Digital Marketing Consultant

Are Your Ready for the iPad 3?

The rumors are growing. The leakers are leaking, the press is getting excited and geeks everywhere are dusting off their sleeping bags and how early they will need to get in line to beat the scalpers. Apple is expected to announce a new iPad on March 7^th.

Social media marketers might shrug at that news. It means that for a few days in March, Twitter will be buzzing about the new device. That might not be a good time to try to build interest in a product launch but once the excitement dies down, things should go back to normal, right? At least until the device actually comes out and the iPad 3 becomes the hot giveaway item in social media promotions.

Not exactly, because there is no normal any more. According to one report, Apple has ordered as many as 65 million retina displays for the new iPad. That is a phenomenal figure and it says much about the way that people are connecting to the Internet and using social media now and in the future.

They are connecting less at their desks and more on the sofa, on the bus, in cafés and in restaurants.

And they are buying in those places too!

Shopping Online… and on the Sofa

This is new. In the past, online shopping might have meant skipping the mall and heading to the study. Now it does not even have to mean climbing the stairs. According to one report, mobile purchases over the 2011 holiday season saw a rise of 172.9 percent over the same period last year. Another study estimates that 18.3 percent of all online purchases made on Christmas Day were made on a mobile device, 13.4 percent of them on either an iPhone or iPad.

Clearly, your website should be optimized for mobile users.  (see Mobile Marketing Guide)  You should be looking now at the percentage of your customers who made a purchase on your website using a mobile device. (It is information that is easily available on your analytics page.) And you will need to check that at the very least your conversion rate for mobile visitors is no lower than your conversion rate for your regular visitors. If it is lower, as more people switch to surfing on tablets and phones, your overall conversion rate will hit a downward trend.

But you will also want to think about how and when you post your social media updates. If you now know that people are more likely to buy your products when they are sitting at home with their iPads than when they are sitting in the office with their laptops, then that will affect how you tweet and post. You will want to send tweets and updates during the day that build interest and create trust but only send the link to the landing page in the evening or at the weekend when your followers are relaxing on the sofa and ready to buy.

You will need to create content that matches the platform on which your customers are consuming it — and you will want to show that you understand them by posting your content from your own mobile devices from the sofa (becoming a couch potentate?).

StumbleUpon redesign gives the site a fresher, more visual look that is easier to navigate and simpler to use. The introduction of Channels provides a separate space where brands and companies can promote themselves, a less obviously commercial version of the site’s Paid Discovery service which some 60,000 products, publishers and other sellers have already used.

For marketers though, the question is whether they should be using it at all.

StumleUpon recently landed its 20 millionth member. Although that’s only a fraction of the 800 million or so people who regularly use Facebook if those 20 million people include your core buyers, then being active on the site might well be an important part of your social media strategy — or should be.

The site throws up some unique challenges though. It’s a social bookmarking service rather than a fully-fledged social media site. Think of Facebook with only the option to like (and un-like) a site, and those sites thrown up to visitors almost at random so that they “stumble upon” new publishers and firms with content and products that interest them.

It’s the “almost” that makes the difference. Click the Stumble button and StumbleUpon will offer a page based on interests, preferences and friends. The site tries to target pages to its readers, a system that allows for some influence. Recommend pages in the same field as your firm’s, follow other Stumblers and suggest more pages, and there’s a better chance that your own Web pages can win more views. That’s useful if your main goal on social media is to drive traffic to your website. 

And that can happen. A recommendation on StumbleUpon can deliver a sudden spike in view numbers. Once that happens, the page can sometimes turn up again, delivering occasional spikes in popularity.

Digg — another social bookmarking site —  has been known to deliver even bigger spikes but the site is also known for not delivering sales. Win a high ranking on Digg and the sudden burst of popularity can be enough to crash even mid-sized servers. Companies have found that very few of those new visitors bother to click through or buy.

It all comes down not to functionality but to demographics. StumbleUpon was long thought of as the “everyman” of social bookmarking sites, a place that was simple enough for anyone to use and where the Web pages offered covered a broad range of topics. (On Digg, you can expect to find lots of weird news stories, technology links and raving reviews of Ron Paul.) That title has probably now been taken by Facebook. But StumbleUpon’s users might be more geeky than many thought.

Analysis of StumbleUpon traffic to websites has revealed that the site’s readers are heavy Firefox users, with as many as 93 percent using the open source browser. One site came up with a profile of the typical StumbleUpon user as a 26-year-old, middle class, Firefox-using student with a big screen and a PC.

The question for marketers though is whether those students are likely to be buying our products. You can figure that out by tracking those visitors through Google Analytics to the purchase page. 

If you are getting traffic from StumbleUpon — and that traffic is buying — you are going to need to learn more about StumbleUpon’s new design.

The electronic retail shopping today is nothing like it was five years ago, and it is unrecognizable from ecommerce at ten years ago.  Even though many online shoppers have been doing business on the web for years, the types of transactions, expectations of quality, and on-site behaviors have all changed dramatically.  Consumers do not go online just to make a purchase.  They go online to browse, compare, and explore.  In other words, they go shopping.

First a few statistics.  During the 2010 holiday season, online shopping reportedly spiked up 13% year-over-year.

• That is compared to a 5.7% reported overall increase in shopping, which indicates the growing importance of the online medium.  At the same time, a recent Limelight Networks study found that 65% of survey respondents claimed to have been shopping online for more than five years.
• This history of on-line shopping appears to show that established online shoppers are doing more of their transactions on the web, even as new online shoppers are only now discovering the web’s advantages.  In other words, growth is coming from both a larger sample of consumers.  Javelin Strategy and Research predicts the percentage of US consumers shopping online will increase to 78% by 2014—and from greater usage among existing shoppers.
• Still, revenue from online shopping is only a fraction of retail revenue overall.  In 2010, holiday online sales rang in at $32.6 billion according to comScore, while the National Retail Federation reports that retail as a whole topped out at $462 billion in revenue.  That means that there is a lot of room for growth in the online space, and, given current growth rates, it also means we could see a big shift in proportional shopping across the retail landscape.  As important as etail is today, its relative impact on the retail sector, including purchases made both online and offline, will increase exponentially in the coming years.

There are three major trends to watch in the growth of online retail:

1. The use of video in online marketing and sales,
2. The growing importance of mobility, and
3. An increasing emphasis on personalized shopping experiences. 

With each of these trends, the impact is not just a matter of a particular behavior spreading to a larger group of people.  More tomorrow.

You must know some important information about your potential customers.  The information you need is more than just their location and who they are.  You must know the following information in order to build a strong marketing campaign:
•    What do they want?
•    What is their pain?
•    Where is the urgency?
•    What are their needs?

And a big question is, who are your competitors in this segment?  How many?  Where?  Who is successful?  How are they successful?

Knowing the answers to these questions is the first step in developing a direct marketing campaign that will connect directly with your target market.   Smart Internet marketers do not assume these answers.  They make sure they have valid answers and data to build a successful Internet marketing campaign to reach the needs, wants, and desires of their market and to meet the urgency and to soothe the pain of their market.

In addition to assisting you with your marketing campaign, this information can also open up new opportunities for products and services for your Internet business.

Establishing a marketing campaign that answers the needs of your target market will result in more conversions.  The more knowledge you have of your customer, the more optimized your Internet marketing campaign will be. 

Social media and blogging offer great opportunities to learn more about your market.   The interactive nature of these sites makes communicating with your market simple and straightforward.  These also offer a great opportunity to test your strategic Digital marketing campaign. 

Marketing directly to the segment of your market that you are most likely to convert will provide a higher return on your investment.  The time and effort you put in to obtain valuable information about your target market will result in positive action by your prospects...and save you lots of pain.

Push Marketing vs Pull Marketing

People and businesses resist others pushing their marketing efforts onto them. This push marketing is interruptive and the message is not always trusted as it comes from just one point of view.

People prefer to find out more about the claims of a company’s’ products and services before they want to engage with a sales
person.

Push Marketing

Push marketing is when you interrupt your target market hoping to get their attention long enough to create interest in your product or service. We are subjected to this interruptive marketing hundreds of times a day, and many of us subconsciously just ignore these messages.

Pull Marketing

Pull Marketing is when your target market finds your company through valuable content that they were searching for. Normally this content is found via search engines.

Once your content is found, your visitor will evaluate the quality and value of your message and may comment either positively or negatively directly on your site or on a social media platform, such as a forum. By publishing extraordinary and valuable content you will attract links from other websites that point and refer to you.

Increasing the number of links to your content helps you get found in more ways than one:

1. Google will reward you by improving your search engine position as you obtain more “valuable” links from other web sources
2. Your website will receive increased visitors from other sources that refer to your content

Contact us for more detail if you need to get started.

Pressure to Reduce Marketing Costs

Companies that have large marketing budgets are looking for ways to cut costs and still have the same visibility to their prospective clients. TV, radio and newspaper advertising can be expensive as it requires repeated messages to be pushed out to the masses in the hope of attracting attention and convincing you to engage with the company.

Companies know that using the Internet can help them reduce their marketing spend and measure the results. But in many cases, most of these companies resort to using the same advertising techniques online as they use offline.

They embark on “banner” advertising and “email blasts” and soon realize that these mediums can be just as costly if not managed carefully as their online marketing spend.

Effective Online Marketing

Companies have heard of many ways that others are using social media, but they still struggle with how to leverage this medium and optimize it for the best possible results.

With the advancement of the Internet, many new marketing channels have become available to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors and the challenge is to understand the best ways to take advantage of the World Wide Web for online marketing.

Online marketing and social media marketing provide a cost-effective and practical way for small and medium sized companies to compete effectively against their larger adversaries especially since they operate on smaller marketing budgets.

Would it not be an ideal solution be to present your marketing message to your targeted prospect at the very moment they are looking for information on your products or services? This is a major shift from push marketing to pull marketing. It is using content to attract your audience and then market to them when they are ready.

So what are the new ways to be found on the Internet?  Answers begin in the next post.

Your subscriber list is valuable to the success of your online business.  It is important to build your subscriber list, but it is equally important to maintain your subscriber list after it has been obtained.

Gaining subscribers is import but keeping the subscribers is also important. The numbers tell the story. If you gain two subscribers, that is great, but it might not be so great if you lost three other subscribers. The net result is what counts.

Understanding this makes tracking the rate of unsubscriptions important to your business.  There are some things you can do that will actually result in subscribers unsubscribing to your site.  An excess of emails being sent to your subscriber list that are directly sales related can result in increased unsubscription rates.  People are turned off when excessive emails start taking up their valuable time and they will withdraw their subscription.

Provide value added content in the messages you send to your subscription list.   Rather than promoting your products, focus your content on value added information.  Ten percent or less of your messages should focus on products.  The messages should be information driven rather than sales driven.

By providing value added information for your subscribers, they will be more inclined to share the information with others that may be interested.  

Subscribers sharing your informational messages will help you to increase your subscriber list and also obtain new customers.  Adding the mechanics of sharing the email either by buttons on social media sites or phrases included in the email will make it easier for your subscribers to share and forward the information.

By giving your subscribers respect for their time, providing relevant informational content, and refraining from using the list to market products and services, you will see your subscription list grow and complement your online business efforts.

Don't hesitate to ask for help.

You know where your website is, but can your target market find it?  Improving the visibility of your website is of utmost priority if you are wanting to generate traffic and obtain lead conversions.

Basic steps you should take to improve your website’s visibility to your target market will improve visibility.   Improving visibility is an ongoing process.  You must also maintain visibility by making improvements on an ongoing basis.  

This can usually be provided for around $30.

Evaluate your call-to-action and landing page.  The solidity of these portions of your website will result in more  visitors providing you with their contact information including phone number and email address.  Obtaining this information allows you to build campaign and marketing strategies for this target market.

Create a blog to complement your website.  Blogging will improve your website visibility by indexed page creation with each blog post.  This will significantly increase your indexed page volume with quality content provided with quality blog posts.  Blog post provide opportunities to build content using keywords that are profitable for your website.  The end result of a quality blog is increased visibility.

Keyword-rich page titles that are both meaningful and unique will improve visibility of your website.   Keyword research will result in identifying strong keywords or what is known as powerful keywords.  Key word research may take some time and effort, but the end result of using these powerful words will be worth it all.

Improving visibility for your website does not stop here.  But it should be emphasized that these few areas are a good starting place which can lead to increased conversions for your website profitability.  Want to know more?  See our free Wisdom Book.

Both online and offline customer service matters to the bottom line of your business.  Customer service is the single most important aspect to be considered for acquiring and retaining customers.  Building relationships with profitable customers is required for a thriving business.

Before you can build profitable customer relationships, you must first identify your profitable customers.  To accomplish this, you will need to develop and review reports that will allow you to track individual customer.  The results can be surprising.

Review your marketing campaign

Does your marketing campaign focus on discount attractions?  If so, you may want to evaluate this strategy a little closer.   Discounting marketing attraction does not typically contribute to building profitable customers.  Discount marketing attracts bargain shoppers, not necessarily profitable customers.  Reconsider your marketing campaigns that focus on discounted services and products instead of quality service and products.

Quality rather than quantity

Having a large number of customers does not always equate to a profit in business.   It just may be that targeting a specific market to your business would result in a more profitable business.

Expand Services and Products key to your most profitable customers

Providing expanded services and products for your businesses most profitable customers will be healthy for your bottom line and will also make this select set of your customers feel valued.  This will also place your company on your customers’ most valued relationship list.  This will enhance your profitability which building customer relationships.

Retaining profitable customers

To retain your most profitable customers may require you to choose not to service customers that are not profitable.   Building relationship and marketing to your customers that not profitable will take both time and funds away from your campaign efforts targeted to your most profitable customers.

Initially when you are building your customer base servicing all customers equally may have some value, but as your business develops, it can be more profitable to focus on your most profitable customers to take your business to the next level.  What can we do for your business?