5 Reasons Your Business Must Have a Social Media STRATEGY | Resourceful Business | Summit, NJ

5 Reasons Your Business Must Have a Social Media STRATEGY

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 69% of US adults use Facebook, 37% spend time on Instagram, and 22% use Twitter. 

If you believe in the four principles of marketing–Product, Price, Promotion, and Place–the audience reach alone of social media makes it an essential component in the successful execution of a marketing strategy. A fifth marketing pillar, Purpose, as described by Mark Schaefer in Marketing Rebellion, only adds to the importance of social media as a marketing tool. However, the sheer volume of posts and ads in the newsfeed means that a hit-and-miss approach to social media will no longer work. You have to have a STRATEGY. 

Here are 5 reasons your business must have a social media strategy: 

1. Facebook Zero is real

There has been a precipitous drop in organic reach for Facebook Company pages since 2012. Organic reach includes content not accompanied by a paid ad. Facebook has been continuously tweaking the algorithm to prompt marketers and business owners to pay for ads to push out their content. According to Key Media Solutions, in 2012, the organic reach of a Facebook Page post was 16% and that number declined to 6.5% in 2014, 2% in 2016, and is less than 1% today, hence the term Facebook Zero. Also, Facebook has telegraphed its shift to Facebook Groups over Facebook Company pages, so organic page reach will not return. Because an effective social media presence for brands now requires an ad budget, there has to be a social media strategy in place to establish, monitor and revise the ongoing ad spend. 

You can grow your audience with social media tags | Resourceful Business | Summit, NJ

2. You can grow your audience with social media tags

Not to be confused with hashtags (#), tagging (@mentions) is an incredibly powerful feature of social media. When you tag a person or business in social media content with an @mention, the tag calls them out in a positive way and gives recognition. Tags hyperlink back to the tagged entity’s social media and also notify the person or business that they have been tagged. When you take the time to tag relevant businesses or people in your posts, they often will share and comment on the post and in doing so, will widen the reach. Tags utilize the audience reach of others and build engagement. They can bring attention to your brand and are a unique feature of social media. 

3. Social media platforms are essential for reviews

According to Vendasta, the top 10 online review sites for businesses include Facebook, which is ranked second behind Google, and Yelp, which is placed fourth behind Amazon. Yelp is particularly important for retailers and restaurants and as of the end of the third quarter 2018, had over 170 million reviews. Because people spend time on social media, it’s a natural extension to add reviews there. Also, social platforms allow you to add your company website in the profile information and can drive traffic back to your website as happy reviewers go in search of more information about your brand. Because your brand’s digital footprint is connected across all platforms, make sure to clean up your social media information and ensure the address, phone number, and contact information for your business are consistent across all social platforms. 

In 2012, the organic reach of a Facebook Page post was 16%, and that number is less than 1% today.  –KeyMedia Solutions

4. Social media imagery can showcase your product

Social media has the unique advantage of coupling a constant stream of images with the content you create. It’s why many brands now embed their Instagram feed right on the website homepage allowing site visitors to see and click-through to the brand’s Instagram posts. In an interesting article by Buffer that analyzed Tweets with and without images, they found that Tweets with images had higher click-through rates, retweets and were more often marked as Favorites. Social media gives brands the platform to showcase their products or services and utilize User Generated Content (UGC), or content created by other users, which the brand can share on its feed. 

5. You can interact with your customers using social media

Whether it’s a question from a client via Facebook Messenger, an answer to a question posed via your Instagram Stories, or a click-through to your online store, social media platforms are interactive and bring you closer to your customers. Social listening, the process wherein brands evaluate feedback from their customers garnered via social channels, can help flag business issues and drive strategic change. The feedback may come in the form of a review, comment, or direct message. There’s no better way for a potential customer to ask a question than via social media or messaging app. 

Shopping via social media is becoming frictionless, too, with many social platforms like Instagram ensuring the shopping experience remains in-app. In the same way, many brands now integrate Facebook Messenger as a chat option on their websites, and the integration is free, so yet another way to interact with customers. It’s worth mentioning that customer queries need to be answered in a timely manner. According to HubSpot research, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question, and immediate means in 10 minutes or less.  

The power of social media is that it puts customer reach in the palm of your hand. Whether you are engaging with customers, collecting online reviews, or growing an audience with tools like tags, social media must be part of your marketing wheelhouse. Interactivity, versatility, and unique functionality are just three reasons it makes sense to put a rigorous, thoughtful social media strategy in place for your brand. 

digital marketing relevance

Why RELEVANCE is Key to a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

An excerpt from Ann Mills’ presentation on digital marketing at Swap The Biz, Short Hills, NJ.

Imagine –

You’ve just been invited to a party, and you have the perfect outfit but need a matching pair of shoes. You head to the local shopping mall and come across a store advertising DRESS SHOES for any occasion. You wander in, and to your dismay, you see rows and rows of sneakers in every style and size. After looking around, you see there are a few dress shoes over in one corner, but certainly not many, and so you leave.

Your experience in the shoe store is a problem digital marketers see played out over and over again in the digital advertising space. People search for a product or service on the Internet and land on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad, an ad the advertiser only pays for when the person clicks. Potential customers click on the ad, and they land on a website which does not offer what they are looking for and if it does, it’s pretty hard to find.

In an attempt to prevent this scenario from happening, search platforms and social networks rigorously evaluate advertising campaigns using many different metrics, the most important of which is RELEVANCE.

What is RELEVANCE and why does it matter?

In digital marketing, relevance is exactly what you might imagine–it’s a score that serves as a barometer of whether your messaging truly appeals to the audience you are targeting. It is measured using a combination of variables as a person moves from search query to ad to website. So, for example, if a person types in a search query using certain keywords and sees your business’ Google ad, she will decide whether to click on the ad. If she doesn’t, chances are she did not find the ad relevant to the original query, and over time, that ad will be shown less and cost more for your business to run.

There’s no doubt that marketing your business in the digital space is challenging to execute and when it’s off track, tough to recalibrate. Marketing can be expensive too, so understanding its relevance and your Return on Investment (ROI) are essential. The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that businesses with under 5 million in sales spend approximately 7 to 8% of gross revenue on marketing. For start-ups in a competitive industry, the percentage can be more like 20% which means advertising can get costly as a business gears up.

Facebook Relevance Score

In Facebook, relevance has historically been defined by an ad’s Relevance Score. Measured on a scale of 1 to 10, highly relevant ads are awarded a higher number. Just one example, if there are positive reactions to a boosted post, it will help the relevance score and not surprisingly, negative reactions will do the opposite. In Facebook, an ad must have 500+ impressions for the Relevance Score to show in the metrics, but marketers have found that a high Facebook Relevance Score does not always correlate to whether the ad works for the business.

In a recent development, Facebook announced that as of April 30, 2019, Relevance Score will be replaced by three more granular relevancy metrics which will measure ad quality, engagement rate, and conversion rate. More importantly, the scores will be relative to similar ads that are competing for the same target audience. Therefore, if these relevancy metrics are not strong for one of your ads, your competitors are doing a better job with similar ads.

Google Quality Score

Similarly, Google defines relevance as, “How closely the elements of your ad campaign match what a person seems to be looking for.” Therefore, optimized ad campaigns have keywords that trigger ads which take the visitor to a user-friendly website page. Ads can also direct people to stand-alone landing pages–single web pages designed to encourage a specific action. A relevant landing page will prompt high click-through rates and Google will reward the business for this positive user experience by prompting more ad impressions at a lower cost. If the ad is truly relevant to the audience it is targeting, it has a measurable marketing advantage over comparable ads in the same space.

Similar to the relevancy metrics recently announced by Facebook, Google has multiple data points which combine to determine an ad’s overall Quality Score. These data points include a Quality Score for the keywords, an assessment of the landing page experience, ad relevance, and the expected click-through rate.

How your website design impacts relevance

It’s important to remember that ad views are impressions, but behind every click is a person. When people who have viewed your ad decide to click the ad to learn more, that click-through takes them to your website or landing page. The construction and organization of your website are critically important to delivering and optimizing the visitor experience once they click.

Look at college and university websites. Often, they divide their navigation into Students, Faculty and Staff, and Alumni when they organize the information for their audience groups. What is relevant to a student or even a prospective student is completely different than what is relevant to an alumnus. Similarly, hotels often organize information by Rooms, Dining, and Events. This type of logical organization structure is essential to relevance. A digital marketer that maps an ad back to a general website page with broadly written content will never be able to impact the business revenue in the same way as if he can direct an ad back to specific, well-written content. Relevant content directly speaks to the audience it is meant to target, and it answers their queries. In the context of the dress shoe example, a store that advertises DRESS SHOES should have rows and rows of dress shoes, not sneakers. If the shoes are organized into sections for men, women, and teens, even better because consumers can easily find what they need.

The DoubleTree by Hilton cookie–a lesson in relevance

If you ever check in at a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel, you are given a warm chocolate chip cookie, a tradition since the 1980s. Aligned with that practice, when you are searching for family-friendly hotels and come across DoubleTree in your search results, you see the following ad:

There’s also a page on the DoubleTree by Hilton website that tells website visitors all about the history of the cookie and that to DoubleTree, “…the cookie means so much more. It represents our constant dedication to our guests and thoughtful touches that ensure you feel special and cared for throughout your stay.”

DoubleTree by Hilton keeps their advertising relevant to customers by associating warm cookies with a welcoming atmosphere and pulls this theme through in their ads and website. Digital marketers have analyzed DoubleTree tweets, and at times, more than 60% of the tweets they are tagged in are about the cookie.  

Two takeaways on relevance

Like the DoubleTree by Hilton marketing campaigns, keywords, ads and websites have to work together seamlessly to create powerful, relevant messaging. As you think about your businesses, here are two takeaways on relevance for you to consider:

  1. Figure out your DoubleTree cookie. What makes you different, and by different, I don’t mean just identifying a particular product or service. What really makes your business different from your competitors, and why should someone call you? The answer to these questions is the foundation for an impactful, relevant digital marketing campaign.
  2. Look at your website. On average, when people land on your website homepage, they take 3 seconds to determine if they can find what they need. If they can’t figure out where to go quickly to answer their query, they will leave–it’s the dress shoe example.

Relevance is by far the most important metric in digital marketing, and by the same token, it can be one of the most difficult to pin down. Each brand has a digital footprint which includes all of its assets in the digital space–website, logos, marketing campaigns, social media platforms. If you think your marketing strategy is not engaging potential customers, the culprit could be low relevance. Contact Resourceful Business to learn more.

digital marketing audience targeting

Finding Your Ideal Customer Using the Power of Digital Marketing



You are on your way to a networking event.

When you arrive, you are surprised to find not one room but three to choose from–each filled with 50 people. Tacked on the door of each room is a sign with some information about each of the people in the room–ages, income bracket, and town. The information also includes whether the person is a parent and his or her areas of interest.

You look at the information on each door and think:

In Room #1, there are one or two people who seem like they might be an ideal networking opportunity.  

Room #2–about half of the people in the room seem to fit the profile of your ideal networking opportunity.

In Room #3, all 50 people fit your ideal networking persona. They are the right age, live in a nearby location, and they seem like people who might be interested in the product or service you sell.

Which room will you enter? Probably Room #3.


advertising mailer

In the context of marketing:

Room #1 with its 2 to 3 prospects is perhaps the equivalent of a mailer like this one about dining room sets. If you are not buying a dining room set, you’ll probably throw the mailer out. Even if you are buying a dining room set, you may not look at the mailer. If you’re the business that sent the mailer, you can’t be sure who actually read it, and as one print company executive said to me recently, “People pretty much open their mail over the trash can.”

Room #2 with about 25 possible networking opportunities is representative of a networking group. You have a higher chance of connecting and exchanging business with people in the room. They more closely fit your ideal networking persona, and you have more in common with people in the group than acquaintances you make outside the group.

Room #3 with 50 of 50 people seemingly possible networking opportunities personifies digital marketing and, in particular, a powerful tool we use called audience targeting.

What is digital marketing?

If you ask someone what digital marketing is, they will probably tell you that it is advertising delivered via a digital channel. It might be a website, Pay-Per-Click campaign (the advertiser pays for the ad only when someone clicks on it), remarketing campaign, email, social media post, or even a response to an online review. Weaved together, digital marketers create omnichannel marketing strategies.

However, that definition of digital marketing does not convey what is so important about it. Primarily:

  • A digital campaign audience is not guesswork.
  • Campaign results are measurable, actionable, and data-driven.
  • Marketing campaigns can be timed to maximize impact.
  • Digital campaigns can be changed and scaled quickly.

Let me give you two examples of the agility and versatility afforded by digital marketing:

A mortgage banker in New Jersey deals almost exclusively with clients purchasing high-end homes. In an effort to broaden his target audience of potential clients, a digital agency does an analysis of zip codes in Manhattan where residents typically pay four to five-thousand dollars in rent each month. Intuitively, it’s clear that many of these young professionals might be thinking of starting families as well. The agency develops a Pay-Per-Click ad campaign to market the banker’s services into specific zip codes in New York City where the high-rent-paying population lives.

A client with multiple retail locations in New Jersey has her online reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp managed by a digital agency. The agency notices that some of the online reviews are in Spanish and come to believe that it is perhaps a far more important demographic than had been previously realized. In addition to Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click campaigns targeting English-speaking people which are already in place, the agency turns Spanish-speaking living in the United States on as a demographic trait for her Google AdWords campaigns. In addition to posts in English, the social media agency also begins to add Spanish posts to her social media feeds. The agency then rolls out corporate overview videos–one with an English voiceover and another with a voiceover in Spanish.

The results seen by our digital marketing clients have been striking. One client has quadrupled sales. Another found that their seasonal summer dip in sales disappeared. One company was named to a prominent list of the fastest growing companies in New Jersey in 2017 and in America in 2018.


Google defines something called a Micro-Moment. A Micro-Moment is an intent rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need–to know, go, do or buy.

The power of digital marketing is that it allows your business to be present at those micro-moments in a way traditional media cannot. In so doing, your business can get:

the right message,

to the right people,

at exactly the right time.


Interested in learning more? Contact us.