You probably rely on social media for alot of marketing your business. Social media has a massive reach, is easy to use, and fits any budget. What happens when there’s a social media outage, or if you’re unable to access your company’s social media page? Rather than wait until to answer that question when there’s an actual problem, plan your strategy now to get ahead of a potential loss of business and a big source of frustration.
Create, Build and Maintain Your Own Platform
One of the absolute best things about social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is that they have such a massive built-in audience. Rather than starting from scratch, you instantly connect with your target audience on social media. The problem with this level of reliance is the fact that because you’ve built your marketing and advertising strategy on someone else’s platform, you give up a great deal of control in the process.
A marketing expert like Mark Crumpacker can tell you the importance of creating, building and maintaining your own site for current and potential customers and brand advocates to explore. Your social media profile opens the door, but it shouldn’t serve as the end of the destination or the main attraction. Be sure you give site visitors the option of signing up for your email list. That way, if they aren’t quite ready to buy your products or services, you can easily keep in touch with them when they are ready to buy.
Look Into Media Placements
While many people no longer have cable, opting instead for streaming services, that doesn’t mean that TV ads have fallen out. You can still buy ad space for streaming services. Look into your options to see how you can catch the attention of your target customers when they’re taking a break from social media.
Don’t Forget About Your Local Community
The internet has made it easier than ever for us to connect to people thousands of miles away. You can’t forget about potential customers who could be just a few streets over in your current geographical area. Look into your local news media outlets to see if they have any interest in running a story about your business that relates to a current issue. If you decide to go this route, focus on something that’s of local interest or trending news. Ask yourself why people would care about your business culture or your products or services. What do you contribute to the community? How does your business help improve lives or make life easier? Make it so that news outlets can’t help but to want to give you air time.
Ask Your Customers and Employees for Ideas
Besides selling your products or services to your customers, you can tap them as a source of insight. Ask your employees if they have any ideas on what you can do to broaden your marketing and advertising reach without an over reliance on social media. Just as you have flashes of insight regarding your business, your employees probably have the same experiences. Your employees may not be vocal about their ideas on how you can evolve your company. Rather than losing a potentially great idea, ask your employees if they have any ideas about how you can diversify your company’s marketing and advertising strategy . This can keep your employees engaged.
Think of Other Ways To Market
You can market your products, services, and business in indirect ways that can still capture the interest of your target audience and keep your current customers interested. You likely have opinions and insights about your business niche. You can create shareable content to distribute via a blog (either your own or someone else’s who’s in your sector). Teach your audience something new, keep them updated about what’s going on in your industry, share your opinion about a newsworthy event. The goal is to show you’re an expert not just a business name, product, or service.
Put yourself into a position today where you don’t go into a panic if there’s a social media outage.
