Integrated Marketing For Success

Presenter: Doug Hay, CEO

Agenda

• Presentation• Q&A – write questions in Webinar questions

consule. They will be answered at the end of the presentation.

What Is Marketing

– Marketing is the broad concept that involves the various processes, systems and activities involved in successfully bringing a product (or service) to market particularly focusing on various aspects of product creation and development as well as promotion, product publicity, sales and distribution.

What Is Marketing (cont’d)

– It begins with research where the demographics, needs and attitudes of the customer as well as competition are determined and evaluated and then proceeds through into product development, packaging, design, advertising, promotion, publicity, distribution, sales and customer service.

– It is fully applicable to both for-profit businesses and non profits.

Marketing Strategy

• A clear statement of how a company will achieve its marketing objectives. The strategy would include the allocation of people and financial resources to concentrate actions to gain a competitive advantage and generate a viable level of sales.

• A marketing strategy is a key element of an overall, long term business plan and provides broad directions to maximize sales, market share and resulting profits.

• Strategies are developed based on marketing research and surveys.

• Along with discussing some huge hurdles many organizations are faced with, other key takeaways from her presentation which can be viewed below include: 

•  

• Stop tripping over the social tools; focus on a handful and master those before moving on to the next shiny thing

• Social media is not new; its the same thing we used to use for business, but with prettier, more attractive packaging that is easier to use

• Did you know that social media was born in 1978?

• Social media buy-in from the top down is crucial for its success in any organization

• Companies need to give their employees flex time to use social media tools to help promote their business

• The customer is not always right

• How do you manage it all?

We already know that Google is a huge proponent of social media. In fact, Matt Cutts, the head of web spam at Google, has stated on multiple occasions that one great way to succeed in SEO is to create a blog and push those blog posts out through social media profiles (learn more about this here).

Search Engines

• Content is king • Search engines

will crawl your website more often if you have a blog which is updated regularly

We’re all publishers

Content Marketing

Creating Content

• Research Story Ideas• Optimize the Content• Add it to Your Site in a

RSS Feed• Add Images • Add Social Media

Links

• Tinu - If there's one thing I've learned in all this... there is no silver bullet, there's no secret handshake...there's only two things that will drive thousands of people to your site...

• The first is getting on Oprah or something like that... which is as easy to do as winning the lottery.

• The second is having a well-rounded website promotion plan to get continuous traffic from a variety of methods.

Photo credit: http://reodispenser.com/

The Long Tail

The Long Tail

• Use your long tail words

• Take the long term view

• Create consistent content

• Publish fresh content in a RSS feed

http://www.novamind.com

Photo credit: http://www.mersiomarketing.com/blog/

Image credit: http://www.gapingvoid.com

http://www.awarenessnetworks.com

http://www.trafficteria.com/

Competitor Love

• People are looking for what you are selling.

• Are you visible?

• If not, the business goes to your competitors.

IntegratedMarketingStrategy

SocialMedia

Blog

OfflineMarketing

WebSite

– Marketing is the broad concept that involves the various processes, systems and activities involved in successfully bringing a product (or service) to market particularly focusing on various aspects of product creation and development as well as promotion, product publicity, sales and distribution.

– It begins with research where the demographics, needs and attitudes of the customer as well as competition are determined and evaluated and then proceeds through into product development, packaging, design, advertising, promotion, publicity, distribution, sales and customer service.

– It is fully applicable to both for-profit businesses and non profits.

• A survey conducted by marketing firm Digital Brand Expressions found that 78 percent of client companies responding to their survey said they use social media, but only 41 percent said they have a strategic plan in place to direct their social media efforts.

• Other key findings from this survey that should be of interest:

• Of the companies that have no plan in place, 88% agree that it is important.

• Of those companies that work from some plan, 94% said that marketing activities are included in the plan.

• 71% of those with a plan said their Marketing Department is the group with the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining the firm’s social media presence.

• Of the planners, 71% indicate they use social media for public relations communications.while 55% said that they used social media for sales-related activities. A surprisingly small percentage (16%) say their HR team is using social media for recruiting, employee retention, training and development, etc. and 26% use it for customer service.

• Social media efforts are being led primarily by Marketing (71%) and PR (29%) departments.

• Even among those with a plan, few (29%) have written policies and communications protocols in place, leaving the organization exposed to problems arising out of employees communicating in ways that inadvertently hurt, rather than help, their company brands.

The Challenge of the Living Web

• Connect Everything

• Give yourself some link love! Make sure that you have social media icons connecting to your various profiles in your website template.

Study Findings

• 78% of respondents said their companies were using social media -- but just 41% said they had a strategic plan.

• In a sadly comical finding, 88% of the group without a social media plan agreed that having a plan was important -- just something on their "to-do" list, I suppose.

• 100% of respondents agreeing that marketing should be involved in formulating the social media plan.

• Source: study of corporate social media usage by Digital Brand Expressions, aptly titled "Social Media Without a Parachute."

Study Findings

• Ensure that some basic branding (e.g. logos, colors, taglines) are consistent throughout. You shouldn’t try to make your Facebook page or email newsletter look just like your website, but they should match enough that we can tell they represent the same organization

Search engines play a dominant role in purchases

• Google is favored over other search engines.

• Organic links get over 70% of the clicks.

Search engines play a dominant role in purchases

• Your supporters should be able to effortlessly travel between your website, blog, email newsletter, and social media profiles without having to hunt down those connections

Why Do It? “The more channels you can use to reach a supporter, the more likely they are to see

your updates, to engage in conversation, and to build a positive image of and rapport with your organization.As you develop your editorial calendar and think about what to say and where to say it, keep in the mind the strengths and weaknesses of various channels. You want to share the same basic message across all channels, but you’ll often vary the specific call to actions.For example, if you are working on a fundraising campaign, email is a better bet than social media for the direct ask for the donation, with highly visible links back to a campaign landing page and donation form on your website.

Google Search Results PageTrack how supporters are engaging with you through various channels online. What are they doing and where are they doing it? What paths are the taking as they move between your website, blog, email, and social media profiles? What types of content seem to work best in your email newsletter versus your blog or Twitter?Also think about ways you can reuse content across channels. Listen to the conversations and bring what you learn back into new content. Can you post a question on Facebook or Twitter and use the conversation there to guide the creation of a blog post?

Purpose

You shouldn’t silo your offline marketing from your online marketing, and you shouldn’t silo your website, email, and social media marketing either. Knit those loose ends together and you’ll weave a stronger community of supporters around your good cause.

Conversion• Your goal with testimonials should be

to provide prospective clients with tangible (i.e. fluff-less) input about you and your work. Your testimonials should be relevant to the prospect, believable, trust-generating and support your statements about why clients should hire you over the next guy.

• – wriIf you're a small or mid-sized business and you truly want to turn your website into a lead generation machine, there's basically 3 techniques available to you:

• Search Engine Optimization• Pay Per Click Advertising• Blogging & Social Media Marketing

•

Different Styles

• You need to create content with key words.

• This is called “optimizing”

• E.g. Optimized web pages, optimized press releases, etc

Prospects Are Online Actively Searching

• When I talk with most marketers today about how they generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel, most say trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising.  I call these methods "outbound marketing" where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack. 

Rather than do outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing "inbound marketing" where you help yourself "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in your industry.  In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a "hub" for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites.  I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing and I advocate that those ratios flip

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/inbound-marketing-vs-outbound-marketing.aspx#ixzz0rtrPqiJF

Word Of Mouth

• To do SEO successfully, you should continuously do 3 things: 1) find more keywords that will bring you relevant traffic 2) create more content focussed on those keywords 3) build links that support ranking higher for those keywords in search results. Who knows your business, your customers, your market, the problems you solve, the solutions you provide - better than anyone else? Hopefully you.

Seniors• HubSpot makes closed-loop internet

marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.

• Get found.• Convert visitors into leads.• Close those leads efficiently.

•

Social Media• If you're a small or mid-sized business

and you truly want to turn your website into a lead generation machine, there's basically 3 techniques available to you:

• Search Engine Optimization• Pay Per Click Advertising• Blogging & Social Media Marketing

•

- Hitwise

What is Web 2.0?

• Web 2.0, is a 2nd generation of Internet based services including wikis and social networking sites and communication tools

• They emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

Web 1.0   Web 2.0

Ofoto Flickr

mp3.com Napster

Britannica Online Wikipedia

personal websites blogging

Publishing Participation

Content management

systems

Wikis

stickiness syndication

What is Influencing Consumers and Business Buyers?

“A Person Like Me” Now The Most Credible Spokesperson

for Companies

Global opinion leaders say their most credible source of information about a company is now “a person like me.”

Edelman Trust Barometer 2006

Influencing Purchases

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is "the ultimate cost-effective, online guerrilla-marketing tactic that generally has the highest ROI of any type of Internet marketing"

• - Marketing Sherpa

Top 5 Media Influencers on Consumers Buying a Car

1. Word of Mouth 30.4%

2. TV Broadcast 24.1%

3. Read Article 21.3%

4. Newspaper 20.2%

5. Magazine 17.5%

Source: Ad Age Domestic Spending by

Category and BIGresearch, 2007

Top 5 Media Influencers for Consumers Buying Electronic/Home

Furnishing/Appliances

1. Word of Mouth 42.6% 2. Read Article 34.1% 3. TV Broadcast 32.3% 4. Newspaper Inserts 32.0% 5. In-Store Promo 27.2%

- BIGresearch, 2007

Organic Search

• Although social media has become important, being found on the major search engines is still vitally important.

• Being ranked on the first half of a search results increases your brand value.

Google Rankings

Even the Google engineers acknowledge that tweaking your tags and on-page elements are not as important as having good content and a reputation in your community (think links).

SEO

• Short for search engine optimization.

• The process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine.

Successful SEO

• The site itself must be optimized– Key word research and strategy– Write new content for web pages using key

words– Design, programming, tags, etc per the

strategy and key words

• Link building with new editorial content (press releases, articles) which Google places heavy emphasis on.

Key Word Research

• Firstly, key word research needs to be done.

Optimizing Web Pages

• Ideally there is an audit and strategy to guide the writer

• Use keyword research to find the terms your target audience are actually searching on.

Search Term

Searches per day

Google Competition¹

Investor awareness 0 2,020,000 Investor awareness index 0 1,760,000 Investor hub 44 2,000,000 Institutional investor 19 2,700,000 The intelligent investor 16 6,990,000 Investor connect 14 10,100,000 Stock picks 2,490 12,400,000 Stock market predictions 781 2,200,000 Stock market investing 123 27,000,000 Stock market trading 105 40,600,000 Stock market prediction 80 2,290,000 Investing in the stock market 60 25,900,000 Stock ratings 15 27,600,000 Stock rating 13 129,000,000 Investing in shares 3 15,200,000

Sample of Keyword Research

One Major Word

Choose one major word or phrase per page that will give you a viable market size and one in which you can realistically compete and get a good ranking.

Page Titles

• Use this keyword or phrase in the title of the page. This does not only mean the headline. 

• The title is coded into the page and appears on the very top blue line of the computer screen.

• Then use it in the headline - in text, not in a graphic (search engines don't index graphics)

Key Word Repetition

• Start the text of the page with that phrase or word.  Use it repeatedly, in context, so that you have around 2% to 5% use of the word count. 

• Make each page at least 250 to 300 words long. 

Page Format

• Each page about 300 words - no more than 600

• Use short sentences and short paragraphs

• Lots of headlines• Bullet points

Can It Be Scanned?

• People are more likely to scan rather than read the whole text.

• Use meaningful headlines and subheads.

Text Formatting

• Don’t overbold – just bold the headline and subhead.

• Don’t underline text for emphasis-users will think it is a link.

• Don’t italicize -some monitors can’t read it well.

Caps Slow The Reader

• Use regular sentence case for body text and Title Case for headlines.

• Using all Caps will slow down the reader.

User Focused

• Everything written needs to be user focused, not company focused.

• Before you start writing find out what the users are looking for when they logon.

• Incorporate the keywords that are getting searched on.

What To Feature?

Don’t feature product details – instead highlight successes and experiences users would have if they bought the product.

Skip The Clichés

• An expression so often used that its original power has been drained away

• Bad: “Best in class services”.

• Good: “Free Blackberry tutorials for beginners”

One Topic Per Page

• If possible stick to one topic per page.

• This could be a product/service page that gives the user all they want about that item.

• Good landing pages do this.

KISS

• Keep the offer simple when writing a sales page

• Don’t give them a lot of options – direct them to take action. Too many options reduces conversion

• Test

Product Lines

“Even if you have a small and clearly defined product line, you must make the differences blatantly obvious on your site.”

- Jakob Nielsen

Product Pages

Provide detailed information about your product or service but it must be written for the users who may not be experts in your sector.

Stale Content

• Keep the site content current.

• Content that is out of date or inaccurate will hurt the credibility of the site and is a disservice to the user.

Alternate Spellings

• In print publications, one style and spelling is utilized.

• On the web, use alternate spellings and plurals as users will make mistakes when searching.

Conversion Drives ROI

• Getting the user to convert (make a purchase, download a white paper, etc) is what you are after.

• Use calls to action to drive conversions.

Stress Benefits

•Deliver what the user needs and wants using benefits.

•They will leave a page in seconds if they don’t find what they are looking for.

Inbound Links

Your Content

Link Back To Your Site

• Inbound or one-way links are links from other sites to your site

• Editorial content in RSS feeds create inbound links

• Helps your search visibility

Web sites

Web sites

Keyword-rich Hyperlinks

• A link in a web page that takes you to another location or resource

• Hyperlinks usually appear as underlined text and printed in a contrasting color, but they may also appear as graphics, such as buttons to click.

Make Links Informative

Don’t use “click here”. Rather than click here for more information, use descriptive key words:• E.g. Top stock picks for savvy investors (key

words: stock picks, investors)• E.g. Compare widget prices with 5 other

suppliers (key word: widget)

Meta Tags

Information placed in a web page not intended for users to see but instead which typically passes information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.

Title Tag

• HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

• A well-crafted title tag can stand on its own without the benefit of the accompanying page content.

• Include at least one targeted keyword or phrase.

Description Tag

• An HTML tag used by Web page authors to provide a description for search engine listings.

• Descriptions should include very specific, keyword-rich writing. Don’t use any keyword excessively, as search engines may perceive this as spamming.

Keyword Tags

• META tag used to help define the primary keywords of a Web page.

• Keep the keywords and phrases relevant to the actual text of the page.

Summary

There are two main objectives when writing web page content:

1. Improve client search engine rankings.

2. Interest visitors, hold their attention and get them to convert.

Action Items

1. Conduct key word research

2. Do further research

3. Write a comprehensive strategy which will cover all your online content.

4. Optimize your web pages following the key words and the strategy.

ROI For SEO

Can go through the roof, shaming just about every other component of your marketing plan.

- Forrester Research

Resources

Expansion Plus Inchttp://www.expansionplus.com

RSS Service:PRESSfeedhttp://www.press-feed.com/

Our blog: pro active http://falkow.blogsite.com

More Resources

Key Word Research:www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ (free)

RSS Service:Press Feed: www.press-feed.com (from $89 month)

Wire Services: (fees average $200+ per release) Market Wire: www.marketwire.com PR Web: www.prwebdirect.com

Contact Details

Doug Hay, CEO

626 793 4911

818 326 6784 cell

dough@expansionplus.com © 2007 Expansion Plus Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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