Over the last several years, social media marketing has been the go-to strategy for companies to promote their business. With billions of daily users, it’s understandable why so many marketing leaders are excited. Social media marketing has been touted as the best way to market to new customers online.
As social media has grown, the organic reach has decreased. Today, almost all of the major social media platforms are publicly traded companies. To appease their shareholders and Wall Street, these social media platforms now have to generate a profit in whichever way they can.
That has meant decreasing the organic reach and making businesses pay to reach their existing audience.
If your company is a midsize organization with a smaller marketing budget, you can’t use social media marketing as effectively as you did in the past. Social media marketing is going through what the SEO industry went through a few years ago with several Google algorithm updates.
What used to work doesn’t work anymore.
Social media is a rented platform, which is why email marketing is still the best way to market to leads and turn them into customers. If someone is signed up for your email list, they will at least receive your email.
Your email list is the people who have given you permission to tell them what you have going on in your company. Here are fives tips to help get potential customers to open your emails and increase your sales.
1. Test what works for your list.
As with anything in business, there’s a lot of advice that’s good and bad. The truest way to know what will work for your marketing strategy is testing. To get the best value from your list, test the day(s) you should send emails.
Test the time of day; test the subject lines and even the template you use. Don’t listen to advice that’s been passed around like it’s the law. Take as long as you need to test how and what your list responds best to.
2. Deliver exclusive and actionable content.
Your testing will be meaningless if you don’t deliver valuable content. “Value content” can be interpreted in different ways but, in general, it means giving your audience strategies, tips, and tactics that help them reach their goals.
Give them content you don’t share anywhere else. Make it feel like a special club that helps them solve the problem they came to you to learn how to solve. That builds the know, like, and trust factor with those on the list and will lead to an increase in sales when you’re running a promotion.
3. Don’t come on too strong.
People are repelled from email marketing that feels like it’s a constant promotion. There has to be a balance between delivering value and selling. Your content demonstrates your company knows what you’re talking about and shows that what you sell will help your audience take the next steps.
If you come off as the spammy marketing list, your emails will be sent to the junk folder. There is a lot of wisdom in serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” way of thinking about marketing.
4. Don’t treat people like they’re just a number.
A big mistake organizations make is treating potential leads like they’re a number or dollar sign. We train all over the world with organizations and talk about the importance of authenticity. People can tell what’s real and what’s fake. Treat people like you value them and they will do business with you.
5. Let your results speak for themselves.
Results marketing is the best form of marketing, whether through social media or email. When you show repeated success, people are impressed and make a buying decision.
There’s a whole segment of companies that are bragging about what they’ve done with zero proof. When you show potential leads what you’re teaching does work, it will turn leads into customers.
People log onto social media for a variety of reasons. Being sold to constantly is not high on their list. You’ve seen it if you’ve spent any time on social media; the constant selling and it’s a turn-off. Don’t be that kind of company.
Email marketing is the perfect example of what Seth Godin calls “permission marketing.” Build up your email list and send potential leads back to your website to see everything else you offer.
Let your content help them make a decision they’ll be happy about later. When you trick them with a clever Facebook ad, they’re not likely to do business with you again.
Build and nurture a list of people who are interested in your organization. Add value and then sell to them. Your revenue will increase and email marketing will become your best marketing tool.
