Social Media Marketing is not meant to be your businesses’ sole means of marketing but rather it’s meant to compliment your existing marketing.
I see businesses scrambling to create presences in the social media spectrum daily without any clue what their goal is. Seeing as I’m in the automotive industry, most dealerships that I see diving into the social media party believe that the “goal” of this endeavor is to “sell cars”. By their actions, it seems as if their true goal is “acquiring friends”. If you go into Social Media Marketing with either of these goals, you are wasting your time.
I’m going to focus specifically on Facebook here but this advice applies to pretty much any social media site.
When a business first dives in and creates a Facebook page, they concentrate on acquiring as many “friends” as possible. While it’s fun to see that you have lots of “friends”, the whole purpose of your Facebook page is to engage with your customers.
Are these “friends” you’re acquiring customers (or potential customers) or are they a collection of other dealerships, vendors, employees, etc.?
If your answer is the latter, your social media efforts are wasted time. Chances are really high that none of these people are going to buy cars from you, get their cars serviced at your dealership, or do anything that is income generating for your business.
What you want to do is captivate an audience of people (ie. friends) that are potential income. You want to market your Facebook page to your real customers. Tell your walk-in traffic. Tell your customers who buy cars from you. Tell your service customers. Include your Facebook page in your other marketing.
Acquire “friends” that are meaningful.
I’d rather have a group of 100 customers that I can engage with that would potentially do (or have done) business with me than 5000 friends who will never buy anything.
This obsession with gaining as many friends as possible is counter-productive. The goal of Facebook marketing is engaging with and marketing to your customers, not acquiring friends. If you do it right, in a passive, non-intrusive way with meaningful content, your message will be heard by the right people (customers) and you will reap the benefits.
It’s the quality of your “friends” that count, not the quantity.
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