In previous blogs we’ve touched on 5 Benefits Outsourcing Your Social Media Will Give You and highlighted that by outsourcing your Social Media you will have Less Stress, More Time, Better Results, A Stronger Network and A Fresh Set of Eyes and Ears- read the full blog by clicking here after reading this blog
This week I wanted to talk about 5 Competitive Advantages Of Working With A Social Media Marketing Company
Those advantages that will allow you dominate the market place
1. Amplification
Whilst there’s several thousand words we could write about brand message, relationship building, repeat custom and customer loyalty – you can’t escape that people need to know your business exists in order to get the sale
The reason you do any marketing activity is for sales and that happens at it’s most basic level via 2 stages 1. Awareness and 2. Action
The reach of your Social Media is so important for both of those reasons
When we talk about Amplification we’re talking about the very fundamentals of marketing
In the old days you used to advertise in the local newspaper because they had an established audience, rather than print out 40,000 flyers to reach every single person
With social media when we talk about Amplification and competitive advantage you can tap into your networks audience to reach a much wider audience which helps grow your own audience in the process
When you work with any local business be it a solicitor, accountant, IT firm, web designer etc you tap into their network and get that Social Media Amplification as people share good news about those businesses they Meet Like Know and Trust
Some people call these cliques – smart people call it networking and business development and get up early each morning to do so
Now think of amplification and the fact that social media marketing companies (if they’re good) will have a large audience, massive reach and you get a massive competitive advantage over your nearest competitor
2. Data
Social Media changes every single day and for a business owner where social media is just a part of your business rather than your business – it’s hard to track how all these changes on social impact your marketing.
One business has a limited data set to work with to see if the social media changes are the real impact on the business or there are other external factors impacting
The competitive advantage of working with a Social Media Marketing company is they often have huge historical data sets and huge real time data sets.
Social Media marketing companies are often filled by sexy geeks – part sexy creatives, part analytical closet geeks
When changes on social media happen it can be quickly established if this is a general trend across many clients accounts, whether certain sectors are effected or whether the effects are just seen one account.
It enables changes and adaptations of strategy to happen swiftly – whereas a business owner running one account may not see the shifts to weeks or months later
Imagine you’re ahead of the curve and your competitor is dabbling along unawares making rash decisions
3. Social Listening
You’ve probably heard the quote “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak”
On Social Media that also applies – Social Listening is something that all businesses should be doing, but often are too busy broadcasting updates to listen and gain real social value
Now if we take that to it’s literal conclusion – a social media company will often have “20 ears and one mouth”
A social media company will spend huge amounts of time listening and engaging with others on a number of clients accounts – for instance we spend around 200 hours month managing clients social media accounts – the economies of scale that come from that mean that the listening opportunities are often 10 fold than that of a single managed account.
From leads to content to engagement, some of our best opportunities for clients have come from opportunities we’ve spotted on another clients account and switched over accounts to follow up with at that instant
The difference between listening and waiting to respond is the difference between being proactive and reactive
4. Specialist Social Media Knowledge
These are 2 quotes we use regularly
“Small business owners award themselves the role of Marketing Director with little or zero marketing experience”
And
“No one is looking for the 2nd or 3rd best business in town – they only want number 1!
When you’re talking about Competitive advantage being in that number 1 slot in your locality is absolutely key and chances are you’re not the best person to market your business either traditionally or social media
A business that employs a specialist social media company is immediately at an advantage over a business that tries to dabble at it themselves – just as you’re a specialist at what you do and get paid accordingly, social media marketing companies have indepth knowledge that can only be acquired by living, breathing and educating themselves on social media every single day
Every single day a social media company will spend time researching, analysing case studies and looking at new strategies for clients
5. A Marketing Department Sounding Board
Not all marketing companies are great at social and not all social media companies are great at other forms of marketing
In fact not all social media companies are good at social media – always check out a companies testimonials and also their own social media accounts to get an idea before employing onw
But find the right social media company and you’ll often find the skill sets that can make up a whole marketing department to use as your sounding board
Our background is 14 years in journalism and events before and alongside the early days of Altrincham HQ and often businesses will ask us for advice on other forms of marketing as well as social media
It’s an added value service and one we’re well qualified to talk in and when needed we help clients source out specialists in that niche of marketing to help compliment what we’re doing on social media
Often when you’re using a social media company you get the advantage of a whole marketing department at the cost of social media consultant and that’s a massive competitive advantage
CHAT TO US
Chat to about Social Media for YOUR business so we can better understand YOU and what would work best for YOU
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting to you
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
