Tune Into The Digital Age of 'WOM'

In this age of ‘Word of Mouth’, how do you leverage social media to connect with B2B customers?

Do you shout it out, get everyone involved, and get them on board?

Do you listen, plan, engage and optimize social media channels?

The reason why it is important to use social media is because it helps you to know:

• Who is saying what about your brand and where
• Who is leading conversation share
• Where your customer are living online
• How to provide value addition
• When and how to engage with your community
• Why customers behave the way they do
• Why they prefer what they prefer

So, why do you need to build a social media strategy?

• To define objectives and integrate it with the overall marketing strategy
• To maintain a unified brand identity and image across the socialsphere
• To utilize various channels effectively and facilitate prospecting
• To integrate communication and build relationships with prospective buyers

When using social media, not every channel is suitable. Find out where your target market is active. For instance, if they are active on LinkedIn, join in on the discussion. If they are active on Twitter, tweet to keep them up to date. If they are on Facebook, post messages to keep them engaged. Check out the grid below, to understand which social media platform is best suited for your requirement.

If you like what you read, socialize it! Post, tweet, ping, poke or pin; let us in your socialsphere as well! 

Augment your understanding of your customer with Social Data
Know your “Share of Voice”
Get your database updated with Social Data

Why Social Data is the New Black!

Ever wanted to how much your brand is talked about in the social network?

Wouldn't you like to eavesdrop?

Customers today do their own research and interact with a brand only much later in their buying process. This has made it difficult for companies to gain insights about customers and to influence their decisions. Moreover, when customers do decide to interact, they do so quite selectively.

Here is where social data has become a critical tool. It is one the best ways through which companies can measure marketing campaigns, and observe, analyze and improve social conversations in real time. Tech savvy marketers are using tried and tested marketing tactics and new techniques to improve interaction and increase quality and quantity leads; from direct mail marketing, telemarketing, email marketing to social media marketing.

Techniques of mass mailing done earlier are replaced by more customized forms of marketing. B2B marketers today are segmenting customer groups to implement targeted marketing programs. And social data provides just that information required to organize customers into specific groups and develop relevant messaging that revolves around them.

In all the digital frenzy, positioning your brand could become quite a relentless challenge. You need to be ‘happening’ in the social sphere and the best way to get around is by knowing the right people.

Big Data is something you may already have

Augment your customer analysis with Social Data

Get to know your “Share of Voice”

Size Does Matter…With Big Data at Least!

Let us first clarify what ‘Big Data’ is and what the buzz around it is about.

Big Data is information about customers available through various sources and channels, from social and ICT networks, from videos and digital images, from sensors or GPS signals, to name a few. This data is something which can be invaluable for businesses. 

So why are people getting ‘buzzy’ about Big Data? 

Because it is the biggest source for marketers to gain real-time and in-depth insights into the preferences and behavior of their customers. 

How does Big Data help? 

It helps in creating targeted marketing campaigns. To give customers what they need more than what they want. While you may think this applies mainly to B2C companies you are mistaken, as B2B companies need to consider their clients’ businesses as individual personas as well.

Ask CMOs what defines a successful brand? And they will tell you it is primarily in using customer data to drive marketing decisions and ROI. What better way to obtain customer data than through social media channels. And yet, of around 85% of companies that use social media as a marketing tool, only 19% collect data from these channels! 

The best way to create brand awareness, build brand association and increase engagement is in conversing with customers, personally. Mass media marketing tactics for sure don’t work in social channels.

Your next marketing plan should go regional rather than national; it should go into sub verticals, into personas rather than demographics and focus on specific stages in the buying cycles. Your database of customers should be segmented to identify groups to enable targeted communication. 

This is where Info CheckPoint comes in by providing segmented databases that are socially integrated including LinkedIn profiles with every contact. 

So go get started, drill down, target, personalize and increase marketing ROI!

Psst - While size does matter, so does the quality of experience!

It Takes a Click to ‘Like’, ‘Pin’ or ‘Tweet’ – What is your Fan Engagement Rate?

Reference: - Research by Buddy Media - http://www.jeffbullas.com

In today’s D-Gen (digital generation) or I-Gen (Internet generation) ‘socialsphere’ we are all focused on increasing our fan base. Who doesn’t like to be ‘liked’? However is that enough? 

Are your ‘fans’ actually interested in who you are and what you have to offer? This is especially relevant in the business context. Corporate profiles more often than not, aim to increase the number followers instead of meaningfully engaging users to identify those who are potential customers.

The tone of social media strategies in the business sense should be informally formal. The idea of social networking is to gain a pulse of the market, to connect with customers and understand their preferences; besides gaining a fan following.

Whether you are interacting with the yuppie, ‘Digital Natives’ or the older, ‘Digital Immigrants’ keeping them engaged is one of the best ways of increasing brand awareness and informing them about new products and services. Developing relevant contests, conducting interesting surveys and providing ‘free’ valuable information will bring about the much required connection.

The train of thought should be to convert all your fans to engaged users, which in turn will increase the potential of increasing your customer base. 

Identify those sincerer clicks. If you ‘liked’ this post, socialize this idea!

Marketing is No Longer Going Social; It’s Going “Mocial”!

Only 1 in 10 marketers had email opt-ins on their Facebook page

Only 1 in 20 marketers had email opt-ins through SMS

People are moving beyond traditional ways and are utilizing mobile, social and local channels or “mocial” channels to drive marketing campaigns. Here’s a snapshot of popular channels currently used for email campaigns:

Explore new ways in connecting with customers. A great way to build your email database is to utilize every channel possible. There is no reason to wait to watch, hop on to the band wagon, Go “MOCIAL”!
In order to drive email campaigns effectively, a power packed database is indispensible. Check out Info CheckPoint.

Integration of Social Media Can Do Wonders to Your Business

Everyone these days talks about social media, and how it can affect your business for the better. Social media integration helps you to network with professionals, colleagues and business prospects, and share vital information about your business.

Combining social media to your business can help you:

• Increase the reach of your content to drive actions and sales
• Capture leads and build your database
• Collect data and segment your list
• Incorporate social content into email campaigns and promote it
• Add email signup form to Facebook page
• Post links to email newsletters on social sites
• Identify and treat your influencers
• Give people special offers and use sharing options strategically
• Measure conversions, test and retest strategies and provide authenticity to your business

You can change the way people perceive you by the help of social media as it brings admirable transparency and genuine honesty to your business. Infocheckpoint now allows you not only to target your key prospects, but also know about their social lives. (Read the press release: Info CheckPoint Ushers a New Era in Social Networking with LinkedIn Integration now.