April 26th, 2011
B2B or B2C marketers should build their company’s online communities by creating targeted email blasts to the company’s customer and potential customer database. Create a theme, such as ‘We’re Listening’ to get your customers to tell honest stories of their experiences with the company, whether positive or negative. For any positive stories, use them in future newsletters or on the company’s website to show the community experience, which creates a positive halo effect that the company is a ‘people-type of company’.
For any negative stories, address them immediately and take action in whatever channel the communication came through, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn, so customers will believe that the company cares about them. Don’t make a mistake like what BP did when the oil spill occured last year, when they waited so long to address all of the negative comments on Twitter. If BP would have addressed the comments immediately, the image of the company probably would have been a lot different, as we know it now.
By addressing customer concerns will make your customers long-term advocates of the company and attract new customers based on the positive experiences of the current customers.
Tags: B2B marketers, B2C marketers, build online community, email blasts, email marketing, Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, Twitter, YouTube
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March 29th, 2011
There has been a lot of misunderstanding on how to handle company urls, when displaying them in marketing collateral, such as print, television, and on the web. I have had clients ask me, ‘If it’s better to display urls in all lowercase, all uppercase or a mix of letters in the text?’ The rule of thumb that I tell all of my clients is, how would you normally write it in a sentence? How does your company name or logo appear on marketing collateral ?
Technically, domain names are not case-sensitive, so it does not matter, how you display your domain name or url in collateral, except for how you may want your target audience to remember your domain name. Western society reads from left to write and phonetically, so you want your target audience to remember your url phonetically. For example, PocketLegends.com, Amazon.com, MySpace.com, and GoDaddy.com all display their names in marketing collateral with a mix of upper and lowercase letters in the url.
There is one caveat, for secondary pages or tracking urls after the .com, such as ‘www.AshleyHartMarketing.com/promotion1′, you may want to defer to using all lowercase letters for your text. If your web host for your website is using Linux or Unix as the servers, they are case-sensitive and if you market your url in uppercase text in your marketing collateral, users will not find the page. The only time that it may work to have uppercase or mixed letters in the url, after the .com, is if your website is being hosted by a Windows server. Although, I wouldn’t recommend to do so, even if you have a Windows server to use the uppercase or mixed letters in the text at all, in case you decide to move servers later.
Tags: domain name marketing, how to market urls, lowercase and uppercase urls, urls
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March 14th, 2011
LinkedIn has launched a new news aggregator and yes, it is different than the current news aggregators (Google) and could be a great marketing asset to specific industry target audiences and for creating new business contact opportunities. The service uses an algorithm that analyzes your LinkedIn profile and determines what kind of industry stories you may be more conducive to reading, such as, if you are a Digital Marketer, it will aggregate news articles on marketing, lead generation, new Internet Start-ups, etc.
This service is not just a news aggregator, but a great opportunity to create new business contacts, since the articles will allow LinkedIn users to share the news stories, which could lead to opening up dialogues, thus potentially creating new business and job opportunities.
Tags: business contacts, business social media, job opportunities, LinkedIn news, LinkedIn News Aggregator service
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February 1st, 2011
Being a Digital Marketer myself, I am constantly evolving my marketing services to keep up with society’s lifestyle changes. Less than 2 years ago, my focus was primarily on online marketing for my clients and optimizing their websites to perform better in SEO, but now, as mobile and social media have changed the landscape of how businesses and consumers communicate with one another, I and my clients have had to learn how to use mobile and social media marketing to keep up with the target audiences preferences of communication. As marketers, our primary job is to communicate with our target audiences and with these new technologies, we now have better interactive opportunities that didn’t exist prior to these last couple of years.
As Digital Marketers, it’s our job to be able to understand target audiences and to not get stuck in our own marketing ruts, just because we know what has worked for us in the past as marketing channels. Don’t let changing techonologies put you “out-of-date” as a marketer or as a business.
Social media and mobile marketing have given us new channels to market to our target audiences and we should take advantage of these new technologies, since they give us more interactive and real-time communication channels, that were limited by prior technologies. These new channels are great ways to build thought-leadership for B2B businesses and get real-time data from consumers for B2C businesses. For example, B2B businesses and marketers, should check out LinkedIn.com for building direct communication through the Groups feature with potential clients and opening the communication with your industry. For B2C businesses and marketers, use Facebook to create excitement for your brand with consumers through contests and interactive polls.
Tags: digital marketers, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing services, mobile marketing, online marketing, social media marketing
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December 2nd, 2010
It’s the holiday season, which is a great time to create unique Christmas promotional campaigns that can increase your traffic to your website and increase your year-end revenues.
For example, if you’re a B2C marketer, try offering ‘limited-time’ offers up to December 25th with discounts. If you’re a B2B marketer, try offering $$ off promotional services to your current customer base, if they purchase a 1 year license for 2011 now.
Make sure you segment your target audience with messaging that is customized to each audience. If you have VIP customers, then offer them a holiday discount higher than the normal discount to show appreciation.
Tags: B2B marketers, B2C marketers, Christmas promotions, holiday promotion marketing, increase web traffic, promotional marketing, segment target audiences
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November 16th, 2010
Running Google PPC campaigns can be tricky and takes a lot of patience to get good click-through rates and landing page conversions, so to get higher than average conversions, try running promotional ads, rather than product ads.
Promotional ads will entice your target audience and differentiate you from the pack, since most online marketers run product ads with feature listings. Try promoting free white papers and case studies, that are proprietary to your company. Don’t buy white papers that can be found in other places, otherwise, you won’t have a leg up over your competition.
Tags: case studies, free ppc ads have better conversions, get higher click through rates on landing pages, google campaign tips, google ppc tips, google SEM tips, landing page conversions, white papers
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November 1st, 2010
Email marketing is one of the best ways to keep in contact with your customers, as well as, acquire new customers. If you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, consider creating an email plan that sends an email once per week to twice per month to your customer base. Use email blasts for short message-specific or promotion-oriented emails and once per month email newsletters to send more general emails that can cross-promote your other products or services that your customers may not be aware of.
Start your email marketing strategy by creating an email plan that uses the 5-tier approach: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Product Usage and Loyalty Program emails. If you create a plan and segment your target audience by this 5-tier approach, you should be able to hit Open Rates of 30-40% with click-through rates of anywhere from 30-60%.
If you’re only receiving 10% Open Rates and Click-through rates in your email campaigns of a targeted customer-base, consider A/B testing to your customers to see what works and what does not work. Try changing the Subject lines first, but sending the same content to see, if you can increase the Open Rate conversion. Then try changing the headline only in the next email, then the sub-headline only, the action only, etc. Statistically, most users have to see the same email 3X, before they may respond to your email the way that you want them to.
With small changes each time you send an email or conduct a test, you should see improvements on your email conversions and hopefully increase your overall ROI!
Tags: acquire new customers, b2b email marketing, b2c email marketing, customer acquisition, customer retention, email blasts, email campaigns help, email marketing strategy, email marketing tips, email newsletters, retain customers
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September 21st, 2010
According to a new study from ExactTarget, the #1 reason that Facebook users ‘Like” a brand, is due to the promotions and discounts that were offered by that brand. 40% responded from the survey that promotions were what drove them to click the ‘Like’ button for the brand’s fan page and 37% clicked ‘Like’ to show support for the brand.
Consider for your Facebook marketing strategy, to offer unique promotions and discounts to consumers on Facebook that is unique to only those users, to get that ‘Like’ click and to win fans. Offers could make a significant difference to your new lead strategy.
Tags: exacttarget, Facebook, facebook like button marketing strategy, facebook marketing, facebook promotions, facebook survey, lead strategy on facebook
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August 2nd, 2010
According to the NielsenWire’s latest report, baby boomers should be considered early technology adopters, similar to the 18-34 year old demographic age group.
The top 10 ranked sites that are used by baby boomers show similar online surfing habits, as the younger demographic. Top 10 sites for baby boomers are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, YouTube, Wikipedia, Ask, and Amazon. Note how similar these are to the top 10 sites for the 18-34 year old demographic group: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing, YouTube, Microsoft, AOL, Fox Interactive, Apple, Wikipedia. Uncanny how similar these groups tastes have become, especially since the previous older demographic trends have shown slower technology adoption. That may have been true of those previous generations, but not of the baby boomers.
If you are a marketer that has normally targeted the 18-34 year old demographic because you thought that was the best demographic, think again, the baby boomers should not be overlooked for targeting your ad spend. Convince your companies that baby boomers should be a considered demographic to market your products/services to. These baby boomers have more cash and are more free to spend their cash, since they don’t have the same economy restrictions that have hit the younger demographic in the U.S.
Tags: 18-34 demographic age, apple, baby boomers, Bing, early technology adopters, Facebook, fox interactive, google, Nielsenwire, online habits, online users, top 10 baby boomer sites, top 10 sites for 18-34 year olds, US demographics, wikipedia, yahoo, YouTube
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July 8th, 2010
According to a recent study on Pew Internet & American Life Project, only 10% of 59% of American adults use their mobile phones or laptops to check their social media status, such on Twitter and Facebook. This is a small in comparison to the buzz that everyone has been hearing in the media about social media usage.
The top reason for using cell phones and mobile devices (54%) in America, is for forwarding videos or photos to friends. Although more and more people now have smart phones, tablets, and laptops, a small percentage is using these devices to access social media on-the-go, which means it’s important to consider social media on mobile devices for the future, but be realistic and focus your marketing efforts and dollars on where your target audience is today.
Tags: Facebook, Pew Internet and American Life Project study, social media, social media cell phone usage, tablets, Twitter
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