Turning your Customers into a “Volunteer Marketing Army”

Thomas Jefferson once said that “the man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” It is no secret that successful marketing is the lifeline of any business.

Traditionally, the main approach that marketers adopted was advertising through TV and radio, posters and door-to-door brochures. Although this has the potential to reach a large audience and is quite an effective marketing approach, it is also an expensive and a one-way communication medium.

Social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn have thoroughly changed how customers are now choosing to communicate with companies, and vice versa. Given the potential that social media channels provide in terms of building and sustaining customer relationships, marketers, nowadays, are keen to obtain a competitive advantage by expanding their marketing campaigns through social media channels as well.

One of the challenges that are frequently encountered within social media marketing is the sheer amount of content that marketers need to keep up with: Which content are users engaging with the most? What topics generate the most discussion? Should I focus more on posting pictures or articles?

Luckily there are tools that can help marketers analyse and understand all of this. Socionomix is one such tool. It helps marketers boost customer engagement on social media by understanding what type of content works best for their audience – the type of content that users are engaging with the most. Through Socionomix, marketers can also identify key influencers that are discussing their brand and sharing their content, enabling them to target them more effectively.

Tools like Socionomix can also be used to help marketers determine the best time to publish content. Content is most effective when published at the time users are most likely to see it. It is also important that all published content is interesting and meets a likely customer query or need.

A key benefit is that the insights that Socionomix provides is also available for competitors – so marketers can understand how well they are reaching their audience and benchmark against the competition.

The sheer amount of data that is available through social media channels also provides companies with the ability to build predictive models. Some existing examples already exist; a notable one is the 2012 electoral campaign for Obama’s presidency. It is believed that the success of this was due to the usage of social media analytics and predictive models.

If you would like to harness the power of social media to turn your customers into a “volunteer marketing army”, you should certainly tap into all the available social media metrics and use them to build a competitive advantage. For more information on how Socionomix can help you do so, please visit www.socionomix.net.