Social Influence Marketing Services

Social Influence Marketing

Social Influence Marketing (SIM) uses social media to reach out to the relevant audience addressed by each of its clients in order to create brand awareness and sales leads. It includes reaching out to and obtaining the support of those individuals engaged in social media activities who have a out-sized influence in various topic or industry areas.
Here’s how you’ll know you’ve integrated an effective Social Influence Marketing strategy

• Customers respond to your content using the Social Networking options you’ve provided (like through your Web site; links to Facebook and other social networking sites; and blogs).
• You experience a steady gain of influencers that are following your content and write or advocate your products and services.
• Your customer base grows as satisfied customers advocate your products through referrals through your social media links.
• Your Key Performance Indicators for your SIM program show steady growth.
• Your Web traffic increases based upon your social influence marketing efforts.
• Your sales increases from active SIM traffic.
• You experience healthier cash flow from your increased sales.

To the uninitiated, the whole concept of social media for both B2C and B2B can be a bit daunting. That’s where Zoom’s expertise comes in. Click here to learn about common pitfalls, and how Zoom can help you avoid them.

Social Influence Marketing
Social Influence Marketing employs social media to create a direct, two-way link between you and your audience. Unlike traditional one-way marketing methods, the skillful implementation of SIM results in an actual conversation between you and your customers.
The skilled spokesperson giving voice to his company becomes a trusted advisor through the use of blogs, carefully crafted Web site design, and other social networking platforms like facebook and Twitter.
Here’s Zoom Sales & Marketing’s approach to Social Influence Marketing:

• Strategic Planning. Planning starts the process. Zoom recommends you allocate 10% to 20% of your SIM budget to come up with an overall, ongoing plan to engage and support your customers. Here are some goals to keep in mind:
• Build brand awareness, 
• Increase customer confidence; be seen as a leader,
• Generate sales leads, 
• Encourage customer feedback,
• Develop strategic relationships with influencers.
• Implementation Mechanics. Next, you’ll select the elements of Social Media that will fulfill your vision. Zoom recommends you allow 10% of your SIM budget for this phase. Here are some goals for effective Implementation Mechanics:
• Decide which social media platforms you want to use.
• Optimize your Web site so your customers and the search engines can find you.
• Design your Web site to be well organized and engaging.
• Content Production. Once you’ve done your planning and laid the groundwork, you’ll begin creating the content that will go through all the media pipelines. Zoom recommends you allow about 50% of your budget for supplying content on an ongoing basis. Here’s why. Blogs, e-mails promoting content, and especially headlines all have to be written with the goal of grabbing your customers’ attention. To develop a following, all platforms and areas for content you chose in the Strategic Planning phase must be kept fresh and current. You will want to spend 50% of your budget here.

• Metrics and Improvement Activities. How will you know you’ve been successful? How does your SIM strategy stack up against your competitors? For that matter, what are your competitors doing that you aren’t? The answer to all these questions is found by using metrics (also called ‘Web Analytics’) to track the variety of interactions, and then to and use the information gained to improve the performance of the SIM program. Zoom recommends you allow between 20% and 30% of your SIM budget to measure and improve your site’s performance.

• Promotional Activities. Most companies believe that once they get their website Social-Media enabled, that the rest of their activities to build their following and impact are activities they practice within their social media platforms (e.g., through their Facebook or Linkedin pages). While these activities are important, what good does it do to have 96 followers (or hundreds when you should have ten's of thousands)? What effect will your presence have if you have only a small fraction of the 'high influencers' in your industry? This is were traditional marketing activities meet social media - to promote the website and the company's other social platforms to one's audience and influencers.

Budgeting
A strong SIM plan doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, small and growing businesses can participate on an equal footing with large companies. Even a SIM plan with a very small budget can be just as effective as the traditional large budget marketing campaigns of the past.

Why Social Influence Marketing is So Important
SIM creates the opportunity for you to listen to your prospects and customers; and to gather and respond to the most important feedback you can receive – how your audience feels and thinks about your products, services, and your brand. A significant reason a company employs a SIM program in social media is to engage with prospects and convert them to customers.