Mehta Inc. specializes in providing end to end internet marketing services and campaigns as per client. We started offering social media marketing campaigns as a new service to clients – specially targeting small and medium sized businesses.
As an offshore marketing company based in India, when we started social media marketing services, we started contacting agencies offering similar services. They would basically up sell the services to businesses in US, UK and Australia at a much higher rate than what we’ll charge them. Using our expertise, our people, and our infrastructure the only thing they’d have to concentrate on was marketing.
The services which we were offering initially had defined metrics, outputs and we did significant amount of interactions with our clients including managing their website content management, search engine optimization, email marketing and everything which would help them improve and enhance their web presence.
Now, with the new service, the rules changed a little. Our overseas consultants started offering social media marketing campaigns to clients as a mix of hours where they would allow clients to choose the number of hours from as low as 40 hours a month and also allowed them to define a set of activities they needed us to do in those hours. They never realized that any new marketing technique SHOULD be in line with clients current marketing strategy – they did, but it was taken as a obvious necessity.
As a result, we ended up offering marketing on Facebook, twitter, article marketing, online PR posting and much more just spending 40 hours per month per client. There was no time to think! The time for execution was measured in number of fans we drive to a Facebook page, number of relevant followers we had on twitter, number of articles we created and posted and more.
While each activity did make sense, the level of activity was so minimal that they barely generated significant results. The explanation was very obvious – we dint CHANNELIZE efforts in one direction but the efforts were spent in an ad hoc manner spread across various channels.
Over a period of a year and a half handling social media marketing campaigns, we have learnt that efforts SHOULD be channelized and each channel should be maintained be a knowledgeable, intelligent and well trained individual.
If you budget is a few hundred dollars a month – we don’t think social media campaigns do make sense for your business. The activities would help you indirectly in SEO and would give you a little exposure, we really think your money is better spent doing an Search engine optimization campaign rather than social media marketing.
Social media marketing campaigns are more focused towards brand building and awareness rather than lead generation. So, be sure what you are looking for before signing up with ANY social media marketing consultant.