Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’

Digital Marketers Must Evolve to Mobile and Social Media Marketing

Tuesday, 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 Don’t let changing techonologies put you “out-of-date” as a marketer or as a business.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.

Inbound Marketing Budgets Increase for 2010

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

According to the ‘State of Inbound Marketing Report’ reported by HubSpot, inbound marketing is increasing at the expense of outbound marketing for 2010. Social Media, PPC, Organic SEO, and blogs, all part of the online media mix, seem to be increasing in value for lead generation for marketers more so, due to the increased success of the inbound marketing programs.  Unfortunately, offline outbound marketing programs, which constitute trade shows, telemarketing, and direct mail are decreasing in budgets, due to the successes of online marketing generating quantifiable leads.

For 2010, outbound marketing budget expectations will be decreasing from 29% to 24%, but inbound marketing will be increasing from 38% to 34%.  This is an important shift for lead generation channels, since the change marks a strong shift to online from offline.  To see what works best for your marketing strategies, make sure that before you run out and spend a lot of money on social media and the other outbound marketing programs, make sure that your target audience is there and test each channel, before making a large investment.

Is Your Target Market on Facebook,Twitter or FourSquare?

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Facebook, Twitter, and the new FourSquare sites are dominating the headlines everyday with how many people have joined on a daily basis, which is great for B2C online marketers, since this gives a new opportunity source for lead generation, but don’t just run out and build that Facebook Fan Page or send out tweets just yet. Just because your target audience may be in these social media networks, does not necessarily mean that they want to be marketed to outright.

Don’t let the hype confuse you from the online marketing strategy that you have already created, but definitely research Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to see how your target audience, is being marketed to by either your competitors or companies in general.

Social media marketing is becoming an integral part of the overall online marketing strategy mix and if you’re a good online marketer, it’s your job to review these networks as possible leads for your company. Just be careful not to exhaust your resources trying to jump on the social media bandwagon, before doing your research carefully.

Good luck!

Using Social Media Twitter for Lead Generation

Monday, May 4th, 2009

There’s been a lot of noise about Twitter today, but what good is it for online marketers? For B2C marketers, Twitter can be a powerful lead generation marketing tool, which can send out real-time information to Twitter ‘followers’. For example, an eCommerce site can send out last minute sale information via ‘tweets’ to move inventory quickly on limited items. By sending out a ‘tweet’ to followers on a 24-hour sale, can increase traffic to a site tenfold.