Social Media Marketing needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and frankly it’s plan is different for every business. However, to ignore SMM would be a fool hardy decision. Most marketing plans today should include a well thought out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, a very detailed keyword rich Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign married with a Social Media Marketing (SMM) initiative. If your business includes off-line strategies then they need to support and involve all these methods.
The following post is Mitch Joel, well I let it speak for itself….
In this interview, Mitch Joel shares some of the big ideas behind his new book, “Six Pixels of Separation”:
Digital channels shift the marketing focal point. Social media and other digital platforms now enable brands to focus on who, rather than how many people, they can put a message in front of.
Think “with” not “instead of.” Companies should not halt what they are currently doing and shift all attention to the digital world; it’s all about effectively integrating those social media channels with what you already have in place.
Don’t underestimate the “power of lazy.” We still live in a world where many people prefer to consume, rather than create, digital information.
As you probably know by now, real estate is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart — quite literally. My wife is a real estate agent. My sister is a real estate agent. My dad opened his own agency in the 1950s and still works from a home office today as he approaches a tender 80 years old. It’s not just personal, though; real estate is all about small business and I try to watch what’s happening in the industry as much as possible.
Lately, I’ve been watching Google take one baby step after another, pushing into real estate as quietly as Google can do anything. Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine. The creation of individual “place pages” for property listings is Google’s latest step toward building out what I believe will be a challenger to any web site, big or small, that offers property listings. The article has apparently earned a lot of buzz today around real estate circles, and I want to point out two posts that caught my eye:
Author Brian Boero says, rightly so if you ask me, “Sure, Trulia, Zillow and a hundred other online real estate sites do this. But this is Google, folks – a force so large that it can upend entire categories overnight.”
Despite the apparently contrary headline, I think author John Rowles and I are in agreement on what’s going on here. He makes the smart suggestion that Google could turn the Local Business Center into a Local Property Listings Center and allow the property owner and/or real estate professional to manage the listing the same way local businesses can manage their business information. Says John:
“Given that option, it’s easy to see how people, who are as distrustful of real estate agents as they have ever been in the wake of housing bubble, might migrate to a real estate information platform that is outside the industry’s control and has the added benefit of the familiar Google user experience.
When Google puts something like this out there, THEN its time to freak out if you are NAR, a local MLS, Move Inc, an IDX vendor, etc..
Until then, enjoy the borrowed time.”
Borrowed time. I think that’s a great way to put it right now.
On the role of real-time search results in the search engine industry, Google has long realized that it falls short in terms of real-time search and has been busy! In recent months Google was working on a secret project: a complete renovation of the architecture in Google’s web search.
If you want to watch the videos:
…. and
Google Caffeine: Under the Cover
Google spokesperson Matt Cutts explains that Google Caffeine changes “under the cover” event. On Google’s user interface will change nothing. Caffeine Google’s search results are largely similar. The big difference is that new content much faster will appear in the top 10 Google Caffeine. This will ultimately lead to faster, more accurate and complete information in Google’s search results.
Real-time search
“Google is certainly faster Caffeine. New content will be indexed twice as fast. Google is rolling out some new adjustments to their sandbox. Performance, speed, reliability, accuracy, Relevancy and other parameters are some features that are being improved.
Here are some questions and answers, discussed on Matt Cutts Blog:
Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?
A: If you search on URL you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.
Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?
A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.
Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.
Q: How do I give Google feedback?
A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.
Conclusion #1
Business owners need to heavily promote & manage social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,Linkedin, and others. It also means photo sharing sites such as Picasa Web Albums & Flicker are important. It also means means blogs & local search sites such as yelp and citysearch are important….
Bottom Line folks Social Media is here to stay and your business needs to be in front of people looking for you…..
Conclusion #2
Business owners need Quality Content. Why? When you are signed into your Google account (many business owners are always signed in) Google is showing results from Social Circles in the result! How crazy is that. That means if we get all of our clients to follow us on Twitter, or all interested business owners to connect with us on Linkedin, or people follow us on YouTube.com.
THIS MEANS WHEN WE PUBLISH NEW CONTENT THEY SEE THAT CONTENT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS.
What a great way to target your target market. Google is practically telling everyone with this new addition that CONTENT is the new LINK VALUE online!
Pay Per Click Management – for your business or a not?
Although search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent way to get free traffic to your website, it’s not all of the available traffic. Even more exposure for your website can be gained through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Research shows that nearly 70% of targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
Speedy and Highly Targeted
A major advantage of a campaign is that it is highly targeted to people that are searching for what you have to offer. A professional PPC management company can easily find the right keywords and test them properly, helping make your campaign very cost-effective. Conversion rates are easily measurable if you have knowledge of proper tracking methods. You can collect data related to conversion rate, cost per sale and click-through rate (CTR), allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your ad. Another huge advantage is that all of the vital feedback from your ad testing is immediate. Ad results are available very quickly, and can be adjusted and retested in a short amount of time.
Test, Test and Test Again!
Knowledge of testing various campaigns to determine which will be most effective is vital in helping spend your marketing budget wisely. A professional PPC management company has the expertise to identify keywords for testing, determine maximum cost per click, write effective ads, create compelling copy, conduct detailed tracking, and make adjustments as needed to maximise the effectiveness of your advertising pounds. Without in-depth knowledge in all of these areas, a PPC campaign can end up costing much more money than it needs to. The profits gained from your investment in hiring professionals to manage your PPC campaigns is well worth the cost.
Track It!
The biggest pitfall encountered by inexperienced PPC managers is the lack of knowledge when it comes to tracking. It is absolutely crucial to know precisely what traffic you are receiving, where it originated from, the keywords that were used, where the user went using those keywords, and which keyword combinations get the best results. A successful campaign includes not only selecting and tracking the correct keywords, but determining proper bid prices, writing good ad copy, creating compelling landing pages, creating search engine friendly links and headings, streamlining usability, and writing those all important calls to action. Professional companies managing PPC campaigns are highly skilled in tracking every aspect of a campaign and adjusting all of the crucial items to maximise your PPC profits.
The first thing I did today when waking was to run down to get some coffee. I needed caffeine in a bad way. You see, I was challenged to answer a question, can you quantify a ROI with Social Media Marketing? I already knew the answer however let me bore you a bit of what I found when searching for this topic. Google, Yahoo and Bing each had over 14 million results for “Social Media Marketing ROI’’s”. So I set out on a mission to read them all……just kidding, I barely got off the first page when it struck me.
I couldn’t help but think, “my audience is Small Businesses and if I am going to be true to this I need to be painfully blunt.” Of all the posts I read on this seemingly elusive question; “Can you put a ROI on Social Media Marketing” all and I do mean all were over intellectual attempts at trying to impress others that they have the answer. Some well meaning, others a blatant marketing campaign. Here are some of the babble.
“an overarching truth about business: The best marketing strategies, those that yield long-term value, are based not on trends, anecdotal evidence, or past “success stories” but on new scientific methods and metrics explicitly developed for analyzing often-imprecise data.”
HUH?
“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”
Really now!
“No marketing program has value that can be measured separately or independently. The value of marketing derives from its ability to help the organization implement its strategy … Marketing programs seldom have a direct impact on financial outcomes such as increased revenues, lowered costs, and higher profits. (Rather,) Marketing affects financial outcomes through chains of cause-and-effect relationships.”
… No impact? Ouch!
At the risk of insulting some of my colleagues I am going to stop there. The point I want to emphasize here is this; small businesses are concerned with one thing, can we make money? We can all agree ROI is hard to measure or because it is too time consuming, many small businesses shy away from social media. I myself own a small business and I am largely concerned with my bottom line. How we get to a good bottom line is with constant Plan, Do, and Review with marketing as a whole.
Ultimately, the key question to ask when measuring engagement is, Are we getting what we want out of the conversation? When you ask businesses why they are participating in social media, what do they say? Most, “to make money,” If they say, “to grow our business,” they’re just saying, “to make money,” in a nicer way. If they say, “to participate in the conversation,” which is the more appropriate reason to be involved in the social web.
In it’s simplest term let me tell you the why you need to be engaged in this type of marketing, however, Social Media on it’s own is not the end all be all. A well executed Online Presence for a business should include a well designed and thought out Web Site/Blog, Search Engine optimized pages, as well as a well researched Pay Per Click program. On top of this should be the inclusion to the 30-40 Social Media sites which will in turn earn you back links to your site.
You may be wondering, “you didn’t answer the original question”, and your right. Let me answer it this way. Did you ask the Yellow Page sales person for the return on investment? Did you ask the Value Coupon rep for that same answer? Even still there is an answer, yes in your business it can be tracked and quantified with some very simple techniques like simply interacting with your costumers. I’ll conclude with this, the Internet is the place where your potential customers are looking for your products and services and you do need to be there. Be there in a way that shows how great of a business you are.
Lastly, I hope I didn’t over simplify this issue, please comments and questions to l.mcleod@bulbwired.com, we love the interaction.
Prior to leaving Forrester to join Altimeter Group, Jeremiah Owyang, along with Josh Bernoff, Cynthia N. Pflaum, and Emily Bowen, published a report that attempted to bring the future of the Social Web into focus. If we viewed the content of his research as a social object, the conversations that would transpire could in fact expedite the development and implementation of the most valuable predictions and observations contained within.
The first part of the report observes the state of the Social Web and summarizes its direction:
Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.
In the report, Forrester documents the evolution and direction of the Social Web in several distinct stages:
1. The era of social relations – Starting with AOL and others in the mid-1990s, this era witnessed the connection of people through simple profiles and friending features that served as the foundation for online conversations through connections.
2. The era of social functionality – Evolving from friending to platforms that supported social interaction through applications and infrastructure, facilitating communities through relationships locked within the confines of a particular network.
As I’ve said before, social networks are jockeying to become our individual online OS – a Social OS essentially. Facebook released its Facebook Connect infrastructure to allow us to traverse the social web with our Facebook identity and relationships in tow, bridging our updates back to the Facebook News Feed to share with our social graph. This is a monumental furtherance as it starts to demonstrate the power of an interconnected activity and profile stream and network that makes the Social Web a much smaller place.
However, what we really need is a “Facebook Connect” within every site, not confined to or benefiting any one network. This will create the segue-way to the era of social colonization as predicted by Forrester.
This need is of particular, perhaps even consequential, interest to brands as they will spend an insurmountable amount of time, resources, and money trying to engage in noteworthy conversions across multiple networks of interest.
3. The era of social colonization – Deemed as the next stage of social evolution, which will emerge as soon as this year, tools such as OpenID and Facebook connect will enable individuals to freely journey from network to network. Forrester believes that we will be able to do so with our social graph in tact, but I believe that the initial phase of social colonization will make a general identity portable between networks. The portability of corresponding data, social objects, and friendships we maintain in each network becomes the Holy Grail.
For consumers, surfing the Web is no longer a lonely experience. Forrester foresees the release of new browsers and frictionless, uncomplicated technologies that allow people to truly surf the Web with friends or see what they’re doing in real-time.
Like we’re already witnessing or hearing (depending on your status on the invitation list), Google Wave represents the ability to centralize and aggregate user activities and collaboration across the Web and across multiple platforms.
Forrester also observes that this era of colonization will leverage the recommendations of peers within the communities where individuals are active. Brands can capitalize on this behavior by instilling and engendering advocacy through direct engagement, blogger relations in the magic middle, and also via sponsored conversations.
This will serve as the bridge to social context.
4. The era of social context – Starting in 2010, social networks and sites will recognize the preferences of users, but more significantly, they will also recognize personal identities and relationships to customize the experience based on preference and behavior.
While this technology already powers, at varying levels, dedicated networks such as Trusted Opinion and Yelp, this functionality will be inherent to future networks using technology similar to Baynote to leverage the Wisdom of the Crowds as it inspires the personalization of content for each individual. Baynotes believes that the Web, and sites in particular, can learn from collective intelligence to improve the experience based on the behavior of crowds over individuals.
In the near future, much of the content will be automated, but will still rely on the explicit express of individuals to improve the experience. As Forrester notes, “Portable IDs mean you’ll be able to flip a switch to tell Nike you’re a woman who runs 12 miles a week and immediately see the shoes that are best for you — along with input from experiences of your running buddies.”
I believe that the combination of semantic and collective intelligence systems will improve the content and overall interaction within sites and social networks over time.
5. The era of social commerce – In 2011 – 2012, social networks will eclipse corporate Web sites and CRM systems. Forrester believes that communities will become a driving force for innovation and as such, companies will be forced to formally cater to communities, signifying the trading of power towards connected customers.
The Dawn of SRM
While Forrester predicts the era of Social Commerce, the future of the social Web as I see it, starts to embrace a corporate philosophy and supporting infrastructure that migrates away from CRM and even sCRM to one of Social Relationship Management or SRM. This will usher in the fifth era as observed by Forrester. And, SRM is also acutely cognizant of and in harmony with VRM (Vendor Relationship Management). Championed by Doc Searls, Chris Carfi, among others, VRM is the opposite of CRM, capsizing the concept of talking at or marketing to customers and shifting the balance of power in relationships from vendors to consumers. As such, systems are created to empower consumer participation and sentiment and improve products and services with every engagement.
While some believe that relationships aren’t technically manageable, in the world of business and a vibrant and influential social Web, it is not a question. And for all intents and purposes, they’re still personable.
The Social Web is distributing influence beyond the customer landscape, allocating authority amongst stakeholders, prospects, advocates, decision makers, and peers. SRM recognizes that whether someone recommended a product, purchased a product, or simply recognized it publicly, in the end, each makes an impact on behavior at varying levels.
Therefore customers are now merely part of a larger equation that also balances vendors, experts, partners, and other authorities. In the realm of SRM, influence is distributed and it is recognizes wherever and however it takes shape.
SRM is a doctrine aligned with a humanized business strategy and supporting technology infrastructure and platform. SRM recognizes that all people, no matter what system they use, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence mapped to specific department representatives within the organization using various lenses for which to identify individuals where and how they interact.
From Adoption to Sophistication, No Social Network is an Island
Forrester recognizes that the past five years of Social Media evolution have focused on growth and adoption, but anticipates that the next stage of advancement is dedicated to improving social functionality. I would also add personalization and portability. The biggest opportunity for the expansion of social networks is to build bridges between these isolated islands to deliver a more fulfilling, meaningful and productive experience. As I see it, we will start to see a the social web not as a collection of distributed islands, but as one greater collective better known as a human network – a contextual and relationship-based network that consists of like-minded individuals no matter where their profile resides.
In the near-term, the future of the Social Web starts with our online identity.
Whereas in Social Media, content is still king, in the business of social networking, data is its currency. I believe that everything starts with empowering the individual with the ability to host one secure profile/identify online that would serve existing and emerging social networks across the Web. OpenID, for example, provides central and protect login credentials for users, connecting identities to other third-part networks including Google, PayPal, AOL, MySpace, among others. Perhaps the future lies with making data mobile while still providing value to the economics of social networks. DataPortability.org is working with some of the most renowned networks to enable users to bring their identity, friends, conversations, files and histories with them, without having to manually add them to each new service. Each of the services we choose to use can draw on this information relevant to the context within each network. As our experiences and connections accumulate and change corresponding data, this information will update on other sites and services if permitted, without having to revisit others to re-enter or re-create it.
The future of the Social Web must begin with data portability to accelerate proliferation throughout Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation adoption system. The lack of it might serve as either the “chasm” that hinders mainstream adoption or the monopolization of user data by a few dominant players.
Last year’s weak holiday results provide e-tailers with a relatively low hurdle to meet, or exceed, past performance. Doing more than just beating last year’ s performance will be hard, especially in a year of restrained shopping, when consumers are looking franticly for “free shipping and handling” offers, sales, and coupons to keep their holiday spending costs down. One strategy marketers are using to support their merchandising efforts is social shopping, because it can have a powerful impact for a relatively low cost. It should be noted that social networks influenced 37 percent of shoppers in 2009, up from 24 percent in 2008, according to e-tailing group research.
As a form of marketing interaction, social shopping continues to evolve. Social shopping has expanded from dedicated social shopping sites like Kaboodle, StyleHive, and ThisNext (where less than 10 percent of U.S. online retailers have a presence) to broader social media sites, like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter (where consumers’ various networks connect). Savvy marketers are just following their prospects and customers based on eMarketer’s April 2009 assessment of the social networking sites used by U.S. online retailers; roughly three in five U.S. online retailers have a presence on Facebook.
Seven Ways to Exploit Social Shopping
Marketers must understand that customers use social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to communicate with and gather information from their friends and colleagues. As a result, your presence on these sites must be integrated into the multi-directional communication when consumers want to interact with your firm. Here are seven ways to maximize social shopping results:
Build relationships with prospects and customers. Enable consumers to reconnect with you later in the purchase process by providing a variety of options including Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, e-mail, and chat.
Add social tools that encourage your content to travel, so as to cost effectively extend relationships and attract new prospects. Provide consumers with tools such as social booking for the major sites your target audience uses, as well as e-mail and IM where appropriate.
Make your message consistent across platforms. This is particularly important for building your brand. In the process, ensure that it’s integrated with the rest of your marketing, both online and off, at every touch point.
Listen to and participate in the conversation. Unlike other media environments, you can’t deliver your message on your timing. While marketers worry about negative feedback, negative comments occur roughly half as often as positive ones, according to Anderson Analytics’ “Social Network Service A&U Profiler” research. Respond to negative comments to show that you’re listening to and care about your customers.
Ensure your Web site efficiently closes sales. Regardless of how well-received your offering is on social networks, your Web site must be able to process the sale quickly. While this sounds obvious, last year, a surprising percentage of sales were lost due to e-tailer inefficiencies. Also, consider allowing sales to be closed offline via phone or retail.
Maintain your competitive positioning. It’s critical to be present in media environments where your direct and indirect competitors are, to ensure that you’re part of the purchase discussion and decision.
Make attractive offers to social shoppers. Since social shopping often translates to efficient transmission of buying information for customers, offer these prospects attractive promotions where you can leverage the strength of your customers’ networks to cost-efficiently distribute them.
Measuring Social Shopping’s Impact
The inability to effectively measure the impact of social media on branding and sales can hinder its use as a marketing strategy in some organizations. Some online retailers find it difficult to move beyond the direct response mentality of tracking advertising effectiveness only through improved response and sales. Still, it’s important not to wait to implement a social shopping strategy because you don’t have the appropriate metrics. Here are some metrics to monitor to help assess the effectiveness of your social shopping tactics.
Track your traffic — particularly your upstream traffic — from the sites that visitors use before coming to your Web site. Are social media sites accounting for more of this traffic than they have in prior periods? Does the traffic from social media sites have any special characteristics that set it apart and can play a role in your marketing? Is this traffic directly translating into sales? Also, monitor your downstream traffic that shows where visitors go after they leave your Web site. Do many of them visit social media sites? If so, which sites? Are there any special trends?
Monitor the conversation to assess brand mentions. Analyze whether the mentions are positive or negative. Are these comments building a positive image of your firm? Make sure that someone is present on each of the major social media sites to respond to direct queries and negative comments.
Assess your competition to determine how they’re using social shopping and the size of their presence on major social media sites. Where possible, estimate the size and impact of their efforts. Consider how their brand is being perceived versus yours, and why.
Given the recent growth of social media sites, marketers must engage with prospects and customers in the place where they’re spending their time, if they want to become part of the purchase decision process. As social media sites evolve, more tools will be developed to facilitate sales, and along with them, better tools to more directly track those sales.
Meet Heidi at Search Engine Strategies, Chicago, Dec. 7-9, 2009. She’s participating on the panel, “Social Media Marketing Checklist.”
How does real time web benefit your small business? As most know about bulbwired.com, we are committed to helping small business and we do that mostly through Social Media Integration. Bing is MSN’s search and decide engine and in in experiment with Twitter to bring value to real time search. And of course you didn’t think Google was going to miss the party did you.
Where we see it benefiting you business is; if your name/brand is in a conversation of Twitter, Facebook and/or all of the other Social Media outlets that are all tied together, you can then me search-able. All this creates “link juice” better known as back-links. If you don’t know what all this means trust that we do and can bring it all together for your business.
The following 2 excepts are posts on the issue, reported from the Bing blog and Goggle blog; enjoy and ask questions.
One of the most interesting things going on today on the Internet is the notion of the real time web. The idea of accessing data in real time has been an elusive goal in the world of search. Web indexes in search engines update at pretty amazing rates, given what it takes to crawl the entire web and index it for searching, but getting that to “real time” has been challenging.
The explosive popularity of Twitter is the best example of this opportunity. Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous. Innovative services like Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.
“We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort; you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
Google isnt the only search engine to get its hands on this valuable data, Bing was also included in the agreement and have been quick to act with Bing Twitter Search already available for US searchers. So if you’re based in the US, feel free to take Bing Twitter Search for a test drive here.
If all this is a blur and you are trying to figure out what it all means to my Small Business and you find yourself asking “Can this type of media marketing bring me an ROI? Consider 2 things;
1) To begin with, simply being on the net is not enough, you need to drive traffic to your
Marketing & Social Networks Webinar (What You Need to Know)
What social media networks can do for your business
How social networks benefit your web presence.
Why blogging and micro blogging is important.
Learn how Bulbwired can help grow your business using social media networks
Register for our weekly Webinar and learn more about this new area of marketing.
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information, But more importantly, that type of exposure seldom offers you the credibility, validation or build brand trust as being featured as a top level search result will. The most effective approach is a strategic online marketing mix. You can reach your target market and gain validation and credibility through effective online PR, and then utilize the this to leverage your message. That is the marketing strategy that you now need in order to build your business, land more customers and make more money.
2) Come and see our weekly webinar and we’ll lay it all out for you in layman’s terms and show you our commitment to helping drive more business to you!
Can small business use email marketing/permission marketing effectively?
Virtually every small business is in need of successful online marketing. Easier said than done. however through the aid of various factors that serve as the very foundation of every business. One of which is email married with permission marketing techniques. Nowadays, more and more entrepreneurs are starting to realize the true potential of business email marketing coupled with permission marketing.
Marketing & Social Networks Webinar (What You Need to Know)
What social media networks can do for your business
How social networks benefit your web presence.
Why blogging and micro blogging is important.
Learn how Bulbwired can help grow your business using social media networks
Register for our weekly Webinar and learn more about this new area of marketing.
Most business owners would agree that traditional marketing is no longer working the way it used to. This is happening for a variety of reasons — people have too many mass media choices, they’re bombarded with way too many marketing messages, the Internet is adding accountability to advertising, etc. So if traditional marketing is no longer effective, then how will you get the word out about your products or services?
What Internet Marketer Seth Godin, author of the book Permission Marketing, calls permission marketing. Permission marketing is when your customers give you permission to market to them. This is opposite from traditional marketing, also known as interruption marketing (another term coined by Godin). Interruption marketing works by interrupting you. Nobody watches television for the commercials. Nobody flips through a magazine for the ads. But that’s how interruption marketing gets you to buy something.
Permission marketing is completely different. With permission marketing, customers look forward to hearing from you. They enjoy receiving information about your products and services. That’s because they’ve agreed to enter into a relationship with you. And if permission marketing is done correctly, you’ll eventually develop a stronger relationship with your customers than you ever would have with interruption marketing.
Permission marketing isn’t new. In fact, it’s older than interruption marketing. Back before there was mass media, business owners routinely developed long-term relationships with their customers. And customers expected to be involved with the selling process from the beginning. Now, of course, we no longer need to be dependent on building relationships face-to-face. With the Internet, we have a whole host of low-cost options available to us, which makes permission marketing easier now than it was before.
Here’s how it works. You start by developing something that your customers find valuable enough to give you permission to contact them on a regular basis. E-newsletters or e-zines, which are e-mail newsletters, are popular and so are Web blogs. Web blogs are like online journals. For a fun sample, check out http://www.boingboing.net Or Seth Godin has his own blog – http://www.sethgodin.com, however, e-zines and Web blogs aren’t the only things of value people sign up for, you can offer them classes delivered via e-mail or tips or contests or points programs or special offers or whatever your creativity can come up with.
While it is possible to develop a relationship with customers using only offline techniques (for instance, a printed newsletter you mail to your customers) it’s less expensive and more effective to use the Internet. It’s quick and easy for your customers to sign up via your Web site and it’s cheap for you to send it out via e-mail. However, in order to get people to sign up, you first need to tell them about it. That’s where interruption marketing comes in. Then once they sign up, you can start building the relationship.
Is this a lot of work? Yes. Is it more work than interruption marketing? Yes again. But is it more effective than interruption marketing? It can be. Especially since interruption marketing isn’t working the way it used to. I feel that permission marketing favors small business owners. That’s because permission marketing only works when customers and businesses form a relationship, and customers prefer forming relationships with people rather than entities. Customers want to know the person behind the business, not just the business itself.But that doesn’t mean big corporations can’t employ permission marketing techniques. They just need to get creative about it. Perhaps developing a spokesperson or a business “personality” or a forum or group of people.
Newsletters
It is through email newsletters that an entrepreneur gets to successfully build a firm relationship with his customers. This type of business email marketing arrives to its recipients on a semi-regular basis that comprise various types of useful and interesting details. Basically, it includes useful internet links, reviews of new products, computer tips, introduction of newly offered products or services, news stories, and a whole lot more.
These emails are then usually ended with short statements and your contact details. For some, writing newsletters can be hard and challenging. This is why there are those that resort to hiring themselves a writer to do the job for them. This also comes to be effective as writers are also capable of coming up with effective email newsletters.
Newsletters can either come in plain text or HTML formats. Emails made out of HTML are like web pages from which you are given with various tools to use for graphics, fonts, and other details. However, the downside is that HTML emails have a much greater risk of viruses and the larger fill size. Email client incompatibility can also occur with HTML emails. This is sometimes the reason why a lot of online firms and entrepreneurs prefer plain texts for their emails.
Email newsletters in pain text forms are also more appropriate to use as it displays formality and is the common choice of readers. In business email marketing, you sometimes have to be able to determine which particular option works best for your online business.
It is through newsletters that entrepreneurs are able to stay in touch with their prospects. This is very effective as customers are sure to think of your business first whenever they are in need of purchasing a product or service you are offering. Newsletters should also provide customers the opportunity of automatically unsubscribing with the service any time they want.
Newsletters are indeed very effective in successfully promoting an online business. Airlines, telecommunications companies, and banks use newsletters to make their businesses clearly visible to their targeted customers.
One of the most important things that must be greatly considered in email newsletters is the use of an opt-in approach. In this type of strategy, subscribers are obliged to validate their email addresses through the links sent to their emails. This greatly helps an online marketer to avoid any fake sign-ups which is often the case of today. From this discussion, you can clearly see the vital role that is being played by newsletters when it comes to effective business email marketing.
Patience in building a permission marketing list
Building a permission emailing list can be very rewarding. The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have drastically grown and a new form of business has been born, internet marketing strategies. While there are companies that are all too eager to help your site and business build a clientele for a fee, there also many ways that can spread the word about your sites subsistence in a more cost free way. One of this is Opt-in email marketing, also known as permission marketing.
Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in doing this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of target market. Take the effort to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.
There are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read and follow in building a list. Sometimes they may be confusing because there are so many and there different ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in building an opt-in list, but no matter how diverse many methods are, there are always some crucial things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.
1) Put up a good web form above the fold, simply means on the top of the page. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.
A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Just write a simple short statement about how they would like to see more and get updated about the site. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This web form will automatically save and send you the data inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing.
2) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage very, very impressive if you want to build a mailing list faster. You need to have well written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitors fancy. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.
Dont waste your time making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the better. Go for a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.
3) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will recommend a business always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone can rake in more business than an expensive ad. As your clientele roster grows so shall your list. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.
4) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers. These are some tips on how to build a mailing list.
All in all, nothing is a slam dunk anymore in the new world of advertising a small business. As I said in the beginning of this post “traditional marketing is no longer working the way it used to”, this alone is the reason to explore, embrace and conquer the online space. Find a company you can work well with and build the relationship to your online profits.
If it feels like your online business is lagging in last year’s dust, keep in mind that it’s normal to fall behind in the race. With all this talk about Facebook, Twitter and the plethora of other Social Media Marketing tools it sure is easy to be confused if not down right overwhelmed. However, it’s absolutely possible and critical to pick up the pace of your marketing strategies and increase your chances of of bringing in new business with Internet Marketing.
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To go forward in your marketing efforts it’s not a bad idea to look behind you. What I mean by this is; what old school method no longer work in your business. Yellow page ads, print coupons, billboards, classified ads and the many other traditional means to reach your prospects are being used little to none. PERIOD! Just last week I had a backed up toilet, you all know how irritating that can be. Without even a thought I went directly to my PC and brought up Yahoo, yes I still use that for search, and I typed in “Portland, OR plumbers”. I got what I needed, it really is as simple as that folks, your prospects are no longer looking for your product or service in the “old school” ways.
Before I get into some suggestions and some things to not do let me first say this. Get professional help in this area. Think of it this way; if you were a Real Estate agent back in the pre-Internet era you wouldn’t tell the local newspaper that you can run your own classified ads, “no thanks, I have a printing press right here and can print and distribute my own ads” or you wouldn’t tell the billboard company, ” I can put that billboard over the highway myself.” So be realistic, you shouldn’t be up a 2am trying to figure out what mySQL is or html, css or where and what do I say or do in my ads. Enough said!
But where do you begin and how will you know what to do? The key to Internet marketing and the path to web success in 2010 and beyond is anticipating customer needs and making every second count for your business on a daily basis.
Here are some suggestions of what companies, large and small, should look out for now and going forward in 2010:
Blogs Will Expand in Importance and Distribution
This year will be all about how a company fights its way through a bad economy. What better way to reach your target audience than provide quality content that is easily accessible and leaves a reader wanting more. Blogs create a community within your field of interest and work to spread your brand. Don’t blog to advertise, blog to help customers by providing informative material. Remember this; Social Media is conversational.
Does Mobile Marketing (SMS) have any potential for my business?
Whether consumers will respond and communicate to businesses via cell phone is worth experimenting with since a large percentage of companies used text and multimedia messaging last year. It’s an effort towards new ways of reaching loyal consumers and potential customers.With the load of apps for smart phones, Google’s new phone certainly makes this method appealing to a small business to reach customers looking for products and services through mobile search. Text SMS Marketing is one of many options that could be right for your business or at least a beneficial look at what your competitors may be using.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Media
This is worth repeating, Don’t underestimate the power of social media! More than ever, Internet-users find it convenient and amusing to maintain social networks and professional relationships through sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. If your online business does not have an account with all, if not one, of these sites, then now is the time to make one. It’s a great way to establish new connections and provide links to your site to help reach your target audience and increase sales.
Be Open to Modification
The spirit of being an Entrepreneur is all about taking chances, predictions and implementation to improve current conditions. This kind of growth requires change. The cyber industry is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, so your marketing strategies and web tools should evolve too. No of our daily mantras at bulbwired.com is; Plan, Do, and Review.
KYSS Chaos Goodbye
Keep Your Strategies Simple And Gain More Time To Enjoy Your Riches In Niches! You’ve likely heard of simplifying your life. From bookshelves to daytime talk shows, simplicity is a hot topic. When it comes to your business, pairing down and doing less isn’t usually the prescribed strategy for success, but it’s certainly essential to staying satisfied in your niche.
As a Entrepreneur, you lead a busy life. Backbreaking labor isn’t always enough to outdo competitors. To-do lists stack against you. Your foundation remains uncertain, squabbling over big ticket items to bail you out of a down economy. Sadly, good intentions don’t always yield top results.
To ensure lasting business success, you must embrace niche simplicity. What is niche simplicity? In essence, by doing less each day, you accomplish more. How is that possible? When you select strategies that meet multiple business needs and achieve exponential growth. That’s what niche simplicity is all about. Think of it as de-cluttering your business deals.
Niche simplicity isn’t just good practice. It’s a smart solution that lets you…
* Closely examine what works and what doesn’t.
* Identify key strategies that grow your business.
* Let go of all good intentions that aren’t working.
Niche simplicity gives you time to develop smarter strategies for success. By releasing bad-result recipes that take time away from strategies for riches in niches, you gain more energy to grow your business. Instead of doing anything and everything, you can do one or two things really well.
Just as smaller markets lead to BIG results, doing less can achieve more.
Ready? Let’s simplify. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Do this slowly a few times, and with each exhale, let go of those to-dos and don’ts. Release any preconceived notions of what you must do by tomorrow. Relax, it’s simple. Once you’re calm and cool, let’s look at how we can corral some strategies for success and-dare we say-under-do the competition. Are you ready to simplify? Here are three suggestions.
Writing fever leads to expert fervor.
By writing a tip, trick or article. Publish your good advice. This gets your name out there, educates your niche and generates media curiosity. Do this at least weekly , and you’re much closer to building your brand, boosting your credibility and being noticed by media. Your fervor becomes their fodder.
Exercises regularly to build media muscle.
Want to build media muscle, but don’t have the strength to carry on with everyone? In your boilerplate message, include your social media links that help keep you on all the time. By regularly checking-in through your social media profiles, you quickly become a media magnet, attracting the attention you can’t afford to lose.
Spread your expertise through education.
Often it’s who you know that helps you succeed, but, more times than not, it’s what you know that accelerates your expert status. To remain in pole position as the quintessential go-to guru in your niche, share your knowledge. Seek out other experts that support you and team-up to teach your niche.
Instead of looking at these strategies for success as different tools to transform your business, think about how you can do one or two of them well to achieve lasting results. By pairing strategies together, you’re building a different kind of daily formula that is… well… simplified.
You can achieve more with less.
You can serve your niche better without hundreds of half-done projects. And you can out last your competitors by doing less, and doing that more effectively and efficiently than they do.
Keep your strategies simple, and you just might get rich in your niche. One thing I would like to share with you in closing is; in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and I am paraphrasing here, ask yourself this one question, “What is the one thing that you can do better than any other company?” This one question was the genesis of the bulbwired.com story. Find one thing and do it greatly!
Mitch Joel’s big ideas behind “Six Pixels of Separation”
Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: 
targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
The Future of the Social Web
Seven Ways To Tap Social Shopping
