At a time when the world turns around the internet, companies, and more security companies, must venture into the world of social networks, a niche often neglected that can deliver very good results in terms of sales.
by Adhir Uzcátegui*
The fact that everything has changed to no one sounds strange. New forms of communication between the company and its customers is accompanied and purposely by the emergence of new social platforms hosted on the network. New actions such as the creation of content or the requirement of direct communication from brands to their followers, and vice versa become indispensable premises in the era called Social Media.
Do you have a Facebook page of your security company?
Going forward, these are the basic premises to take into account in digital marketing that is already part of our Security industry:
Bidirectionality: Traditional advertising gives way to the new forms of interaction that arise on the occasion of new technologies. A one-way advertising dies that imposes a business idea that in most cases has little or nothing to do with reality. We are now the users who 'sell' products or services depending in any case on the user experience, on what we experience when we consume. It is the democracy of the Internet that is championed by the recommendation.
Humanization: Numerous studies show the hours that users spend online. Exorbitant audiences that host certain social platforms in which there is continuous interaction. It is here that the dynamization of communication emanating from the divine and the human plays an essential role. From people to people.
Brands stop being at the top and go down to openly relate to their followers. Real-time communication by the online voice that 'shakes' the brand. The very controversial figure of the Community Manager, a key piece in this gear.
Need for information: The main novelty is accompanied by the need for information that users demand. We spent hours browsing waiting for interesting content to share. It is now when the 'What do you know how to do?' takes on special relevance. It is no longer worth saying it, it must be demonstrated.
The figure of the corporate blog appears on the scene. Exceptional place to host content, opinions and debates on topics of interest, current affairs, curiosities ... As the only premise the value, what we are going to offer in exchange for loyal followers who become excellent ambassadors of our brand. Users delivered by an unparalleled treatment.
.
Generosity: You must know that to get on the bandwagon of new communicative and promotional forms ..." you must first give and later receive". Generosity is imposed as another of the basic premises. As a company, what are you willing to offer?
Remember that digital users will be faithful to you in exchange for an exquisite treatment that makes them feel special and unique.
The well-known contests on Facebook, or on any other platform are nothing more than a way to reward the loyalty of followers, in addition to becoming a powerful tool for attracting target audiences.
.
Transparency: The time has come to "undress", to show the world what our way of working is, or what are the incentives we use to motivate our workers. Sharpness in the work done, without trap or cardboard.
There are many security companies that still feel some reluctance when it comes to exposing their showcase on the network. The atrocious idea that haunts us from the past is not conceived. How will I allow myself to be controlled by my competition? Will it really be beneficial to tell what we do?... Doubts fruit of the prejudices that we drag.
The time has come to move forward, to reorient our goals towards the new forms imposed on us by the most rabid present.
There are as many strategies as there are ideas that can be generated, and you know that there are hundreds of tools available in Social Media and thousands of ways to use them, but making a summary of everything we conclude that large companies such as General Motors, Nike, use only the following strategies in Social Media to increase their sales and obtain a return on investment both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
To do this we will have to define more complex metrics, I am not talking about simply staying in the number of fans, comments (although they are important data and must also be measured) ... but we must go further and define real metrics such as leads generated, conversion to customers and revenue produced.
Let's see one by one each of the strategies with examples, which you can then analyze and assess how to apply them to your business.
Brand image strategy
One of the main strategies in Social Media is to improve the brand image and notoriety of a security company, and for this a very good option is to make viral videos that are distributed on platforms such as YouTube, but we should not stay only in brand image, but we have to see how to take advantage of all the pull that produces a viral video to generate sales.
As an example I will take a campaign that Toyota made for the promotion of one of its models in miniseries format creating the Sienna family that got more than 8 million impressions with their videos on YouTube, and managed to get the people who saw them to share them with their friends through their social networks helping Toyota to reinforce its brand image, in short, turning the users themselves into pre-prescribers of their brand and the new car model.
Do you see how it can reflect this in the security industry?
Market research strategy
Another potential of social networks is their ability to use them as a market research tool, where we can know very valuable data for our business.
One of the best examples is the one carried out by the company Starbucks with its website MyStarbucksIdea.com, where they decided to create a platform so that users could leave their ideas to improve Starbucks. The result was noteworthy, since users not only left thousands of ideas but also voted for the ones they liked the most, leaving their opinions.
Customer loyalty strategy
It is known by all that it costs more to get a new customer than to retain a current one, and based on this some companies have decided to use social networks as a loyalty tool, and one of the best examples is the social media strategy of Comcast, a company that had a very bad brand image and decided to implement a customer service system using several channels on Twitter where a real team of people are dedicated exclusively to supporting customers and turning complaints and unsubscribe requests into new business opportunities.
The results after 12 months are visible, today they already have more than 45,000 followers on Twitter, and this strategy is helping them convert their customers into potential sellers of their brand to their circle of friends.
Strategy: Capturing opportunities
The generation of databases of potential customers is one of the most profitable business tactics in the long term since it allows us to open a communication channel of promotions with people interested in our product, being able to send direct and personal communications through email marketing campaigns, so social networks and lead generation must go hand in hand.
To capture leads we can use different tools, and therefore we must define a strategy where we take advantage of the full potential of the Internet by relying on our website, YouTube videos, download of ebooks, blogs in such a way that little by little we generate a powerful qualified database that will help us convert into sales.
Do you realize you need a Facebook page?
These are the strategies in Social Networks most used by large companies and that have also proven their effectiveness, so it is time to see how we can apply to our security company all these strategies so that like the big ones get Social Networks to help us increase our sales.
Happy sales!
* If you wish you can write to the author of this article at email: [email protected]
