social media marketing Archives

Valentine’s Day: how to make customers fall in love with your brand

Posted on 1 February 2023 - 12:05 by Arsenis Paschopoulos

In about 2 weeks we celebrate one of the most controversial and commercialized holidays: Valentine’s Day.

That’s why we have prepared a list of 20 actions that you must take in order to bring customers into the arms of your … e-shop and make them fall in love with your brand

Eshop

Homepage: change your main banner with one or more themed banners or make a special visual high on your homepage for Valentine’s Day. Describe the actions you are taking for this day (discounts, special gifts, contests)

Special landing page: create a special page where all your Valentine’s Day social media posts and ads will end up.

This page can include the categories of products you recommend for the day, gift ideas based on the gender, age and money available, a contest and product delivery information.

Logo: make a Valentine-themed variation of your logo

Trade policy: limited number of pieces, discounts, 2+1 gifts and (of course) free shipping are some of the trade policies you can use to make your visitors buy from you without looking for alternatives in other eshops

Contest: create a popup (or special banner) that will lead to a Valentine contest (more about contests at the end of the article).

Product delivery: make clear (with a banner or even a countdown mechanism) the last day and time you need to receive the order in order to deliver it on time.

Even better, make a special deal with the courier company you work with for extra fast orders and inform your eshop visitors about fee gradations.

Email & Viber

If you’ve run Valentine’s Day contests in the past, the list you’ve created is the hottest to use again to bring back Valentine’s Day attendees to your eshop in previous years.

To get even more information from your already registered users, ask them if they are looking for a gift, how much money they want to allocate and for which gender so that you can send them corresponding ready-made proposals or direct them to a specific section (for example gifts for her) of your eshop.

If not, it’s an opportunity to enrich your list with one of the contests I’ll suggest below.

Through email & Viber you can of course also express your appreciation to your customers by giving them a gift such as extra points (without making purchases) in the loyalty system or encouraging them to make purchases to enter this system, by earning more than the usual points.

And of course don’t forget to make clear through these two communication channels the day the order should be placed so that it is delivered on time.

With contests

Contests as a tool can be useful to you in many ways.

Contests that will generate UGC

These contests will be held for you so that the followers will create content (user generated content) for you.

Show us your Valentine: Ask your followers to take a photo or a video with their love.
Show us your love: Ask your followers to take a photo with one of your products or share why they love your brand.

Contests to get information about your followers

If you’re a travel agency: “Send us your dream vacation on Valentine’s Day”
If you sell gadgets: “Tell us what gadget will make your day on Valentine’s Day.”
If you have a hair salon: “Send us the hairstyle you like and win it”
If you have a super market: “Tell us what you want to cook on Valentine’s Day and win the ingredients”

Contests to increase interaction

In this case the most common method is to complete a sentence in the comments.

For example, if you sell cosmetics: “Even more beautiful for Valentine’s Day. I would like a ________ cream” (ask them to tell you).

Or ask them to tag the person they will be spending Valentine’s Day with.

Don’t forget advertisment

None of the above will be successful if you don’t advertise it.

The HOT audiences you will target are:

The visitors of your eshop who have bought in the past
All other visitors who have not made purchases
Those who have interacted with your social media presences
Those who state that are “in a relationship” or “it’s complicated”
Those looking for “gifts”, “Valentine”, …

If stocks allow, do not stop advertising until the courier company you work with tells you that they are unable to deliver.

But even in this case you can give the opportunity to those who are in love to order with an extra discount something from your eshop and receive it the next day or some other day.

What if you don’t sell gifts suitable for Valentine’s Day?

In this case turn to the “singles” and urge them to give themselves a gift “because they deserve it”.

Where will you find them? But with the Facebook & Instagram ad filter that lets you find singles and divorced.

You can also target with Google ads keywords and content like “anti-Valentine” “alone at Valentine’s day” etc.

You can also run a contest for singles or give away a really big discount or giveaway, ONLY for Valentine’s Day (so you can “pull” the extra disposable income of that day)

Good luck and … don’t forget to fall in love!

If you need help with the above actions, please contact us

Social Media: A sales pitch and a photo?

Posted on 22 September 2022 - 11:15 by Arsenis Paschopoulos

Although over the years social media has proven its value as a promotion and sales tool, there are still entrepreneurs who treat it as a tool, a process and a practice that can be done “on the leg” by anyone. .

The classic we hear is “I’ll have the girl in the secretariat handle them” or “come on kid, social media is a joke and a photo, don’t pay for advertising”.

I heard the second particular saying 6-7 years ago from a client, but unfortunately it still exists as a mentality.

But is that the case?

What more than a tagline and a photo does the proper use of social media require to bring business results?

Hold on, here we go!

The first step, since we are in the field of business, is to enter goals

When starting social media you need to know what goals you want to achieve: sales, site traffic, more awareness, customer support are some goals that a business may want to achieve.

The second step is that you will have to choose how you will measure these goals, success, KPIs (key performance indicators), and in general the performance so that every month you know after all what these social media give you and how close they bring you in achieving the goals.

The third step is to anticipate some difficulties, such as: will you be able to create material? will it be easy to make it yourself? should you find an external partner? This, believe me, is the number one problem that most small businesses face: how will I create material, who will make it for me, what material will it be… And of course you have to The third step is to anticipate some difficulties, such as: will you be able to create material? will it be easy to make it yourself? should you find an external partner? This, believe me, is the number one problem that most small businesses face: how will I create material, who will make it for me, what material will it be… And of course you have to find a solution to these problems by making the corresponding decisions .

The fourth step is to see what the competition is doing: is it strong on social? how often does he post? what do people like? what does it advertise and how often?

The fifth and most important step is to find your own strengths and weaknesses: what will make you stand out? how do you want the consumer who sees you on social media to remember you? how will you impress him? with which identity.

The sixth step is to gather the material with which you will create content. This material should create an image that will “transfer” your strong points that we mentioned above.

It is all these elements that will make you create your own voice and do the infamous branding to be able to stand out from the competition, to be the green apple among all the red apples.

The seventh step is to choose which social media to use. I hear from various people saying “so we won’t use Tik Tok”? Not sure why, one company might have to use it and be late to use it, while another company shouldn’t. It has to do with where your audience is, what image you want to convey and what material you can create…

Are you wondering, “And how will I know who my audience is?” what is this I have to do?’

Your audience, if you are a company that has been around for some time, you define it based on the marketing plan it has made and you say I sell this product or this service and I target this audience.

But you can also find it from mechanisms that exist and give you the searches that people make on social media or the interests they have, or who frequents and interacts with your competitor’s social media, and so you can find / limit who is your audience

Because many times we think our audience is women 15 to 25 and we find out our audience is also women 35 to 40.

The above process – the eighth step – is called creating buyer personas: groups of your potential customers that have some specific and distinct characteristics.

And here the difficulties begin. The material for each buyer persona should be different and you may need to use different media. For example, to reach a younger audience you will use Tik Tok and Instagram. In order to reach a larger audience, you will use YouTube and Facebook (well, YouTube is an exception because it is a medium that is consistently and permanently addressed to all ages – I close the parenthesis) and accordingly adjust the posts you make for each medium .

Have I convinced you that social media is far from just a joke and a picture?

I’m not done yet!

The ninth step is advertising these posts and advertising in general.

The tenth step is to monitor the reactions of the public: what the public likes on our social media, what they like, comment on, but also responses to the comments (and not only the negative ones but also the positive ones), and the monitoring and performance of the advertisements.

And of course we will tie all this up at the end of each month with a nice report – the eleventh step – to say what actions were taken, what goals we achieved or how far we are from achieving them.

You must do all of the above for each of the social media where your company is present.

In order not to get lost, you need a program.

Let’s not forget that social is not just posts, it’s also advertising and community management is also influencers management, it’s also crisis management, competition monitoring, new tools and the removal of some, which we haven’t mentioned even in our conversation (it’s the steps, 12, 13, ….).

So you definitely want programming, and the program comes out based on the audience you want to reach and the content you want to provide and – all this – under the light of the goals you have set.

So either you will do it with an external partner or you will do it in-house depending on your needs and the amount of data and the number of social media you want to use.

But what is certain is that if you stick to posting a joke and a photo you will wonder why social media doesn’t work… for you!

If you don’t want to fall into this category, ask us to show you what we can do for your business.

Why Businesses Fail With Social Media?

Posted on 16 September 2022 - 11:16 by Αρσένης Πασχόπουλος

But there are many entrepreneurs who treat Social Media as something “not worth their effort and time”. “They don’t work”, “I didn’t see anything despite all the Likes”, “with brochures or emails I achieve more” are some opinions that are heard. This article aims to describe the misconceptions and actions of companies that use social media for their promotion, while examining the goals that a business can achieve through them, so that the entrepreneur has realistic expectations from the use of Social Media.

Social Media is NOT free

“Social Media is a full-time job”

Gone are the days when Social Media was just Facebook, where you could create a group, a profile and post text and images. The platforms, but also the tools of each platform (pages, groups, contests, advertising, channels, albums, …) increase, change, remove, improve, at such rates that a trained full-time person is now required to monitor them, while at the same time creating the company’s strategy and implementing it (without the technical part of course).

Conclusion: the nephew who graduated from some school and “knows about computers” and “also does social media” will probably do more harm than good. No disrespect to any nephew, but handling social media isn’t all about posting. It’s communication, talking to the public, handling problems and crises, monitoring competition, advertising, AND quality, intelligent and original posts, which help build and strengthen the brand.

Businesses are slow to get into the game

“The early bird gets the worm”

The easiest way to convince an entrepreneur to use a new tool is to show them that their competitors are already using it. But it is wrong as a reasoning. As with anything new, in Social Media most businesses (and not just SMBs) get into the “game” late: when their competitors have built a decent presence, made mistakes and learned from them, and built a “voice” to the audience they want to attract.

Thus, those who look “from the outside” must “run” to establish their presence and voice. The good thing about Social Media is that if a business combines originality with strategy, useful content and dialogue (along with some reasonable budget), the time it takes to be “heard” and gain an audience and voice is not long. But how many software companies or how many travel agencies or bookstores will the prospect Like, Share, Follow, Repin and Retweet? And why let the competition become that benchmark for your customer and constantly compare you to them?

They want results here and now without much “investment”

“Content, Content, Content”

Especially skeptical entrepreneurs who, due to temperament and habits, “will not be convinced even if you convince them”, want to see results (that is, sales, sales and sales) here and now. Their mistake is twofold: on the one hand, they consider Social Media as a (direct) sales channel, and on the other hand, they believe that, because the number of users is large, any results must come quickly for the medium to prove its value.

The answer to why one should not expect immediate results is given by the definition of Social Media: they are “meeting places” on the internet where people – consumers share experiences (mainly personal and less consumer) with other people.

Following the example of salespeople in the ancient forums, companies have “entered” Social Media because their audience is there too. However, the public enters Social Media mainly for “socializing”, sharing, chatting, to put it simply, some to search for information (on specific platforms), and some also for shopping.

This means that the main objective of a business on Social Media should be to increase awareness and build its brand. And fortunately, social media gives enough tools and space for a company to make its brand known and convince the prospective customer of its value. Both, however, require time and effort (content) if done on the “terms” of social media (useful, original – and therefore shareable – content) and not just with advertising.

They are using Social Media the wrong way

“It’s not possible without preliminary”

The most common mistake made by businesses on Social Media is that they use it as a means of advertising and not as a means of influencing the opinion of their potential customers. The magic of social media is that they offer you plenty of space for texts, photos, videos, infographics, with which you can show who your company is, show your product and service in use, help the buyer understand , install, use your product, build your image by telling “stories” through the eyes of happy customers and generally convince of the value you offer.

Yes, you will advertise, contest, offer coupons, you will enable booking and purchase through all platforms, you will connect the photos of your products to your website. But with the “preliminaries” we mentioned above, you’ll not only get more people to jump in and buy, but – more importantly – you’ll create followers who will talk about you.

They copy the competition

«Other thing is copyright and other thing is clopyright»

If one had to pick ONE “tool” to “make it” in Social Media, it would be original content production. On the other hand, the hardest step in exploiting Social Media is producing original content! Why; Because, like reputation, it is not bought but must be created.

So the easy solution is to copy the competition, not only in the content it uploads but also in the actions it takes: advertising the competitor, advertising us too, photo contest the competitor, photo contest us too, supporting those who have been bullied o competitor, support us too.

The result; Lots of Likers and Followers who “follow” the brand on Social Media only for offers and giveaways, no engagement, comments, content retweets (unless they earn points in a contest).

What can I expect from Social Media?

“Recognizability and increased traffic to the site or eshop should be the main goals”

Social Media is great and you should use it to increase awareness and build your business brand by providing original content that helps the reader because it solves their problems, gives them useful information or is just plain fun.

Through appropriate posts on Social Media you can increase traffic to your site.

You can also build a database of names and e-mails through contests, sweepstakes and general promotions that ask for this information from the user in order to participate.

Also, with the creation of applications for the distribution of coupons, reservations or the creation of a store / product posting within your social media presence, you can also expect direct sales or partnerships if you use LinkedIn correctly.

Finally, social media has risen in consumer preference as a means of communication and support from businesses because they consider it more immediate (and they also expect immediate responses to their queries).

If you are taking your first steps with social media, I believe that the above article will help you avoid important mistakes that will cost you time and money. If you already use them, do a social media audit to improve your practices.

If you still want help, either for a social media audit or for a collaboration on a monthly basis, contact us