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Measuring Social Media in your marketing

2010-09-27T10:34:45Z

Just as you would include your campaign advertisements, communications, emails and phone calls into your marketing plan - to ultimately be tracked, analysed and reported on, nowadays, ensuring your Social Media contacts and communications (from eg. Facebook / Twitter) are legitimately included can mean a clear understanding of who and where your customers come from:

Facebook company pages are like websites in the 1990s: everybody wants one but we’re not sure why. Marketers know how valuable social media can be to their cause. However, proving that value can be a different story. Do you know what impact Facebook, Twitter and blogs are having on your campaign outcomes? Are you monitoring user-created comments and reviews? Tracking and analysing these things can help you maximise the impact of your efforts – here are some tips for measurement and analysis in the social media world:

Getting the complete picture

Incorporating data from Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more into your online marketing platform gives you a unique perspective on how your social media exposure is impacting your entire marketing mix. The behaviour of visitors when they’re away from your website enriches your understanding of their preferences, and helps you understand which types of marketing offers will help to drive them to convert. You can achieve this level of insight by tracking data over time, to create a unique profile for each visitor, including both on site and off site activity.

Ensure your attribution includes every step

Capturing the impact of your marketing messages on very visitor, customer and prospect, even if they don’t take immediate action on that message, means you can understand the impact of every campaign on every conversion. Determining which of these un-clicked assets were viewed during the conversion process and attributing their value to an eventual customer-driven event helps you make the right decisions when determining which social media sites are best suited for off site display ads, widgets and videos.

Understand the impact and value of video

Investing in video without understanding what kind of effect it’s having on your marketing results is a lost opportunity – and wasted money. Capturing a greater level of information makes it possible for you to get a clear picture of the return on your (no doubt) significant video advertising investment, while incorporating video metrics into a broader understanding of the success of your marketing programs.

Take advantage of user-generated content for re-marketing

Tracking and analysing user-generated content is a great way to optimise future campaigns and to showcase your highest rated products and services. Decisions about your products and services are being influenced by customer ratings, user feedback and other user-generated content, and it’s often happening away from your website. Use this content for product recommendations, and prioritise ‘highest rated’ or ‘most popular’ items as part of a product recommendations strategy.

How this affects your bottom line

Understanding how an investment in internet applications contributes to your bottom line means you can make smart decisions about what kind of media to employ – and how much to invest in it.

Facebook applications and website widgets are extremely popular vehicles for driving website traffic. However, to ensure you are making the right decision for your campaign, you need to know how much influence they have on website visits, pages views, and any conversion events such as orders and bookings.

Like any valuable marketing tool, engaging and understanding how social media outlets can increase or improve our online marketing efforts is vital in determining its place in our campaigns moving forward. We just need to ensure that, like other marketing activities, we are actively measuring and analysing the real effects they are having on conversions and our bottom line.

Great article by Kevin Mackin - thanks!
http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs/view/measuring-social-media-success-2414

What style of online video is best for your business?

2010-03-26T07:08:23Z

There really is no better way to clearly, simply and cost effectively showcase your product or service than with an online video. Just try and think of how else you would be able to achieve this result - national trade shows, product demonstrations, promotional staff or TV advertising - ouch..

Thanks to this informative and interesting Nett article:

What style of online video is best for your business? The challenge is to make it interesting and relevant. Take a look at the quality of most of the videos on YouTube and you'll see that cost is no longer a barrier to using video to promote your business. Bigger companies may have more to spend on high production-value video, but small companies can definitely benefit. But how to do this? (with Vivid Media's online video production help of course!)

Video options

The more senses that are involved in gathering information, the more engaging the process. If the experience of watching a video is stimulating, customers will stay on your site longer, increasing the opportunities for them to do business with you. So what types of video content can small businesses create to engage their customers online?

News

Advantages: Building brand awareness, generating leads

How to get it right: Avoid talking heads. Mix things up, such as using an opening shot before the speaker appears; insert charts and PowerPoint slides where appropriate; use music. And remember, make sure it's really news, not your company's credentials or history.

Greg Jarboe, president of SEO-PR and the author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, says: "Avoid visual banality. If you want viewers to pay attention to your video, show them something they have never seen before."

Demonstrations

Advantages: Direct selling, customer service, building traffic

How to get it right: Video is a great way to show your product or service in action, educate your customers and make it seem more real. Using video, it's easy to show them how to assemble or operate your product. Add text overlays to take them through the process step-by-step.

How-to/solutions

Advantages: Building traffic, direct selling

How to get it right: How-to videos put your product or service in context. For example, if you sell oatmeal you could produce cooking videos where someone uses a recipe that includes oatmeal. If you own a bike shop, you could produce a series of travelogues on interesting bike journeys in your city or suburb.

FAQs

Advantages: Direct selling, customer service

How to get it right: Let your customers tell you what you should make videos about. An example, says Kaplan, is an insurance company that produced a series of videos based on the most commonly-asked questions at their call centre. They performed A/B testing and directed web visitors to either a text-only page or the FAQ videos. The conversion rate via the video page was 240% higher than the text-only page, and average purchases via the video page were 13% higher.

Testimonials

Advantages: Building brand awareness, changing brand preference

How to get it right:We're social animals and you're more likely to build trust with customers by presenting them with believable people who like your product or service. But don't make them staged or too slick; keep it real, even if it's a bit rough around the edges.

"The most effective testimonial videos are those that show loyal users of your product or idea testifying to its virtues - when they don't know they're being filmed," says Jarboe.

Entertainment

Advantages: Viral effect, building traffic, building brand awareness

How to get it right: This is the hardest type of video to get right, but if you win, you win big. It needs to be memorable or funny, but in a way that reflects your brand, appeals to your target audience and gets them talking about your company in a way that encourages engagement and, eventually, purchase.

Advice when making your video

Don't cover off more than one or two points in your video.
Keep it short: attention spans are short online and you need a good reason to make a video longer than a minute. Kaplan says: "Don't assume that just by capturing your company presentation on video that someone will sit through a 30-minute on-demand version. Find the juicy, bite-sized bits and make them available in a format that's easy to digest."
Use a concisely-written script and rehearse; unless you're a polished speaker, ad libbing doesn't work.
Don't get too many people involved. Remember the old adage, the camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Keep it authentic and use your own employees or customers rather than actors. Videos are all about creating trust; make sure the content gives your audience confidenc

Video is a great marketing tool

2010-03-22T22:29:53Z

Video is a great marketing tool

A video that is designed to speak to your target audience can increase your interaction with your customers online. Consumers are more likely to be interested in your product or service after they have seen a video demonstrating it, for several reasons such as:

Firstly, video engages the viewer, bringing them closer to the company on a personal level. A video could introduce the team, the office/workshop and the surroundings.

Secondly, a video lets a viewer see the product or service in action, allowing them to relate to it. A demonstration of the product or an interview review can reinforce this.

Overall, a video can help in conveying trust and reassures the viewer that there is a real person behind the online portal offering the product service through.

Video increases your ranking on major search engines

Major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, now recognize that users enjoy (and expect!) to watch videos online.

In fact, video content is now indexed and displayed directly in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). See an example below, where “how to tie a tie” was searched on Google:

Imagine your video appearing on page 1 of Google for keywords that your target client would typically type to find your product or service. Add to this the fact that users are more likely to enter a sale after having watched a video and you will understand why video is the next big thing for online business!

Set up a Small Business on a budget...

2010-03-01T11:05:19Z

Embarking on a mission to start your own Small Business is a daunting one.

This is especially true for those of us how have enjoyed the majority of our working life being paid by someone else.

Working out where to look, who to use and what you actually need to set up the basics of your own business, when you don't yet have the resources, time or the money to get going, can be a huge challenge.

It can't hurt to develop a profile for yourself via free New Media avenues, and it is especially sensible, once you start promoting your business, of course, if your target market for your product or service, are large users of online or social media.

Some basic tips to get you going:

Start your own Blog talking about your topic
Register with Social Media apps, such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or other various free review or business listing sites
Join some local or online business networking or mentoring groups
Make sure you aren't afraid to mention what you do, when you speak with someone you know.
Send an email out to your friends and family to let you know what you are up to and what products and services you will provide (of course with a mates rates incentive)

There are so many things you can that are cost-free or cost very little to utilise.

Put aside some time and energy (outside of developing your core business) to think about ways to market your business..it will be well worthwhile and unbelievably more cost effective than just using traditional marketing and advertising avenues.

Keep in touch!

Which day of the week gets best Marketing cut-through?

2010-03-01T11:02:29Z

After putting days or weeks into planning a marketing/promotional/PR campaign, then not putting any thought into when is the best time to send out that comms, can be a huge waste of time and money!

If you've made the effort deciding to do it, planning it, writing it, designing it, then presumably it is some sort of important information that deserves a few minutes thought as to when is the best time to send it out.

Think about your target market and put yourselves in their shoes..

What time of day might best suit them and their lifestyle? What would they be doing on a Thursday afternoon at 5.30pm - is really the best time to send those types of people an email about your product?

If you expect a response or action from the target customers, could it be better to wait until a day that is closer to the time you want their action, so that your message might be more relevant for them?

Have a good think about whether timing is a trigger for your customer and tailor your communications accordingly.

Here's a simple (and possibly entertaining) breakdown of a generalised working week to see if it can help shed some light on the answer:

Mondays - catch up on emails from Friday and then spend the first half of the day consuming coffee trying to get your head back into work mode.

Tuesdays - start work focused, clear inbox, book meetings and spend the afternoon powering through 2 days of work.

Wednesdays - are feeling inspired by Tuesdays efficiency and start the day well, clear the bulk of the week's work.

Thursdays - start the day relaxed knowing that the bulk of work has been done, but it is also a great day for work functions, late night shopping, work lunches, launch parties or networking events.

Fridays - spend the first few hours panicking, finish anything urgent, then start relaxing into weekend mode and cleaning out inbox, planning, filing and counting the minutes until 4/5pm..

In my experience in Direct Marketing and having had access to sophisticated campaign reporting systems, along with discussions with many marketers and research companies, plus a healthy dose of consumer/client insight, the conclusion is that the best response rates can be achieved on:

1. Tuesdays - the day when people are paying the most attention to what comes into their inbox/in-tray..

2. Wednesdays - the next best thing to Tuesday...

Goodluck and I would love to hear any thoughts you may have..

Do you even know if you need Direct Marketing?

2010-03-01T10:49:58Z

If you own a business or are thinking of starting one, then you should know what Direct Marketing is.

Most of us are pretty sure we know what 'Marketing' or 'Sales' means to us as consumers, or to our businesses, but Direct Marketing, is often left out of a Small Business Marketing plan. It's probably just easier to print off some new brochures or put an ad in the paper and hope someone wants your product or service, right?

It’s the same for everyone..even you

Across any industry the fact is that Direct Marketing is the same for all. Work out what the customer wants, when and why they might want your communication, think about how they want it delivered and how they would like to be spoken to when they receive it.

Sounds basic when you only think about one single customer at a time. Translate that into a customer base of hundreds to tens of thousands and it becomes a little more complicated to execute and manage ongoing.

Speaking with many business people over the last few months those discussions continue to reinforce the belief that Direct Marketing can be of great benefit to Small Business.

Where’s your client list?

A bit of asking around often tells us that many small businesses have a list of clients that are managed via a pile of business cards, a bunch of email addresses or some are stored in an out-of-date excel spreadsheet.

Many would have kept these together with the intention of having them in a database or CRM system down the track, but were so busy running their business on an everyday level, they never quite got round to doing anything with them.

Time to clean up.

Taking the time to sort out, clean up and check current details is a very worthwhile project to undertake. Once your customer list is clearly and succinctly ordered then a business can think about how to separate out the customer base into relevant groups or segments that each might want different things from your business.

Know exactly who you are dealing with.

Once each segment is laid out in front of you, it will be a much easier task to then start thinking about how you can best communicate with each section of your existing customer base and that is, my friends, the essence of Direct Marketing.

Goodluck!