Quote of the day

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

Avoid These 4 Startup Marketing Mistakes

There are many things on your plate while growing your company. You have a team to manage, a product to develop and deals to close. You may or may not have already hired a marketing manager, but you know marketing is crucial for your company’s growth. You also want to make sure you don’t throw away valuable marketing money.

Making mistakes is normal and as Joseph Conrad said, “it’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes.” Working with entrepreneurs and startups, I’ve learned you can’t avoid all mistakes. But you can avoid some.

Here are the top 4 growth-stage startup marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. You don’t have a fixed marketing budget.

Just like your general budget planning, you should work with a detailed marketing plan. Creating such a plan makes it easier to understand where your marketing money is going and when. For example, if you’re looking to launch your blog mid-year, your marketing plan should take into consideration the time and budget needed to build the blog and create the initial content.

Growing your company and showing growth in your forecasts is nice and all but it has to be backed with a growing marketing budget. SEO work is another example for a marketing initiative that spans through a period of time and needs allocation of funds throughout the budget timeframe (there’s no such a thing as an “SEO campaign”). Setting a fixed marketing budget can be okay for the first couple of months, but if you want to grow, you need to take into consideration a growing budget.

2. You don’t keep track of the competition.

Some startups mistakenly operate thinking that they don’t have competitors. Even if you don’t have direct ones, it’s crucial to look at the nearest ones. Being an entrepreneur, it’s impossible to operate in a bubble (on a side note – telling potential investors you don’t have competitors is probably in their top three things they hate to hear).

Knowing who your competitors are and following their work can help your business and marketing strategies as well. By signing up to your competitors’ newsletters, and using alert tools such as Mention or IFTTT, you can stay on top of what’s going on in your field.

3. Your tracking tools are not in place.

Having tracking tools, such as Google Analytics in place is crucial, as otherwise you’ll be operating like a blind person. Google Analytics is the most popular tracking tool, 100 percent free, well-known, and reliable. If you don’t like using Google for tracking, there are other tools such as Piwik or Clicky that are just as good (and free) as well, or for both a web and mobile presence, Mixpanel.

If you haven’t done so already, set your tracking and make sure that you know how to create goals, funnels and read reports. Having the majority of your traffic marked as “unknown” in Analytics is terrible as you’re spending money on marketing but cannot calculate the ROI. If you are unsure of how to set analytics and connect them correctly yourself, hire a freelancer to do this small project for you.

4. You’re not where your audience is.

If your product is an innovative baby sensor that is sold directly to customers on your site, a LinkedIn campaign may not be the best use of your marketing money. Plan your marketing according to where your audience is. If you are a B2B cyber startup and your target audience are CIOs and CISOs of large enterprises, meet them in industry events, publish in blogs and newspapers they read, and re-target them on LinkedIn. If your product on the other hand targets millennials, you have to be very active on social media and mostly these days, Snapchat.

Source: http://bit.ly/25P5xxN

7 Tools to Help Your Internet Marketing Efforts

The difference between a beginner Internet marketer and a proficient one is, on the one hand, in experience, and on the other hand, in the tools they use. And while experience can only be obtained through continuous work and study of the market, tools are what you can get right now. Here are some with which you should start.

1. Google Alerts

Good old Google Alerts may look unassuming, but it is still one of the best tools for tracing the mentions of your or your competitor’s brand name. RSS may not be as popular as it has been several years ago, but it is nonetheless a simple, reliable and completely free way of keeping track of developments in your industry, and with careful choice of keywords you can gain a lot of insights from this simple tool.

2. DA Checker

Whether you want to check the results of your latest advertising campaign or decide if this or that website is worth cooperating with, knowing the resource’s authority is always extremely helpful. Domain Authority Checker is exactly what it says on the tin – it determines the strength of a website’s presence in the Internet and, unlike many of its analogues, can be used completely free of charge.

3. Website Grader

Do you want to get a fast and reliable review of how strong the SEO of your website is? Then go no further, as Website Grader is one of the most popular and straightforward instruments available in this area of marketing.

4. Hootsuite

Social media may be a major power in modern marketing, and their importance seems to be on the rise. Unfortunately, managing all your social media accounts, updating them, reviewing what others are saying and so on tends to eat up inordinate amounts of your time that you could use for more productive purposes.Hootsuite is a free tool that allows you to comfortably manage all your social media accounts, speeds up the process of posting and lets you review everything from a single interface.

5. Phrase Builder

Phrase Builder may look a bit ugly, but it is truly indispensable when you need a plenty of related keyword ideas and don’t have time to think them up ‘manually’. You simply define certain input criteria, and the tool will generate the list of keywords and phrases.

6. UberSuggest

UberSuggest is one of the most popular tools used by PPC marketers, and for a good reason. In many respects, it is similar to other suggestion tools, but there are a few differences, such as foreign language support and a lot of small details that add up to better and more flexible functionality.

7. Five Second Test

It is often said that what a user sees within five seconds after visiting your site defines whether he is going to stay or leave.  Five Second Test allows you to check how much your website is attuned to this idea: it shows you what the visitor sees, what he is likely to miss and what he is likely to remember.

Using these tools won’t turn you into a pro in a blink of an eye, but it will certainly increase your effectiveness as an online marketer – and quickly!

Souce:http://bit.ly/23oGX5B

Quote of the day.

"Beware of geeks bearing formulas." 

- Warren Buffett -

Inbound Marketing: Concepts, History and Evolution

The term “Inbound Marketing” has become in recent years one of those words that everyone talks about but no one is entirely clear what it really means or where it came from.

Inbound Marketing The idea born in response to changes in consumer behavior that are no longer passive recipients and are no longer willing to allow advertising breaks from traditional media such as radio, television or newspaper.

The response to these changes is a new philosophy called Inbound Marketing marketing in which customers are which includes brands and interact with them in a consensual without unwanted interruptions occur.

It revolves around three main pillars: SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing. All three work in an integrated manner, and form part of an overall strategy that combines all actions, channels and techniques for improving brand reputation and greater online visibility that translates into growth of visits, leads and customers.

Origin

The origin of this movement is given to Brian Halligan, one of the founders of Hubspot, who along with his partner, Dharmesh Shah, and one of his advisers, David Meerman Scott, coined the principles of this new form of marketing within the online world.

Evolution in the Twentieth Century

In the decades of 50 and 60 Peter F. Drucker emphasized the value that companies had to identify the interests and orientations of consumers in market research. Drucker noted, for example, the importance that General Electric had to use the inputs of consumers in all phases of design and development of products to achieve business success.

To explain the fundamental theory of marketing, Ducker focused on customer orientation and segmentation as the keys to marketing:

“Marketing aims to identify and understand so well the consumer that the product suits your needs perfectly” P.Ducker, 1974.

Inbound Marketing and the Digital Revolution

Based on these ideas, Seth Godin summed up the concept of marketing Ducker in his concept of “Permission Marketing”, where marketing leaves out aggression for sale and the intrusion and focuses on getting permission from consumers before continuing the sales process.

“Consumers will only permit a company to communicate with them if they know what they will gain in return. The advertiser has to compensate users, explicitly or implicitly, by paying attention to your message. “Seth Godin.

Another milestone in the development of the current paradigm of inbound marketing is “relationship marketing”, which became popular in the mid-90s and had the consultant and best-selling Regis McKenna one of its greatest exponents. Its maximum is that organizations should focus on satisfying and retaining its customers to create lasting relationships over time.

“Marketing is everything and everything is marketing.” Regis McKenna.

With the technological revolution that took place in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, all these theories gain a new dimension and its application to digital world creates the environment for the founders of Hubspot coined the term “inbound marketing” context.

SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing has become the main tools for consumers who are able to meet and interact with companies offering services and products they need. The goal is to generate the most value for visitors to become leads and customers.

Future

In a recent post Brian Halligan, taking on Amazon as an example, emphasized the fact that, in the near future, the success of many online businesses requires personalize the experience of users and exploit information gathered from leads and customers to provide them with messages and offers that fit the needs of each. The result of this “Segments of One” is a dramatic increase in conversion rates and the success of those who are able to implement it properly.

Conclusion

Both the present and the future of marketing require an effort from the brands to understand the changes that have occurred in consumer behavior in the way they relate and the medium itself. Therefore, it is more necessary than ever to adapt to a new context in which some of the traditional principles of marketing are staggering to give way to new ideas such as Inbound Marketing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KRPMfE

3 Tips for Using Pinterest to Drive Sales

Pinterest has become a powerful marketing platform. While social has long considered an awareness raising activity, marketers are more committed this year to making a clearer connection from those endeavors to increased sales. This is one area in which Pinterest shines, driving both traffic and commerce online.

The biggest challenge for businesses on Pinterest is making sure their Pins are seen, and seen by the right audience. The solution to this challenge, says Lux, is understanding the Pinterest audience and whether or not your product is a good fit.

With 100 million active users, Pinterest is not nearly as big as some of the other big networks. However, the biggest demographic on Pinterest are women aged 25 to 34; most likely Millennial moms interested in fashion, DIY, cooking, home decor and shopping. Pinterest users also differ from those on other networks in one very specific way: They prefer to follow brands than notable celebrities and influencers.

Lux had these recommendations for how to drive traffic, and ultimately sales, from your Pinterest marketing efforts:

• Choose your target wisely. Pinterest has robust analytics that can be used even before you spend any money on promoted Pins, said Lux. Experiment with Pins, then use Pinterest analytics to find out what’s working, then choose keywords based on what your audience is most interested in.
  

• Use optimized, high-quality images. In this age of visual media, image quality is extremely important. In addition to professional quality photos and graphics, Lux said there are tools like Canva that make editing easy. Include descriptive text and keywords to improve the likelihood of your Pins bubbling to the top of the search.
  

• Use Rich Pins. Lux noted that most have seen Rich Pins, where a complete recipe or article appears within the Pin. Product Pins, which are a type of Rich Pin, includes important product details like the name, price and availability lead to higher conversion.

For small-business owners on the fence, Lux noted that converting a personal account to a business account is very simple:

With just a little bit of code on your website, it can’t hurt to try and use the analytics at least, even if you’re not going to pay for Promoted Pins.

Readers: Are you using Pinterest for your business?

Source : http://bit.ly/1Kub3ff

From Likes to Leads: Five Steps to Social Lead Generation

Does the name ‘John Wanamaker’ ring a bell?

Probably not, but around the turn of the last century, he was a brilliant marketer and founder of a department store chain. He pioneered merchandising, was the first to add price tags to items, and introduced the money-back guarantee on purchases.

But perhaps more than anything, old Johnny W. is best known for his humorous take on his investments in marketing. You know the quote: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

Which Half is Social?

Fast-forward to today, and the truth is that many social marketers likely ponder similar issues. Over 150 years later, marketers and communicators are still wrestling with what we today call ‘attribution’.

On one hand, it feels great to measure success based on the number of fans, followers and subscribers a brand has. After all, views, likes, shares, and tweets are clear indications that your audience appreciates what you have to share. There’s definite value in creating brand awareness and affinity.

But on the other hand, this isn’t 2010 anymore. CMOs are under increasing pressure to show demonstrable ROI (or attribution). Every marketer must now correlate social marketing with the bottom line. Are those Facebook likes translating into web form completes? Are Twitter campaigns reducing acquisition costs of search engine marketing? What happens after somebody shares your blog posts on LinkedIn?

Just ask any sales exec and they’ll be quick to tell you what they want from social. Quality leads.

Driving Bottom Line Value from Social

Generating leads from social marketing is the new measure of effectiveness, but the majority of organizations fall short. While 83% of marketers use content to generate leads, a mere 21% are able to correlate ROI against the goal.   

So what’s a marketer to do? Let’s check out five social tactics that can help you delight your sales team and measure the value of your investments.  

1. Listen for the Right Signals

The key to being a great conversationalist is to be a great listener, right? Social marketing is no different.

Of course you want to deliver great content, but social listening is a short path to lead generation. Not only does it enable you to discover what topics are generating interest and what customers are saying about your brand, it equips you to hone in on key ‘buy words’ that indicate an active interest in finding solutions pertinent to your products and services. You’ll need to adjust your listening filters based on your specific situation, but imagine the value of detecting associated terms like ROI, RFP, considering, opinions, evaluation, buying, review, etc.

2. Pinpoint Messages Based on Insights

Next, leverage the insights you’ve gained through social listening to join the conversation. Make that research actionable. Monitor where conversations are happening, and align content to topics generating the most interest.

For the best results, apply social insights to drive broader marketing decisions. One quick win opportunity is to target specific customers with 1-to-1 social advertising on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Be sure each call to action enables you to track the prospect to the next phase—this is not the time for fleeting marketing messages.

3. Connect Social IDs to CRM Records

Associating social identities to CRM records enables you to continue the conversation on other channels like email. The best approaches use every customer interaction—regardless of channel or stage in the customer lifecycle—as an opportunity to connect the dots. Imagine a day where your marketing can be “channel-agnostic” and technology helps to determine the best way to reach a prospect at a particular time. That day starts now with identity consolidation.

Customers are accustomed to providing an email address or phone number as a unique identifier. Are you requesting social handles as a standard part of every interaction you have with them? How about your peers in support? Or better yet, even earlier—do your online purchase forms include fields for social identifiers? Your product registration process? Webinar registration forms? Surveys? 

Be sure to identify all critical touch points throughout your customers’ journeys. It will likely reveal new opportunities to connect social identities to data already stored in your CRM platform. 

4. Carefully Manage Sales Expectations

It’s not uncommon for social leads to meet some initial resistance from the sales team. Because the strategy is unfamiliar, there’s a tendency to perceive the source as less valuable than more traditional types of leads.

That’s a dangerous assumption. Consider that only 27% of all leads—regardless of how they were generated—ever receive any type of follow-up from sales (and most of those don’t receive any within the first 48 hours). Talk about a negative impact on ROI!

Marketing will have a hard time changing that culture: It has to come from sales leadership. As it relates to social leads, let sales leadership know what they can expect from your team in terms of volume and quality, and gain agreement on SLAs for follow-up.

It’s also a good idea to provide some coaching on how to best follow-up on social leads. They should be handled differently than other qualified leads. The chances are that you’ve carefully curated the interest over time, and a heavy-handed response from sales can quickly unravel what had been a ‘soft sell’ up to that point. 

5. Measure the Results

Last but certainly not least, carefully track the results of your social efforts. Avoid the temptation to solely use marketing metrics. Instead, speak salespeople’s language—analyze and share results based on sales-centric measures like number and value of leads, opportunities and closes. 

For added validity, be sure you’re able to answer the proverbial ‘as compared to what?’ question in reports. With social lead generation being new, it’s easy to classify it as a new sales tool with no peers (and thus no comparison). But the budgets, resources and marketing efforts could be spent doing something else.

And of course, be honest with your reporting, even if you don’t see immediate efficacy. Driving leads through social can take time, but few doubt that building 1-to-1 social relationships will continue to become ever-more critical.

Source : http://sforce.co/1Q3DNYG

11 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Making Money

What's stopping your website from being successful? Here are 11 potential reasons.

Websites are a means of making money. That being said, most websites aren't good at making money. If yours isn't getting the job done, why not? What's stopping your website from being successful?

11 potential reasons for you:

1. Your site is broken on mobile devices. You'd be surprised how many websites don't function properly on mobile devices. Considering the fact that more organic search traffic comes from mobile devices than desktop devices, this problem can sabotage over half of your potential sales. Does your site load on all devices and browsers? Does it load in a reasonable amount of time? Do your images and video load properly? Is your content legible? Do your conversion forms work and forward to the correct inbox? Don't assume. Check.

2. Nobody can find your site

. It's one thing to have a website. It's another for it to be findable. If it isn't, it's a huge problem. Improving your online visibility isn't quick, nor easy; it's a process of building your brand through quality content publication. Start with a content marketing strategy, focusing on quality, and build from there..

3. You don't know your audience.

 It's not enough to pick an audience at random or just target "everyone"; you have to know your audience, and create content and messaging that appeal to them specifically. Conduct thorough market research and test your assumptions--make sure you're actually offering your target audience value.

4. Your content sucks.

 A content strategy is useless without high-quality content. In fact, publishing content that sucks will only damage your brand and lower your conversion rates. Only publish content you're proud of, which offers value to your audience. 

5. Your site is disorganized.

 People feel more comfortable on a site that's well-organized. Is your contact page easy to find? Does every page have an easy link back to the homepage? Are your pages organized into meaningful categories and sub-categories?

6. Your site is ugly. 

There's something to be said for the aesthetics of your site, too. Does it look good on mobile devices? Does it fit in well with your industry and the ethos of your brand? Is the text easy to read? Are there compelling images and colors?

7. You have no opportunities for conversion. 

This can be a complex problem because there are so many ways it can go wrong. First, check to ensure you have plenty of opportunities for conversion on-site. Then, make sure they're visible; can people find them and see them easily, no matter where they land on your site? Finally, make sure the conversion forms actually work across devices and browsers--again, never assume.

8. Your conversion process sucks.

 If the actual process of conversion is annoying or clumsy, people will bail. If you're asking for information via a form, ask for fewer fields. If you're hosting a checkout process, make it as fast and seamless as possible.  .

9. You're not showcasing the full potential of your offer.

 It's possible that your content, product, or services are really worth it, but you just aren't doing a good enough job convincing people of that. Be sure to include your unique value proposition (UVP)--what do you offer that others can't? Do you have a blog or FAQ page, or do you offer a customer service line or live chat window? The more information you offer, the more comfortable people will be to buy from you.

10. You're selling too hard. 

Of course, it's also possible that you're selling too hard. If you're exhausting yourself trying to make your product seem better than it actually is, or if you include sales messages on every page, people will become skeptical and leave. Offer value and information to your visitors; leave out the selling.

11. You lack social credibility. 

People trust other people; not companies. Do you offer "social proof" such as customer reviews, testimonials, or other indications of your value and authority? Do your social media profiles show good engagement with your customers, and impressive followings? It's also helpful to list your accreditations or industry affiliations if you have them.

You might find your site has all of these problems, or some of them, or only one. But one thing is certain; unless your site is already making money or you genuinely aren't trying to earn any kind of revenue from it, something is wrong. 

Take care of your website, take care of your users, and the rest will take care of itself. It's not a fast process, nor is it an easy one, but it's a real one capable of real results if you put in the necessary effort.

Source : http://bit.ly/1nxCryX