Archive for the Digital Marketing Category
Posted on February 11, 2011 by Bill Hansen
Just because we’re in the traditional advertising business doesn’t mean that we have a chip on our shoulder regarding social media. In fact, anything that helps local businesses grow is a good idea in our view.
But a study published this week raises serious questions about how Social Media is being used in retail: the finding suggest SM does much less for local retailers than many expected. The analytics firm ForeSee Results found that social media drove just 5% of visitors to retail Web sites. On the other hand, “promotional emails, search engine results, and [traditional] advertising are more influential,” it says.
In fact, the study found that more traditional marketing techniques not only generated more traffic, they also deliver better-quality customers. “Some of the most satisfied site visitors arrived at the site because of previous familiarity with a brand, promotional emails, word-of-mouth, and product review websites,” it says in its report. See the study details after the jump.
The Big Ideas:
- We don’t disagree with this research. Social media is clearly still in it’s hype stage and there’s a lot of experimenting going on and a lot still to be done. But don’t write off social media. We’re still in the 2nd inning with this rapidly evolving platform and consumer expectations and norms are changing continously. Get out there, get comfortable in the space, and experiment. Get ideas from people half your age.
- Social media is not ‘one thing.’ Different types may have different benefits to your business: watch them all. The goal of any local business shouldn’t be to just drive traffic to its web site. It should include building the brand, informing those that want to be informed, and improving its relationships with customers – and last but not least: driving store traffic! Yelp.com is social media that impacts expectations and perceptions. The Facebook ‘like’ button can influence thousands of people at a time. Same with ‘check-in’ sites like Foursquare.com. Group buying sites like Groupon are social and they can drive huge traffic spikes (just be careful how you use them). Even Google is building social into it’s index for search. Be broadly social, regardless of its immediate impact.
- We strongly agree with one thing here: Email works. The problem with email is that it’s difficult/expensive to reach people outside of your own customer base, so it’s a tough putt for new customer acquisition. With strict ‘opt in’ laws, you run a big risk buying email addresses and many of those you can buy are long-since dormant. You can solve this problem by leveraging other people’s email lists. Start with your local media outlets. Our radio stations have listener email programs that you can usually use to get the message out to thousands of new prospects and ask for your own opt-ins. Consider more creative approaches, like partnering with another complimentary business to reach a broader base. Use traditional advertising to drive people to your site for a reason (a discount, gift, etc) and get them to register as a condition of taking the freebie. Even consider designing a promotion with a large local media co (radio is perfect), to use your advertising dollars to drive entries for contests and fun activities. Again, the goal here is to get them to register so you can communicate directly later. You don’t even need a website for this – your local station can drive it through theirs.
Posted on June 12, 2010 by The Growthwire Team
There’s a free software tool available to small and medium sized businesses (SMB) today that can quickly transform your business into a savvy, high ROI digital marketing operation. This tool was originally created to help some of the world’s most sophisticated web marketers and ecommerce sites understand who was using their websites, opening targeted communication, and interacting with different parts of the operation. It allows these firms to actually track individuals, their interests, and their response to differing marketing exposure – a web marketer’s dream.
Until recently, this type of solution has only been available to larger companies that had enough electronic marketing and web-based activity to merit the monthly investment. The good news is that this is no longer the case.
One of the leading providers of lead management software, Loopfuse, is now offering a free version of their solution (it’s called FreeView) to businesses that focus on lead and customer groups of fewer than 2500 people – in other words, the average local business like yours. Should you give it a try? Answer these 3 questions to find out:
Posted on April 22, 2010 by SBarbalho
As most of you know, Twitter is a free social media platform. Its users micro-blog everything from what they ate for lunch to news articles that they’d like others to see and share. Users express themselves in short 140 character broadcasts to designated groups of “followers” (Tweets), which can be read and passed virally through the Twitter site, mobile devices, and a number of 3rd party applications. In the last months,
The Growthwire has received
a lot of questions about the use of Twitter for local businesses. Most of these questions come from people who clearly see Twitter’s value as a social and a customer-service/relationship tool, but are uncertain about Twitter’s usefulness for
customer acquisition.
Our honest answer is that we don’t know the answer yet.
The platform obviously has many evangelists, some of whom say it’s a great acquisition tool. We’re not entirely convinced that these anecdotes are objective or applicable to the average local business. Most of the more thoughtful discussions note that even if it does ‘work,’ it’s probably not for everyone. The most common challenges appear to be: 1) It requires a lot of work and a broader social media strategy to use effectively, 2) Its potential decreases significantly as the geography of its use narrows (i.e. global, virtual companies like Dell will get more ROI than the small brick and mortar/local market computer shop), 3) Despite all the talk and awareness, only about 11% of the US is using the service (compared to 40% for Facebook), and 4) A lot of Twitter activity is now the cultivation of mass-follower lists to facilitate spam advertising.
Maybe we’re jaded – we’ve been through several major cycles of internet hype to date… So instead of trying to tell you what’s going on, we’ll simply ask. Read on to take our one-question poll and see links where you can learn more about Twitter.
Posted on April 18, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Big companies use PR firms to keep the press up to speed on their latest product announcements, event sponsorships, management changes, and other important information. All of these announcements inundate the press (i.e. spam) and have actually created a backlash – many journalists now look to blogs in their area of interest for the really interesting stuff. This is even happening in local press, where reporters eye local blogging content to spot trends and subjects of interest.
What does this have to do with your business? Blog writers are always searching for fresh meat (trust me) and are often very open to direct communication, comment, and suggestion. If a local blogger is writing about something that you’re an expert in, or a product/service area that you serve, it’s likely the blogger would welcome your input (much more so than a traditional journalist). Also, it’s not at all unusual and, under the right conditions, not unethical, for bloggers to accept offers of free products/services to evaluate and comment on. If the blogger does pick up your idea or input, you can often get a nice little bump in traffic for the effort. If the local paper cites or follows up on that blog, or if the organizations that compile the “best of” lists in your town pays attention to bloggers (most do now), you could get a significant recognition and months of free publicity.
Bloggers often do a pretty good job of optimizing their sites for Google too. This means that their work (and potentially your press) might be picked up by a broader audience than just their core followers.
Posted on February 8, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Google is putting their money where their mouth isn’t: brand marketing via
broadcast media.
The internet advertising behemoth has been running broadcast ads since mid-January and invested an estimated $5 million for a single 53-second Super Bowl TV ad. The spot, an emotion-laden story about life, love and adventure, driven by Google searching, was one of the critic’s favorites this morning.
What most advertising pundits missed was this: Why does a company that has unlimited ability to advertise and build name recognition across billions of web pages every single day need to advertise on TV? The answer: Google is facing real competition today from Microsoft/Bing, and soon probably from Apple. They realize that they can’t just win with superior algorithms any more. And they know something that a company learns by driving and analyzing 60% of internet advertising: internet ads do a lousy job of branding and building desire.
Posted on January 18, 2010 by The Growthwire Team
As reported by the
Wall Street Journal this week, the board of Zales Corp fired it’s CEO and two other top executives over poor performance, particularly during the 2009 holiday season. One of the major issues, according to The Journal, was CEO Neal Goldberg’s decision to shift most of it’s broadcast advertising budget to internet marketing. This strategy clearly backfired as Zales’ prime competitors, heavy users of broadcast media, posted strong results.
Consumers are obviously using the web with increasing frequency as their source of entertainment and social connection. Marketers should take caution, however, before they assume that this shift in attention equates to a shift in digital marketing effectiveness.
For all its promise, the web has yet do demonstrate an ability to influence desire and intent to purchase. In fact, most web commerce is dependent on those triggers occurring before Google is searched, a banner is clicked, or a merchant’s site is opened.
The desire and brand choice that drives market share — online and offline — are still being created by effective terrestrial advertising. This is particularly true for emotion-driven purchases like diamond jewelry, as Zales can now sadly attest.
Bottom line: Make sure that you’ve built the desire for your brand with effective offline advertising before you expect consumers to look for it online.
Posted on January 7, 2010 by Bill Hansen
With recent advances in search technology, your customers’ experiences can now be instantly in the public domain and, in many cases, magnified by the size and nature of social networks. This adds to the existing risks posed by sites that offer un-moderated ‘ratings’ of local businesses – many of which you may not even know exist.
If you don’t already, its time to start taking steps to manage your brand’s reputation online – at the very least, to find out if there are any reputation-killers lurking in the dark recesses of the web. For most businesses, this can be as simple as a doing a couple of quick searches each month, or setting up an automated Google Alert to do the searching for you. Other businesses may need to dedicate more effort to this issue; particularly ones that are active in social media, have high staff turnover, face very aggressive competitors, or who’ve had problems with product quality or customer service.
In this, the first of two posts on Reputation Management, we’ll cover why you should be concerned and how you can take steps to monitor what’s said about you or your business online. In the second post, we’ll focus on how to use this information, including strategies for remedying bad situations.
Posted on January 7, 2010 by Bill Hansen
According to several recent studies, 75-90% of small businesses get
no return on investments in web marketing via social networks. This, despite the fact that about 50% of small business owners spent over 100 hours last year engaged in social media marketing. In one recent survey conducted by
BizLaunch, owners were asked a very general question: ”What social media platforms have contributed to your sales?” The answers were pretty dismal:
- Facebook: 14%
- Linked-In: 7%
- Twitter: 5%
- Blogs: 4%
- YouTube: 1%
So what’s going on?
Posted on December 14, 2009 by The Experts
Every month, our team of marketing, operations, and strategy professionals put their heads together to answer a reader’s question about growing his/her small business. You can click here to submit your own question, and please feel free to join this discussion by adding your comments below
Rachel H., Stamford CT
Q: My staff and I put a lot of time into our website – it has a fantastic design, includes video testimonials, detailed pages about all of the services we provide, and have a very good page of Frequently Asked Questions. It’s so much better than our competitors’ sites that several are even starting to copy us. I get a lot of positive feedback from customers about the site so I know it does what we want it to do. The problem is that it doesn’t generate a lot of traffic. But the traffic it does get results in an email to us about 20% of the time, which I understand is a very high converting level. I have our www address on our direct mail pieces and very large print in the occasional newspaper ads that we run. I’ve had web programmers offer to do things (that I don’t fully understand) to make it show up more often in Yahoo and Google, but the bids are pretty expensive and I just don’t know if they will work. What do you recommend?
Posted on November 23, 2009 by Bill Hansen
Does your business show up on the first page of a Google search for your firm’s general category/service? If not, you’re in the same boat as many other local businesses and you’re probably missing revenue opportunities as a result. The good news is that even the smallest firms now have a free, easy-to-use tool to help them solve this problem.
It’s important to remember that only a minority of your potential customers actually search for vendors – roughly 4 customers go to ‘known’ firms for every 1 that uses a search engine to find one – but now you have a better chance than ever to compete for these searchers without a large investment in your own website and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is needed to get it found today.
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