Category: inbound marketing

October 11, 2011October 11, 2011

9 Ways How Chief Marketing Officers can Harness Social Media

An IBM study found study found out that about 26 % of chief marketing officers track blogs and only 40 % follow any online communications. And the most shocking is that about 82 % still rely on traditional “old school” market research to plan their marketing strategies.

As social media is two way communication and offer tremendous opportunities for companies to get in touch with their audience this seem like somebody has not activated the phone or fax while somebody is scared of communication!

Companies like Coca-Cola, Nike, DELL, and Starbucks, only to mention a few shows how important social media and the conversation is which is taking place there. Companies which engage their target audience in social media show them that they care and are willing to listen what their audience is talking!

As a business which is active in social media you get direct feedback for your product and the chance to improve and evolve them that way your audience wants to buy them.

Companies which embrace social media and the opportunity to step into conversation will be the winners, there is no question!

Studies prove that companies which transform their communication skills to social media gain more trust and strengthen their brand.

Here are some simple steps how companies can step into social media conversation!

1.) Create a social media policy. There are a lot of examples only which you can use to get ideas.

2.) Get active and build a corporate blog where you publish information about the topics your audience cares of.

3.) Spread those blog articles in social media like Twitter, Facebook and also in LinkedIn if you are B2B focused.

4.) Listen to the conversation in social media networks and if you have something beneficial to contribute do it, if not listen further.

5.) As you are in conversation keep the water cooking and ask open questions, ask for recommendations and critics and answer your audiences’ questions.

6.) Be always honest! Do not even try to hold something back.

7.) Be authentic! People forgive mistakes but they not forgive to be ripped so easily!

8.) When you get critics than deal with it in a professional way! Critics and complaints are great to step into discussion and show your point and to show that you care and are willing to improve your products and services.

9.) Measure your doings to learn where the social media conversation is leading your business.

As social media is no trend it will not vanish and Chief Marketing Officers should very quickly embrace this powerful communication channel.

If you still believe your audience is not in social media than prove this by doing research there for your industries top key words or for your competitors and you will see by yourself if other companies have already take action there to get in touch, maybe with your recent customers.

—What have been your experiences with social media for your company? I am looking forward to your feedback.

Further important resources:

Marketers struggle to harness social media – survey

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September 29, 2011October 7, 2011

Is Google+ a good bet for your business?

When Google+ was launched some people had the opinion that it will destroy Facebook in a short time period. Within the first weeks which have been running under invitation only to get an Google+ account, Google+ as been able to register more than ten million users.

Some observer had the opinion that a big exodus from Facebook to G+ will happen and maybe Facebook had the same in mind when they begun to close loopholes to expert contacts to Google+.

But this has not happen. Sure users which use Facebook are also on G+ now but no exodus took place.

The last estimations about the number of G+ users go in a range of 40 million and up. With its 750 million and daily growing base of global users Facebook does not need to be scared of G+ yet.

Imagine you went several years back and had the chance to register with Facebook when they had about 40 million users. Can you imagine how big your possible network could grow and how far would be your brands range globally?

This is your chance now to turn the wheel of time several years back and get into the game. Probably this will be your last chance to become part of massively growing social network for the next ten years. Position your business now, before you competitor does!

G+ actually offer personal profiles only but is also experimenting with company profiles similar as Facebook Pages.

The best thing what you can do as a business person or marketer is to register a personal profile with G+ which is now open for everybody and help your employees and coworkers to do the same.

G+ is ruled by the social networking rules too!

Build relationships and communicate in a professional and beneficial way to your Circles! This will help you to increase the number of connection and when the day has come that you can register your business page on G+ than you hopefully have a large and influential audience with which you maintain good relationships. This could jumpstart your G+ Business Page in a very powerful way.

To take action now can make huge a difference for your business. As G+ and social media are no secrets anymore, simply any business is tried to get a share of the cake.

Businesses that wait will be left behind and have to fight an uphill battle reach a reasonable position, but will never overtaking those who came first. That’s for sure!

Here are some simple tips for you to take advantage of G+ NOW!

1. Go to Google and register a G+.
2. Complete your profile and upload a personal picture.
3. Research who of your business partners and other connections is actually on G+ and invite them.
4. Place the G+ widget on your website and blog so your visitors can use this as an opportunity to connect with from there.
5. Look daily through your STREAM and see if you can contribute to your Circles news or if there are interesting information which you could share.
6. When some of your Circles comment your info than this are you weak up call to start the conversation. Ask some open question.
7. If you operate your own corporate or personal blog you could share your latest post in your STREAM.

And as you are waiting for the G+ Business Page to come you have the opportunity to get into G+, build your circles, expand your reach and set you and your business in advanced position. And this all with no pressure or any deadlines!

–How about you, how do use G+ actually? I am looking forward to your comment.

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September 26, 2011October 7, 2011

SHOCKING: How to Destroy your Business Reputation? BUY leads!

Today as I went through LinkedIn a group got my attention. It was the group about Online Lead Generation which I am a member of and where I contribute if there is a topic where I can help?

But today I went through the posts and I thought OMG, they are talking about buying leads. The word “Business Suicide” went through my brain.

Especially one provider caught my attention and I went to look into his background. This provider claimed to „generate thousands of real time leads in just about every vertical”!

Puhh I thought, this is a tough proposition and let’s see what’s behind them! I checked his website and guess what?

– An Alexa Rank of only 2,170,186 (means about 5 -10 unique visitors daily)
– 13 Google Indexed Pages (lesser pages means, lesser chances to get indexed and found on the search engines)
– Only 92 Backlinks (Qualified back links are one of the SEO strategies to get found, the more the better)
– No Corporate Blog (content marketing through blogging is the key to get found and to get leads)
– No presence in social media: no Facebook Business Page and no Twitter (43 percent of all online consumers are social media fans or followers, if you are not there you are missing them)
No Web DNA…. (maybe a ghost 😉 )

I asked him two question, I am curious if I will get any educated answer.

Q: How did you establish a business relationship to those leads?
Q: Why should those leads do business with the people who buy those leads from you?

Disussion Update

If you like to follow this discussion on LinkedIn, you can find it here.

Why did I done this you might ask?

Simple answer: I was shocked by that proposition made there and more shocked me that businesses believe this kind of fairytales and put their business on risk without to know what they are doing!

To buy leads is a waste of time and money and WILL harm the reputation of your business FOR SURE!

When you buy leads it is the same like you open the yellow pages and start cold calling from A-Z.

The people you reach do not know YOU, they did not requested to be contacted from YOU and they did not explained an interest in YOUR products and services previously!

By buying those leads – their addresses and bother those people you only show one thing, that your business has no USP and your products and services have no value for them.

You ask why?

If it would be the opposite you wouldn’t be dependent on paid leads! Instead of you would generate leads and customers automatically!

Boooom. You don’t like what I say!

So before you think about to pay for addresses, you should ask yourself why do you need to buy them and why do you not generate enough recommendations and leads from your existing customers actually?

To purchase leads is only a drip onto the hot stone. This will not solve your long-term issue and will not bring you closer to your business goals.

The opposite is the fact: The longer you depend on bought leads the more your chances will decrease to gain a competitive advantage!

Believe it or not you will loose business in the long term!

Stop buying leads and start build relationships. Build trust and credibility through content publishing (blogging) and two way conversations in social media. This is where you can generate highly valuable target leads with an PROVEN up to 55% conversion rate.

Start inbound marketing strategy by starting your own corporate blog ASAP!

69% of Businesses Attribute Blogging to Increased Leads [Data]

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound marketing can help you to:

A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget.
B. Stand out of your competition.
C. Generate a massive amount of leads.
D. Get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates.
E. Increase your customers and sales.

“Get seen and you get visited! “

— How about you? How are your experiences with bought leads?

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September 24, 2011October 7, 2011

How to Take Advantage from Mobile Marketing & Location Based Marketing

Is mobile marketing recently a part of your inbound marketing strategy?

More and more people worldwide use mobile devices daily to access the web, to shop and to network on social media sites. Social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have apps out there to make it dump easy to communicate and update the network from the run.

To ignore this growing mobile marketing trend could be a very dangerous failure for your business!

To get your piece of the pie from this trend the first thing you need to do is to optimize your website and email communication for mobile use!

Did you thought about to make use of mobile apps to improve your location based marketing?

Services like Foursquare are best examples how businesses use location based marketing to reach a wider audience.

Some facts:

People are increasingly use mobile devices to access content on the web!

In March 2011, nearly 39% of US mobile subscribers were browsing the internet using their mobile device. That’s up by 2.2 percentage points from just 3 months prior.
Mobile apps are almost as popular as browsers; 37% of subscribers used downloaded apps.
Subscribers are also increasingly using social networks on their phones. In March, 27.3% indicated they used a social network on their mobile phone, up from 24.7% just 3 months prior.

Source: HubSpot

Actually about 30% of companies who are using Mobile Marketing do strategic lead generation through this! With only one third of the companies you and your business still have wide opportunities to position in this area!

As this trends evolves more and more businesses get ready to get there communication done in the mobile and location based marketing area, you should not wait to get active here. Otherwise you are put on risk to get left behind.

An uphill battle later could cost you more than to be with the trend now!

Further sources:

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September 20, 2011October 7, 2011

Social Media Marketing Daily Tasks or How to eat an Elephant?

Most people who are interested to market their business on the web and especially in social media become overwhelmed of the necessary tasks which need to be done to achieve any serious results.

They feel that they need to handle an avalanche of information and requirements to get the necessary steps done.

And I fully agree with this. Inbound marketing which also includes, content creation as blogging and marketing this content through social media channels is a very time consuming business!

As any other marketing activity you cannot expect to do all the necessary tasks at once. You also need a strategic plan where you set timeframes to do your necessary inbound marketing tasks and which you can stick to. Discipline is a key factor!

Above in the title I ask how to eat an elephant? This is very simple, bit by bit!

As any other work you need to split your inbound marketing in daily tasks. You have five working days you can use. You need to determine how much time you can invest daily and from this point you can start.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Content creation – blogging

As blogging is a key factor for lead generation we suggest to blog no matter which kind of other content you have or want to publish!

Which kind of content is the best fit for your target audience, your buyer personas?

Can you reach your audience with video, eBooks, reports, whitepapers, and pictures, blog commenting or any other piece of content?

Find out which kind of content has the best opportunities in your industry, and this does not mean it must be the same old way like your competitors do it! Be creative. When you competitor does eBook, than you can do video! When they do video than you can do eBooks! To get ideas and inspiration just look through other industries how and what kind of other content thy produce.

Social Media / Forums

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and industry related forums are great place to get seen from your future clients. These places are also great to improve your of page SEO. When you are active there, means when you get into the conversation and share your content there than you increase your chances to found in the search engines!

Lead Generation / Conversion

Content creation and social media marketing are great tools to drive interested visitors to SEO optimized landing pages (lead capture pages) to get them into you database to follow up and to make them paying customers through the time.

Lead Nurturing

As you generate leads you should stay in touch with them. But avoid sales pitches. Instead of do the same which whom you have generated your leads. Inform them with interesting and share worthy content, solve problems, answer questions and simply stay in touch with them, stay visible!

Closed-Loop Analysis

Analyze your doings to determine where your lead and revenue coming from measure refine and improve your content creation, social media marketing, lead nurturing and analysis.

Repeat this process above!

Example: The daily inbound marketing tasks!

Monday

Facebook 15 minutes
Twitter 15 minutes
LinkedIn 15 minutes
Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Tuesday

Facebook 15 minutes
Twitter 15 minutes
LinkedIn 15 minutes
Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Wednesday

Facebook 15 minutes
Twitter 15 minutes
LinkedIn 15 minutes
Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Thursday

Facebook 15 minutes
Twitter 15 minutes
LinkedIn 15 minutes
Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Friday

Facebook 15 minutes
Twitter 15 minutes
LinkedIn 15 minutes
Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Check analytics 15 minutes

Refine tasks 30 minutes

———

To effectively profit from your web marketing efforts you should plan to invest about 2.5 hrs. daily and more, this depends on your business goals.

You also can split this work to different persons in your company.

— What do you think and how get you the daily web marketing tasks done?

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September 17, 2011October 7, 2011

Bloggers, Stop Thinking… “Just Do It”

We all know that a personal blog and professional blog are inherently different to the core. A professional blog is set up to drive traffic and conversions, but I feel strongly that running a successful corporate blog is less about running a “business” and more about simply grinding out quality content.

I’ve been in online marketing for a little more than a year, and one thing I’ve learned is that the majority of online marketers are “thinkers” and there are very little “doers.” People who will go out of their way to evaluate needs and fill them immediately themselves are doers.

Thinkers can understand needs but they make plans to do them. The inherent problem here, is that not everything is going to run like a well-oiled machine in blogging, so thinkers get caught trying to correct non critical problems when the doers are out engaging. In this post, I’ll explain how the motto “Just Do It” explains why the doers are successful in the blog world, and the thinkers are left thinking.

Blogging Is Raw, Organic

One of the most appealing aspects of blogging and reading blogs is the fact that it is real. Blogging is inherently a less corporate and more human way to communicate with your audience. Thinking too much about what you are saying strips the human, organic elements that make blog posts engaging. As we all know, successful blogs are shareable and engaging.

De-corporatizing your blog and encouraging informational, fun posts will improve your social influence and will help you build a community faster. Just think about the links you click on Twitter. Chances are you are clicking on “6 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Dr. Seuss” over an article called “6 Tips for New Bloggers.”

Don’t Plan…Write

Thinkers research keywords for titles to rank for and plan out posts based on targets. Doers write about content that is exciting to them. Forcing a blog post based on keyword opportunities and Google Trends is inhibiting your writing. I’m willing to bet 9 times out of 10, a blog post that is written from emotion and necessity will trump engagement over a post that is written from SEO opportunities.

What I’m ultimately trying to say is, blogging is simple. It doesn’t need to be a systematic process of checks and balances to be effective. It simply needs to make a reader want to share it with his/her friends.

Now this doesn’t mean that utilizing blogging “street smarts” won’t help you. Reaching out to contacts to help promote content and going the extra mile, sometimes pays off in big ways. For the most part, however, don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep a consistent tone and write consistent blog posts you take pride in, the readers will follow!

About the author:

Matt Krautstrunk is a writer on topics ranging from social media marketing to credit card processing at Business.com. You can reach Matt on Twitter @mattkrautstrunk, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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September 16, 2011October 7, 2011

4 Powerful Reasons to Start Your Corporate Blog

The Technorati Study: “State of the Blogosphere 2010” shows Corporate blogs have become a powerful business marketing tool for companies.

With the increasing demand of finding new and creative ways to get the attention of future buyers and recent customers, corporate blogs are established as a trust and credibility building way to show expertise and to get in touch with target audience.

Companies like IBM use blogging to get seen online. Every person there who wants to write a blog gets the chance to write about the things they are interested in, not only about IBM related products.

As blogging is a clear way of communication a business should be authentic and communicate in a human way to become successful with their blogging, content and social media marketing.

Businesses that blog expand their blogging engagement with the help of strategic social media engagement to spread their content and to step into a two way conversation with their audience. Studies show that 57% of companies who blog get customers through their blogging effort!

Blogging used with the power of social media sharing brings blog posts to a wide audience. This audience is interested in this kind of content as it is their primary source to research for products and services on the web.

“Reach” is the key factor which decides the success or failure of a corporate blog.

These days buyers’ research proffered on blogs and in social media to find products and services.

4 reasons to start a corporate blog:

Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic.
Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links.
Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines.
Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads.

These numbers are good reasons for a business to consider blogging for content marketing!

Blogging is the basic way of content marketing. Which means it is very easy to start with reasonable marketing investment.

There is clear context between the number of published articles, website traffic and generated business leads. The more articles are published the more outposts are there to get found from future customers on the web.

To be successful with corporate blogging, increase reach, web traffic and leads it takes these points:

— Publish high quality articles, which are interesting and share worthy.

— Participate in social media and in top rank forums to gain larger exposure.

— Submit your blogs to blog directories and to top ranked Blog Search Engines.

— Offer free reports to visitors to increase their interest in your website.

There is no question that businesses who utilize blogging gain a massive competitive advantage against those who do not blog.

— What do you think? Do you use a corporate blog?

Further important resources:

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September 13, 2011October 7, 2011

10 Great Ways How to Reach Global B2B Customers with LinkedIn

LinkedIn has about 100 million users from all over the world and the majority of 56% comes from outside the US.

As the biggest business related social network, LinkedIn offers large opportunities for B2B to get in touch with future and to stay in touch with recent business partners.

LinkedIn offers a wide toolset of features to get seen from future business partners. To list all of them would lead to far. But let me mention some which you can use right away.

For your profile:

You personal profiles are the first stage you have to reach. Register with LinkedIn and complete your profile. Take care to use keywords related to your business. This makes it much easier for the search engines to index your profile and for future customers to find it during their research online.

-Twitter stream

You can add your Twitter stream to your LinkedIn profile. This stream can encourage visitors of your to become more curious about what you do.

-Publications

Ad your publications and a web link where your profile visitor can read or download them. So you can lead visitors of your profile directly to landing page to get them registered as lead.

-Ad your blog

Here you can add your blog RSS feed and all blog articles you publish will also be visible on your personal LinkedIn page.

-Recommendations

A great way to capture attention is when other people talk about you and your qualities. Her you have the opportunity to ask for recommendations of your network members you already have worked with. This can increase your credibility with people who did not know you before.

-Additional Information

Here you can add your websites with up to three links, your Twitter with up to two links and your interests which can be made of keywords to get better found from search engines.

LinkedIn Company Pages:

This is where you can introduce your company to the LinkedIn audience.

-Overview

Here you can write a brief description about your business and how it benefits the future customer.

-Recent Tweets / Recent Blog Posts

As in the personal profile you can add your Twitter account to make your Twitter stream visible on LinkedIn as well and your corporate blog to show your blog articles on your LinkedIn company page.

-Careers

Here it is where you can post jobs on LinkedIn to find candidates on the world’s largest professional network.

-Products & Services

This is my personal favorite of all LinkedIn company page features. Here you have the great opportunity to introduce your products and services to you audience. You can add a description and a picture of the product or service. This is a valuable opportunity on the world’s largest professional network with it 100 million users!

-Analytics

To know what’s going on your LinkedIn company page is important for you. By this analytics tool you get a clear picture what going on, on your company page. So you can measure, observer and improve your LinkedIn marketing.

Keep in mind that all of the above described features are for free. The only thing you have to do is to make seriously use of them. By seriously use those above features you empower your LinkedIn to a powerful business outpost for your company. An additional toolset of chances to get attention, visitors to your website and business leads to increase revenue and profit.

It is as simple as that! Get on LinkedIn be persistent and serious about the goals you want to achieve from your LinkedIn marketing time investment!

–What do you think about LinkedIn for business? I am looking forward to your comments below.

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September 12, 2011October 7, 2011

3 Ways how to use Online Video for Business Lead Generation

The average internet user is watching 30 minutes of video online daily! These people mostly lookout for entertainment.

This opens wide opportunities for your business to get your products and services in front of potential future buyers when they are looking.

The use of online video is growing as people also increasingly watch videos from their mobile devices.

Videos made as product pitches are not a good bet to attract interested people. Also image videos do not work as a potential viral marketing tool.

Your business should use online video to inform and to entertain your audience. Take care to also optimize your video for mobile. As the smart phone use grows you should keep in mind that these users are also able to see your videos on their mobile devices. Here is an interesting article about video sizes.

Smartphone Trends Infographic:

For information / education: You can show your products in action or explain product features in a more understandable way through video. Let your satisfied customers talk about your products and publish and market those videos everywhere on the web.

Watch this video:

For communication: You can do a video blog, where you instead of to write articles can do videos. Steve Garfield’s video blog.

Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the Internet’s first video bloggers, Garfield began experimenting with the technique in 2002 and launched his own video blog on January 1, 2004.

For entertainment: Nobody says that a product video needs to be boring! You can be creative and do an entertaining product video which people like and share.

Watch this video:

If you have a lack of ideas just crowd source your video to your audience, for example to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

Do a contest for the best crowd sourced video! So you can create a buzz on the web, get a lot of attention from your target audience, a ton of creative videos online which mention your brand and can lead further interested people to your business.

Online Video Facts Infographic:

The easiest way for you to profit from online video for your business is to do videos by yourself and publish them in your corporate blog on Youtube, Facebook and other videos channels on the web.

You can simply start your video by using the camera you already have. This can be the cam from you smart phone or any other cam you have. Start doing videos of your company and your products. Ask your collages to explain one of your products in plain English and upload, add a descriptive title, tag and describe this video to help search engines to index it and your audience to find it.

Embed it to your website, write a blog post about the video topic and embed it in your corporate blog. Market it on your social media channels and ask for comments and opinions.

Than do the next video and so on.

Don’t try to do a perfect video. There is no such thing like a perfect video on the web!

With the time you will get a better routine and your videos will become better and better. But this will only happen if you start doing them.

— How do you use online video for business? I am looking forward to your comment below.

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12 Powerful Ways How To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Presence

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September 1, 2011October 7, 2011

Study shows: 20 of 100 of your customers are researching on Google

More interesting is that 20 percent of searches on Google each day have NEVER been searched for before. So every day 20 percent of chances are completely new with new search terms which include products and services.

“Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation where he also explained that 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before.”

People hear from their friends’ info about products and services and then they go to their favorite search engines and try to find more information on.

What does this mean for your business? More and more people research online on search engines before they buy products and services. The chances are good that an interesting amount of your target audience is also looking for products and services on the web which you also have to offer.

The chances are also good that those people do not know your business and what you have to offer.

And here is your big opportunity to profit from this fact.

Here are some tips how you can get more seen on the web:

To get found online you need to be active and visible there where your audience is. The best and proven way to get seen on the web is content marketing. Content marketing is very simple and easy to do.

You should publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it in social media.

Content is everything you have from your business which can be published online. For example photos, articles, videos published on Flickr, forums, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, document and video sharing platforms like Slideshare and YouTube.

But it is not enough to publish the content. To tag it right with long tail keywords and include a keyword rich description can also help to get it found on the search engines.

By publishing content through a corporate blog every blog article you publish becomes an outpost of your business online.

Market your blog articles in social media. Social media content is indexed by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and your social media activities increase your chances to get found on search results of search engines from people who are looking for products and services you also have to offer. Social media marketing has become the new SEO!

Companies who blog generate more traffic and more business leads.

Find further spaces to publish other kind of content and repeat this. Make content marketing to an important part of your marketing strategy.

The more outposts you establish online the more chances you have to get found from future clients.

Published content increases the brand recognition of a business and can earn a trust and credibility with its target audience. The more interesting content a business publishes on the web the higher are the chances that people will find it also interesting and share worthy and share it with their friends and their social network. This spreads your brand to undefined reach and attracts attention from people which did not know you before.

This effect multiplies! The more content, the more outpost, the more chances to get shared and to get seen from new people the more potential clients you will attract to your business!

Companies which do the content marketing strategy seriously get the most traffic through their outposts on the web. The content there is indexed by search engines and appears in search results when the used keywords are typed into search engines!

Smart companies direct this “outpost traffic” to optimized landing pages to generate business leads, to get new customers and increase revenue!

Marketing takeaway tip: Start to publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it on social media. The more content you publish, the more your chances will increase to get found from future customer.

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August 31, 2011October 7, 2011

Overtake 33 Percent of your Competition by Measure your Marketing ROI

If you are in B2B than this data could be very interesting for you! Moreover if you read them backwards you can learn how to overtake about 33% of your competition by simply measure your marketing ROI.

A new research done be Sagefrog Marketing Group and reported be eMarketer found out that about 33% of B2B companies did not track return on investment (ROI) at all.

Do you measure your marketing ROI? If not yet you should do it as soon as possible. To measure the marketing ROI is easier than you think.

What does this mean to your business when you are selling primarily to B2B?

When you actually are able to measure your marketing ROI effectively this could mean that your marketing department is working closely with your sales department to generate and to close leads. This also means you have set efficient CRM and follow processes to support your lead to customer conversion, measurement and reporting.

But if you have not already done these steps above than you will need to rethink your business strategy if you want to overtake about 33% of your competition by apply these simple tasks and processes to your business.

To apply powerful marketing ROI measurement you will need to invest time, effort and money. You will need to do an audit of your whole business and recent processes to learn where you stand at the moment.

From this point you can do a plan to execute your pathway to marketing ROI measurement and to overtake the mentioned 33% of your B2B competition. But be aware that your competition is also not sleeping and they read the news and such reports like this as well. So you should start right away to improve your market position.

Here are some quick steps you could do make your marketing ROI more visible:

– Measure your traffic and the traffic sources.
– Find out which of your pages attract the most traffic and the how long the visitors stay on those pages.
– Optimize those pages and include effective business lead generation tactics on those pages. You could do call to action and you could offer more bonus info by registration through a short form.
– Use technologies like marketing automation software to help you to do the things smarter.
– Segment the generated leads to track the best and most successful lead sources.
– When you push a new lead to your sales, than they should touch the lead ASAP and report the recent lead outcome. They should do this with an effective CRM. By the way Microsoft Excel is not an effective CRM system. Instead of you could use one of the several very high qualities and less cost hosted solutions on the market.

Hosted CRM Solutions:

– Track the way of each lead from the visit at one of your websites, the registration on a landing page, the push to a sales person, through the lead nurturing process and the closing.
– Establish reliable and track able communication ways between marketing and sales so things can be improved in real time.
– Make the reporting of these data and the recent marketing ROI to a real time task to hold your marketing transparent and all people involved accountable for the results.

With these activities you will be able to see from which marketing activities and sources you gain your best ROI and to improve your recent marketing tasks to increase your revenue.

Marketing takeaway tip: To measure your marketing ROI is the same thing as check a course of a ship at high seas. If you do not check your course in your business you will not be able to reach your goals on the long term. Stop relying on luck or your experience. It’s a real time world where things happen and change within minutes. There is a lot of technology out there to help you. Set yourself in the position to see your business in real time. This helps you to make decisions in real time as well. To know where your marketing budget is going and what you get out can make the difference between to overtake the 33% of your competition or to get left behind and lose the game!

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August 9, 2011October 7, 2011

Is your health care institution prepared to communicate in social media?

A study done by National Research, a health care research firm discovered that 96% of their respondents use Facebook, 28% of their respondents use YouTube and 22% of their respondents use Twitter to research on information about health care.

The study shows that people which are more likely to use social media for health care information research have an average age of 42 and live in households $75,000 annual earnings or more available.

National Research found out that the most Americans still rely on professional -hospital websites as their main source for research on information about health care but also combine information from social media websites which 11.5% of respondents gather with mobile devices like smart phones and apps.

What does it mean for hospitals, local doctors and other health care related businesses to engage in social media in real time?

When people are looking for products and services on the web they go to Google first to do their research.

When they research about services you also have to offer what will they find?
Will they find your Health care organizations to give the answers to their questions?
What will they find about you? W
ill they find helpful information which benefit there health, if yes how much information is online accessible from your source?
Do you know what’s talked about your health care organization in social media right now?
Do you respond in real time?

Social media is conversation!

Conversation is happen with o without your participation. The point is if you do not participate you lose your chance to explain your point of view. You also lose the chances to show your professional competence and the opportunity to gain trust and credibility in the health care sector.

Health care organizations which miss this opportunity to engage their audience who is actively researching for health care information will be left behind after the smart organizations which embrace social media and understand the necessity of conversation to show their professional competence and to gain trust and credibility at the moment when their opinion is requested and needed.

Open and honest conversation earns health care organizations a lot of credibility and can result in an increase in wide exposure for their organization.

Open and honest conversation can also increase business for a health care organizations by simply being there when potential help is needed and to offer professional competence and information in real time when it is needed!

What should you do to secure your share of health care conversation in social media?

Your first step should be to establish a presence in social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

As the next step you should set alerts through Google Alerts to stay on track what’s talked about you and your health care organization. This gives you the opportunity to react in real time and you should use this opportunity to do so!

The strategy to go to different influential groups and listen to the conversation should be your third step. Listen and if you have something beneficial to contribute, than do it otherwise listen further.

By contributing to discussions in a professional manor you attract attention of your target audience and the level of quality of your contribution decides how you will be seen from your audience and your influence.

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Get on social media, there where your audience is. Participate in conversation in a professional and beneficial way and increase your chances to and get seen, to gain trust and credibility when your audience is researching on Google for services you also have to offer.

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August 4, 2011October 7, 2011

Show me the social media Return on Investment

The Return on Investment of social media is measurable and this is much easier than you think.

There for you need the right platform which displays all tasks, traffic, lead sources and includes them into CRM and financial software.

To get this done social media needs to be seen as part of an integral strategy called Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, social media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

A seriously executed Inbound Marketing strategy saves up to 62% of the marketing budget and increases lead conversion rate by up to 55%.

A study done by the “MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Sloan Institute” has discovered that businesses which use Inbound Marketing can reach up to 13% revenue growth in a time period of 18-24 month, depending on the target market.

To get measureable results and even your up to 13% revenue growth for your business out of Social media you need to do some more things than only to have a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account.

Social media is a communication channel. So you need to communicate with your target audience!

About which topics you should communicate with your audience? Simply about anything related to your market which solves your audiences’ problem!

To do this effectively a corporate blog can be a great way to publish helpful information and start the conversation through blogging and on social media as well.

You should also consider to distribute helpful and share worthy information in any channel where your audience could do research online for products and services in your industry.

When your audience researches for products and services from your industry they go to Google first. Here they are able to take a closer look to different topics for their search term.

Everything, here all the search results appear for the requested keywords.

Images, here all the search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any picture published to the web.

Videos, here all the search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any video published to the web.

News, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any news published to the web.

Shopping, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any shopping published to the web.

Books, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any book published to the web.

Blogs, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any blog article published to the web.

Discussions, here all search results which appear for the requested keywords and are related to any discussion published to the web.

When you go through these search options, than you can discover communication opportunities, to position yourself where your competition actually is not active.

Simply type in your company URL address and see what’s coming up under these above search options about you.

When you are done, repeat this with your best competitors URL address.

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Discover creative ways to reach your target audience to set you apart of your competition.

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