The Social Technographics Ladder by Forrester Research now includes Conversationalists too. Covering majorly the US crowd in their survey, the resulting ladder reflects the level of engagement as:
Creators (24%) includes an individual who
• Publish a blog
• Publish your own homepage
• Uploads audio/video/music you created
• Writes articles or stories and posts them
Conversationalists (33%) are the people who
• Update status on social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, etc.
• Posts updates on microblogging websites like Twitter
Critics (37%) are those who
• Post rating/reviews of products or services
• Comment on someone else’s blog
• Contribute on online forums and discussion groups
• Contribute to or edit articles in a wiki
Collectors (20%) include people who
• Use RSS feeds
• Vote for websites online
• Add “tags” to web pages or photos
Joiners (59%) are the ones who
• Maintain profile on social networking sites
• Visits other social media channels too
Spectators (70%) are the individuals who
• Read blogs, tweets, customer ratings/reviews and online forums
• Listen to podcasts
• Watch video from other users
Inactives (17%) are the people who don’t come under any of the category mentioned above.
With an addition of “Conversationalists” in this ladder showcases how effective it is to generate and spread conversation about a company. If the main goal/objective is to spread brand awareness, it would certainly be worthy to create a Twitter presence and reach out to those people conversing about your company or point them to a site where they can get rewards, encouragement, or connections with other customers. They might find interesting content that’s worth talking about.
Marketing during a Recession via Online Reputation Management
During recessions, most of the macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way. In a lay mans term recession refers to general slowdown in economic activity over a period of time. During tough times, companies are uncertain where to make marketing investments, one sure bet is to invest in the reputation of the company and the key people. In such times, it’s good not to test or spend on new campaigns. When budgets shrink, relationships win the day, salesmanship goes down. It yields to engage with SEO and online public relations plan called "Online Reputation Management" to facilitate and improve media coverage using word-of-mouth (WOM) vehicles.
One of the most effective ways to research for any company, products and people of interest is Search. Therefore, the companies that are managing their online reputations successfully implies that they are closely monitoring the search results and also participating in social media mentioning their company names, brands and key people. This helps to gauge the sentiments – positive, negative, and neutral.
Start with the monitoring program by collecting the raw data, afterwards do the analysis of that data, make distinct categories, identify sentiments and influence to sources. When you spot any negative comment or review on the web, you get an opportunity to respond and deal with the situation appropriately, before it results into any wrong perception for your company or product.
Online Reputation Management helps to discover positive and neutral comments and you can recognize brand evangelists. Companies work proactively for managing online reputation and monitoring program, much before yourbrandsucks.com starts ranking top ten on Google for significant brand names.
Start up with monitoring, followed by optimizing the assets on and off the company websites. The key components for an effective and successful search engine reputation management effort leverages public relations expertise for conversing and messaging in conjunction with SEO for keywords and link building, in a recession or in good times.
One of the most effective ways to research for any company, products and people of interest is Search. Therefore, the companies that are managing their online reputations successfully implies that they are closely monitoring the search results and also participating in social media mentioning their company names, brands and key people. This helps to gauge the sentiments – positive, negative, and neutral.
Start with the monitoring program by collecting the raw data, afterwards do the analysis of that data, make distinct categories, identify sentiments and influence to sources. When you spot any negative comment or review on the web, you get an opportunity to respond and deal with the situation appropriately, before it results into any wrong perception for your company or product.
Online Reputation Management helps to discover positive and neutral comments and you can recognize brand evangelists. Companies work proactively for managing online reputation and monitoring program, much before yourbrandsucks.com starts ranking top ten on Google for significant brand names.
Start up with monitoring, followed by optimizing the assets on and off the company websites. The key components for an effective and successful search engine reputation management effort leverages public relations expertise for conversing and messaging in conjunction with SEO for keywords and link building, in a recession or in good times.
Leverage LinkedIn for Online Business Networking
LinkedIn is currently the most popular business as well as professional networking website. It is one of the businesses networking website being used by many professionals to share useful information and for the purpose of networking too. As on date, the participation at LinkedIn is increasing exponentially.
The standout features of LinkedIn like listing your experience in your profile and recommendations from employers, coworkers, clients, and other professional connections make it a quite good platform for building professional network. It is generally populated by a different type of individual, including professionals and many entrepreneurs. These people can be ideal prospects for your business. The profile may be used by the employers and even clients to locate the best available resources. Also, group discussion and sharing at LinkedIn: LinkedIn Groups facilitates discussion and information sharing in areas of common interest. The discussions are focused and helpful to very specialized business needs.
Best workable methods for using LinkedIn are:
a) Establish a credible profile - Your professional experience and the recommendations are important in order to be taken seriously. Recommendations matters a lot to enhance and verify your profile content.
b) LinkedIn Groups - The groups are monitored and moderated by the administrator of that Group owner like in Facebook. To join a Group, an application needs to be sent to the Group owner, who validates your profile and checks for your knowledge about the Group’s interest area. If you abuse your membership, your postings’ gets removed by Group owners. If found doing self-promotion then its assured you would be deleted from a Group.
c) LinkedIn Groups could be an effective feature that can be leveraged for your business. If you contribute in group discussions effectively, and provide helpful information to a community, this helps to develop good professional relationships, and eventually establish sound contacts.
d) The views you share and your participation in a Group, determine your effectiveness in making connections and eventually helps to turn these connections into leads for your business.
Try and focus on the way outs mentioned above and see how fast it could help to build up strong and huge professional network.
The standout features of LinkedIn like listing your experience in your profile and recommendations from employers, coworkers, clients, and other professional connections make it a quite good platform for building professional network. It is generally populated by a different type of individual, including professionals and many entrepreneurs. These people can be ideal prospects for your business. The profile may be used by the employers and even clients to locate the best available resources. Also, group discussion and sharing at LinkedIn: LinkedIn Groups facilitates discussion and information sharing in areas of common interest. The discussions are focused and helpful to very specialized business needs.
Best workable methods for using LinkedIn are:
a) Establish a credible profile - Your professional experience and the recommendations are important in order to be taken seriously. Recommendations matters a lot to enhance and verify your profile content.
b) LinkedIn Groups - The groups are monitored and moderated by the administrator of that Group owner like in Facebook. To join a Group, an application needs to be sent to the Group owner, who validates your profile and checks for your knowledge about the Group’s interest area. If you abuse your membership, your postings’ gets removed by Group owners. If found doing self-promotion then its assured you would be deleted from a Group.
c) LinkedIn Groups could be an effective feature that can be leveraged for your business. If you contribute in group discussions effectively, and provide helpful information to a community, this helps to develop good professional relationships, and eventually establish sound contacts.
d) The views you share and your participation in a Group, determine your effectiveness in making connections and eventually helps to turn these connections into leads for your business.
Try and focus on the way outs mentioned above and see how fast it could help to build up strong and huge professional network.
Tools for Online Marketing Campaigns
Today everyone prefers different modes and methods to market their brand. Here I have gathered some of the online/internet marketing channels having high success rates like Social Media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click, Email Marketing, Video Marketing, and Mobile Marketing.
a) Social Media
To measure success and calculate the ROI, set certain defined goals at the start up. Social media participation definitely drives targeted/potential visitors to your website. To gauge from social media channels, use certain online analytical tools. You can look towards its potential targets which may include brand awareness, relevant traffic, improvement in trust and confidence among customers, valuable feedbacks, and visibility, to drive sales or to increase leads.
Try to focus on set goals so that you can assess ROI from social media efforts.
b) Search Engine Optimization
With the help SEO, it is easy to increase search rankings at Google, Bing or alike. But it is just half won battle. To target the potential visitors from all the desired locations, focusing on ranking as well calls to examine the metrics of your online/internet marketing campaigns to achieve utmost results.
Try to focus whether search results are targeting yours potential customers or live content address your target audience’s needs.
c) PPC
Amongst online marketing campaigns, PPC generates definite outcomes. Efforts put in PPC campaigns increases conversion rate. For the sake of betterment, you can try two different ad versions for a single ad resulting differently, like one could be cost-effective and other emphasizes on convenience aspect. You can try distinct headlines on your landing page using a tool named Google Optimizer.
d) Email Marketing
Email marketing, like other online marketing channels, has proved its significance. You can integrate emails with social media which is going to be a popular thing in coming years.
To bring email marketing up, try to encourage email subscribers to forward content via mail, and get social with mail and share them via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and other many other social networking sites.
e) Video Marketing
Google is pushing video as a larger component in search results. Online video with proper formats are getting more CTR than ever before. The live videos add value to your business making your website more searchable.Try to include “closed captioning” and “alt tags” in the video formats.
f) Mobile Marketing
Optimize your website to be workable with/for hand-held devices. As on date, mobile devices are not only used for net banking, to purchase commodities, download ring tones, to play games, instead consumers are doing a lot more than this. Now they have started their social media participation via networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and create additional engagement opportunities and also traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.
Try to keep basic font format, eliminate ads to conserve screen space, take out images unless they are necessary, and also remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content, if not very necessary.
In case you have other online/internet marketing channels that has potential to increase success rates via running their set campaigns, do share.
a) Social Media
To measure success and calculate the ROI, set certain defined goals at the start up. Social media participation definitely drives targeted/potential visitors to your website. To gauge from social media channels, use certain online analytical tools. You can look towards its potential targets which may include brand awareness, relevant traffic, improvement in trust and confidence among customers, valuable feedbacks, and visibility, to drive sales or to increase leads.
Try to focus on set goals so that you can assess ROI from social media efforts.
b) Search Engine Optimization
With the help SEO, it is easy to increase search rankings at Google, Bing or alike. But it is just half won battle. To target the potential visitors from all the desired locations, focusing on ranking as well calls to examine the metrics of your online/internet marketing campaigns to achieve utmost results.
Try to focus whether search results are targeting yours potential customers or live content address your target audience’s needs.
c) PPC
Amongst online marketing campaigns, PPC generates definite outcomes. Efforts put in PPC campaigns increases conversion rate. For the sake of betterment, you can try two different ad versions for a single ad resulting differently, like one could be cost-effective and other emphasizes on convenience aspect. You can try distinct headlines on your landing page using a tool named Google Optimizer.
d) Email Marketing
Email marketing, like other online marketing channels, has proved its significance. You can integrate emails with social media which is going to be a popular thing in coming years.
To bring email marketing up, try to encourage email subscribers to forward content via mail, and get social with mail and share them via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and other many other social networking sites.
e) Video Marketing
Google is pushing video as a larger component in search results. Online video with proper formats are getting more CTR than ever before. The live videos add value to your business making your website more searchable.Try to include “closed captioning” and “alt tags” in the video formats.
f) Mobile Marketing
Optimize your website to be workable with/for hand-held devices. As on date, mobile devices are not only used for net banking, to purchase commodities, download ring tones, to play games, instead consumers are doing a lot more than this. Now they have started their social media participation via networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and create additional engagement opportunities and also traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.
Try to keep basic font format, eliminate ads to conserve screen space, take out images unless they are necessary, and also remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content, if not very necessary.
In case you have other online/internet marketing channels that has potential to increase success rates via running their set campaigns, do share.
To Achieve DREAMS, Remember your ABC’s
Achieve you dreams keeping in mind:
(A) Avoid negative sources, people, places, things and habits.
(B) Believe in yourself.
(C) Consider things from every angle.
(D) Don’t give up and don’t give in.
(E) Enjoy life today as if yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come.
(F) Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their riches.
(G) Give more than you planned to.
(H) Hang on to your dreams.
(I) Ignore those who try to discourage you.
(J) Just do it.
(K) Keep trying no matter how hard it seems, it will get easier.
(L) Love yourself first and the most.
(M) Make it happen.
(N) Never lie, cheat or steal, always strike a fair deal.
(O) Open your eyes and see things as they really are.
(P) Practice makes you perfect.
(Q) Quitters never win and winners never quit.
(R) Read, study and learn about everything that is important in your life.
(S) Stop procrastinating.
(T) Take control of your own destiny.
(U) Understand yourself in order to better understand others.
(V) Visualize it.
(W) Want it more than anything.
(X) Xccelerate your efforts.
(Y) You are unique, nothing can replace you.
(Z) Zero in on your target and go for it!!!
One must follow these golden rules to achieve success.
(A) Avoid negative sources, people, places, things and habits.
(B) Believe in yourself.
(C) Consider things from every angle.
(D) Don’t give up and don’t give in.
(E) Enjoy life today as if yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come.
(F) Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their riches.
(G) Give more than you planned to.
(H) Hang on to your dreams.
(I) Ignore those who try to discourage you.
(J) Just do it.
(K) Keep trying no matter how hard it seems, it will get easier.
(L) Love yourself first and the most.
(M) Make it happen.
(N) Never lie, cheat or steal, always strike a fair deal.
(O) Open your eyes and see things as they really are.
(P) Practice makes you perfect.
(Q) Quitters never win and winners never quit.
(R) Read, study and learn about everything that is important in your life.
(S) Stop procrastinating.
(T) Take control of your own destiny.
(U) Understand yourself in order to better understand others.
(V) Visualize it.
(W) Want it more than anything.
(X) Xccelerate your efforts.
(Y) You are unique, nothing can replace you.
(Z) Zero in on your target and go for it!!!
One must follow these golden rules to achieve success.
Marketing of Products through Website using 5 W’s and an H
In today’s technology driven world, one needs to be crystal clear with 5 W’s: Who, What, Where, When, & Why and an H. People make snap decisions everyday - to use products, services, and even software too. The focus should be whether you are giving your potential customers the information they need to make split second decisions about your products/services or not.
Who
- Who is this for? - Communicate clearly who your target market is and try not to be too subtle. The visitor to you website should know if you are talking to them or someone else.
- Who is using it? – Exemplify the target users if possible to make things more clear. People generally follow up things which are pretty tried and tested ones.
- Who created it? – Disclose your real identity, no need to hide behind an isolated corporation. Tell the potential users exactly who you are.
What
- What is this? – Make it clear whether it’s a website, a mobile app or an iPhone app. Come right out and say what it is. Instead of presenting an idea, communicate exactly what it is.
- What does this do? – Tell the real features of your product or services and spread the real picture giving its benefits to satisfy your potential customers. Say it clearly.
When
- When is the best time to use it? - Mention certain case scenarios to let the potential customers know when your services could benefit them.
Why
- Why use this at all? – Try to mention the advantages of your product/services in front of the product/services provided by your competitors. This would need a different angle to achieve their faith in you.
- Why is it better than other similar apps? – To help people in making educated decisions, outline the similarities and differences in the services provided by you and your competitors.
How
- How do I use this? – Lastly, never forget to give detailed description of using your product or service. You can take help of podcasts and videos to give an idea about your product/service and can outline the steps in text as well.
This is the way you can map the theory to practice to increase the success rate.
Who
- Who is this for? - Communicate clearly who your target market is and try not to be too subtle. The visitor to you website should know if you are talking to them or someone else.
- Who is using it? – Exemplify the target users if possible to make things more clear. People generally follow up things which are pretty tried and tested ones.
- Who created it? – Disclose your real identity, no need to hide behind an isolated corporation. Tell the potential users exactly who you are.
What
- What is this? – Make it clear whether it’s a website, a mobile app or an iPhone app. Come right out and say what it is. Instead of presenting an idea, communicate exactly what it is.
- What does this do? – Tell the real features of your product or services and spread the real picture giving its benefits to satisfy your potential customers. Say it clearly.
When
- When is the best time to use it? - Mention certain case scenarios to let the potential customers know when your services could benefit them.
Why
- Why use this at all? – Try to mention the advantages of your product/services in front of the product/services provided by your competitors. This would need a different angle to achieve their faith in you.
- Why is it better than other similar apps? – To help people in making educated decisions, outline the similarities and differences in the services provided by you and your competitors.
How
- How do I use this? – Lastly, never forget to give detailed description of using your product or service. You can take help of podcasts and videos to give an idea about your product/service and can outline the steps in text as well.
This is the way you can map the theory to practice to increase the success rate.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is the type of marketing that is mainly focused on getting found by potential customers.
In traditional or outbound marketing, companies used to focus on searching for expected customers, using techniques with poor targets and most of times interrupting people. This type of marketing involves cold-calling, T.V. advertising, print advertising, junk mails, and trade shows. But these techniques are less effective and more expensive.
Today, Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing completely. The most successful key components of an Inbound Marketing campaigns are:
a) Get Found
Create Content via Blogging – It mainly surrounds the content. The substantial content in any Inbound Marketing campaign is a tool that to attract potential customers to your website for your products or services. You must create web pages, write blogs, participate in the blogosphere and then publish this content to drive traffic to your website.
Optimize via Search Engine Optimization - SEO is the practice of building your website and the inbound links to your site to maximize its ranking in the search engines, where most of your customers generally begin their buying process. It eases the potential customers to find your content. You must do on-page as well as off-page SEO and use channels like Youtube, Twitter to optimize your remarkable content.
Promote via Social Media - Social media magnifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed over the network of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic, and is more likely to drive qualified and specific consumers to your website. You can even run PPC campaigns to promote the website.
b) Convert
Convert Visitors to Leads via Landing Pages - Convert a targeted stream of traffic into mature leads. Design a well-crafted offer on a landing page specifically for the audience you will be driving to the page.
Lead Tracking and Intelligence – After generating lots of traffic from myriad sources like Google, social media sites, the blogosphere, create a magnet that sucks in prospects from all over the web. Look into the conversion paths on your website. Use your intellect to gauge where might people land, and what paths through your content they might take. And then put right offers in front of a given visitor to maximize the chance of converting it into a lead.
Lead Management – Use the analytic traffic tracking tools to keep a track and then manage the matured leads. Identify the hot prospects to increase the total count of potential customers.
c) Analyze
Marketing Analytics – Regularly post and comment on articles, and check your traffic, leads and landing page conversion rates. Schedule properly to write, optimize, publish and promote your content.
Competitive Analysis – Keep a close eye on your competitor’s presence in the market. Analyze and identify their hot prospects closely.
Lead Scoring – You need to strategize for further gains. Generate marketing reports and make new offers and landing pages to enhance the substantial traffic on your website.
In traditional or outbound marketing, companies used to focus on searching for expected customers, using techniques with poor targets and most of times interrupting people. This type of marketing involves cold-calling, T.V. advertising, print advertising, junk mails, and trade shows. But these techniques are less effective and more expensive.
Today, Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing completely. The most successful key components of an Inbound Marketing campaigns are:
a) Get Found
Create Content via Blogging – It mainly surrounds the content. The substantial content in any Inbound Marketing campaign is a tool that to attract potential customers to your website for your products or services. You must create web pages, write blogs, participate in the blogosphere and then publish this content to drive traffic to your website.
Optimize via Search Engine Optimization - SEO is the practice of building your website and the inbound links to your site to maximize its ranking in the search engines, where most of your customers generally begin their buying process. It eases the potential customers to find your content. You must do on-page as well as off-page SEO and use channels like Youtube, Twitter to optimize your remarkable content.
Promote via Social Media - Social media magnifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed over the network of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic, and is more likely to drive qualified and specific consumers to your website. You can even run PPC campaigns to promote the website.
b) Convert
Convert Visitors to Leads via Landing Pages - Convert a targeted stream of traffic into mature leads. Design a well-crafted offer on a landing page specifically for the audience you will be driving to the page.
Lead Tracking and Intelligence – After generating lots of traffic from myriad sources like Google, social media sites, the blogosphere, create a magnet that sucks in prospects from all over the web. Look into the conversion paths on your website. Use your intellect to gauge where might people land, and what paths through your content they might take. And then put right offers in front of a given visitor to maximize the chance of converting it into a lead.
Lead Management – Use the analytic traffic tracking tools to keep a track and then manage the matured leads. Identify the hot prospects to increase the total count of potential customers.
c) Analyze
Marketing Analytics – Regularly post and comment on articles, and check your traffic, leads and landing page conversion rates. Schedule properly to write, optimize, publish and promote your content.
Competitive Analysis – Keep a close eye on your competitor’s presence in the market. Analyze and identify their hot prospects closely.
Lead Scoring – You need to strategize for further gains. Generate marketing reports and make new offers and landing pages to enhance the substantial traffic on your website.
Grow Business Via Social Media Network
Build your social media network aiming at driving targeted prospective customers to your business.
The primary goal in Social Media is to build and test the effectiveness of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space, Twitter and many more.
Primary Goal in Social Media is to measure Traffic and Conversion
This is the timeless business revenue building success formula. It includes:
• Identify and discover what works in attracting targeted prospective customers to your offer.
• Convert the targeted traffic to buying your offer.
Network Building Services in Social Media:
Develop a communication strategy to measure the social media growth that renders the growth of business profits as well as revenue. The social networking websites which are targeted primarily are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The success rate in social media marketing can be measured based on the destination picture and also how the incoming traffic visits to your websites is accounted for.
In short, build targeted followers, friends, contacts as fast as the sites allow us to. While building work on developing rich and quality content that will convert traffic into clients and customers.
Promotion and Advertising Using Our Social Media Network
Grow your social network on a regular basis and reach as many people as you can through primary social media networks. By analyzing the current trends you can double the customers with positive views for your product and services.
Effective Social Media Campaigns
The most effective campaigns include blogs and websites as destinations for most of our social media campaigns. Moreover the clients should be in business of selling products or services. You can drive traffic from third party sites also but it is challenging since the results are not easily tracked. The best way to track the traffic is to set up Google Analytics analyze the traffic patterns.
The primary goal in Social Media is to build and test the effectiveness of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space, Twitter and many more.
Primary Goal in Social Media is to measure Traffic and Conversion
This is the timeless business revenue building success formula. It includes:
• Identify and discover what works in attracting targeted prospective customers to your offer.
• Convert the targeted traffic to buying your offer.
Network Building Services in Social Media:
Develop a communication strategy to measure the social media growth that renders the growth of business profits as well as revenue. The social networking websites which are targeted primarily are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The success rate in social media marketing can be measured based on the destination picture and also how the incoming traffic visits to your websites is accounted for.
In short, build targeted followers, friends, contacts as fast as the sites allow us to. While building work on developing rich and quality content that will convert traffic into clients and customers.
Promotion and Advertising Using Our Social Media Network
Grow your social network on a regular basis and reach as many people as you can through primary social media networks. By analyzing the current trends you can double the customers with positive views for your product and services.
Effective Social Media Campaigns
The most effective campaigns include blogs and websites as destinations for most of our social media campaigns. Moreover the clients should be in business of selling products or services. You can drive traffic from third party sites also but it is challenging since the results are not easily tracked. The best way to track the traffic is to set up Google Analytics analyze the traffic patterns.
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