Connecting With The Connected Consumer..
Understanding And Connecting With The Connected Consumer
Whether you like it or not, people are talking to each other about their purchase experiences, both online and off.
Small business owners still don’t have a strong sense of what’s happening in the offline world; for example, does the old adage that there are “five bad reviews for every positive good review” still hold weight?
In 2012, consumers reported that offline word of mouth still accounted for 62 percent of the conversations around deal sharing.(1)
But it’s challenging for small businesses to measure how effective offline marketing, word of mouth, and referral programs are for them.
Alternately, online businesses have access to a wealth of hard data on a variety of factors, including how consumers are browsing the Internet and what they’re doing with their time. If businesses know what they’re looking for, they can get a much clearer picture of which aspects of their programs are effective, and which they should tweak a bit or even drop completely. Most important, the profusion of sharing taking place on the web gives everyone a good idea of whom consumers are engaging with, and what they’re talking about.
The real challenge small businesses face in terms of influencing—or even joining— the online social conversation is that there is simply too much information out there. It’s difficult to know where to start, where to focus, and where to invest the marketing dollars and time you have.
For example, if you account for one in every seven minutes that people spend online globally, you’ll find that Facebook seems to dominate the social conversation. Therefore, the obvious choice seems to be to sign up for Facebook ads. However, the context surrounding the kind of social conversation you have on Facebook depends on the type of business you’re running, and who your customers are. It’s important to have the right kind of conversation and invest in the right social channels.
Otherwise, you could very well have no impact—or worse, a detrimental effect on your business.
You may already be aware of these as critical factors to success in today’s online social economy. But let’s face it: You’re a small business owner, not an online marketing guru. And that’s okay. You’ve gotten as far as you have in your business by focusing on what you know, and honing your area of expertise. You don’t have to be an expert in using online resources, because this book is going to help you with that.
We’ll show you how to easily apply a few key marketing principles to your business so that you can concentrate on being the amazing small business owner that you are—and feel like a marketing guru at the same time. "You also don’t have to be a client of my company, Demandforce, to get value out of reading this book. My intent is to give all small business owners the tools they need in order to quickly build an effective plan aimed at converting online shoppers into offline customers."
It will be easy for you to put this plan into action, and it will deliver impressive results for your business. The chapters ahead contain tips and tricks, worksheets, and best practices that we teach our customers every day to compliment the Demandforce program. This information will help you get that much closer to “wild success.”
Socially Connected Consumer versus Social Influencer
The key difference between a Socially Connected Consumer and Social Influencer is that the second person will use pretty much any medium to communicate his or her recommendations—and it doesn’t matter which one he or she chooses.
When a Social Influencer passionately advocates a product or service, he or she creates a trend wave that friends and followers readily jump on.
Leveraging Social Influencers isn’t about finding a celebrity to adore your product or service and tweet about it. Social Influencers exist across all of the social groups noted in Rogers’s innovation adoption model. For many small businesses, converting a small but vocal group of loyal Social Influencers creates a strong foundation for long-term growth.
In Chapters 8 and 9, we’ll explore some topics around incentivizing and rewarding both your Socially Connected Consumers and those coveted Social Influencers.
领英推荐
(1)September 2012 report from Valassis and RedPlum, www.marketingcharts.com/wp/ direct/us-consumers-willing-to-get-social-for-deals-23182.
Copywrite free excerpt sourced from: Understanding And Connecting With The Connected Consumer By Annie Tsai -
The Small Business
Online Marketing Handbook
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Published by?#NHGBe?2022-12-16 - CEST 09:30 AM?
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