INFLUENCER MARKETING IN 5 EASY STEPS

Spending your company’s marketing and advertising budget on online ads and social media promotion that is not paying off as you had hoped.  The marketing advisors to whom you entrusted your marketing budget felt this was the best return on investment, but nine months in, you know something needs to change.  After a lot of stress, headaches, late night research and investigation, you stumbled across the idea of influencer marketing and all of the research, statistics and information lead you to believe influencer marketing might just save your company’s marketing strategy.

How you can incorporate influencer marketing into your company’s business strategy in five simple steps.  

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?  

1. Set the stage for success

Creating an influencer marketing campaign is not rocket science, but it does take dedication, planning, and foresight.  Some things to consider to set up the best foundation for a successful influencer marketing campaign:

• Know your audience, industry, and niche
• Understand how your target market (for this campaign) thinks and brainstorm how you want to reach them digitally.  Think about types of content (video, images, written reviews, Twitter parties, live events that are streamed on Periscope and Tweeted about, etc.).
• Get a sense of the type of influencer who could execute this project for you.
• Set campaign goals.  These can range anywhere from driving sales, improving your social numbers, boosting brand awareness, introducing a new product into the market, and so on.

2. Find the right influencers

Going about finding influencers is always a little challenging.  Naturally, you can hire an influencer marketing agency to ease this – and all other aspects – of your campaign.  If you do take this on yourself, ample tools exist to help you uncover influencers.  Keep in mind:

• Target influencers whose audience is the one you wish to reach.
• Don’t base your influencer decisions solely on follower count.
• Compile a list of influencers you would hire for the project and begin the process of reaching out to them.

3. Engaging and recruiting influencers.

Once you have chosen a group of influencers you would hire for your campaign, have your team reach out to them systematically.

• Do in-depth research on each and eery influencer including each of their social profiles, their blogs, About Me pages, and any other information you can find.
• Include personal information in any communication with the influencer, be it email or phone call.  Influencers receive hundreds of emails every day.  The only way to grab their attention is to send an authentic, genuine, and human message.  Connecting with an influencer on a personal level will make that happen.
• Once you receive responses from your chosen group of influencers, source the people who express genuine interest in working with your brand and representing your product.  Influencers are very frank; they will either not respond, tell you they don’t think your product is a good fit for their audience, or say they can’t wait to represent your brand because their followers will love what you have to offer.

4. Be flexible with creatives.

As you put together a list of viable influencers, have creatives in mind that you would like to use in the campaign.  Keep in mind that influencer marketing works because it is understated.  If you have an ad for a hot new clothing line, keep that for your direct brand campaign.  Instead, send the influencer a couple of items to wear in photos.  The influencer is an expert at wearing brands’ articles and promoting them in a very natural way, so defer to the influencer.  You might not want to give up control since it’s your product and money, you are paying an influencer because you trust what they do and the power they have over their audience.  Negotiate “must haves” in a post, and leave the rest to them.

5. Measuring results.

There are many different ways to measure the results of your campaign, and a lot will depend on your initial goals.  Some metrics can help you determine the current status of your campaign.

• Total reach of campaign
• Overall engagement on influencer posts (comments, likes, shares, clicks)
• Direct traffic as a result of influencer posts
• Conversions attributed to influencer posts in the form of sales, etc.
• Increase in brand awareness – measured by increase in new mentions of brand by new individuals aside from influencers

Source : http://bit.ly/29frlHy

7 Ways to Measure Marketing Performance

If you want to make sure your company is successful, you need to have knowledge of marketing. One of the biggest challenges that marketers face is having enough patience and prudence to wait on results and determine which methods are fruitful versus those that are a mere waste of time and funds. Unfortunately, it can take weeks or even months for the full effect of your efforts to become apparent, so it is imperative to start tracking any available analytics that might provide insight into your current performance within a campaign.

The best marketers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their progress in specific areas, and then use this data to hone in on effective strategies and identify weaknesses that need to be addressed. Now that you know why you need them and what they’re used for, here are the top seven marketing KPIs every entrepreneur should know about.

Conversion Rates

If you don’t know about this metric as an entrepreneur, you’re probably not very experienced. The conversion rate is the percentage of leads or site visitors who perform a desired action versus the percentage of leads/visitors who do not.

The “desired action” in question could be anything from buying a product, to signing up for a subscription, to opting into a newsletter, to clicking an ad. Obviously, you want your conversion rates to be as high as possible. In fact, that’s the main goal in marketing, which is why it’s at the top of this list.

Sales Revenue

You might not be tracking every aspect of revenue generation or comparing your data to your marketing efforts to find a correlation between your efforts and increases in revenue. But you should be. That’s what tracking KPIs is all about – using analytics to identify what works.

If you’re not analyzing your sales revenue in relation to marketing efforts on a daily and weekly basis, you’re limiting your businesses. After all, the last thing you want to do is waste time on sales efforts that aren’t yielding results.

Cost Per Lead

It’s also important to calculate how much each lead and customer is costing youin terms of advertising budget. Are you spending more to acquire customers through inbound marketing than you are through outbound marketing? If you are, the sooner you know about it, the better.

Identifying the most cost-effective method of lead generation is just one of the advantages of keeping track of this crucial KPI. Because spending money to make money only works when you spend less than you make.

ROI for Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the practice of bringing customers to your company or website passively, rather than aggressively going out and seeking new clients/customers. Inbound techniques might include search engine optimization, content development, banner advertisements, and other methods that increase your brand’s visibility and presence.

The greatest businesses reap huge ROIs from inbound marketing, so this is a KPI that should never be ignored. Remember, sometimes playing hard to get actually works out.

Organic Search Traffic

Reiterating the importance of effective inbound marketing, organic search traffic is a KPI that shows how strong your company’s ranking authority is within the search engine result pages (SERPs). Ultimately, most of your online marketing efforts should be put towards ranking higher in major search engines like Google for popular keywords and queries.

Developing and distributing great content related to your brand is by far the best way to increase the amount of traffic gained from organic search results.

Social Media Engagement

Businesses that are firmly rooted in social media have a higher chance of continuing and thriving, so it’s important to keep an eye on the amount of traffic coming from social media as well as the percentage of those visitors who are converted into customers. Tracking KPIs related to social networking will ensure that you’re at least aware of where you’re at and what needs improvement in this pivotal department.

If you’re slacking on your social media game, you might want to try increasing social media engagement and presence and monitoring your KPIs along the way.

Average Customer Value

Finally, while all of the above KPIs are useful in their own regard, they won’t help you manage your budget if you don’t know the average value of your customers. There are several ways to calculate the average customer value metric, either in the short-term or long-term.

Essentially, your average customer value is the average sales revenue generated by each customer minus the cost of lead acquisition, multiplied by the average number of sales per customer. Figure out this number fast so you know how successful you need to be to stay afloat.

  Source: http://bit.ly/297psQR

5 reasons to say "No!" to marketing

Over the course of my 15-year marketing career, I have evaluated my fair share of marketing ideas. Many of these ideas have come from co-workers, managers, and owners. I have had requests for everything from videos to exhibiting at trade shows in Las Vegas to creating printed brochures and more.

Early in my career, I didn't spend much time evaluating their requests, rather, I would add them to my to-do list and get working on them. As I gained experience, I also got smarter, and I soon became critical of internal marketing requests.

Now, when approached by someone who says "We need to attend the annual tech conference in Seattle the first week of October" the first question I ask is "What is your business case?".

I can't recall a single time when someone has been able to provide a reasonable business case. Most of the time I get one sentence responses something to the tune of:

"We need to do this because our competition is doing it."
"We have always done it this way."
"I can't explain it - just trust me."
"I'm the boss - just do it."

I usually end up categorizing these requests as RAM - Random Acts of Marketing. Sometimes they pay off and other times not so much. None of them lead to long-term growth.

So, here are five reasons to say NO! to marketing:

1. The idea has little impact on the bottom line.

If you think the issue with marketing is that only 50% of your efforts pay off but you don't know what 50% is paying off then you're doing it wrong. Marketing efforts can be attributed to bottom line results when benchmarks are put in place and campaigns tracked correctly. If you can't draw the path from a marketing initiative to sales then just say "No!".

2. The idea is not part of the company strategy.

Small businesses serious about growing will have a strategy. Most plans will outline the target consumer of the main products and services key to a company's success. If the marketing idea does not focus on your primary audience then just say "No!".

3. Your customers expect you to do it.

There is limited time and money in every department - marketing is no different. It would be nice to be able to do every initiative, but it doesn't work that way. Choices need to be made every day. Where is marketing time and money best spent? If the only reason you are running a campaign is your customers expect it, then just say "No!". Only consider the campaign if it is strategic.

4. The competition is doing it.

If you want to be a leader in your industry, then be just that - a leader. Base your marketing on a sound strategy, defined objectives, and continuous measurement. If the main reason to go through with a marketing campaign is your competitor is doing it, then just say "No!". Second place follows. First place leads.

5. You have always done it that way.

Executing a marketing campaign simply because you have done it before is not a reason. There are variables constantly changing that impact the growth of business. What worked at one time may no longer work today. Marketing is ever-changing, and so marketers and businesses must adapt. If you're executing a marketing campaign for the sake of tradition then just say "No!".

The growth of a small business requires marketers to be strategic and to say "No!" is an important part. However, always saying "No!" and never saying "Yes!" will get you nowhere.

As mentioned, marketers of small businesses have limited time and resources. Removing the "noise" that doesn't contribute to the growth of a company leaves a lot more time to focus on marketing initiatives that do have an impact on business.

 Source: http://exm.nr/1qPK5Wm

3 ways marketers can improve customer experience

Customer experience is a hot-button topic in marketing.

As more and more marketing pros seek to add this skill to their toolkit, advice from one of the leading minds in the field, Brian Solis, can help.

I met Solis, a former public relations and digital media executive, a year ago. My blog post about our conversation, Is Customer Experience the Next Killer App? was one of the most widely shared, liked and tweeted blogs that I have ever written. Since then, marketers are chiming-in everywhere you turn about improving CX.

I was talked to Solis again while he traveled to one of his worldwide speaking engagements discussing CX, and gathered more insights. Here are three main ways that Solis says PR and marketing pros can improve customer experience:

1. Uncover points of friction.

The first step is the most difficult. It requires that you recognize that customers’ experiences could be improved and requires you (and others) to step outside of your roles and collaborate to bring about sweeping change. But, it can start with small steps.

Any employee or manager can address customer experience by looking within their domain—whether it is sales, marketing, product development or customer service.

A good place to start is uncovering points of friction. This can be done personally or with the help of other team members and customers. Look at the experience within and outside your department, paying attention to what happens before and after your department becomes part of the customer experience.

When you involve your customers and other departments, interesting developments can appear, enabling you to identify things that are broken and how to fix them.

2. Place innovation over iteration.

Changing the customer experience may not require a complete product or customer journey redesign, but every aspect can benefit from a benchmark review through the eyes of the connected customer.

To make meaningful changes, you need to look at the experience from both ends. This leads to improvements and opens the door to innovation. It’s important to find a balance between innovation and iteration. Both are required for success.

Take a note from Steve Jobs and the development of the iPhone. Jobs didn’t want designers with traditional cellphone experience on the team, because he didn’t want any previous biases. Rather than focus on what a phone was, Jobs looked at what it could be.

3. Rethink what success means to CX.

Improving the customer experience can have widespread value. It is important to determine goals and how to measure them early in the process. Goals should focus on business value as well as how they affect the customer experience.

What’s the ROI of customer happiness? You can use existing metrics, but to truly track experience, rethink what success means and develop additional metrics that ensure how the two align.

Track key performance indicators related to customer satisfaction, shared experiences, customer paths and conversions. Focus on new customer growth baselines, looking at revenues and return on revenues once changes are completed. Also look at the journey and whether or not it is efficient for customers based on intent, context, device and immediacy.

The more tangible goals that you set, easier you can measure success.

  Source : http://bit.ly/24Uyndd

15 ways to boost your brand’s social media ROI

Social media marketing is both a bane and a boon to business owners.

If it’s working for your business and driving traffic, you love it. If it’s not bringing in results, you hate it—and feel that you’re wasting your time.

So, stop wasting your time. Drive results, with the right tactics and appropriate planning.

Here are 15 strategies to improve your social ROI 

that every business owner should practice:

1. Use the right social channels.

The social networks you use for your marketing campaigns should fit your audience—as well as your goals. Consider these points when determining which channel(s) to target, taking into account the following metrics from Alexa:

· Facebook has the largest user base (1.1 billion users, compared to Twitter’s 500 million).

· Facebook garners 8 percent of page views on the web, compared to 1 percent for LinkedIn and Twitter, and .5 percent for Pinterest.

· LinkedIn and Twitter lean toward B2B marketing, while Facebook dominates the B2C market.

· YouTube is the second-largest search engine and is a great ad source to use for amplifying exposure to other social campaigns or your own videos.

Take the time to research your audience and niche so that you can create the blend of social channels that provides the highest return on your efforts.

2. Curate relevant content.

Since it’s not always easy to come up with fresh content, you should curate some. Find relevant articles, news, videos, images, memes, infographics, interviews and more that you can share with your audience.

3. Adapt your strategies based on competitive research.

You’re not the only player in the social landscape. You are competing for a portion of people’s awareness, attention, interests, time and money.

Analyze what the most engaging companies are doing, then innovate and do it better.

4. Keep your team on track.

Pay close attention to what your team should be focusing on, and set goals, identify important channels and eliminate activities that are ineffective. You always want to keep your team working on social activities that perform the best for your company.

5. Balance promotions, with value-oriented content.

Remember the 80/20 rule in everything you do. The importance of not spamming and overselling your business on social media cannot be emphasized enough. Keep your content 80 percent organic and value-oriented, and 20 percent promotional.

6. Push individual user engagement.

It doesn’t matter how big the company is: Customers love personal attention. Respond to those making comments, even if they’re not asking a question. Directly engage followers in all of your social channels. That builds trust and respect, and followers will be far more likely to do business with you.

7. Be authentic.

Today’s customers are savvy, and you can't fake it online. Says Sid Shuman, who runs social media for Sony Playstation: "They can smell that a mile away."

The same people who are die-hard fans of your brand will be the first to call you on the carpet for shady behavior or activity and content that does not reflect the culture that you’ve already created.

8. Stick to a calendar.

Fans appreciate it when they know they can expect certain types of content at certain times of the week. When you’re posting daily and then drop off the radar for a week, it’s noticed and remembered. Schedule your posts, set the number of posts per week and stick to the plan.

9. Leverage social media outside of social channels.

“Incorporate social into every aspect of what you do,” says Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre's founder and chief executive. Kretchmer's company reports that 88 percent of businesses using Twitter feeds, comments, ratings and reviews on home pages have increased user engagement. Some 42 report of business have boosted their average time on site, says Lifefyre.

Social media can bring you indirect ROI right on your website because of the social authority that comes with being active and engaging your fans.

10. Experiment and monitor ROI

Don’t be afraid to break the mold and try new things. Some of those things won’t work, but many will, and you’ll be adding to your toolbox of tactics to improve engagement over the long term.

11. Use paid promotions.

More and more social platforms are offering you the opportunity to promote your page, push specific messages and more, beyond your immediate network of fans.

You’ll see much-improved ROI by boosting posts and sponsoring Instagram photos, not only for immediate campaigns, but also for long-term ROI from newly acquired fans who otherwise never would have discovered you.

12. Tag URLs to better track ROI

With multiple campaigns running, it can be difficult to see the return across a variety of channels. One way to simplify that is to use UTM tags in the URL that tag a specific campaign source.

This lets you see traffic from Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud or YouTube within your analytics. Now, you can actively see the return as it applies to specific posts or campaigns.

13. Join conversations.

Get to know your audience in groups and communities like Reddit, and let them know who you are as you contribute organically to the conversation. The more you engage your audience, the more you can build trust, brand visibility and referral traffic.

14. Mention people.

When there are opportunities to mention “influencers” and brand advocates in your industry, do it. When you have a proud customer, highlight that person or company. Mentioning people, and tagging them, puts a spotlight on them that leads back to your social channels—a spotlight that everyone in their network can see.

15. Recycle past content

Past content, especially content that your fans enjoyed, should be repurposed whenever possible because you’re always gaining new fans who never saw the original piece.

If you’re short on content, grab some of your “greatest hits” material and repost.

Which social platform(s) bring you the highest returns or the most engagement?

  Source : http://bit.ly/1Toag2a

Quote of the day

How to use Twitter marketing to increase your expert status

Twitter can be an incredibly effective tool for positioning you and your business as a market-leading company and expert source of information. Creating that position as an expert requires time and patience. The key methods to do so on Twitter include creating a personality, becoming involved in conversations and interacting within (and beyond) your industry. 

Have a strategy

Engaging on Twitter should be an element of your overall communications plan.You should have a Twitter strategy aimed at achieving a specific objective. For instance, it could be you want to be known as the most respected business consultant in the construction industry. Your strategy should encompass the type content you will share, your tone and the type of audience you want to connect with and influence.

Real-time auto-biographies 

Each Tweet may only be 140 characters long but your Twitter feed is a live, real-time auto-biography. Personality on Twitter really counts and simply trying to sell or promote doesn’t work effectively. Telling your own and your company’s story, in your own words creates a sense that there’s a real person behind the keyboard. The internet is a difficult place to gain trust but Twitter allows you to develop a personality which, in turn, helps to build that trust.

Learn to listen

Learn to listen Many of our conversations now occur online but the art of conversation is older than the internet. There are two sides to communication and the most important part is listening. Interact with your followers, follow them back and respond to their comments. Engagement is a two-way process in both the on and offline worlds. Be interactive and you’ll find your followers are far more engaged with your story.

Interact with influencers 

Search out others in the same, or similar, fields and follow and interact with them. Comment on relevant issues, stories or new topics. This approach helps to place you as a leader or expert in your own field and it can even create some surprising and possibly lucrative partnership opportunities.

Connect with media

Many journalists use Twitter and the platform offers a great way to connect and engage with them. You can do this by following them, commenting on and sharing their stories and also messaging them from time to time with relevant information. Not only could these interactions lead to possible media opportunities, it may also help you reach a new audience that’s relevant to your industry that’s following the journalists you’re interacting with.

Manage your reputation 

By monitoring your mentions on Twitter you can also deal with any negative issues relating to your brand. Customer complaints on Twitter can be damaging but monitoring for these (and having a strong presence on Twitter) allows you to respond quickly. Ideally, a direct message and a personal response to the issue can be the best way to get these negative conversations offline. With the problem resolved the customer may well become a great advertising tool, impressed by your response and helpfulness.

Twitter can be a powerful tool for positioning yourself as recognized expert and there are many things you can do to get noticed, convey a particular message about yourself and build strong and beneficial business relationships.

 Source : :  http://bit.ly/210Xok4

Snapchat: The King of Millennial Micro-Moments

In 2015, Snapchat put the world on notice that the app is an advertising force to be reckoned with — maybe theadvertising force to be reckoned with. Named Adweek‘s hottest digital brand, Snapchat commanded a reported $750,000 for brands to place ads, and the millennial darling reported more than 6 billion videos daily. Snapchat will become even bigger in 2016 as brands learn how to apply the app to create micro-moments for the surging millennial population.

Snapchat has accomplished something nearly impossible: opening its door to brands while retaining its essential coolness among a loyal user base composed largely of millennials. In fact, big brands climbing onto the Snapchat bandwagon may have helped the app transcend a reputation as the go-to platform for sharing racy photos. Here are some of my favorite examples of brands that relied on Snapchat to increase their own coolness quotient:

• McDonald’s became the first brand to sign up for a sponsored geofilter, or a special content overlay (akin to a digital sticker placed on Snapchat photos and videos) that can be accessed only at certain locations. Customers across the brand’s 14,000 U.S. restaurants could decorate their Snapchat images with playful illustrations of fries and double cheeseburgers, creating tremendous engagement for a brand that needs it.

• Dunkin’ Donuts took the geofilter ad concept a step further to generate demand by offering free cups of coffee on National Coffee Day (September 29). Snapchat users who clicked on a geofilter of raining coffee beans could get a free medium cup of coffee, but they had to unlock the image either at or near a Dunkin’ Donuts store to get their coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts also used Snapchat to run video ads on the ESPN Discovery Story on Snapchat as part of its sponsorship of ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown.

• In November, Sony Pictures Entertainment made innovative use of Snapchat Discover channels, which consist of dedicated content for publishers such as CNN and Mashable. Sony launched a temporary channel devoted exclusively to the movie Spectre as part of a worldwide marketing blitz to promote the 24th official James Bond movie. The channel consisted of behind-the-scenes content (such as photos from different shoot sites) shared across 17 countries. The exclusive nature of the information shared made Spectre exist comfortably alongside all the publishing-oriented channels.

These three brands are all using Snapchat to capitalize on “micro-moments,” which Google defines as real-time moments of consumer discovery that occur on mobile devices. Micro-moments are little touch points that can add up to big moments for brands who are present with compelling content when consumers are on their mobile phones to find places to go and things to do.

Google characterizes micro-moments as “the new battleground for brands.” In a seminal report,Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile, Google notes that we check our phones 150 times a day. Brands have an opportunity to create contextually relevant content that will engage consumers when we’re checking our phones to perform tasks. Writes Google:

Thanks go mobile, micro-moments can happen anytime, anywhere. In those moments, consumers expect brands to address their need with real-time relevance.

What Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, and Sony realize is that millennials are creating more and more of those micro-moments. In 2015, millennials surpassed baby boomers as the largest share of the U.S. voting population. As Google notes, 87 percent of millennials always have their smartphones at their side.

In recent weeks, Snapchat has made it easier for brands to create micro-moments through micro targeting. Snapchat has been offering “audience bundles,” or users grouped by different themes such as “world news and culture-themed package.” The themes correspond to readers of different media such as Mashable and CNN that have Snapchat sections. According to Adweek, Snapchat can already target content by gender and for users over the ages of 18 and 21.

Given the size and influence of the millennial population, Snapchat becomes an increasingly important option for brands. Businesses that want to capitalize on Snapchat would do well to:

• Be contextually relevant. Content that strikes the wrong tone and fails to engage in a playful way will fail. Many other brands besides the ones I’ve cited have learned how to create contextual content on Snapchat, including Taco Bell, which does an excellent job gamifying Snapchat on special occasions such as Valentine’s Day.

• Create “next moments,” or actions that occur after a brand and a consumer find each other. Dunkin’ Donuts created a next moment by encouraging Snapchat users to walk into its stores and receive a free cup of coffee.

As Snapchat builds out its targeting capabilities to justify its advertising rates, I believe next moments represent a huge opportunity for brands on Snapchat in 2016. Enterprise brands with multiple locations can and should tap into the Snapchat geo-filtering feature to create customers at the local level. So long as businesses stay focused on creating the right kind of contextual content, brands will win and so will Snapchat.

Jay Hawkinson is a digital marketing professional with 20 years of sales, marketing and merchandising experience including organic search optimization, paid search advertising, local search, mobile and social media. Jay joined SIM Partners in 2006 as an equity partner and currently oversees mobile, social media and emerging technology at SIM Partners as the senior vice president of social and emerging products. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1Pah3q6