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A discussion about social media and its use in sales and marketing often leads to a discussion about return on investment—the elusive ROI.
The fact that incorporating social media into sales and marketing can generate return on investment has been and continues to be proven. Just search “social media ROI” or “proof that social media marketing works” and you will have plenty of proof. That’s not the problem. The problem is the question about ROI is still being asked, and it’s because many people are still unclear about how to measure ROI and not about whether they can prove it can be measured.
That confusion is why the following five questions are so important when it comes to understanding where to start, what to focus on, and what meaningful social media ROI looks like. Many organizations start in the wrong place or focus on the wrong metrics. Hopefully the following will prove helpful....
Even business-to-business brands seem to be getting a grip on the mobile world. Intel this week is launching a month-long campaign on News360, a mobile news aggregation app. The tech company is using the app to promote its new IT Business Report mobile app.
The fact that a B-to-B marketer like Intel—mobile is often depicted as a consumer space—is buying News360's ads underscores how major companies are increasingly giving relatively obscure smartphone apps a shot at their business. In a saturated apps market, News360 needs to prove itself, as brands have countless options to choose from. To that end, the 3-year-old mobile developer, which claims roughly four million users, is now jumping on the buzzy native trend in its pitches to advertisers....
With so many individuals and companies competing for attention on social media, it can seem nearly impossible to make your voice heard above the crowd. However, compelling social media content is a quick way to earn attention and brand loyalty. So what can you do to take your social media strategy from “blah” to viral? Here are some tips...
While putting together our recent series of posts looking at how major brands use the four main social networks I’ve somehow managed to overlook Coca-Cola, so today I have rectified that startling omission. Coca-Cola is one of those instantly recognisable brands that would rake in fans and followers without even trying, so it’s to its credit that it has active account across the social web. So, here’s a quick look at how it uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+....
Discover how social marketing tools like Commun.it, BlogDash and Traackr can help you identify, connect with and engage industry influencers.... This month, we learned that although 65% of brands participate in influencer marketing, just 10% of total digital marketing spend goes to social, which includes influencer marketing. Some have cried, don’t people see the opportunity? Why aren’t they spending on influencers! Technorati Media’s 2013 Digital Influence Report shared the above insight, as well as the fact that a mere 6% of social spend is allotted to marketing to influencers. This doesn’t signal a problem to me at all. In fact, it’s an indication that while influencer marketing is recognized as a valuable piece of the online marketing puzzle and many practice it, it doesn’t require a great deal of budget to accomplish. That, friends, is what we call an opportunity. That’s not to say influencer outreach is easy, but that an array of low-cost tools are available to help marketers better identify, understand and connect with industry influencers. These social tools enable us to automate much of the research, to weed through a mass of data and identify trends or common characteristics among the people who can positively impact our business with a tweet, a blog post, or a thoughtful comment. Check out these social tools for brand marketers looking to more easily and inexpensively measure and act on influence in their industry....
Think you’ve got the social media thing down at your business? Think you’re squeezing every last bit of benefit by utilizing online marketing across a variety of social platforms? Think again. Because there’s no way you’re getting the most bang for your social media buck if you’re only using it for marketing. Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes tells Fast Company that according to a McKinsey report, social technologies have an untapped business value of $1.3 trillion. “And most of that comes from improved office productivity,” says Holmes. “In the year ahead, expect enterprises to embrace social media tools – including internal networks, real-time chats and wikis – for uses that go way beyond the familiar applications for marketing and community building.” How can you tap into some of that value? Here are a few of the departments besides marketing that could be making good use of social networks...
Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week. Stats include mobile analytics, Twitter customer service, eBay's mobile revenue, online privacy, digital salaries, dual screening in America, and app downloads....
In 2012 there was a mad rush from companies to understand the value of social in all its complexities. What could social media do? What value could it provide? How could the company engage with its users? As a result there have been numerous traditional agencies suddenly becoming digital marketing specialists and providing their clients with complete social strategies. There have been promises of guaranteed followers, likes and shares which may or may not have been achieved. There was (and still is) so much jargon that many businesses were sucked into the social media marketing black hole. Please note that many of those were successful and marketing teams breathed a sigh of relief as Directors, CEOs and other high-ranking officials nodded their heads in appreciation of the high number of followers, likes and shares. However, unlike their marketing counter parts, these high rankers have a goal that must be met – ROI. Return on investment is difficult to measure from a social media perspective. What is the value of a like, follow or share? Can it be equated to the lowest possible sale value of a single unit of product? No – because for every 10 likes only one user purchased the product! This is just an example, but remains true in essence....
I got a real surprise on Monday during the workshop I was leading on using content to attract qualified leads at the Online Marketing Summit. When I asked the audience, "Have you experienced unexpected results for your brand from a particular social network?” I wasn’t prepared for the digital strategy head of a top 5 accounting firm who told me that Pinterest is a significant referrer of traffic for their financial services and hedge fund strategy content. Apparently, among the juggernaut of dream wedding pictures and fantastically decadent fashion and food, a good infographic about the hedge fund business can gain real traction....
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Social media marketing is not just a trendy word, it is fast becoming and in some cases already is a viable acquisition channel for most businesses.
In fact, Hubspot reports that 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired a customer through Facebook. If you are still having trouble convincing your boss that social media is worth the investment, here are 28 must see statistics for 2013 to make him/her jump on board....
Overall usage on social media platforms is exploding. Millions and millions of consumers are expressing likes on Facebook, tweeting about products on Twitter, and pinning on Pinterest every single day. Retailers and brands are therefore increasingly focusing their attention on social commerce. But, many struggle with the question: how do you convert a "like," a "tweet," or "pin" into a sale? In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at successful examples of businesses and business models for generating commerce via social media-based strategies, analyze Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform, look at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender, and examine the e-commerce conversion and order value gap. Here's an overview of the converging trends that promise to transform social media into a viable commerce platform....
If you work in digital, you're probably getting a bit tired of the ROI question by now. We are all tasked with justifying our pitches and projects with proving where the ROI lies directly. ...Since it’s physically possible to buy from the place that you’re running your digital campaign, we’ve assumed that this is how we judge success. That’s where we’ve gone wrong, and where we will keep going wrong. We’ve thought that because you can just be a click away from buying a product or converting on a website, if users don’t do that straight away, it’s a failure. So the ‘trust’ remains in costly methods such as TV, which will never be expected to prove this because they can’t. Buying Behaviour To understand this, we need to think about the process of how we buy something versus what we engage with online. A recent study released by Invodo found that consumers are 174% more likely to buy something after watching a video about it online. While this is a wildly encouraging figure that will probably need to be toned down a bit, this finding in itself is significant. The fact that we’re more inclined to buy something from a brand after engaging with it online is what’s important. An increased likelihood to buy is all that should ever be asked of an online campaign, particularly one that is content led. To force a transaction at that point, or to judge that as an indicator of success is detrimental....
Unfortunately, like other marketing channels out there, social media, is still not without its own set of growing pains. Most businesses today commit critical and costly mistakes when setting up their social media marketing campaign. So to help you, I’d like to discuss the top 3 mistakes in social media marketing and ways you can avoid them so you can get the biggest return for your marketing investment....
Many marketers today are looking to increase their Facebook fans, LinkedIn memberships and/or Twitter followers. Social media marketing is a new buzz-word in both b2b and b2c domains. But, when it comes to engagement, how easy is it to measure the engagement-level of your Facebook fans or LinkedIn Group Members? How easy is it to interact with them and nurture them? How easy is it to get usage and engagement metrics out of Facebook, LinkedIn et al? Is it even possible? Can you act on the metrics? External social sites are good for brand-building (or reach) but not for interaction or engagement. A recent Gartner report cited that a mere six percent of marketers claim that marketing on social networking sites is their top priority. What is even more powerful is that 45 percent of those surveyed said corporate websites were key contributors to marketing success. And from the customer perspective, four out of five customers claim to visit a website for product information and only a mere 19 percent would visit a Facebook page, according to Incyte Group....
... To become an empowered social business is to inject the advantages of social media directly into the heart of your corporate DNA. That means recognizing it’s not only about having a fantastic Facebook page or a high profile Twitter account (though that might be part of the plan!). It’s about implementing the benefits social technology offers through the fabric of your business- not just the consumer facing ones. What social networking tools provide is a way to break the divides that separate your employees and their expertise from customers and one another, fostering a climate of knowledge sharing and collaboration. Instead of isolated knowledge hives, you build engaged communities who relate and share with one another naturally. It’s about building a social corporate culture where innovative solutions naturally arise by a foundation built on trust and a love of sharing, a business of conversation and mass participation....
After watching this video about how technology can and does bring people closer together, John Nicoletti, Director of Agency Development came on to talk about the Zero Moment of Truth and how it’s changing the way consumers make purchasing decisions and how it’s forcing companies to rethink their marketing strategies. The Zero Moment of Truth is the result of much data analysis and research. It started when Google asked “How have the recession and technology evolved brand building?” Google started with Proctor & Gamble’s “first moment of truth” – the moment when a consumer encounters a product. From their research, Google discovered what they call the “Zero Moment of Truth.” This is when consumers do online research after receiving a stimulus (in the form of commercial, print ad, or seeing the product in stores). Instead of taking 4-7 seconds to decide to buy, they instead take that time to take out their phone or tablet and research the product. They look for product reviews and user recommendations. They look at the website to get as much information as possible to help them in making a decision....
Content marketinghas become a bit of a buzzword recently. It’s become a synonym for digital marketing and a catchall term for marketing tactics like blogging and social media. It’s also become an essential part of B2B marketing strategies, recent research found that 88% of B2B content marketing spends are to either stay the same or increase in 2013. For B2B companies, the bottom line is sales. Most B2Bs aren’t interested in becoming a household name brand, or appearing on billboards. They just want to sell their product. Which is odd, considering that same research found that only 43% of B2Bs listed sales as a measurable target for content marketing....
Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
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Before your CEO asks, have the answers to these five critical questions about social media ROI.