Learning the market.
Surveys allow a business to learn what their customers want in a business. Do they want more size selection, more colors offered, or less emails sent after purchasing? By using surveys, they have a chance to learn about their customers before they have even purchased!

Meet your customers.
With surveys, a business can better understand the people that have purchased from them. They can learn how they were found, what made them the better choice, and why they ultimately decided to complete the purchase. This allows a business to focus on those areas and continue to succeed!

Understand your employees.
Using surveys with your employees means that you can understand what helps them work best as a team or individually. If they work best from home or in office, a survey can help decide what is best for the company to continue or start doing. Happy employees are employees that stick around!

Craving something new.
When a business is interested in creating a new product, why wouldn’t they reach out to customers or potential buyers? They are the ones who will make the product fail or succeed because they are the ones buying it. Sending our surveys and offering a discount after completion when help a business get a good sense of what their buyers want!

It’s inexpensive to run Facebook lead ads. Facebook ads are cheaper than Google ads and reach a larger audience at a cheaper price.

You can target exactly who you think your ideal customer is. If you think your best customer is women over 35 who live in the Midwest, then you can click those buttons and that is who sees your ad! You do not waste money showing your product to people who won’t buy it.

You can customize your lead form, so you get exactly the contact info you want. Do you want a persons name, number, and email or would you prefer just their name and email? You have the option for any contact info that you want and can get rid of what you don’t! It is as easy as clicking a button!

You are getting customers who are on step further down the buying cycle. Typically when someone is clicking on your ad for more information, they have already decided they are ready to buy something! With Facebook lead gen ads, they are contacting you during their shopping prices which means you could be talking to an actual customer of yours.
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You can make contact with customers and tell them about your product or service. The ad you post is already telling them a lot, but when they click on it they are learning more. Once they have already clicked to get more information, you now have the opportunity to send them emails or texts with more information that might help them with the buying process. If you wanted to, you could even call them and have an actual conversation!

The most important thing to remember about using social media is that you want to show you are a real person. People want to know they are seeing or talking to someone real and not another robot.

YouTube is the second most used search engine and the third most visited website in the world which allows for more viewers to learn about your business.

Facebook has 1.66 billion users that log in daily which is the amount of people that your business could reach through posts. When using Facebook, you can gain emails for potential customers and learn who the people are that look at your page. It is important to know who your customers are, so you can figure out what the best thing to do for your business is.

Instagram is important for your business because it is more focused on sharing information while providing photos of what you are doing or selling. Instagram stories are a big thing for businesses right now because when people view your business for several days, your business is now the first thing that pops up when they login. How helpful is that!

Twitter has an estimated 78% of their users that influence purchases of friends and family and 73% follow brands they love on their platform. Twitter allows you to share deals and information that buyers might want to know.

Snapchat allows your business to reach a younger audience and show behind the scenes of what you are doing. If you are creating a new product, launching an app, or want followers to know your staff better, create a snapchat!

TikTok is another business for a younger audience, specifically people between the ages of 16 and 30. TikTok allows users to share fun videos with music and generates those videos to show up on specific users pages. The app learns what users like to see and creates a page specific for them!
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LinkedIn helps businesses establish credibility for potential customers. If someone wants to find a construction company near them, they might use LinkedIn to search for one and learn more about the company and the employees who work there. If you have good information on your LinkedIn, costumers are more likely to call when they need you!

​When I say the word “survey,” what do you think of? Do you think of an email or text asking you to answer questions about a recent purchase or experience?
 
If I told you surveys could be extremely beneficial to your business, would you believe me?
 
Let me tell you why you should be adding surveys to your business.
 
Surveys allow you to customize your product for your customers.
If you are selling keychains but spending too much and not selling half of the patterns, you could send a survey and notice that your customers are mostly into the western style patterns. With the help of the survey, you were able to save money, create product that your customers loved, and focus on possibly adding more products with a western style.
 
Surveys help you understand what your customers want from a service.
When starting a car detailing business, you might not know what your customers want or need when looking for that service. Sending out a survey would be beneficial in this case because it allows you to ask people who use this service what they want or need and allows you to provide them with it.
 
Surveys take customer service to a whole different level.
Surveys allow you to see what your customers did and did not like about your product or service. You can see if changes could be made to your product, service, shipping, packaging, etc. We all know that changes cannot be made in every area, such as shipping because that it is related to the shipping company, but it is nice to know what you can do to help. If customers love your product, then you have an awesome review ready to share with possible customers in the future! 

During 2020, most businesses have had to move completely online, at least for a couple months. Most agriculture clients aren't online, yet, but they are slowly moving there. These six businesses are showing how fun and interesting farming can really be while still teaching you more information!

1. How Farms Work on YouTube - They are using good songs, cool views, and themselves to make you feel connected to what you are watching. They are showing people who don't live on a farm what it is actually like. 

2. Millennial Farmer - He started his YouTube because of all the misinformation out in the world. He is using his platform to teach people about how their food is grown and raised. He does through vlog style videos and sharing about his personal life to help you feel more connected!

3. Show Me Shortline - They are using lots of different social media platforms to show people different types of farming machines (not all made in the U.S.) and what they are used for! They use videos with different angles to show you what the machine can do!

4. Hingtgen Farms on Instagram - This account is run by Cameron who works with his father on a farm in Iowa. They use Instagram to share awesome photos of tractors, farm animals, and their fields. They use IGTV to share their opinion on machines and show videos of harvesting.

5. Modfarm on Instagram - They use bright colors and fun photos to help people learn about where their food comes from and more about farms! They share photos from other farming accounts to share their business and what they do!

I officially hit my one year at SMS Marketing Group! I have been thinking a lot about how my life was so different when I started and I couldn't be more happy I made the decision to work in digital marketing.

I have learned more about social media and how to use it, farming and farming machines, and designing. I thought designing would be my favorite part, but it's actually getting to know our clients or potential clients. They share about their business, how they started, and what drives them to keep going. They show you the passion they have for their business and it's fun and exciting to learn about.

Today, I am sharing with you 5 Things I Love About My Job!

I always wonder what made some people start their business. Did they have a huge passion for dog treats, a love of home décor, or did they just start a business to say they can?

When I started working at SMS Marketing Group, I asked Janeka what made her start social media marketing. She told me it was not what she originally planned to do, but when she moved back to Missouri, she found a passion for it.

She started working with Chris at Show Me Shortline and saw how much he was spending on his marketing and what he was getting out of it. She asked him to take a chance on her and see what she could do for him.
She took half of his budget, had him get rid of print ads, go to less trade shows, and start using his money towards Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads.

Janeka wanted to help Show Me Shortline save money, while still getting more customers and more people interested in what they sell. In less than 1 year, they had a 35% increase in sales!

Janeka has made sure that SMS Marketing Group is made for all businesses. Too many marketing companies ask you to pay too much for not much of anything.  Small or large budgets, we are there to help them all. We keep prices reasonable and we do not do contracts.
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We want to help businesses gain customers, but not break the bank. 

​With the first day of fall, we thought we would share ideas for social media posts. It can be hard to figure out what you want to share and what people want to see. 

   You can use so many different social media ads to support your business. Companies always talk about what ads they can run to help you, but they don’t always tell you the best ads to run. They also don’t tell you how to get the most out of your money.

   As I’ve said before, social media is extremely important to businesses trying to reach new customers. It’s not easy to gain followers or activity organically, so paying for ads is extremely important! You can run ads on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, even Tik Tok! You’ve definitely seen them before, but they don’t always look like ads.

   Just like there are different platforms to share ads, there are different types of ads. You can share photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, or text ads. They can all be very beneficial, but it is important to learn what your customers want. Janeka, our Marketing Director,  spent 7 years A/B testing and learned what is best for Agriculture! It can take time, but it is definitely worth it.

   When deciding to run an ad, you have to figure out what you want from the ads. Do you want people going to your website or calling you? It probably depends on your business. If you are selling clothes online, you’ll want them to head to your website to make a purchase. But if you sell a service, not a product, you want them to contact you to learn more about it! This is called a campaign objective.

   Several factors play into how much you are going to pay for an ad. Your campaign objective, the audience you are targeting, where you are targeting, and when you are doing it. Ads are sold in an auction format which means you set a maximum bid for results or bid for the day.
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   Here are some other blogs we’ve written, if you ever want to learn more about what advertising terms mean, what social media is best for your target audience, or more about digital marketing.
The Best Content for Each Social Media Platform
6 Digital Marketing Terms You Need to Know
Helpful Social Media Statistics
Digital Ads