What is the real value of social media for your business?
How can social media help your business and what is the real value of investing in social media marketing for businesses? Geoff Byfield, Business Coach at GEOFFBYFIELD.COM, shares his view of the real value of social media marketing and how his view has evolved.
Geoff Byfield is a coach, author & speaker, with a passion for helping entrepreneurs win the game of both business and life. He runs GEOFFBYFIELD.COM - a company dedicated to providing free resources to help entrepreneurs achieve financial and personal success. Check him out at geoffbyfield.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi guys, it’s Geoff Byfield Business Coach.
Just got a quick tip for you today, if you’re looking to invest in social media marketing for your business and you’re not quite sure on the value proposition that this has for your business.
So today I’m gonna make it clear eactly what the value that the social media has for your business, and to get rid of any confusion surrounding the value of social media marketing and how it affects your business. If you’re interested in knowing this information, stick around and check it out.
Okay so I’ve been in the business a long time and I’ve been involved in creating an executing a number of different marketing campaigns during that time.
Now, traditionally, the way that I viewed marketing has been it’s a very linear sort of process, I spend time and money once. I get leads, I do convergence and I end up with cash. If I want to achieve the same results again, I just spend more money, produce more leads, to produce more cash.
Now when I first started using social media, I consider it the same way, as the marketing channel. I want to put time and money into it, I wanted to bring in leads, I wanted to convert those leads into cash.
It didn’t take me very long to realise that social media is actually a very different beast and actually produces something very different than just leads, it actually produces an asset base. And this is an asset base of people who connected to my social media. Their prospects in my target market who have actively said, “yes, I’m happy for you to talk to me and communicate with me on an ongoing basis.”
Now, unlike a normal marketing campaign, this asset base grows overtime. It’s not just linear, it’s not just paste in money, it actually grows and it continuous to grow overtime exponentially. Just like most things that have exponential growth, the growth actually starts slowly. Then after a period, you start to get that exponential growth where the growth increases dramatically.
As long as you are providing regular content, that is of value to your users that they can then use and share with their friends.
Now this is an extremely valuable asset base from me because they are high-quality prospects, they’re not just like marketing to everyone. They’re people in my target market who are high quality because they’ve said they want to interact with me on a regular basis, so they’re already interested at what I have.
Now once I start reconsidering social media in this way, it became very clear that the money and time that I was spending on social media was producing something that other marketing campaigns wants and that was an asset base.
Now when I worked with my clients to establish the value of the marketing channel in terms of time, and money and invested for return, social media is one of the only marketing channels that actually ends up with a higher return on investment over time. So the same amount of money and same amount of time gets put in, and the return gets higher and higher.
Now as a coach, I look at the value of a business as a function of how many of its parts are automated, that they can run without the owner so that they can produce specific measurable results.
Now, social media is one of the only parts of a business that you are able to automate which over time, put in the same amount of time and money, but you actually can produce far better results, better and better because you’ve got an asset that’s growing exponentially.
From my and my client’s business, this is resulting in a higher return on investment overtime for the same money.
So what are the few things that you can do to look at your social media companies and see just how much value it has for your business.
First of all, take a look at the campaign and work out its return on investment over a long period of time between 12 months and 2 years ideally. The amount of time you’re spending and the return. And the return in terms of the asset base, not just the return in terms of convergence.
Now as with most things that have exponential growth, you must post regularly. It’s like putting a regular amount into a savings account every week to get that compound interest. If you’re not going to put in the regular post and have it done regularly on time, you’re not going to get exponential growth.
Make sure that your post are providing high value to your readers. They’re not going to share the post, they’re not going to be interested in reading more of them, if they’re not an extremely high value. So make sure you know what your readers want and make sure you give it to them as often as you can.
Make offerings to your list. There’s a lot of different schools of thoughts on this. Do I make an offerings on my list, do I not, do I just provide value?
If you are going to make offers to your list, I suggest at least 5 to 7 pieces of value before you actually go and make an offering. But you’ve got the people there, they are your list and you want to make offerings to them, put it in front of them, they may well be interested at your product after you’ve offered them enough value.
And last but not the list, make sure your time and money is being spend wisely by consulting with a social media expert for strategy.
This is hugely important because you can spend a lot of time and money doing social media that just doesn’t work. Find someone who knows what they’re doing, they’re in the business and talk to them.
Alright so in summary, social media like other forms of marketing builds an asset base. It builds an asset base of prospects who are interested in what you have to say. They’ve said they want to connect with you and they’ve asked you to connect with them on an ongoing basis. This grows and builds exponentially overtime.
It was Albert Eistein who said the “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earn it, he who doesn’t, pays it.” I think it’s good to remember.
Alright, so that’s all for today, if you’ve enjoyed this video please leave a comment in the notes below and let us know what other value proposition you’re social media campaign and client base has for you and your business.
Please leave a comment in the notes below. We’d love to continue the conversation and we’ll talk soon.
I’m Geoff Byfield. Cheers.
