With these numbers ever growing, social media marketing isn't going anywhere. Businesses often spend Millions every year on influencers and paid advertising. You might be thinking using these platforms as a means of marketing is already over saturated, however there are still some fairly untapped streams of social media marketing.
Undiscovered by the masses, here are 5 free Social media marketing ideas.
Simply creating an Instagram page, uploading some videos to Youtube and the occasional Tweet won't make the cut in 2020. With nearly the entire population of China being an active social media user, standing out in the sea of noise requires one thing. Community.
You've heard Gary Vee, Seth Godin and countless others say this. Community is Key. So why not take this idea a step further with text message marketing..
Text-message, or SMS (Short Message Service) marketing continues to be one of the most underrated channels in marketing. Despite the fact that almost everyone has a mobile phone these days, with some people even having more than one, text-message marketing has tended to get a bad rap due to how heavily legislated it is in the United States.
Text Message marketing allows you to build a much more valuable community compared to generic social media platforms. Text message marketing is where you convert followers into fans.
Nearly a third of millennials globally check their phone screen at least once every five minutes without being prompted by an alert or notification, according to KPMG’s 2017 Me, My Life, My Wallet Report.
Take advantage of these statistics by converting your audience of followers into an audience of super fans. Here's how you can get started with Text Message Marketing.
Here are a few other companies you might consider:
SuperPhone - A full-fledged CRM for SMS with a new app and round of funding. Designed for entrepreneurs, entertainers and anyone juggling clients or sales contacts, SuperPhone tells you who you’re forgetting to connect with.
SMSZap – It has all the great capabilities of one-to-one and mass communication all while saving interactions to users’ contact records. It’s available internationally with options of short codes, local numbers, and alphanumeric IDs.
EZ Texting – EZ Texting integrates with Salesforce, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Zendesk, EventBrite, Infusionsoft, AWeber and iContact. From this platform, you can upload your contacts and send mass messages, schedule recurring messages, and enable call forwarding. EZ Texting can only be used in the U.S. and Canada.
Sakari – Sakari is another messaging software that connects with an abundance of applications. This platform allows for mass messaging, has a team mobile app, and call forwarding. They offer pay-per-use pricing or monthly pricing.
Salesmsg – Salesmsg can be integrated with Marketo, HubSpot, Zapier, Salesforce, and more. Salesmsg allows for automated communication, landline texting, and MMS messages. Salesmsg offers an app, which makes communication easy on-the-go, but the software is only available in the U.S. and Canada. With block pricing, you pay for a bundle of texts, so you’ll have to monitor your numbers so you don’t run out mid-campaign.
Start growing your network! Your audience is already on mobile. Collect phone numbers from your social media profiles, existing contacts or website.
Texting beats email with a 99% open rate and a 40-50% click-thru rate. Deliver your message on the channel that works best.
Here are some campaign ideas from Business2community.com
Promotional messages – Having a sale? Let your most valuable customers know by texting them a promo code and a link to your online store.
Appointment reminders and meeting links – Don’t let your contacts miss their appointment! Send them a reminder and ask them to confirm or reschedule.
Customer feedback – Getting customers to fill out surveys after a purchase can be difficult, but reaching out to them on their phone could be the key to increasing engagement. Send them a text asking how they enjoyed their purchase or send them a link to a short survey.
Contests – Make submissions easy by asking users to submit their contest entry through SMS. Use a short code to make their entry even easier.
Company updates – When an event gets rained out or your business is closing early, your contacts need to get the memo quickly. Send a quick text to your customers to let them know.
Read their full guide here.
Similar to text message marketing, group messaging marketing allows you to build a loyal community around your brand.
Unlike text message marketing, group messaging allows your fans to interact with each other.
Some popular apps to set this up are, Telegram, Slack and Whatsapp.
"The Telegram channels come in handy as a tool for content distribution to large audiences since they help individuals or brands stay in direct contact with their followers."
Check out How to use Telegram for content Promotion, by Linkody.
You probably come across several GIFs in a day. Maybe you send them to coworkers for a laugh, attach them to a tweet, and see them in responses on Reddit or animated on Instagram Stories.
GIFs are there to add colour and context to your reactions, and provoke a smile or two out of the intended audience. With that kind of objective, it’s no surprise that GIFs can also be a powerful content marketing tool for your business using Giphy.
The kind of powerful that reaches one million views, fast. (And has surpassed four million in the meantime!)
To learn more about Giphy content marketing, check out this Ultimate Guide to Giphy
You've seen them, you 've probably fell for them and you probably hate them. The 'Free Download' all you have to do is sign up. Websites claim you're getting an amazing deal when in reality you've fallen for their email marketing.
The reason so many websites offer Free resources in return for your email address is because the power of email marketing.
If you have a social media, you need to start collecting email addresses. Mailchimp allows you to create a landing page, send automated emails and track your insights.
The first email, sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 or 1978 depending on your source, marked the beginning of the modern communication era. The message was nothing special, a series of numbers and letters that looked more like a password than a message, but its significance was profound.
Check out this Email marketing Article from Mailchimp.
As you can see from the graph above, email Marketing still has the Highest ROI.
55% of shoppers find reviews important for making purchase decisions. Take this to the next level with Video Reviews.
Boast is a platform for collecting and managing all of your customer reviews and testimonials.
As the mainstream social media channels grow larger and larger, marketers are going to have to find new and creative ways of getting through the noise. Hopefully some of these ideas have helped you or given you inspiration.
Thanks for reading.
With these numbers ever growing, social media marketing isn't going anywhere. Businesses often spend Millions every year on influencers and paid advertising. You might be thinking using these platforms as a means of marketing is already over saturated, however there are still some fairly untapped streams of social media marketing.
Undiscovered by the masses, here are 5 free Social media marketing ideas.
Simply creating an Instagram page, uploading some videos to Youtube and the occasional Tweet won't make the cut in 2020. With nearly the entire population of China being an active social media user, standing out in the sea of noise requires one thing. Community.
You've heard Gary Vee, Seth Godin and countless others say this. Community is Key. So why not take this idea a step further with text message marketing..
Text-message, or SMS (Short Message Service) marketing continues to be one of the most underrated channels in marketing. Despite the fact that almost everyone has a mobile phone these days, with some people even having more than one, text-message marketing has tended to get a bad rap due to how heavily legislated it is in the United States.
Text Message marketing allows you to build a much more valuable community compared to generic social media platforms. Text message marketing is where you convert followers into fans.
Nearly a third of millennials globally check their phone screen at least once every five minutes without being prompted by an alert or notification, according to KPMG’s 2017 Me, My Life, My Wallet Report.
Take advantage of these statistics by converting your audience of followers into an audience of super fans. Here's how you can get started with Text Message Marketing.
Here are a few other companies you might consider:
SuperPhone - A full-fledged CRM for SMS with a new app and round of funding. Designed for entrepreneurs, entertainers and anyone juggling clients or sales contacts, SuperPhone tells you who you’re forgetting to connect with.
SMSZap – It has all the great capabilities of one-to-one and mass communication all while saving interactions to users’ contact records. It’s available internationally with options of short codes, local numbers, and alphanumeric IDs.
EZ Texting – EZ Texting integrates with Salesforce, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Zendesk, EventBrite, Infusionsoft, AWeber and iContact. From this platform, you can upload your contacts and send mass messages, schedule recurring messages, and enable call forwarding. EZ Texting can only be used in the U.S. and Canada.
Sakari – Sakari is another messaging software that connects with an abundance of applications. This platform allows for mass messaging, has a team mobile app, and call forwarding. They offer pay-per-use pricing or monthly pricing.
Salesmsg – Salesmsg can be integrated with Marketo, HubSpot, Zapier, Salesforce, and more. Salesmsg allows for automated communication, landline texting, and MMS messages. Salesmsg offers an app, which makes communication easy on-the-go, but the software is only available in the U.S. and Canada. With block pricing, you pay for a bundle of texts, so you’ll have to monitor your numbers so you don’t run out mid-campaign.
Start growing your network! Your audience is already on mobile. Collect phone numbers from your social media profiles, existing contacts or website.
Texting beats email with a 99% open rate and a 40-50% click-thru rate. Deliver your message on the channel that works best.
Here are some campaign ideas from Business2community.com
Promotional messages – Having a sale? Let your most valuable customers know by texting them a promo code and a link to your online store.
Appointment reminders and meeting links – Don’t let your contacts miss their appointment! Send them a reminder and ask them to confirm or reschedule.
Customer feedback – Getting customers to fill out surveys after a purchase can be difficult, but reaching out to them on their phone could be the key to increasing engagement. Send them a text asking how they enjoyed their purchase or send them a link to a short survey.
Contests – Make submissions easy by asking users to submit their contest entry through SMS. Use a short code to make their entry even easier.
Company updates – When an event gets rained out or your business is closing early, your contacts need to get the memo quickly. Send a quick text to your customers to let them know.
Read their full guide here.
Similar to text message marketing, group messaging marketing allows you to build a loyal community around your brand.
Unlike text message marketing, group messaging allows your fans to interact with each other.
Some popular apps to set this up are, Telegram, Slack and Whatsapp.
"The Telegram channels come in handy as a tool for content distribution to large audiences since they help individuals or brands stay in direct contact with their followers."
Check out How to use Telegram for content Promotion, by Linkody.
You probably come across several GIFs in a day. Maybe you send them to coworkers for a laugh, attach them to a tweet, and see them in responses on Reddit or animated on Instagram Stories.
GIFs are there to add colour and context to your reactions, and provoke a smile or two out of the intended audience. With that kind of objective, it’s no surprise that GIFs can also be a powerful content marketing tool for your business using Giphy.
The kind of powerful that reaches one million views, fast. (And has surpassed four million in the meantime!)
To learn more about Giphy content marketing, check out this Ultimate Guide to Giphy
You've seen them, you 've probably fell for them and you probably hate them. The 'Free Download' all you have to do is sign up. Websites claim you're getting an amazing deal when in reality you've fallen for their email marketing.
The reason so many websites offer Free resources in return for your email address is because the power of email marketing.
If you have a social media, you need to start collecting email addresses. Mailchimp allows you to create a landing page, send automated emails and track your insights.
The first email, sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 or 1978 depending on your source, marked the beginning of the modern communication era. The message was nothing special, a series of numbers and letters that looked more like a password than a message, but its significance was profound.
Check out this Email marketing Article from Mailchimp.
As you can see from the graph above, email Marketing still has the Highest ROI.
55% of shoppers find reviews important for making purchase decisions. Take this to the next level with Video Reviews.
Boast is a platform for collecting and managing all of your customer reviews and testimonials.
As the mainstream social media channels grow larger and larger, marketers are going to have to find new and creative ways of getting through the noise. Hopefully some of these ideas have helped you or given you inspiration.
Thanks for reading.
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