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It’s been a while since marketers are talking about a new consumer decision making process. The truth is people have been changing their shopping behavior in the past years with the evolution and adoption of social media and new trusted information sources available in the internet. It became easier to search for a product, gather relevant information and check feedbacks and recommendations. Customers are more informed and social than ever, but it doesn’t mean having a website an some social media presence will be enough to influence your potential customer.

David Edelman, on his article The funnel is dead, wrote:

“The classic funnel shows an ever-narrowing array of decisions and choices until purchase, when in fact the channel-surfing customer today often is expanding the set of choices and decisions after consideration.”

It’s clear that your customers will look for relevant content, about you and your competitors, before making a purchase decision. The question is, are you ready to engage with them in each step of this new decision making process, and most important, providing the right content? Of course every industry and company have its unique market, target audience and values. But as a starting point, here is a list of relevant content you can consider on each step of the process:

1] Consideration
Goal: educate the customer, create awareness.
Focus on: market, technology, trends, concept.
Suggested content: blog, podcast, videos, articles, eBooks, white-papers, webinars, reports, publications.

2] Evaluation
Goal: customer engagement, create the need.
Focus on: product, benefits, differentiators, value.
Suggested content: product webinar, case study, samples, how to use videos, guided tour, product demo.

3] Buying Process
Goal: influence the customer, create urgency.
Focus on: solving problems, return on investment, growth opportunities.
Suggested content: free trial, consultation, assessment, estimate, forums, training, usage tips.

4] Post-purchase
Goal: customer engagement, create satisfaction.
Focus on: product experience, buying process, future needs.
Suggested content: feedback survey, recommendations, share buttom, similar products, customer services, newsletters.

5] Advocate
Goal: retain customers, create loyalty.
Focus on: recurring customers, brand engagement, positive recommendations.
Suggested content: pre-sales event, special offers, coupons, gift cards, premium services, loyalty program.

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It’s incredible to see how fast social media grew in the last years and how it changed the marketing landscape.

Catherine Parker published in 2010 her book 301 Ways to use social media to boost your business. By the time Orkut was the largest social media network, Pinterest was still a beta site and Google+ didn’t even exist.

Yeah… Facebook has more than 1 billion active users now, Pinterest is a huge success even for businesses and Google+ is still struggling against competition. But as some people say: somethings never change.

Reading some of my notes about the book today, It’s interest to see some great advises that fits perfect to our current social media scenario. Specially for those companies that are at this exact moment trying to put together a social media strategy, the book is still an amazing option to understand the different platforms we have available to share contents and engage with customers. And if it helps, follow some of my personal notes:
The social media strategy must be part of the bigger picture, it’s an important part of your overall marketing strategy and mix.
Just like any other marketing campaign, you must guarantee a consistent voice across all activities, even when mixing together inbound and outbound activities.
Choose a central arm to drive call to actions. It can be your site, blog or your Facebook page.
Then decide the social media platforms and marketing activities you will have around this central arm.
We’re still talking about marketing: don’t forget you must have objectives, target results and ways for measuring these results during and after the campaign.
Use less rather than more: know your target market and choose the right platforms to achieve your goals.
Always track the effects of your marketing activities internally and externally.

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Know your customers before implementing any social media strategy takes time and is definitely crucial. But make your brand and product relevant to this customer is a lot harder. A social media plan is not only about reaching the right customers, but is also about long-term relationships and making your content useful for this potential costumer.

Just like any other marketing strategy, it must have a primary objective. It can be small as increasing the number of “Likes” at your Facebook page, or huge as improving your overall satisfaction rate in the customer care channels. This objective will guide you through the whole social media plan process.

But, specially at small businesses, we deal with lack of resources and limited budgets all the time. It’s important simplify as much as we can the process. So, here are four easy steps to start your social media plan:

1) Draw the strategy.- What is your objective?- Who is your target audience?- Where they are and what they need from you?- Which social platforms, groups, search engines are you gonna use to reach these customers?- What content are you planning to use or develop?- How do you want your customers to see you and your company?- Who in your company will be responsible for the social media activities?- How often do you want to listen and engage with these customers?- When and how are you planning to measure the results?

2) Listen to your customer.- Search for people talking about your brand and products.- Gather competitive intelligence.- Monitor your industry discussion groups.- Monitor your content’s response and customer’s comments.- Test your audience, using different approaches, contents and platforms.

3) Engage with potential customers.- Surprise and delight your fans.- Answer to their questions and ask for feedbacks and new ideas.- Share experiences, your vision and your company’s culture.- Build long-term relationships.

4) Measure, measure and improve.- What’s the share of conversation?- And the adjusted engagement level?- What’s your level of influence?- Do you have the right audience, the right content and right platform?- Are you engaging too little, or too much?- Did you reach your objective?

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The way people and brands interact changed in the last few years with new social networking platforms. If before a simple print ad was enough to convince your customer your product was the right choice, today it’s not. Customers became more critical and rigorous since the world became more social. It’s easier than ever to talk about brands in discussion groups, rate and recommend products to other customers looking for the same thing.

It’s true that most of these tools existed for a long time, but it was after social media’s consolidation that people felt more comfortable to share their experiences with products and services. And as a consequence it’s also changing the way companies try to reach out customers.

The traditional “outbound” marketing that usually pushes products on customers using one-way communications, adding little or no value at all, will no longer bring the results the business needs. To understand the new “inbound” marketing concept, companies of all sizes must first understand the shift in their consumer behavior, and most of all, understand how can they actually help.

Inbound marketing is a strategy where your goal is to bring customers closer to your brand and products, creating a long-term relationship, giving them answers and solutions that can have a positive impact in their life.

According to some researches, 86% of people around the world skip television ads, 44% of direct mail is never opened and 91% of companies email subscriptions were cancelled. Outbound marketing, the way it is, is not working anymore.

It’s time to change the strategy and prepare your company for a new social marketing scenario. Basically there are three simple questions you must ask yourself:

1) Who is my ideal customer?
2) What type of information is relevant for them?
3) What are the main challenges I can solve for them?

That’s only the first step for an inbound marketing strategy, but it’s a crucial one to guarantee it will be efficient and effective in the future.

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Marketing has always been an important piece in the organization puzzle. Size doesn’t matter: small, medium and large companies use marketing strategies and tools in a daily basis to understand the market needs, create awareness, promote products and services and, last but not least, to influence customers through the buying cycle. Although each segment requires different marketing approaches, all companies should have a clear and solid marketing plan aligned with the business goals. But, when is time to admit that the marketing strategy must change?

From time to time the market changes. People and companies face new challenges, establish higher targets, use new technologies and at the end of the day we have a whole new market of opportunities. But most of all, we have the same people interacting in a different way with brands and products. And that’s the red flag most marketing teams don’t see.

When Facebook was launched it was a simple way to connect people, share experiences and personal information. Twitter, a way to express yourself in less than 140 characters. LinkedIn, an online address book for professional contacts. By that time, social networking represented nothing to companies and businesses. It took years for the marketing teams to realize the potential of these sites and communities, and how important they are for the business growth.

Today, we have over 5.3 billion pieces of content shared every week through social platforms. More than 1 billion of active users in Facebook, with more than 27 billion of “Likes” per day. Fifty three percent of these active social media users follow brands, of which 60% write and share reviews of brands and products daily.*

Even though not all companies and business are yet prepared to this new marketing scenario, it’s more than clear today how social networking platforms changed the way marketers reach out customers. I’ll take the risk and say it’s the largest CRM tool we ever had. It’s not about reaching any customer. It’s about reaching the right customer.

In 2011, 3.8 billion dollars was spent on social media marketing and today 62% of fortune 500 companies have an active corporate Twitter account, and 67% of B2C companies have acquired a new customers through Facebook.*

Of course some of the traditional marketing activities will always be part of the business. It must be. But more and more companies are adapting and mixing their strategies to reach the right customers, spending less resources and money to do so and being more effectively, bringing higher results by the end of the fiscal year. The question is: are you engaging to your customers right now? Your competitor probably is. Think about it.

*Sources: SocialKia.com; HubSpot.com; Voltier Digital Infographic, 2011.

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