Social Media Marketing is Not Free!

I have heard many businesses say that “social media marketing is free”, but that’s not true! There is this little elephant in the room called “opportunity cost”. Opportunity cost is the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. In other words, these are the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.

This concept is not exclusively applied to social media marketing. It also applies to businesses that allocate resources to Pay Per Click advertising, Search Engine Optimization, or even Web Analytical reporting.

It Pays to Listen to Your Social Media Conversation

Every business plan or marketing plan has a section allocated to customer analysis, identifying the target market, and market research. Social media monitoring provides businesses with the ability to listen to what customers& prospects have to say about their experience with your company or product. Combined with web analytics, social media monitoring can provide your business with the numerical data as well customer feedback.

In the end, this information provides businesses and marketers with the information to improve products and services. Through social media monitoring, you’ll have the opportunity to see the real impact of tweets, blogging, press releases, and social sharing tools. Furthermore, it will provide insight into which segments to target, and avoid costly marketing campaigns. The question is “Are you looking for ways to capitalize on what customers and prospects are saying?

Are You Using Social Media to Increase Your Business Exposure?

Social media marketing is being used to increase awareness for organizations within their target market. According to eMarketer.com, businesses have been accomplishing their goals regarding social media marketing tactics. For the most part, social media is a useful tool for increasing awareness, attracting new customers, and engaging with current customers.

The most important part is whether or not the tactics are aligned with the business goals and objectives. Businesses have achieved their objectives, but are you seeing the value in generating leads, sales, and revenue for the business? What is the ROI for your social media marketing campaign? Doing the social networking and getting a customer to become a fan of your business on Facebook is great, but are you seeing the benefits in your wallet?

Back to the Basics with Testing for Internet Marketers

It seems like business owners have forgotten the fundamentals of marketing and that it includes testing. “Almost any question can be answered cheaply, quickly, and finally by a test campaign, said Claude Hopkins the author of Scientific Advertising (1923). Although the book is dated, scientific advertising is critical to SEO, Pay per Click, Website Design, and Email Marketing. It is not just important to determine what works but also learning what doesn’t work to helped the business get to the point of generating leads and converting them into sales. In today’s environment, web analytics and conversion optimization are linked to scientific advertising or marketing. Continue to test your landing pages, ad copy, and call to action.

For more information, read “Always Be Testing” for tips, guidance, and tools.

Web Analytics an Integrated Service

According to the US Web Analytics Forecast, 73% of businesses are currently using or piloting Web Analytics technologies. Not all businesses are effectively utilizing the information and employing actionable feedback. The data has and will continue to be the commodity. Web analytics is just the tool that has the potential to improve marketing effectiveness, elevate customer satisfaction and identify new revenue opportunities. The fact is that businesses either fail to recognize the ROI or do not apply the data.

DaBrian Marketing Group has identified 4 elements that organizations must have to successfully leverage web analytics: money (investment), human resources, communication, and action. For the most part, businesses can implement Google Analytics so the cost of the investment has been minimized. The biggest issue is human resources that require analyzing the data and translating the information into business action. It requires a will, desire, and talent to understand the business, web analytics, and the variable that can impact measurement or analysis. Communication is critical because the business must effectively communicate to understand the value of web analytics as well as recognize the impact that the information has on marketing effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth in order to fund the department or web analytics technology. This will also help to get people to act on the information and deliver it in order to see results.

As technology improves there will be increase in complex marketing challenges. Many marketers struggle to uncover the insight within their web analytics and to keep up with new measurement issues. The existing expertise will continue to be needed by web analytics agencies and the importance of integration will more to the forefront.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Myths & Misconceptions that the Best SEOs Rank at the Top of a Google Search for SEO

While it's very hard to convince some people otherwise, with the exception of top level SEO consultants, the results for "SEO" at Google are substandard. Even SEOToday was ironically not listed on the first page of Google on October 16, 2010, and several of the United States Top SEOs were not listed within the first 3 pages of Google. Why not? SEO considers the company, branding, messaging, and positioning statements. SEO consultants look to identify keywords and phrases that not only increase visibility, but also increase the probability of conversions (leads or sales). This request intensive keyword researches both quantitative and qualitative data usually in the form of web analytics, keyword tools and customer feedback. SEO starts with keyword research, which leads to an understanding of your client’s goals, objectives, strategies, and target audience.

This is a job for an SEO or SEM agency, not for a web design firm. In some cases, web design firms can provide most businesses with a title, keywords, and descriptions; however, the lack of expertise or human resources to allocate time and applied knowledge to keyword research, conversion optimization, keyword ranking monitoring, crawling issues, continuous on-page optimization and link building for a campaign can be detrimental. In general, their area of expertise is in creativity, user experience, and developing great user interfaces, not developing or enhancing a site for search engines. There is an evident difference, one is more creative and one is more research-oriented or analytical. You would not ask an artist to analyze and diagnose your businesses financial statements, would you?

Reading PA SEO

Is Your Interactive Agency Delivering Results?

Many clients are too busy to evaluate whether or not their interactive agency is delivering results, but it could cost you in the long run. If your agency is not testing, measuring, refining, and reacting to your marketing tactics, then they are not delivering results. The ability to improve your marketing results requires continuous evaluation and communication with your agency.

1. Do you discuss your marketing results? This may give your agency quantitative and qualitative results to leverage.
2. Does your agency provide specific information when discussing the progress of your interactive marketing campaign? In general, specificity signals ownership, intention, and a plan of action to drive results.
3. Have you or your agency learned from the marketing and reporting? You and your agency should have details on what works and what does not work. Going forward, this should reduce marketing cost and lead to actions that drive results.
4. Does your agency push for deeper web analytics, continuously test banners and ad copy, and work to integrate interactive and traditional marketing for optimum results?

The only time your interactive agency should cruise or stop seeking better results is when you discontinue the relationship!