Digital Marketing and Social Media: Playing the Long Game

November 16, 2016

It’s easy to get apathetic about social media and digital marketing, and you see it all around if you look. The biggest examples are businesses dealing in large, one time purchases with repeat purchases happening over long periods of time. Good examples might be Real Estate or, gasp, websites.

It’s easier to grasp the power and immediacy of digital marketing when it applies to businesses like retail serving daily necessities. Small item retail with the possibility of frequent repeat business provides a more immediate response rate when tracking you advertising. Post a “BIG SALE ON WIDGETS”, put your message out on Facebook and Twitter, send out an email newsletter to past customers, put a splash on your website, and you can quickly monitor web and in-store traffic pretty easily (results may vary – hopefully you are selling something popular, like bacon wrapped anything!).

Large ticket sellers can end up feeling in a huge rut with their digital marketing. Results might be slow to come and lack immediate gratification. Quickly work put into creating regular online content feels more like yelling into an echo chamber than delivering results, and this makes it easy to shrug and say “What’s the point?” – but that’s where you’d be wrong. Digital marketing for “when I need it” service providers requires an attitude change. Typically the art of marketing is making consumers believe they need what you are selling before they need it, and that’s great, but sometimes we have to admit they need it when they need it, and thus, digital marketing becomes a play for the long game.

Imagine the Home Buyer. Last week they didn’t think they were going to sell their house, but they imagined they might need a new home a year from now… but OMG! That perfect house on the corner just came up for sale, we’d better buy before it’s gone! OMG OMG we gotta make a bid and sell our house immediately to make this work! We need an agent! Lets go online! (This is where the faithful digital marketer makes their play.) Does the agent have a website, and have they established great content to prove they are knowledgeable? Check! Lets click their Facebook – do they have any action on their page? Check! Hmm, I wonder if they are on Twitter? Wow! Look at all the Tweets! We even found a great link on how to negotiate your mortgage! Lets call this guy/gal!

What just happened? The big ticket seller had a whole comfy bed of online information just waiting for their potential customer – a customer confident about what the seller knows and their history of selling and servicing it. Did that customer care about the seller yesterday? Nope! Will that client visit that seller a day after the transaction? Probably not! BUT they’ll probably refer a friend in the future, and what will those friends find? That’s right, content just waiting to pull them in.

So when you feel like you’re wasting your time without daily spikes in traffic, Likes, and re-Tweets – don’t worry. Being ready with a history of digital content for future clients to discover might be your greatest strategy.

About Scott Kasprick

Scott Kasprick is a graphic designer in Brandon, Manitoba and owns and operates Reaxion Graphics while helping his wife raise three lively daughters!