 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
Shares and links come with benefits. They amplify your content and help increase traffic. You could argue, however, as many do, more eyeballs don’t necessarily translate to conversions. I don’t take social shares and links from other websites lightly. They say to me the content struck a chord with readers. It may be a fuzzy measure of success, but a measure no less. In fact, thanks to Buzzsumo, it’s a measure you can access instantly and use to gauge interest levels of your content. I’m into it.“Shares can particularly help visibility and content distribution while links tend to help authority, search engine rankings and longevity,” wrote Buzzsumo’s Steve Rayson. The quote comes from Steve’s post, The Top B2B Content of 2016: Six Lessons for Marketers....
Traditional social media listening platforms don’t collect this location-tagged social data. Think you’re not missing much of the conversation? Think again. It’s time to complete your social media strategy with location-tagged posts, and there are infinite ways to leverage this data for your social listening and engagement campaigns.
So, what are the top five ways you can activate your location-based social media data to ensure you hear the complete conversation?
The first company is not proof that social media works. That's not the issue. The issue, of course, is that social media simply "is". It's no different than the focus groups and surveys of twenty years ago. It's both marketing and customer research. It's data. It just "is". You cannot separate social media from the rest of the branding elements of the business. You can't. You cannot prove that social media works, and you cannot remove it from the business. It is not a tactic. It simply "is" the business. And customers are acquired cheaply as a result.
The second company can easily prove that social media doesn't work. They should know. They tried putting some sale messages on Twitter, and nobody responded. The second company is fully confident in their merchandising team. The second company just needs to find marketing channels to communicate the merchandising strategy to the customer. The second company is going "omnichannel". They'll ship-to-store or buy-online-pickup-in-store or get you a discount on your mobile phone when you're in the mall (if the customer ever steps foot in a mall anymore).
Retail is moving in two different directions....
There are few marketers in the industry who haven’t felt the pains of working with a CEO who isn’t behind the marketing strategy. A study by The Fournaise Group revealed that 80 percent of CEOs don’t trust – and aren’t very impressed by – the work done by marketers.
In other words, CEOs oftentimes aren’t on the same page with the people who spread the word about their company. Sound effective? Not by a long shot.
While not every CEO needs to be a marketing expert, it’s imperative that CEOs have a clear understanding of marketing’s role within their business and how to measure its effectiveness. I recently polled my network of CEOs to find out their top marketing questions....
Most search engine-optimization (SEO) practitioners (71%) say understanding the link between social sharing and search rankings is more important in 2014 than it was last year, according to a recent report from BrightEdge.
Measuring rank in Google Universal Search results (those that include photos, videos, etc.) is also seen as increasingly necessary by SEO professionals (57% say it is more important in 2014), as is measuring presence and rank in Google Carousel results (72% view as more important).
Less than half (46%) of respondents say finding anomalies in keyword rank is more important this year than last, perhaps reflecting the search engines' changing emphasis on keywords as a ranking factor....
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....
Instagram is becoming a core platform for brands to engage with consumers since it registers consumer engagement 18 times that of Facebook and 48 times that of Twitter, according to the latest report from L2 Think Tank.
The "Intelligence Report: Social Platforms" found that the visual component of Instagram has helped the platform grow to 100 million users with the average luxury brand having 100,000 followers. Other visual platforms such as Vine, Pinterest and YouTube have grown significantly and continue to be platforms for brands to deeply engage with consumers.
"For all the mindshare that it occupies, social media ultimately drives very little ecommerce, less than 0.25 percent, and site traffic, less than 3 percent, for prestige brands," said Danielle Bailey, research lead L2 Think Tank, New York....
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....
Suffering from underperforming marketing KPIs? Read this post and learn how to fix those guys! After that, you’ve got to grab your marketing by the bootstraps and make the necessary adjustments in order to provide your CEO with the ROI they’re looking for. Below I’ve detailed six metrics highlighted by CMO Mike Volpe on this very blog, how to identify when they’re underperforming, and how to make the necessary adjustments to save your bacon. Here’s how. How to Fix 6 Critical Marketing KPIs When They're Underperforming....
A recent study conducted by the online marketing firm Vertical Response and reported on in Forbes concludes that small businesses are spending more time on social media but struggling with the added workload it represents. Perhaps as a consequence, most are doing social media marketing in a vacuum because they’re not tracking results, which means they have no way of quantifying if their time and effort are paying off. “Our survey confirms that small businesses are understanding the value of social media,” says Vertical Response CEO and founder Janine Popick. “They’re spending more time doing it, and investing more money into it at a faster rate. But the extra work will likely lead to time management issues, especially for the small business owner who’s handling social media on top of all the other responsibilities of running a company. This implies that small businesses are in need of tactics and tools now to help them save time.”...
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....
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's the thing. Search works, but only if, as a brand, you know what it's worth to you. Too often brands allow outside influences (competitors, corporate vanity of presence, top-line revenue) to shape their buying strategy. Just as damaging is taking what eBay has published as anything more than one unique company taking a curious public position around corporate buying choices. It's not dissimilar from GM's declaration of Facebook failing it. Brands need to understand what search is worth to them. Accepting this study as gospel is no more palatable than accepting the long-standing Google view that if it's delivering, you should just keep writing checks. There's a proper brand point of investment in search for any company, just like any other media channel....
|
Retailer sites, printable coupons, and retailer emails are the most commonly used digital tools by online shoppers, though they’re not the ones wielding the greatest impact on shoppers’ journeys, details Epsilon in a recent study.
The report – based on an online survey of more than 2,800 respondents – determined an impact score for each tool by averaging the percent of its users saying it has influenced them across 10 areas.Those areas range from influencing choices (e.g. “it influences my choice of stores,” “it influences my choice of brands”) to impulse buying (“I make more unplanned purchases,” “I spend more than initially planned”) and utility (e.g. “it makes shopping easier,” “it makes shopping faster”).
Interestingly, the digital tools with the highest overall impact score were retailers’ social media activity and price comparison sites, although they had relatively low penetration rates. Shopping applications, brands’ social media activity and product reviews were also among the most highly rated by their users. The influence of product reviews has also been noted in a separate recent study of e-commerce behavior, in which online shoppers cited them as important content on retailer websites and in retailers’ shopping apps....
All customers are not created equal. Sure, you might like some more than others, but that doesn't mean they're your best clients. Sales comes down to revenue and ROI -- so how can sales leaders objectively determine which customers are most valuable?
Through a customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis. But calculating CLV isn't a cake walk -- inaccurate data, confusing metrics, and inadequate technology can all block the path. But the organizations that do figure out a customer's net costs and revenues over their engagement see the benefit: Three-quarters of senior executives in North America categorize CLV as a highly or extremely valuable indicator.
This infographic from Aria provides a CLV primer, explaining the concept, covering how retention and satisfaction play into customer value, and suggesting ways to bump up your average client's CLV. You'll find that playing favorites based on net revenue versus rapport is a lot more profitable.
The Return on Investment (ROI) of social media marketing can be difficult to pin down. Results can’t be guaranteed, and there is no way of knowing how your audience will react to the things you share online. While ROI proves that your marketing efforts are successful, it will only do so if you’re tracking and measuring the right things, and have ruled out other influencing factors. Here are five ways to troubleshoot your social campaign’s ROI and measure your results more accurately:
Facebook's dialing-down of organic brand content has been a hot topic for months. And according to recent research, paid ads on social networks do have better conversion rates than organic content.
For the most part, though, social media is not the last or only touch for consumers on the path to purchase. According to Convertro’s figures, 87% of interactions with social content were a middle touch, while just over one interaction in 10 was either the last or only touchpoint.
Still, some social venues are more geared toward conversion than others. YouTube stood out in Convertro and AOL’s research as the most likely social media property by far to turn a prospect immediately into a customer—likely because video content like that hosted on YouTube can provide 100% of the information an online shopper needs to make a purchase decision.
The distance between a social touchpoint and a conversion also depended on the type of product being purchased. The research found that more impulsive purchases—such as subscriptions to services like Birchbox or Dollar Shave Club, personal care items and local services—were more likely to appear as social ads and lead immediately to a conversion, as the last or only touchpoint on a consumer’s journey....
Social media ROI is a messy business. How do you bring some order to it? There’s no getting away from it. The higher up the sales funnel, the harder and messier it is to make decisions on measuring ROI. Social media is, like any channel (if you choose to view it as one) not perfect to measure, though far from hard to get a good handle on it, and to compare channels with channels using techniques like Google’s Multichannel funnels or social reports.
It’s the scale of choices that become complex. It’s much easier to post rationalise and retrospectively connect the dots, but not easy to plan for it – otherwise why is ‘viral’ still so remarkable in social media – and why we don’t see the experts doing amazing campaigns repeatedly.
It’s always been a challenge, attributing the value of visitors through multiple channels, social media has made that more complex. Certainly when compared to lower down the funnel the touchpoints are more measured and explicit, visitor-to-goal completion is relatively simple to monitor and quantify.IAB suggests 3:1 return on social media investment...
The research revealed that, four out of five consumers said they would be more inclined to buy a brand more often in the future after being exposed to a brand’s social media presence, while 83% of consumers exposed to social media would trial a brand’s product. ...
"Brand" will always be a nebulous term. Arguments rage about its true value, especially on social media...
Although recent research shows that it can be responsible for nearly 15% of your total worth (Or much, much more, if you’re J.K.Rowling), it’s still seen by many as the ultimate wooly metric. There’s no doubt that being a household name will improve your chances of success in social, but just how far will it take you?
I’ve taken a look at the world’s top ten brands, and matched up their profiles across the biggest social media platforms.Let’s see what’s in a name...
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....
How are you measuring the ROI of social media? Do you measure up against your peers? Does the ROI of social media meet your expectations? Do your metrics help make better business decisions? ROI of social media ROI means return on investment and when we talk about the ROI of social media we’re looking at metrics to evaluate your increased sales as a function of expenses to drive those sales. But, that’s really hard to do since there really isn’t a direct link between social media and sales. In the infographic below, see some of the surrogates for return firms use to evaluate their social media marketing campaigns....
Secrets to millennial marketing success? ... Fromm recommends small businesses constantly make “little bets,” taking small risks on novel products and services that might hit big. “If you’re going to win with millennials, you have to temporarily suspend your notion of ROI and EBITDA,” he says. “You have to make little bets and see if they win or lose in the real world. Test things that are way beyond your definition of normal and see if they work. Technology allows you to do that every day.” Social channels will tell you quickly if your wagers are effective or not. “The little-bets theory is based on the fact that millennials are willing to experiment because it’s part of their adventurous DNA,” Fromm says. “And if it’s a hit with millennials, others will follow.”...
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+....
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....
|
![6 Blog Post Formats that Work Best in B2B Online Marketing [Research] | Feldman Creative | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/uAGiK6-UOW9kTnLoNNu4GDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Blog post formats that earn the most shares and links are showcased here with great examples and data from research by Buzzsumo.