Social Media Marketing – No Quick Fixes

Time and time again we hear clients asking for the short-cut – the quick, cheap fix that will allow them to participate in social media marketing. Although some activities result in immediate results, overall, a sound digital strategy takes some time to bear fruit.

That does not mean your digital agency gets a 6 month pass. They should definitely be accountable for their actions even while they are laying a strong foundation for a long term online strategy. Buck Rogers said “It’s no good picking up speed if you’re on the wrong road” and we could not agree more. So to take time to think through your approach, test a few theories and do some A / B testing to see what works makes a lot of sense. But so too does setting clear objectives within a specific time frame.

Speaking of time – it is only going to get more expensive to get in this game. As competition increase, both for PPC and for organic search terms, it will take more time and effort or require more dollars to achieve your goals. So jump in now. It is far less expensive to defend a first page ranking for a keyword than to gain it.

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
March 18, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Does Our Advertising Work?

Now more than ever, marketers will be asked to defend their budget, demonstrate the value of their impact to sales and describe their unique value proposition to the business. It is truly ironic – businesses spent like drunken sailors trying climb over-top each other when results could not be measured. Now that promotional activity can be accurately tracked and measured, they do not want invest a nickel they don’t have to. Mass Media Executives liked that it could not be measured – it kept them in business.

How does marketing justify and account for all that investment? Sirius Decisions research has found that only 15 percent of b-to-b marketing functions use an automated marketing dashboard; another 62 percent are currently developing such a dashboard, suggesting there is still a significant amount of measurement work to do. While there are no shortcuts to properly deploying a marketing dashboard, we agree with Sirus that the greatest area of focus for 2010 must center on metrics that align with sales.

No client ever asked for website traffic or an increase in leads. They want more sales. Yet most Digital Agencies have little to no influence how those qualified leads are followed up. A measurement gap that every marketer must wrestle with. One clear solution is to have sales report to marketing. Then hold marketing accountable for performance. The tools exist to manage and measure all promotion activity designed to generate leads and sales.

Every marketer must know for certain where the leads are coming from. Measurement strategies are the key to Inbound marketing success in your organization. And the key to making your advertising dollars work.

Tags: , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
January 24, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|2 Comments

Facebook Beats Google!

According to All Facebook, Facebook was the most visited site on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, taking over the #1 visited site from Google. Impressive numbers for both.

Yet they are not competitors. So how can one beat the other in any truly meaningful way?

Google is the tool we use for SEARCH. When we want to look for something or someone. When we roughly know what we are looking for, and indeed when we are actually searching for something specific, Google is the go to site. They help us narrow it down until we find what we are looking for. So on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, it is not surprising that people were not searching for stuff.

On the other hand Facebook and most other social media sites are DISCOVER-based sites.  In other words when you want to be discovered, or you want people to trip across your message, social media is often the place. People are not really searching when on Facebook, they are being entertained by other people in their own communities. They are discovering what others in their community are up to. So again over Christmas, it is not surprising that people were checking in with family and friends. They were discovering rather than searching.

Being SEARCHABLE and being DISCOVERABLE are 2 completely different ideas, yet both allow you to BFOUND online. And being found online is a competitive edge that most businesses can no longer ignore. After years of learning to HUNT for customers, business is just now waking up to the opportunity of BEING HUNTED. Why try to sell people your product when you can simply allow them to buy?

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
January 1, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

It’s the Consumer Stupid.

On October 21, 2009 in Advertising Age,  Judy Shapiro addressed the shift that is happening in the media world. With a good grasp of the issues she talks openly abou the opportunities and what it might take to benefit from all of this change. Einstein said ” The problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it”. In other words we need to make a shift of mindset in order to come up with a smart solution with regard to the changes in the marketplace. Fact is there is nothing usual about business today. Companies with little focus and who have relegated marketing to the basement office will most certainly pay a steep price in The Google Age.

The main issue – the single action at the core of all this change is the fact that the consumer has changed the way they make their buying decision. I did not say they changed the way they buy or where they buy, yet those can well be impacted when they change the way they make their buying decisions.

In the past they would remember ads & promotions, talk to relevant friends & family, seek advice at store level and make their choice. In studies, it was difficult to give any one of these a heavier weighting than the others. But today, although we may still seek opinions and counsel from freinds family and store clerks, by far and away, in Google we trust. Now we simply Google what we are looking for, assemble all the info we need and make our choice.

The problem is not that the consumer’s buying process has changed, it is that our marketing and sales process has not. Most businesses are no longer fishing where the fish are. The consumer has changed and we have not. Easily corrected indeed, BUT the mindset issue comes into play big time. If a marketer uses the same language, tactics and thinking when marketing online, they will likely have their hat handed to them by the communities they engage with. Go slow and LISTEN first. Act only when you have a feel for the community and the environment. This is like no medium you have ever used. Lose the corporate-speak. These are people you are talking to. In fact, we have a list of 21 marketing thoughts & ideas we live by that would serve most marketers when they go online.

Tags: , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 22, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Context Is Everything

HUNT or BE HUNTED

In order to understand what is happening to marketing at this early stage of The Google Age, we thought it best to examine the context. Said another way, context is what is at work in the background, informing our decisions. Indeed, if our context gives us our decisions and our decisions determine our actions, it would be good to understand the context in this situation.

As context is made up of many factors such as culture, experience and history, what has determined the decisions in business since the end of World War II? Even before 1945, mass media was shaping our world. What we knew and believed was heavily influenced by mass marketers and mass media owners. The technologies that we developed were, for the most part designed to reach more people at the same time. For those who grew up and entered the business world during this period, all we knew was “mass marketing”. Most of us just did not distinguish it that way. It just was the way it was.

It is believed that a fish has no distinction called water. It just is what the fish swims in. A fish can only get the distinction “water” if you take it out of the water. So lets pull ourselves out of the business world for a moment and look at what might be at work. The only business context we could have had for years is “mass marketing”. Given that, we spent our time and brainpower developing smarter, more creative ways to HUNT for new customers. We used every new technology to get an edge over our competition, and more important, we used genuine creativity. But HUNTING was still HUNTING. Given our mass marketing context, that was all we could distinguish.

We would SPEND significant ad, promotion and sales dollars.

HUNT for customers everywhere.

HOPE we can then catch them at the right time, or

HOPE they remember us when it comes time to buy.

We refer to it as the shhh model and the media owners were hoping to keep it very,very quiet. After all it was the source of their wealth. We have to pay the gatekeeper if we want access to the eyeballs that the gatekeeper controls. It is just how it works. The media owner invests millions in developing properties that your target audience is interested in, so they can sell you advertising and sponsorship opportunities at significant premiums. The transaction must be based on a fair, consistent factor so we have come to buy media on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. As marketers we then had to separately weigh the quality of the audience (how targeted they were vs our ideal targets) as well as the CPM required to reach them. It is a subjective process that is extremely hard to measure.

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 16, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Left-Handed Monkey Wrenches For Left-Handed Plumbers

Co-founder of Hub Spot, Dharmesh Shah says, the internet is great at connecting makers of left-handed monkey wrenches with left-handed plumbers around the world.

But the makers of left-handed monkey wrenches must:

  1. be very clear that they make left-handed monkeys wrenches
  2. not tell everyone about their full line of wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers and saws
  3. talk directly to left-handed plumbers and not be tempted to include right-handed plumbers, general contractors, the owners of hardware stores, the local handymen across America and anyone else interested in buying any household or industrial tool.

Inbound Marketing is, like the internet itself, far more efficient. Shah’s partner, Brian Halligan uses the example of eBay. Apparently the Founder started it because he wanted to expand the number of people to trade PEZ dispensers with, after he had traded with his entire rolodex. The internet offered free access to a lot of other people interested in his unusual hobby. Now eBay is the ultimate connector of buyer and seller in the world. Like Brian said – a very efficient system.

A more efficient marketplace truly allows for specialization amongst small business. So now the average small business does not have to be everything to everybody in order to survive. Due to the long tail effect ( see Chris Anderson’s Blog ) one could build a solid business making left-handed monkey wrenches for left-handed plumbers. And they can reach them all over the world.

In the old SPEND, HUNT and HOPE model, (spend lots of money, hunt for customers and hope they remember you when it comes time to buy) using mass media that was expensive and played to the large Company’s advantage, many small business owners believed they had to supplement their main offering with additional products and services, just to make ends meet. They had to add right handed wrenches and small saws, hammers and screwdrivers. The more products they offered, the more potential audiences they could identify to sell to so they forgot about the left-handed plumber and their left-handed wrenches. They lost themselves – but even worse, they collapsed sales and marketing into one big mess. In this state they want (believe they need to) tell everybody about all of the things they sell. Their ads lose focus. Their promotions are at best desperate grabs at low hanging fruit and they spend a lot of money on a lot of things. In other words marketing goes down the toilet. In this world they must sell hard and often to survive.

We conduct inbound marketing campaigns and as a professional marketer I see the Internet as the savior of marketing. The Google Era will put marketing back in the corner office. I will explain.

If a small business takes their traditional marketing mentality to inbound marketing it will fail. No ifs ands or buts. The keys to inbound marketing are:

  1. be very clear about what you sell.
  2. be very clear who your ideal buyer is
  3. put out content that educates that buyer about that product

If the business also has other things for sale, they need to run separate campaigns. That’s marketing. In this model customers buy and because they are in control of the transaction, they often enjoy it. So that left-handed plumber can easily find a left-handed wrench online.

emarketing toronto

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 15, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Check Out Who’s Eating Your Lunch

Business is good for some of us. And awful for others. We can blame it on the economy or the changing market, but the fact is, we all have choices about what we do and how we conduct our business.

Those of us engaged in online marketing have repeatedly tried to show traditional marketers just how effective inbound marketing can be. And how inexpensive it is relative to the results you can produce with a good strategy. We are not talking about “using Twitter” or “being on Facebook”. It serves no one for your staff to be online without a sound strategy that integrates with the rest of your marketing. Yes – it is early in the game, but our experience to date indicates it will be a lot easier to defend a top 3 organic ranking for a relevant keyword than to try to take it from a competitor who is defending it effectively. Creativity and innovation will beat big time spending in this marketplace.

We are talking about engaging in an honest open conversation with the people you believe should buy your product. But obviously, as bad as things are, most traditional marketers are happy with the current SPEND (lots of advertising and promotional dollars), HUNT (go out looking for customers) and HOPE (they remember you when it comes time to buy) model that has been dictated by the mass media marketplace we have all grown up in. This model is more about selling people than letting them buy.

We have done our best to convince businesses that the average consumer (B2B or B2C) just Googles what they are looking for and even if they do not actually purchase online (although Marketing Sherpa reports that over 34% do), they do make their buying decision based on their online research. Sure they still talk to friends and get advice. Sure they still shop in retail stores. But the strongest influence by far is the combined results of their Google search.

So, bottom line: take a 10 minute break today and type in the keywords or search terms that you think people would use to find your product or service. Not your Company name – the product or service you sell. See if you can be found when your prospects are looking to buy. And pay special attention to the firms that do show up on page 1 of the search. They’re most likely the ones your potential buyers are buying from.

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 5, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

What Constitutes Quality Content?

Andrew Davis of Tipping Point Labs writes a great article on Defining Valuable Content in which he thoughtfully goes through the elements of valuable content on the internet. We are all seeing too much mindless ramblings and cheeky quotes. It makes me think that a well written, thought through point of view is the key. Andrew talks about a balance between relevance, quality and frequency. I for one, am far less concerned about frequency if a perspective is well written, informed and thought through. In fact, even points of view I don’t agree with are welcome under these circumstances. If you are passing content on or sending clever quotes, please pay attention to frequency. Less is better. None is perfect.

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 4, 2009|Blogging, Inbound Marketing|Post Comment »

Fish Where The Fish Are

Oh how slow we are to change our habits! Jupiter Research documented – in 2007 – a clear picture of how consumer behavior has shifted, indicating the gap between consumer habits and ad spending. Here we are 2 years later and the gap is still very present. In fact, if the difficult economy had not set in, I would bet many businesses who have changed their habits to match, would not have.

Consumers report watching less than 11 hours of TV per week, yet advertisers still spend 22% of their budgets on TV ads! Newspaper is worse – consumers spend 1 hour a week reading newspapers, yet, through force of habit, advertisers still spend 15% of their budgets advertising in newspapers. Hello.

The fish have moved. Come on marketers – fish where the fish are.

Tags: , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
September 25, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »