At the moment it seems everywhere you go all you hear about is Social Media..Social Media..Social Media.
People are forever asking me; are you on Twitter, are you on Facebook, have you got a Pinterest account?
By the way for reference the answers are Yes, No and I am but not quite sure how & when it happened.
Anyway, for anyone who knows me personally or CBF as a business, will know that we are fairly partial to dabbling in the realms of Social Media. We focus on using every aspect of Twitter to create more leads and to spread the word that CBF are on the front line for providing print knowledge.
Being in the print trade I can tell you that social media is most definitely not killing off the need for printed materials.
It may sound controversial but yes, I am saying there is enough room on this planet of ours for social media and printed solutions to exist. If anything, I am saying that if businesses learned how to link the two together they would see leads and positive feedback like never before.
Here is an example of how this can be put in to effect. I would like to state because I am not a lawyer in my spare time and to be brutally honest I am not a huge fan of being sued no names are going to be mentioned in this example as it is based on a real case study.
There was a company that produced machinery for a much specialised industry. The industry was in fact so specialised, they only had a handful of competitors. However, to the Directors annoyance they were will not creating the sales they needed and the company was fast losing money.
The directors decided to do something about this and decided to bring in a Social Media guru to help them create a strategy to build their business. In short the amazing Guru told them to drag themselves into the present times and use the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter, to start writing a blog and create videos to post on Facebook and YouTube.
The company took the comments of the Social Media Guru and starting acting on them, although at first it did whip up a bit of a frenzy as the phones soon stopped ringing and the inquiries dropped.
In the weeks to follow, thought provoking chin strokes occurred and coffee fuelled all night meetings took place to try and come up with a solution to save the business. In the end a member of staff threw forward an idea that turned out to be a stroke of genius.
His statement was “why don’t we use the positive aspects of both print and social media to help point at our USP’s (unique selling points).”
Lots of Godfather style ponderous head nods followed, then eventually one of the directors set the employee the task of taking his idea and making it work.
Obviously, the case study did not give away all of the trade secrets but some that were mentioned were as follows.
He created a marketing pack that was sent out to all potential customers explaining who they were, what they did and why the customer should be looking at them to be their provider.
What he also included in the index of a brochure was a list of five or so YouTube links pointing the reader to videos showing certain aspects of their machinery and services they offer. Essentially turning what could be a fairly boring read into more of an appealing visual concept he also felt this would make their business seem more tangible.
He also introduced a similar idea to leaflets and booklets that were given out. Instead of simply stating on the material that they have a Facebook, Twitter accounts etc, he pointed out links educating the reader on how to become social media savvy themselves so they can interact with the customer. What is the point of telling someone you are on a social media website if they don’t know where to find you?
On the flip side, when using the twitter account he starting advertising to people to sign up to their newsletter that got posted out every 6 months and once again used social media to point at printed materials to create a more rounded, professional feel to the business.
Again, I am going to have to fudge the facts a little to hide the identity of the actual business but I can assure you the figures I am about to use are not a million miles away from the truth.
Within one year they increased their inquiries by “160%”, due to their customers have a clearer idea of the services which were being offered and they achieved a conversion rate of “80%”.
Needless to say the company is now thriving and is still growing rapidly to this day.
One thing I can say is that the company in this case study was a big company with a turnover of millions. This doesn’t mean that the structure put in place by mixing Social media with printed materials cannot be introduced into any sized business.
If you would like to learn more about how to introduce a similar structure in to your business, then why not book in to have a free consultancy with us? One of our team will work with you to make sure you are getting the most out of your business marketing.
Adam & the CBF team.