Tag: social media

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Inbound Marketing – It's Not Just Social

What is digital marketing? Is it just social media marketing? NO! When looking at marketing today, a better way to look at things is to look at the old way of doing things — outbound marketing — and compare that with the new way: inbound marketing.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is NOT social media. Social media is one component of Inbound Marketing

How does inbound marketing differ from outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is “traditional, old-style” marketing. It is:

  • Flyers
  • Sales calls (cold calling — you know, those annoying sales calls that always come at dinnertime!)
  • Junk mail
  • Anything that is directed out at you, that you didn’t seek out

Inbound marketing is about getting found by customers. It includes:

  • Creating videos that customers want to see
  • Writing blog posts and maintaining a blog that talks about subjects that people want to see, subscribe to, read, and interact and engage with
  • Participating in the conversation about your brand and its principals on microblogging and social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
  • Creating useful content that people want to read and engage with

There are three key components of inbound marketing. They are:

  • Content: This is the substance of any inbound marketing campaign
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This makes it easier for your potential customers to find your content. Today, content isn’t king but rather optimized content is king.
  • Social Media: Amplifies content

As you can see, social media’s sole purpose is to amplify and promote the optimized content that is being created in the first two components. Most of an inbound marketing campaign’s time should be spent on content creation and not sending content via social media. We will shortly post on how much time is required on a daily basis for anyone who wants to engage in inbound marketing.

According to HubSpot, “When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site”

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Social Fans More Likely to Buy

Brands are still a bit slow on the social media bandwagon. Some are still wondering why they should join it. A new report from eMarketer gives a good answer. People who follow brands on social media are more likely to buy. According to Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate social friends and followers are more likely to purchase from brands that they are fans of.

More than one-half of Facebook fans said that they are more likely to make a purchase with brands that they are fans of. 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.

60% of respondents claimed their Facebook fandom increased the chance they would recommend a brand to a friend. Among Twitter followers, that proportion rose to nearly eight in 10.

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Socionomics takes on Social Media ROI

I’ve already written about social media ROI before, but this socionomics video further shows the economics of social media. As a recent HubSpot report showed, inbound marketing has a 60% lower cost per lead than traditional, outbound marketing. Companies that have a higher level of social media have higher sales. Gary Vaynerchuk was able to use the Internet and the power of video blogging to turn his father’s Shoppers Discount Liquors to the powerhouse that Wine Library is today.

Just a few stats from the video about how the Internet and digital marketing helps businesses save costs:

  • Lenovo had a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to their community website
  • Burger King spent less than $50,000 on their Facebook application — leading to over $400,000 in press and media value.
  • Blendtec tripled sales with its “Will It Blend” YouTube videos
  • 37% of Generation Y were aware of the launch of the Ford Fiesta via social media before it’s US launch. (Great car, I want one!)
  • 25% of Ford’s Marketing is spent on Digital/Social Media – They are the only US automaker that didn’t take a government bailout
  • Software company Genius.com reports that 24% of social media leads convert to sales opportunities
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The REAL Social Media ROI – Quantifiable and Measurable (Sometimes)

After writing my last post about the ROI – the return on inaction –  of social media, one of the commentators challenged me to actually quantify the social media return on investment. This give and take is one of the challenges and benefits of social media. Companies can’t just stand behind pronouncements – they are challenged and forced to strengthen their claims.

The interesting thing about the question of “What is the ROI of Social Media” is that we can track this in ways that weren’t trackable with traditional marketing. Despite the fact that many people have difficulty giving real numbers to the ROI of social media, it’s actually far EASIER to track than traditional media.

If someone watches an ad on a TV screen or in a newspaper and then goes visits my store, how do you know that they came because of your ad? Maybe a comment card if they choose to respond. Maybe they’ll tell you. Maybe they won’t.

But, if you’ve set up your site correctly, and someone comes to your website (today’s equivalent of the corner store) because they read your blog, saw your tweet, or even clicked on the link that accompanied the online version of your news article on Time.com or the Wall Street Journal online, you can look in your web analytics and tell. If 100 people came to your site because of a link from Robert Scoble on Twitter, or a news article, or because they were looking up “really cool widgets in Florida” and you sell cool widgets in Florida, your web analytics will show this search. You “just” have to know how to monitor it. But your ROI was that 100 visitors who now know about your brand. And might buy your products or hire you. Or tell their friends about you or let a stranger know on Twitter.

For example, my wine blog analytics are below. Here, I can discover that I had a spike in readership because influencer Gary Vaynerchuk linked to me on ONE Twitter post. The ROI of one link on Twitter from an influencer is this traffic spike and the building of my personal brand. Just like companies claim that such and such magazine did an article on them, I now can say that Vaynerchuk linked to me and I can see that it drove traffic (even if only temporarily). If I had an online portal and earned revenue through page views, my income would have increased because of one link on Twitter. By the way, I have to be honest. The post Gary V linked to? That’s what I was hoping for when I wrote it.

In this case I blog as a hobby – very few people make money on ad revenue from their blog –  but because of it, I’m known of as an expert in Israeli wine and was quoted in a magazine for the restaurant trade and have been invited to trade shows. And occasionally — and this is why established brands still need to be paying attention – the established brand that’s not online doesn’t get mentioned. Or the established brand that’s not online’s credibility depends on the younger upstart’s view – even if they’ve been building their own brand for longer than the Millenial’s been alive. And a thousand (or more) more people a month know about Israeli wine and have made purchasing decisions based on what I’ve written. Yet there are plenty of people who know more about the subject than me. But they aren’t blogging.

If you sell something online then you can track if they found you from a  Facebook page. If you are a major B2B brand with no online commerce option, you can tell who found out about your company/brand because of web analytics. As an example, in the past few days, we had several visitors who came to The Cline Group – after just launching the site this month – because they went to Google and searched “the cline group” and others came because they looked for “inbound principles.”

But that leads back to the question of ROI.

Why does The Cline Group have a blog? Well, one of the reasons is because we are a business and, yes, we want to get paid to provide our communications and marketing services. If we get one new client a day, month, or year because of something that we wrote on our blog, well, that’s our business ROI. If we get one client at $3,000 a month or $100 an hour because they loved what we have been writing – over time, that’s our quantifiable ROI. More importantly, though, if we are seen as reputable in our community because (for example) 1,000 people read what we have to say every week, than that’s valuable for our business.

If someone comes to your hotel because they Googled “four star virginia hotel” and stayed for 4 nights at $120 a night and found your website, than the ROI of that one Google search (and the SEO and web design investment that you spent) is $480. If you got just 10 customers a month because of this, than your ROI is $4800 a month.

It’s worth noting another use case. What if you can find that 30 people found your site, saw it hadn’t been updated since 2006, couldn’t find your room rates and weren’t able to book elsewhere so they went to the hotel down the street – even though your hotel was better but your web site didn’t reflect that? That’s also lost ROI. Even there, by the way, Analytics can help track how many people went to your website and were immediately turned off and bounced away.

If you have an event, and you sell tickets to that event for $50/ticket, and you get 500 buyers because of your active Facebook presence, 300 because you reached out to people interested in the subject of your event on Twitter, and you got 10 corporate sponsors at $500 than your ROI for this one event is $45,000. Not bad for free tools and a whole lotta marketing knowledge.  So, in this case the ROI of social media is $45,000?

Not exactly. Because, let’s say that because of your last event, 500 of the 800 people signed up for your e-mail newsletter, found out about your next event, and 100 bought $75 tickets (because they enjoyed themselves so much last time). And, let’s say 1 of your previous sponsors really enjoyed themselves that this time they pledge $1,000. Then your ROI for the second event – because of work you did on your last event, as well as keeping up the relationships with the previous attendees – is $8500. And what if the other attendees couldn’t attend this time, but shared your post about it on Facebook and Twitter with their friends and their friends bought tickets because of a Twitter link – and positive experience from someone they trusted.

What do you think?

Hmm… so who said there’s no ROI in social media?

ROI photo licensed under Creative Commons –http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/ / CC BY 2.0
Hotel photo licensed under Creative Commons – http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/ / CC BY 2.0
Audience photo licensed under Creative Commons – http://www.flickr.com/photos/megapolis/ / CC BY 2.0
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What is social media?

Following up on my previous post about the ROI of social media, perhaps it’s worth explaining what social media is.

Social media is not so new. Even the technology is new and major social networks have been on for close to a decade. Facebook only started in 2004. Twitter in 2006. Blogger in 1999 and bought by Google in 2003, and WordPress also was first released in 2003. College seniors that opened up a Facebook profile in 2004 are now your 27- year old workers. Moreover, humans have been social since the first caveman shared pictures on the cave walls.

However, many so-called social media gurus like to focus on the new technology, instead of human’s nature to be social and communicate, in order to confuse you (probably to charge you more). Watch the video below, if you want to understand what social media is without being confused by Tweet this, Twibe that, RSS, ping, or other buzzwords. This explains social media – not for technology, but for ice cream.

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Social Media for Social Good

Social Media doesn’t just sell technology (although Dell claims that they’ve made over $1 million in sales due to their Twitter presence), or shoes (although Zappos has also been raking in the big bucks), but it also saves lives and does good.

Whether it’s a religious organization, charity fundraising campaign, or trade group, or promoting democracy, social media does good.

If you’ve been paying attention, social media has been recently saving lives in Haiti and promoting democracy in China and Iran. Ben Parr of Mashable has a new story posted on CNN about the social web.

According to Parr, “In all three cases — China, Haiti and Iran — social media has had an impact, especially as the course of events evolved. Real-time communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook have spread the word about what’s happening within these nations, long before the mainstream media prints the story. These tools have also created a level awareness we’ve never seen before.”

As of this writing, over $11 million has been raised – just via text messaging – for earthquake relief in Haiti. Google is highlighting ways to help – texting, online payment, or even Google Voice.

Twitter and Facebook are also being used to help raise funds for disaster relief.

Twitter is helping to promote individual country’s roles in the Haitian relief effort. The Israeli Defence Forces spokespersons office created a Twitter account at @IDFatHaiti to showcase that country’s role in helping Haiti..

How are you using social media for social good?