Just finished reading a report from Forrester Research that looked and the small to mid sized businesses in the US to see how Interactive Marketing is having an impacting. There is a lot of valuable information in thisreport, you can download it here for a little personal information, but one of the points that they make that I felt really nailed it was right in the beginning when they identified the hurdles that the survey participants pointed to in keeping them from their online goals.

I’m especially happy to see these issues in print as we’ve been hearing these issues from our clients and prospective clients that we’ve been talking with. Here they are:

• Few Staff Members: We’re already working full time on our jobs, when are we supposed to do this online stuff?
• Limited Budgets: Money is tight for everyone, let’s make sure the ROI for online is good!
• Losing Customers: It costs too much and takes too long to get ‘em, lets keep ‘em as long as we can.
• Lacking Skills: Online marketing takes a unique skill-set, especially to do it right!

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My grandma tweets.

It’s true.

While not all grandmas can be as cool as mine, statistics show evidence against the stereotype that social media users are all narcissistic 20-somethings.

Do you know how your customers are using social media? If not, you may be missing out on the opportunity to interact with them. Worse yet: your competitors are probably already doing so.

In the most recent 3Sixty webinar, I spoke about reaching your customers and business objectives through social media.

Feel free to check out the slide deck if you missed it but here’s a quick overview:

Your customers are social butterflies. 2/3 of your customers regularly use a social network.

The average social networking user spends 4.6 hours/week on social networks. That’s 3x the amount of time they spend on email.

70% of SMBs use Facebook to promote their business.  70%! Those are pretty good odds that your competitors are part of that percentage.

Ok, your customers like social media. So what?

So glad you asked.

Download the presentation or request a copy on CD to learn strategies on reaching  your customers.



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We all get ‘em the email that promises instant results in getting your website listed at the top of the search engines.  In fact

here is an actual email that one of our client’s recently received and asked me if this is something that they should look into!

Come On!  Really!  Haven’t we all been online long enough to realize that these aren’t real?

I know, I’ve answered my own question but it is getting out of hand.  Not everyone is offering “white-hat” SEO services and its making the rest of us all look bad.

Google has very clear cut opinions on what they consider to be acceptable methodology for getting your website to rank high for specific key-phrases and if you or your agency doesn’t play by the rules (either knowingly or unknowingly) you will be penalized.  In fact, this will apply to everyone.  The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about Google’s penalty on Overstock.

If you want to get your site top ranking on the search engines, do it the right way or you will be penalized.  If your unsure how to accomplish it, align yourself with an agency that will provide white-hat seo services.

What do you think about this email message, am I missing something, would you respond to this?

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…the most important thing that you’ll never hear about!

I know…you just started to get the hang of SEO, then came Blogs.  You finally started posting to your blog on a regular basis and then everyone started pushing you to use videos to increase your online success, then came the Social Media blitz…and now I’m going to start talking about Web standards.

The interactive industry really is  its own worst enemy, but this is really important so if you’ll bear with me for a couple of minutes, it really will be worth it.

Within the last couple of years the digital marketing industry is moving at the speed of light to adopt the standards that are assembled by the W3c, our industry’s standards organization.  Concepts such as semantic markup, accessibility, contingency design, an the all important, separation of the structure and presentation layers.

Sorry about that last paragraph I fell off the Techie wagon for a second.  What this means is that buy making sure that you website is built according to the W3c industry standards you will be more successful online and you’ll realize that success faster.

And Here Is Why

Short Term Cost Savings

• Less development time required
• Less development effort required
  Your project will be built more effectively and  launched faster when the agency that you are working with adheres to W3c standards than if they don’t!

Long Term Cost Savings

• Less expensive maintenance expenses
• Less bandwidth overage charges
  When  building a website to W3c standards, the entire application is more efficient and developed according to a plan.  That means that maintenance changes are easier because every qualified programmer will understand the structure of your site.

Marketing Advantages

• Faster to market
• Tremendous search engine optimization advantages
  Beyond the savings of time and costs, marketing benefits for your company will increase by using an agency that develops to industry standards.

Customer Advantages

• Increased responsiveness of website
• Cross-Browser compatibility
• Cross-Platform compatibility
• Accessibility for disabled users
  Ask any user group what they want from their online experience with your website and they will unanimously  tell you that they want your site to be “easy to use”.  Developing to W3c standards will make your site “easy to use”.

To get more information on web standards and how to make sure your site is meeting these standards, contact us through our website.

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Ok, a quick definition for the term “Customer Engagement”.  According to Wikipedia the definition is:

Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.

Why is this important?  Because too ofter we hear people talking about CE as if it refers to lead generation.  Put in its proper context; the online element that best supports customer engagement is Social Media!  Social media’s greatest direct benefit to businesses is the increase in Customer Engagement.  The engagement can be in the form of watching a video, pressing the ‘Like’ button, or tweeting about your brand or services.

When your putting together your online strategy, don’t get frustrated by putting the wrong expectations on the wrong technology.

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It really comes down to a plan, the execution of the plan and the measurements of the plan’s execution.  How many of us really take it this seriously:

Some 75% of marketing budgets is targeted at the user/purchasing levels. Only 15% is spent at the influencer level, and (sadly) only 10% is spent at the decision-maker level.

The great companies that have separated themselves from their benchmark competitors have a marketing budget spread that more closely resembles the following: 35% to the users/purchasing, 35% to the influencers, and 30% to the decision-makers.~ Marketing Profs

Yup, we know; don’t have the time, can’t measure, don’t have the faintest what your talking about.  But if it could boost your business, would you like to talk about the potential?

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In a recent article in B to B Magazine they said that 51.9% of the marketers that were surveyed said that they are going to increase their budgets for 2011 while only 7.3% of the surveyed marketers said that they are going to decrease their budgets for 2011.

For their marketing goals they stated the following:

• Customer acquisition: 69.1%
• Brand Awareness: 18.4%
• Customer Retention: 12.5%

The biggest increases in spending is going to the Online channel followed by Events then Direct Mail, Telemarketing, Pring, Broadcast, Radio, and Outdoor.

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According to Adology, a research firm that focuses on market segments has reported that consumers that have said mobile applications or mobile marketing has influenced their purchase decisions are purchasing casual clothing, home furnishings, personal care services, vehicles, home maintenance and repairs, auto care, jewelry, insurance and electronics.

In fact, according to Adology, nearly half of home furnishings consumers say that mobile applications or mobile advertising influenced their purchase decision!

As for the type of phone that these shoppers are using the survey states:

IPhone users lead the pack with 14.8 percent, followed by BlackBerry (13.4 percent) and Google Android (9.1 percent).

To reach this segment of your customers it is high time that you start to investigate the potential that the mobile market has for you have how you can get in front of your customers.

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