But first, you have to get the right groups of people to hear about what you have, before the word spreads and it becomes successful. These days, one of the fastest and cost-effective ways of marketing your product is to promote it via online social media networks.
But that means harnessing social media, the way a general marshals his troops according to a strategy. How exactly does one “harness” social media, given the fast-paced, highly-decentralized nature of communications between people over these networks?
Targeted and responsive social marketing
The trick to getting a good handle of your social marketing strategy is to systematize how you put out your product’s photos, brand story, and gimmicks (i.e., memes), and how you respond in real time to your target audience’s reactions to what you put out.
Remember that in the world of social media networking, your market’s “reactions” aren’t meant to be ignored like background noise. Rather, your consumers expect you to treat their reactions as valuable input to your actual product.
For instance: if they blog or tweet about what you’re selling in a favorable manner—then offer up a suggestion as to how to use your product which may be a little different from what you originally intended—the rest of your consumers just might listen to that suggestion, and run off with the idea. You may end up facilitating the birth of a cultural fad or major trend that’s almost completely under the control of your consumer “mob.” Unless, of course, you can somehow seem to be everywhere (online) at once, interacting with the public in real time, answering their questions or providing new information that can help you put a rein on your product’s fame-trend.
It’s very much like conducting a public relations campaign, except on a much faster, more guerilla-like pace—and all done online.
You had better have the right software technology to help you do this. And it must work like a pilot’s cockpit dashboard, giving you a complete one-glance view and control of your entire campaign in real time.
Engaging your exact target
ExactTarget is an interactive email marketing technology provider that has precisely what you need.
Among the company’s social media marketing management platforms is “SocialEngage,” the latest iteration of its “CoTweet” suite of software and services. This version of the platform has been expanded to include management functions for Twitter and Facebook.
This means that you can create single views of each consumer group (or even each consumer!) on ExactTarget’s “Interactive Marketing Hub,” with Twitter and Facebook features integrated into the view. It also means you can easily see (and control) how your product’s Twitter marketing efforts can be integrated with your posts on Pinterest to drive sales, your YouTube videos’ traffic generation, your standard email marketing, and your product’s Facebook page status updates.
The whole CoTweet “SocialEngage” system is, of course, mobile. You can literally be moving about, doing your work, and still be connected to social media in real time, as long as you have access to the Internet and have your smartphone or mobile computer with you. The system is integrated with ExactTarget’s “MobilePush” application, which further enables anyone to consistently push their marketing messages across email, social media, and even blogs and websites (called “cross-channel integration”).
Other management features include “advanced segmentation,” which allows you to automate your message sending based on particular customer preferences. And of course, the system’s reporting and analytics will let you view social media “engagement metrics” in real time.
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