Time to read the signs?
Driving back from leaving my daughter to pre-school this morning, I was behind a driver studiously keeping to 40 mph along the road. He was a careful driver but the problem was he was ignoring the many 50 mph signs. Even when the signs changed to 30mph he kept steady at 40 mph. Maybe he’d decided that keeping to a single speed was easier than taking account of the changes around him.
That got me thinking about communications channels and the growth of new social media platforms. If you’ve been successfully running your business for many years, keeping to the same speed, using the same methods of communicating with your customers old and new, then maybe you’re not looking for signs of what’s happening in the marketplace?
The signs are certainly there.
- Companies with a regularly updated blog on relevant subjects see, on average, 67% more
leads than those with no blog - 69% of b2b marketers are already shifting budgets from traditional to social media
- 41% of b2b companies are acquiring customers on Facebook
- 86% of b2b companies and 82% of b2c companies are using social media
[Source: Richard Bagnall, Gorkana Group]
But maybe it’s all a flash in the pan? Surely customers still value the cold calls, the direct mail, the print advertising? Perhaps they do – these channels may still have a significant role to play for many businesses, but maybe its time to consider adding new channels to the marketing mix. Twenty years ago businesses were wondering if it was worth investing time and money in this new thing called the internet. Now it seems every business and organisation has a website and it is the first thing many prospective customers look for.
So, if you’re interested in learning more about the opportunities social media could offer your business, give us a call for a chat about the options. We’d love you to join our conversation.
