You’ve got your social media strategy and tactics in place. You’re measuring everything you can: tweets, retweets, followers, friends, shares, visits, bounce rate, etc. But what do all these numbers tell you about how successful your strategy and tactics are? What if you’re measuring the wrong things? What’s the impact to your social media strategy?
[Read more...]
May
12
2009
Social Networking for Referrals
Many companies get the highest conversion rates (and best customers) from referrals. People tend to trust their friends, family and colleagues over companies – that’s a given. So, it may be in your company’s interest to use social networking to gain referrals. Like networking in person, social networking for referals involves quite a bit of relationship development and communication. People need to get to know you before they’ll be willing to recommend you to anyone else.
Social networking for referrals also means being on the networks where your potential referrals will be. And if you provide products and services to other businesses – this probably means other businesses. So, for this social networking purpose, it’s not about where your customers are on the social networks – it’s about where the referrals or other businesses are. This means it may make sense to dedicate some resources (time & effort) to networking and building relationships on business networks.
So if your business relies heavily on referrals for new sales, you may want to look where your potential referrals are, instead or in addition to where your potential customers are.
(photo by Athena’s pix @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: social networking, referrals, leads, business, lead generation, marketing
Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.
Mar
30
2009
12 Tips for More Effective Email Marketing
Emailing a prospective client can be difficult at best. Following up on potential leads is important, but so is saying the right thing. It may help to consider your email piece as an elevator pitch – you only have a few seconds to grab attention and entice the customer to continue the conversation. Here are a few tips to help make your email more effective:
- Keep it short – No one wants to read pages of text in an email. If it’s longer than 3 or 4 paragraphs, it’s too long. One or two paragraphs (short!) are best.
- Focus on the customer – What benefits are you offering them? What will they gain from your product or services?
- Be concise – Get right to the point about who you are and what you’re offering.
- Use bullet points – Short phrases in bullet points can be effective for getting across a message succinctly.
- Provide examples – Potential customers want to know what you’ve successfully done in the past. Keep examples short and link to longer explanations or case studies on your website.
- Keep it simple – Even people in your industry won’t want to read wordy technical explanations. Make sure just about anyone can understand what you’re talking about.
- Link to your website – for more information or longer testimonials or stories.
- Include a call to action – Whatever you’d like the person to do. It’s most effective if its something you’re offering them on your website (for free) that you can use to gather the lead (and measure that they’re actually interested).
- Introduce Yourself - Customers want to know who you are, but keep it to 1 or 2 sentences (think elevator pitch). Link to more information on your website.
- Followup – Don’t rely on customers to contact you. Followup with another email or a phone call during a specified time period. Ask when and how they prefer to be contacted.
- Respect privacy – Have a privacy policy and follow it. Allow people the option to opt-out of receiving emails from you. Post it on your website and link to it in your emails.
- Give them space - Don’t bombard potential customers with phone calls and emails. Give them time to think and do their own work. Contact them at specific times through their preferred channel.
This an evolving list. Do you have tips that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear them in the comments!
(photo by frozenchipmunk @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: direct marketing, email marketing, internet marketing, business, leads, lead generation, sales, marketing
Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter.
Jan
26
2009
Do you have Effective Advertising?
If you can spare some cash, a tight economy is actually a great time to do some advertising to expand your brand’s reach. Your competitors may be pulling back on advertising, which makes this a good time to steal some share from them. All of this is meaningless if you don’t have effective advertising.
I’ve seen many clients who have pretty good click-through rates for their ads (especially Google AdWords), but when you take a look at how much they’re paying for a conversion (usually a sale), it often is more than the product is selling for. Here are some tips to make your advertising more effective:
- Tout benefits to the customer.
- Be clear and to the point.
- Make your brand stand out.
- Don’t be obnoxious – avoid too much movement.
- Ads should lead to an effective landing page.
- Make information needed for purchasing clear and consistent.
- Minimize clicks for whatever action you want people to take.
- Target your ads to places that actually have potential customers.
- Don’t try to trick your customers.
- Be attractive – your ad and landing page (and website) need to look good.
What else makes for effective advertising? Please share any ideas in the comments below.
(photo by Skywork Media @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: advertising, ads, marketing strategy, internet marketing, internet advertising, business, marketing
Oct
23
2008
Creating Leads with Customer-Centric Design
Now that we’ve had an overview of what customer-centric design is, let’s discuss how it can be used to create leads.
Providing Valuable Information
Having a reason for customers to visit your site is the first step in creating leads. The most important aspect of customer-centric design is providing your customers with exactly what they are looking for. Think about everything they might come to your website to look for and make sure the information is easy to find. It should also be easy for customers to contact you with questions or concerns.
A Place to Connect
By providing a place for your customers to connect with each other and with you, you can help your customers get the information and support they need. More importantly, you’ll be able to get information about who needs help and where they are in the buying process.
Enticement
Do your customers have a reason to give you their contact information? Is there some useful information or service you can provide for free in exchange for contact information? Enticement to create leads can be very effective for you and provide a useful service for your customers. Remember to keep information gathering to a minimum. (name and email work best).
How do you use customer-centric design to create leads?
(photo by Just chaos @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: customer-centric, design, customer-centric design, usability, customer service, brand, brand management
Digital Marketing & Strategy
Connect with Sazbean