Marketing Houston

Houston Internet Marketing and Social Media Blog

There are offline businesses going into bankruptcy everywhere. In a time of prosperity, people rush to buy the latest electronic gadget or to get the latest bath accessories, one for each change of the season. So, your market niche may have done well when the economy was doing well, but now you’ve noticed a down tick in purchases. What’s going on? Don’t assume that this is a product of the economic recession; instead, be proactive and try to determine what factors are affecting your sales. It could be the economy, but it could also be various other factors: A shifting demographic, poor sales strategies that don’t work in a downturn, or bad or no advertising campaign.

Shifting Demographics

When you set up your business, you probably had a good idea of what demographic you wanted to serve. With the recession, the demographic you serve may have had shifts in their income level or even living situations. Take a look at the boomer generation. They are experiencing an epic shift in their income as they retire, with battered retirement accounts from poor market results. Even though you could rely on this demographic to purchase certain products and services as they continued to dominate the market, this may not be true in the future. So, you need to re-evaluate the demographics that you are serving in your market niche.

Sales Strategies

Running the same promotions with worse results? That’s not really surprising considering that the psychology of the market place has changed dramatically and that the consumer may not be in a buying mood for a while. Before the recession, status was a great psychological trigger to use to create a buying opportunity. The same trigger is somewhat meaningless in a downturn unless you are marketing to the very rich.  The biggest strategy for the downturn is going to be value offers; you need to make sure that many of your strategies reflect a trigger for value.

Bad or No Advertising Campaigns

The immediate impulse of business owners in a downturn is to stop throwing money at advertising since there are fewer buyers. This is a mistake and can be a self-fulfilling prophecy for poor sales later on. So, if you haven’t evaluated your advertising campaign, you need to do that now. Look at where you are advertising, what psychological triggers and sales strategies you are using, and whether you can provide value offers that put you ahead of the competition during this tough economy.

What is Twitter? Well, where have you been.. LOL?  Twitter would have to be the fastest growing site on the web today.  It is taking the internet by storm and there are around 10,000 new users per day signing up to participate in this internet revolution.  Twitter is best described as a micro blogging platform.  You are limited to 140 characters each time you do an update, which initially, may seem a small amount.  However, as you become more experienced, it’s just amazing what you can fit into 140 characters.
That said, Twitter is much, much more than that.  It is like one huge global chat room, but then again, it doesn’t have to be.  It all depends on how many people you follow on Twitter.  If it’s in the thousands, then your “Tweetstream” will be running fast and furious with everything that’s coming in.  If you are only following a few hundred, or even less, then things are much easier to keep up with. Twitter is also a great way to meet new people online, particularly those with similar interests to you.  I will show you how to do this more as we progress thorugh this report.

Click Here to Get the Full 19 Page Version of Twitter Basics and How-To’s.

Personalize It To Sell!

Social networking is taking off big time with sites like Facebook and Twitter in the top five social networking sites. These sites have created new opportunities to reach people online, even market them, if you know how to do it correctly. One thing that you can be sure of is that people who get on these sites enjoy the way it helps them define their self-identities. So, marketing to anything that helps them say who they are, what groups they belong to, and what values they uphold is a great way to build your contact list, and even in some cases, promote products that will appeal to this demographic.

Look At Me!

One way that Facebook and Twitter allow you to personalize the profile is by using your real name, or in the case of Twitter, a screen name. This draws attention to who that person is and helps to boost their self-image. In the same way, if you are trying to sell cups or calendars, if you have some way that you can include a personalization to make the item more custom, you will generate more orders. Everyone likes to see their name in print!

Generate A Group Identity

On Facebook, you can set up a Facebook page for celebrities, businesses, and products. People then join these pages to become a group of fans that like the page or topic. Once you have a group of people together, it can be a great way to get a group identity together by creating interesting names for the groups, having interactive activities on occasion and creating social badges that show people as being a member of that group. This helps in promoting your group and your business as other people go to other social networking sites. They can then identify themselves by saying they’re a member of that group or using some other form of badge or button that you provide to identify themselves with pride. Even if they never go elsewhere to promote your group, the fact that they are a part of a group that you started gives you a captive audience and relaxes many of the restrictions that you have for marketing in Facebook. You can’t spam others on their profiles with your offers, but in a group, the practice may be more acceptable if it helps to facilitate group activities and uphold group standards of identity.

Social Values That Sell

If you are a non-profit organization trying to use social networking to help generate contacts and promote some of your products, you can sell through the promotion of your social values. For instance, if you are a non-profit that believes in environmental issues, you can promote specific items in your product line-up, in a post to a group wall, that shows how that item helps to save the environment. Since people wouldn’t join the group of a social conscience site without having some of the same values, it provides an excellent trigger to generate buying behavior.