When it comes to business development and growth, getting the business name out there is one of the most important aspects in order to succeed, and in the past, this has been done in many ways – business development agencies such as Alchemis still heavily rely on the tried-and-true methods such as cold calling, email marketing, and of course, social media. But do businesses still need social media to grow, or can business development be handled just as well without having an online social presence social media strategies to grow your orthodontic practice?
In many regards, it may simply rely on the type of audience that a business is trying to target – if reaching out to a younger audience then it’s safe to say that social media is almost the only tool that will really work. Younger audiences typically won’t pick up cold calls or respond to cold emails in the way that an older audience might, but social media engagement and interaction drive most of their interests.
It’s also true that the type of social media platform is important here too – once again, younger audiences have been steering clear of platforms such as Facebook for quite some time, whereas Tik Tok and Instagram have become populous hubs for an ever-growing audience across all ranges too. Where cold calling and email marketing may be one singular channel, social media splits this in a more dramatic way and requires many different avenues to be explored for success.
Where there has been a change in recent years with customer service and the company having a more relatable face being more important, much of the time and perhaps to the dismay of some business owners, this is most likely and most successfully done through modern social media platforms. Potential clients would prefer to reach out through an instant message or direct message rather than a phone call or an email, and having an active feed is often enough to encourage some clients to convert who may have been on the fence if they’re able to agree or see eye to eye with individual business thoughts.
With this in mind, any business development strategy still relies heavily on the usage of social media across any good strategy and that likely isn’t going to change, but with news on the performance of different platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter over the past year or so, there will likely be major changes in the coming years around the best social media platforms to strategize on, and how different businesses can benefit from social media platforms that may not be as in demand as they once were to capture a more obscure audience that has yet to move on to the newer, more trendy platforms.
