Tag: Marketing

Why Relationship Marketing is Important

Check out this great interview with Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing and Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

In the interview, Mari discusses why relationships are important to businesses (regardless of size or type) and why businesses need to improve their listening skills. She explains that it doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or a B2C business, you should always think of your company as a P2P (people to people).

Relationship marketing involves using multiple medias to communicate with your customer:
– social media
– Blogs
– Email marketing
– Offline marketing

Lessons all companies should learn about relationship marketing:

– Personalize and humanize your brand. Don’t be afraid to humanize your brand even if you are a big or medium size company. Focus on using the first person “I/Me” not “Us”, and using people’s names when replying to customers through social media.
– You do not need to be a big business to do relationship marketing. It is just as important for small businesses to focus on relationship marketing.
– When using Facebook focus on posting great content and having an engagement strategy in place beforehand. Be consistent and don’t get discouraged, it will take a while to for users to become engaged.

Check out the full interview below.

Have you focused on using social media to build relationships with your customers? Have you found other ways to create new relationships or maintain current customer relationships?

How Marketers Will Use Social Media In The Future

Each year the Social Media Examiner publishes the ‘Social Media Industry Report‘. The report is based on interviews with over 3,800 marketers. This year, one of the big questions that they focused on was:

“How will marketers change their future social media activities?”

Overall, marketers plan on increasing their use of social media in the future. However, the tools that they utilize and how much the use each tool will change.

YouTube

YouTube and other video platforms are leading the pack, with 76% of marketers planning on increasing their use of YouTube and/or video marketing in 2012.

Facebook

Not a big surprise, Facebook came in #2 with 92% of marketers planning on using Facebook in 2012 and 72% planning on increasing the activities on top of that. Only 4%Facebook Usage 2012 Social Media Industry Report of marketers do not plan on using Facebook at all; however, this is most likely due to the industry that their client is in. Clients in industries such as healthcare or manufacturing are less likely to include Facebook in their social media strategy.

I found it very interesting that Facebook is the #1 focus of those just getting started in social media. This makes sense because it is most likely the platform that they are most familiar with. In addition, B2C companies plan on increasing their use of Facebook much more than B2B companies. B2C companies are able to reach in customers more easily using Facebook than B2B companies. However, B2B companies can use Facebook for building and monitoring their online reputation. For more information about how B2B vs. B2C companies use Facebook, check out this infographic.

Twitter

Overall only 69% of marketers plan on increasing their activities on Twitter; however, this increase will most likely be by enterprise level companies and local small businesses. Marketers realize that due to the real time nature, maintaining and monitoring a Twitter account effectively requires a significant time commitment. As such, marketers currently dedicating 21 hours or more per week on social media are more likely to increase their use of Twitter.

Blogging

Blogs are great for driving site traffic and increasing search rankings. Due to the benefits of blogging, it is no surprise that 86% of marketers plan to either continue or increase blogging. Similar to Twitter, blogging requires a significant time commitment to write, edit, and post articles, as well as monitor comments. Due to the necessary time commitment, marketers who are currently dedicating 11 hours or more a week to social media are more likely to increase their blogging efforts.

Google+

The platform that most of us are aware of and probably have an account on, though we probably don’t use it much, is Google+. Some interesting statistics on Google+ usage include:

  • 67% of business plan on increasing their Google+ activities
  • 1 in 5 businesses have no plans on using Google+ in the future
  • Men are more likely to use & increase usage of Google+
  • It is the #1 platform that marketers want to learn more about

LinkedIn

In 2012 B2B companies are more likely to increase their usage of LinkedIn, while only about 1/2 of B2C companies will increase their usage. As a tool for networking, LinkedIn definitely has more benefits for B2B companies than it does for B2C. B2C companies will most likely use LinkedIn as a tool to increase brand awareness in their industry and search for potential employees.

Photo Sharing

The industry report states that only 60% of marketers even plan on using photo sharing sites such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Flickr. Photo Sharing Site Usage 2012 Social Media Industry ReportHowever, I believe that these numbers no longer accurately reflect where usage is going based on:

  • Rapid growth in the popularity of Pinterest
  • Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram

I think that there will be a much larger increase in usage, as well as a decrease in the percentage of marketers who have no plans of utilizing photo sharing sites.

 

Geo-location Services and Daily Deals

Of all the statistics in this section of the report, I found the information on Geo-location services and Daily Deals the most interesting.

Only 23% of marketers plan on increasing their use of geo-location services like FourSquare in 2012. This is particularly interesting since FourSquare just hit their 20 million user mark this week. (Check out more information here)

72% of marketers have NO plans to use daily deals, such as Groupon or LivingSocial. This percentage really surprised me since Groupons were recently very popular. The decrease in usage may be from lack of repeat participation by companies or lack of profitability.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing Graph Social Media Examiner 2012

Social Media Industry Report – 2012

The Social Media Examiner recently published their 4th annual social media marketing industry report. Each year they interview marketers about how they are using social media to grow and promote their businesses.

For the 2012 report, they interviewed over 3,800 marketers to determine:

  • The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered
  • The time commitment
  • The benefits of social media marketing
  • Commonly used social media services
  • Social media sites people want to learn more out
  • How B2B vs. B2C companies use social media
  • How marketers are using other forms of marketing
  • Outsourcing of social media management

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

One section of the report that I found most interesting was the benefits of social media section. The top 5 benefits of social media marketing that marketers have seen are:

  1. Increased exposure
  2. Increased traffic
  3. Provided marketplace insight
  4. Generated leads
  5. Developed loyal fans

Below is a graph from the annual report that shows the percent of marketers who have seen specific benefits from using social media marketing.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing Graph Social Media Examiner 2012

An interesting change from the 2011 to 2012 report is the percent of marketers who said social media marketing helped to improve search rankings. In 2011 62% of the marketers interviewed said that their search rankings improved, but only 55% of the marketers interviewed in this year’s report saw a benefit. I found this change very interesting since I have experienced improvements in search rankings using social media campaigns in the past. After examining the report further, it appears that those who saw improved search rankings were investing more than 10 hours a week in social media, have at least 3 years experience, or are selling to other businesses (B2B companies). There appears to be a direct correlation between the amount of time invested and experience on search ranking. However, industry is a large factor, as only 50% of businesses who sell to consumers saw a significant increase in their search rankings.

Benefits of Social Media Takeaways:

  • B2B companies are more likely to grow business partnerships using social media than B2C companies.
  • Spending 6 hours or more a week on social media shows a significant increase in lead generation.
  • Small business are more likely to see an increase in lead generation than large companies.
  • Those with 3 and more years experience managing social media see a significant increase in all the measured benefits compared to those with less experience.
  • Over a third of all mid-sized and large companies have not seen a reduction in their marketing expenses. This is very interesting, I wonder if social media is seen as an additional marketing effort not a replacement for other marketing at this time.
  • A not surprising find, social media is great for generating site traffic. 74% of marketers saw increases in site traffic when investing minimum 6 hours a week in social media.
  • B2B companies use social media for gaining marketplace insight much more than B2C companies.
  • B2C companies have a much larger increase in their loyal fan base when using social media than B2B companies.
  • There is a direct correlation between amount of time invested in social media and acquiring loyal fans. More Time Invested = Increase in Loyal Fans

Check out the full 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry report on the Social Media Examiner site.

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Future of Branding – What Goes into a Branding Framework

“The future of branding is marketing with people and not at them.” This is one of the great quotes included in this new article from BrandGrowth. This post is based around the book Brand Against the Machine (which I am definitely downloading onto my Kindle when I get home).
This article does a great job explaining the 6 Steps to Building a Branding Framework from the book and how they apply to your brand:

  1. Know your audience
  2. Define your position
  3. Create a solution
  4. Content
  5. Promotion
  6. Over-deliver your value

I highly recommend checking out the full article, and I can’t wait to write about what I learn from this book as well.

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Why Branding is so Important

Your brand is the core of your business.

Company Branding

As I have written in some of my other posts, maintaining brand consistency extremely important to customer relationship management, marketing, product development, advertising, company relationship with employees,and basically every facet of your company.

This article by Ben Erickson is a perfect breakdown of why maintaining your brand should always be at the top of your list. He does a great job of explaining how branding is important to your customers, differs by business size, and the team you will need to maintain it all. I highly recommend checking out his post What is Business Branding?

Image: KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

9 Steps to Creating a Personal Brand Strategy

9 Comments

Check out this great infographic below on 9 ways to create your personal branding strategy.

You can’t just create a LinkedIn profile and hope for the best, a lot of thought and work goes into creating and maintaining a personal brand. When creating your personal brand strategy, you need to determine who you are versus how you want to be perceived, or more who you want to become. Changing that party image to one of professionalism and experience. A few tips are:

  • Define who you are
  • Set specific goals
  • Be original, don’t just be your job title
  • Connect with those in your industry, create a network
  • Start conversations and monitor your online personal brand

9 Steps to creating your personal brand strategy infographic

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10 Ways To Generate Trust With Your Landing Page Copy

Via Scoop.it – Being Your Brand

Demian Farnworth of The Copybot describes ten ways to generate trust with your landing page copy.

10 Steps To Creating Great Copy

  1. Match Ad Copy with Landing Page Headlines
  2. Write Seductive Headlines
  3. Create Compelling Landing Page Copy
  4. Display Impressive Numbers
  5. Supply Endorsements
  6. Highlight 3rd Party Certification – are you an accredited business? If so, flaunt it!
  7. Display Press Mentions
  8. Don’t Skimp on Design – if your design looks cheap, it doesn’t matter how great your content is because no one will stay on your site long enough to read it
  9. Tone Down Those Terms and Conditions
  10. Testimonials – Customers trust other customers more than they will trust what your company says

Check out the whole article to find out more about the 10 ways use content to build relationships with your customers.

Via blog.crazyegg.com

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Should My Brand be on Pinterest?

Atomicdust, an agency in St. Louis, posted a great blog on how to determine if your company should be using Pinterest.  As of now, Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined (10 million monthly visitors and growing).

I really enjoyed this post because it asks three straight-to-the-point questions about Pinterest and your brand:

  • Are there compelling images associated with your brand?
  • How much time do you have?
  • How well do you know your brand’s core values?

Takeaways:

  1. Use compelling images that link out to great content, this will not only promote your company but it will improve your website’s SEO with more inbound links.
  2. Social media is important to your company and requires time, and Pinterest is no different. Set aside time to not only find images but to also to respond to followers and repin pictures from your followers.
  3. Create a multi-dimensional brand image by creating multiple boards on varying topics.
  4. Pinterest is about expression not content, though it can drive traffic to content.

Use the link below to check out the full blog and learn more:

Should My Brand be on Pinterest? – Web Design and Marketing Blog.

Navigating the New Company Facebook Timeline Pages

The internet has been buzzing this week about company (fan) pages on Facebook switching to the timeline format.

So, you have built your company’s social media strategy based on how people find and share information using the old page format, but do you really need to change how you use Facebook just because the page looks different? Very simple answer….YES!

Whole New Layout

The first (and most obvious) note is that the whole layout of the page has changed. The top of the page is now occupied by your profile picture and a cover picture. Do not under-estimate the power of the cover photo. While you can use your company logo for your profile picture, I recommend using a unique photo that represents the company culture for the cover photo. This will help create more of a personal connection with customers.

The majority of the page is composed of two columns, which represent a passage of time for your company. My favorite feature of the timeline page layout is that you can mark posts as “Company Milestones” and create an interactive real-time timeline of your company’s history: from the day it was founded to today. The timeline of company milestones will also help your customers understand and relate to your company, by understanding where it came from and will be going in the future.

Goodbye Landing Pages

There is one feature that am not a big fan of (and it may take some getting used to), it is that you can no longer set a default landing page. Since the tab pages are gone, (the ones that used to be listed under the profile picture) you are not able to choose what content visitors see first when they go to your page. For example on McDonald’s page, (still in the old format) they could direct all visitors to the “Latest” page first.  Where a new product would be featured, instead of to the default “wall” page. See example below:McDonalds Facebook Page

In comparison, the Wendy’s new timeline page always features the top two messages. Because of this change, it will be more pertinent than ever to monitor what the top posts are, as they are the first thing visitors will see (other than the cover photo). See image below. There is a great feature that can help with this. It is the “pin”feature, which allows you to “pin” a post, or mark it is important, so that it will appear at the top of your timeline.

Wendy's Facebook Page Timeline Format

Pick Your Top Three

While you can not direct visitors to a particular landing page, the tab pages and application pages will still exist. But know that they will be more difficult access. As you can see above in the Wendy’s timeline, links to the tab pages (photos, likes, WendyThreads, Wear the beef) are now shown in between the cover photo and the timeline. But, instead of listing all the different pages, only the 4 pages can be featured at one time. Also, the photo link/feature can not be removed so you can only change out the other three items. It will be more important than ever to understand what your page visitors value most in order to promote the correct pages and apps.

Changing the Conversation

In the past, if a customer wanted to communicate with a company over Facebook they would have to leave a comment on a post (or post a message on the wall if it was allowed). But now, customers can send direct messages to a company.

I really like this feature because I don’t think everyone is always comfortable stating their opinion in a public arena (especially when their name is on it) and they often prefer more personal interactions with companies (aka one of the purposes of social media). I also like this feature because it may decrease possible negative comments from appearing on the public timeline.

What do you think?

This is a big change, which will take some navigating. It will be a learning time for marketers and companies alike. Please leave a comment below letting me know what you think about the new timeline format for company pages and what your favorite ones are so far. I personally really like the New York Times page (below). They use a great personal cover photo and their timeline goes all the way back to the 1850’s!!! New York Times Facebook Timeline Page

Social Media Week 2012 – A Global Platform | Blog au Roux | Mudbug Media, Inc.

Via Scoop.it – Being Your Brand
Check out the blog I wrote for Mudbug Media on the Social Media Week 2012!

Here is a snippit from the blog:

Last week was Social Media Week 2012, a weeklong global initiative that focuses on the impact of social media on culture, politics, economics, and social change. This was truly a global celebration, as unique events were held in nine countries: Germany, China, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Singapore, and Brazil.

Social Media Week 2012 leveraged the benefits of the popular social media platforms to create a truly global discussion. The majority of the events were broadcast live through Livestream, and promoted hashtags (such as #SMWNY) that viewers were able to use to tweet questions to the presenters, which were answered live. A particularly innovative feature was a real time infographic that displayed trending topics, hashtags, and handles by city.

Knowing that social media is now a crucial part of brand strategy, members of our media, analytics, and strategy team made it a priority to learn as much as possible from the talented social media week presenters. The following are a few of the great events that our team watched.

Click here to read the rest of my Mudbug Media blog Via mudbugmedia.com