Winning Through Marketing - Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is our next post in our series of marketing. Aside from our Winning Through Marketing introduction post and our Ultimate Lead Guide series, also check out:

Cold calling
Email marketing
Sales Letters
Networking
Social Media Marketing
Podcasting

Social Media Strategies Deep Dive:

Facebook

I'm going to post from a 30,000 foot view. I won't dive in deep here. I won't provide tactics in this post. Why? If I posted just a small fraction of what you need to know in social medial and using it for your business, we'd have a book. What I do plan to do though is release new posts around each platform, so a post for Facebook marketing, a post for Instagram marketing, a post for LinkedIn marketing, and so on. I don't have a time table in mind yet, but I'll update this very post. 

According to the digital marketing agency, Goat, over 308 million people are social media users through 2023 and nearly one-third of their time spent on the internet is on social media equating to two and a half hours per day!. The average user has 7.1 social media accounts, like Facebook, IG, TikTok, and others. 

From the perspective of the cleaner, that's a lot of potential eyeballs. GlobalWebIndex reports that 54% of users use social media to research a company before buying and they are 71% more likely to buy based on referrals from others online. 

There are 3 ways that social media influences buying decisions: 1) It shortens the customer journey. 2) It helps create social proof. And 3) There's always leverage from influencers (even from micro- or industry-specific influencers).

So, people are using social media (look around you). They are using social media to learn about you. They are using social media and are being influenced to buy. But what if they don't buy? Well, there are secondary benefits by being active on social media. This includes improved SEO and website traffic, you can learn about your audience like their pain points. You can become a micro influencer in the cleaning space. You can find your next employees (we always visitors wanting to apply). And finally it gives you a chance to retarget any missed customers. You can run retargeting ads.

But you can win business. In our previous company we spent very little time on social media, admittedly. I wish we did more. But I do have a success story to share. COVID hits. A vast majority of our business was tied up with 2 primary niches: churches and schools. Among the first to close during COVID? Churches and schools (and gyms). We took a 70% hit initially. In the middle of this I felt the calling to support the community. Food banks were closing in our area out of fear distribution of food would spread the virus. Local food banks reverted to gift cards for the community. We came up with a campaign to raise and match funds and we raised over $12,000 in one month. We split that between two food bank charities and we had promoted this throughout that month to help raise funds. A local dance studio owner happened to see one of our shared blog posts on Facebook and called us in for a bid. That bid led to a $3000/mo cleaning contract at the peak, and it's an account we still serve 4+ years later. We didn't have the fundraising to win more business. That wasn't the goal. But it was a welcomed result.

Whenever I do a walkthrough, I ask, "How did you hear about us?" I want to know what marketing works and what marketing doesn't work. Oddly enough, we had several people report they found us through social media. Specifically, they said they found us on Facebook and through YouTube. On our Facebook page, we only reposted our blog posts. On YouTube, we only had 2 or 3 videos, all promoting our company and we hired someone of Fiverr or UpWork to create something for us. In both cases, our posts/videos were terrible by professional standards. But yet, seeing those posts were strong enough to put us over the top in terms of asking for a bid. You don't have to be polished, but doing nothing through social media will result in nothing through social media.

Again, check back here and I'll update this post with any future links for a social media deep dive. I'm not a social media expert my any means but I'll share a few tactics and strategies I'm leaning more into now to win more cleaning business. First post in this series....Facebook.

Next on Deck: Using EPA Lists for Disinfecting (7/24/2024)