It started out with blogs, now there’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linked and a host of other social media platforms. Is there really a way you can harness the power of these platforms to grow your business?

Social media is the Internet’s fastest growing traffic generator. According to Facbook, the number of users is growing so fast that only the population of India and China exceed them. Twitter, the popular micro blogging platform is soon catching up. With the success of such social media platforms, the future for marketers looks promising in ways they never thought possible.

While large businesses have moved in on social media in a big way, social media has been a landfall for small business owners and internet marketers. As a small business owner or internet marketer, you can communicate with your target audience without having to conform to the rigid advertising guidelines of newspapers, TV or radio…or paying exorbitant advertising costs.

A major benefit that social media provides to small businesses is the flattening of the business playing field. Larger companies can no longer “buy” all the advertising space and edge small businesses out of the market..

Consumers tuning in to social media

Fed up with the exaggerated claims in mainstream advertising, consumers now have an option to check out products and services on social media platforms. Users frequently post information about their experiences with a product, service or even company, which prospects use as a guide to making an informed choice.  Consumers, tired of being subject to highly exaggerated sales pitches in mainstream media are eagerly turning to social media networking, where they have the opportunity to read, comment and share information about products and brands they really care about in real time.

How can you take advantage of social media for your business?

Imagine sitting down with your prospects and customers, and inviting them to give you feedback about your products and services. How much more credible would your business be if you could then act upon the feedback to improve your product and then inform these people what you have done. Much more credible than a feature loaded press or TV ad isn’t it?

Social media is all about two way communications with your target audience…however care has to be taken to get it right. Implementing a communication strategy on these lines has the potential to explode the traffic to your website and increase the recognition and popularity of you brand. Here’s how this happens. The internet has programmed users to click on links of products and services they are interested in. Some of them forward the link for their friends or business associates who are more likely to click on the links, than if they had received a “cold” link. As a result messages fly back and forth between members of a social network group with the result that page views and impressions escalate.

Unfortunately many small businesses bury their heads in a ground or choose to ignore the power of using social media and continue to rely on traditional advertising, while their competitors bleed them into insolvency. Marketing on the information highway is a two way street and consumers have an equal right to share the traffic. Small businesses who understand this and grab the opportunity that social media presents will outperform the competition and emerge victorious in the battle for a larger slice of the market.

If you have a large customer base, you may not notice it at first. But soon you realize that you haven’t heard from your customer for a long time. When you finally get around to making that call to find out what happened, you feel terribly hurt. Had they just called you, you might have been able to negotiate a new arrangement with just a few tweaks to your existing one and carry on doing business. But it’s too late, they’re gone.

Such a situation is repeated so often with businesses owners and some large organisations, whatever product or service they may be selling. It is going to happen. To pretend that it doesn’t, or won’t happen, is simply deceiving yourself.

So what should you do in such a situation? Just write off the loss of a good customer? Blame the customer’s sense of integrity, and carry on as usual? That’s not the thing you should do. Instead, now is the time to become even more proactive and go after that “lost” customer.

One of the best ways to reduce the frequency of losing your good customers is to remind them of the reasons they bought from you in the first place. Regularly scheduled meetings or conversations with your customers to remind them of their motives can go a long way in helping insulate your business from the competition.

Always remember, that your competition has similar products, services and prices. Studies have found that your customer’s reasons for buying are only 35 percent based on those products, services, and prices. The other 65 percent is for what you can do for them. Are you always available to solve their problems? If you can’t do it yourself, can you recommend someone else to help them and follow up to see that that the problem has been solved?

You need to spend the time with customers. Review their needs, wants and concerns. These change with their business cycle. Reinforce their motives, and their decisions for buying, and you will reduce defection of customers to the competition and develop not only loyal customers, but friends, as well.

If you go back and think about an ad you’ve seen about a not-so-well-known product that you bought, it’s quite likely that you read through a lot of copy.

So why does long copy usually sell so well? Let’s consider an analogy. A prospect walks into a store and looks at a product. He is then approached by a salesperson who explains the benefits and features of the product the prospect desires, quotes a price and goes on to serve another customer. The prospect lingers, undecided. The salesperson engages the prospect once again and throws in a few bonuses to sweeten the deal. The prospect is now hooked, but still not willing to part with hard earned money. By now it’s probably a good half-hour that the prospect has spent in the shop. The salesperson then plays upon the prospect’s emotions, offering a take-it-or-leave-it offer. After deliberating for awhile, the prospect relents and makes a purchase.

The whole process from the time the prospect walked into the shop to the point the sale was made, probably took around 40 minutes.

Interesting isn’t it? The more time a prospect spends in a shop, meaning the more time he invests in the salesperson’s proposition, the more likely he is to buy.

This is the simple reason why long copy works.

The best sales copy keeps the reader engaged for a long time. Involving the reader in the copy is the key to keeping the reader engrossed. Copy that plays upon the readers fears and spells out exactly how the reader will benefit by using the product or service.

Astute marketers nowadays cleverly add video and audio to the mix for a complete multimedia experience. For instance adding an audio or video testimonial dramatically improves the believability factor, and increases the propensity to buy.

You may probably be wondering if long copy works in an age where attention spans are shorter, people are busier, and the target audience is getting younger.

Yes it’s true that people are busier and attention spans are getting shorter. The challenge is therefore to make copy even more interesting, compelling and to focus it like a laser shattering the objections of the target audience. And replace it with compelling reasons to purchase.

What success would a man have if he asked a pretty girl to marry him on the very first date? Most likely, he would end up with a bruised cheek. Of course he has to woo the girl first. Wine and dine her. Pique her interest in him. And then make the offer. That’s just what long copy does.