More important than an image that comes to mind when one thinks of McDonalds, Nike, or Coke, is the gut feeling they get. This gut feeling is powerful because people first make decisions with there gut and then justify them their mind. When enough people come to the same gut feeling about your company, product, or service you have achieved “brand”
The same principle for large popular brands apply to small businesses — the cumulative effect of customer interactions with the company, product, or service results in brand.
These interactions are known as touch points and can include your store or place of business, company vehicles, uniforms or clothes, packaging, print materials, human interactions with customer service or salespeople, online experiences, YouTube videos, photos, reviews, word-of-mouth social discussion, advertising, and more.
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If you are a local business that you think Foursquare is your salvation in these challenging economic times, think again. It may just as easily breed mediocrity your business mindset and create an opportunity for your competition to get a hand up on you. As a local business you need to treat every one of your customers, every day, like Queens and Kings. They need to feel special all of the time. Believing that you can simply concentrate on the few customers who use Foursquare to build your brand, and business, is a mistake. Yes, it may give you a little bit more visibility, but the question is how effectively this translates to your bottom line?
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Social media is not distinct from other online marketing efforts; it is really part of the same effort, one of the many levers that could be pulled to reach strategic objectives. It is just one part of a smart integrated marketing strategy. While SEO is used to drive traffic to your website, and advertising is used to build awareness, social media works in concert with all the others efforts and aims to get more people to talk more frequently in more places about your products, services, and company, with the goal of selling more products, more frequently, and at higher margins.
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