CB Advertising Services, Inc.

Everyone who is in business realizes at one point or another that advertising is necessary. So as a business owner or manager you think about what kind of advertising techniques and strategies work best to convince your consumers to buy your product. Going back not too long there were fewer options for your campaign than today. Typically the focus was on direct mail, magazine advertising, newspaper ads, billboards, radio, TV and telemarketing. Let’s face it the goal of any advertising technique is to convince your target customer that your product or service is what he or she needs.

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Does Social Media really work?  This is a question that is asked a lot. Most businesses understand that a social media marketing campaign eventually will produce ROI. However, many are not quite sure on how to approach this medium or what it takes to measure the return. One thing is certain; most business owners will agree that a social media strategy is necessary and makes sense.

Let’s look at some statistics:

• 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook in 2013   (Source: HubSpot)
• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55 to 64 age bracket (Source: Business Insider)
• Every second two new people join LinkedIn (Source: Business Insider)
• 49% of marketers selected Facebook as the single most important social platform for their business (Source: Social Media Examiner)
• 89% of marketers said that social media has generated more exposure for their business and 75% reported positive results. (Source: Mediabistro)
• At least 62% of businesses with 10 or fewer employees agreed that social media reduced marketing expenses. (Source: Mediabistro)

Considering this why is social media so frustrating to many businesses? Believe it or not there are actually businesses that don’t want to deal with it even though they understand that this could be quite a powerful marketing outlet. Here are five Social Media traps that could be of concern and should be avoided:

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With all the social media and mobile marketing hype that is going on you might think that email marketing is sort of an old-fashion type of marketing. It is pretty amazing that we are thinking in terms of old-fashion when this medium has been around for less than 30 years.

As a matter of fact, email marketing is a very powerful marketing tool that is often neglected by individual businesses. In fact it is a direct way of having a one-on-one relationship with your clients. Think about it with an email you reach out to one person and this gives your business a chance to shine in a more personal environment. At the same time email marketing is amazingly cost effective plus if you use an email marketing service you most likely will have access to some very valuable statistics that can help you further understand your market.

Where to get the email addresses

You cannot start an email campaign without any addresses. So it is absolutely vital that you are collecting the email addresses from your customers. There are several organic ways you can acquire these names. If you have a storefront why not ask your customers to sign up to join your email list. If you have a website, why not use a call-to-action and ask for your visitors to sign up to your list. Once placed on this list you can send newsletters, special offers, special announcements etc. It may be a good idea for your customers to know that you will not misuse or sell their addresses. This is a good practice and will also help adding credibility to your business. By having the permission of your customers they are aware of your business and most likely will read your notes,  plus your email is not considered spam.

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Seth Godin on marketing

There seems to be a great deal of confusion between marketing and advertising.  So marketing vs. advertising what difference does it make?  Well, let’s see; for one, marketing and advertising are not interchangeable.  However, advertising is often a significant part of marketing. They are closely related yet two different and very distinctive disciplines.  I like to think that marketing looks at your selling approach in a larger and boarder perspective. Advertising on the other hand is typically created by an ad agency or freelancer.  It represents your brand and your visual offering.  Direct mail, TV, radio, magazines, emails, mobile ads, Internet ads and more are examples of advertising. Often advertising will take a largest chunk out of your marketing budget followed by public relations and market research.

Marketing on the other hand is focusing more on overall strategy.  Marketing analyses your goal and tries to apply techniques such as internet data to find and analyze your potential clients.  Sometimes you have to tweak things just little in order to improve the result you are looking for.

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