Many experienced viral marketers like Brad Powers already understand the benefits of Facebook, online exposure, and photo tagging. For the less experienced, these tools can become quite useful, when used creatively and effectively.
At a recent workshop sponsored by the Northwest Metroport Chamber of Commerce on July 27th, the chamber hosted a Facebook workshop to focus on tagging and photo distribution.
Don Philabaum, an online technology consultant who led the hour-long seminar explained that “It’s word of mouth enhanced by the Internet…It’s marketing on steroids.”
If you’re enjoying finding marketing materials online, you’ll certainly find a bountiful supply. At the same time, while do-it-yourself websites help to simplify your life and add to your marketing strategy, they can also have certain pitfalls.
Make sure that any template that you use fits with your brand and image and tweak the design to give your company a unique look. Try, as well, to keep in mind the basics of marketing, even when you’re focused on the technology side. As any experienced marketer like Brad Powers knows, include a coupon with your fliers or postcards so that you’ll know your marketing strategy is working.
As Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs LLC says, “Add some call to action in whatever marketing you’re doing. It’s basic stuff, but people forget about that when they get into tools and cool stuff.”
Understanding Social Media
According to Michael Haenlein and Andreas Kaplan, social media is “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” This type of media is best used for social interactivity situations, applying various different publishing techniques through the web to develop media monologues into social media monologues. Other names for social media are consumer-generated media (CGM) and user-generated content (UGC). To understand the basics of social media, one needs to first comprehend how technology and social interaction are united to work together. Brad Powers has much expertise in this area of marketing.
3 Key Online Marketing Tips
This article shares three key, and quite important, facts about online marketing. In the world of online marketing, it’s always helpful to have advice along the way, as keeping up with the ever-changing rules and guidelines is certainly a full-time job! Online marketing specialists like Brad Powers are constantly looking for new, fresh ideas and ways to attract people to their sites and products.
The three findings in this article include the following. Consumers do like targeted advertising, but only when they are relevant and sincere. Another study showed that it is not necessarily in the company’s best interest to focus on click-through rates when you are trying to raise brand awareness. As Lotame CEO Andy Monfried said, “Everyone in this business knows CTR is way overvalued; But a lot of marketers are addicted to it, because measuring CTR is easy, and they don’t know what else to track.”
Finally, they found that digital media is definitely damaging traditional media categories, even more than people might already expect.
If you want good business advice, go with viral marketing. The fact on the ground is that “Facebook ads reach a potential audience of 400 million active users.” So for businesses looking to reach a large audience with no cost, it makes sense to use FB for advertising purposes.
E-mail Marketing and Consumer Habits
An interesting new study at InformationWeek.com has found that almost 40% of consumers look to Facebook and Twitter to complement the information that they get from companies through e-mail marketing. The study was conducted by ExactTarget, who explain that , “Consumers don’t silo their engagement with brands to a single channel, instead they tend to layer marketing channels on top of one another to meet their different objectives.” Morgan Stewart, principal, ExactTarget’s research and education group, continues by saying that “The things that motivate consumers to go online initially dictate where and how they choose to engage with brands — whether that be e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.”
The study offers an interesting look at consumers and how they respond to internet marketing and other social media. It’s certainly worth looking at for anyone from the novice social media person to the experienced viral marketer such as Brad Powers.
Brad Powers, along with many other internet marketers, are constantly looking for the best ways to reach the most people and get the best results.
One of the most popular and fastest growing places where internet marketers are focusing their energies are in the social media sites which have become all the rage, especially with teens and young adults. Included in this category are the incredibly popular Twitter and Facebook. More and more young people with growing consumer power are incorporating a visit to their favorite social media sites into their daily routine. With this much exposure marketers are realizing that advertising on these sites can be a highly effective way to reach new customers and create more loyalty and stronger bonds with old customers.
Larger corporations in the United States have been more aware of and have steadily been adapting to the explosion of social media as a medium for communications among teens. Smaller businesses have been slower to discover the rewards of advertising in the social media tools, but in the past year the number of relationships between the social media sites and smaller U.S. businesses had doubled, from 12% in 2009 to 24% in 2010.
According to Dallas Lawrence, managing director at Burson-Marsteller’s Proof Integrated Communications, “I think what we’re seeing in the last 12 months is the trickle-down effect of social media from the major Fortune 500 and global companies who have been putting significant resources into large-scale outreach efforts. Social media really has replaced the phone book and your billboard advertising of the past — it’s the easiest and lowest threshold of entry for these folks to do marketing.”
Keeping High CPC’s Down to a Minimum
Companies with small monthly budgets can become frustrated with the high cost per click when they are marketing their B2B companies through paid search. In a helpful article entitled “6 Tactics For Overcoming the High Cost of Clicks in B2B PPC” you will learn some clever ways to keep those costs down. Assumptions made in the article should be noted:
• The authors are not discussing B2B e-commerce at all, only lead generation efforts.
• Even when success is achieved budgets are never as flexible as one would prefer.
• Expect long sales cycles.
• It is essential to keep track of quality leads and sales by keyword, although this can be a difficult task at times.
• Not every conversion action is the same, for example a request for a quote versus a white paper download.
Tips for Internet Marketing Success
Anyone, from the most experienced internet marketing executive, like Brad Powers, to the novice can benefit from extra tips for improving a company’s revenues. This blog explores 10 easy ways to do so and to get ahead.
The tips include building good customer relationships with clients, even after the deal is closed; offering additional products to clients; creating special promotions to allow clients to earn money back with referrals and with products they sell; selling slower moving products at a discount, and more.
These 10 tips can help experienced internet marketers like Brad Powers, and anyone else, to monetize and improve company outputs.
Fynanz, Inc. Adds New Executive
Fynanz, Inc, where Brad Powers is an Advisor, recently announced a new addition to their executive team. Jim Merrill has joined as Senior Vice President of Sales. He brings over 20 years of financial services experience to the Fynanz team including time as a direct credit union manager.
With Fynanz, Merrill will manage the sales and client implementation teams that work together with the credit union and school partners for Fynanz. Fynanz is certainly looking forward to having him on board and to having him as a vital part of their executive team.
