Social Media can be an absolute dream of a marketing channel. Billions of people all at the other end of a screen, what could go possibly wrong?
When we speak to prospects, we’re usually met with a bit of a grimace when it comes to social media. Many business owners see the platforms as more of a hinderance than an opportunity, or as several people have called it in onboarding meetings with us, ‘a necessary evil’.
Buy why the negative reaction? Have they gone viral for the wrong reasons? Are people simply not interested in what they have to say? What we tend to find is that business owners dislike it simply because they aren’t getting as much out of it as they should.
When we look at the channels of the people who don’t like social media, we tend to see the same thing. Posts and posts of generic ‘salesy’ messages.
Examples such as ‘Have you seen (input product nobody has ever heard of)? It’s amazing because (input reason which means nothing to anybody). Buy it here.’
You can hang your hat on the fact that they aren’t generating sales from these type of posts. This isn’t our biggest concern though. Our biggest concern is you can guarantee that they aren’t getting any sort of interaction on these posts and this is the key point.
Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, users do not go on to these platforms to be knowingly sold to.
Think about it – have you ever opened up your phone and thought to yourself ‘I’m going to buy something on Facebook now’. I’m sure the answer is of course ‘no’. However, there is every chance that you may have opened up your phone, gone on to Facebook, enjoyed a couple of cat videos and then found yourself buying your cherished kitty ANOTHER cute sweater. You’ve been sold to without having a clue!
Forget the sales for now. You need to be engaging on social media. Be funny, be bold and be creative and the likes and comments will come. Once you get regular interaction and more people are interested in what your business is saying, the sales will happen naturally.
A perfect example of this is the #FreeCuthbert campaign by Aldi in 2021. You can read some of the more intricate details here (https://www.marketingweek.com/masters-awards-aldi-free-cuthbert/). It’s a great story about how 1 tweet led to a campaign that generated over 30 million views, raised a lot of money for Teenage Cancer Trust and ultimately increased their purchase consideration score by 7%. Not a bad result eh?
Consider how many Cuthbert cakes Aldi sold on the back of it and think about how many they’d have sold if they just put a post out saying ‘Cuthert the caterpillar is a great cake for a loved ones Birthday, buy one in store today’.
Aldi didn’t look like they were trying to sell, they were actually poking fun at a competitor. Well guess what – people saw the post everywhere and suddenly they fancy a caterpillar shaped chocolate cake and there wasn’t even a hint of a salesy message!
Do the same for your business and if you still don’t know how to go about it – give us a shout and we can help you!