Are you making mistakes on your Social Media pages that are affecting the results you are receiving?
Is your Social Media Marketing less effective than it could be because of these mistakes?
Over the next three weeks we will take a look at the 3 most common mistakes jewelers make. This week we will discuss the biggest one.
Mistake #1 – Not Focusing Your Social Marketing on Business Objectives
You need to ask yourself, why is your jewelry store on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or other Social Media websites? Why do you spend time, energy, and money to be on various Social Media channels?
Hopefully your answer is to reach existing clients and new potential customers and bring them into your jewelry store.
Sure, it’s great to get hundreds of Likes and Comments on a Facebook Business page posts and a real boost to your ego to have 10,000 Fans. But how do those engagements actually lead to profit? To quote Rod Tidwell from the movie Jerry McGuire: “Show me the money!”
Recently a client of ours dropped our service in favor of a different “marketing company.” The store owner said our content was too focused on marketing and not socializing with people.
Well, Duh!!
Are you a business doing marketing to gain new customers or a social club visiting with the community?
Of course our marketing is focused on marketing!
Too many so called experts claim that this is “SOCIAL media”, but the reality is it is “social MEDIA”.
Marketing is marketing is marketing regardless of the media. It doesn’t matter what the media is, the message should remain the same.
People watch and/or listen to news media to hear the latest news story. However, businesses that take out an ad on a news media channel don’t change their marketing message into a news story. And Social Media is no different. Yes people are on Social Media to stay in touch with their friends and family, to share what is going on in their lives, and socialize with people they know. As a business owner or store manager you can and should do the same with your Personal Profile.
Your Business Pages, however, are different. A Business Page or Account is to be about business, not trying to act like a person.
This year, a week before Valentine’s Day I saw a number of jewelry stores post on their Facebook Pages a question to try to stimulate conversations. One question asked was; “Summer is not far away. What is your favorite summer Vacation destination?”
Seriously? Who in their right mind would think that it is a good idea for a jewelry store to start a conversation about summer vacations a week before the second largest holiday for jewelry sales? How many jewelry sales were lost because a jewelry store, of all people, started a conversation about vacations and customers decided to save the money for a cruise or other summer vacation instead of buying a Valentine’s Day gift?
Just like any other business, your jewelry store needs to generate revenue and create profit. The way to achieve this with Social Media is to have all of your activities either achieve or move users towards achieving concrete business objectives.
4 Business Objectives of Social Media:
1. Create a desire to own & wear jewelry and to give it as gifts.
This is one of the most overlooked objectives of marketing, yet one of the most important. If consumers do not desire your products, they will not be interested in buying them! The jewelry industry is one of the poorest at accomplishing this objective which is why so many young people today have little to no interest in buying and wearing jewelry. Before you can create the sale, you must create the desire among consumers in your market area to want to own and wear jewelry.
2. Build your brand establishing you as a knowledgeable jeweler and the store to purchase jewelry in your community.
Branding as a form of marketing has received a lot of criticism from so called marketing experts. However, no one will read your advertisements if they don’t know who you are and cannot buy from you if they don’t know you exist. In addition, today’s consumer does more research when making a purchase than ever before. Not only do they research the products they are buying, but also the companies they buy from. Social Media provides the greatest platform ever created for you to share interesting stories about diamonds, gemstones, and the jewelry they are set in, spreading the word about your store and establishing you as someone who knows and cares about your business.
3. Provide opportunity for ladies to share with their significant other their desire for jewelry.
This is an area of marketing that is unique to Social Media. Here you can create and share marketing materials to help women convince their boyfriend or spouse to buy them jewelry.
4. Bring consumers into your jewelry store.
The first 3 are marketing objectives and are easy to accomplish on Social Media. This last one is an advertising objective and is not as effective on most Social Media channels. However, Facebook’s new Ad Manager is just for this one objective. The first 3 can easily be accomplished on your Facebook Business Page and you can then use Ad Manager to complete this final task.
Before you post anything to your Social Media pages, ask yourself if it meets at least one of these objectives. If not, it doesn’t belong on your jewelry store’s Social Media pages!
If you’re perplexed by all the clutter of information from so call Social Media experts that’s confusing the Social Media Marketing landscape, just ask yourself; Would I pay for advertising space with any other media to display this content?
If not, then don’t put it on your store’s Social Media pages either – unless you plan on paying your bills, buying new inventory, and feeding your family with Fans, Followers, Likes, Comments, and Shares, instead of real, hard money!
Next month we will look at Mistake #2 Trying to Market on Too Many Channels.
Brad Simon is co-owner of Internet 4 Jewelers and specializes in Social Media Marketing exclusively for retail jewelry stores. They are dedicated to making Social Media simple and affordable for every jeweler, and provide content packages for jewelry stores doing their own marketing, as well as affordable full-service Social Media Management and Facebook Ad Campaign Management. For more information you can contact Brad at 864-680-4416 or Brad@Internet4Jewelers.com or visit their website at www.Internet4Jewelers.com.
