So we’re seeing an increase in the number of mountain tourism businesses who are using the social media platforms, whether it is encouraging their staff to participate in Linkedin groups or sending out Blog content on Facebook.
A lot of the high end companies we speak with tend to have certain reservations about how best to utilise social media. The problem generally seems to lie with the complexities of targeting the niche crowd that is suited to the product – however being able to measure the SROI (Social Return On Investment) of hitting a wider audience can help to relieve these concerns. Measuring this social return can be tricky to grasp initially, as generally speaking it takes longer to see social endeavours hit the bottom line.
If you try to think about everyone who has some link to your product (i.e ski instructors, resort workers, competitors & even aspiring consumers) as word of mouth agents then it becomes easier to see how your product will funnel down to those who’d be potentially ready to buy.
If we can achieve this layered brand awareness hierarchy funnel then what we’re essentially doing is injecting tiered levels of brand association and awareness that would generally be seen in multi national corporations into your SME (Small & Medium Enterprise.) The effects of doing this won’t immediately hit your bottom line, but the potential client network increases so that over the years you’ll be able to develop many more clients that can be accounted for on previous years’ acquisition expenditure. As this infrastructure of online socialising spreads you’ll see this framework continually grow.
This can all be compared to Facebook’s own revenue stream – take a Facebook fan page advertisement, the ad is set with a budget – when a user clicks on the advertisement Facebook charges X (Cost per click.) However when this user ‘likes’ a page this then gets displayed to all their friends (International avg number of friends is 130, and much higher for some demographics.) So the advertiser gets the extra impressions, and so on and so forth. It’s also crucial to remember that these second level advertisements (‘likes’) are being endorsed by a friend so it’s more likely for a higher click through rate per impression than the initial advert created.
Just because you own a ‘niche’ high end brand, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t interact on Social Media (it doesn’t mean you need to expose your clients, all you’re doing is showcasing your business,) unless of course you’re looking to have a ‘secret’ company.
