Category: Sales & Marketing

Young Go Getter by Eric Brantner: Are you still waiting to see if social media marketing is worth your time? It’s understandable to be hesitant of this new style of marketing, but entrepreneurs in particular have a lot to gain from getting involved with social media. It’s a free way to get in touch with your target audience and other leading figures in your industry. Even if your contacts don’t go on to become paying customers, you still get direct insight into your target audience’s mindset.
Still not convinced? Here are 7 companies making big strides through social media marketing.
Note: Thousands of companies use social media. Don’t think of this as a “Top 7” list, but rather as a sampling of companies from all industries and of all sizes making social media work for their unique needs.
1. Whiteflash– Whiteflash.com is an online diamond jewelry retailer. The owners of this company believe that buying a diamond is an interactive experience. That’s why they focused on social marketing techniques to engage potential customers. With live chatting on their website and numerous relationships with top bloggers, the company has increased their revenue by 15 percent, and most recently, they were featured in Entrepreneur magazine for their social marketing success.
2. Eastern Isles– Eastern Isles Teas and Tonics is a company headed up by two twenty-something young adults with a strong sense of Internet marketing. A key part of their marketing strategy is social media marketing. Through sites like Facebook and MySpace, the company generates about 30,000 unique visitors to their site each month.
3. Dell– Long gone are the days of the stoner gracing our television screens with “Dude, you’re getting a Dell.” Today, Dell is taking full advantage of social media marketing. In addition to over 20 Twitter accounts, they also have several company blogs that attract millions of visitors each month. However, most impressive to me is their Ideastorm website. This interactive community allows users to submit and vote on ideas. Well over 10,000 ideas have been created here. A truly great idea in and of itself.
4. Doritos– Dell isn’t the only company getting its users involved in the process. Remember the Super Bowl promotion that Doritos ran earlier this year (and last year, too)? Fans were allowed to create and vote on ads to appear during the Super Bowl. Thousands of submissions and millions of video views were generated by this overwhelmingly successful promotion.
5. Zappos– This online shoe retailer is always one of the first companies mentioned when it comes to social media. While they have a host of blogs and video blogs, what has really captured consumer interest is their Twitter presence. 198 Zappos employees maintain active Twitter profiles, and a page on their website is devoted just to this. By enticing the public to “See what Zappos employees are doing right now” the company generates tons of interest in their Twitter campaign.
6. Crafty Chica– “Crafty” is the perfect word to describe site owner Kathy Cano-Murillo’s marketing strategy. When her book Art de la Soul was coming out, she used MySpace to connect directly with her target audience. By staying committed and being social, she was able to get nearly 2 million visitors to her website each month.
7. MTV– Hate them all you want for not showing music videos anymore (it’s not like the ones they played were good anyway), but you have to give MTV credit for knowing its target demographic. In addition to their widgets and blogs, MTV also promotes The Hills (gag) in Second Life. Furthermore, you can connect with their “reality” stars through the MTV website. 14 year old girls throughout the world are rejoicing!
7 Companies Getting the Most out of Social Media [Young Go Getter]

Article Contributed by Mark S.
Business owners are pressed for time, pressed for funds and most importantly pressed for survival in this competitive world. It becomes very crucial to deploy the limited resources available in the best possible manner to ensure continued and successful survival and growth of business. Marketing is a very wide arena helping businessmen to achieve this, and online marketing has become the key to reach wider audience at much cheaper rates.
For those who have decided to take the plunge and go for online marketing, you will be faced with this very important question: Which strategy is better SEO or PPC?
Let’s just briefly skim over what these 2 very important terms under online marketing mean:
“Organic” or “Natural” search engine optimization (SEO) consists of optimizing web pages to enhance their position in the naturally occurring search results. Organic SEO consists of On-page and Off-page optimization tactics which is generally undertaken by a professional SEO firm or experienced SEO consultant.
When you purchase visitors or “clicks” from a search engine, it is called “pay-per-click” (PPC) search engine advertising (or PPCSE). One of the highest recognized PPCSE is Google Adwords. Pay-per-click search engine advertising allows to quickly leverage search engine traffic by “bidding” (paying) for high-value keywords related to particular product or service.
As you can see organic SEO is a free service in monetary terms although investments is required in terms of time and resources whereas PPC is a paid service. At the first glance, one would definitely get attracted to the free services of organic SEO and benefits garnered from it. But the latest statistics show a different picture as shown below:
SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.
Surprised?
One of the major reasons for quick adoption of PPC strategy is that it is very similar to traditional paid advertisement strategy and business owners can manage such campaign on their own. Whereas SEO requires a pre-requisite set of skills to ensure your website reaches the top rankings on search engine search through various on-site optimizations and off-site organic search engine optimization strategies. Another reason why businesses, prefer PPC is that they have better control over the entire program and they know exactly how and where their dollar is spent and results for each dollar spent, can be seen through subsequent Ad words report. They also do not have to change their tactics each time the search engines change their algorithms, which can prove a real headache, especially for those who are only interested in quick, short term results. Organic SEO might seem like too much of work, with absolutely no guaranteed results for short term goal seekers.
While a PPC campaign can deliver leads with relative ease, it can be a big money drain and has no real longevity — once you stop shelling out the cash, the website traffic goes away. SEO and link building require a lot more creative effort, but can have more sustainable results. It also allows a business to target a larger base of users, as most studies reveal that 75 – 80% of searchers click on organic listings as opposed to paid listings. As time goes on, web surfers are less prone to clicking PPC links on the right side of Google’s results or in the top sponsored links section. Why? In the past web surfers didn’t understand the difference between sponsored and non-sponsored links. Now web surfers are much more net savvy. The result is that a growing number of web surfers will click on non-sponsored links on the first page of results because they think: if that site made it into the top ten without paying for it, they must really be the best sites.
Just like planting seeds Organic SEO as an internet marketing strategy requires patience, but the rewards when reaped are plentiful. Although organic optimization is not the first choice for many (depending on the brand and business model) organic search does have inherent benefits that are unparalleled by sponsored or paid advertising tactics. The benefits and results last for longer period.
Generally you can go for Organic SEO if you;
ü Have a product that you can dedicate 300-750 words to describe its value.
ü Can exhibit supporting materials images, references and materials that emphasize the products benefits.
ü If you can shroud it in essentially keywords consumers might use to find it in enough frequency, that it can leverage a high-ranking organic search result.
ü This is a good strategy to adopt for lasting results, if you have the patience to hold out for 2-4 months or more depending on your industry & competition, for the benefits to start pouring to your website.
Besides, if you have a product that has a high price point, where there is some room for how much you are willing to spend to keep the cost per sale within bounds, then by all means pay per click advertising is a viable solution.
During tight credit crunch it is advisable to increase reliance on free organic SEO strategies rather than PPC. A hybrid plan (combination of SEO +PPC) is another alternative for those who seek quick results and suffer from very poor rankings, as SEO will ensure with time regular traffic builds for your site, while PPC will bring serious buyers to your site through banner ads, to get the ball rolling for your business. Once SEO tactics picks up, the budget spent on PPC can be minimized and then totally withdrawn, if required.
At the end of the day, decision on any kind of marketing strategy depends on the end results you expect from your online marketing strategy and the budget restrictions you face. Be sure you spell out exactly what you expect from your online marketing strategy before undertaking any plans. Flexibility & Control on your marketing budget is what you will gain from your online marketing strategies, which is very unlikely from traditional marketing techniques.
About the Author:
Mark S. is a qualified SEO Expert working with Analtyix Solutions which is a fast growing back-office service company for Finance and Accounting, IT, Marketing and Operational services. Analytix has been doing SEO for websites from various industry verticals like business brokerage firms, outsourcing firms, IT firms, dentists to e-commerce industry. To receive a free SEO analysis of your site contact Mark at mark@analytixsolutions.net

When I first started my career as a solo entrepreneur, I hired a web designer to create my website for me. He was awesome, and I loved his work. When I received my first bill, it included a contact email address for his “support department” and “billing department”. I was a little curious about who those other people were! Later I found out it was just him…he was ALL of those departments — design, support, billing, the works! A true case of putting lipstick on the pig. Even though he attempted to “paint” his business with these additional departments, underneath it all, he was still simply a solo entrepreneur.

You Can’t Contrive Credibility

It was amusing to me at the time…but now I see it for what it was: someone trying to be or look like something they aren’t in a misguided attempt to add credibility. This web designer was worried that clients wouldn’t take him seriously as a professional if they knew it was just him. So he created the illusion of these additional departments, presumably staffed by other employees. It wasn’t what I would call dishonest, more of a stretching of the truth. He delivered on his promises and had the needed expertise; none of his clients received anything less than was promised (and he was actually quite good at over-delivering.)

The Risk of Dressing Up as Something You’re Not

I knew this designer well enough and trusted him so it didn’t really bother me much, although it was somewhat of a revelation when I discovered he was a solo entrepreneur just like me! His other clients, however, expecting a bigger enterprise, might not have been as forgiving of the pretense. They may have felt deceived, suddenly unsure if they made the right choice. Future work and referrals were put in jeopardy simply because the vendor set an expectation that wasn’t exactly true.

The Upside of Putting Away the Makeup

The irony is that particularly as a solo entrepreneur, I actually was happier that he was a solo entrepreneur too! I’d left the corporate world and was embracing my own version of doing-it-all-myself. A short while later I interviewed an accountant for my growing business. She operated in an office with a couple of staff members. And she totally did NOT understand that no, I didn’t need to be budgeting money to rent an office for my soon-to-be-hired staff — I worked alone, from home, and I liked it that way! I sought out an accountant who was a solo entrepreneur like me, precisely because I knew she would understand my business — and understand me, because she was LIKE me.

Like Attracts Like — So Be Yourself!

The absolute best thing you can do for yourself and your business, is BE YOURSELF. The greatest truth in business is that you are going to want to work for and with people who share your goals, values, and to a certain extent, your personality. The best way to find those people is to be completely authentic about who you are! If you are a bit quirky or have a flamboyant style, let your website reflect that. If you like to tell it like it is, then do just that when you are on discussion forums, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Not everyone will like it…but those that do will be the ones that do business with you and rave about you to their colleagues.

Throw Away the Lipstick
So stop listening to those who offer well-meaning advice that doesn’t feel like you. Don’t change your website colors just because some study shows purple isn’t seen as a power color. Don’t censor yourself in online discussions or let someone talk you into a business card that just doesn’t feel like you. Put away the lipstick…and let your real self shine!

When you have got a business that you can continue and sustain, what’s the fastest way to make it profitable?

There are a few pointers you can take note of to make your business profitable.

Focus on the marketing.
In any business, number 1 is leads. Every single day, you have to track and measure your leads. How many leads did we generate this month? How many leads did we generate this week?

Most businessmen when you ask them, what will they say? I am not sure, I have to check. It has to be at your fingertips. You have to track your leads and constantly experiment using new strategies and new techniques to increase leads.

Advertising as an investment.
The best way to increase leads is through advertising right. Now, is advertising an expense or is it an investment? I always ask people that question.

If you throw in an ad and you don’t measure the leads, it’s an expense. If you throw in an ad and you don’t make money to cover it, it’s an expense. But if you throw in an ad and you track your response, and if for every dollar you spend, you get a dollar and twenty cents back, it becomes an investment.

So if you put in a dollar and you get back a dollar twenty. What’s your return? 20%. Your ad is an asset; it just could give you 20%. So how many dollars would you put in if you get a dollar twenty back? You put in as many as you can. You just keep putting it again and again. But all of us know that there’s this thing called the Law of Diminishing Returns.

As you keep putting ads, your returns will drop from a dollar twenty and drop to a dollar ten. So what happens. Do you give up your ads? No. you create new ads. And the moment you create new ads with a bit of different skew in that headline, what happens. Your return will again jump up. So that’s the first thing.

Focusing on the conversation rate.
Experimenting with new ways to increase conversion is very important. One way to do this is through creating a community. It’s easier to resell to a current client than it is to sell to a new client. So by making sure the moment you get a client, the same person comes back again and again and he brings all his friends. This will end up in better conversions as we all know that referrals through friends have a high rate of conversion.

Focus on margins
The last pointer is to constantly focus on your margins How can you do something more cost effectively, yet not compromising on quality. A lot of people ask this question. How do I know when I should hire someone? Or should I just do it myself?

The answer is this, when you hire someone, are you hiring an asset? If you’re paying the person $3,000, is the person making back for you another $3,000? If by hiring this person you can make $6,000, invest in that person. If by getting that person at $3,000, you lose that $1,000, then it’s not a good investment. So look at things from an investment perspective, from an asset perspective.

Here you have it, the key pointers that you can apply to your existing business and making it more profitable.

Article Contributed by Mark S.
Economic recession has forced most of the small to mid-sized businesses to cut their costs and re-work in a lean and mean way to survive. This involves slashing down those balloon sized marketing budgets and switch over to cost-effective and accountable marketing – SEO is definitely one of them.
Although traditional marketing has its benefits but Internet marketing is gaining an edge due to its attractive measurable deliverables at much lower costs.
One of the toughest things that business owner’s face with web marketing is lack of awareness and knowledge, since it’s just a decade old in terms of popularity. There are conflicts in their expectations on what search engine optimization (SEO) constitutes and what it can do for their business. This confusion is further aggravated when pushy SEO experts spew overblown sales pitch just to lure clients and close deals. Be sure to study and understand what SEO can deliver in form of results to your overall marketing plan.
Broadly speaking one can make SEO accountable by checking up on the following 4 deliverables.
1. Search Engine Rankings:
This is the basic requirement which every SEO campaign should deliver. But the intensity varies as per specific individual circumstances and requirements. As one shirt size cannot fit all, similarly importance of rankings cannot be same for every business.
Search engine ranking optimization focuses on bringing your keyword search on top rankings in various search engine sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, AOL etc. These results cannot be guaranteed or controlled.
Points to remember while demanding a high search ranking from your SEO expert:
· Check the competition for your chosen keywords. If it is highly competitive then it gets very difficult to climb over the top. It can be done, but requires consistent labor, time and resources spent on regular basis and following various SEO rules and guidelines to get on top rankings with search engines.
· Your demand should coincide with the current state of your site. Is your site brand new? If yes, it will take more time and efforts to bring you top rankings as one of the important factors influencing the search rankings is the domain age. Always remember rankings take time and constant efforts to build up. It is not a one day, one week or one month job.
· Do NOT expect your rankings to be on top all the time. Rankings fluctuate on a real time basis and your site rankings might suddenly drop to no-man’s island. Trust your SEO expert to find the reason for unexpected poor performance and take immediate damage control actions.
· Last but not the least, if you are obsessed with rankings, remember, rankings can only do so much. If visitors come to your site and immediately leave, it’s waste having high rankings. What is the use of having top rankings but no measurable increase in your sales or marketing results?
2. Traffic:
Another area to focus during an SEO campaign for your site is site traffic. This means the number of unique visitors to your site everyday and the amount of time they spent there. When your SEO campaign kick starts you should expect to see a gradual increase in the number of visitors to your site.
Important points to know about traffic before you focus on this area:
· Try and focus on quality instead of quantity. Even if you have 1000 visitors every day, if none of them convert into leads, your SEO campaign is not working. Be sure to take time and explain to your SEO expert what type of visitors you want them to target.
· Role of traffic is downplayed if you are in niche industry segment. This is because very few people will be actually searching for your product and services. Focus instead on conversion rates.
· Traffic loses its significance if you already have large number of visitors to your site. In such a situation ask your SEO expert to analyze the type of traffic and what action you want the traffic to take on your site. The emphasis should be on finding what’s working and not working to increase sales.
3. Conversions:
Conversion is the heart of any SEO campaign. You can check yourself the conversion rate by the following equation:
Conversion Rate = [(Total Web Sales / Unique Web Traffic) / Average Sales Price] x 100
To put simply you need to calculate how many visitors are actually converting into your customers. How do you do this?
· You need to tell your SEO expert what you consider as conversion for you. You need to define whether a visitor filling up an inquiry form is conversion or when they click on your ‘buy now tab’ on your e-commerce site or is it filling your contact us form or filling your subscription form/newsletter etc.
· You cannot hold your SEO expert responsible for low conversion rate if you have not clearly defined what you would consider as conversion.
· Remember the final sale depends totally on you and not the SEO expert. They can only bring the visitor to your site and guide them to take the action you want online; rest is totally dependent on you. Try and be reasonable in your expectations and see that you demand for an achievable goal from your online SEO campaign.
4. ROI:
The ultimate goal in every business strategy is to increase your bottom line. You need to ensure that the amount invested in any activity gives profitable return to make business sense. The same scenario is expected when you invest in search engine optimization.
The crux here is to remember it’s an investment. Every investment takes time to fructify. Give your SEO expert the minimum time required for the program to start delivering result. Generally it takes 90 days to start seeing some positive activity through SEO. This can vary as per the keywords, competition and industry. Sometimes it might take 6 months, sometimes 1 year. It is an on-going process and the sooner you begin, the soon you can see some good benefits out of it.
Conclusion
When hiring an SEO expert it’s important to have expectations since you are not indulging in charity. You need to be clear on what those expectations are and make sure to define it clearly in a formal written contract. This ensures a detailed road map or guideline is prepared which can be referred to check progress continuously. Any breach thereby can be clearly found out and dealt accordingly.
One of the major reasons why SEO campaigns fail is, when changes are requested for rankings, conversions, ROI or any help is required off site, it is not followed or provided by clients. They feel once they have dumped the job to the SEO expert, they will perform miracles. You need to help them to help you. Be co-operative, supportive and provide them all the information and help they need to carry out their job in the best possible manner. If still they cannot deliver as per your expectations and contractual agreement you have every right to penalize them and search for a better option.
About Author:
Mark S. is a qualified SEO expert working with Analtyix Solutions (www.analytixsolutions.com) which is a fast growing back-office service company for Finance and Accounting, IT, Marketing and Operational services. Analytix has been doing SEO for various industry websites from business brokerage, outsourcing, IT, dentists to e-commerce industry. To receive a free SEO analysis of your site contact Mark at mark@analytixsolutions.net