Earlier this week I hit the road to visit several of my potential clients. Many of you know how the routine goes – You drive for hours across several states hoping that by taking the time to actually visit people in person you gain a little more trust and build the relationship. I could tell right off the bat that was the case with many of the professionals I visited; I could see it in their body language, hear it in their voice and several came right out and let me know how great it was that I took the time to come visit them in person.

The Pitch For Social Media

While I was out meeting all of these potential clients I got the same questions from all of them – “Is social media really going to increase my sales?”. Now I didn’t answer the way most people selling a product or service would. I didn’t say something like “absolutely! Social Media can help grow your business by 25% because of . . .” Instead I put it this way – Social media and online marketing is an ever evolving process and is today’s leading way of building your brand awareness. Online marketing allows businesses to think outside of the box and stray from the ordinary routine of playing pin the tail on the donkey marketing (you’re blindfolded and not really sure where your pin is going to stick). Conventional marketing is just like that old-school kids game; you create thousands of marketing pieces, send them out to a list you bought from a website, and hope the people that receive them are interested in your services or products.

With online marketing it’s much easier to know that the messages you are posting are going to your target audience. The reason for this is the fact that with sites like Facebook and Twitter the audience is coming to you. They visit your page and “Like” or “Follow” it; they do that because they are interested in your product or service so any post you have they will see. This is considered Inbound Marketing – they came to you to get the information they want.

A Changing Of The Guard

Why is this important? Because while the old school Pin the Tail on the Donkey may have worked in the past chances are that it’s not going to anymore – and there have been plenty of case studies proving that. People want the information when they want it; not when you want them to receive it. Nobody likes being bothered by a sales person – I’m in sales and I still hate it when I get those cold calls. They interrupt my day and emotionally hijack my brain causing me to get annoyed immediately and breaking my concentration on whatever I’m doing. I know when I have the time to look at different sites I’m interested in and when that time comes I’ll hop online and check out different websites, and social networks.

Online marketing lets you drill down and really target the appropriate people to market your brand to thus maximizing your marketing dollar. You’re able to identify the people that are interested in you, your service or product, and when they are listening.

So will online marketing really help increase your sales? Yes it will if you utilize it appropriately and correctly. Generate the right messages that will get noticed by your audience, engage with them, drive them back to your site, use landing pages to gather their information, and ultimately drive them to buy your product or service.

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