Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Monitoring online buzz is like reverse market research. Instead of asking people what they think in a survey or focus group, you read what they’re saying online in blogs, article comments, posts made to forums and places like Twitter and Facebook. It’s eavesdropping on public conversations.
In the old days there were clipping services. Now there are amazing tools that gather and capture the relevant information you want about your company, your brands, your competitors and even individual people. At any given moment there are millions of conversations happening online. They may be brief, but they’re happening nevertheless. Tuning in to this ongoing dialog and focusing on conversations specifically about your business or brand can offer a wealth of insight into your customers’ mindsets.
Why monitoring social media is important
1. Lead generation. More marketers are recognizing that effective lead generation isn’t about firing out the most messages. It’s about getting the right message to the right prospect at the right time, which may be after that person has already engaged in some type of social media encounter with your brand and your customers.
2. Reputation management. Keeping your finger on the pulse of what customers are saying, especially as it relates to issues, frustrations, and complaints, allows you to quickly and authentically resolve their concerns.
3. Identifying brand fans and vocal customer advocates who spread positive word-of-mouth so you can nurture these free “sales reps.”
How to monitor social media marketing
There are a number of companies that offer tools and services to make it easy to monitor what people online are saying about your brand and your competitors. Some of these tools are free, others you pay a nominal fee for. A complete list of social media monitoring tools may be found by performing a search on the keywords “social media monitoring tools.” Tweetdeck and Hubspot are two of the more popular tools available.
These social media monitoring tools are very helpful because they will save you a great deal of time and your email inbox won’t be clogged with all sorts of tweets, updates, and alerts. Instead, you’ll have a dashboard to monitor what people are saying about what matters to you most. That may be your company, your own name, your executives, your competitors, your industry or specific brand names for products or services.
Cautions about Social Media Monitoring
Social media marketing shouldn’t replace market research. Why? Because in general the people who take the time to express an opinion about a business or brand via social media are generally on one extreme or the other: they either love something enough to talk about it, or dislike it enough to complain. It’s helpful to monitor brand popularity (or lack thereof), but social media monitoring tools/services are not very helpful for understanding customer satisfaction, new product acceptance, and test marketing. They should complement, not replace more traditional market research.
A wise man once said “Marketing = Education”. What he meant by that is that you need to use you marketing to educate your prospects. But what do you need to educate your prospects on? You need to educate your prospects on the solution your services provide, your expertise and the value of your services.
Although you can educate your audience through teleseminars, article marketing or your blog, my personal favorite is workshops and seminars. You can invite your prospects to an inexpensive 1 hour or ½ day workshop and teach them about your area of expertise. This does several things:
– It establishes your credibility, because when you are in front of the room, you are instantly perceived to be the undisputed expert. Whether you think you are or not, you are the expert in the eyes of your audience.
– It educates your audience on the solution that your product or services provide. Remember, you never sell just a service, you sell a solution to the problem your audience has. Focus on the problem and educate your audience on how your services provide the solution.
– Clients buy from people they know, like and trust. When you are up on stage, your audience obviously knows you. When you tell your story and share some vulnerability, people will like you. Since you demonstrate your expertise by teaching your audience, you are getting your audience to trust you. So having a workshop is the ideal vehicle to get people to buy from you.
– If people have objections to buying from you, that generally means that they do not have all the information yet. Your workshop should be able to give them all the information they need to make a decision one way or another. Not everyone is a good fit for you, but they will know after your workshop.
– Your workshop establishes the value of your services. Through your success stories and your content, you can show the value of what you do. You can demonstrate through examples the money clients made or saved my using your services. That is a powerful tool and cannot be underestimated.
So take the plunge and start teaching. You will not only educate your audience, you will also market yourself and your services. You will be surprised at the new clients you will attract and better yet, the increase in your bottom line.
The problem with free advertisements along with other free online marketing and advertising channels is that they might give the unsuitable impact to your company. Several free ads come off as inexpensive and second-rate, phrases you actually wouldn’t like to link to your company. It’s nice to save cash with guerrilla marketing techniques, however, you shouldn’t sacrifice the image and credibility of your business along the way. Good guerrilla marketing such as a rewards-based customer referral program helps improve your business organically and project a professional image.
Instead, below are a few popular web marketing strategies, which you could use instead. Link exchanges could be terrific, particularly when your advertising budget is restricted or nonexistent. Find merchants that sell supplementary items, and offer to trade text links or ads with them. In case you are just starting out and your site doesn’t get much traffic, you may not get a one-to-one trade; be prepared to make concessions, at least until you have a track record and traffic to indicate. Having said that, most companies is not going to ignore the opportunity for more exposure, so you will likely find a few happy to exchange links on you.
Newsletter advertising is a great way to reach select groups of consumers. For instance, when you sell health products, you may advertise in a newsletter that gives health tips and advice. Because newsletter advertising is specific, it is usually really expensive. If your budget is tight, you can start your own newsletter campaign. Budgeted advertising, like Google AdWords, allows you to get a set of keywords, set a limit on how much you would like to spend, and have your ad display until the limit is attained. It is a specifically useful way to track your campaign success, and has been a boon to small businesses proprietors.
When you have graduated from these techniques, or if your budget allows it, try approaching popular news services, Web-based email providers, and other sites that reach a big segment of the population. While this can prove extremely expensive, in return, you have the potential of reaching countless new clients. No matter what method you may take, provide serious thought to your “creative” the actual ad itself. Be it just a text link, or whether it’s an extensive banner-ad campaign, the creative can make or break your advertising effort. Try several versions, track them, and see, those that perform best.
Local Business Advertising is effective however, you need to be wary of sites offering to provide a free link in the interest of increasing your search engine rank. Search engines caught on to these so-called link farms a long time ago and a link there is more likely to hurt your ranking than improve it. In fact, it could even get you banned from search engines altogether (something called ‘being in the sandbox’). There’s nothing ever really free. Whatever looks free eventually ends up costing you in the long run.
Did you ever get some advertising device from a corporation which is not handy to you? Maybe you do not drink coffee or don’t like to write too much. Then again, from time to time, we tend to get some promotional merchandise that is not beneficial and can clutter in our area. Most of the discount solutions or gifts are useful but it’s not for everyone. It would be best to give an item that suit their personality. For example, a pen and a notepad for someone who writes or a cup to a coffee drinker. Or how about a coat for someone who may get cold and needed one on a cold day.
We don’t see them that much but umbrella is a good gift to give to people. Sometimes, we get rain and needed it to keep us dry. A coat is also a good idea too but it does cost a bit more compare to compact gadgets such as mugs, coaster, notepad, balloons, and pens. You need to think what most people will apply either on a daily or a weekly basis. You do not want to waste your money on gadgets that people do not use since you are investing in one to help promote your industry.
When you are ordering some promotional solutions, what do you think most people will use? You should factor in how useful the good is because it helps put your name out there. And if the product is not useful, you would not come to mind if you want to get some firm going for you. Factor in how much money you are willing to spend on the promotional devices. If you buy them in bulk, you would save more money because you are buying the same merchandise. And plus, buying in bulk would make more sense from an economical point of view.
If you cannot buy products that would cost a bit more, forget about it. Wait until you make more money in order to invest in one. But, when starting out, it would be best to invest in compact and useful merchandise. What comes to mind is pens, mousepads, mugs, notepads, balloons, calculator, and a keychain. They should be able to fit in any size of purse or wallet in case they don’t bring any bags with them to stuff it in.
Whatever marketing effort you are doing, don’t forget to factor in promotional pieces. It’s a good way to spread the word.
Here are some statements about marketing, unlike business phrases that we have seen above, have a colloquial and somewhat jokingly, but not therefore cease to be instructive.
“Selling according to the client’s face”
If the client gives the impression of having a lot of money immediately and temporarily increase the price of the product or service.
“Professional expert in getting the customer to spend a lot”
The typical case of fine dining waiters, specialists and offer a snack, a second cocktail, a bottle a wine, a rich dessert, coffee brand, or a liqueur for after dinner.
All of that is with the goal that the customer spends as much money as possible, rather than seek their satisfaction.
“I call it poor”
If a business has a second-hand furniture, a poor design or decoration, equipment or machinery at low prices, inputs or raw materials of poor quality, marketing or advertising a low budget, in short, is an austere business and “few resources “, then do not be surprised that customers who visit are also” limited resources. ”
“If the competition can not join it”
If you do everything possible to overcome the competition, or to deal with their bad practices without success, then all that remains is to join her, trying to find some agreement and, ultimately, associated with it.