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Traditional and Social Media: A Dynamic Duo

August 4th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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Social media marketing is all the rage these days, but are you ready to take the plunge and ditch your tried and true marketing methods for Facebook pages and Twitter feeds?  Relax.  Here’s a three-pronged approach for combining the old with the new for maximum results.

Step 1: Listen to Your Customers to Create Effective Campaigns

The key to effective search, display, and email campaigns is making sure your message is targeted specifically to your audience.  If you already have an actively maintained Facebook page or Twitter feed, there is no need to make assumptions about what you think your customer wants to see when you can tap into their true feelings. Can you say free focus group?  This is an opportunity not to be missed.  Use it to turn this valuable information into effective ads that speak directly to the needs of your customers.

Step 2: Build Relationships with Prospects through Dead-on Content

You’ve heard it been said time and again that content is king, and this still rings true.  Content in the form of articles, white papers, webcasts, blog posts, etc. is what gains credibility, builds trust, and leads to the development of relationships that lead to sales. Why reinvent the wheel when you can use what works with your current customers to attract new ones?  By applying what you learned from the close observation of your customer’s social media interactions (what content was retweeted, clicked, Liked, and shared the most), you can create a relevant content  marketing campaign that makes prospects feel that you understand their problems and that your product is the best fit for them.

Step 3: Go for the Sale with Display Ads That Speak to Them

Now that you have a good handle on what your customers and prospects want, it’s time to update your messaging once more and hit them with new search or display ads that reflect what current customers actually believe. Since your prospects have been engaged with your content, they are already familiar with your brand, so go-ahead, ask for the sale now that you know what makes them click!

Need help creating a dynamic marketing campaign that pairs social media with traditional marketing to turn social media visitors and prospects into customers?  Look no further, contact us today!

Websites Redefined

July 25th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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A single, static repository of information (a.k.a. website) might have gotten you by about 10 years ago, but in this day and age people seeking information digitally are looking for more – they are looking for an experience.  Websites that shine engage your audience by creating a social, mobile, and interactive experience that is tailored to them.

Six Tips for Creating a Great Interactive Experience with Your Website:

Know your audience
Who you are speaking to will influence what type of website you create or better yet, allow you to target the vehicle that your audience is most likely to use:

Baby Boomers – Boomers are used to going to a physical site to find the information they are looking for and they don’t mind digging for it.  Whether it’s a landing page, a content site, or a Flash-driven experience, as long as it contains the information that they’re looking for they’ll dig it.

Young Professionals–Young professionals in their 20s and 30s want quick and easy access to information. Enhance your brand experience on social sites like Facebook to reach these people.

Generation Y – These coming of age consumers are on the go and their mobile device is where it’s at.  Be sure to have your WAP page or mobile applications ready for this audience.

Get social
Regardless of your target audience; chances are good they are involved in some type of online community.  Simply provide them with the necessary tools and let them go to work for you – sharing the information they like. Site add-ons like “Add This” give developers quick access to the tools that make it easy to share any content on your website. Social sites are also coming out with their own set of sharing tools that allow you to easily integrate your content so you can see what your friends have “liked” – providing a great new way to quickly see what products are popular within a particular demographic.

Get the most bang for your buck
Utilizing multiple touch points through an integrated network – rather than a website alone – enables you to engage a much wider group of consumers through a more interesting, integrated, interactive experience – and get more out of your marketing dollars. Consumers rely on many different digital devices to search for information, so once you figure out where they are you need to keep them engaged. You can do this by making sure the various ways you communicate with your customers (blog, website, Facebook, Twitter, mobile application) are connected and lead to each other.

Keep them coming back for more
Rewarding the users who are influencing your brand will keep them engaged and active, and most importantly – talking.  Be sure your fans and followers are the first to know about new offers or company information. Creating exclusive content, offers, and promotions will help develop a sense of community and ensure they keep coming back.

Let your users drive the content
Fan suggestions, surveys, images, and videos will be the natural result of a growing social network and won’t require too much work on your part.  It is important that your fans are just as involved in creating content as your internal team. Make sure you are providing the means of gathering this type of content and in some cases reward those who participate in content generation and brand discussions.

Participate
It’s no secret that people like to talk and your brand is the topic du jour. Most comments will be neutral or positive but at some time or other there will be a negative comment to deal with.  More than delivering good feedback to improve your brand, the careful monitoring of the social sites you are involved with gives you the opportunity to guide conversations and potentially turn a negative comment into something positive.

We can help you create more than just a “website”. Let us help you deliver a great interactive experience that will keep your customers coming back for more.  Contact us today!

Make Social Media Work For You

July 17th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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Social media provides the perfect opportunity for companies to engage with their customers – a big plus for companies who are quickly learning that their brand is being determined by the conversations that are being had about their company. So how do you effectively incorporate social media into your marketing mix to ensure the biggest bang for your buck?

Three Tips to Ensure Social Media Success:

  • Be an active participant: If you’ve decided to use social media then you need to roll up your sleeves and get in the ring! Assign someone to be an active and consistent participant in the communication.
  • Be yourself: Lose the marketing fluff – a real voice will build trust and allow you to connect with your followers and fans and make them feel that they are part of an exclusive group with special insight into your company.
  • Be aware: The most active users of social media are the people who will carry your brand message for you. These influencers often retweet or post your messages to their followers and friends, so it’s a good idea to be aware of who they are.


How to Integrate Social Media and Measure Its Worth

First things first… Start by connecting your Facebook fans and Twitter followers to the customers in your marketing database using the email address – accessible via the application programming interfaces (APIs). Now you are ready to build social media into your marketing mix. A great way to start is to direct message your followers and/or place exclusive offers on your Facebook page. To keep fans and followers coming back for more make sure that when you do send an email or direct mail message that they are the first to receive it. Also be sure to advertise your social media presence on your website and by using the “forward-to” social features in email. Finally, you can measure the success of your social media efforts by turning to the APIs from Facebook and Twitter which contain valuable information such as who has posted your message, who has retweeted, who has clicked on your link, and more. This information can then be brought into your marketing database and measured.

While only time will tell the true marketing value of social media, one thing is for sure – this is definitely an area you don’t want to ignore. We can help you bring social media into the mix and maximize its value while enhancing the value of all your other marketing communications. Contact us today!

How to Create Engaging Email Campaigns

June 5th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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Click-through rate research has shown email to be one of the most effective elements of a brand engagement strategy, which explains why an increasing number of brand marketers are turning to email campaigns to gain and retain consumers. But all leads are not created equal. Cost-per-lead (CPL) advertising, which lets marketers reach only interested customers while only paying for signups, has been found to be the best way to engage with interested consumers. Think quality over quantity.

Across different industry verticals, leads acquired through cost-per-lead advertising deliver superior brand engagement as compared to industry averages. However, acquiring a lead is only the first step. It’s what you do with the lead that really matters. It’s important that marketers speak to the prospect in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them in order to deepen brand engagement.

Here’s how you can maximize your CPL advertising campaigns:

1. Know where your ads are running
Transparency, which allows you to know exactly where your ads are running so you can be sure to tailor your message to your audience, is it the most important factor to the success of a CPL lead generation campaign. Transparency helps you to protect brand integrity by allowing you to be sure the content of the site aligns with your brand. Transparency can also help you to optimize your campaign by mapping leads to their sources, which allows you to increase your spend on the better performing sites and increase your return on investment.

2. Make it manageable
Save yourself time and money by working with an enabling technology that provides access to a significant portion of the CPL market and can help you set-up, manage, and optimize all of your campaigns from one place – leaving you time to focus on developing meaningful engagement strategies that will resonate with your customers.

3. Immediate follow-up
Auto-responders enable an automated “thank you” email to be sent to the consumer in real-time. Just be sure that the call to action in the auto-responder matches the one that’s specified in the advertisement. In addition, the follow-up email should inform the user where they saw the ad, and list the benefits of following through on the call to action.

4. Give them more than just a good deal
To keep the consumer engaged you need to consider your long term strategy. While everyone loves a good deal and promotions are a great way to get consumers to respond to your ad, you need to consider other strategies that deliver value to the consumer by appealing to what they are interested in.

We can help you acquire the right consumers and engage them in a relevant way through email, Facebook, Twitter, and other engagement vehicles. Contact us today!

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

May 5th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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In today’s media-driven world, with mobile devices, social networks, and company websites playing the lead roles in consumer purchase decisions, marketers may want to deem “communication” the new “location”. As consumers access these multiple touch points throughout the research process, businesses need to create an integrated cross-channel customer experience to build trust, increase loyalty, and ultimately win consumers.

Sounds easy enough, but with consistently low customer satisfaction ratings for cross-channel customer experiences, it’s obvious that businesses are struggling with this. Why is that? For one, it is enough of a challenge to merely keep a company website up-to-date, never mind ensuring that is also delivers an excellent customer experience. Add to that the growing number of web-enabled mobile devices and the rise of social network usage and companies face a real challenge when it comes to creating a seamless and personalized experience for each user. The goal is to figure out how to communicate, not only constantly, but consistently with customers across all these intersecting channels. We have listed several ideas below to get you going.

Optimize your website for all mobile devices
We’re talking more than just resizing the screen and calling it a day! This requires getting in tune with how you want customers to move across the various channels and devices they use to interact with you. Customers on the go using their smartphone to get quick information have different goals than customers accessing your website from the comfort of their office. The key is to tailor the experience to what customers want, when they want it – quick answers to specific questions or a more engaging experience where they can browse and search. This allows you to recognize the customer as an individual and customize your content to them regardless of the way they choose to access it.

Make it personal
By addressing the customer’s context as opposed to just the channel or device they happen to be using, you are able to create a personalized experience. This means it’s not just enough to know how they are seeking information, but in what situation they are seeking this information – the who, what, where, why, and when. All these factors will help you to present relevant, timely, and highly- targeted content.

Make communication a two-way street
Communication needs to be a give and take to be effective and customers need to feel that their opinion counts. An easy and effective way to do this is to use your website to invite comments, ratings, and reviews. This lets customers know you are committed to improving customer satisfaction and provides them with a forum for discussion with you and with other customers. This provides many benefits for you too. Your best sales team may very well be your customers, so why not unleash the power of all those happy customers, as they interact and communicate to help sell your products? Customer comments and blogs allow you to directly respond to customers and address issues before they affect more customers. The feedback from ratings and reviews lets you get into the heads of your users and find out what they are seeking so you are guaranteed to hit the mark when you go to market with new products and services – a win-win for all.

Help them to help themselves!
Ease the call volume of contact centers, decrease costs, and increase customer satisfaction. Sound good? As long as it is intuitive and appropriate to each channel and device, offering web self-help can really, well, help! The key is understanding the potential problems that users encounter and providing the right help at the right time.

Providing a forum that allows you to tap into your users (many of whom enjoy helping others deal with issues they too have faced) not only builds a powerful database of solutions and takes the pressure off your own call center employees, but builds a customer community that works to increase customer loyalty. The most important thing is to ensure a smooth transition between channels. If customers don’t have to repeat information their frustration and the time your agents need to serve them will be greatly reduced. Also be sure that your call center number is still easily found on your web site so that customers can contact you on their terms.

Know who your customer is – all the time
With more and more customers accessing you through different channels at different times, it is becoming increasingly important to take an integrated approach that provides a snapshot of key customer information across all channels. Not only will this allow you to address customers on a personal level as they contact you through a new channel – making them feel important – but it will help your sales team to easily identify cross and up sell opportunities.

Be a social butterfly
Go ahead, spread your wings. With social networking on the rise – 46 percent in 2009 according to Forrester Research – social networks offer a new way to get in touch with your customers, drive web traffic, get customer insights through candid conversations, and provide real-time information to your organization – allowing you to increase the size and loyalty of your audience and maximize your communication efforts. Just be sure to stick to social networks that are relevant to your audience, otherwise you are wasting time with something potential customers will never use.

Mix it up
Make these different channels work for you. By mixing your various channels together and having them play off each other, you can create integrated marketing campaigns to liven up your marketing efforts, differentiate your company, and get your target audience to sit up and take notice.

It’s easy to get hung up on the task of managing the many channels, devices, and social networks that we have today. Instead look at this as a unique opportunity which offers many new ways to approach customers and allows you to differentiate your business through multi-channel, innovative campaigns that spark interest, ignite desire, and most importantly keep your sales engine running.

Listen up and don’t be shy about it
At the end of the day you can do all the work you want creating integrated, personalized communication and it would be all for nothing if you do not actually listen to what your customers are telling you. You do this by taking real steps to improve your business based on the feedback and advice garnered from your customers. But what good is this if your customers don’t even know that you have listened? Take it one step further. Tell them. It goes a long way to toot your own horn and actually tell your customers that you have listened to them and let them know what you have done as a result. Think: You asked, we listened. And since you’ll already have the communication channels set up to do just that, it should be no trouble at all! What a great way to not only communicate, but demonstrate, to your customers that they are important.

Need help creating an effective and innovative integrated communication strategy? Look no further, contact us today!

Social Media: Three Essentials Your Business Needs Before You Engage

September 5th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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It’s true that social media has become the most popular marketing channel since the advent of the Internet, but marketers (and those who are responsible for marketing) need to develop a solid strategy first, as with all other tactics, before testing the new waters.

Whether yours is a small or midsize company, nonprofit, or public institution, if it’s not yet in the social-media space you should know up front that entering and playing in that space is going to take an investment of time and effort.

And even those organizations that have been tweeting and networking for a while should stop chasing social media without the following three essentials in place.

1. A Professional Website

Although some marketing experts claim that blogs are quickly replacing websites, most people will visit company websites to learn more about your products, services, or mission. Your website’s landing pages are also the destination point from external links in online news releases, published articles, videos, or any social-media entries and blogs in which you’ve posted a URL or other hyperlink. If your site isn’t ready for prime time, you can lose those visitors in seconds—and reduce the odds that they’ll come back.

Your organization’s website should have the following elements to attract and retain visitors:

  • A professional and consistent design and look that are easy on the eyes
  • Easy-to-read text
  • The organization’s name and a clear explanation of what it does
  • Menu options that are easy to navigate
  • Contact information or contact links on every page
  • Content that is compelling, informative, credible, authentic, and relevant— focused on the “customer” and error-free
  • Few bells and whistles that take too long to load
  • Working links

Although 63% of consumers and small-business owners turn to the Internet first for information about local companies, and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online, according to research from WebVisible and Nielsen.

Participating in social media can help your organization build brand awareness and possibly generate leads; but before you post links to your site (or landing pages) to entice target audiences with more information, ensure that your site has all the essential components to make it professional and functional.

2. An Understanding of the Social-Media Rules of Engagement

If you jump into the social-media space without a solid understanding of its rules and best practices, you may commit social-media suicide without even realizing it. There are certain protocols that will become evident to you as you read and observe others. Learn from them first, and you’ll avoid alienating your audience.

Here are some valuable rules:

  • Know your online identity. “Knowing your online identity as well as letting others know up front who you are is important in establishing trust among the online community.”
  • It’s not about you. Social media is about community; it’s not about what you do and what you market. Show interest in others and offer value, or others will see through your self-interests.
  • Do not jump in and promote your products, services, or mission. Wait and build your reputation on the networking site first before you begin to promote anything. Contribute to the online community, help solve users’ problems, and develop friends and followers.
  • Read and learn first. Observe users and get a feel for their interests, attitudes, and personalities. Take the time to “listen” and learn before delving into the community.
  • Don’t mix business with pleasure. Keep your friends and family profiles separate from those that you use for your organization or company. Friends won’t care about your latest promotional effort, and customers won’t care what you did on the weekend.
  • Be positive. Don’t say anything that will come back and bite you, and avoid getting defensive when someone says something negative about your organization. Take a deep breath and wear a public-relations hat when you respond.
  • Go slowly. You don’t have to join every social-media site at first. Take it slowly, and establish your identity on the one or two sites where your target customers are before you take on more. It’s better to participate more frequently in fewer sites than infrequently in many.

3. An Understanding of Available Online Tools

It’s important to know the available online tools, particularly those for beginners and intermediate participants. If you are unsure of what’s out there, or what you can use – talk to us, and let’s know how we can help you.

Again, start slowly, using the tools that you find easy to learn. You can build on your knowledge and engage other tools as you become more proficient.

Although millions of organizations and companies participate in social media, many have overlooked the aforementioned essentials before taking the leap. If your organization hasn’t yet begun, take the time to develop a social-media strategy that will help guide your participation and content as well as build a foundation for better results. And if you have already been engaged in this space, evaluate how many of those essentials are in place. There’s always room for improvement.

Time to Boost Business

July 25th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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It’s a Wednesday night, and business is excruciatingly slow at the local pizzeria. With the help of Fishnet Media’s mobile marketing service, the owner quickly sends a text to their customer base, offering a generous discount to diners who visit within the next two hours.

In today’s economic times, it’s important to know your marketing is both timely and reaching the right customer base. Increasingly, real-time marketing technologies are helping small to mid-sized businesses nimbly adapt to the ebb and flow of consumer demand. Like the example above, Fishnet Media offer’s the ability to pinpoint marketing, providing more return on investment.

Real-time marketing has emerged as a way for small and medium-sized companies to more easily and efficiently keep up with larger competitors. Companies with smaller budgets and greater accountability, are looking to make each dollar work harder in today’s economy.

For the most part, our real-time technologies focus on mobile marketing, social media, and combinations of the two to reach customers.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you reach your regular customers, track potential customers by interest, attract customers by proximity, and get more out of your marketing dollars.

How to Maximize Your SEO

June 28th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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While SEO is one of the best ways to drive quality traffic to your site, it’s also deceptively labor intensive. SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” tactic – but rather requires constant attention to make the most of your efforts.

Where do you start, and how do you know if any of it’s working? Are you winning or losing your SEO battle, and if you’ve hired an (some other) agency to manage your search profile, are they doing all that they can? These are questions that anyone who manages a website should be asking. Below are a few easy tips that you can use to spot check your SEO.

Work with the search engine
Site operators can easily monitor their SEO performance by using some simple tools. For instance, Google’s Webmaster Tools – The tools will tell you what keywords you are ranking for, which keywords are driving traffic to your site, which pages are in the Google index, who is linking to you, and if there are problems on your site.

What does your link text say about you?

Are you the No. 1 website for the phrase “Next Page?”. If so, it’s because your linking to that phrase. When you link from one page to another, the search engines use the words in the link text to determine which keyword phrase to look for in the content of the page that the link is going to. You should be linking to your ‘apple pie’ page with the link text ‘apple pie.’ The search engines will confirm that ‘apple pie’ appears in the title, description, and body content of the page that you are linking to and award the page with rankability.

What do inbound links say?

You want all the inbound links you can get, but what really makes the difference is to make sure that the linked copy from the other website includes a term that people would naturally search for, rather than the name of your website.
Here’s an example: “A motorcycle website can identify key terms, such as ‘front end components,’ ‘discount exhaust,’ and ‘seats.’ Then, the website can encourage outside websites, including blogs to link on these terms instead of the name of the motorcycle website. Over time, the website will start to position itself on these key terms and improve its search engine positioning.

Meta matters

If you’ve ever wondered why some websites have a full-blown directory in the Google results and others offer only a lonely link, the answer is in the meta data. Marketers need to be cognizant of what story that information tells a prospective visitor to your site, and that means entering useful copy in your site’s meta data that will inspire the user into actually coming to your site to hear more.

Ask about relevance everyday

If you’re not asking about relevance, you’re definitely failing at SEO. Much like a credit score, no one knows exactly how specific factors affect rankings. But as a general rule of thumb, always ask yourself: What more can I offer the users who I want to attract? How can I be the most relevant website on a particular topic? This means an abundance of informative content, and a diversity of content that a user might be interested in. Don’t just load your site down with text. Make sure to include PDFs, videos, and even links to outside resources that would be helpful for your users. Do anything you can to make your site extremely relevant and useful for a visiting user, even if that means providing links to outside resources. This will rank you higher in search engines.

98% of all new technology purchases begin with a key word search; make sure your offering is at the top of these searches.

To learn more about the current state of your site, or if you’re looking for SEO help – Contact us today.

Increase Results and Stretch Event Marketing Dollars

May 28th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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The recent downturn in the economy has had a significant impact on the events industry; budgets are being slashed and travel costs are limiting attendance.

However, there is a great opportunity to be successful during these rough times and (to no surprise) it demands creativity. So tune up your traditional marketing approach and try some of these strategies to show value in your event program:

  • Measure ROI today
    In order to institute metrics quickly, most marketers advise hiring a company familiar with how it is done. Some methods include polling attendees before and after a show via e-mail or surveying attendees during a show.
  • Ramp up your pre-event marketing
    One method is to have the thought leaders and speakers who will be giving presentations at the event help spread the word in advance. Have them connect to attendees through social networking or via the Web to give a preview of the types of useful information they will be providing those who attend.
  • Think digital
    Aside from the fact that digital events provide a significantly greater opportunity for measurement and attendee tracking, they also tackle the travel problem, since Web-based events make it easier for attendees to choose your event over other, non-Web-based ones.
  • Where do your customers network?
    Find people where they gather on a daily basis. In many cases this means using social networking sites.
  • Maintain an open mind
    Be willing to make changes. Marketers that create true value in their event, target exhibits directly to attendees based on their emotional and personal as well as professional needs. And they use metrics to prove ROI should weather the financial storm and come out the other side with a new set of tools for successful marketing.

If you’re looking for help with your next event, look no further – Contact us today.

Get More Out of Your Creative

May 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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The need to get more out of less is nothing new, but rather a continual trend in the marketing world. Below are 5 tactics that may seem like ways to deal with current economic environment, but they’re actually practices that will help you improve the performance of your marketing efforts.

1. Keep your messages simple
2. Test and optimize
3. Support campaigns on your homepage
4. Try out the latest technologies
5. Remember “searchability”

And no matter how “creative” your creative is, if you’re not taking ROI into consideration, it’s likely your competition is. So now is a good time to start.

If you’re looking for help with your next campaign, look no further – Contact us today.