germerothlunchandlearnLee Germeroth’s message to participants in the second Cooperative Venture Workspace Lunch and Learn presentation was that businesses need to understand where their customers hang out online before they can develop a strategy to market to them.

Lee is founder of Germeroth Consulting & Creative and, he is a member of the Workspace.

His presentation on February 21 was the second Lunch and Learn, a free peer-to-peer training program offered by the Workspace to both its members and the business community at large.

A sold-out group of 15 people gathered for lunch then to hear Lee talk about his expertise of business branding and digital data analytics.

Lee described the social media as “a little bit of the Wild West,” because of the many options and different ways of approaching a variety of channels.

He said business should focus on where particular customers are in order to focus on how to approach them.

“You can find a special niche in those larger platforms,” he said.

Lee used the conference room’s technology to display on two viewing screens his take on answers to three fundamental questions: Where are my customers? How do I get people to my business? How do I grow my business using digital marketing?

As to the where, he noted what he called the “big seven” of social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest.

He cited a couple of examples on the differing nature of social media channels, describing Instagram as more polished and business focused, while Snapchat is gritty and behind the scenes.

To attract customers, he said the primary methods are paid traffic and organic traffic. Paid advertising can build traffic quickly, but it costs money, according to Lee, while using social media postings and/or content marketing on your website can build organic traffic that is free, but it’s slower and harder to track. “Optimize your content for your user,” said Lee.

Lee took questions to understand from participants some of their digital marketing challenges, and he condensed his talk into a post on his website that you can read here.

Be on the lookout for details regarding the Workspace’s next Lunch and Learn presentations with Dragonfly Photography. Head photographer, Rachel Kloss, will be leading a presentation on how to take better photos for your business.