Ideas for Remarkable Online Marketing by @KunalKripalani

Augmenting your customer database with user interest data from social network profiles is possible using Flowtown or Rapleaf.  But these solutions require an email database for you to plug-in to their systems.  If you don't have an email database yet, you can still gain some insight into how your audience interacts with social media by tapping into market research conducted by Exact Target, Forrester and GlobalWebIndex.  Play time: 

Forrester Research

Exact Target

One of the key questions for a business is:

"Which social media channel should I use?"

There is a need to justify the investment of resources. The answer is to focus on the networks that your customers are already using.  Go to where they already are rather than trying a "build it and they will come" approach.  

Furthermore, this is also a way of identifying which social network is likely to be a source of new customers.  Since your existing customers are on the network, it's reasonable to infer that people like them (that like your product) can also be found on that network.  One useful tool to help identify which social network(s) you should focus on is Flowtown.  

It's easy to create social profiles for every person in your email database:

A social profile provides data on a customer's demographics and interests as indicated on the social network and can therefore be used to not only enhance your social media marketing, but also to send more relevant and targeted email communications.

An alternative to Flowtown worth assessing is Rapleaf.

Critical Mass and mainstream are words you could start to associate with social media. The bottom line is:

Your customers are embracing social media, making it an opportunity to build a community around your offering.

It's an opportunity to build rapport, loyalty and warm fuzzy feelings about your brand. Because of the context of the medium, you can afford to, in fact - you have to take a less formal tone than the typically corporate one size fits all corporate approach.

What is the new approach?
It's conversational. It's an opportunity to share what's remarkable about your product with people who are genuinely interested and turn them into evangelists that include their networks in the conversation also.

Engaging in Social Media is also a way to take back some control over your online reputation. For example, if someone leaves negative feedback on Facebook or Twitter, your monitoring and engagement means you can respond to the critisicm then and there.

Key areas of benefit are:

CRM: Communicate with customers through a medium of their choice, be it Twitter, a forum or Facebook. Because it's all public, understand that this is an opportunity to show the world that you genuinely care about your customers.  In the first instance, respond to the issue quickly and in a manner that ensures it does not spiral into a long public debate. Sometimes, when sensitve personal data needs to be shared, it's best to take an issue private using Twitter DMs or even back to email.

Sales: In it's simplest form: consider how can you repackage old marketing tactics?  For example, affiliate programs for lead generation on insurance policies can be made more social & conmmunity friendly.  Instead of a $50 commission to an affiliate marketer, you give that $50 to the favourite charity of your existing customer who gives you a new lead that converts.

Brand Visibility: Your presence on social sites will positively impact your visibility in Google search results, but more importantly, it puts you in front of eyeballs, and at a fraction of the cost of banner ads.

New Product Development Research: What better way is there to get fast and cost-effective feedback on new product ideas? What's working? What needs improving? Even what geographic location you get most interest from can be identified and perhaps used as a launch market.

Ultimately, you have an opportunity to have a conversation with every one of your customers, and win new ones.