“You Gotta Have Balls!” Brandon Steiner of Steiner Sports Marketing

January 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In this episode of Marketing Made Simple TV, Brandon Steiner, founder and chairman of Steiner Sports Marketing and Memorabila joins host Jeff Ogden (http://about.me/jeffogden) for a fun discussion about his new book, “You Gotta Have Balls!”

This show is sponsored by The Pedowitz Group, the world’s largest revenue marketing firm with a great offer of a white paper to help you “Build a Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence.” Just click the Yes, please button in the show.

In this show, you will learn:Brandon Steiner You Got to Have Balls
1) How a poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn bought Yankee Stadium
2) Why you always need to ask “What Else”
3) How a strong mother can overcome deep poverty

You’ll also learn how Brandon extended his business by doing a deal with the host’s alma mater, the University of Notre Dame and how a Jewish kid met Touchdown Jesus. You can also follow Brandon on Twitter at @brandonsteiner. And check out the Brandon Steiner blog What Else?

Marketing Made Simple TV premiers new shows every Thursday at noon ET at Marketing Made Simple TV (http://www.marketingmadesimple.tv) and at many syndication sites. The show is a production of Find New Customers (http://www.findnewcustomers.com) and is financed by the show’s wonderful sponsors.

About Jeff Ogden

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancyFind New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

Filed Under: Authors, Business, General, Professional Spotlight, Sales & eCommerce Tagged With: , , , ,

A Look at Reddit [INTERNSHIP]

November 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Reddit.com is a different kind of social network. It is a social news website that allows their users to submit content in the form of either a link or text and share it with the Reddit community. The site has their own kind of search optimization that allows users to rise to the top of the page. Users vote on the content “up” or “down”. Up meaning their content rises to the top of the page giving them more visibility, and down meaning you get pushed to the bottom of the page.

Reddit runs a bulletin board type of system. This makes it easy to scroll through content. On the home page, there are many different categories you can browse through. Categories include politics, world news, gaming, technology, music, science, and much more. Fortunately Reddit allows you to edit and add categories you want visible on your home page. This gives the users personalization.

The users can scroll through different kinds of content. The content can be informational, funny, newsworthy, etc. Users post things you can find in a history textbook or even a fashion magazine. There are many different ways you can learn from Reddit. The site keeps up with everything going on in the world by posting breaking news. For example the shootings in Aurora, Colorado were posted almost instantly after it happened. They kept the information updated even days after.  Find out what kind of dinosaurs existed millions of years ago, or find out what’s going on in space. Reddit follows free speech, so they don’t discriminate on any kinds of content.

Even though Reddit is considered a news website, it can still help businesses. The best way to market on their site is to find content that pertains to your audience and target market. You want to be able to understand and listen to the content carefully so you will be able to contribute something of value. If you want to find specific content, Reddit allows you to search by keywords. Sharing content is also simple on Reddit. You can share the information to your followers on twitter, Facebook friends, your Google+ page, or you can even pin it on Pinterest by pressing their individual button on the top of the page.

In recent months Reddit’s popularity has grown tremendously. The social news site obtains over three million page views a month and has over 43 million monthly active users. It’s easy to see why Reddit’s slogan is “The front page of the internet”. Individuals, small businesses, and large corporations can all benefit from having an account on Reddit.

Sources:

The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.

About Digital Media Education Internship

Digital Media Education Internship Program is an outreach initiative for Digital Ethos.

Filed Under: Authors, General, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media, Social Media Topics Tagged With: ,

The Path to Better Marketing Results: Laura Patterson and Julie Schwartz

October 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Just Add Data | The Path to Better Marketing Results – Laura Patterson and Julie Schwartz on Marketing Made Simple TV

Welcome to Marketing Made Simple TV in High Definition!

ITSMA research shows that marketing organizations that leverage data in their strategic and tactical decision making have a business performance advantage. Data-savvy organizations are better able to improve their average time to revenue and decrease their sales costs per order dollar. But what does it take to be data-savvy?

Join show host Jeff Ogden with Laura Patterson of VisionEdge Marketing (https://www.visionedgemarketing.com/) and Julie Schwartz Senior Vice President, Research and Thought Leadership, ITSMA for a fascinating chat about the results of a study of B2B marketers.

You will gain insight into how you and your peers use marketing data, metrics, and analytics to inform marketing decisions, predict buyer behavior, improve marketing performance, and forecast trends.

Download the Revenue Performance Management – Demystified guide from Eloqua at http://bit.ly/RPMDemist or click the button in the show.

We thank Laura and Julie for appearing on this show, as well as sponsors such as Avitage, Digital Ethos, Communication Strategy Group and Eloqua. Marketing Made Simple TV premieres a new show every Thursday at noon ET/9am PT.

Love the show? Then we invite you to join the Marketing Made Simple TV Fan Club.

About Jeff Ogden

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancyFind New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

Filed Under: Authors, Branding & Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing, General, PR & Writing, Publishing, Traditional Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How Can Pinterest Help your Retail Store

October 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

When brands like JCPenny, The Gap, Honda, McDonalds, and Banana Republic make it to Pinterest, you know that Pinterest means business. And it does, although Pinterest was not intended to be a business venture, but like other social networking sites, it has found a niche. It is rapidly growing and provides a visual delight to its visitors, and now features a platform for businesses and retail stores to display their products.

Pinterest for Retail

Well it’s no secret, Pinterest is pretty. It is a visual delight and provides that ultimate virtual experience of window shopping. Your retail store too can become a part of the ever growing retail community.

According to the 2012 Social and Mobile Commerce Study released by Shop.org, Pinterest users follow an average of 9.3 retail companies whereas Facebook users only follow 6.9. This is reason enough why more and more retail brands are making sure that they keep up with the new trends in e-commerce. And you can do the same, here’s how:

1. Product Marketing

You can put pictures of your products which link back to your websites. Pinterest has a high click through rate, so pinning those pictures will lead to visitors, who may find your product appealing enough to visit your website to make a purchase. Even if a visitor does not intend to buy the product but finds it visually appealing, chances are he or she would re pin it, which will market your product free of cost.

2. Know what’s Trending

By following your followers or even your competition you will know what’s trending. Especially in case your product is related to fashion e.g. clothing or accessories, see what’s making the news and pin pictures which relate to it. For instance if a certain celebrity is trending or a certain color or silhouette then pin or re pin pictures of your products that reflect those trends. By following your followers you will also be able to get a better idea about their tastes and preferences. It will provide that much needed feedback and insight into your customers or potential customers tastes.

3. Picture Perfect Sales

Any sale via the web requires serious selling techniques, with Pinterest it’s the visual tactic. And it has been known to work. So even if you do not sell products but services, then pin pictures that relate to it. For instance if you are an event management company then pinning  pictures of your completed projects or pictures that display themes or ideas will attract potential customers.

4. Links

Don’t forget to link your website with Pinterest with a “Find us on Pinterest” link on your website. Also link your website with other social networking sites, especially Facebook and Twitter, this will let your pins then appear on the newsfeed of those sites. This will mean more traffic and will attract customers from other social networking sites too.

Pinterest is only 2 years old and it already has millions of users and a profitable retail presence. So it’s about time that you jump on the bandwagon and make the most of it.

Pantelis Vladimirou is the Co-Foudner of Webarts, which is using Pinterest and other Social Media as part of its Cyprus Digital Marketing strategy for its clients.

About Guest Blogger

This article is a guest post provided by a third party, its content was added to Digital Ethos to help provide additional information for our readers and followers. While the Guest Blogger posts do not undergo the same scrutiny as Authors and lack sources, the content was reviewed and approved as valuable to our mission.

Filed Under: General, Guest Bloggers, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media, Social Media Topics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

10 Ways to Use Foursquare for Business

October 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

Foursquare is a location-based smartphone application which offers check-in service to customers, marketers and businesses alike. You can use this mobile application to check-in to venues and share with your friends where you are, and obtain info about those places.  Based on your updates, the application might assign you merit badges. It’s an interesting social concept for consumers and at the same time, a strong business tool that can be potentially used for creating brand awareness and profits. Hence if you want to leverage your business, this platform platform is worth looking at for several reasons. To do this, you’ll have to understand how it works. There are 10 ways to use Foursquare for business. To help you get an idea about promoting your own business through this platform, there are a few tips discussed below.

How to use foursquare for business

To begin with, check your business on Foursquare. If your business is not there, add it and then, claim it on the listing. Connect your Twitter account with the listing. This process is quite simple. Once this is done, you can proceed further to use Foursquare for business promotion. In this endeavor, following things can be done:

  1. Create interesting deals to draw in customers. Deals can easily be created if you have claimed your business on this platform. You can give special discounts to those users who checks in to your business, for instance – announce to give 10% off on one’s next merchandise shopping. However, just ensure that your deals are special and creative so that new customers get attracted and keep coming back to you.
  2. Design reward-based programs on Foursquare for loyal customers to retain them. If deals help you draw new customers, rewarding those who are regular visitors to your business is useful in winning their loyalty. It can create a bond between your customers and the business and entice them to come back to you. Your reward-based programs should be smart and intelligently devised, for instance – a program asking one to check in 5 times in 15 days and win a surprise gift.
  3. Use Foursquare to collect demographic details of your customers. Through this platform, you can know the average check-in rate of a customer, his/ her age and gender, check-in timings and where he or she is sharing the check-in details – on Facebook or Twitter.
  4. Another interesting way to use Foursquare for business promotion is to get feedback from your customers about your business. Customers can leave their comments or tips about a particular venue they visit. You can use their feedback to bring improvisation in your business.
  5. Foursquare is a powerful medium to advertize your business for free. When you claim your business and optimize the listing by adding authentic contact details and website, you increase the chances of promoting your business across various social networking sites which are used by millions.
  6. If your business doesn’t have a physical presence, you can use Foursquare to set up a page instead of claiming a venue. Foursquare page is not much different from a Twitter page. Those who follow your business on Foursquare can obtain information about you from there.
  7. You can enter a partnership with other brands which are physically present to derive optimum benefit. For instance if you are a book publisher, join hands with a local bookstore to increase the reach of your business.
  8. Design Foursquare event at your venue to boost massive check-ins and brand consciousness.
  9. You can encourage your staff to join Foursquare and check-in at your venue there whenever they report to work. This will also help spread awareness about your business among their friends and followers.
  10. You can also share useful tips on Foursquare to engage with your customers and thereby, attract their attention to your business.

These are few ways to use Foursquare for business. You can use these and other innovative techniques as well to make success out of your business.

Edoardo Piccolotto, is an Internet Marketing and Strategic Consultant that provides specific strategy advices to business that want to use internet to generate new business opportunities. Follow him on twitter @epiccolotto.

About Guest Blogger

This article is a guest post provided by a third party, its content was added to Digital Ethos to help provide additional information for our readers and followers. While the Guest Blogger posts do not undergo the same scrutiny as Authors and lack sources, the content was reviewed and approved as valuable to our mission.

Filed Under: Business, General, Guest Bloggers, Sales & eCommerce, Social Brand Visibility, Social Media, Social Media Topics Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Keep Your Email Campaigns Running Smoothly

October 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Too many times, business owners don’t have an email marketing strategy in place and keep sending out emails over and over again to any list that they can get their hands on.  Most use Constant Contact to deliver their email communications and manage their contact lists. Guess what?  Constant Contact is cracking down on companies that are sending out continuous emails with no plan in place.  If you are one of those people, be prepared for Constant Contact to shut down your account.  Yes…they are shutting down accounts for a few valid reasons.  It’s important to understand the rules of email marketing and follow it!  Don’t let it happen to your company.

Here are some reasons that your email account can get shut down:

  1. Too many bounces – It’s important to collect your bounced email addresses after every campaign and clean up your internal list.  If your bounce rate is continually high, you will be shut down.
  2. Spam Reports – Spam is unsolicited email also known as UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). By sending email to only to those who have requested to receive it, you are following accepted permission-based email guidelines.  If you receive a high rate of people complaining about being spammed by your company, then you are in jeopardy of being shut down for good.  Constant Contact has a no tolerance spam policy.
  3. Not removing Opt-Outs – Every email generated from Constant Contact contains an unsubscribe link which allows your contacts to opt-out of future emails and automatically updates your contact lists to avoid the chance of sending unwanted emails to visitors who have unsubscribed.  It’s important to use one service for all your email campaigns to ensure that your opt-outs don’t receive any further communication via email from you. If you switch to another service, make sure you bring your opt-out (unsubscribe list) with you.
  4. Invalid Company Contact Information - All of your emails are pre-filled with your contact information including your physical address.  If you try to tamper with this or put in a phony address, be prepared to be shut down. Your contact information has to be clearly stated in any email communication.

 

What happens if your email account has been shut down?

The first step to rectify the situation is to contact a representative at Constant Contact and find out the reason why? Once they give you a reason, you can discuss ways to rectify the situation with your sales agent. Since you are paying anywhere from $28-$75 per month depending on your account preferences, Constant Contact wants to help you get up and running again. Just be very careful to follow their rules so you avoid being shut down for good.

I have spoken to clients that think they will just get another email vendor, but most vendors are following the Spam laws and regulations and will shut you down at some point.  Also, another big misconception is that you can just use Microsoft Outlook to send out mass emails.  Again, you need to make sure you have an unsubscribe link in your email and your contact information is clearly displayed.  I would not recommend using Outlook for mass email communications since it’s not made for this purpose. You are better off using an email service that specializes in email marketing.  At the end of the day, you do not want to annoy your customers/prospects with too many emails.  You need to develop an email marketing strategy that works for you company and ensure that your email communication is going out to people that want to hear from  you! 

How to protect yourself from Spam: Take the Spam Test (compliments of Constant Contact)

  1. Are you importing a purchased list of ANY kind?
  2. Are you sending to non-specific addresses such as:
    • sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses.
  3. Are you sending to distribution lists or mailing lists which send indirectly to a variety of email addresses?
  4. Are you mailing to anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?
  5. Have you falsified your originating address or transmission path information?
  6. Have you used a third party email address or domain name without their permission?
  7. Does your email’s subject line contain false or misleading information?
  8. Does your email fail to provide a working link to unsubscribe?
  9. Are you failing to process any unsubscribe requests that come to you via a reply to your email within 10 days or the request? If you have answered YES to ANY of the above questions you will likely be labeled a SPAMMER.

Sources:

http://www.constantcontact.com/uidocs/CCSpamPolicy.jsp

Email Marketing Rules

Email Marketing Laws

About Monique Merhige

Infusion Direct Marketing's founder Monique Merhige has over 15 years of marketing communications experience with technology companies ranging from small service firms and equipment manufacturers to a 1.5 Billion dollar division of Motorola. Monique is an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Dowling College in Oakdale and Brookhaven. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Marketing and an MBA in General Management.

Filed Under: Authors, Branding & Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing, General Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Day at Google New York & Seth Godin [OPINION]

October 1, 2012 by 5 Comments

Google started a pretty amazing program called “Google Engage for Agencies”, while it’s a great outreach program to help generate brand advocates that act as a sales team for low to no cost, it’s much more then that!

Google has generated a program that has done a few things, but I want to center on two, Content and Education!

1) Google Engage is a program that is producing content for Google.  Agencies are now telling stories for Google about Google and tying it directly into local communities! The Engage program has agencies and consultants that now have stories that tie back to their community, ones that give all the recognition to Google and the AdWords platform.

2) Google is flooding the market with the correct information and empowering agencies and consultants through education to provide the correct and effective services. In a time period where consumers distrust agencies and digital marketers (and they should) Google has decided to empower those that want to learn, want to provide value making it much harder for those that are not genuine to survive.

The Engage program has provided others, like myself with direct education and training. The information that I now have as a professional has been advanced by the support of Google, both in a distance education program and done in conjunction with Dale Carnegie trainers at Google.

I made a comment earlier that consumers distrust digital marketers and agencies and that “they should”. I stand by that statement, in fact,  I started blogging because of that very fact just a few years ago. Walk into a small business owner these days and don’t be surprised when you get a question like “what makes you different then the other 100 sales people before you” and it’s a great question, in fact if business owners and organizations had asked it sooner we wouldn’t have the distrust that the marketing industry has earned.

Google made a commitment to provide a service that they believed helps connect people on the web to solutions providers and services. That incredible tool has been defiled by digital marketing consultants and agencies. As Seth Godin has explained, marketing had it good until the illusion vanished. Out of fear and greed the economy was destroyed overnight by those that worked to game the system, be in PPC, SEO or just selling products, services and solutions that they didn’t care if it worked as long as they got paid.

Google had another great surprise for those of us in attendance, a LIVE Google Hangout with Seth Godin, “America’s Greatest Marketer“ as claimed by American Way Magazine. Seth’s presentation was excellent and while he did a great job sharing information with us, the Q&A was a treasure. Seth’s message is that success comes from being genuine and often takes a long time, in fact Seth admitted it took his blog three (3) years to gain traction.

A day at Google confirmed one thing, the world is full of fraud and the marketing industry has a disproportionate number of contributors. The bright note is that for those of us that take the time to genuinely try solve problems and not just generate sales or revenue, we can and will be successful. In this case, Google is genuine about wanting to connect people with what they are actually looking for, be it through organic search or paid search. Google is acting like a leader, providing the right and accurate resources to the community. The Google Engage program is just one of the resources that Google has invested in to empower the professionals that are trying to do the right thing by their clients, customers and business.

In the end, Google was impressive at every turn. Google New York had Food, Fun and Value! The information was only surpassed by their commitment and methods to deliver it! A methodology that I feel is worth any successful business or corporation pursuing.

About Basil Puglisi

@BasilPuglisi is a Content Contributor and the Chairman of the Board for Digital Ethos. Basil C. Puglisi is also the Digital Marketing Manager for PMG Interactive. As the Digital Marketing Manager he provides oversight and support to Digital Campaigns, from Website Development to Search and Social Reach.

Filed Under: Authors, Branding & Marketing, Business, Business Networking, Content Marketing, Digital & Internet Marketing, General, PR & Writing, Publishing, Sales & eCommerce, Search Engines, SEO Search Engine Optimization, Traditional Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Top 15 Must-See Websites for Designers and Illustrators

September 30, 2012 by 3 Comments

http://www.gfmarketing.co.uk/web-design/

From visiting the museum to riding the bus, inspiration can come from anywhere. However, finding inspiration is not that easy for some designers and illustrators. Sometimes, designers suffer from what they call an artist block. Imagination can actually dry up and leave the designers with an awful feeling of blankness. Luckily at this day and age, the World Wide Web offers a multitude of creative information and ideas from all over the globe to those in dire need of inspiration. Overcome artist block with the list below that features the top 15 must-see websites to get designers and illustrators motivated.

These ultra-modern websites range from personal blogs to online galleries of graphics and images, are definitely awe-worthy and rousing. The creative images and works to be featured here are products of the hard work and passion of other designers and illustrators. These are great sources for inspiration but are not meant to be copied. They’ve put much love and soul to their works and deserve the respect and admiration of everyone.

1. Inspired Mark

This is the personal website that features a range of scribbles, outstanding illustrations, and awesome designs by web architect Mark Collins.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

2. We Love Illustration

Another good resource for inspiration and motivation, We Love Illustration is a real haven for art and illustration lovers to find inspiration and share their works. This is a place that showcases the amazing talents of different artists from all over the world.

Find them on Facebook

3. Leivos

Managed by designers Shyra and Veronika, Leivos provides more than just creative images and pictures with their daily posts. This virtual pin board also features the coolest interviews with well-known artists and other new artists worth knowing.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

4. Daily Design Inspiration

The name says it all. With artworks from brilliant designers, this website offers a great deal of fresh design inspiration every day. It features the best logos, cool websites, illustrations, creative photos, and never before seen patterns made by the most talented designers worldwide. Daily Design Inspiration is a hodgepodge of everything artistic and original.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

5. Sketchblog

According to website owner and professional art director, Rob Sheridan, Sketchblog is a creative playground he set up to encourage himself to draw and create more often. But with his cool and unique artworks, Sketchblog does more and inspires even aspiring artists worldwide to live their dreams start sketching.

Find them on Twitter

6. Ads of the World

Owned and managed by Web Media Brands, Ads of the World is an advertising archive and community. It features inspiring print ads and marketing campaigns done by the world’s top advertising agencies. Students and beginners also post their works at this site to get constructive criticism from the industry experts. There’s also a forum page where artists and designers can exchange ideas for their projects.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

7. Print and Pattern

Print and Pattern is a gallery of nothing but awesome prints and pattern designs. Print and Pattern transforms your fabrics, wallpapers, cards, and gift wrappers into works of art. The innovative mix and match of colors, shapes, and lines is a must-see for all artists.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

8. Cool Hunting

Founded in 2003, Cool Hunting has grown from one designer’s personal reference into an award-winning publication. Composed of a global team of editors and contributors who highlights creativity and innovation in technology, design, travel, food, and culture, Cool Hunting provides daily updates and mini-documentaries that attract creative people internationally.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

9. Orange You Lucky

Cute, colorful, and imaginative are the three words that best describe this website. Owned by an illustrator, designer, and a mother of three pretty girls, Orange You Lucky offers fun and fresh art and drawings.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

10. Theartcareerproject.com

This website is creativity to the max.  Really sleek cool design that gets your artistic juices flowing.  The site is owned and hosted by a sharepoint hosting company in California and so far has become very popular within this last year.

Find them on Twitter 

11. Web Designer Wall

Toronto-based web designer, Nick La started this website in August 2007 as his personal wall of design ideas, trends, and tutorials. It has quality content and eye-catching design that makes it a must-see website for designers.

Find them on Twitter

12. I Love Typography

Often taken for granted by designers, a good typography is vital in creating the best quality designs and artworks. I Love Typography has the prettiest and most unique type design, lettering, and fonts, from road signs and shampoo bottles to billboards and posters.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

13. Fuel Your Creativity

A great website to spark your creativity and generate awesome ideas, Fuel Your Creativity is a brilliant design blog that has inspiring articles and links to various design websites.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

14. Design is Kinky

Design is Kinky brings design and art goodness from Sydney, Australia since 1998. A blog that features new designs, photos, and artworks from all over the world, this site has been inspiring many artists for years.

Find them on Facebook

15. Monster Meltdown

Founded in 2005 by design lover and cool dude, Patrick McNeil, Monster Meltdown is a funky website that has the cutest little monsters in the web. It has a variety of design styles, trends, and elements. Its mission is to provide the largest and most exhaustive inspiration sets possible.

Find them on Twitter or Facebook

Rob Smiel is a advit design art fan.  Rob especially likes graphic design and web development.

About Guest Blogger

This article is a guest post provided by a third party, its content was added to Digital Ethos to help provide additional information for our readers and followers. While the Guest Blogger posts do not undergo the same scrutiny as Authors and lack sources, the content was reviewed and approved as valuable to our mission.

Filed Under: Design, General, Guest Bloggers Tagged With: , ,

What is Inbound Marketing? [Internship]

September 24, 2012 by 4 Comments

            Inbound marketing is a way of making yourself or your company easy to find and drawing people to your website by producing content that appeals to your visitors. The term “inbound marketing” was coined in 2005 by HubSpot’s Brian Halligan because he believed that traditional marketing was becoming less effective. Inbound marketing includes content like blogs, enewsletters, and the social media network. Inbound marketing is far more favored by businesses than outbound marketing. Outbound marketing includes content such as spam, telemarketing, and fliers.

            The whole concept of inbound marketing is to get the customers to find you, instead of you reaching out to them. It can be broken down into five stages. One, attract traffic; two, convert visitors to leads; three, convert leads to sales; four, turn customers into repeat higher margin customers; and five, analyze for continuous improvement. A company can attract traffic to their website by blogging, for example. Updating your blog more frequently will attract more visitors to your website and revenue traffic. Announce your website via email, and across the social media networks like Google+ and Twitter to garnish social and search traffic. Email everyone you know about your new website, lead with content and the word will travel. Share it on your social media websites. Include keywords that will draw your targeted audience in. Then, you want to make sure that the material on your page is what the visitor is looking for. Your goal is to make the visitor a customer. After your visitor becomes a customer, make sure they will come back by sending them an enewsletter and keep your page updated with things that will attract them to buy again. After you went through the four steps of the process, you want to analyze everything that you have done and make sure you are doing everything you can to satisfy your visitors, followers, customers.

            In order to make inbound marketing completely effective, you want to give your customers your marketing information, and a little something else. This provides a value above and beyond what they are looking for, which creates a value to the customer experience. For example, if you’re a gardening or landscaping company, write a little side story about your home garden and how you personally take care of it in the newsletter. The three key phases are “get found, convert, and analyze”.

            Inbound marketing can be effective if the communication is interactive and two-way, unlike outbound marketing which is one-way. One way to create inbound marketing is by being found on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, etc. This is a type of inbound content because someone who is looking for something specifically related to you will go directly to your page. By creating valuable content on your website, your website will rise in organic search results. By rising in organic search results, it will benefit you tremendously because the closer you are to the search engines first page, the more visibility you are gaining for your website.

You can try and get your website higher in the organic search result by pay per click (PPC). PPC is an advertising model used to direct traffic to a certain website. Every time someone’s ad is clicked, the advertiser pays the website owner or publisher. Another way to rank higher in organic search results is to make a well put together press release that is filled with information that your targeted audience will click on when they search on a search engine. Don’t use keywords that are commonly used by your competition; be more creative when it comes to keywords.

            A recently new field that inbound marketing has found its way to is the social media network. Social media sites are the most visited websites on the web. When marketing on social media, identify your target audience. Once you have a targeted audience, think about keywords this audience might use to search to find sites like yours. Facebook for example, has seen a steady increase in its search bar for businesses. A basic principle of a social media site is like using a forum, if there is no activity going on you will leave. To make sure that this doesn’t happen to you on your website, fill it with lots of information and useful content. Finally, another way to use the social media network for inbound marketing is to give your “community” something to talk about. For example, if you own a fitness company and you are now selling a new workout machine, tell your social medic community. This is the “network effect”, when your community creates a “buzz” about what you were talking about, it will bring in other users.

            An easy way to get information out about your business or product is to advertise where they are already going. For example, by putting “like us on Facebook” on your company’s website, this will draw people to your Facebook page where you can advertise all about your business, products and services. Another way to generate inbound marketing is to host contests. By letting your visitors and or customers take an online survey about their experience with your website, offer a chance to win a prize if they take the survey. Also give them the opportunity to go through an easy-to-do sign up for newsletters offering them coupons and sneak peeks into the future.

            Inbound marketing is far more effective than outbound marketing. You can prove this just by asking if you have deleted spam mail without reading it. Spam mail is an example of outbound marketing. Since social media is huge growing field, there should be no question as to why inbound marketing is so effective. In the end, it’s all about finding a new way to generate interest, and inbound marketing is the new way to generate interest and visitors, followers, customers.  

Sources:

The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.

About Digital Media Education Internship

Digital Media Education Internship Program is an outreach initiative for Digital Ethos.

Filed Under: Authors, Branding & Marketing, Business, General Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Beth Comstock, CMO of GE on Marketing Made Simple TV

September 19, 2012 by 1 Comment

In this episode of Marketing Made Simple TV, sponsored by Eloqua, Beth Comstock, SVP and CMO of GE, one of the world’s top companies shares key tips, including:

1) Why it’s important for marketers to step back and see the big picture

2) The importance of keeping an open mind and being receptive to fresh insights and ideas.

3) Why every marketers, big and small, needs to be everywhere and easily found. Why you don’t need the resources of GE to do great marketing.

 

We thank Beth for appearing on Marketing Made Simple TV, and that Eloqua for sponsoring this show and sharing a great content offer.  In addition, we thank other sponsors, such as Avitage (http://www.avitage.com), DigitalEthos (http://digitalethos.org), Communication Strategy Group (http://www.communicationstrategygroup.com) and Watchitoo (http://www.watchitoo.com).

Marketing Made Simple TV is produced by Find New Customers (http://www.findnewcustomers.com) It is Produced and Directed by Craig Yaris and our Editor is Kevin Ogden.

About Jeff Ogden

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancyFind New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

Filed Under: Branding & Marketing, General Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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