Social Media Networks

Guys, do you use Social Media networks to promote your small business?
Mr Lamington's new job is wine sales after struggling for many many years at the other hand. Vineyard work, low pay long hours and no hope in hell for any increase. Especially after Melbourne's awful 40 degree heatwave week + bushfire wiping out everything in the vineyard. He has to hit $100K in sales before he earns commission (which is a very generous %) and he gets base pay plus car allowance otherwise until he hits this magic figure. Obviously he is super keen to pump up his sales. His company owns the vineyards globally and only sells direct to the public. They have calling leads and 'areas' that they specialise in. But they are allowed to sell through friends etc and referrals from their customers. Often wine buffs have friends who are wine buffs.

I am on Twitter & Facebook and he has asked for permission to advertise himself on the interwebz. :)
Does anyone use these mediums? I have heard it has worked quite well for small businesses but it has not really worked for my side biz which thankfully has grown somehow through our website's google ranking -> perhaps people who book girls for bucks parties don't trawl Twitter and Facebook for inspiration :D So I want to do this right for him ... If anyone has suggestions etc. That would be great.
His company is a little old school and said it will not work but happy for him to try it.
 
There's only one way to find out if it can work.
I doubt very much that a plain facebook campaign will bring in reasonable returns.
The marketing process does'nt change with the media, ie:
Test -> measure -> repeat until you find something that works.
And try slight variations to see if it can be improved.
The question is can you isolate and target your customer base using the facebook ad system?
It's not as easy as most think as FB has terrible return for most ime.

Imo twitter is pretty much useless for 90% of biz types.

The next Q is you dont do adwords? that would be my focus.

The internet allows another great way to promote your products and that is through information & education.
Does you biz have any commercials they ever ran? Put them on youtube.
Do they have any info/videos etc on their growing/manufacturing processes? Publish them on their website/youtube, FB page etc.
If you get a bit of response, there's plenty other sites to post them.
 
There's only one way to find out if it can work.
I doubt very much that a plain facebook campaign will bring in reasonable returns.
The marketing process does'nt change with the media, ie:
Test -> measure -> repeat until you find something that works.
And try slight variations to see if it can be improved.
The question is can you isolate and target your customer base using the facebook ad system?
It's not as easy as most think as FB has terrible return for most ime.

Imo twitter is pretty much useless for 90% of biz types.

The next Q is you dont do adwords? that would be my focus.

The internet allows another great way to promote your products and that is through information & education.
Does you biz have any commercials they ever ran? Put them on youtube.
Do they have any info/videos etc on their growing/manufacturing processes? Publish them on their website/youtube, FB page etc.
If you get a bit of response, there's plenty other sites to post them.

welcome to earth PB. new here? :rolleyes:

http://www.themultimediainstitute.com/social-media/how-grow-your-business-facebook-page

an FB page and regularly updated website grew my biz 20%.

twitter posts are google indexed and help with SEO which drives more people to my website.

adwords is SO 1997.
 
Our *cough* stripper agency ran adwords.
It was expensive as you guys would know but did not drum up business tbh.
Google ranking did some odd to the new website, agency owner put the old website up and ran a CLICK here to new site and our rankings went up like to page 1, number 2/3 and the calls and emails came in.
 
I dont think a static facebook site will achieve that much. You would have to have some interaction... maybe how to match wine with food, "virtual wine tasting"!!
Try to think of a clever commercial and put it on youtube, and then onto FB... if its clever, people will also put it onto their pages.
I know alot of people now who are buying wine on graysonline and other sites like that. Don't know if you can ebay them, but that could be a way to grow awareness

Pen
 
welcome to earth PB. new here? :rolleyes:
Not my preferred place of sojourn.
an FB page and regularly updated website grew my biz 20%.
Yeah? wonderful.
How much did you spend in money & time and how much net profit did you make from it?
And how does that compare to the normal hourly pay/profit?
A 20% increase for mmy sites is in the hundreds of Ks, there are very few niches that will do that profitably on FB.
And once again I see that silly cocacola example which is ridiculous and noob.
twitter posts are google indexed and help with SEO which drives more people to my website.
adwords is SO 1997.
Now I know you dunno much about ebiz, as anyone who advised you on this.
An adwords is'nt the only network btw.
Hope you all do well.
 
In that line of work I'd probably set it up more like a review of each of the wines - perhaps say one a week. This can be done as a written blog and / or as a weekly youtube segment. I'd also get him posting some opinions and building some credibility on a wine related forum too (just like certain professionals on this forum).

Mention what is liked / disliked about each one and more importantly where to get them :)
 
I don't know if this would work for your business structure but here is a method which has successfully created a lot of exposure for a business in extremely short time.

Shopping Square recently opened a FB page and offered progressive vouchers for the more people who join by X date, around a week from open. These incriments were 1k, 2k, 5k and 10k people. Within one week they had iirc over 7,000 people joined up which in turn were receiving their news feed, which in your case could be reviews, offers etc.

If you can do something similar you could offer 6 cases for X, price drop of Y etc. if you join. Furthermore post on ozbargain.com, those people will buy anything with a discount! A lot of wine gets listed there, so there is a valid market base.
 
Thanks Pennyk for those ideas.
Youtube.. i wonder how to youtube about wine. Must do research!

I would start wit a detailed process on how they make the wine from start to finish.
Get your cam and go on site and shoot vids.
Does'nt have to be all in 1 vid, divide the process into stages and put up one stage at a time as detailed as you can.
Always emphasize any item/process ingredients etc that make your product different or unique.
Don't have anything unique? Find something or die!
Video of your products winning prizes would be excellent imo.

There are plenty review sites out there, reviewing your own product is not a review, it's an ad.
Find where your product has been independently reviewed and use or link to that.
Can't find one? Submit your product to them. Pay them if you have to.
Wine buyers like to read the labels about the product.
Bland labels? fix that too asap.
This is marketing 101 and applies to any medium.

Unless you have a known brand name, selling the wine cheap will only attract chepskates. Unless it's low quality I doubt this would be beneficial.

cheerio
 
Not my preferred place of sojourn.

Yeah? wonderful.
How much did you spend in money & time and how much net profit did you make from it?
And how does that compare to the normal hourly pay/profit?
A 20% increase for mmy sites is in the hundreds of Ks, there are very few niches that will do that profitably on FB.
And once again I see that silly cocacola example which is ridiculous and noob.

Now I know you dunno much about ebiz, as anyone who advised you on this.
An adwords is'nt the only network btw.
Hope you all do well.

the page costs me nothing.

therefore, 100% profit.

cheers.
 
Due to the cost (money) free nature of FB advertising, at the very least its great to use as a suppliment to an advertising campaign. Unless you're that time poor.
 
The following links helped and may be useful:

a. Social Media and how to get the most out of it. Sarah's presentation can be found here : http://www.slideshare.net/globalcop...or-making-social-media-work-for-your-business

b. When it comes to social media and helping your business, I came across this ebook from Elsom Eldridge. If you go to: http://www.obviousexpert.com/ in the top right corner there is a place to put your email address and received the ebook for free.

c. Here are 2 great charts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasabibratwurst/3128711125/sizes/l/
http://www.flowtown.com/blog/social-media-demographics-whos-using-which-sites?display=wide

d. …and more
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/10/10-tips-for-becoming-a-smarter-social-business-person/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/11-mind-blowing-reasons-your-business-needs-facebook/
http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2010/01/social-media-ebooks-you-may-have-missed/

e. Just some thoughts on marketing wine – I would think that wine is a saturated market. Capture more market share by converting beer drinkers to wine drinkers will be tuff. Perhaps focusing more on the demand side instead of the supply side may be better i.e export markets like China and India then www.Linkedin.com may be usefull for contacts. Then perhaps also look at the business case of YellowTail wine and how this Aus company broke into new markets great success story: http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/too/yellowtail.html
 
Some nice charts ottg, thnx for posting.

Wine is a mature market, but "wine online" in this country is in it's infancy.
Actually the whole ebiz is still crawling here, so I think there's still room to move.
although in a mature market your increase in sales comes from taking customers away from your competitors.
Meaning you have to have a very competitive attitude in all that you do.
And that does'nt mean sellling cheap, in some industries it may do even more harm than good.
 
Just stumbled across this wine forum while trying to educate myself on wine and noticed the following subforum which might be interesting to Mr. Lamingtons?
http://forum.auswine.com.au/
Australian Wine Marketing Forum
A place for discussions about Wine Marketing, including use of Social Media - aimed for those in the trade, but interesting to everyone

Looks quiet but I dunno, maybe he might find some responses there too.
 
....although in a mature market your increase in sales comes from taking customers away from your competitors.
Meaning you have to have a very competitive attitude in all that you do.
.

That is all true but conventional - I would like to share a different spin on it. (some extracts from my ebook which I havent publish yet http://www.gtbc.com.au) When many businesses compete in the same markets space for the same jobs and contracts it becomes a zero sum game; some win and some loose and market share is moved around. If this is how business gets done then it raises the thought that this approach doesn’t contribute to growth in demand but rather contributes to the supply. This competitive approach may eventually result in an oversupply of availability and keep new entrants out. This oversupply of businesses result in not getting enough affordable skilled work force and many business offerings become part of the “me too” market space.

Can we do something different – can we make competition irrelevant?

Most conventional strategies focus on getting better, smarter and tougher in the same market space in order to become a preferred supplier…. too such an extent that the winner takes it all.

Are there strategies that we can use to help us to look beyond this competitive mindset? Are there better ways to develop new strategies (game plans) that rather focus on the demand side of the equation and prepare the small business owners better for the new economies?
There are 3 mainstream methodologies that may be used to develop a new game plan:

a. The conventional method
b. A variation on the conventional method
c. The value innovation method (BOS)

In the latter case the key is to focus on your non-customers. Start by listing all of the reasons why your non-customers do not buy from you today. Then think of changes you can make, however slight, to your current product or service, changes that will eliminate some of the objections you would expect from a non-customer. I did draw a BOS model if it is of any interrest.
It doesnt mean that you dont use the conventional methods because once competition emerge you have to switch. That's why the Fortune 500 company list keeps on changing - better ideas and ways of doing things.
 
Very helpful links ottg.... thank you.
I am in the infancy stages of starting one too (not a wine business), and reaching
the initial client base is the hardest thing for me to do. I have a facebook page,
and the first stage of a website up.
But am always looking for ways to improve my google rank and receive more exposure.
 
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