Cold Calling. Just the phrase sends shivers down your spine, doesn’t it?

Back in my day (I’m about to reveal how ancient I am, now.), when we started our video business in 2000, for a small business the most popular methods for advertising were – mailers plus cold calling, emails plus cold calling, and trade shows plus cold calling. I did more cold calling than any other marketing activity, and it worked! I was using a list of known brides with upcoming weddings. They signed up with a magazine we advertised in or a bridal show we attended and I would use that list to email, mail, and make numerous phone calls. It was time consuming, but relatively cheap, and it yielded results! The cold calling effort was bringing in as much or more than a google search for our website which topped the google page for several years!

Now, though, if I were to call a bunch of people off lists, I’d probably get a lot of no’s and a lot of voice mails. People just don’t respond to items sold by email or phone anymore, and no one uses mailers anymore except for pizza coupons and bills. About 5 years ago, we realized that the tides of advertising were changing…we just didn’t know how to cope.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…except that science now tells us that you CAN…so – here I am - an old dog... learning new tricks.

Research tells us that 90% of young adults—ages 18 to 29—use social media (compared to just 35% of those over age 65). Fully a third of millennials say social media is one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses. So…if your target demographic is young adults, you NEED social media marketing.

Here are 2 common misunderstandings that I’ve learned:

  1. Social media marketing itself will not cause sales. Here’s what I mean by that – no one will call you and say “Hey, I saw your post just a few minutes ago and I’m ready to buy!” Social media marketing is NOT intended to make quick sales. It’s a slow play. You post good content consistently  and your viewer, who has subscribed or “liked” your page, will occasionally see SOME of your posts. Posting using your key words helps put you at the top of search engines, so that’s one purpose of social media marketing. The other is simply to endear your audience to yourself so that they will be worn down by your awesomeness and be forced to message you to ask for more info on your services or products! I have had numerous people message me on FB asking for more info or asking to meet with her simply because of one or two comments on a wedding group FB page. If you seek out your audience and provide helpful comments regarding their questions, you make yourself valuable. That’s a good way to summarize – social media marketing is simply meant to showcase your value to your targeted demographic. It is the new age of Permissible Marketing.
  2. Social media marketing is NOT just about you. If you incessantly post about you, your business, and how great you are compared to your competition, your followers will leave by the DROVES! Research tells us that on social media platforms your audience prefers to hear about your personal life and things you find funny or fascinating, plus a little bit of helpful articles pertaining to your potential client’s stage of life as it relates to your industry, and THEN a few posts about your service or product. You have to provide a variety of information on your pages.

OR…

You could hire us to do it for you. We are located in Colorado but can do this kind of work for anyone, anywhere! If your website needs to be redesigned, or revived for improved SEO, or if you need a better company to park your website, we can do all of that for you! In addition, I have developed a social media marketing calendar system and we know how to set up your page, create content relevant to your industry, and schedule posts. Call us to see how we can revitalize your marketing plan!