The saying, “there’s in fact an app for that” has become a tired cliché, but this ultimately comes from how true such a statement is.
When you launch a campaign to market anything through social media, a major part of the process is the use of apps. The following are some of the apps you’ll likely want to use to market to people on their own terms.
Foursquare
Foursquare is a great app to use because it has people literally handing you demographic data about themselves and when they’ve visited either your business or your partners. When someone checks in, they can rate you and help other people who are searching for what your business offers. This is great because ratings and suggestions from the consumer level aren’t seen as ads, but work almost as well as personal recommendations.
People love to tweet inane things, but often they’ll tweet about your business and how great it was. Through retweets, a few satisfied customers can turn into a deluge of new business. You can encourage tweets by offering discounts and special offers through hashtagging your business’s name. With a few keystrokes on their BlackBerry 10, your customers can help themselves, help others, and help you.
Groupon
Groupon is a great app for three reasons. Firstly,, it allows you to create a loss leader that’ll be distributed widely to Groupon’s network – most likely a larger group of potential customers than you have now. Secondly, Groupon allows you to boost your sales as you introduce a large number of new customers to what you’re offering – a great cash flow tool early on.
But perhaps the strongest aspect of this kind of marketing campaign is that Groupon lets you test out a new, lower price to see if it’s sustainable and ultimately more profitable. It’s a great way to tweak your price without lowering your offering’s perceived value.
Viggle
Viggle may not initially sound like a great idea for your marketing campaign, but it is. Since Viggle’s users are motivated to make money by watching TV, they’re likely to pay attention to shows that involve your ads. This is a great way to both test out ads for where they work out best and where your target customers are actually finding them. After all, even the best ad hidden away is not going to help you.
Yelp
Yelp is another rating service, and this one is great because it lets people say what’s good and what’s bad about your business. While it can hurt badly to see “poison pen” on your Yelp page, it’s a great eye opener and motivator to make things better. You can even integrate your Yelp reviews into your marketing when you have proactively fixed a problem and want it to be known.
Marketing to your customers has gotten extremely high-tech. The above are some apps that can help take your social media campaigns to the next level.
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