Expanding Business Through Social Networking
With minimal marketing budgets available to many businesses, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a quick, useful, cheap and most importantly, an effective way of promoting their products to a global market. Most owners agree that these sites work as a bulletin board, a marketing campaign and branding exercise rolled into one. Warplanes, producers of hand-made military, civilian and airline models, can attest to this. Warplanes’ Marketing Manager Joni Ang, admitted that her team was skeptical at the idea of creating a Facebook Fan page at first. “Most of our customers are war veterans so we don’t really expect them to be “into” the internet that much, least Facebook.” Today, Warplanes has created a following with nearly a thousand active fans on Facebook, over 800 on Twitter and counting! “We use these sites to post news, discounts, sales and promotions that Warplanes is currently having. Fans and followers never fail to make us happy with their positive feedbacks.” Ang added.
It was reported that companies with Facebook and Twitter accounts see their business growing successfully while others struggle. So what is it with these social media that draw more customers to your company? First, with the help of these sites, you can interact with your target market. For example, Warplanes admin can talk to their fans and followers real-time through comments and tweets. They can somehow build a relationship with their customers. It is indeed a solution to the need of keeping in touch with their prospected customers. “The good thing is we can respond right away to any concerns or queries raised by our fans and followers.