Kerisma

A New Year Brings A New Beginning

Be happy knowing that 2009 will be a great year of new technology usage as more B2B marketers experiment with online mediums. At a time when advertisers are re-evaluating their marketing spend and travel may take a deeper downturn, the internet is the way marketers are turning to promote their business. For the most part it’s measurable, in some cases with social media usage it’s less expensive, it’s where people are going when logging on with their computers and/or their mobile phones at work, or for their personal usage. Feel free to add your own comments here where you think are the best areas for marketers to focus on in the coming year. Share some of your own examples that have had great success.

Any questions pertaining to these topics below I can point you in the right direction.

Keep Your Eyes Open to Competitors: Don’t forget to put together a competitor analysis by signing up for their services to learn from others and how to do it better!

Webcasts Are Where It’s At: So you may find that trade show bookings are in a slump for both exhibitors and attendees. How about adding webcasts to your site? Think of ways to provide your audience video teasers to the show that will attract them to register, but also give them the opportunity to register for webinars with exclusive interviews with an industry professional. How about offering your clients the opportunity to promote a new book, product and/or service and create sponsorship opportunities for others to discuss the health of the market, best practices in the industry, as well as demonstrations of new products/services that could be entertaining to audiences. People can’t make it to the show, don’t leave them in the dark. Recently, eMarketer reports, “Marketers in the US will take a closer look at online video in 2009, according to a survey conducted in December 2008 by PermissionTV. More than two-thirds of respondents said they would focus their budgets on online video this year.”

Let’s Be Social: Think about creating an online community. If you don’t have this already on your site, start utilizing some services that are currently on the market through LinkedIn, Facebook, Meetup.com, or a trade association to promote your organization. You can easily add an icon to your site with a little description to have audiences go to your community on these external sites, as well as make sure you continue to contribute and monitor the activity on these other public community sites. Look at these popular social media networking sites as a billboard to promote your business.

Be Personable: One size does not fit all when it comes to promoting your business online. People want messages that are tailored to their interests. The easiest approach to segmentation is creating campaigns that are focused on driving people to specific areas of your website that meets the needs of that audience. Create unique newsletters for different audiences to subscribe, use giveaways as a way to attract distinct groups of people and make one feel important. Additionally, think of a ways to invite people to an exclusive community to participate and welcome their peers. Perhaps you wish to create an exclusive webcast, or local networking event/seminar in a certain region of the country. Think of ways to reach out to people’s emotions, whether it’s online, direct mail, or a combination of both on and offline tactics. Sometimes the littlest things can make a big impact on some individuals. Cards, expression of thanks, amusing stories are some inexpensive ways to make people feel good and valued. Everyone wants to feel special especially when times are tough.

Baby Start Blogging!: Whether you want to create a name of your own online, or for your business, don’t get left out in the crowd and start blogging. Check out this cool service from Yahoo called MyBlogLog. It’s a way to connect with others in the community, but sharing comments, blogs, videos, pictures, or other contact information. Check out the Recent Reader widget that allows you to post the icons of others reading your blog. Twitter also offers a service like this so you can see who is twittering about the topics on your blog.

Gotta Love the Links: Link building is key to spreading the news about your business. Look for ways to reach out to potential partners by encouraging better visibility placement on your partner’s sites and follow the proper directions to make sure your partners code their images and links properly. Make things right so it worth your hard efforts contacting others.

Provide directions to optimize links with proper HTML code and reference image name:

• Hyperlink description (i.e. Join us at our exhibit Add your URL)
• Image: <ahref= “http:yourbrandurl.com”><img src= “name of logo.jpg” alt=“Title for logo”></a>

Lead Generation and Cost Per Lead Calculations:White papers, webcasts, and online contests are some ways to generate leads through sponsorships. Dont’ forget to consider ways you can barter with others to promote your business.

Cost per Lead = (campaign cost/ # of responses)

Sales Lead Calculator for Marketers – MacMcIntosh B2B Sales Lead Experts offer this guide for marketing professionals to better assess their budget and get the best bang for their buck!

Results to the Rescue:Don’t forget the value of A/B testing of your campaigns. Mix things up a bit with different audiences and see what provides the best results. So if the industry says this is the way to do it, SO WHAT if you are doing things with great success. Keep up the good work! Yet, how do you know until the proof is in the pudding and one starts analyzing the email results (Click/Open Rate, Uniques, Hard Bounces, etc,), as well as your website activity, the increase in leads, or revenue generated? Don’t be afraid to dive into the sea of knowledge and analytics that are at your fingertips with the tools available.

Video:

What Recession? – December 17, 2008 – WATCH ARCHIVED VIDEO PRESENTATION

Contact:
Keri Singer
Emails: ksinger@gmail.com, kerisays@yahoo.com

How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness in the Virtual World and Finding the Value in the Real World

How does one measure the value of engagement, trust and building the right relationships with your online audience? The Internet has far greater value and measurement available. Yet, how do we define the right metrics that make sense for marketers to validate their worth and provide them with information that is useful to share with other executives.

• Is it really just about the ROI?
• Why is it that marketers want to evaluate engagement across their brands?
• What tools are available today in the marketplace to define the level of engagement?
• How can we align our strategy for the future?

Measuring engagement across one’s products and services is the magic question for many these days. As more technology is developed, it allows greater use for executives to review the data in hopes to take away insights to make improvements to their products and services. When analyzing the level of one’s engagement, it’s important to marry both the quantitative and qualitative data, in order to gain a better understanding of the audience and their engagement, as well as different types of usage across one’s products and services.

Every marketer defines in their own eyes a level of engagement with their customers. For some it maybe brand awareness, for others, it maybe how many people recommend their services, or it could just be the Net Promoter Score  as a way to determine the value of their marketing spend. How do we satisfy all the different types of goals for marketers and define what is an engagement index for measuring the effectiveness of one’s marketing efforts?

When evaluating click-thrus, this is a concern, because someone that clicks often on a particular page, or decides to go deeper within the website, doesn’t necessarily really mean that individual is engaged with your website. Perhaps this could be evidence of the individual having a difficult time to find what he/she had the intent to seek. One could go to your site with the hopes to learn more, but it’s important to realize the value of engagement should be measured on what warrants a person to come back and learn more (Retention). It’s important to identify where discovery had occurred and what keeps one coming back.

It’s funny how hard the online world is trying to replicate the real world and bring more people together and services through technology. People have gained skills in SEO to attract the search engines, experts have coached others how to craft email campaigns and subject lines to be viewed properly by email service providers, at the same time, we’ve tried our best to add the human element to this type of communication by personalizing the messages to drive actions, as well as create videos and share photos to inflect emotions. In essence people are craving engagement and connections with others and/or products as they have done so well in the real world, trying to replicate a portion of that experience online. I believe that companies that can find the appropriate balance between the real world and the virtual world, combining and understanding how to best analyze the information gathered from these two worlds (the quantitative and qualitative) are the ones that will best engage their audiences. It’s important for marketers to be pro-active to recognize those people online that are taking action with their product and/or service, using the data collected and reach out to those audiences both through virtual means (social communities, links to blogs, partnerships, etc.), as well as traditional means of contact (interviews, phone calls, attending events etc.) to drive further engagement and understand how it relates to ROI.

Read My Full Report>>
What Engagement Means to Marketers

Other Thoughts on this Topic:
Ron Shevlin’s Marketing Whims
WebAnalyticsDemystified.com
Brian Haven’s Blog
Peter Kim’s Blog: A Framework For Measuring Social Media
Todd Defren’s PRSquared

Good marketers act as entrepreneurs seeking new ways to promote their message to the audience. More professionals are adopting social online community mediums in their personal lives and in their professions. It’s important to keep a breast of all the new digital avenues arising and available. Test a few to see what works best for your brand. Always be on the lookout for new ways to market your businesses and create a two-way dialogue with your target market online.

Generating Buzz & Monitoring the Viral Spread Of Your Business

Tactics to Take On Your Own

• Create a social media strategy and make sure to have people internally pay attention to your audience’s comments
• Add an area on your website for audience to rate videos or articles
• Start searching for blogs in your industry and consider both your editorial team and marketing team to contribute, or create one specifically for your brand
• Test different social media sites to promote your brand and see which one works best. Don’t be afraid to start spreading the word on LinkedIn, Twitter, Meetup.com, etc, because more business professionals are going there to reach out to others to share their thoughts and opinions
• Create a way for your audience to subscribe to RSS feeds where one can pick out keywords to subscribe to their specific interests
• “Digg” your own website: Showcase the most read articles or popular areas visited on your website to share with your audience
• Recognize when someone promotes your brand on other blogs by quoting the source on your website with a link to the report, as well as publicize in your magazine
• Gather blog conversations as a basis of conversation for a special session at your next trade event
• Create a link building strategy