I've never gone viral. I'm thankful for that. Sounds painful.
But that's not the reason why I decided to close my Facebook and Instagram accounts.
It was fun when Facebook was first around to reconnect with old school friends. But when it became just another advertising portal, I got bored.
Same with Instagram. After a while, scanning the feed became a mindless exercise, like watching a picture book of fashionable brands interspersed by the odd kid pic posted by a friend.
Then, at some point last year, I realised I didn't have a book on the go. It was the first time that's happened since I learned to read. That realisation tipped me over the edge and I closed my accounts.
I don't want to read social media in my free time. I want to read books like I used to (by the way I can highly recommend The Sellout by Paul Beatty, best book I've read in years).
My decision to dump social media got me thinking. Advertisers can't reach me when I'm reading a hard-copy book. So how do businesses promote themselves to people like me who have opted out of the main social media platforms?
It's worth noting that, according to statistics web site Statista, there are plenty of people who don't use social media. Its figures suggest 45 per cent of Australians don't engage with social media – so that's 10.7 million people.
If you can't get to this group through social media, how do you get in front of them? I asked Judy Sahay, a director of digital marketing consultancy Crowd Media, this question.
"There are many ways brands can market to you. Google AdWords is a good way to connect with your consumer. So, if you're not on Facebook I can still get you on Google," she told me.
If you're a small business, one way to set up Google AdWords is through Google Webmaster Tools.
"The only thing hard is knowing which keywords to set up. You need to do a bit of research on what your competitors are doing and the cost per click. If you're a very small business and your budget is $1000 per month, and you have to pay $100 a click, you'll spend your budget in 10 clicks and it's not worth it," advises Sahay.
Advertisers can't reach me when I'm reading a hard copy book. So how do businesses promote themselves to people like me who have opted out of the main social media platforms?
Programmatic advertising is the second one. This is when different websites serve up the same ads to you as you move from one site to another.
Influencer marketing is a third way to reach people who are not on social media. Sahay explains this involves working with people – influencers – who have the ability to affect the way people in your market think and feel. This might include bloggers or celebrities, for instance.
"A lot of people may not be on social media, but they might follow someone's blog. In our business, influencer marketing return on investment has been anywhere between five times to nine times the initial investment.
"The return on investment depends on the influencers you use, they need to be relevant to your brand and must have an authentic audience who are highly engaged," she says.Â
Video marketing is another option. Sahay says the stats suggest it's a very powerful way of reaching an audience. For instance, according to online research house Forrester, the chance of a page-one listing on Google increases by 53 times when a business uses video as part of its marketing program.
Alternatively there's electronic direct marketing. This involves sending emails to a database. "So building your own database is important," advises Sahay.
To do that you need a really good website and a Google AdWords advertising program. This should direct people to a landing page that collects people's personal details so you can send them marketing emails in the future.
"People say eDMs don't work, but if you have the right content and call to action it works very well," Sahay says.
SEO – search engine optimisation – is the final way to reach people who don't use social media. This involves positioning your website so it heads towards the top of Google search lists through an ongoing marketing program involving all of the above marketing tactics.
Sahay says it can take up to six months to see results. So it can be a good idea to initially focus on the marketing tactics described above before investing in a comprehensive SEO program.
The good news for small businesses is, when it comes to online marketing, there are many approaches you can take to reach many different types of customers – even the hard-to-reach ones.
How do you approach digital marketing? Share your approach in the comments below.
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