Obviously you want to use social media to market your products and you don’t always want to use the roundabout approach. There is nothing wrong with being direct, just know that there will be more money involved.
Either way with marketing, it’s going to cost you time or money and as they say, “time is money,” so it really depends on what kind of currency you are willing to spend.
If you have the extra cash, though, I would suggest investing in some direct marketing through social media to yield the best results and make sure enough eyeballs see your product.
Here are some ways that you can use direct marketing to increase your sales and brand awareness.
Advertising New Products
Whether someone is already a fan of yours or they are new to your market, new products have a tendency to get people really revved up and excited.
You can use your social media platform to keep the public aware of new products as they become available and even more importantly, you can rev up the interest for that new product before it has even been launched.
Let’s look at something as simple as a movie trailer.
Studios have gotten smart and they generally start a social media campaign as soon as the movie has been green lit.
From there, the hype builds with what is essentially a teaser machine. It may start as small as photos of the posters for the movie, photos of the cast or behind the scenes images.
Over time, as the project develops, little clips may be released to give people a taste of what is to come. These may be as short as ten seconds, but even that is enough to make fans explode with anticipation.
As the movie nears its premiere, they drop the big bomb—a trailer! People go insane and they share this trailer on their walls so everyone they know can see how awesome this movie will be!
Imagine if you took this approach with your product. Imagine if you built a launch slowly, over time, with tidbits that would hype up your audience. Imagine if you took this a step further and started releasing ads that teased just enough to get people excited enough to follow you page.
This seems like a winning approach, doesn’t it? Well then, use it!
Use your social media to your advantage to hype up new products. This will help to maintain your current audience and will bring new customers into the fold.
Affiliate Products
Social media allows you to reach your audience more directly than anything else. Sure, your goal is to get them to subscribe to your newsletter, but what better way to tease your newsletter than giving them access to your affiliates?
I know this sounds strange, but hear me out. If you can begin hyping your affiliates before they even join your newsletter, they will be WAY more likely to buy once they join. This doesn’t mean that you have to give away the info for the product for free. You can still affiliate market or let them know about the program without giving the name.
Make it seem like giving them access to the affiliate products that you know will help them is a reward. This may give them more incentive to bite and will get them ready for the affiliate emails before you even start sending them.
Pushing Traffic To Your Website
This is the primary goal for most internet marketers. No matter what technique you use to get people there, at the end of the day, you want them to get to your website so they’ll subscribe to your newsletter.
If they don’t get to your website, they won’t subscribe. If they don’t subscribe, all of your efforts will be effectively meaningless.
Getting people to sign up for a newsletter can be difficult and it really may come down to the wording.
If you sell people on the idea that your website will give them all the answers that they need, they will be much more likely to click. If you tell them to go to your website so they can sign up for an email newsletter, there’s a good chance no one will click.
It’s likely that you’ve spend some good money on your landing page. It’s time to put that page to work!
There’s a reason why all the most successful internet marketers use landing pages. You need to hype up your newsletter before you capture their emails and often the best way to do this is to give them a free gift and a promise of quality content.
So, how do you use social media to drive traffic to your website?
Well, there are a couple of different approaches.
One is the approach that we were talking about earlier, with engaging your audience. Once you’ve gotten them to “like” your page or you’ve engaged them in conversation, you can send out posts asking them to check out your website.
You don’t want to flood your page with these, but you also don’t want them to be sparse. A balance is important.
The other way is more direct, which is advertising through social media.
Facebook, for instance, has an excellent advertising tool that allows you to reach thousands of people for a pretty marginal price. This will get you lots of impressions, which will increase the chance for clicks.
With these ads, your call to action can be to “like” the page or go directly to the website. Try out both and see what works better for you and your specific business. Either way, promise them great, FREE content and even that free gift.
People want something for nothing, at least initially, and once you’ve gained their trust, they will be more likely to take your opinion and buy from you.
One way or another, these ads will drive traffic, which will lead to more sales. Once again, this is going to cost you a bit of money and you may even want to consider hiring someone to write your ads for you.
We all like to think of ourselves as social media experts, but in reality, most of us don’t have a business degree or marketing background.
Once you’ve captured your potential customer’s attention and gotten them to the website, it all comes down to the newsletter. If you sell them on the free gift or the merits of the newsletter, you’ll get clicks.
From there, it’s up to you to have a killer newsletter that will keep them reading and keep them loyal.
This may actually work towards feeding your social media campaign, as happy customers will tell their friends and share your page on their social media!
3 Foolproof Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Your Internet Marketing Efforts
