Hello loyal readers, customers, and passersby. It is time for another entry into my Blog of the Boss. First and foremost, thank you. The messages and feedback I have received from the blog have been nothing short of astounding and humbling, so I appreciate all of you!
Today’s subject should be a familiar one to everyone, whether they are a business owner, a salesperson, or simply a human being. Social media and social media marketing. If you have a Facebook or ANY form of social media, you have been a victim of social media marketing, in one way or another. Why do I say you have been a victim? Easy! That is because unless you have hired a LEGITIMATE (more on why this is capitalized, later) social media manager, are a social media genius, or have a 7-figure advertising budget, you have seen a poorly placed ad or been part of a poorly targeted campaign.
You have undoubtedly received multiple different pitches and messages about this product or that service that have left you wondering “Why on Earth am I seeing this? I have absolutely no interest in this!” On the reverse of this, you may have spent money on a Facebook ad and gotten almost no sales from it. Like I said in previous blog entries, what good is spending money to get a boatload of followers if they aren’t turning into buyers? It isn’t. It isn’t ANY good. You work hard for your money and if you are just starting in the business world, every cent you spend is taken into careful consideration.
So how do we ensure that those cents that you are obsessing over spending carefully, are spent carefully? Simple. KNOW YOUR MARKET! Not just in a broad sense, but in a highly specific sense! Facebook is a great place for ad spend and you can pinpoint almost eerily specifically, but unless you have a really solid profile of your ideal buyer in mind, you run the risk of getting exposure, which is nice, but the probability of sales is not high.
It is also incredibly important to understand how each social media platform works, and what users are utilizing the platform. The list below, while not a list of EVERY platform out there, is a list of the well-known and heavy hitters.
-Clubhouse (KEEP AN EYE ON THIS ONE)
-Tumblr
Again, this is not a complete list as there are so many out there, but the ones I listed above have a VERY wide-ranging audience demographic. Each platform has to be utilized differently. What worked on Facebook won’t work on Clubhouse. What works on Clubhouse won’t work on Tumblr. I’m sure you are following, by now.
So, as a business owner, entrepreneur, person looking to build their brand, where do you begin? Not so easy. I know, that’s not something you read often in this blog! Start by getting a general understanding of how each platform is being utilized from a marketing standpoint. Be sure you are researching based upon your space. Meaning, if you are building your brand or unique and one-of-a-kind items, don’t start taking lessons from Apple’s Facebook marketing campaigns. While this seems like it should be a no-brainer, you would be surprised.
Research more than one medium, next. Determine which platforms your prospects are using the most and focus on these. You don’t want to spend time and money on a platform that your ideal customers aren’t even on. There is one thing that is consistent across all across every platform: THE NEED TO TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE!!! I absolutely cannot stress that enough. While we help with making up your ideal customer profile as part of our sales process projects, we also work with our customers to develop a rock-solid social media marketing plan that we implement or bring in one of our rock star partners who are world-class when it comes to the social media marketing sector.
Earlier in my post, I capitalized the word “LEGITIMATE” and I want to tell you why. This next part is going to ruffle more than a few feathers. The marketplace is flooded with self-proclaimed “experts” of social media. With the social media craze, this was, and is, to be expected. I don’t knock anyone for saying they are social media experts, for the simple fact that anyone willing to put themselves out there and try to make a living being their own boss deserves a world of respect, but this has to be taken into consideration when determining whether or not to hire a social media manager.
With the influx of these “experts,” we find that way too many people and companies are not getting less than adequate results. I will not sit here and tell you not to hire somebody if they are below a certain price or offering to work for free. When I was first starting, I offered, and even still do in some cases simply because I am having a BLAST doing what I do, to do entire company building for free or as little as 10 percent if the person had no money to get their dreams off the ground. If you do have capital spend on a social media manager, however, you absolutely must understand that MOST of the time, you will get what you pay for. Social media takes time and effort. In most cases when it comes to brand building and expansion, it takes a large amount of time and effort.
These social media managers come at a premium and for good reason. Most will only take on a set number of clients because they want to give their customers their best output, and if they have more clients than they can handle, it waters down there their results. A good social media manager should run you around the $1,200 to $1,800 per month range, at a BASE price level, and then the price goes up depending on what the customer is looking to achieve.
Seem salty? Not when you compare the massive ROI’s that are there if you hire the right one. Remember, though, the MOST IMPORTANT, part of all of this (Yes, this entire sentence will be capitalized): EVEN AFTER TARGETING AND ZEROING IN WITH A LASER FOCUS, IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A WORLD CLASS SALES PROCESS, AND SALES TEAM, YOU WILL NOT REACH THE LEVEL YOU COULD REACH.
Let’s take a moment to talk about Clubhouse. If you didn’t recognize that name, you probably aren’t alone. Clubhouse has only been around since April of 2020 and is still pretty unknown, though it is starting to pick up steam. Keep your eyes out for this platform. Even though right now, it is iPhone only, the company is already sitting at a $1 billion valuation and that is a valuation that is probably undervalued. We have spent some time on Clubhouse, @slaymakermethod is our tag, and we can see the gargantuan potential the platform has from a business owner and would-be entrepreneur standpoint. We took The Slaymaker Method from a relatively localized company to a company that is being requested to speak in rooms in the UK, Taiwan, Australia, Spain, Canada, and Hungary, all in a ridiculously short amount of time. So short of a time that we are still sitting here reeling from how quickly it happened. How did we do it? I am going to save that for a later post, and even then, will give a general overview, and save the secret recipe for our paying customers! ;-)
In closing, social media can be a world-class asset and titanic-sized game changer if utilized correctly, and for very small capital investment, again, IF UTILIZED CORRECTLY.
There is no true guaranteed recipe for success in business if you are focusing only on one thing. Yes, things happen and some people and businesses make just the right post or product, and the next day they find themselves wildly popular and successful, but these cases are super few and far between. Social media is just one piece to a very intricate jigsaw puzzle. So, the question is, how many pieces of your puzzle will The Slaymaker Method be able to put together for you?
-Kyle
