I like to think marketing is a lot like fishing. You’re throwing your line out to sea and seeing if someone will take it or not, but the real question is, what kind of bait are you using? Lots of people are going crazy over this new social media trend, spending lots of time and money on it, trying to attract customers. Is it the right way to go though?

Sure Social Media can be a help to any company, let’s face it, there are millions of people on these sites, but is this really the way to attract new customers? Yes and No. There are plenty of ways to attract people through social media, but once you get them to your page, how do you sell them your product? A great way to do this is by getting them to subscribe to your newsletter. Yes, I am talking about email marketing! It is sometimes forgotten after all of the hoop-la of social media but it is still a great way to attract customers. Now don’t count out your social media tools because I’m telling you about email marketing. Those tools can help you attract the customers to subscribe to your email campaign.

For example, say we have a really cool blog (which we do obviously) and were attracting our followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to check out our blog. So now we have a party going on, on our blog webpage! We have attracted them there with our social media tools and now we talk about something interesting. For example, let’s say we have blog post #1: spilling our secrets on how we have been one of the most successful entrepreneurial businesses in the Baltimore area in the last year. At the end of the blog after we have drawn them in with our mighty persuasive writing, we tell them, “to learn more secrets of our entrepreneurial success, subscribe to our newsletter on the right.” And if they want to learn more, they will type in their email address and we will receive it, putting them on our subscription list.

Now we have that fish on the line! It is ours! We just need to reel in that fish. Now obviously we can’t sell them short, we have to send them our next blogs containing our “secrets.” So we send them a few blogs (I feel like were throwing more bait to the fish, getting it closer to the boat), and let’s say on the 3rd blog we send them an offer on a product of ours, with a limited time only deal. If they don’t budge, no worries, keep sending the blogs. After a few more entries, send them the same deal but say time is running out to receive the product or service. Again if they don’t budge, no worries; finally, after a few more blogs are sent, give them there last opportunity to accept the offer. And hopefully they will accept it. It may not always work, but at least you’re making direct contact with the customer. You had that fish on the line, just try to reel it in better next time. Give more intriguing offers; give them a selection of offers. If you’re a businessman and reading this, you know how to sell your product, be creative.

Oh wait, what’s that? You want to subscribe to our newsletter? Go ahead! It’s located on the right side of your screen!