How strong is your social media strategy?

When developing a marketing strategy, you have to utilize as many angles as possible. There are so many options to get eyeballs on your company that involve social media, but you must know what you are doing.

Many companies have spent a lot of time on social media because there are so many options. We will discuss what each one is and how it can help you, however when making your strategy, focus on what you can do to be effective.

Twitter –

Learn to say a lot with very little. Fast and easy, but be careful of not looking to much like spam. You are limited to just 140 characters, but you can create explosive promotions that get passed all over the world in a small amount of time.

Here is a great site that has three great ideas for creating a twitter campaign. http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2011/10/twitter-promotions/

Facebook –

Facebook is so powerful with almost a billion people signed up. It is hard to be relevant without having a facebook page. It is great to create exposure and an easy place to communicate with the end user.

In order to be effective on facebook there is a trend of customizing your facebook page to create more followers. This does take time but it is effective.

Sprout Social does a nice piece on how to do this.

http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2011/10/facebook-promotion-ideas/

YouTube –

If you have videos and want customers to see them, you need to create your own YouTube channel. Many users are not looking for a completely professional video, many times viewers are looking for fun content or meaningful content that is updated regularly.

Brad Scott created a workout channel that explains how to work out and various different exercises that get you ripped. There is even one where he bench presses his girlfriend to show you that you can exercise any where and with anything. http://www.youtube.com/user/bradscottfitness

Many of the posts of fun little segments and then some are very just fun.

Google Plus –

It is getting harder to not have a google plus site. It is easy to set up a company profile, and because it is google, it helps your google rankings. There are other features such as groups, circles, hangouts and sparks. These are great places to find good contacts.

Blogging –

Do not forget about blogging. Even if you do not have a large following, creating pertinent content that will be searched by the search engines to create Google, Bing and Yahoo rankings. Many times this is the most important part of search engine optimization.

This is easy, free and quick. We have a Tumblr account as well as a blogspot account. Many times we post the same things to both.

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/retailpitch

http://retailpitch.blogspot.com/

Blogspot is part of google so you know that google will be crawling your blog for information.

There are many other places to get exposure for your company as well, but remember you will need to focus. All options listed here are not required, rather create a strategy that you can spend time on and be effective.

As a retailer and manufacturer you need to be involved in social media. Like all marketing you need to understand and target on your market

Pitching to Retailers

The most important issue facing almost any organization is, "how to get your product to market?". Even the greatest of products fail due to a lack of exposure, and the ability to get the product in to the hands of the consumers.

As a brand new company or a company that is trying to increase sales, your message needs to be succinct and clear. Here are a few pointers:

1. Make sure you are talking to the right person. Nothing more frustrating than finishing a meeting and realizing that you are talking to the wrong person.

2. Know your product from front to back, top to bottom. Many times product sales people feel that the product should sell itself, however the customer rarely knows as much as you do about your product.

2. Understand that the retail buyer or store owner has limited amount of time. Smaller retailers' main job is to run the store and provide great customer service. So make sure your message is worth their time and convincing.

3. Everyone wants to make money, but your product needs to have bottom line capacity to justify the existence of your product on their shelves. This can come in the fashion of profitability or quick turns. Be sure to give examples of other success stories and be ready to provide good references.

4. Be sure to point out the advantages that your product will bring to the retailer, this could include a new subset of customers, additional sales or faster turns.

5. Explain how they can be included in your marketing efforts and how you can help drive customers to their stores.

Having the right pitch to retailers can make all the difference. Be prepared and you will surely see success!

http://www.retailpitch.com