Social Media Marketing
Tell Your Story & Reach Your Target Audience With Purpose Through Social Media
Reach More Customers
New media platforms have shifted the dynamic between business and consumer. Communication isn’t a one way street anymore. Social media and online reviews demand a new level of transparency and accountability. Cobblestone can work in tandem with your team, bringing our own expertise to your branded social media. Our strategic, solutions-oriented approach will help you find ways to create partnerships with your customers, and connect and interact with your audience in ways that have never been possible before.
Ignite Your Business
True social media advertising is both targeted and collaborative. We will use data and analytics to help you find interested audiences that you haven’t engaged before. By combining public relations messaging with the latest search media best practices, social media is an extremely effective way to connect with your audience. This sort of one-on-one interaction with current and potential customers is powerful because it takes place where your audience is already evaluating your product. When done right, social media marketing can create unpaid visitors, expand awareness and give personality to your brand, making your company’s identity more authentic and approachable.
Communicate Your Message
Social media is a key part of a brand’s overall marketing and communications strategy. We’ll start by using immersion and download meetings to better understand your business goals and customer profile. Then we will apply the latest new media and tools to find and influence your audience. Because it uses cost variables and targeting tactics that aren’t available with traditional campaigns, social media marketing is uniquely customizable. We’ll work with you to create a strategy that will grow your audience and increase your bottom line. Once in place we can interact with your audience directly. This offers both a security buffer for your brand and makes your online identity more active, efficient and effective.
The 3 R's Of Social Media Marketing ROI
Social media has grown, evolved and massively scaled over the last decade. What was once a nice-to-have is now a powerful foundational touchpoint, with the power to not just support existing customers, but engage prospects, build relationships and drive immediate, measurable impact to your bottom line -- and beyond.
That said, simply having a social media presence isn’t enough to move the needle. By digging in and understanding the impact of your social efforts, you’ll be able to turn up what works and shift what doesn’t. And, from there, you’ll be able to maximize your social footprint and create a consistent, cohesive brand experience that engages consumers and inspires them to take action. That’s where the three “Rs” of social media come in...
Use Social Media To Conduct RESEARCH
Social media gives you unparalleled access to your core consumers. But, too often, brands don’t leverage this in their research and development. According to Kalypso Social Media and Product Innovation, 70% of brands surveyed say they plan to use social media for research -- but just one in three have a plan in place to actually accomplish that goal.
Not only is this is a missed opportunity, but it keeps you and your business from getting the most out of your social platforms. By soliciting feedback from social followers, unpacking your audience demographics and reviewing what they’re engaging with when, you’ll be able to better understand what makes your consumers tick -- and that’s something that will help you deliver on customers wants and needs, so you can take your marketing and messaging to the next level.
Use Social Media To RETAIN Customers
While many businesses focus their time and talent on acquiring new customers, often the real revenue comes from existing buyers and long-term loyalists. On average, it costs five times more to engage and activate a new customer as it does to retain a current one. So, while driving new consumers into your pipeline is important, it’s essential to be all-in with your existing customer base -- and that’s where social media comes in.
Social media is a critical retention tool. Not only does it provide another more personal platform for consumers to engage, but it brings them face-to-face with your business. Where else can they post on your consumer-facing profile, share feedback directly with your business and, overall, interact with your customer base and with YOU -- all with a few quick clicks? And besides that, social works -- according to Sprout Social, brands leveraging social media in their marketing and retention efforts see a customer spending boost of 20%-40%.
To make the most of your retention opportunities, be sure you’re tracking retention rates among social followers versus non-social followers as well as when they took repeat action, what they responded to and any other elements that indicate what’s working and what’s not. From here, you’ll be able to better understand what compels existing consumers to dig deeper with your brand so you can strategize and streamline future engagement efforts.
Use Social Media To Get REFERRALS
Referrals and word-of-mouth are, truly, the oldest marketing methods out there -- and, still, they’re the most compelling. Interestingly, though, today’s consumers don’t need to hear it from a trusted friend, relative or colleague. Today’s consumers are just as apt to trust and take action on a positive -- or negative -- online review from a total stranger as they are from a first-hand comment. According to
Small Business Trends, 84% of consumers trust online reviews of small businesses. Use that to your advantage and you could easily harness the power of your loyalists to drive new consumers -- consumers who come to the table primed to buy.
The best way to gauge, evolve and scale these efforts? By integrating UTM codes so you can tap into advanced tracking and referral systems. Your viral feedback and the results that emerge will be completely trackable, which will help you better increase and enhance the power of your word-of-mouth efforts -- efforts which, according to Sprout Social, can drive 20%-50% of all purchase decisions.
By focusing on these three Rs you’ll be able to make the most of your current and future social media, driving more engagement, consideration and conversions among new and existing consumers. Done right, social media can be the lynchpin of your marketing efforts, delivering more consumers with more spending power than any other outlet out there -- and can cost a fraction of the price with a fraction of the waste. That’s the power of social media -- and that’s powerful.