Who is your social media really for? Is it for your business because you have to get your marketing out? Or is it really for your customers in Halifax, Dartmouth, Truro or elsewhere? What you choose will determine the success of your social media marketing.

As I sat yesterday with two business women at a coffee shop, I asked them this question. I wanted to know what they understood about their marketing. I was really impressed with their answers. The truth is there are two ways that most people market:

  1. They market what they want to share with their customers so that they get the company message out, or
  2. They market to their customers based on what their customers actually want.

These are two very different ways to market. The first type can venture dangerous close towards broadcasting. It can become very much one-sided. The last type delivers content and marketing to the customers that they actually want in the first place. It’s the latter type of marketing that I want my clients to do.

When a business listens to their customers and gives their customers what they are interested in, that business will do far better than the business that just has a message. Customers may even feel a strange sense of ownership when the marketing is based on their wants and desires, instead of the wants and desires of the business.

So how do you go about marketing based on customer desires? You might simply ask them. What do they want to see? How do they want to see it? People love to be helpful. Asking is a great place to start.

The key point I am trying to make is that your marketing efforts and your online assets should be designed for the wants and needs of your customer. Case in point, what does your Facebook Page look like? Is it what the customer wants to see, or is it what you want to share? Our marketing should be based on what the customer wants, not on some weird itch we have as a business.

So are we putting things out that really would interest our customers? If we are not, we will not have an audience in these changing times. So let’s find out what our customers want, and let’s give it to them. That only sounds fair? Right?

So have a great day in business today. I am cheering you on.