Strategic Approach to Social Media for Small Business - What is a website's most effective customer acquisition channel online?

The shocking answer to that question is the reason dock29 was created. 

According to Website Magazine, August 2011:

• 72% stated the most effective customer acquisition channel online is social media profiles and communities (Facebook, twitter)
• 26% stated that natural and organic search listings were the most effective customer acquisition channel
• 2% stated that general website referrals were the most effective website customer acquisition channel.

Consumers don't Trust Marketing any more.  There's an all out rebellion on traditional media both online and offline.  Consumers don't trust the brand messages or product deliverables that are being detailed.  As result marketing has to become smarter.

dock29 has a unique process when it comes to social media but it all goes back to the basics of marketing; price, product, place (commonly know as distribution), and promotion.

Let’s look at product & promotion.

Keywords are Key – bar none the most important thing the organization can do online is make sure the “best” keywords are being used online, across all channels! 

Keywords may include: brand and derivations of brand, products and services, specific features and benefits of products and services, executive team and other high level spokespeople, brands the brands has worked with, case study highlights and reviews, portions or specifics of a much larger solution set, symptoms of problems, etc.  The number of keywords, even smaller companies with limited product/service suite, can run in the tens of thousands, and this is before we look at including local cities derivatives. 

In the new online environment ALL potential keywords and derivatives of those keywords need to be considered.

Our process is actually pretty systematic. 

1. We build out the largest keyword list the organization has ever compiled
2. Test those keywords live in Google
3. Bucket the keywords into target social, target organic search, target pay per click, don’t target
4. Craft & manage interactive campaign to achieve best performance whatever the companies KPIs
5. Provide a monthly report via email to management with highlights (to report how were doing) and action steps (what we are going to do next month) and attached the reports in PDF for review (if you’re a data freak like us).
6. (Unique to social) - Social Media Alert & Engage Program. We will put in alerts to notify us immediately of any mention of the company's brand, product and/or service, or any other keywords that are targeted.   Then, depending on the level of service we will either engage in correspondence on the company's behalf, engage in correspondence on the company's behalf with approval provided for each message, or simply let the organization field all correspondence directly.