Fresh ideas…
The tech marketing holy trinity (ie webinars, whitepapers and tradeshows) still rule for most of the B2B marketers I meet. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t thinking about ways to test the waters with new/social media. While their customers may not be gathering and connecting in great numbers in these channel (yet), opportunities still exist to share content and start the conversation. Here are three fresh things you can try: Update Linkedin – Make sure your company profile is up-to-date and check out a few groups where you think your prospect are chatting. If you feel ambitious, start a couple of discussions. While the groups are a little spammy, there is a also a ton of action. Do a Google blog search – Check out what people are saying about you or your competitors in the blogosphere. Even better, setup a Google blog alert for your top 5 organic search terms. This gives you the opportunity to comment on relevant posts. Peek at your Web referrer logs – I am always surprised to find new sources in my organic web traffic. It often gives me fresh ideas for online content and campaigns. Any other super simple things you have tried? How have they...
A post evangelic social media world
As a followup to my recent rant about faith-based arguments, I grappling for a better label for a social media proponent. Aside from the obvious consultant label (self deprecating barb), I came up with the idea of replacing “social media evangelist” with “social media pragmatist”. Imagine what Twitter would be like if people spent more time admitting that some social media were not adding much business value. Conversations could be less opinion based and more factual. We wouldn’t have to hear the same old tired stories about the hype spot of the day or that crummy low margin etailer who everyone loves because its CEO tweets alot. We could get down to discussing business transformation and measurable outcomes. Boring things like sales, leads and net promoter scores could become the only meaningful metrics. One can only...
Are you measuring the right things?
I’d like to share a story about a time when I thought I was measuring the right thing (but wasn’t). I had decided that paid search was the right answer for my business. Many of my competitors were buying keywords and there was plenty of traffic in the space. The popular terms were bid up to the $2-3 dollar price range and based on my conversion assumptions, I thought I could get the customer acquisition cost tuned to the point where we would have a strongly positive ROI. After about six weeks of adjusting bids, killing off bad ad creative, inserting new ads, and reorganizing ad groups, BINGO, the cost per customer landed within about 5% of my target. Needless to say, I felt pretty good and was thinking it was time to “pour some gasoline on the fire” by making a big budget request. It seemed like a sensible thing to do given the acquisition cost and conversions rate. Before making the “big ask” for budget I decided to take one more look at the numbers. I wanted to make sure these new sign ups would become productive long term customers. My back-of-the-envelope estimates prior to the campaign had assumptions for the average revenue per customer. The real data, however, showed that these customers yielded 75% less revenue than our “typical” customers, pushing this campaign into the red. I was relieved to discover this before dropping a large sum of money into this medium. The moral of the story: make sure you are measuring the right things and they are connected to real results. In most businesses, activity-based measures like leads or traffic are directional indicators. In the end, revenue and sales are what really matter. So, what are you doing to connect your marketing activity to bottom line...
Making a bad decision on purpose: option value and social search
Am I going soft? I’ve been dabbling with paid search on one of the major social networks. The interesting thing is that we decided to press forward despite the fact that our “back of the envelope” calculations using an optimistic lifetime value estimate projected that this campaign will end up underwater. I frequently rant about the value of running the numbers first but in this case we decided to “do it for strategic reasons”. More specifically, this campaign had high option value. In a situation like this, a simple ROI calculation may not be enough. Conventional projects with predictable outcomes can use straightforward estimates. When venturing into the unknown where the risks are greater and the future is uncertain, people often use real options as a way to capture the potential value of an opportunity. So in this case, paid social search is a good fit for thinking about option value. Despite a lousy initial estimate, there is great potential in the medium. If this works, it could open up a big, new promotional channel. It could also be a bust. We’ll never know unless we try it. So can you think of any high risk projects that have a small chance of a exponential...
January Cambridge Search Engine Marketing Meetup
Who said that search engine marketing is yesterday’s news and it is all about social media these days? Yesterday I discovered a meetup on Twitter and decided to sneak out from the nightly festivities with the Tangy clan to attend the monthly confab of the Cambridge Search Engine Marketing group (this was the closest name I could get out of anyone). The topic interested me and the location ( the Robbins Library in Arlington) was a winner. Here are some highlights from the evening. After breaking up into two groups (“advanced” and “soon to be advanced”), we proceeded with individual introductions by the 60 attendees. I cringed at the idea but soon realized that this was pretty helpful to understand the audience. Each group then had a Q&A session covering a range of topics including paid search, affiliate marketing, social media and online lead generation strategies. Here are some my other observations from the evening: Online lead generation businesses are alive and kicking even in the down economy – There were people with lead gen businesses for a variety of markets including weddings, baby products, lawyers, real estate and replacement windows. I guess everyone needs still leads. People are still trying to figure out the intersection of search and social media. Affiliate marketing is still going strong – A couple attendees (including me) were interested in learning more about the latest in creating affiliate networks. Tuning paid search campaigns is still a major challenge for people – A number of people mentioned that their organic search is performing well but their paid programs need help. I’d like to thank Peter Davis and Jim Spencer for leading the “less experienced discussion. Some of the questions were pretty random but they found a way to keep things on topic. It was also nice to finally meet both of them in person after connecting with them online (yes, via Twitter). Finally, I’d like to give shoutouts to Eric Sugalski of Rascodog who is promoting his new dog leash and Kiril from Bigskinny.net who is building his thin wallet business. Best of luck to both of you in 2009. All in all, it was a worthwhile event and I plan to attend in February. You should check it out if you are in the...
Audio from my Social Media Breakfast 11 presentation
Here is a recording of my talk at the Boston Social Media Breakfast 11. Special thanks to Adam...
