Social Media is all about getting connected with people. Be it a B2B firm or a B2C firm, at the end it zeroes in on people communicating with people. Though marketing in other media can be channelised based on B2B and B2C, social media is all about P2P – People to People.
While traditional marketing would be transactional, which is, going for one sale and moving on, social media marketing is relationship marketing through which long-term relationships are created with consumers.
1 The essence of relationship marketing is adding value to the consumer. For this, marketers need to a be a good listener to theiraudience. Marketers should listen to audience to know their Challenges, Requirements and Needs. When you listen and implement what your consumers are asking for, you are bound to win trust and credibility, the core elements for a business to grow. So ask your fans and followers on your social media sites about the challenges they are facing and tell them how you could be of help to face those challenges. Conduct surveys and polls relevant to your product/service on the social media networks. Based on the results, you can improvise or customise your products/services.
2 Second thing that marketers should be doing to have a great PtoP relationship – Personalise or Humanise your brand. Most large and medium companies are usually afraid to give their business a humanized look and feel thinking it would make them look small. But the fact is people easily relate to themselves when your Facebook page or your Pinterest pinboards or your Twitter accounts are more humanized. Even the language that is being used on the pages should be direct. Using mentions in your tweets or posts make a great impact on the consumer and you are likely to get a sale may be lately. You should be able to tell your customers that you value them and they will definitely reciprocate. And, when you are talking about your products/services, do not just talk about the features, tell your audience how they would be benefited on using those. Benefits are what audience would be looking for not just the features.
3 The best strategy that marketers can have on Facebook is great content which is engaging, to pool in more people and make them stick around your brand or your page. And you need to do this consistently. Expecting results in a day or two might be a hitch but you will definitely get results for your efforts if you constantly and consistently interact with them and engage them with your sticky content. Anything you post on Facebook should be timely, educational, entertaining and engaging.
4 Have interesting apps on your facebook page to make your fans and followers feel special. If you have apps incorporated in your fan page which can measure the conversations on the page and rate them accordingly and send them updates every week or a month, your fans would love to come back to your page to position themselves as the top fans on the page.
Tidbits on People-to-People marketing:
There are millions of people out there on the social web. But as a marketer, you should know the quality people you need to connect with. The chief marketing officer should be creating profiles of the people with whom your brand can get connected to increase the brand and business value in the social networks.