Six ways to capitalize on Facebook and YouTube tools to grow your business

In a recent report published by eMarketer, Facebook and YouTube tools are the most visited social media platform and has outranked others by a long stretch. The report was sourced by Hitwise, on September 3^rd, 2019.

As marketers and business owners, we can learn a great deal on where to concentrate our efforts in order to gain advantage and attract more customers.

Here are six ways you can capitalize on these social media tools to grow your business over the next few months and beyond.

1. Take stock of where you are now and where you’d like to be relative to Facebook and YouTube channels. Before you begin to take advantage of Facebook and YouTube, it is important to understand where things are. What is your current situation on these platforms? This is crucial in crafting a strategy that will help to achieve your goals. No doubt, you may already have account(s) on Facebook and YouTube, but how much are they working for you? In comparison to the top players in your field, what are the things you could be doing better? How do you measure up against the competition? Answering these questions will give you a base where you can now begin to develop a strategy.
2. Develop a strategy that is aligned precisely with your goals. Your strategy is the approach to win on these platforms. And how do you do that exactly? The aim to win must be in alignment with the goals you have set for your business or product. How can these platforms help to achieve these goals? Perhaps it’s the creation of more videos, which means you will need to find the necessary video content creation tools to publish more videos. Smart Insights wrote about some content creation tools a few months ago that you may want to look at. Perhaps you have access to professionals who can help you to create video content. While video is certainly the most consumed content on these channels, YouTube is a video platform. Therefore, video should be the context in which you approach the use of that channel. If you plan to advertise on YouTube, you will also need a video ads to attract customers. The most important thing about creating a strategy for these channels, is determining whether both is suitable for you. Keep in mind your end goal and what outcome you are seeking before executing on a strategy.
3. Map out the journey for your customers. Another area most marketers and business owners don’t focus on is their customer journey. We all know discovering an ad is one things but what happens after that, is too important to ignore. The journey from discovering your ad to taking action that reflects on your bottom line, must be properly mapped out. Most customers don’t know what you’d like them to do unless you tell them. Better yet, show them the path you would like them to take and your chances of success will go through the roof. This cannot happen without first having a clear definition of who your customers are. Define and redefine who they are down to a science. That kind of obsession will get you unbelievable clarity. Where do you start? If you’ve had any success in acquiring a customer, start with them. Get to know who they are and why they decided to buy from you. Learn as much as you can about them and plot their journey to making point of sale decisions.
4. Give every customer you interact with an opportunity to stay connected. We have a term we use in our lead generation training called “prepping the house”. This implies that before inviting anyone over to your home, you must prepare to receive them. The best experience anyone can have when visiting you, is one that you are prepared to give. The same is true for digital media. Even though you are on the top social media platforms, never forget that you are nothing but a guest there. Your advantage of using those platforms is to get customers to your own digital assets. Invite them over to your landing page and give them an opportunity to connect with you. Even though Facebook for example offers the ability to create lead pages within their ad platform, you should still make best efforts to have customers experience your own assets. This is your domain that you can control the interaction and the chance for customers to stay connected.
5. Monitor and measure what is being done. We find that business owners waste a lot of money through advertising on Facebook and YouTube. They would setup their ads and leave it running for days without looking at it. If you are guilty of that, you’ve wasted money. Monitor your ads frequently to keep track of its performance. The tools are available for it. Regardless of your ad spend, you should be checking in on your ads several times for the week and tweak things accordingly to ensure effectiveness in your advertising. This is also true for organic posts. You shouldn’t do anything you can’t measure and if you can measure it, you can find ways to improve it.
6. Ask for help from experts and professionals. Finally, seek professional help when it comes to getting social media right for your business. There are any number of guided content loaded with advise on how you can master social media. If you are too busy growing your business, having someone in your corner to help you navigate these ever-changing platforms, is one of your best decisions. Not only will it help you to save, but you will also benefit from maximizing the use of your time while getting the results you need.

For over 10 years MI Group has been helping small and mediums size business to grow using online technology and digital media tools. We’ve helped our clients make and save millions of dollars through demonstrating our level of expertise. We partner with Facebook and Google to help with advance advertising strategies for optimal benefits.