I figured that I would write this blog to introduce myself, it seems Dan the other co-owner has beat me to the point. So I will write about advertising and where it is going and why it is important to advertise.
Advertising for the most part is social media. So why haven’t we had social media all the time? The point is we have had social media all this time. It has just taken some time to get to the Internet and cyberspace. Social has been around for decades. Every time someone recommends a place to go or a product that is word of mouth. Word of mouth is the original social media because chances are most likely the person that recommended you to that establishment is not getting paid for it.
Word of mouth advertising is the best way of advertising because a happy customer will be a repeat customer and in turn recommend your business to friends and family. Now social media is so big with Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace can reach more people faster. There is a herd mentality affect. Below you will find an explanation of herd mentality from Wikipedia.org.
“Herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include the early adopters of high technology products such as cell phones and iPods, as well as stock market trends, fashions in apparel, cars, home décor, etc. Social psychologists study the related topics of group intelligence, crowd wisdom, and decentralized decision making.”
So why wouldn’t any business use social media for their marketing efforts? It’s free all you have to do is invite customers. Once the customers become a fan of your company, you have to hope that they leave a positive comment on your fan page for Facebook or whatever site you are using. People will recommend other people they know if they feel strongly about your product. This way you get your message out to multiple people at a time, and we all can just imagine how that works out! Now if you get a negative comment on your wall, do not delete it that will just make the situation worse than it already is. Respond to it after you have calmed down (if you are irate or mad), because you do not want to write something that you didn’t mean to say and then someone sees it. That could make the situation worse, if a whole lot of people happen to see it. Just explain your side of the story and your return or satisfaction policy. Finally I would like to end this by talking about why advertising is so important now more than ever.
Advertising is so important now because you need to grab the attention of your prospective customers. Everyone cuts back on advertising during a recession when they need clients or customers the most. Advertising drives extra revenue into your business especially if you are targeting the right audience. In a boom time (a great economy) people advertise like crazy. I know some of you are thinking you do not have enough money to advertise so you just stop. There are ways around that. You can advertise in ways that are not so expensive. You can use social media like I wrote about above. We can set you up with a marketing campaign that targets certain areas and we can set you up with a budgeted campaign that allows you to advertise by spending so much a day, for example $10.
If you have anything more that you want to learn about email me a topic. Feel free to contact Dan or myself.
-John Botch
www.laserburnmedia.com
john@laserburnmedia.com
