The social media craze that began with websites like Facebook and Myspace has now reached epic proportions. Hundreds if not thousands of social marketing sites target specific demographics with promotions and giveaways designed to increase the visibility and traffic of a corporate website. A successful small business can take advantage of the most profitable social marketing sites with promotional products.
A recent survey of social media sites was conducted by international brand-value rating agency BV4 and the Department of Social Media Management at the HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland. The study ranked social media corporations from around the world, and the top three were no surprise to many people. Facebook was valued at roughly $29 billion, followed by YouTube at $18 billion and Twitter at $13 billion. The sites provide tremendous marketing opportunities because they are absolutely free for small businesses to use. People can receive access to basic pages and information, and can customize their marketing strategies with nominal fees.
Promotional products that link to one of these free sites can deliver monumental benefits to a company trying to make a name for itself. For example, a flower distributor at an upcoming tradeshow could hand out promotional pens, and the best way a marketing manager can drive traffic to the vendor’s booth is to use the three social media sites together. Retailers can use Facebook to invite people and inform them of specific details, YouTube can feature videos of past events and Twitter can be continually updated during the show to provide potential clients with limited-time deals and fun promotions.
Businesses can provide corporate gifts featuring hashtags, URLs and other social media symbols that can link back to a website. Picture a successful promotional advertising strategy like a repeating circle – social media provides the information necessary to procure the promotional products, and the gifts send recipients back to social media sites. This cycle is almost impossible to break as long as promotional items remain in circulation.
Traffic on company websites can be directly responsible for increased sales and business options. Since the most proven social media sites are free, it can be very cost-effective for a small business to use promotional products in conjunction with online marketing.