There are people who will tell you that you should never, ever write business proposals. Proposals take a lot of time, the argument goes. There’s a lot of work involved. The very act of putting together strong business proposals draws heavily on your expertise and insight. You’re making an investment when you create a proposal – and if the client doesn’t close the deal with you, it’s an investment that returns nothing.

There are people who agree with the never write a proposal position, who are simultaneously very aware that in order for their business to function on a daily basis, they need to write proposals. That’s the way the world works, and so they go through the motions, lining up the necessary fact sheets and price points in the routine fashion and sending them off in the hopes they get the sale.

And then there are people who see business to business proposals for what they really are – a powerful marketing tool that can be used to gain a significant advantage over the competition.

Which group do you belong to?

Business Proposals

The Underappreciated Sales Tool

While preparing this article, I reviewed the last 200 business proposals my company generated. Not every one of these proposals was ultimately successful, of course, but they all had one trait in common: They got our team in the door for further meetings, deeper into the sales process with the prospective client.

We wondered what it was about these business proposals that made customers open the door enough to say, “We’re willing to explore working with you.” Below are the key ingredients that appeared in every proposal.

Overview of Potential Project

Each proposal begins with an outline of the goals and intended outcomes of the project are. This step is absolutely essential. You’re convincing the client that your company is focused on solving their problems.

To be convincing, you need to speak the same language that your client speaks. Every industry and profession has its own language, composed of jargon, acronyms and shorthand terms. The more fluent you are in your potential client’s language, the easier it becomes for that client to feel like you understand them.

Quick Review & Initial Recommendations

In the next section of the proposal, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your insight and judgment. Remember to think like your customer. No matter what industry you’re in, you want to do business with partners who are perceptive and smart.

Use this section to provide your assessment of your customer’s situation, including any items that may be of concern. This is also the point to provide a few surface level recommendations for your customer to consider. You don’t have to provide the solutions to your customer’s problems in the proposal, but you do have to provide your customers with the confidence that you’re capable of solving the problem.

A business proposal is an invitation to start a new relationship. In this section, you’re demonstrating to your prospect what value they may find in the relationship with you. By giving feedback you’re demonstrating to your potential client your style of communication and your level of intellectual investment in their business.

Assumptions and Process

After proving to your customers the value to be found in beginning a relationship with you, the next step is to explain what the experience of working together will be like.

Not everyone has the same background and not everyone has worked on the same projects in the same way. I find it a helpful to share a list of assumptions about how we like to work and what we expect of our client. This step can often help clients determine very rapidly if they’ll be happy working with you.

Marketing to your customer’s means educating and informing your audience. Depending on your industry, a customer may not realize what’s involved in a potential job. Giving your potential client a way to understand what you do and the process you follow illustrates how you value your time and their time.

Clear Pricing Breakdown

Money matters. You have a budget that guides your business decision making process. So do your customers. We’ve found that the clear, easy to understand pricing information is highly valued by potential clients.

Don’t be afraid to be detailed. Break down the costs in a clear way with supporting details for each line item. Customers want to know what they’re paying for. Having support for every number in your proposal demonstrates an awareness of your client’s business needs.

Pride in Your Work & Team

Go ahead and toot your own horn a bit. This is a sales pitch, after all. Let your potential client know why you’re the best choice for them. Be specific, and relate your experience to your potential client’s needs.

Add case studies or images of successful projects. List your team members and their involvement. Tie everything together for your potential client to see you value your team as much as you value their business.

Make it Pretty

Never, ever forget that business proposals are a sales tool. Presentation really does matter. A well-designed proposal is a demonstration to your customer that you value them highly – that you want to get their attention, their respect and yes, ultimately, their business.

Taking the time to make sure your proposals are well organized. Ensure that everything is easy to read and understand. Use color, font, images and layout to make the process of reading the proposal as engaging and enjoyable as possible. Whether you service business is accounting or design people want to feel they matter and good design is a great way to provide that feeling.

It’s Time To Stop

Stop looking at your business proposals as a waste of time or a necessary evil. Start looking at your business proposals as powerful marketing tools you can use to start profitable, long-lasting relationships.

It’s an investment that will reap rich rewards.

Waiting with Proposal Photo via Shutterstock

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Knowledge is dead. Have you heard this?

It’s a meme making the rounds in marketing circles right now. This happens periodically, when advances in technology make accessing information easier, faster and less expensive than it was previously.

It creates a type of existential angst in the industry: What’s the point in showcasing expertise when anyone can be an expert?

Any question can be answered with a quick web search. We don’t have to know anything, we can Google it.

Well, I’m here with good news for you. Knowledge isn’t dead. Knowledge isn’t even sick. What knowledge is, however, is fundamentally misunderstood.

Google Happened. Good For You.

Yes, Google happened. The Internet is indeed out there, in all its splendid, schizophrenic glory, cram packed full of data points, which may or may not be factual, that the Internet will return to you when you do a search. But reports of knowledge’s death are entirely premature.

Proof of concept: An Internet search for “How to cure cancer” will return to you as one of the top ten results, a site that promises that the cure can be found in your kitchen cupboard—specifically, baking soda. Does this “knowledge” mean you’re ready to go forward and start healing the sick? Probably not.

Knowledge isn’t the accumulation of data points. Knowledge is the ability to judge the quality of the data points you encounter. When you’re knowledgeable about a subject, you possess a frame of reference informed by your experience and education.

How to Use Knowledge to Connect to Your Customer

Knowledge Applied is Knowledge Alive

As a business owner, your knowledge of your field is greater than your customer’s knowledge is. Demonstrating this is to your advantage. The digital landscape may be flooded with lots of information, but it’s not packed with knowledge. You have to bring that to the table. This concept needs to be at the core of your online marketing strategy.

For example, if you’re a web designer, you know that your clients can go out and search the Internet for how to build a website. They’ll find a lot of information out there—all kinds of things like HTML, CSS coding, CMS systems, mobile compatibility, responsive design, etc. And it suddenly becomes clear to them that they need help navigating all of this.

Implementing this approach and philosophy means understanding the following:

Full Buy-in

Before you begin executing this type of strategy, you need to be sure that you and your firm truly buy into this strategy. You cannot get caught up in worrying that your competitors will learn from you.

You need to be completely confident in your company and your own depth of knowledge and experience.

Become Detail Oriented

Your online presence should clearly establish that you know the facts—and not any random detail, but the most valuable particulars that are highly relevant to your customers. Tell a story no one else is telling.

This is your chance to demonstrate that you understand who your customers are and what’s important to them.

People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

Answering your customers’ questions before they even knew they had questions is a very powerful and convincing sales technique. Don’t just give your customers the facts. Give them the facts that matter to them.

For example, an adventure travel company’s most popular blog post isn’t focused on an exotic getaway destination as you might expect. Instead, it’s a guide to traveling internationally with small children. This travel company understood that their customers were parents first and adventurers second.

They took their specialized knowledge about adventure travel with children and put it out there.

Knowledge that applies to your customers’ lives is knowledge that’s alive – alive and building your business.

Knowledge Photo via Shutterstock

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And it’s true: it won’t cost you a penny to go out and set up a Twitter profile – or two, or three, or four.

What’s the big deal if you’ve got an old MySpace page that’s absolutely overrun with spam, or if the phone number for your business is wrong in some local search engine directory? You won’t be fined or incur any financial penalties of any sort.

But as you know, nothing in this world is free. Every single digital marketing mistake your organization makes (and you can discover what mistakes you may have made by performing a digital inventory) comes with a cost. These costs manifest in terms of wasted time and effort – and you don’t pay them. Your customer does.

When your customer searches for your company and they find empty social media profiles, pages full of spam, and incorrect contact information, they’re not accomplishing what they set out to do.

Don’t make your customers pay for your digital marketing mistakes. Luckily, many of the most common digital marketing mistakes are actually relatively easy to fix. And here’s how:

Multiple Populated Social Media Pages

Do you have two Facebook pages, six Twitter accounts, and four Instagrams?

If you do – and it’s not part of a deliberate, articulated strategy – it’s time to simplify. Consolidate when you can. Facebook pages can be merged, for example. In other instances, you’ll want to engage with your followers on each platform and direct them where you’d like to go which is, ideally, the active social media account you’re using on a regular basis.

Don’t forget to close down old accounts if you have decided they are officially obsolete.

Empty Social Media Profiles

During the digital marketing inventory process, you may very well discover that you have social media profiles that were set up but never used. It’s time to make a strategic decision. Do you want to be on this platform? Will it help you connect more effectively with your customers?

If so, start moving ahead and using the tool to promote your brand. If not, deletion may be in order. If you want to keep the presence in order to protect your brand name, but don’t want to use the tool, make sure you have messaging there to make it easy for customers who are searching for you to connect with you.

No Social Media Profile At All

You may discover that a digital marketing tool you thought you never had actually existed. It happens. At that point, be strategic. Is this still a tool you want to have? If yes, move forward and create the missing profile and begin using the tool.

If this tool no longer fits your strategy, no one says you have to set it up.

Spam City

If you have a social media presence that has become overrun with spam, your first step is to look at your website analytics. How much traffic are you getting from this site?

If it’s significant, take the time to clean up the spam, and change your user names and passwords to keep the problem from recurring. If the site isn’t sending you any traffic, decide if you want this profile and, if not, delete it.

Incorrect Information In Local Directories

Edit your profile to reflect the correct information. Make sure to check the site after performing your edits to make sure they’ve updated correctly.

A great trick here is to Google current and past phone numbers. This way your sure not to miss something or cross-check with some tips from this local SEO article .

Moving Forward: The Best Mistake is the One You Never Make

Making sure that all of your digital marketing efforts are accurate, correct, and in alignment with your strategic plans is a form of customer service. When you get it right, it’s easy for your customers to find you quickly.

To make sure that you’re consistently providing this level of customer service, plan on assessing your digital presence at least quarterly.

Oops Photo via Shutterstock

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The more accurate an understanding of what a company’s resources are, the easier it becomes for business owners to make smart, strategic decisions about their operations.

What Is A Digital Marketing Inventory?

A digital marketing inventory examines the online assets you use to connect with your customers. Included in this list are all your domain names, social media profiles, and email marketing. You need all of these assets to be populated with information that is both accurate and current.

We’re all very busy people. Maintaining the details of our online presence is one of those tasks that has a tendency to be overlooked.

This is a problem for two reasons:

• First:  Any outdated or inaccurate contact information that’s out there to be found can frustrate potential customers who are trying to do business with you. Your customers are not Sherlock Holmes. If they find out they can’t easily contact you, they’re not going to try to solve the mystery of what your correct Web address or email actually is. They’ll move on to an alternate vendor without a second thought.
• Second:  Your online assets are tools that are supposed to be performing for you, to raise brand awareness, encourage customer attention, build relationships, and ultimately generate sales. These tools have to be configured properly for success. If they’re not, you’re wasting some – maybe quite a bit – of the investment you’re making in your marketing. That’s an expensive decision to make in a tight economy.

Conducting Your Digital Market Inventory

It’s a good idea to take an annual (bi-annual or quarterly would be even better) look at your domain names, social media profiles and email marketing programs. Here’s what you want to know:

Domain Names

Make a complete list of all the domain names your company controls. Are they all still relevant to your operation? What are these domain names connected or forwarding to? Does the domain name bring your customers where you want them to go?

All of your domain names should be on a single registry. Moving domain names is a simple process, so if you’ve got domain names registered all over the place with several companies, make 2013 the year you get that mess cleaned up.

The key to choosing a good registry: Customer service. Choose a company that has a reputation for flexibility and access. You want someone who is easy to work with.

Social Media Profiles

Make a complete list of all social media profiles associated with your company. Include your company’s Facebook Page, Twitter account, Google Plus and LinkedIn presence – but don’t forget about the social media hotspots of yesteryear. Does your organization have a MySpace account that was started and never used?

Examine each account to make sure it’s in the state you’d like it to be in. Social media sites can get hacked and overrun with spam. If that’s the case, get the profile cleaned up, or delete it. If you decide to maintain a dormant account in order to keep control of the name, make sure all information on the site is correct and that you have information there pointing people toward the tools you want them to use to connect with you.

The visual branding on all of your social media profiles should reflect your current messaging. Review images and brand logos on your profiles to make sure they’re timely. This will help you meet your messaging goals.

A Digital Marketing Inventory is a prime opportunity to remind your team of internal social media policies. Urge people to add private email addresses to their social media profiles. If you’ve had some turnover, review the social media pages of your former employees to make sure their employment status with your organization is accurate.

Email Marketing

At least once a year, your email marketing lists need cleaning though quarterly is my recommendation. Pruning and analyzing non-performing addresses from your contacts can help ensure that your messaging is actually reaching interested parties.  Your email marketing list can reveal opportunities to strengthen relationships with your customers.

Cross check any unsubscribes against your in-house contact information: If a valuable contact has switched employers, for example, they may no longer be receiving your information yet still want it. Review these opportunities. Reaching out for new contact information can reestablish a relationship and open a door to future sales.

The Digital Marketing Inventory period is a good time to assess the value of your email marketing campaign. Look at your campaigns over the previous year:

• Which messages had the best click through rates?
• What messaging worked, and why?

For some industries, the specific timing of when messages are sent is highly relevant. Answering these questions will allow you to make better choices moving forward.

Digital Marketing Inventory: Phase Two

By looking at your domain names, social media profiles, and email marketing, you’ve completed the first phase of your Digital Marketing Inventory. This is a huge accomplishment, and a great start to putting 2013 on track to being your best promotional year ever. You’ve taken an important first step.

It’s important to remember, however, that it’s only a first step. If you have more digital marketing tools in your arsenal be sure to take the time to inventory all of those as well. When you’re considering items like online advertising campaigns, guest blog appearances, and the like, the goal should be to identify all efforts; ensure accuracy, relevancy and timeliness; and assess performance.

Then you’ll be able to determine what choices you need to make with these tools moving forward.

In a year, it’ll be time to go through the entire process again. Like the shampoo bottle tells us:

“Rinse, lather, and repeat.”

It’s important to acknowledge the repetitive nature of effective digital marketing. The more attention you pay to what it is you’re doing, the better job you’re going to do – and that’s great news for your business.

Digital Marketing Inventory Photo via Shutterstock

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We depend on our cars for many things. It’s really hard to get around town without one. Running errands, meeting clients, rushing delivery items to the Post Office just in the nick of time: as a business owner, how are you going to do these things without a car?

You could do it – but it would be tough. That’s why we make regular, ongoing investments to keep our cars in good working order. We fill the gas tank. We check the oil. We go to the mechanic for tune-ups as needed.

Now think about your business website. We’re very dependent on our business websites. In many cases, your website is the primary point of contact for new and returning customers. Sales, customer service, and brand building – it all happens on your business website.

Yet many business owners don’t do any maintenance or monitoring of their website. In fact, they hardly engage with their website at all once it is launched. This is the equivalent of getting your new car from the dealership, driving away, and never once visiting a gas station or mechanic.

How long do you think that car will last under those conditions? If you don’t want your business website to stall out or break down, you need to take charge of the situation and start monitoring your website.  Here’s what you need to look for:

Weekly Website Reviews

Spot Check: Give your website a quick visual inspection. Does everything look right? Are images and videos behaving as you expect them to? Click on a few links throughout your site – different ones every week! – to see if they take you where you want to go.

Any problems you find, you can let your tech team know about for a quick fix.

Read Google Webmaster Report: Every business owner should be signed up for Google Webmaster. This free program provides you with valuable information. The application offers some great insight including a report on any broken links on your website, information about the last time Google indexed your website, etc.  Important for effective SEO.

You can also see if there are any viruses on your site.

Review Your Google Analytics: Google Analytic reports tell you many things. You’ll be able to see how much traffic your website gets and where the traffic is coming from. This is great if you’re tracking the impact of a new marketing initiative.  How long do visitors stay on your website? What your bounce rate?  A bounce rate measures how many visitors come, view a single webpage, and then leave your site.

Bear in mind that if you have a popular blog, for example, your bounce rate might be high and that’s totally okay.

Monthly Website Reviews

Test Forms: Data collection forms, such as the one used to request a consultation, send feedback or sign-up newsletter subscribers should be tested regularly to make sure they’re still working.

Try testing your forms using different email addresses and from different devices and Web browsers.

Shopping Cart Test: If you have any type of shopping cart on your site, run a complete test order every month to make sure your shopping cart system is operating seamlessly. Review your shipping and taxes on the order and pay attention to each screen and the receipts you receive. This is the shopping experience your customers are having.

You want to make sure it’s a good one. If you identify any problems, you need to let your web development team know right away.

Review Dynamic Content: Compare the dynamic content you’ve added to your website (blogs, podcasts, videos, new merchandise) with the numbers you’ve seen during your weekly Google Analytics review. Is the content delivering the results you’d like to see in terms of traffic, stickiness, and conversion?

If not, adjustments may be in order.

Speed Tests: How quickly does your website load? How quickly do individual pages come up? A sudden change in the rate of load speed indicates that something may be wrong, and it may be related to how dynamic elements are coded or changes in the web host server.

Quarterly Website Reviews

Is It Time for an Upgrade? Open source Content Management Systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are continually improving their platforms. They make changes to their codes so sites built with their technology are more secure, more virus-resistant, and load faster.

Generally, there will be a message alerting you that an upgrade is available in the dashboard area of your website. If you see this message, it’s time to let your web developer know.

Don’t try to do the update yourself.  Hitting that ‘Upgrade Now’ button can totally wreck any custom coding or third party plug-ins you may have on your site.

Review User Names & Passwords: Internal security is important. Do you have the user name and passwords for all accounts associated with your website? Accounts may include Google accounts for Analytics, Webmaster or Adwords; shopping cart passwords for tools like PayPal or Authorize.net; and website control through FTP, C-Panel or web hosting accounts.

For security purposes, passwords should be changed routinely – and always if you’ve let go of an employee who previously had this access and permission.

As a business owner you are ultimately responsible for your website. If you have an in-house team this list is a great way to start implementing a process to pay better attention to one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. If you have an external team you may want to request a cost for this level of monitoring.

The fact is that the Web changes, and upgrades to Web browsers or operating systems can cause changes.  Even good old fashion human error can occur when editing a site.

If you pay close attention to your website you can catch things before they cause any loss of business.

Tune Up Photo via Shutterstock

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Teens handle this by forming cliques. Cliques are self-selecting social groups, which have a very profound impact on the school environment. Membership in the clique could be dependent on a shared interest, such as sports, drama, academics or band, or it could be a matter of other, more nebulous, identity based qualities. Think back to your high school days. Chances are you can remember specific groups – the jocks, the Goths, the Stepford-Wives-in-Training – and the efforts you made to find the place where you belonged.

This was the very first market research you ever did. Securing and maintaining a position within any clique meant that you had to follow certain unwritten rules. To be accepted by the group, you had to present yourself in a specific way.  Teenagers are obsessed with fashion for a reason. The clothes we wear are a powerful social language and behave in an expected manner.

The Big 3 Rules of Cliques

Associate With Your Own

Cliques spend time together – lots of time. Group members prefer the company of the people in the group to that of people not in the group. Clique members are trusted more than non-members, and receive preferential treatment in any situation of scarcity. In other words, if you only have room in your car to drive three friends home, you’re going to offer those seats to members of your clique first.

Exhibit Common Interests

Cliques often form around a shared activity, such as sports or drama. But having that in common isn’t nearly enough. Bonds between clique members are strengthened by having multiple points of commonality. It’s great if you and your friends all play soccer. But it’s even better if you all play soccer, all listen to Rihanna, all wear Abercrombie, all wear blue glasses…

Wear A Signature Style

Cliques are visually identifiable. Members deliberately cultivate a specific look, expressing their collective identity through clothing, accessory, hairstyle and makeup choices.

The ability to successfully identify and follow these three rules is what researchers call social intelligence. Also coming under the social intelligence umbrella is the ability to successfully engage with and form relationships with members of other cliques.

Cliques Then and Now

Cliques don’t go away once high school is over. They evolve and enlarge, becoming niche communities or markets. As business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s important to understand that our success is directly dependent on our social intelligence. It’s essential that we can identify the cliques that our customers belong to. That’s the only way we can truly understand the nuanced web of expectations that the clients have of us: meeting and exceeding those expectations is the route to business success.

Clients from different cliques have different expectations. In my own practice, I work with both small business and corporate clients. The two groups are very different. Small businesses are more relaxed and easy going. They want quality work but they also place a premium on the experiential aspects of doing business. They are looking for a personable company with an added social touch. Corporate clients tend to prefer things to be mostly business with little small talk, hard deadlines – no excuses.

The better you understand your client’s clique, the more successfully you’ll appeal to them. One of the fundamental rules of business is that we prefer to do business with people we perceive to be like ourselves. In other words, with members of the same clique.

You have to be able to assure your clientele that you have enough points of commonality with them that you’ll be able to understand their needs and serve them well.

Identifying Cliques

Cliques exist in every field and industry. If you’re a person strong in social intelligence, you may be able to spot these cliques instinctively through the course of your everyday business. Sometimes you may need to be willing to take a step back and consider the situation from a distance.

Look at your client, and where they do the majority of their business:

• Who are their customers, colleagues, and suppliers?
• Who are their competitors?
• What portion of the market is distinctly theirs?
• How do they spend their time, and who do they spend it with?

The construction company that focuses on leading edge sustainable skyscraper building is a member of a different clique than the construction company focused on manufactured home production.

The products and services you offer to your client must be in alignment with their signature style. This doesn’t mean you need to look like a carbon copy clone, but your presentation must be recognized as your clientele as both familiar and appealing. This creates the necessary comfort level in your customer, enabling them to trust that working with your organization will complement and enhance their brand’s image.

Cliques and Social Mobility

As a business owner, you have to make a strategic decision whether to focus your marketing efforts on one specific clique or to position yourself in a way to serve multiple cliques. The ability to present yourself and interact with more than one clique is what researchers call social mobility. You have to really understand your organization’s social intelligence and mobility skills before you make this decision.

Some firms are far better served by focusing on one clique – assuming it is large enough to sustain profitability over the long term – than by attempting to appeal to multiple groups. For other companies, working with a range of customers from multiple cliques provides a revitalizing energy that helps the organization thrive.

High School Clique Photo via Shutterstock

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We seem to have collectively lost sight of the fact that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are ultimately businesses. They’re not philanthropic organizations – and they’re not the benefits of anyone’s charity. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to design and maintain a social media platform.

Facebook employs thousands of people. They all need to be paid. An initial IPO was disappointing, at best, and the former advertising model wasn’t profitable enough to meet revenue goals. More money needs to be made – at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media platforms – if they are going to remain viable on a long-term basis.

If You Want To Play, You’re Going To Pay

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms need a way to increase their revenue. Where is this money coming from?

There are only two possible answers to this question. Social media companies can charge social media fees for accessing their platform, or they can turn to an already existing business base, and ask them to foot the bill.

For years, there have been recurring rumors that Facebook was going to charge users a monthly fee. Every time one of these rumors surfaces, thousands of people protest, on and off social media. Dozens of “Keep Facebook Free!” Facebook pages appear after every new rumor, with hundreds of thousands of people uniting in opposition to the idea of a monthly charge or social media fees.

If Facebook started charging, a significant number of users declared they would switch to another platform. There are certainly other options: Wikipedia’s admittedly non-exhaustive list of active social networks has over 200 to choose from.

If you were on Facebook’s leadership team, would you try to go forward with charging users a monthly fee anyway? The other option – charging businesses for different features like advertising, applications and extended reach – now that certainly seems more appealing.

As business owners we have to pay to be seen in every other vehicle on the planet. There may be thousands of articles on getting free press or free exposure, but ultimately, implementing those strategies is not free. You pay yourself, your staff or an outside marketing firm.

Advertising Is A Marketing Staple

The mediums have changed over the years, but one fact has remained constant: advertising has never been free. From printing an ad in your target demographics’ favorite magazine to airing a commercial on your favorite talk radio station, every bit of exposure costs money. Charging business owners for enhanced exposure on a popular social media platform brings social media into alignment with all other existing marketing vehicles. This is not likely to provoke significant public backlash, which is an important consideration for the now publically traded Facebook.

At the same time, social media has proven to be an extremely effective way for business owners to connect in a direct and meaningful way with their customers. The best way to reach your customers is to be where they already are – and over 60% of the world population is using social media. The dynamic conversations that happen on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms build brand equity, customer loyalty, and drives revenue. That’s why there are more than 11 million businesses already on Facebook.

However, The Efficacy Of Advertising Has Been In Decline

Print advertising is particularly imperiled. Nearly 200 national magazines closed their doors in 2011, while 450 newspapers went out of business. Results matter. Companies who want to realize maximum value for their marketing dollar were quick to notice that print, radio, and television advertising weren’t delivering a satisfying return. Even banner advertising, a relatively new kid on the marketing block, has become markedly less popular under this performance based paradigm. Companies aren’t willing to pay for yesterday’s marketing tools in today’s economy.

Charge the social media user or charge the companies that were already using social media to connect with their customers? If I had to make that choice for Facebook, it’s pretty clear to me what my decision would be. As a business owner, it should be clear to you too. We’re all in this to connect with our customers and make money, and the best way to make money is to provide a high-value product or service that the customer just can’t get enough of. That’s what we all try to do for our customers. Facebook’s doing it too. Don’t be surprised to see Twitter, Instagram, and your other favorite social media platforms following suit by charging social media fees.

Pay to Play: Why It’s Good For Your Business

Make no mistake. Facebook wants businesses to stay active on their site. That’s why they’ve structured this new pay to play model in the way they have. Using a reach-based algorithm, rather than charging organizations based upon the number of fans they have or the amount of content they post, allows the business owner to have an important element of budgetary control relevant to their social media activity.

There is another silver lining to be found in the pay to play model of social media, and it’s this: a significant number of businesses, particularly who don’t fully understand the potential of social media, simply aren’t going to pay. They’re going to keep their money in their pocket, and disappear from the conversation.

This is good news for you: the brands that customers value highly are the brands they see regularly, and engage with in a meaningful way. If your competitors aren’t there to be seen or engaged with, they’re going to occupy a less prominent position in your customer’s psyche. You’ll benefit from their absence.

Where Is It All Going?

Expect social media platforms to continue identifying new ways to generate income from the tools they have spent time and money creating. We know, as business owners and marketing professionals, that advertising alone is not going to sustain our connection with our audience. Today’s businesses do so much more like; running webinars, writing white papers, and hosting events. Product placement marketing is evolving into exciting new territory, with companies aggressively competing for the opportunity to integrate their products into films, music videos, and video games.

Businesses have found new ways to energize their marketing efforts and stay in front of customers.

Social media platforms are doing the same thing, looking for new ways; creative ways to leverage what they’ve built so traditional display advertising does not become their sole source of revenue. I applaud new ways of thinking and encourage all of us to do the same in our businesses.

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