Using Social Media to Enhance Direct Marketing | Online Business ...

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By Johann Williamson

If you have ever posted a message on Facebook, in trying to find an apartment, sell a car, or invite friends to a gathering, then you yourself have used social media to enhance direct marketing. Because what you are doing as an individual is exactly what businesses are trying to do every day and all over the world.

The most important asset you have as an individual is that when you ask people to respond, they know you and hopefully trust you. Businesses do not always have that point to start from.

Obviously a business such as McDonalds or GEICO has a name which ?needs no introduction?, and so their main goal is simply going to be to target as many potential customers as possible.

Small businesses, however, have to build trust. One way to do that is to build a network of people who know their company and who do business with them, and who communicate with each other. The use of social media reinforces a basic rule of commerce: people buy on the approval of others.

Any company interested in increasing its customer base will want to use social media in order to improve its sales and growth curves. There are two levels of activity which you should be looking at:

1) Electronic media alone; 2) Electronic media in conjunction with print media.

The most obvious examples of electronic media alone are email, Facebook and electronic coupons. Let?s examine these in more detail:

Email can be used to send a ?letter?, just the same as a letter can be sent through the mail. The problem with email is that they are often treated as spam, and many are filtered out. Many more are deleted by the recipient without having been read.

On Facebook, it really is true that ?corporations are people?. Any company or organization can set up a Facebook account, and can begin to attract friends, and can create posts which detail company events and new products. A company can reward viewers to the site by awarding them a discount, coupon or special offer if they will use the ?Like? feature in favor of the corporation. Because of Groupon and its many imitators, the growth of online couponing has changed the face of marketing. New businesses have to at least consider using them. The advantage of these programs is that they can bring a huge number of new customers. The disadvantage of these programs is that they can bring a huge number of new customers! The key here is to limit how many customers you can serve and to limit how much you can give away in a discount. The goal is to gain new customers, not to put yourself out of business on a single deal.

Electronic media in conjunction with print media.

The possibilities here are numerous. Any postcard, poster, flyer, brochure or booklet can be printed with links to media: QR codes which can be read from a distance, and PURLs which can send a customer to a website.

The idea here is that print media leads to electronic media, and electronic media leads to special offers and incentives to act.

Contact Conquest Graphics today to find out more about using social media to enhance your direct marketing efforts. Direct marketing may include bookmarks or brochures or many more items.

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