Does the rise of social media mean the death of email?
Not so fast! Given the fact that social networking is on the rise, and presumably not going away, many companies may be neglecting their e-mail marketing. An article published at Social Media Week discusses the that many companies silo their marketing efforts from each other. In truth, when viewed as a full marketing strategy, where all components compliment each other.
With a properly developed website that has Google Analytics installed, a company will begin to understand the habits of their visitors. How they are getting to the site, what they do when there, what is the referring medium and lots of other information. When distributing your valuable content using social media site like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and using e-mail, print and pay per click campaigns, the company is now using all the tools available for a successful campaign. For retail, restaurant and other destinations, using location based services like Foursquare and Yelp strongly recommended.
A comprehensive campaign enhances a companies Search Engine Optimization (SEO), thus allowing them to be ranked higher on search engine results. As a company uses the results from Google Analytics, they should use that information to dictate future messaging plans. If Facebook is driving more traffic than Twitter, perhaps running a pay per click along with increased messaging might be recommended. If Twitter is driving more traffic, more messaging, promotions and engagement might be recommended. For some companies, YouTube can be incredibly successful. Think for a moment, if you are an IT consulting company and you did a 2-minute whiteboard demonstration where you talked about a specific problem you worked through to a successful resolution. Allowing potential business to see how you attack a problem is a great way for them to get to know you before contacting you.
Using a comprehensive marketing strategy incorporating all available resources to target your audience is the way to go. Using available data to help dictate future decisions is how you will get an advantage versus your competition.
