Tag: marketing

Inbound Marketing Cliffnotes for Business

Dan’s Social Media & Inbound Marketing Cliffnotes
Keys to making social media work for your business

I have read 6 books about Social Media, Personal Branding and Inbound marketing over the past two years and I thought it might be helpful to provide you with a super-condensed “cliffnotes” version I recently compiled:

Be Social. Listen. Communication is a two-way street

  • The real key is it’s not about being ON social, it’s about BEING social, but make sure you have the right people on your team to talk for you.
  • Social media marketers ask, “What can we provide our customers online that will make their digital experience better?”
    • Create something worth building a community around
    • Identify and recruit advocates immediately
    • Give people something to chew on
    • Welcome criticism
  • Don’t “play” with community building, take the no-bullshit approach:
    • Define Goals
    • Establish Measurable Objectives
    • Enact Strategies and Tactics to accomplish them
    • The measure what is done and the results of it
    • Rinse and repeat.
  • To sell online, stop thinking like a traditional marketer. Remember the fundamentals of this type of marketing:
    • Listen first
    • Be responsive
    • Be honest
    • Provide value
    • Sell last
  • There is a difference between driving business FROM social media sites and driving business THROUGH social media sites.

Get Found with Inbound Marketing

  • Customers are getting better-and-better at ignoring marketing “interruptions.” Inbound marketing today is about “getting found” using Google, blogs, and social media on the Web.
  • Inbound marketing as opposed to outbound is achieved through social media marketing when your business:
    • Asks and answers questions;
    • Provides information or engagement through content, or
    • Shows up when the audience members are having conversations about the industry, the company or anything at all really.
  • It is about having a seat at the table.

Create Remarkable Content

  • It is important to create remarkable content on top of having a remarkable value proposition. Remarkable content encourages your message to be spread giving you links of people that may possibly become customers to your website and allows you to move up in the search rankings for your keywords. Remarkable content is the gift that keeps on giving, unlike paid advertising. You need to make sure that you create content that people can effectively spread online like:
    • Blog Articles / Posts
    • White Papers (about industry trends and challenges, not products)
    • Videos (short 2 to 3-minute videos about industry and/or products)
    • Webinars (live ppt presentations)
    • Podcasts (Ten to twenty minute audio programs)
    • Webcasts (live video shows viewed online)
  • You have to give to get with remarkable content. Today your marketing effectiveness is a function of the width of your brain. Think of yourself as half marketer, half publisher.

  • Blogging

  • Video Posts:

    • Videos are a great way to give a sneak peak behind the screens of a company and make people feel like you are more real and approachable.
    • Videos should be less than two minutes, accompanied by text descriptions and posted on the blog.
    • In general video views drop by about 1% per second for the first minute or so (10.4% @ 10 sec, 55% @ 60 sec, etc). Simply posting any video does not mean it will be watched from start to finish.

Tweet your tweeter off – but don’t be a lame broadcaster

  • Think of Twitter as a micro-blogging interface
  • “Give more than you expect to receive out of twitter,” and to ask the question, “How many people can I engage in a dialog with?”. 20% about yourself 80% about everyone else on social media is the rule.
  • Focus more on starting conversations and less on broadcasting
  • Most everyone on Twitter is looking for new wisdom and hope. Order of operations for using the collaborative power of Twitter is:
    • Find a topic;
    • Ponder;
    • Share your thoughts and findings.
  • In terms of Twitter Research:
    • Find awesome people to follow. You can use wefollow.com and other sources (there used to be a site called twellow, but it has closed down).
    • If you are all about the metrics, check out influence measurement tools like Klout and Twitalyzer
    • Twubs.com and WhatTheTrend.com are great resources for tracking what people.
    • Start using Hootsuite or bit.ly to track your links and see what people actually click upon.
    • For monitoring, check out SocialMention.com and google.com/alerts. Set up some alerts for our topics (i.e. Solar, WasteWater Efficiency, things like that). You can receive email alerts when something new pops up. For instance, any time my name appears on the web somewhere new, I get an email letting me know someone is talking about me.
  • Look at personalizing (and possibly standardizing across the company) a twitter background that includes name, contact info, web, and bio but is not distracting

How to get started – game plan #1:

A big shout out to @DrBret for help pushing many of us to jump into the fire and get started in this way:

  • Define Value Stream:

    • Define a simple yet niche value stream for your online communication (say Solar for California municipalities)

  • Tweet:

  • Facebook:

    • Similarly engaging content as found and posted on Twitter should be posted to the Facebook page, but not as frequently (say once per day) without handles, though Facebook now recognizes hashtags.
    • Consider asking questions and provocative (non-scandalous obviously) content is encouraged. Example:
      • Project Vesto post: “Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.” – Lori Greiner.
        ‘Like’ if think this is true
        Example of Engaging Facebook Content - Lori Greiner Project Vesto
  • Publish two blog posts and one video post per week
    • Publish posts on different days
    • Each post should be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and/or LinkedIn where appropriate
  • Comment on relevant blogs:
    • Comment on say 2 blog posts per day with insightful and relevant thoughts.
    • DO NOT just comment to comment or spam with a bunch of links back to your homepage. If you have nothing to say, keep that nothing to yourself.

Be Human. Be Genuine.

Get to the point

  • Spend less time searching and more time engaging. While you obviously want to make the most of this experience, the priority with social media is action over precision.
  • Between searching, listening, creating content, sharing content, and engaging with folks don’t spend more than one to two hours in the day (though when you are first getting started I understand it taking a little longer ). A person could spend all day doing this stuff, but that wouldn’t be the most effective use of all of their time.
  • Don’t end up in analysis paralysis in searching for the perfect people to follow or engage. Take the startup culture mentality by getting 60% of the way there and then acting  and testing your hypotheses.

Follow @DanHerr 🙂

Thank you for reading my blog – Daniel S. Herr.
I invite you to connect with me on Twitter @DanHerr
Or follow to my blog 

Sources

In a World of Encrypted Search Terms

Once upon a time there was a world of perfect web information when you knew where you visitors came from, what they were looking for, what they found, how long they stayed, and where/why they left.  I don’t know about you, but more than 30% of my web visits these days come from “encrypted search terms.” From WordPress Jetpack to Google Analytics I see “(not provided)”, “encrypted search term”, “unknown search term”, or “other search term” every day in my keyword referrals.

Where is this going as more an more people opt to select “do not track”? Will our information as content creators, web designers and curators be incorrect? If I do not know which of my content is most effective, how will I deliver what is most valuable? What happens when and if privacy concerns get to the point of website users not wanting website owners to even know when and if they access content?

Completely anonymous browsing would lead to imperfect websites, where in order to find out what works and what doesn’t, you would have to go back to focus groups and test sample markets; supremely slow adaptation is what this reads. No longer could the web be dynamic, custom tailored, or quick to change in meeting our every whimsical desire. No longer would the try and fail quickly, iteration, least viable business model approach work. Will that happen, likely not.

Sure many people will stick to their privatest ways, hiding in the dark shadows of the web, creeping on websites and hiding browsing data with the fear the Uncle Sam is watching my every move. The derived right to privacy seems fundamental to our US culture, but technology and the web has dipped dramatically in the favor of public good and connectivity. Have you ever asked how Google gets its live traffic information on Google Maps? I looked the other day to find that when Andriod users are opted into location tracking (to show where they are on the map, identify close restaurants, directions, etc) they are also agreeing to share their location constantly with Google. When Google see’s a bunch of Android cell phones slowing down at the same time, it knows there is likely traffic their. Crazy hunh?

In my opinion this is all great stuff that truly does you little if no harm, but I am sure that if everyone knew that, it could turn into a big privacy uproar eventually leading to Google needing a more costly, non crowd-sourced way, of identify traffic delays. To me what all of these privacy questions will lead to is a need for more good-ol-fashion statistics. No longer will you know the entire base of your population, but you will have to derive a population mean from your sample with a determined confidence requirement.

Perhaps someone will read this as a substantial business opportunity for the future (which will likely be captured, created at, purchased by, or merged into Google, Apple et. al. eventually) is web statistics simply integrated in graphic form with web analytics. I think most people’s eyes glaze over at the first mention of statistics, standard deviations, and confidence intervals, but to me that is the opportunity shinning its head. Will some people ride the privacy crazy train, yes; lets just hope not too many. All that can be told is that future will definitely unfold new needs for solutions (new opportunities) in a world of encrypted search terms.

Even Reno Landscape Companies Kill it with Social Media Marketing!

“We sold $150,000 in one day though, can you believe that?”
– Small-time Reno Landscape Guy

Social Media Marketing isn’t just for the chic & trendy businesses anymore. This morning I must have walked in on good ‘ol boys landscaping industry meeting at Starbucks. Okay it was definitely nothing official but four guys from different landscaping companies were definitely having coffee together this morning… Collusion in Landscaping perhaps?

I didn’t catch where the others were from, but one of the company tee-shirts was clearly legible (but will remain nameless here) Anyway, I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation about what works and what doesn’t in advertising and marketing today.

They started off my talking about the fresh orange teeshirt the guy with the long pony-tail in his 50’s was obviously proud of. The young guy of the four chimed in about the cost of having one of those billboards up in Verdi on I-80 and how bummed he was that some backyard waterfall company landscape company that he didn’t care for was using one.

Finally the biggest and oldest started talking about the Anniversary Sale he had recently posted on Facebook. He said, “We sold $150,000 in one day though, can you believe that? People just started sharing our ‘45% off everything’ post that we put up on Wednesday and you know it went viral.” The pissing contest continued. “Everything didn’t go perfectly, but we learned a thing or two in the process.” He said, “Well I’ve been getting all those calls from Groupon and LivingSocial the past couple months, but then we figured out that we could do the same sort of deal ourselves.” And in the process not give away 75% of the farm!”

Who knew? Landscaping businesses making big money with Social Media Marketing?! You got it. He was not at the table this morning, but if you want a great example of a Lawn and Landscaping Business in Reno that is doing all the right things in Social Media, look no further than Cory’s Lawn Service:

coryslawnservice.com/

Natural Inelasticity: Providing Value instead of Value Engineering

“Sell to the classes, eat with the masses.
Sell to the masses, eat with the classes.”
– Henry Ford

One recent point in my class on Economics and the Firm looked at how to maximize revenue in a business from the standpoint of an economist. The example has been, “If you increase the price of your product by 10% and you lose less than 10%, you likely aren’t charging enough and haven’t maximized your marginal revenue.” Once you  lose the same percentage of your customers as the percentage you increase in your price, you have maximized your revenue. All of this lead to an interesting point in my head demonstrating that Henry Ford, from an economists standpoint, would be dead on to market and sell to the masses.

Economists create some pretty lame terms, but I have to go into one for you here. All that “price elasticity” means is “how much people will react when you change your prices.” If I am selling my Aqua-Globe doodad for $20 each, will no one buy them anymore if I raise the price to $40 each? What about if I just raise it by one dollar, how many people will just say, “The heck with this, I’ll get a friend to come over and water my plants”? To address these questions economists came up with their terms:

  • “Elastic” – like a rubber band, it can be changed / stretched easily
  • “Inelastic” or solid stuff, doesn’t like to change

With an  inelastic product people won’t really change how much they purchase and with elastic they will. Anyway, enough with economics vocabulary… the point was that you want to build an “inelastic” business so your customers won’t leave when prices change (perhaps by building a connection with them, proving that you are about value more than cheapest price, etc.).

To Henry Ford’s point, if you are selling more of a product (selling to the masses) you will tend move toward the economist’s “inelastic region” and rest on the right side of the maximized revenue point (eat with the classes). I believe Mr. Ford had some great points, and obviously proved his abilities and business values far more than I have, but I would make sure to emphasize that more than simply selling to the masses, you need to provide enough value such that customers keep coming back. I believe Mr. Ford would agree.

I would argue that in focusing upon value, your business will naturally end up in that “inelastic region”. Sure you may be more likely to reach that region by selling large quantities (which are likely at a lower price), but I believe businesses can also get there with a cult-like status. Build a business that provides so much value and genuine emotional connection that it is near impossible to replicate the results: Disney, Grateful Dead, Harley Davidson, Red Bull, Google, or Incline’s T’s Mesquite Rotisserie. Once you’ve built that great business, even if your prices come up, or competitors try to imitate you, you won’t lose many customers. When your business is just barely “inelastic” (whether naturally or economically engineered) an increase in price still increases your revenue and your business is less susceptible to another Great Recession (or decrease in customer income).

Bringing us back to the first example, if I want to operate in this attractive inelastic region, I can’t just maximize my revenue. Once I focus simply on maximizing my revenue, any change in the economy will push me off the hill and down the slope into elasticity where all the customers care about is the cheapest price. No longer are you a value provider, but just another name in the game of the lowest bidder. To that end I say:

Don’t forfeit your values to squeeze every last penny out of your pricing.
Focus on providing Value instead of Value Engineering.
– Me, Today (25-May-2012)

This is all too often what you see companies do just before an Initial Public Offering, trying to puff up their feathers for the potential investors. “Look! Our revenue has grown 100% in the last year! We are booming!” Fail. If you subscribe to this philosopy, please allow me to give you a little lesson Value vs. Growth stock investing (for educational purposes only).

In wrapping this up, economists basically went through all this to show that you should try to have a hook that keeps customers coming back (inelastic) and if you’re interested in making more money, sell to more people. Amazing that it takes all this math and graphs to figure out something that is common sense. Gotta love economists.

Thank you for reading my blog – Daniel S. Herr.
I invite you to connect with me on Twitter @DanHerr
Or follow to my blog 

If you’re still unsure about price elasticity, these simple examples should help:

Inelastic = We don’t react as much when price goes up ( we keep buying)

  • Arm, Leg & 1st Born−0.09 Gasoline (Short run)
  • −0.1 Eggs
  • −0.20 City Bus Fare / Pass
  • −0.3 First Class Airfare
  • −0.31 Gasoline(Long run)
  • −0.31 (Medical insurance)
  • −0.5 Cigarettes
  • −0.5 Chicken
  • −0.8 Beer
  • −0.87 Movie Theater Visits
  • −0.9 Discount Airfare
  • −1.0 Wine

Elastic = We definitely buy less when prices are jacked up

  • −1.5 Spirits
  • −1.5 Pleasure Air Travel
  • −2.8 Purchase New Car
  • −3.8 Coca-Cola
  • −4.4 Mountain Dew
Some Sources:

Julia Boorsten of CNBC: I have an Inbound Marketing lesson for you

Facebook’s IPO is obviously a landmark achievement; $16 Billion raised in no time, $104 Billion Market Cap, estimated wealth in excess of $20 Billion for Mark… Well done guys. One of the big concerns prior to the Facebook IPO has been GM’s announcement (or leak) that it was pulling away advertising on Facebook, and asking why would GM do and say that now.

Earlier today I was watching the Facebook Special on CNBC’s PowerLunch when something concerning caught my ear (good thing we have TV with a DVR in preparation for the Olympics – thanks babe!). Today Julia  Boorsten said:

“I think if you look at the numbers of what GM was actually spending; they were spending $10 Million on Facebook Ads, but $30 Million on creating content for Facebook. That’s a wierd mix. A lot of people say that that’s not the way you should advertise on Facebook.”

Bravo Julia on subscribing to the old-school advertising bandwagon that is dying. You’ve done a lot of digging into the Facebook story, but I’d say GM has the might know a bit more about social media than you at this point…

No Bullshit Social Media:

Only 5% of people trust advertising, and only 9% say advertising companies act in customers’ best interests while 84% of people buy based upon what other people have to say online. The web, post dot-com bust, is about relationships, communication, and sharing by the people (exhibit A for Facebook’s success thus far).

Some other hard to swallow numbers for traditional marketers:

  • Newspaper advertising revenue fell more than 28% in one quarter in 2008. More than 20 metropolitan daily newspapers have folded or moved online since 2007.
  • Television advertising is predicted to fall more than 75% in the next decade
  • Since 2007 radio advertising has declined for 14 consecutive quarters (to publication of book in 2010)
  • From 2008 to 2009 only cable TV and online mediums showed audience growth with network TV, local TV, magazines, and newspaper all in decline.

Inbound Marketing

Ch1: “The bottom line is that people are sick and tired of being interrupted with traditional outbound marketing messages and have become quite adept at blocking marketers out!” The “10-years ago” tactics in marketing do not work anymore, people primarily gather information through search engines such as Google today. As you are well aware, the average info-seeker performs dozens of searches every day. The second place people look is at one of the more than 100 million blogs on special topics. Thirdly people learn/shop (other than search engines & blogs) with recommendations through social media.

Ch3: In order to move from outbound to inbound marketing you have to stop interrupting people and “get found” by them instead.

Ch4: Remarkable content is the gift that keeps on giving, unlike paid advertising.

Ch7: The value of Facebook is the ability for content to go Viral and for remarkable content to be genuinely shared with friends of friends, not advertising.

Ch11: On average inbound marketing leads are 61% less expensive than outbound marketing leads.

Ch12: In years past Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola, and IBM perfected the craft of interrupting their way into customers’ wallets using outbound marketing, but the era of interruption-based marketing is coming to an end.

My Thoughts on the Facebook IPO:

In case you care about my two cents on Facebook: The stock price will jump because its hyped in the short-term but personally I would not go long on it. Facebook will continue some good growth as it enters into more new markets for the next few years; I have seen that stalker-book obsession of new users too many times since thefacebook.com’s introduction to Cornell in 2004 to not place merit on its new market growth potential (currently less than 1/7th of the world is on Facebook).

You might remember, one of the main reasons people shifted to Facebook from Myspace was because it was clean, simple and free from ads and spammy content. Facebook, in looking to become a more and more profitable business, has forgotten its original premise and those of us who were on the site when there were less than a few thousand people have begun to distance ourselves from it. I do not believe that outside of application (in game etc) advertising Facebook has a solid-enough revenue model as people are more and more annoyed with interruption advertising and are exceedingly better at ignoring it (which devalues Facebook’s offerings). Their introduction of sponsored stories changes the game a little bit, but again at some point, people will get sick of the advertising in this manner.

In the midst of the hype it may seem like Facebook is the end-all conduit for online communication of the future, but I believe its time is coming and that its purchase of Instagram for so elevated a price is a warning sign and insecure fear of insignificance from the leadership.

I welcome your comments…

How Google Went Kung-Fu Panda on SEO

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is dead. Great companies don’t fake it, and Google is out to force that hand. In the past search simply focused on providing the best results for the keywords used. It didn’t matter how great your site looked or how valuable the content was, as long as you had your SEO con-men or some smart computer guys. The name of the game was:

But no more; that has all changed. Google is forcing businesses not to cut corners. Google basically said,

Sure content is King, but content quality is what really matters.

In 2011 Google released the Panda (algorithm) and forever changed the game for schemsters and Search Engine Optimizers. Google knows that great companies do what is right; providing quality products they are proud to stand behind. Great companies provide value, not an MBA-analyzed, trick the system, triangle-scheme, convince people to but more of my junk marketing strategy. Google has adopted artificial intelligence to force companies to provide attractive, quality content if they want to be found online.

Curious why blogs and social media are becoming more and more popular? Google’s Panda uses artificial intelligence (syncronized with real people) to determine what pages and websites are of greater quality based upon design, trustworthiness, speed, and whether or not people would return to the site.

Today the name of the game is user happiness.

Google sat down with loads of real people and asked them to browse websites, and answer questions like:

  • What is the experience of this website?
  • Is it creating a brand that you are going to love and share and reward and trust?
  • Would you trust this site with your credit card?
  • Would you trust the medical information that this site gives you with your children?
  • Do you think the design of this site is good?

The fact of the matter is that people trust genuine peer recommendations and well-written experience statements over advertising copy. Blogs and social media are becoming more and more important. Look at the success of Yelp; you are looking for a place to eat and you trust the reviews of people you have never met to decide where you will spend your money. Google’s Panda, like real people, rewards humor, being human, well-written content; not just keyword-filled jargon.

So for those of you that think you can survive with at static, sale-brochure, “me-focused” website, your time is coming. Prosperity to all ends will reach those who, above having the best moves and winning any single game, strive to be of the most value.

Thank you for reading my blog – Daniel S. Herr.
I invite you to connect with me on Twitter @DanHerr
Or follow to my blog

Some of my research sources:

Work ON your business. Not IN.

Work on your business, not in your business.

Have the forethought to manage instead of always being consumed by your business.

I met a wonderfully prosperous and inspiring man while hitching a ride from Wanaka to Queenstown in New Zealand in 2009. The one piece of advice he gave was to “Work on your businesses, not in them.” There are loads and loads of people with great business ideas who are awesome people, but many get so consumed in the day-to-day operations that they lose the vision for the future, the time to analyse the past, and the ability to plan for where they want to be.

The largest value I personally bring is often that ability to step back, see and analyze the big picture, as well as the ability to tackle finite technical challenges that might require my immediate attention. Understood that you must make your business profitable, provide your products and services on time, and there are a million and a half things that need doing at any one time; but without that planning ability, all is for not. This need can be grave and fatal if not addressed in many start-up businesses.

If you are a new small business owner, entrepreneur, or even sole-proprietor I encourage you to take the time, force it into your schedule if you must, to work on your business. Make sure you are still addressing the why and the how as much as the everyday what.

Work on your business, not in your business.

Thank you for reading my blog – Daniel S. Herr.-
If you are interested, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @DanHerr
Or Subscribe in a reader