Storm Dawg Marketing

Yes, social media can be time consuming but it’s worth it. Like anything worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And to do it well, it may take you a little time.  Thinking of not investing the time?  Ask yourself this:  Can I afford not to invest the time?  I know, “Time is money”…trust me, I know!  Let me explain why I think you should invest your time.

Unless you are a huge brand like Coke that had a “fan” create their Facebook fan page for them - imagine that…their customers taking the time to do their social marketing for them…and people talking all day about how they love their product…whoa – you will need to devote some time to figuring out a social media strategy.

Maybe you’ll start with a Facebook ad or Fanpage…Maybe a Twitter account…maybe all three.  Whatever you do, have a “game plan.” Look around and see what other businesses like yours are doing. I’m not saying you should copy them, but you can certainly learn from them.  Play around with Tweetdeck,  Seesmic,  HootSuite and other free services that help you organize your online presence and engagements.  Find the one that suits your needs and makes sense for your business.

Think your customers aren’t talking about you online?

Think again! Not only are they talking about you, they’re also sharing their opinions with their friends, relatives and total strangers.  Can you afford not to listen to what they are saying? Wouldn’t you like to be able to thank the people saying nice things about you…and have an opportunity to turn an unhappy customer into a happy one?

More and more small businesses are running targeted ads on Facebook, developing fan pages and keeping customers happy on Twitter. Why? Because that is where their customers are!  So that is where you need to be.  Not should be…NEED to be.  Did you know that Comcast, Southwest Airlines, QWEST and Verizon all use Twitter for customer service?

Here is a great article that gives you seven cases of businesses using Twitter to service customers.

Engagement is key. As most of you know, when you make a connection with a customer, they’ll keep coming back to your store.  They come in because they like something about you or your store.  They will tell you by their reactions to your small talk or smile what level or type of engagement they want.

What people who use SMS (Social Media Sites) are telling us/you is they want to engage on these sites and expect to be engaged with before they make a purchase.  Here is another great article that will give you some insight into how small businesses are using social media to compete with large brands.

There is a new breed of consumer coming…really they are already here.  If you don’t understand where they are coming from, you aren’t going to know where to look for them,  and more importantly, how to sell to them.

So…do you have time for social media?

Next week I will give you my thoughts on a few of the free tools I mentioned today -  Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic for starters.

If you have any questions on anything you see here, just leave a comment on this post…I will be glad to help you out.

Until next week,
Christina Kudym

Agents & brokers alike are jumping on the social media train.  It is abundantly clear that in this economy it is important to get more exposure in social networks if you are a small business.   Realtors have figured this out and are learning quickly the advantages.  A survey conducted by the NAR found that 84% of it’s agents use SMS (Social Media Sites) for business purposes.  I’m sure that you may have seen this at one time or another and not realized it…  Your friend telling you on Facebook that their home is for sale…and inserting a link to their realtor’s site.   It’s Social Media at it’s best.  Word of mouth Social.  So not only are realtors doing it…their clients are as well.  Imagine how much faster you can sell a house when you put it on your facebook wall….your clients puts it on theirs and between the two of you, you have 300 friends.  Those friends then share it with their friends…and so on.  Well now you’ve just gone viral with your listing and it didn’t cost you a thing.  Please see the attached research from our friends at ORC Guideline.  There are some great stats that you should see.

If you have any questions or stories about using Social Media Sites to get word out about your business please write in and share them!  I’d love to see what you are doing.

Have a great week!
Christina

Hey all,

It’s StormDawg again. So, hopefully by now you have watched a couple of my videos and have put to use some of the marketing ideas/tactics I have suggested. The next big question you should be asking yourself is, “How do I know if my campaign was a success?”  Here is my latest video blog that might help:

The important things to remember:

At first glance, ROI seems to be a pretty easy question for most of us to answer. We all know how to calculate an ROI. You take the revenue that came in from your marketing campaign and divide that into the overall cost of the campaign and you should come up with your ROI. It’s almost like placing a bet and measuring your winnings.

But, what if your ROI isn’t positive? I mean, is a loss always considered a loss… or did you learn a little more about the game this time?

Consider a few things before immediately pulling the plug on the campaign -

1. How long is your sales cycle? Perhaps it is too soon to measure the ROI, or to put it simply, maybe you need to let your bet ride a little longer.
2. How many times did you mail or email or market to the same audience? I recommend sending your message at least 3 times before deciding if it was successful or not.
3. Are you seeing an increase in performance in your other marketing activities? For example, is your search marketing starting to perform better or are you seeing more leads coming in off of your company name through the search engines? If yes, this may mean that the prospect has received/seen your marketing campaigns and then gone to a search engine and typed in your company name.
4. Finally, what we have found is that whatever media mix we use, they typically supports each other. We know, at infoGroup, that if we stop direct mail entirely we will also see a negative impact on our search marketing and an overall result of less leads coming in to our sales floor.

ROI, however, isn’t the only thing you should measure. We continually run marketing campaigns for all of our divisions and yes, ROI is important to us, but we also measure activity. By this I mean we track how many calls or leads are coming in and analyze the quality of the leads.

For example, do the leads coming in appear to be in the right industries and employment sizes? If so there is a higher likelihood of converting these leads into paying customers. If we find the leads are good, but are not converting, then it is time to talk to the sales managers to see what additional training is needed.

The bottom line is this: your marketing efforts may feel like a gamble, but with smart metrics, it doesn’t have to be. Measuring the success of a campaign takes more patience and practice than picking a winning horse or two. The most important thing to remember is to keep playing, but beat the odds by using my tips. You’ll learn quickly what works.

If you don’t play, you can’t win, right?

Don’t work too hard.

StormDawg