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    Five Ways Pinterest Can Benefit Your Business

    Kelly Kautz

    After nearly a year of meteoric growth, Pinterest has become the third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter. For those who haven’t already jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, the site is a virtual pin board that lets users save, categorize and share images from around the web.

    According to Mashable, Pinterest receives an average of 1.36 million visitors each day, 68 percent of whom are female. While Pinterest’s traffic has declined in recent months, it still presents a huge opportunity for companies to expand their reach.

    Business Benefit #1: Traffic

    One of the site’s most obvious business benefits is referral traffic. The third-party measurement company Shareaholic recently found that Pinterest referred more traffic to sites than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

    To harness Pinterest’s referral power, first make sure your content is pinnable. You can test how well your content transfers to Pinterest by installing a “Pin It” button to your bookmark toolbar and using it to pin images from your own site. You can also install a “Pin It” button directly on your site. read more

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    Wanamaker’s Dilemma: Using Marketing Intelligence to Stop “Wasting” Your Marketing Budget

    John Walker

    “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker, famed department store magnate and difficult advertising client, is reputed to have said this around the turn of the 20th century.

    No doubt Wanamaker spent plenty of money on advertising to drive traffic to his store, and he used the best techniques of his day─target as best you can, hope your message connects and get corresponding results if you’re lucky. Ironically, this basic marketing approach lasted from Wanamaker’s day until just a few years ago. But times have changed and so has the opportunity to target and measure marketing with precision. You’ve heard of Google right? Paid search is the most fundamental change in ad targeting in 100 years. And now Facebook enables ad targeting with arguably even more precision.

    But here’s the thing:  Using these remarkable new marketing tools is not enough. To get the most out of them requires a new marketing approach that lets you benefit from the precise targeting and measurability. We call this approach Marketing Intelligence.

    Marketing Intelligence is a way of using data-driven decisions to guide the planning, implementation and adaptation of marketing campaigns.

    read more

    1 Comment

    Facebook Brand Pages – The Free Ride is Over

    Joe Tertel

    With the release of Facebook’s new Timeline layout for brands, there has been a lot of conversation around the development of engaging content related to the Timeline, and rightfully so. However, the real discussion should be around reach and exposure. Today, your Facebook page and content may be getting low exposure, but there are remedies.

    Only 16% of your fans see your Facebook content

    A study by Allfacebook.com revealed that less than 0.5% of your fans visit your page after they have “liked” it. This makes sense because after they have “liked” your page your content will be pushed to them via the news feed. Well, a second study conducted by comScore shows that brands are reaching only 16% of their Facebook fans each week through the news feed. This is because Facebook’s news feed only shows those brand pages that you and your friends have recently engaged with. This is referred to as Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, and it is directly responsible for the visibility of your Facebook content.

    Sixteen percent and 0.5% are extremely low numbers based on the time that it takes to manage and maintain your page. Bottom line, this is low ROI. So, what can be done to increase your page’s visibility? read more

    3 Comments

    An Artful Approach to Marketing

    Michael Endy

    We’re exposed to thousands of informational messages every day. As marketers, how do we get our targets to see, hear and remember what we want to say?

    One way to cut through the clutter is to take the path followed by great artists: simplify, reduce and focus.

    Too often, we try to say too much. In the noisy world we live in, we just need to say less. No matter how much you tell them, most readers remember only one thing. By simplifying our communications to just one or two main points, and presenting them in a memorable way, we improve our chances of retention.

    “Impression: Sunrise,” Claude Monet (1872)

    Artists – such as poets, painters, playwrights and even cartoonists – strip away the confusing parts of the human condition to reveal its essential truths. Their work usually focuses on one idea that reflects their point of view on the world.

    In design terms, they remove the clutter of everyday life and replace it with white space to help us focus on what’s important. They make the complex simple. read more

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    This American Lie: Turning Crisis into Opportunity

    Kelly Kautz

    Earlier this month, the public radio program “This American Life” made headlines when it retracted an episode of its hour-long show. In doing so, it revealed how a healthy dose of transparency can transform crisis into opportunity.

    The show in question, “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory” took a critical look at working conditions of Apple suppliers. It was based on a one-man show by performer Mike Daisey, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

    The Invention of Lying

    Since its broadcast in January 2012, “Mr. Daisey” had become the most popular podcast in “This American Life” history, with almost a million downloads to date. But when other journalists noticed inconsistencies in the story, Daisey’s story began to unravel.

    Additional fact-checking revealed that Daisey had fabricated many of the details about Apple’s employees, from their ages to their work-related disabilities. In doing so, he joined a long list of writers who have taken liberties with the truth. He also sparked a PR nightmare for “This American Life.” read more

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    Higher Education – Are you getting the “right” students?

    Matt Kurowski

    “We don’t really need help with our marketing. We get many more applicants every year than we can accept.” We hear these statements time and time again from marketing decisions makers in higher education.

    On the surface it makes perfect sense. Why invest time and budget resources into marketing when you are already turning away 50 percent (or more) of your applicants?

    It’s a good question. But here are some other questions that we ask of those marketers. Wouldn’t you like to have your admissions team spending more time with highly qualified prospects? Would you like to be in the position to be even more selective?

    Done right, a strong higher education marketing program can do much more than just drive MORE prospects. It can, and should, drive the RIGHT prospects. read more

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    Facebook Launches Timeline for Pages – Get Ready!

    Joe Tertel

    Last week at the first Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC), Facebook made some big announcements that will affect every brand that has a Facebook page. The main announcement that must be acted upon is that every brand page will transition to a Timeline layout. Timeline is Facebook’s new profile layout that allows you to highlight the photos, posts and events that help you tell your brand’s story.

    Since many of you did not have two hours to attend the fMC webinar, here’s a summary of what you need to do to update your Facebook page and what these changes mean to you as a marketer.

    read more

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    An Unexpected Partnership: Marketing and IT

    Megan Myers

    Technology will become increasingly important to marketers in the years to come. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by IBM, “Four-fifths of respondents plan to use customer analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), social media and mobile applications more extensively over the next three to five years.”

    However, implementing this valuable technology isn’t easy. In that same study, IT issues such as implementation and reliability are cited as a major barrier to usage.

    So what’s a marketer to do?

    You’re getting pressure from the top to show results, but the subsequent meetings and cost to implement tracking technology can nearly break you.

    Enter IT. read more

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    Know Your Customers by their Digital Footprints

    John Walker

    “By 2017, the chief marketing officer will spend more money on information technology than the chief information officer,” according to Gartner1. Why? Because a “data explosion”2 has suddenly given marketers the information they need to understand customers with a level of intimacy never before possible. This data comes from website analytics, social media platforms, call centers, promotions and purchase transactions.

    The challenge is how to derive insight from all the data. In other words, what can you learn about the customer who left their digital footprints? Start by looking at the data from your website. It is easily available and it paints a picture of customer behavior based on thousands of recent customer interactions. And look at these three metrics:

    1) Traffic flow
    2) Bounce rate (% of website visitors who leave from the first page they visit)
    3) Most popular website content

    Traffic Flow

    Traffic flow is the first line graph you see when you open your website’s Google Analytics account. The line graph will probably show a consistent up and down wave pattern, which represents the predictable ebb and flow of website traffic during every week.

    Google Analytics Traffic Flow

    This report may also show some spikes which are dramatic increases in traffic. Investigate these spikes to learn something useful about your customers’ behavior. You may learn:

    • Your ad campaign is creating interest in your brand
    • Seasonal buying patterns are in effect
    • Or, some other factor is at work like a weather event or a news story

    Once you identify the cause of increased traffic, you can activate a plan to repeat that. read more

    No Comments »

    Business as Usual?

    Michael Deiner

    Every day we focus on running our businesses as efficiently as possible. We have orders to complete, projects to finish and connections to make. Work can be a daily fire drill. But how often do we step back and really check the pulse of our business and its competitive advantage? What’s the view from the outside looking in?

    Do we know that our competitors plan to steal our customers while we continue with “Business as Usual?”

    Managing brands and marketing departments is challenging when work loads are high. From daily meetings to status reports, keeping the business moving is what we do.

    Brand Image

    Taking time to see an outside-in view of our brand can seem like an impossible task.

    Brand audit

    A well-choreographed brand audit can improve your competitive position. It will also provide clear direction for future growth.

    A well planned brand audit includes:

    • Messaging – Does your current message still resonate with your target audience?
    • Industry and Markets – Does your product and service offerings still meet the needs and demands of your target?
    • Communications – Are you on top of the ever-changing digital landscape? Are you using these new tools effectively?
    • Competition – Are there new competitors, services or products you need to know about? How are they marketing against you?
    • Visual Identity – Are you presenting your organization in a progressive, compelling way that connects with your target market? Does it break through the clutter?
    • Your Promise – Are you still delivering on your brand promise at every customer touch point?

    Taking the time to conduct an objective review of your business is critical to developing your brand and making sure you are positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities.

    A brand audit is vital for any business.

    Stop functioning with the “Business as Usual” mindset, and put your organization in a better position. Conduct a brand audit and re-define your brand strategically. It will re-energize and re-focus your business and serve as a powerful driver for success.

    2 Comments
     
     
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