Page 5 - St Maur marketing and social media thoughts.

Most of the statistics are fairly accessible and obvious. It varies by platform, but Facebook, Instagram and the rest are happy to tell you how many followers or likes you’re getting
The tricky part is collecting data at a granular level that will allow you to identify the impact of social media activity of individuals. Particularly the financial impact
As a minimum, you should create a mailing list so that you know who your audience is. Think of the types of questions you’ll want to be able to answer:
• Who are our clients?
• What have they bought from you?
• How much have they spent on your products and services?
• How did they hear about you, eg Facebook, Instagram, word of mouth? • Which platforms do they now use to connect with you on social media? • When did you last contact them?
• Do they get regularly scheduled communications?
• Have they shown a particular interest in buying anything in future?
It’s easier than ever to collect this kind of information using one of the free contacts databases such as Google contacts I use Google for my email, calendar and contacts I keep track of my customers and potential customers using ‘labels’ These are simply tags that you can attach to any contact to add them to a particular group As a result, I know who all my buyers are, what they bought, who is on my mailing list, who came to particular exhibitions and a whole host of other factors. Knowing this information enables me to target people based upon their specific habits and history rather than a one size fits all approach.
Researching your Competitors - Again for this I will give you an example based upon my own business
In a business like photography, in which the participants are individuals rather than companies, it’s sometimes difficult to identify your competitors. I’m a wildlife and field sports photographer, but am I really competing with Sarah Farnsworth? Do I aspire to be in a similar position one day? perhaps, but it would be unfair to compare my total likes and follows with hers! Ultimately by focusing on my area of the market and concentration my efforts towards my own specific area rather than hers I have built a reputation and business in my own right. I do not go after her clients as I have different aims and goals and targeting her area of expertise would be time consuming and counter production.
Identifying your real competitors takes a bit of time and effort but it’s worth it. You can then plot your relative position over the months and years. It may be difficult to get financial information about individual brands, but you can at least use the available statistics to see if you’re in the same ballpark and, crucially, whether you’re catching up with your competitors or falling behind
Written by Jeremy Pascoe @ Walking Gun Photography