Facebook’s New Marketing Tools for Ads and Insights

3RD OCTOBER 2011 by LAUREN FISHER

With the recent changes announced at Facebook, it wasn’t going to be long until it started to introduce changes for brands, with new targeting options. And now it’s started to do just that, as it’s announced a new ad format that is focused on driving more engagement for brands, attracting ever more ad dollars to the site.

The announcement was made today  in conjunction with New York’s annual Advertising Week. The ad format is called a ‘Premium’ ad and it functions similarly to sponsored stories, which are generated when someone takes an action on your Page. The ‘story’ itself is what’s shown in the ad, as opposed to any ad text or images that you decide.

With a Premium ad, if a brand shares a particular piece of content on their Page, such as a video, an ad containing that content will be served to fans’ friends, expanding to show the content and which of the friends have Liked it:

In line with the changes to the new Facebook profiles, this is all about driving more content to people’s profiles, with increasingly new ways to discover that content. The only issue is that it doesn’t really look like an ad at all. Which is great for marketers of course, but perhaps not so great for users, who will find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between paid and organic content.

Unfortunately this ad unit isn’t currently available on the self-serve ad platform on Facebook, so it won’t be accessible to many brands who have a smaller budget. For those that can afford to run these ads, it puts the onus on the Page owner to share increasingly relevant multimedia content, as opposed to flat text updates. At the moment brands are getting swallowed up by the sheer volume of content that’s now generated in the newsfeed, so they will need to work harder to attract people to the Page, turning it almost into an entertainment hub that simply a place to converse with a brand.

Up next – new Page insights

Given Google’s announcement of new real-time analytics last week, it’s perhaps not surprising that Facebook is introducing changes to its own Insights product. It’s just launched a feature called ‘people talking about’ that essentially allows you to see the total conversation about your brand, outside of the immediate fans you’re reaching. It combines all the stories generated about your brand across Facebook, including Likes, comments, checkins, tags in posts and RSVPs. It will also take into account impressions through ads. Interestingly, it’s not given as a percentage of your fans, but is presented to brands as a raw number. This screenshot was sent by Facebook to show the new insights in action:

The end of the Like obsession?

Interestingly, or perhaps worryingly for some brands, this number is not going to be private. It will be presented to anyone visiting your Page, directly underneath the Like count. This is likely to end an obsession with the Like number on Pages – as brands race against each other to get an arbitrary number of ‘fans’. It will instead start a new, more meaningful race : how engaged are people with your brand across Facebook? Now brands will be judged not just by how many Likes they have, but through their talkability. Are they generating content in any way that is spreading across Facebook? That is shareable, and interesting. It’s a new challenge for brands that have previously focused on Likes as the sole aim, but it’s certainly a welcome one.

Insights API

Another new announcement by Facebook for brands, is that it’s opening up the Insights API for developers so that they can experiment with the information provided by Facebook in Insights and develop new products that present alternative solutions to those provided by Facebook. This will likely largely be used across larger brands, although it could see some new consumer-facing products developed, that will better serve all brand Pages.

This is just the start of what we’re likely to see from Facebook over the next couple of weeks, as everyone continues to wait for the expected upcoming change to brand Pages. But for now, we’ll make do with this.

The Rise of Engagement marketing

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the “death” of traditional advertising and the rise of engagement marketing. In this post I want to discuss engagement marketing, also known as engagement design, tryvertising, experiential marketing, and guerrilla marketing.

Undeniably, the importance of traditional advertising has diminished as we have gained greater access to what our friends think, via social media. People naturally place more weight on their experiences and their friends’ experience with brands and products than on ads. At the same time, our ability to block advertising is on the rise as well.

So what is a marketer to do to catch the attention of prospects and create a positive ROI on their marketing investments? First, we have to understand why people behave the way they do when it comes to decision making. In Advertising on the Brain it states, people “have an emotional and a physical reaction, before we engage in rational thought.” In other words, we feel first, react second, and think last (sound like anyone you know?). Emotions are the connection between our feelings and our actions. In the same article it says, “It would really come in handy to have a yellow highlighter pen in your brain that says ‘This is important, remember it.’ That’s what emotions are; a yellow highlighter pen in your brain. We can’t make decisions without them because emotions are our brain’s way of signaling importance biochemically.” Bottom line, marketers have to affect people’s emotions in order to get them to act.

Most advertising fails to elicit positive emotions, which proceeds action. Any negative emotion felt, intentional or not, is carried over as a negative towards the brand/product. As example, I often see in my neighborhood an ad on bus benches that states “All work and no play makes Jack a great realtor!” Every time I see it I want to pick up the phone and tell Jack that his ad stinks and he should hire a real marketer instead of trying to do it himself! The problem here is that we all know the phrase from childhood “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” When I read Jack’s ad, I am reminded that he is a “dull boy,” and quite honestly I would never hire anyone who is “all work and no play.” He must be burned out by now, and certainly is not one I’d entrust the purchase or sale of a home to. Maybe he’d fall asleep in the middle of a transaction. This was unintentional eliciting of a negative emotion.

The rise of engagement advertising is simply this – marketers have to be mindful of the emotional reactions that they create, be authentic in creating positive emotional reactions, and make it easy for people to try their brand/product, thus (hopefully!) solidifying the positive emotion that makes them talk about their experience with others.

In Charting A Shift from Communications to Engagements it says, “The new marketing is about creating 360⁰ brand experiences, not messaging. Consumers should buy into to your brand’s ideas, not just your product. Instead of defining ‘Reasons To Believe’, you need to define ‘Reasons To Be.’ “ Brands no longer are “contained in any communication or campaign, but rather is understood through its many touch-points.” Create enough positive touch-points, and you create positive ROI. Of course, creating multiple positive touch-points requires a creative mind. You have to be willing to risk failure, and ideally allow a minimum of three months to test any marketing/advertising ideas to see what works. It takes using your intuition, something women seem to utilize a little better than men, which explains to me why so many more women are in the marketing field than men. No judgment here, just observing the facts. However, as stated in Reinventing the MBA: 4 Reasons to Mix Business With Design Thinking, “An over-reliance on intuition is every bit as limited as management by the numbers.” Really it takes both intuition and analytical thinking to create excellent engagement marketing experiences.

In addition, also stated in the same article, it takes humility and team-building skills as well as a willingness to be “always ready to praise…colleagues and friends.” One of the ways we can utilize the principles of engagement marketing is through the use of “tryvertising.” From Trendwatching, tryvertising is defined as “[incorporating]…’obvious’ activities like handing out product samples, and more subtle, integrated product placements that are part of an experience or solution. It’s everything from new-style sachets containing single servings of liquid products, to hotels partnering with luxury car makers to offer high end model test drives to guests during their stay…The challenge here has always been a certain lack of relevance: there’s no guarantee samples are tried out at the right time, in the right spot, and by the right target audience.

So what about more targeted, more relevant new-style tryvertising? Product placements that become part of the landscape, part of the real world where consumers hang out and certainly don’t mind trying something as long as it makes sense to them?” Read the rest of Trendwatching’s introduction to tryvertising, to know how Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Mini Cooper, IKEA, Nike, Starbucks, HP and other brands are using it. Experiential marketing is another way of saying engagement marketing. As an aside, you may want to join the Experiential Forum, as I did, to join in the conversation about the latest-and-greatest in experiential marketing. In The Last Campaign: How Experiences Are Becoming the New Advertising it states, “65% of U.S. consumers report a digital experience changing their perception about a brand (either positively or negatively) and 97% of that group report that the same experience ultimately influenced whether or not they went on to purchase a product from that brand. In a nutshell, experience matters.

A lot. Of course, brands that were ‘born digital’ intuitively know this. Google and Amazon are pioneering experiential brands. That’s why Amazon continues to pour money into improving its customer service rather than run traditional advertising or marketing campaigns. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said, ‘We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them. Zappos…built its brand the same way, as has Facebook.” Experience matters. A lot.

If you have an amazing engagement campaign, but your retail staff aren’t plentiful enough, don’t know where anything is, or how to help you resolve your problem, it matters. A lot. If your customer service reps don’t know how to handle the frustrated customer and act snotty, it matters. A lot. If your website makes it difficult to find what the person wants and see the price before they put the item in a digital basket, it matters. A lot. As marketers, we often have to step back, look at the entire process and be critical of how it works through the eyes of the customer. It matters. A lot.

Lastly, I want to talk about guerrilla marketing, which is also a form of experiential or engagement marketing. The term guerrilla marketing has become a catch-all phrase for non-traditional marketing, but it really is its own form of disruptive marketing and we have opportunity as marketers to bring it into the world of digital media that we are now in. As stated in Guerrilla Marketing Goes Tweet, “People are focused on social media; they’re walking around with their smartphones and updating their statuses and tweeting. The more we give people opportunities to do that, the more exciting it is, such as creating art at an event where people can save it to their profiles…The more we can incorporate social technology into real-life events, the more people get excited about it.” Marketers should be on the prowl to incorporate promotion of art into their work. After all, art creates positive emotion, which begets action. Not to mention, it helps those who are less business and more creative-minded earn a living. To read more about guerrilla marketing tactics that companies are now using, I recommend the blogs Guerrilla Gorilla and Guerrilla Communication Blog. Google “guerrilla marketing” and you are sure to find much more. I hope this post helped your thinking about creating positive emotional and experiential marketing tactics, resulting in the positive ROI you are looking for.

The 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

You're the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here's how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

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In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic."
Whatever that means.
If you find yourself resisting "being strategic," because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you're not alone. Every leader's temptation is to deal with what's directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you'll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you're on is leading off a cliff.
This is a tough job, make no mistake. "We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It's hard to be a strategic leader if you don't know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.
After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what's required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate

Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including their own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution. A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

Many leaders fall pretty to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people's agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it's uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by. You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure--especially failure--are valuable sources of organizational learning. Here's what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you're off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Do you have what it takes?

Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But they can be taught and whatever gaps exist in your skill set can be filled in. I'll cover each of the aspects of strategic leadership in more detail in future columns. But for now, test your own strategic aptitude (or your company's) with the survey at www.decisionstrat.com. In the comments below, let me know what you learned from it.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker: Founder and Chairman of Decision Strategies Intl. Author, professor, entrepreneur and speaker. Research Director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at Wharton, where he teaches strategy and decision-making

COMPETITIVE MARKET:

A market with a large number of buyers and sellers, such that no single buyer or seller is able to influence the price or control any other aspect of the market. That is, none of the participants have significant market control. A competitive market achieves efficiency in the allocation of scarce resources if no other market failures are present.

A competitive market is a market with a sufficient number of both buyers and sellers such than no one buyer or seller is able to exercise control over the market or the price. Efficiency is achieved because competition among buyers forces buyers to pay their maximum demand price and competition among sellers forces sellers to charge their minimum supply price for the given quantity exchanged.

Working the Market Model

Competitive Market

The market model presented here depicts a typical competitive market that has achievedequilibrium. The market demand curve is labeled D and the marketsupply curve is labeled S. Competition among buyers forces the market price up to the maximum demand price on the demand curve. Competition among sellers forces the market price down to the minimum supply price on the supply curve. With competition among both buyers and sellers, the market price is simultaneously on both the demand curve and the supply curve.

This result is illustrated by the market equilibrium achieved at price Po and quantity Qo. The competitive forces of demand and supply automatically generate this market equilibrium. If the going market price is higher or lower than Po, creating a shortage or surplus, then competitive forces eliminate the imbalance and restores equilibrium.

The Invisible Hand of Efficiency

A competitive market is efficient because equilibrium is achieved where the demand price and supply are price equal.

• Competition on the demand side forces buyers to buy a good at the maximum demand price that they are willing and able to pay. The demand price is the value society places on the good produced based on the satisfaction received.


• Competition on the supply side forces sellers to sell the good at the minimum supply price that they are willing and able to accept. The supply price is the opportunity cost of production, which is the value of goods NOT produced.

Equality between the demand and supply prices means that the economy cannot generate any greater satisfaction by producing more of one good and less of another.

Competitive markets are the cornerstone of capitalism and a market-oriented economy. They efficiently address the scarcity problem and answer the three questions of allocation automatically (as if guided by aninvisible hand) with little or no government intervention.

Uncompetitive Markets

The real world contains some markets that come close to this competitive ideal and other markets that fall short. These real world markets can be grouped into three distinct market structures.

• Monopolistic/Monopsonistic Competition: The most competitive real world markets are termed monopolistic competition or monopsonistic competition, depending on whether the focus is on the sellers (monopolistic) or the buyers (monopsonistic).


• Oligopoly/Oligopsony: Real world markets with a modest amount of competition, but not a lot, are termed oligopoly or oligopsony, depending on whether the focus is on the sellers (oligopoly) or the buyers (oligopsony).


• Monopoly/Monopsony: Real world markets that have no competition are termed monopoly, if there is only one seller, or monopsony, if there is only one buyer.

Other Market Failures

Competitive markets achieve an efficient allocation of resources as long as other market failures are not present. The lack of competition, also termed market control, is one key market failure. Three noted market failures are externalities, public goods, and imperfect information.

• Externalities arise if the demand price does not fully reflect the value generated by the good or if the supply price does not fully reflect the opportunity cost production. As a result, the market equilibrium does not include all of the information about value and cost needed to achieve efficiency.
• Public goods are goods characterized by nonrival consumption and the inability to exclude nonpayers. The use of the good by one does not impose a cost on others and no one can be prevented from consuming the good.


• Imperfect information occurs if buyers or sellers do not know as much about the good as they should for an efficient allocation. In other words, buyers are not aware of the full value they obtain from consuming the good or sellers are not aware of all opportunity cost incurred in production.

Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics

by JOHN FURGURSON on NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I’m appalled. A successful marketing guy asked me a question recently — a real no-brainer — which led me to believe he didn’t know the difference between strategy and tactics.

How can that be? He’s held several high-paying marketing positions. He’s college educated in Marketing 101. He’s gotta know this stuff.

So I started doing some research online and I’ve found the problem: The internet!

There’s more misinformation than information out there. More nonsense than common sense. Even some of the biggest gurus in the industry have posted conflicting information on the subject.

No wonder the guy’s confused. I ran across one article that listed “search engines” as a marketing strategy and that “long term strategies such as giving away freebies will continue to pay off years down the road.”

This isn’t just a matter of semantics, it’s negligence. Advice like that would never get past the editors of a trade publication for worm farmers, much less a brand-name business magazine.  But you can find it on-line!

In any case, the easiest way to clarify the difference between strategy and tactics is to go to the source. I’m sorry if the war analogy doesn’t appeal to you, but that’s where these terms came from, some 3,000 years ago.

Here’s how it breaks down: Goals first. Then strategy. Then tactics.

Goal: Win the war.

Strategy: “Divide and conquer.”

Tactics:

CIA spies gather intelligence.

Navy Seals knock out enemy communications.

Paratroopers secure the airports.

Armored Divisions race in and divide the opposing army’s forces.

Drone attacks take out the enemy leadership.

An overwhelming force of infantry invade.

Hand-to-hand combat.

A strategy is an idea… A conceptualization of how the goal could be achieved. Like “Divide and Conquer.” Another possible war strategy would be “Nuke ‘Em.” (They call them Strategic Nuclear Weapons because they pretty much eliminate the need for any further tactics.)

A tactic is an action you take to execute the strategy.

But let’s get off the battlefield and look at a successful brand…

Back in the 70’s, executives at Church & Dwight Inc. noticed that sales of their popular Arm & Hammer baking soda were slipping. The loyal moms and grandmas who had been buying the same baking soda all their lives weren’t baking as much as they used to.

Business Goal:  Turn the tide and increase Baking Soda sales.

Strategy: Devise new reasons for their current customers to pick up that yellow box at the supermarket and use more baking soda. Specifically, sell Arm & Hammer as a deodorizer for the fridge. That’s a big, strategic idea that led Arm & Hammer in a completely different direction. They’re now marketing a whole line of environmentally friendly cleaning products. Every current Arm & Hammer product, from toothpaste to cat litter, originated with that strategy of finding new ways to use baking soda. And in the process, an old-fashioned brand has managed to stay relevant.

Tactics: TV advertising. Magazine ads. Infomercials. Retail promotions. Website dedicated to all the various uses of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. All the traditional marketing tactics were employed.

All good marketing strategies share some common components:

• Thorough understanding of the brand’s status and story. Arm & Hammer has a strong heritage that dates back to the 1860’s. That yellow box with the red Arm & Hammer logo is instantly recognizable, and stands for much more than just generic sodium bicarbonate.

• A realistic assessment of the product’s strengths & weaknesses. Market research proved what Arm & Hammer executives suspected… that people don’t bake as much as they used to. But it also showed that people use their baking soda for all kinds of things besides baking. So why not leverage that?

• A clear picture of the competition. Arm & Hammer has always been the undisputed market leader in the category. However, when they decided to introduce toothpaste and laundry detergent, the competition became fierce. Arm & Hammer’s long-standing leadership position in one vertical market gave them a fighting chance against Procter & Gamble.

• Intimate knowledge of the consumer and the market. The shift away from the traditional American homemaker directly affected baking soda sales. Church & Dwight kept up with the trends, and even led the charge on environmental issues.

• A grasp of the big-picture business implications. Good strategies reach way beyond the marketing department. When you have a big idea, execution of the strategy will inevitably involve operations, R&D, HR, finance and every other business discipline.

A great strategy does not depend on brilliant tactics for success. If the idea is strong enough, you can get by with mediocre tactical execution. However, even the best tactics can’t compensate for a lousy strategy.

Some people confuse marketing strategy with goals.  They are not synonymous. Here are a few examples from misguided on-line sources:

“Create awareness”

“Overcome objections”

“Boost consumer confidence”

These are NOT strategies, they’re goals. (And not even very good goals.) Remember, it’s not a strategy unless there’s an idea behind it.

Any number of strategies can be used to achieve a business goal. In fact, it often takes more than one strategy to achieve a lofty goal, and each strategy involves its own unique tactical plan. Unfortunately, a lot of marketing managers simply throw together a list of the tactics they’ve always used, and call it a strategy.

Sometimes you can build a hell of a strategy around a simple, tactical idea. Like Dominoes did with their 30-minute delivery guarantee. Someone said, “Hey, what if we guaranteed 30-minute delivery?” and a strategy was born.  They couldn’t compete on product quality, but they could compete on speedy delivery. After that, their entire operation revolved around the promise of 30-minute delivery.

If you’re still wondering about the difference between strategy and tactics, try the “what-if” test. “What if we came up with a bunch of new uses for baking soda?”  That’s a strategy.

“What if we search engine” doesn’t make sense. Must be a tactic. “What if we increase market share?”  No idea, must be a goal.

The Top 10 Internet Marketing
Strategies for Increasing Your Sales

After reading this article you will learn:

1. How to increase your website’s results with conversion rate optimization;
2. The "Top 10" marketing strategies you can use to increase sales;
3. The "Best Practices" of increasing your Search Engine Rankings with SEO.

Are you searching for creative marketing strategies to grow your business? Looking for tactics that will increase lead flow and provide an impressive effect on your sales? If your business gets a majority of sales and/or leads via the Web, the following are 10 great marketing strategies you can use to boost your sales NOW.

#1 A Superior Product (or Service)

A gifted product (or service) is mightier than a gifted marketing campaign. This principle has built more fortunes than any other marketing insight which is why I listed it as #1. A superior product (or service) gives the best results in marketing and selling because if it is not in the product, it isn't going to be in the marketing either. In other words, if your product is not better than the competition’s your marketing can’t honestly communicate any unique and advantageous qualities to your market. The better your product, the more persuasive your ads can be, and the bigger your marketing success will be. You need a strategy; a unique and powerful message, to win.
One way to position your product as being better than the competition is to make it unique and fill the void that your market wants with a Unique Selling Proposition. For example, back when Federal Express started they knew the market desired faster package shipping then the typical “4 to 6 weeks” delivery time. Federal Express (FedEx) filled this void and in turn dominated the package shipping market with the following USP: "Federal Express: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." The deployment of this USP allowed Federal Express to emerge as the dominant leader in the industry, taking market share rapidly, and also increased its sales and profits. How can you position your product to be more advantageous than your competition’s product?

#2 Words That SELL

The most successful marketers know their market and how to sell to them. They understand who their customers are, which common needs and goals they possess and the psychology of why they buy. They use this information to optimize their marketing and website to “speak” to their market’s desires and give them what they want. This superior "Message to Market Match” makes their marketing and website generate more leads and sales than the competition.
You can use this strategy on our website with “Conversion Rate Optimization” (CRO). CRO is the process of making your website generate more results by being more persuasive, more trustworthy and easier to navigate for your visitors so more of them find what they’re looking for and take action. CRO is the fastest and easiest strategy for increasing leads and sales generated from your website. Plus, it’s the best way to significantly increase your leads and sales without having to spend a bunch of money on increasing your website traffic. In fact, it’s the first step that should be taken before increasing your targeted traffic.

#3 A Newsletter

Sending an email newsletter is a powerful way to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis. By staying on their "radar," the odds are that they will think of you first the next time they need a product or service you offer! In fact, a quality newsletter is probably THE best customer retention tool available, and it costs very little to use. Plus, it can also be an effective Customer Acquisition Program it you use it correctly.
A newsletter is not a new concept, it is simply an informative letter mailed to subscribers via email or print. Of course, your newsletter must have useful content and information that is appreciated by your database of readers, otherwise people will unsubscribe by the masses. So, every couple or few weeks send out an "informative letter" covering areas of interest to your subscribers including helpful articles and tips, news, free stuff and special offers.

#4 Public Relations (PR)

Hiring a good Public Relations (PR) agency can really boost your business’ visibility and profitability. A PR Agency’s role is to get publicity for you by getting your news, press releases and articles into the media that your target market reads. The publicity will increase your visibility, credibility and sales.
For the best results with PR, go where your market is. In other words, get your message in the media that your customers read and watch. For example, the websites, online discussion forums, magazines, newspapers, radio and tv shows that your prospects use to get their news and information.
Hiring a PR agency who knows the right journalists in your market is advantageous to you because they'll get your story covered in the media more often. Since most media outlets have websites, they'll publish your news online too! Often it's a good idea to hire a talented PR Company AND an online marketer who knows the Internet and is skilled in getting your articles, news and press releases published online on Google News, Yahoo! News and your industry’s news websites and online discussion lists. This is a powerful online / offline "1-2 punch" that will boost your visibility, website traffic and sales!

#5 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

More than 88% of all Internet users look for websites, products and services by using search engines and online directories. Approximately 90% of the clicks on the search engine results pages (SERPs) are on the top 3 ranked websites (not the paid listings). Plus the top sites are considered “more trustworthy” and there are no pay-per-click fees involved which means lots of low-cost high-quality visitors for you. In other words, if your site isn’t listed at or near the top, it may as well not exist!
Ensure your site is ranked prominently for keyword phrases related to your product or service with an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. There are three basic steps to SEO:

1. Optimize your web pages with keywords in the page titles, meta tags, headlines, content and URLs;
2. Link your web pages to each other using keyword phrases;
3. Acquire keyword optimized in-bound links from industry authority sites that point to your site.

All three steps are important, but the third step - acquiring keyword optimized in-bound links (IBL’s) - is the most important step. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand this or just do this step all wrong. The best ways to acquire in-bound links to your website are:

• Acquiring and buying links (yes, buying them) on “authority websites” within your industry;
• Getting listed in the best Internet Directories like Yahoo’s Directory;
• Distributing keyword optimized press releases via services like PRweb.com;
• Distributing articles and information related to your product or service.

Usually only a handful of carefully selected links from the right websites will boost your rankings tremendously. Stay safe by only seeking 'related' targeted in-bound links (IBL's) from quality websites related to your website’s topic. SEO takes time and effort, but it’s well worth the investment because of the quality visitors it provides 24/7/365.

#6 Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising (PPC)

“Pay-Per-Click” (PPC) search engine advertising is the most targeted advertising money can buy. Why? Because PPC allows you to place your advertisements directly in front of hard-to-find prospects at the exact time when they’re searching for your type of product or service. No other form of advertising can do this for you! (except for maybe yellow pages)
Within an hour of set-up time your PPC campaign can be launched on Google AdWords and you can see results fast. PPC also gives you more control over which landing pages you send your visitors to allowing you to give them the most targeted message or the exact product they are searching for. Of course, with PPC you have to pay per click so there are advertising costs involved. Fortunately for you, Google AdWords allows you to use “Conversion Tracking” tools to see exactly which keyword phrases are producing sales and profits so you can optimize your campaign and website to provide more results. PPC can and should become an indispensable part of your business’ sales-generating arsenal.

#7 Free Content, Resources and Tools

Providing free content, resources and interactive tools on our website to attract your target market is a great strategy for increasing your sales and leads. The more interactive your website is, the more likely your visitors will experience satisfaction with it and use it as a resource. For example, Andy King at WebsiteOptimization.com offers the free “Web Page Analyzer” tool which analyzes the performance of web pages and give recommendations for improvement. This free tool is truly helpful to webmasters and gets more than 2.4 times as much traffic as the home page. This free tool generates more leads than any other page on Andy King's website!
So, consider adding content, a discussion forum, audio and video files, or even helpful web-based tools for your visitors. These technologies can be used to engage your website visitors in real time and get them to take actions that lead to more conversions. What resources or tools can you create to attract new visitors and to get your message across?

#8 Social Networking and Web Intelligence

Social networking on the Internet is a great way to get in front of audiences who are discussing topics related to your expertise, product or service. In fact, it is becoming THE most powerful way to get in front of your audience on the Internet. New technoligies like Twitter and FaceBook make it easy.
Affordable and easy to use Web Intelligence Tools can be also used to automatically scan the Net daily and provide you with a list of these Social Networking opportunities. For example, you can use “Google Alerts” www.GoogleAlert.com to find online discussions and blog posts related to your product or service allowing you to provide input on these topics as well as posting links back to your website. Google Alerts allows you to easily and consistently reply to blogs and news features. You’ll enjoy seeing your posts bring in new business.

#9 Referral Marketing

Referral-generated customers are the least expensive and most profitable and loyal source of new business you can get. In fact, these referred customers also tend to buy quicker, negotiate less, buy larger quantities, and refer even more business to you. Plus, today’s advertising rates are not inexpensive... so use referral systems to leverage (increase) the results generated from all of your advertisements and marketing techniques by getting your customers to spread the word about your company to bring in even more sales.
Significant amounts of referrals usually do NOT "just happen" so use "referral marketing systems" - techniques and tools that you can easily integrate into your business that will proactively generate referrals. For example, just concentrating on providing outstanding service will result in happier clients who will talk favorably about your business and refer new business to you. Consider setting up “joint-ventures” with other companies that could provide you with potentially lucrative partnerships and be sure to share the wealth with them. Start an “affiliate program” for your website to get other sites to send visitors to you. Give every customer who purchases from you five 10% discount cards that they can give out to their friends and watch the referrals roll in. Think of the up-side profit potential if you could integrate 5 new referral systems into your business and/or website!

#10 Web Analytics

John Wanamaker, famous retailer and inventor of the price tag and the department store once said, “I know that 50 percent of my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which 50 percent.” ‘Fortunately with tracking tools like “Web Analytics” and the Google AdWords conversion tracker, a quick glance will show you what is working and what isn’t. This allows you to save money by eliminating wasted advertising and further optimize your website to produce more for your budget.
For example, check your Google Analytics account to identify which websites are sending you the best visitors and get more traffic from them by increasing your advertising with them and/or getting them to post your press releases and articles. Improve website’s performance by optimizing the navigation and “conversion funnel” so visitors quickly and easily find the content or product they want and buy it with the least amount of confusion and clicks as possible. Save 50% on your Google AdWords PPC advertising by running a “Search Query Performance” report to identify and eliminate off-target keywords and save big money on your PPC Campaign.
Conclusion:
If you are searching for creative marketing strategies to increase lead flow and sales, use these 10 great marketing strategies to grow your business. Start today by selecting a few of these strategies and using them to boost your sales now.
Contact us for a free price quote on our conversion rate optimization and Search Engine Marketing (SEO & PPC) Services by calling Matt Hockin at 866.279.5785 or by clicking here.

Other Related Resources:

• Conversion Rate Optimization
  How to increase your web site’s results by 25-250+% with "conversion rate optimization." Click Here
  
  
• Organic Search Engine Optimization
  More than 88% of all Internet users look for sites using search engines and directories. If your site isn’t listed near the top, it may as well not exist. Ensure your site is ranked prominently and is “spider friendly.” Click Here
  
  
• Referral Marketing Systems: 40 Easy Ways to Increase Your Sales
  Discover how to quickly leverage your business into increased sales and profits with easy-to-use referral marketing systems. Includes a collection of the top 40 referral marketing systems. Click Here

Loyalty, The Key Element of Effective Leadership

A leader, a master of leadership strategies must continually be a student.

To be constantly studying will keep you in the loop with the most excited employees and will help you direct your experienced workforce to more powerful strategies.

Your people count on their leaders to be on the innovative edge.

Fresh ideas and experience, fresh practices and new methods wherever they come from should be welcomed as well as integrated into the things that you know and what is presently working for you and your organization.

In order to be an authority of twenty first century business leadership strategies you and all of those other leaders ınside your corporation will need to have the essential traits of leadership. And it is only thru experience that these qualities will be developed and nurtured until they turned into master skills.

In the competitive universe of trade show promotion, today more than ever, first impressions are critical. When you use trade show displays to showcase your business at expos and industry events you make the best first impression possible!

Just about every single article, virtually every publication, and every study course dedicated to business leadership management and its enhancement have lists which claim to be “the essential” qualities and characteristics of leaders.

I will certainly not argue with any of them since they are all essential, each is more or less important depending on specific industry in which the characteristics are located.If there’s an individual characteristic of leadership that each one of authorities, industry professionals, authors, and college professors will agree on, it is loyalty.

Employees receive belief if they know you are consistently learning new information, not simply relying on what has worked well for you historically as an pretext to stop stretching yourself.

Most importantly a real leader must be loyal. Loyalty to the objective, loyalty to your companies, loyalty to your direct reports, and loyalty to your colleagues.

Loyalty is really a significant component of leadership strategies is not in doubt, however being loyal does not necessarily mean we should not disagree with one another.

They understand that it is the most loyal supporters who disagree with their leaders and also honestly discuss their items of disagreement till a comprehensive agreement is attained that both the followers as well as the leader can agree with and wholeheartedly endorse.

The follower who, in the best interests of the business disagrees with the leader is someone to be paid attention to.

That person embodies the notion that open conversation is allowed and that all appropriate viewpoints are considered and that although a business organization may not be run as a true democracy, this one is certainly nearer to it than most.

Leaders have got to present loyalty by welcoming that discussion, by taking the feedback of their followers seriously and taking into account opinions other than their own.

And not merely the leaders inside the Board room either. This also relates to leaders whose business leadership management takes place on the warehouse floor or in the sales manager’s office. They must also encourage negotiations between themselves and their reportees.

The bad old days of “don’t do what I do do what I say do” are gone perhaps in theory. The masters of leadership strategies at every level of the organization must be sure theory and practice are one and the same in their work environment.

However, employees up and down the company’s pecking order, who take part in or inspire others to take behavior that are not in the best interest of the organization will be fired. It is as simple as that.

The turn coat’s ability to sway and thus discourage faithful employees, managers, and executives is contagious and must be cut out the minute it’s discovered.

Developing your very own leadership strategies is about locating and creating opportunities and meeting issues other individuals haven’t addressed. It’s inspiring your people, making well informed, tough choices for your organization, and taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

Effective leadership strategies calls for responding to uncertainty with innovation, supplying innovation in management, and displaying flexibility in the field.

This is a state of mind which enables a person to take responsibility of not just him or herself but of others, the whole organization and society as well.

What Is Market Research?

What is market research? How to use it for your company's benefits?

One of the most effective ways for a business to gain advantage over its competitors is to utilize market research. This is an integral component of a good business strategy that gathers critical information about various markets. For instance, you can use this information to determine the acceptance of particular products or services and the kind of consumers that accept or reject it. The portion of the population that purchases a product may be segmented in accordance with their age, gender, location, income level and other variables. In addition, a company is able to obtain other valuable information about past and current consumers.

The research will also show what potential customers a company can target with their products and services. With this knowledge, the company will be able to better communicate with such clients by using appropriate strategies. Based on the data that are collected during the research, target audiences can be developed. A target audience is a specific group of people that have a distinct desire or need for a product or a service. There is something typical of all people of one group which is usually discovered by researchers who will be looking for such data including how often people buy the product or service, how much they are willing to pay for it and their level of satisfaction.

In addition, you will also be able to learn the opportunities that you can take the advantage of. For instance, if there is something that the competition is doing wrong or not doing at all, you can capitalize on this by offering a better product or service. Your competitors may be selling a product that is meant for particular demographics, but there is one demographic that is not being reached. With appropriate market research, you can find out the reasons for this, and then make the necessary steps to ensure that your brand actually performs well with every demographic.

If you are introducing new products or the whole product line onto the market, at some point you will need the information on how well you can expect your product to be consumed. In addition, you will also get important information on how the public responds to a comparable product that is already on the market, so that you know when it comes to the needs and wants of your potential customers. This also means that you will have critical information that will let you minimize the risk as far as your business operations are concerned. This is because you will be in a good position to make decisions such as whether to halt the production when the item sells poorly or take other necessary measures.

Another benefit that you gain from your market research is that you will be able to create the benchmarks that will assist you in measuring your own progress. You will be able to set a high standard for your company at the onset, which will also mean that you will be in a better position for sustained growth. With the data collected, you will be able to compare and determine the position of your business. As such, market research is a good way for a company to know whether it is reaching its goals.

Although marketing is now one of the most popular and successful industries of today, there is a number of people who are still asking the question: ‘What is market research?’ They also are unaware of what should be included, whether they should focus on the goals of their niche or look for solutions to problems that their niche experiences.

There are different forms of market research. You can ask your consumers about your services and products, you can run suggestion polls on the Internet, or you can choose to start a forum where you can offer assistance to those who are looking for help. Therefore, you need to decide what type of market research you want to be involved in.

The internet is a place where market research can be easily conducted. You can take part in forums of your niche in order to get an idea of what exactly it is that your prospects are experiencing and going through. Then you should take the information that you have found, and transform it into solutions and products that will help solve the problems that your niche is facing.

Getting feed-back from customers. You can choose to send your customers anonymous surveys so that they can evaluate the various aspects of your business. Ask them specific things such as customer service, the way the product was delivered to them, the product itself and the packaging of the product as well. Getting feed-back from your customers is an aspect of market research that will help you improve products and services that you offer. If you are having an issue with customers responding to your surveys, then you could offer some sort of free gift so that they are more willing to interact.

Polls are another effective means of conducting your market research. If you are looking for a fast way to see which of your products or services will be demanded on the market and which will not then you need to organize some polls. Once you have enough data, you can modify your services and products so that you to deliver the ultimate solution to your niche. If you already have your own forum, then you can use polls to ask your prospects what products or services you should introduce next, what products or services to keep in your collection, and which ones to get rid of

Brand strategists observe that successful brands are built on stories that interweave the value of the brand with the consumer’s lived experience. See, for example, Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars, which is not a pitch for deceit so much as an argument that authentic-feeling stories build vibrant brands in a world where consumers are skeptical and overloaded by stimuli. A lot of the brand work we’ve done over the past years has been built around that insight, but I’ve seldom seen its truth demonstrated as clearly as I did last weekend.
My daughter, Anna, recently became a Girl Scout, and cookie-selling season is upon us. (Email me to get hooked up with a box of Samoas.) This was her first foray into the world of sales, and we were excited to watch from the sidewalk as she went door to door, clipboard in hand, with a smile and a sales goal. What followed was a clinic on the power of brand and how the brand relationship is composed of and conveyed by stories.

MANAGEMENT is the art and science of working with and through people to make them work together toward the desired goals and objectives of the organization. It is not an exaggeration to say that the science of management is what makes the world go ‘round – it makes things happen and function more efficiently. Without management, governments and businesses will be in constant chaos.

Being such an all-encompassing science, management has a myriad number of functions. Different authors of books, magazines other publications understandably have different ways of looking at what the functions of management are. However, if we sort through the chaff and grain, it all boils down to four main functions: planning, organizing, controlling and supervising. Anything else, such as monitoring, directing, designing, etc., will easily fall under any of these f our main functions.

Planning. In anything that needs to be done, this is always the first part. There’s an adage that applies here: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Or as T. Boone Pickens, the great industrialist, says, “A fool with a plan will outsmart a genius without a plan.” Planning is the stage where the manager determines the vision of the organization and sets the goals, objectives and strategies towards reaching them.

Organizing. This mainly concerns putting together the different activities needed to attain the objectives and staffing people to perform them. As environmental conditions affecting the organization’s pursuit of its goals and objectives are constantly changing, the organizing process will be in constant flux to adjust to the changes.

Controlling. During the planning stage, standards are set such as budgets, sales quotas, production quantities and qualities, production costs and similar things. It is an important function of management to control the processes in order that the standards are met satisfactorily.

Supervising. Among all the four major functions of management, supervising takes up the most time of a manager. This consists of, among others, motivating and inspiring staff, coordinating their activities, instructing, training, guiding and giving counsel.

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