5 Simple Rules for Digital Marketers

1. Listen, engage, and participate.  Measure social media initiatives and tie these measurements back to business value, but keep in mind: it's not a one-way street.
2. Develop a mobile strategy, but realize that mobile is not a channel - it's a platform.
3. No mater the medium or technology, marketers still need to deliver relevant and engaging content to customers.
4. Heard the terms marketing and ROI used together lately?  Take it to heart.  With tight budgets, allocating spending and measuring its ROI will continue to be a running battle in marketing departments.
5. It's too tough out there to commit budgets without a clear return in sight.  Being able to demonstrate value of marketing initiatives back to the overall business objectives is paramount (i.e. what the CEO cares about).

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

*Branded* Content is King

According to a recent study by the Custom Content Council and ContentWise, 78% of U.S. marketers plan to shift investments from traditional marketing to branded content marketing. More specifically, 62% are “moderately” making the shift, while 16% are pursuing it “aggressively.”

The study found that branded content marketing spending reached its highest level ever in 2011, just shy of $2 million per company. This accounted for 26% of overall marketing, advertising, and communications budgets for the year, and 30% of marketers expect their content budgets to increase in 2012.

Why content?

The top-ranked reasons are:

1. To educate customers (49%)
2. To retain customers (26%)
3. To increase brand loyalty (14%)

Similarly, marketers believe content marketing is more effective than:

1. Magazine ads (72%)
2. Public relations (69%)
3. Direct mail (69%)
4. Television ads (62%)

Is your brand pursuing a branded content marketing strategy?

PHANTOM POWER

Marketing by Design

www.phantompower.co

How to Monetize Social Media

As someone who provides Social Media Marketing solutions, both on behalf of employing organizations and clients, I am often asked... "OK, I am onboard, but how do you make money from all of this?"

I am a disciple of Inbound Marketing.  I believe in this day and age this is a philosophy that works.  It's simple in theory; create great content, promote that content via social media, attract qualified leads and convert those leads into customers.  Many Marketers out there work in conjunction with sales.  I personally have been in positions where the Marketers job ends at garnering qualified leads and passing those leads off to sales to close.  But Marketers are often tested by sales... what am I supposed to do with this information.  Marketers are often frustrated by sales when they don't jump on such qualified lead data... this is an age old quandry between the two departments and why I contend there must be a happy marriage between the two departments... but that is a story for another day.

Today's story... How Marketers can help themselves by helping sales monetize their social media efforts.

Companies are not only getting the word out about their brands using social media such as Facebook and Twitter but are also making money.

Many businesses have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube useful in making money. Building genuine online relationships that are also good for the bottom line is not so easy. There is a lot of trial and error. But while monetizing social media is difficult it is not impossible. There are companies that are getting the word out about their brands using social media and are turning a profit.

Take The New York Jets. The NFL team launched their Ultimate Fan social game in September 2010, which was the first revenue generating Facebook app to be backed by a pro sports team. The application lets football fans do online what they would normally do at home and in stadiums—root for their favorite teams and players, predict game scores, and hold a virtual tailgate party with other fans from across the globe. Ultimate Fan has since lured four major sponsors integrating their brands: MetLife, Motorola, SNY and HotelPlanner.com.

The Jets also communicate regularly on Twitter. They even advertised a Twitter-based contest to win tickets to their 2011 AFC playoff championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Jets are able to engage with their fans and make them feel like they are part of the team. They are leveraging social medial to capitalize on their fans' passion for the team and their willingness to share that fervor.

Like many companies, your social media efforts have started small and grew organically. To capitalize on those efforts to generate sales and revenues you need to have a team of people dedicated to your social media presence. You also will need a deep understanding of your audience, a creative vision, and a way to measure results in order to execute a successful strategy.

Here are some ways your social media can be monetized…

How to Monetize Social Media: Build Brand Awareness

The first step is to use traditional media or word-of-mouth advertising to drive awareness and traffic to your Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages. Unless you already have a recognizable brand like Nike or Apple, your brand needs to develop social media magnetism before you can look to make any money. You also need to create circular momentum across many platforms when designing your social media campaign. By providing multiple channels for users to talk with you, you let customers choose the channel that they are most comfortable with, by doing this you increase the likelihood that they'll connect with your brand in any number of ways.

How to Monetize Social Media: Engage Your Audience

Social media is about having a dialogue. When you have a dialogue with a customer or prospect, the communication is much more fulfilling and much more profitable. The PETCO brand has developed a strong presence in social media. The pet store chain has a YouTube channel, its Facebook page generates a lot of discussions among pet owners, and there's lots of activity on its PETCO Scoop Blog, which has received hundreds of “Likes” and Comments. PETCO's customers are true pet lovers and treat their pets as part of the family. The company tries to keep conversation going by aiming Facebook and Twitter posts so that there's an explicit question to answer, or at least a specific piece of information to which people can react. You have to know your community and know how to take part within that community and through that create great content or conversation that will raise awareness and increase sales.

How to Monetize Social Media: Offer Special Promotions

Dell Computers exemplifies a company that is selling products using social media. Its Twitter page, @DellOutlet, offers discounts exclusively to followers. Dell might tweet 15 percent off any Dell Outlet laptop or desktop with a special coupon code entered at checkout so they'll know which tweet you are seeing. @DellOutlet also points you to a specific web page. There is some interaction in terms of chats with tweeters. @DellOutlet has garnered more than 1.6 million followers and generated more than $2 million in incremental revenues for Dell. Traditionally, Dell would have spent a lot of money running print ads. Today, they can write a 140-character promotion to reach customers.

PETCO is yet another example. The company provided a promo code to their customers for $40 in free shipping. The person who shared their code with the most people won a $500 PETCO gift card. About 40% of the sales that resulted from this promotional push came from new consumers. The desire to save a few bucks drove loyal PETCO customers to connect with the larger pet owner community and spread the word about the store via social media.

How to Monetize Social Media: Use Media Advertising

Many companies have used display advertising (banners) and contextual advertising such as Google AdWords. Many bloggers use Google Adsense to make money. There are plugins to help; you make money from clicks. There are also ad networks that you can join that pool several advertisers. You get a code and banner ads rotate from their network. This is an item that you will want to include in your advertising rate sheet. Major advertisers who buy display ads are finally beginning to figure out how to reach audiences through social networks, and have begun to shift significant dollars into Facebook.

Instead of a typical banner ad, consider offering a microsite, which would be equivalent to a paid supplement. For example, you could devote one page (a link on your website) specifically to an advertiser's products and services. Or you can become an affiliate. With affiliate marketing you get paid to refer people to another business.

Consider combining rich media advertising with display advertising. Video advertising and promotional material can be quickly and easily streamed to your social community. Another consideration is charging for sponsorship on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Of course, attention needs to be paid between balancing the delivery of the rich media advertising against the comfort level of your customer base.

How to Monetize Social Media: Brand Within Applications

The best way to use apps is to create something that is functional such as a calculator, entertaining such as a game, or provides some sort of social connection such as an app just for your community. Your app can be fee based or you can give it away to build a relationship with customers. A number of well-known company brands use mobile apps to interact with their loyal customers, including Target, Coca-Cola, Nike and Gucci.

The fashion designer touts a luxury lifestyle application that is a quintessential example of branded mobile marketing. Through "Gucci Connect" users were able use their mobile devices, such as iPhone or iPad, for virtual access of a Milan fashion show, watch live runway and behind the scenes video coupled with live chat between virtual guests through Facebook and Twitter. Exclusive also to iPhone app subscribers are interactive games. The "Gucci Live" section features a music channel. Subscribers stay "in the know" with a calendar of upcoming brand events and feature articles. The Gucci "Little Black Book" provides recommendations to the hottest restaurants, nightclubs, and hotels in various cities throughout the world.

How to Monetize Social Media: Set Up Shop on Facebook

Facebook fan pages are another way to generate sales and enthusiasm especially if you have loyal fans that follow your updates. You can list your products on your Facebook page for fans to easily share with their own friends and essentially allow your product offerings to go viral.

Businesses are increasingly selling their goods on Facebook. There are various e-commerce solutions available. One is 8thBridge which is helping companies like 1-800-Flowers and HuateLook sell from Facebook. A special deal 8thBridge ran for the designer brands retailer HauteLook along with fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg generated more than $100,000 in sales in one day, 40 percent of which came from new customers. Users were given a $10 coupon for every new member that they brought in. Using 8thBridge, 1-800-Flowers is drawing people into buying flowers and other gifts for friends and family while they are already thinking about them on Facebook.

Payvment is another storefront option that provides online stores for companies to sell on Facebook. It has a network of more than 60,000 merchants using its self-serve technology. Payvment generally serves smaller clients while 8thBridge caters to small- and medium-sized businesses. According to a study released by Forrester Research, Facebook is more suitable for small retailers, niche products, or steeply discounted items. Most of the benefit that big retailers get from Facebook is branding their company but not actual purchases, Forrester further reports. Moreover, some products are inherently social such as books, DVDs, and event tickets, which have been successful because they are easy to buy and sell online.

How to Monetize Social Media: Use as a Retention Tool

Companies don't always need to use social media as a sales tool or to acquire news customers, they can use it as a customer retention tool. If someone likes or follows your business, it's because they're interested in hearing from you on some regular basis. It's important that you have a routine schedule for your blogs, tweets, and postings. Keeping your fans and followers up to date on what's new and happening with your business or industry will keep them engaged with you and keep your brand top-of-mind. 

What have you done to monetize your social media marketing efforts? 

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/  

Sell the HOLE – Not the DRILL

"As much as creative marketing and promotions can help a product, service, or company stand out," writes Linda Ireland at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog, "it always comes down to a simple premise: Did you solve the need that triggered the customer to act in the first place?" In other words: You can surprise and delight customers all you like, but it won't matter if you don't fix what they asked you to fix.

So keep your focus on this goal with tips like these:

• Do what you said you would do
  You'll impress customers by providing the product or service you promised, on time and without any surprises along the way. It would seem self-evident, but this oft-forgotten concept forms the foundation for every positive customer experience.
• Don't create more work for your customersThey're paying you to make a pain point go away—it won't seem that they've gotten their money's worth if they have to jump through hoops to get anything done.
• Don't tout unnecessary benefitsA slew of new features won't excite a customer who doesn't need them; if you insist on discussing them, it'll start to feel like tiresome oversell. "Keep it simple," she says. "Fix their problem. Then stop. Then solve another one."
• Don't forget the emotional aspect of customer experienceInspire loyalty and satisfaction by matching your actions to the way a customer should feel at each stage of the process.

The surest way to surprise and delight a customer is to roll up your sleeves and solve her problem.

Do you have a secret for identifying customer's problems so you can figure out how to solve them?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

10 Reasons Why Twitter Is So Popular

I was pondering today why the social networking site  Twitter is so incredibly popular. So I thought I would Google it and read what others are saying about Twitter. Surprisingly I couldn’t find much out there so I wrote down some thoughts and it wasn’t long before I came up with the following reasons for Twitter's popularity.

Everyone seems to love lists so here are my 10 reasons why I think Twitter is so popular.

1. Twitter is so darned easy to use - period. No further explanation is required. 
2. It’s a lot easier to get Twitter followers than it is to get Blog newsfeed subscribers. 
3. Twitter is a complete no-brainer. Absolutely no technical know-how is needed. Just open an account and start tweeting. 
4. It’s an excuse for being a bad writer. Because of Twitter’s 140 character limitation you can be excused for bad judgement grammar and abusing abbreviations. 
5. Twitter makes you feel like you are a part of something greater than yourself. You never have to feel alone again.
6. For the ‘always-connected’ generation Twitter keeps you in contact with all of your ‘friends’ no matter where you are. When you are mobile and on-the-go it’s like a free conference text-messaging service in your cell phone.
7. Having lots of so-called Twitter “friends” makes you feel you are popular. How else can you make a lot of friends as quickly? Where else can you find an audience interested in what you ate for dinner and threw up later?
8. Is there a better way to keep in touch with your favorite celebrities? Twitter is an instant social fan club. You can write to them and they (or their entourage) might respond. You can almost reach out and touch them. Do you feel the love?
9. Similarly, if you follow your favorite a-lister they will probably reciprocate and follow you back. Wow! Is Howard Stern really tweeting?  He really is the King of All Media.
10. Twitter is a great way to pretend being someone’s friend so you can sell them something later. Backdoor marketing for the new media age. 

Perhaps you have your own reasons for Twitter’s popularity. Did I miss anything?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

RIP Cold CallingSurvived by Social Networking

Cold calling has been served notice, a new era beckons and with it an altogether different way of working. Social networking has arrived and will soon replace cold calling as the predominant method of prospecting in business.

I know many people will think that there is no replacement for activity, specifically picking up the phone. Yet, no matter how intelligent you are about cold calling, it is what it is – speculative, scatter gun selling, not to mention costly and increasingly ineffective.

Consider the following data I found online...

In a test which spent an equal amount of time cold calling and using social media (9 AM - 5:30 PM; M - F).

Cold Calling Results

• Outbound calls made 325
• Meaningful conversations (pitches) and brand touches 80
• Meetings made 4
• Sales made (as a direct result of cold calling) 0

These are average conversion ratios for time spent but it comes with much overhead.

Social Media Results

• Inbound calls generated 8
• Meetings as result of inbound calls 3
• Sales as a result of inbound calls 2
• Brand touches (from site statistics unique views of content) 422
• Visitors to sales associate's blog Subscribers (RSS) to sales associate's content 27
• People following sales associate's Twitter 12
• New contacts 71 (on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeCanDo.BIZ, etc)
• Listeners to sales associate's Podcast 83
• Opportunities to sell found 21
• Online conversations had 39
• Warm call list (names generated expecting a call) 11

The cost of the social networking blitz to find new business opportunities, other than time and internet connection are small, if anything at all. Most importantly 2 sales were closed, covering any cost associated with the activity and generating a very healthy return.

The central question, however, is do modern-day sales people have the level of skill required to conduct a social media campaign individually? The simple answer is no. Not all salespeople will have the necessary skills, but having a skills gap is nothing new on the sales floor otherwise we wouldn’t have the multi-million pound training industry!

Can the skills be taught quickly and cost effectively? Yes. I have always taught people that sales is a process: follow steps one through five to achieve your aims. Social media networking can be processed as well, giving salespeople clear guidelines on the ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’. We spend millions every year teaching salespeople to cold call better, use the latest CRM (customer relationship management) system, be better team players and so on; and so it must come to pass that companies will need to train all staff to be ‘social media savvy’ as it extends far beyond just sales – marketing and service need to be in on the picture as well. 

Naysayers?... Agreed, updating your Facebook page with pictures of the weekend, playing silly games, nudging or poking other people is not the best use of your company’s time. But creating engaging, thought-provoking, discussion-opening content, centred around your products or services is. 

Social media networking will reduce dependence on cold calling. I am not saying it will eradicate the need for the telephone – that perhaps is to bold an idea. But I am certain it will become the first step in prospecting for new business.

What kind of results are you seeing when you pin Cold Calling vs. Social Networking?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

Email Marketing Tips for Targeting Inactive Subscribers

I've been managing an email marketing campaign for one of my clients for the past few years. The database grows slow and steady but it seems it is the same people consistently opening and interacting with the email content.

How can I get the others to participate?

Well, the first critical step is complete, I've identified those recipients of your email campaign who are inactive.

The point of identifying your inactive recipients is to treat them differently - not to delete them, ignore them or cry over their inactivity. Your goal after identifying and segmenting your "active" and "inactive" subscribers is to spend more productive time on actives and attempt to re-engage inactives.

Here are some things one can do to re-engage inactives:

• Special Offers
  If you are a retailer, for example, consider a special offer such as discounts or free shipping. If you are a B2B marketer you might offer a special white paper that will motivate the recipient to re-engage with your communications.
• Survey Subscribers
  While you are not likely to get a significant response, consider surveying these recipients to help provide insight into their inactivity.
• Update Profile
  Using incentives, drive subscribers to your profile update page where they can change email addresses, update format preferences, demographics and interests. This updated information may now enable you to send them targeted and relevant emails.
• Understand Their Demographics/Profile
  Perhaps a large percentage of your inactives share a common trait. Perhaps they opted in as part of registering for a white paper or seminar or promotional offer. Or perhaps a majority are women, while your content is oriented toward men.
• Try Different Send Days/Times
  If you always mail on the same day or time of day, try some different distribution times (what do you have to lose?).
• Modify Frequency
  Now that you've segmented your list by actives and inactives, consider adjusting the frequency of your sends. If you normally send twice per month, you may want to test sending three times to active subscribers, but only once to inactives.
• Create Different Content
  If your analysis has been able to uncover some common threads among inactives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. For example, a newsletter from a job search-oriented business might logically find many subscribers becoming inactive after completing their job search. For these recipients, the company might want to focus its newsletter content on managing people, careers and the hiring process. Uncovering this type of trend should lead to providing different newsletters or dynamic versions based on a person's profile or stated preferences.
• Try Different Formats
  Test using a text version, for example, that is very simple but with specific links and messaging intended to drive action.
• Test Different Styles of Subject Lines
  If you've used a particular style of subject line, try a different approach with the inactives. Creative subject lines could be one of your most effective strategies in getting recipients to re-engage.
• Monitor Seed/Proof Lists
  Send your messages to proof and seed lists for key domains. Monitor if content or images are causing your messages to be filtered or treated differently with specific ISPs and companies. If problems are detected, consider developing different versions of the messages that may not trip filters.
• Send a Postcard
  If you have your subscribers' mailing addresses, consider sending them a postcard that offers an incentive if they'll update their email preferences and profile.
• Re-engaged to Active Status
  After each email message sent to the inactives, change the demographic status of those recipients that clicked a link to "active." This helps keep your focus on converting the inactives and tracking your success in those efforts.

GET A FREE 60-DAY TRIAL OF CONSTANT CONTACT

Easy to use Email Marketing Software
Courtesy of PHANTOM POWER

Here is an extremely useful blog post from Seth Godin where he discusses the efficiencies and inefficiencies of two different email marketing campaign case studies.

What are you doing to re-engage inactives?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  


Achieving The Coveted:Viral Marketing

Viral campaigns yield the highest ROI... Information about your product spreads naturally, like a contagious disease... only a good one...

I once read up on the 5 C’s of viral marketing:Community, Compelling, Comedy, Charity, and Contest

Let's talk Community...

We all know that viral marketing in the social media space is all about communities. In fact, I would argue that communities play a larger role than most people think, both online and offline. They can build a brand, kill a brand, make a career, break a career, influence elections, etc. Think about it; from an offline perspective, life is community driven through PTA organizations, church groups, sports leagues, stay-at-home mommy groups, and various school organizations (sororities, fraternities) to name a few. And of course online, you have Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Stumbledupon and hundreds of other social media sites jumping in the scene daily.

Within each of these online/offline communities consumers are talking and having conversations with each other. And, they are sharing opinions, experiences, advice, recommendations and commentary about products, services and companies usually based on real personal experience.

THIS IS VIRAL MARKETING.

The challenge with viral marketing is that it’s not always viral, if that makes any sense... Often, marketers plan for and label their marketing plans as “viral” but 9 times out of 10, it never catches on. It’s the things that just happen by accident that become viral. Remember the Diet Coke and Mentos video? At first, Coca-Cola distanced themselves from the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos viral video phenomenon, fearing it would damage their reputation and brand; however, just recently that have fully embraced the concept and now there are over 7,000 consumer generated videos on YouTube, millions of pageviews, hundreds of comments, and favored by thousands of fans. The community here is not only the millions of YouTube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos.

So, while I do believe it is impossible to craft a viral campaign, you can certainly try to influence one:

• Formulate your marketing message.  Think about the product or service you are advertising and create a message that communicates the benefits and uses of what you are selling.  A website is nonnegotiable.  
• Make the content on your website sharable. For example, you can allow readers to embed a funny video from your website onto their own blogs. An "email this article to your friend" link is another way information spreads from one person to another.
• Use email as a viral marketing tool. Include a marketing message about your product or service in the tag lines of your emails and also include your advertising message in auto responder emails you send to those who email you.
• Post your content on other Internet sites such as message boards and blogs. However, do this carefully; many forum managers are now aware of this practice and may delete your messages if they think it's spam.
• Incorporate your marketing message into rich media. Video clips and Flash games are very popular on the Internet, so if you have a great idea for this medium your message will spread like wildfire.
• Spread your message off line as well. Tell your friends and colleagues about your product or service and hand them business cards with the URL on them along with a catchy tag line, perhaps the same one you use in your emails.

What are you doing to boost your buzz factor?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

Google Instant Search and its impact on SEO

During Tuesday’s major search event in San Francisco Google announced a new search feature called Google Instant which will significantly change the way users search for information on Google Search.

Google Instant - Live updating search result page

This new interface updates as a user types in the search query. Not only will the regular search results update as a user types in letters in the search field, but elements from Universal Search (maps, news, shopping, etc) as well as AdWords ads will also update in real time. This results in a user seeing a much larger set of search results as the query is being typed in and refined. In addition, the query suggestions (Google Suggest) play a more central role in discovering possible queries and relevant websites.

Why Google Instant is cool?

• Dynamic Results  Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Preditions  One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that the rest of your query is predicted before you finish typing?  See what you need?  Stop typing, look down and find what you're looking for.
• Scroll to Search  Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

To the Webmaster, Google Instant is cool because as users are shown a much larger set of search results, there is a higher chance of your pages being displayed in the SERPs.  In addition, users can now more easily modify their search which results in more specific query that will drive more relevant traffic to your website (See my post on The Importance of Longtail Keywords).  And relevant traffic means conversion!



Impact of Google Instant Search on SEO

In general this new feature won’t change the basic rules of SEO since Google’s algorithms will continue evaluating webpages in the same way as before. Webmasters should hence continue focusing on their content, traffic, and conversions.

What will change, however, is the way users will go about finding information, how they interact with search results as they learn to use more specific search queries, and how they review the results before making a choice.

• CTR is the new ranking. The click-through rate for organic listings becomes more important than pure rankings since users will see many more search results in each session.
• Creating relevant content which better targets specific queries will drive more traffic as users learn to perform better searches.
• Experimenting with page titles and snippets and tracking the changes in CTR becomes even more important.
• Universal Search listings (images, video thumbnails, maps, shopping, etc) will attract more clicks since dense graphic elements will draw more attention in a fast updating interface.
• The traditional Golden Triangle theory regarding the users’ eye movements on search result pages is no longer true. Earlier you performed a search, sat back and studied the results and the ads before either clicking on a listing, or modifying your query. This will now be substantially different as the users’ eyes will wander up and down between the query field, listings, Universal Search entries, and AdWords ads. I’m looking forward to the first eye tracking study for the new search page.
• Searches with short queries will fall considerably since people usually come to Google with a very specific goal in mind. The now interactive search result page allows users to dig deeper into a subject until they’ve found a reasonable set of search results which better fits their intent.

For those proclaiming the death of SEO, I would actually argue the opposite.  This is definitely a game changer but it does not change the way serious SEOs have worked for a long period of time. That includes focusing on important Key Performance Indicator’s other than rankings. Instant Search is however a massive headache for those who still treat SEO as a magic formula and have been focusing on optimizing for mere nuances in Google’s search algorithm. They will continue wasting their time focusing on the petty details in the algorithms instead of working on improving the overall value of the sites they are promoting.

All in all, no matter what some people wrongly proclaim, SEO is certainly not dead - it just got more interesting.

How will you change your SEO strategy given Google Instant?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

And In This Corner...

What research is available to demonstrate the superiority of online market research versus traditional -- in terms of "soundness" and validity -- and and vice versa?

In my experience I do find that online marketing methods are more efficient than traditional marketing in terms of "soundness," "validity," and most importantly, measurability and ROI, however, I feel an integrated, 360-degree approach is really key to the marketing mix.

Here are some great statistics on the effectiveness of online marketing but it also speaks to integration as a winning approach:

http://www.clickz.com/3626795

I agree with (name ommitted) who asks whether online is really considered nontraditional at this point. However, given the current economic climate, I find online marketing the more efficient of the two.

Unfortunately, the traditional marketing and advertising sectors are bearing the brunt of the current economic conditions budget cuts. Emarketer reports that 59% of marketing executives initiated a decrease in spending on traditional marketing in 2008 and 65% decreased budgets for traditional advertising. Additionally, the Newspaper Advertising Association of America reports that total newspaper advertising revenues fell by $3-billion in the first six months of 2008, marking the lowest level in 12 years.

In stark comparison to the struggling traditional marketing sectors, online marketing firms have been steadily building market share for several years and are surprisingly unaffected by the current failing markets. Displaying a clear strength in a clearly chaotic business environment, both paid search and online advertising revenue have grown by over 28% since 2007. Marketing Sherpa reports that nearly half of medium to large businesses plan to increase their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) spending in the upcoming year.

I find online marketing benefits outweigh those of more traditional methods in that online offers...

1. Quantifiable Results.  Businesses who advertise online or use SEO can track and measure precisely how their company was discovered, the keywords used in a Google search, click through rates on advertisements, and direct sales results based on internet ads or searches. With this specific knowledge, tailoring campaigns to a particular market becomes easier and ROI can be easily monitored.
2. Flexible Messaging.  With traditional marketing and advertising methods, there are no second chances at making an impression or communicating a message effectively. Once an ad is placed and printed it is essentially permanent. Online marketing is a much more forgiving and flexible option. If it is shown that internet ads are not getting enough attention, companies can quickly and easily make strategic adjustments and reap the rewards.
3. A Focused Approach.  Using internet marketing, a company can hone in on specific customers that are searching for a particular product or service. Rather than convincing a customer to try their product, internet marketing works to position a company as a resource for those consumers actually seeking their specific business offerings.
4. Cost Effectiveness.  SEO and internet advertising is quite cost effective in comparison with traditional marketing and advertising.

Now more than ever it is important to think strategically about where and how a marketing budget is spent.  With online marketing options showing marketers greater value, flexibility, and insight into the changing trends of the market, we can expect to see more companies advertising online to help their firm weather succeed in the future.

What is the most important variable in your marketing mix?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

Marketers Rank B:B Challenges

What are the greatest challenges that B2B marketers are facing? From generating high-quality leads and a high volume of leads to generating public relations buzz, see which challenges topped the list.

Today's Most Significant Challenges for
B2B Marketers to Overcome

The call from the sales force is not "Give us more leads" – it’s "Give us better leads." As you can see in the chart, marketing teams are aware of this issue and are responding to the challenge. 

Depending on your lead generation process, lead quality may be the result of either the original state of the lead or of a nurturing process to determine if and when the lead is sales-ready. The latter case – a nurturing process – also addresses the second most significant challenge shown in the chart above: marketing to a lengthening sales cycle. 

A strategic nurturing process not only identifies when a lead is sales-ready, but can pinpoint at which stage of the buying cycle the prospect is in, to forecast timely opportunities.

When the quality of a lead is dependent on its original state, it usually means that all but the most obviously disqualified leads are handed off to the sales force as they are generated. Surprisingly, this practice is still very common in B2B marketing.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co