Category: Marketing

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How to Begin Successfully Email Marketing

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 31, 2017
No Comments on How to Begin Successfully Email Marketing

Since the technological breakthrough of email, you would be hard-pressed to find an individual who isn’t currently using email in some facet. In most cases, individuals will own multiple email addresses out of necessity or requirements needed to fulfill app downloads or use certain services or products. For this reason, email marketing remains to this day on of the most effective ways to promote your products and service to prospective buyers or build trust between your business and a consumer.

Gather Emails

It’s hard to market your services or products through email if you haven’t compiled an email or newsletter list. It is important that the email addresses included in your list are accurate and approved by the owner to ensure regulations are met and your message is actually effective. Email addresses can be easily compiled through an online form on your website or manually entered when gathered at trade shows or events.

Give Recipients Value

Chances are if you are blatantly asking for a sale every time you send an email your potential customers will be less than enthused to open your emails, or worse, unsubscribe from your mailing lists. To avoid this, give your customers valuable information that relates to your business then provide a call-to-action to reach your desired outcome. Make your newsletter valuable enough that they will consistently open the following ones.

Try a Service

There are many email marketing services that help small business owners create professional emails with minimal effort. For example, Constant Contact features an easy to use drag-and-drop editor that can help make your emails deliver at certain times with advanced scheduling. For some, this makes the process a little less demanding and helps add crucial automation features that can be utilized to help grow your business.

You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your social media management or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags Email, marketing

Marketing

How Can You Drive Social Media Sales?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 24, 2017
No Comments on How Can You Drive Social Media Sales?

Social media collage with icons background. Vector illustration

Small business owners have a wide variety of outlets to get the word out about their products. However, social media can often be the most impactful FREE outlet for promoting your products or services. Most small business owners will mistakenly invest little time in their social media accounts. It can be hard to determine the return on investment that small business owners receive from social media. For this reason, many factors must be considered to ensure your customers are receiving proper incentive to purchase your products or services. Growing your social media audience is the target goal to help drive individuals ready to purchase to your websites.

Seek Out Intent

Social media outlets are hotbeds of potential customers seeking product recommendations to suit a particular need they may have. With the help of a social media manager or agency, small business owners can seek out customers on an individual basis that may require their products of services. One report found that social selling generates 40% more qualified leads than cold calling.

Competitive Monitoring

By utilizing an agency, small business owners can gain insights into how their competitors are growing and making mistakes. This can be pivotal in determining how to proceed with the goals of your small business. Monitoring your competitors can also provide a deep understanding of your customer base and customers you potentially are missing.

Focus on Customer Service

In the modern digital world, reviews and customer recommendations are key. By promoting superior customer service, small business owners can benefit not only from word of mouth referrals but digital referrals through positive reviews. Modern social media communication makes it possible for customers, or potential customers, to voice their concerns in real-time, regardless of the time.

Proactive Lead Research

A great social media manager understands the value of empathy and the power of insights. By having a dedicated social media manager, you are more prepared to identify your customer base on social media and effectively sell to them. Monitoring industry trends and the habits of your customer base can help build a stronger case for bolstering sales in the long term.

Utilize Content Marketing

It is important to have a strong content strategy that aligns with your businesses desired outcome to ensure your end goals are achieved. Many studies have shown that consumers are 90% of the way through their research before ultimately settling on their chosen product or service, making it difficult to influence their decision. Utilizing influencers can help turn a company push into an individual push.

Tags sales, social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

What Are the Best Practices for Social Media in Business?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 17, 2017
No Comments on What Are the Best Practices for Social Media in Business?

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It is important to define how you want to leverage social media for your business before utilizing the services of an outsourced social media manager. Establishing objectives that are trackable and measurable are pivotal in creating winning strategies. These goals should be flexible to allow for pivoting when strategies need to be changed. It is also important to ensure your social media goals focus on a specific strategic goal. This can be as simple as collecting user engagement metrics or pushing potential customers to your website to drive sales. Depending on your personal business goals, these best practices should be considered:

Leverage the Right Social Media Networks

Social media is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Many businesses will attempt to utilize multiple social media accounts and only see success on individual social media platforms. Use your target customer base and their online behavior to determine the social media platforms that best work for your products or services.

Brand Your Profiles

One of the most important steps in creating a social media profile is branding each account to ensure a consistent user experience. With the help of an agency, you can ensure each of your social media profiles exemplifies your brand while sharing common, yet effective, posts. This can help build stronger brand awareness and, in turn, brand loyalty.

Focus on Quality, not Quantity

Quality posts will always be more beneficial than excessive posts that may turn off your customers in the long term. A good social media mix will include promotional posts, thoughtful posts and posts that drive engagement. By utilizing social media management through an agency, your posts will be tracked monthly to determine which posts were most effective and then tailor your social media efforts to that data.

Monitor Metrics

By utilizing social media management through a firm, you can rest easy knowing your metrics are consistently being tracked. By analyzing your social media analytics on a weekly basis, an agency can determine the best methods of driving engagement for your profiles. With tools like HootSuite and Google Analytics, you can be sure your best interests are in mind.

Patience is a Virtue

Building a loyal following on social media platforms doesn’t happen overnight. It can take time to effectively analyze your customer base and accurately target their needs. With consistency and patience, you will be more likely to achieve social media goals.

Tags social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Why Should Small Businesses Outsource Social Media?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 10, 2017
No Comments on Why Should Small Businesses Outsource Social Media?

We can help on black blackboard with hand

There are many reasons why small businesses owners may wish to outsource the management of their social media accounts. As the list of social media platforms continues to grow, it is unlikely small business owners will be able to consistently account for all of their accounts. It can often take several hours monthly to efficiently handle a single small business social media platform according to this report. To accurately leverage the power of social media for your business there are several key factors that must be considered. Often, small business owners will utilize these factors to ensure their social media profiles are in good hands. The factors included in this process include:

Accountability

As a small business owner, you may not have a passion for social media. Outsourced social media managers will have an inherent passion for social media and genuine understanding of how each platform works. A great social media manager will have knowledge of the digital landscape as well as a drive to keep up with current trends to push your business forward.

Prior Experience

With outsourced social media management, small business owners will have a knowledgeable team that can help determine what works and what doesn’t, based on past experience. Whether you are interested in social media advertising or standard posting to drive engagement, it is important to have a team that can pull from previous experience. With an agency, small business owners can be sure they have all facets covered from conception to completion.

Reliability

Reliability is one of the key factors that must be considered when hiring a social media manager. Because consistency is key, it is important to utilize the services of an agency that plans ahead. For example, if your social media manager becomes ill, who will continue the content? With an agency, you will likely have several individuals capable of continuing the job if disaster strikes.

Conflict Resolution Experience

There are many “social media managers” available to small business owners. However, it is important to ensure that you are employing the services of an individual, or group of individuals with a degree or years of experience. In the best-case scenario, you will desire a person with a public relations or business administration background that can ensure conflicts are managed appropriately.

Cost

Nationally, a decent social media manager will likely cost around $50k to $70k annually. Gathering content and copy for campaigns or posts can take several hours to effectively express the views of your business.

When utilizing Skynet Solutions social media management services, you can be sure the ins and outs of social media are covered for less money. You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your social media management or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags small business, social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Why is Social Media Important for Businesses?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 3, 2017
No Comments on Why is Social Media Important for Businesses?

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There are many reasons why a business should be actively using social media. In the modern age, your brand or business doesn’t really exist without having representation on social media. Social media accounts are FREE to start and can be leveraged to help meet and express the goals of your business. Every social media post you make is indexed resulting in consistently increased SEO. This can help boost web traffic to your primary sites and ultimately lead to brand awareness and increased sales. These are some of the reasons your web presence can suffer without a consistent social media presence:

Relationship Building

Interaction with customers is an important step in driving sales. Through social media, businesses can interact with their customer base, or potential customer base, in real time to help build lasting relationships. This can help humanize a business and drive sales by making the transaction more personal.

Immediate Conflict Resolution

With the evolution of social media customer service is more important than ever. If a customer is dissatisfied with your product or service they will now have a wide audience to voice their concerns to. This makes it more important than ever to ensure you are addressing concerns openly and honestly for the most beneficial outcome for both parties.

Brand Loyalty

A recent report published by Texas Tech University found that brands that actively maintain their social media profiles are more likely to have a loyal customer base. By actively engaging with your customer base on social media, you are more likely to build relationships with those people on an individual basis. This can make repeat customers more likely to utilize your products or services on a long-term basis.

Keeping Up With Competition

It is likely that your competition is actively utilizing social media. To help level the playing field, it is important to ensure you are also leveraging the currently digital market. If your competition is already establishing relationships with potential customers, it will be more difficult to catch up.

Finding New Customers

By utilizing keywords and hashtags, businesses can easily find potential customers they may have never knew existed. Leveraging the power of social media groups can also be a lucrative source of website traffic. Though this may not result in immediate sales, it lets customers know there are options in the future.

Tags social media

Marketing

Dealing with Customer Complaints

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date February 24, 2017
No Comments on Dealing with Customer Complaints

Complaints - Red Ring Binder on Office Desktop with Office Supplies and Modern Laptop. Business Concept on Blurred Background. Toned Illustration.

In the modern digital world, it can be incredibly easy for a dissatisfied customer to voice their complaint to a large audience. As a business, it is important to know how to properly respond to customer complaints and minimize the impact they can have on your business. Follow these steps to help remedy a bad review.

Listen to the Customer

If your customer has a legitimate problem, it may be a good idea to listen to avoid future problems. Listening to the customer without interruption can help give a company an idea of what the problem is and how it can be avoided in the future. To truly fix a problem, you must be receptive to hearing what it is.

Make it Right

Empathy and an apology will get your far when dealing with customer complaints. The customer needs to understand that you actually care about their experience, negative or positive. By satisfying the customer’s needs, businesses can often build a stronger bond with that customer in the future.

Be Public

It doesn’t do a company any good to secretly address a bad review. By being open and honest, other customers or potential customers can see that you are interested in making the situation right. Nothing helps a brand promote its customer service more than a public apology.

Damage Control

Trying to get a bad review removed from the internet is perhaps the worst thing you could possibly do for damage control. Instead, focus on gathering more positive reviews. The more positive reviews you receive, the more the bad reviews will be buried and less relevant. Remember, getting a bad review isn’t the end of the world. It’s just important to properly deal with it to ensure the damage caused by it is as minimal as possible. Focus on your customer service to ensure bad experiences are rare.

You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your business listing, website development, marketing or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags consumer behavior, Digital Representation, digital strategy

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