Why You Need More Than Social Media When it Comes To Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing can be a whole cluster of automated postings, blog schedules and website changes! It can leave your head spinning with all of the things you feel like you need to create, plan and offer out to your clients! We can focus so much of our time and attention on building our business on social media that we forget to look at our other avenues of digital strategy.
Let me ask you this, what happens if Instagram shut down tomorrow and you lost everything? All of your followers and relationships that you had created were gone! What would you do? Would your business be ok?
It’s a tough question to answer and even our team is getting a little uneasy thinking about it, but it’s a reality that every business should be prepared for. You’ve heard the saying “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”. So don’t bank your businesses entire success on your Instagram or YouTube channel! It’s time to start making sure you are well-rounded and investing in other avenues of marketing to build your business! So where do you start?
Let’s talk email! A lot of our clients come to us and think that email is old, outdated and that people don’t read let alone buy from email campaigns! Well friends, those are all misconceptions! Did you know that 72% of people prefer to see your promotions and updates via email? Or that email generates 174% more conversions that social media will. Those are some big numbers!
Here’s why we love email and why we are encouraging all of our seasoned social media clients to invest more time in email…
1. You don’t control social media algorithms
Let’s face it, as much as we wish Alexa or our Google Home’s would pass along our frustrated conversations about the new Facebook and Instagram algorithms to the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world, nothing is changing yet. We can’t magically hack the algorithms to present our posts more often to our dream clients. We can only continue grinding to cultivate a loyal following or maybe even investing in paid advertising. And even then, we don’t OWN our social media followers; the social media platforms do. Don’t get us wrong, social media is still a CRUCIAL part of your marketing strategy but it shouldn’t be the ONLY thing.
2. Email establishes a more personal connection
If you write your emails right, you can talk directly to your subscribers and get across your personality and thoughts! It’s much more challenging to do this in social posts that you are writing to your thousands of followers. Email campaigns can become a routine for your subscribers to look forward to reading your updates. In a way, emails can become new blog post reminders for your subscribers! It also is THE BEST way to inform your subscribers on what is happening with your company!
3. You OWN your email list
We mentioned it a bit above, but THIS is co crucial! Even though your social media followers may be a bigger number than your email list, your email subscribers will always see your emails and are 10 times more likely to buy a product or service from your email as opposed to your social posts!
Email marketing is for sure a whole other beast to tackle! You have to be sure you write them correctly to engage with your audience and offer enough insight into your business. With all of this being said, email is truly one of the BEST facets you should have in your digital marketing strategy!
The Skim
Don’t put on blinders this year and only focus on your social media growth. Make sure to spread you eggs amongst many baskets. Take time to make sure you are sending out newsletters and have avenues for users to subscribe to your email list! This will help you know that if one day Instagram crashes and everything is gone, you will still have a list of loyal subscribers who are more likely to support your business than a lot of your social media followers. Remember to have a balanced digital marketing strategy that includes both social media and email marketing, because both are VERY important to growing your brand and business this year!
