One thing that I’ve just discovered in a meeting today, is that a lot of the time people don’t actually think about what they want from social media.
So they may think social media is about engagement, it’s about brand building, or it’s simply a case of something that’s done because everyone suggested that they should do it.
Now in part this is true – every business should be active on social media. But you need to be active for the right reasons.
You need to understand and look at your target audience.
You need to understand what it is you want.
That makes it profitable for you to be talking to them on social media.
But you also need to understand the right social media that they operate on.
Just because someone’s told you that you should be using Twitter it doesn’t mean you should be using Twitter if your target audience isn’t using Twitter. That’s like being an insurance broker in Nottingham paying for a billboard in Aberdeen hoping to attract walk ins …
Really?
Likewise from this meeting I had today. One of the things that came out was the old chestnut of “well I don’t really use Facebook because my audience isn’t on Facebook.”
And that was really just an assumption rather than any kind of analysis as to whether their customer base actually does use and interacts on Facebook.
So one thing that I suggest all clients do is take a look at all the different social media platforms and see if they can find their target customer. They can build a strategy to actually interact with those people and turn those people into clients.
Here is a quick list of some of the more popular channels you could be investigating (and in no particular order):
It’s no good in this day and age just to try to gettingout as far and wide as possible, because for a lot of insurance brokers there’s just isn’t enough time in the day and budgets could be fairly tight. This might be a good strategy for big brands or providers, which have products that lend themselves to a wider range of content or are going for brand building.
You need to pick your platforms and invest time effort and in some cases money before expanding into other platforms.
Social Media is not free…
All social media platforms allow users to have free accounts but there is a huge cost involved in providing these services. Servers, and staff are just two costs. So they need to monetise. You can see this as a good thing or a bad thing.
I suggest you see it is a good thing and an opportunity to get you and your business in front of the right people.
I also do suggest that clients look at paid social media advertising but, again, only in the confines of advertising where their client base currently resides.
There’s no point attacking Facebook if their customer base is not there or there’s no point paying for traffic on Pinterest or Instagram because it’s really cheap when their target audience doesn’t interact on those platforms. (Remember our billboard in Aberdeen?)
So make sure you do a lot of research or invest in somebody that can do that research for you to ensure that all your marketing spend is used as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
We are offering a number of options for brokers to figure out exactly what they need to do in order to grow their businesses from online activity in 2018. You need to consider starting now.
Get in touch and see how we can help you get 2018 off to the right start by getting all your planning done before you get to January 1st.