The number of customers you require to succeed in business determines the strategy of your social media.
After the Phlier workshop on Article Marketing, @shawnvincent and I were talking about the relational vs. non-relational strategies of digital marketing. The long thought marketing tactic of “It’s a numbers game” vs. the new media strategy of engaging in relationships and conversations through social networks.
Relationships, engagement, and Conversation are words that may be completely overused in the social media realm, but they are words that imply time and energy.
Typically, the higher your ticket price is, you’ll experience a lower amount of customers. The less amount of customers you have the more probable your ability will be to engage with them.
On the other end, the lower your ticket price is, you’ll need a higher amount of customers in order to succeed. This is where “It’s a numbers game” takes place and transactions will be more important than managing individual customer relationships.
Does this mean that businesses with a transactional focus should bypass social media or for that matter engaging with their customers? No. @OldSpice recently did a campaign that brought their transactional marketing and converted it into a 24 hour relational marketing campaign. Old Spice is a perfect example of Transactional marketing because the ticket price of their product is low and they require a large amount of purchases in order to succeed. Their spokesperson, Isaiah Mustafa, entertained people through a one way marketing campaign on television. When the commercials were uploaded to their YouTube channel, viewers became fans and immediately began responding. Old Spice put Isaiah on a 24 hour campaign responding to fans with comical videos creating a stir in the web world. Although unable to respond to everyone, they spit out a number of videos using their fans twitter/youtube/facebook usernames to address them. The end result? Old Spice doubled in sales.
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Great example of how we never want to forget the engagement and relationship building aspects of Digital Marketing.
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