Social Media and Promo Products - Twins?
Email Blasts Are Door Hangers. Good Blogging Is a Stuffed Mailer
Never fear, social media will never replace Promotion Products, but as a distributor or salesperson in the advertising specialty arena, your use or failure to use social media can easily be compared to your clients missed opportunities in the employment of imprinted merchandise to increase leads, actions, sales, and profits.
1. Social media isn't the only way or even the best way to market. Many businesses, and even some in the promo business seem to think that the great "free" method of social media is the panacea to increasing exposure, leads, etc. In fact, leading experts continue to point to word of mouth as representing 70% of the way almost all businesses get new clients. Customer service is still the leading way to accomplish customer retention. Promotional goods and social media represent outstanding marketing tools with higher than average ROI, but they are just part of the tool chest.
2. You don't need to and should not try to use every type of social media. Far too many businesses today think they need to chase every single type of web based marketing. This would be like using promotionals for every marketing need. It just doesn't make sense. Carefully posture your online effort to meet the client where they shop and to most effectively create the actions you seek to generate. In general, email blasts and YouTube video are the most effective online tools today. However, your client might really respond to Linkedin or Pinterest.
3. Just because social media is so inexpensive, doesn't mean that the ROI is better than much more expensive marketing approaches. Even for small businesses, a trade show or well crafted print ad might create a much higher ROI than giving away water bottles at the school fair. The same is true for "free" media. First of all, it isn't free. I figure my time at $70 an hour. Creating this blog post was anything but free. Second of all, there might not be any tangible order that comes from this single posting, just like there might not be a tangible order from sending out an annual calendar.
4. Social media is very much like the tschotchke biz in that most of both are reminders. The goal in both is more often to keep the advertiser front of mind as opposed to creating the immediate sale. This is not always true for either, but is generally the primary motivation and result.
5. Quality counts. I know full well how often you have tried to convince your clients to go to multiple colors or a product that will actually work for its intended purpose for more than an hour. But they only have a 50¢ budget. It is no different with social media. If you only blog once a month, or only send out two emails a year, or if the posts or the videos or the emails are just not attractive, thoughtful and spelled right, they aren't going to get you much in the way of results.
Can you think of other ways that social media marketing is similar to promotional products marketing?
