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When it comes to advertising, putting your message in a bottle can be catastrophic. Romantic for sure, but catastrophic all the same. When you send your missive out into the world with limitations, only a few will ever see it. Sure, your bottle will float lazily away with the current, but it has the potential of eventually reaching only one customer. Unless you’re sending out millions of the little buggars — all neatly written by your freelance writer, rolled up, and tucked in tight — you’re never going to make an impact.
Don’t be that guy.
Be a savvy marketing genius instead, and make use of the nearly limitless tools you have at your disposal: tools like social media, for instance.
If you crunch the numbers, marketing yourself and your brand on social media just makes sense. According to eMarketer, by the year 2017, 2.55 billion of the world’s population will have access to social media.
That’s a lot of potential customers for your business.
But you shouldn’t just set out to create a business page on Facebook or a persona on Twitter without doing any research. First you need to find out which types of social media your target audience interacts with the most and then hire your freelance writer accordingly. This is the only way you’ll reach your full marketing potential. You have several options for obtaining this information:
Ask
Probably the easiest way to find out where your customers go to play is simply to ask them. Add a survey to your website. Send out an email. If you interact with consumers in person, do it the old-fashioned way — ask a question. Twitter is huge, but that doesn’t mean your target audience necessarily loves it. India Times has pointed out that the majority of Twitter users are twenty-something females who utilize the platform mostly to interact with small groups of friends. If your product or service caters to wealthy, professional males over the age of 50 — why turn to Twitter to get your message out?
Spy
Of course, if you’re too shy to ask outright, you can always spy on your customers for fun and profit. This is where website analytics come into play. Today’s analytics are advanced to the point that they can tell you the exact pages a user perused on your site, which social network he or she visited from, how long they stayed, how far they scrolled, where they hovered and more. It’s downright spooky.
But what better way to find out which networks your customers prefer? And if you add a few of the major social media share buttons to the content your freelance writer creates, you’ll easily be able to track who shared what and where.
Think big when it comes to marketing your message. Break free of the glass bottle that’s holding you back and opt instead for saturating the market with your message instead of simply teasing it.
Romance has its place in the world, but it’s not smack in the middle of your company’s marketing strategy.
Don’t be that guy.
(free lance writer)
Anne G enjoys researching, social media, landscaping, gardening and home renovation.
