Tag Archives: online marketing

Loading
loading..
facebook ads results

Did Your Facebook Ads Not Produce Results?

Many small businesses have tried Facebook ads that did not produce results. Others are using them to drive significant business results. What is different?

Facebook generates $4B. in ad revenue and over 1 million small businesses use Facebook ads. When I speak with people about online marketing, I often highlight the opportunities to use Facebook (and now Instagram) for cost-effective advertising. I also highlight that you can no longer rely on organic reach to get to existing followers of your business.

Several people have recently told me they tried Facebook ads and they “didn’t work.” So they stopped. That usually means that they did not see an immediate, short-term uptick in sales.

Advertising can generate awareness and it can induce someone to look more closely at your product or service. It may not produce an immediate sale. It depends on your product/service and where the reader is in the buying cycle.

In Facebook, People Are Not Actively Looking to Buy Things

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]In Facebook, people are not actively looking to buy things.[/Tweet]

In Facebook, they are likely not actively looking to buy something right now. Google ads based on certain keywords may be aligned with immediate purchase intent, but Facebook ads have another complementary role to play.

Facebook advertising is usually a longer-term investment. It helps you to generate demand with people who weren’t already looking for you. It helps you to build an audience to market to over time.

There are exceptions. Some products or services may be impulse purchases that can show immediate sales results. Certainly Facebook and other social media networks are hoping that is the case as they all continue to invest in social commerce capabilities. But most of the value of your Facebook ads is to generate awareness and to build an audience to sell multiple things over time.

Common Reasons Your Facebook Ads Didn't Work

There are some common reasons why your Facebook ads didn’t produce the desired results or “didn’t work.” I have compiled my top ten things to look at and adjust in your approach:

  1. Wrong Objectives. People on Facebook are primarily looking to connect with friends and family and to be exposed to interesting content. They are not primarily there to find and buy products. If you have a relatively inexpensive product that someone can make a fast purchase decision about, then maybe you will see product sales directly from ads. I get a lot of ads for T-shirts in my News Feed and I might click to purchase one that I found particularly interesting. People may have an interest in your products, but are not currently ready to make a purchase. Or your target audience may need additional information before they are ready to make a purchase from you. Facebook is primarily a place for you to create awareness and induce people to do something to start a relationship with your business to learn more. Ask people to sign up for something rather than make an immediate purchase.
  2. Incorrect targeting. The power of Facebook advertising is in targeting your audience. First you have to define the personas of the buyers of your product or service. Then look at the Facebook targeting options to match those personas. You don’t want to target too broadly. You want your ad to display to the person who will have the most interest in your products and services. If you only rely on targeting by location or by interests, you may have wasted your ad dollars. Use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to get the most targeting options, including location, age, gender, interests, connections, relationships, language, education, and workplace. You may also be able to make use of custom audiences to target people from your email list or lookalike audiences based on people who liked your page or visited your website.
  3. Uninteresting Image. Facebook is a visual platform. If your image does not stop the user’s eye and grab attention, they will scroll right past your ad. Generally, images with people grab the most attention. Or your image needs to stand out in some other way. It might be brightly colored. Or it might be funny. Sometimes the images that I think are good turn out to be duds and ones I think are marginal turn out to be stars. You have to try multiple images and test to see which ones work the best.
  4. Dull headline or unclear value/benefits.  Headlines with emotion get the most attention and response. Words like “easy” or “free” or “simple” or numbers or brackets in the headline generate more clicks. Clearly stating the value or benefits you provide also will drive clicks. If the reader is unclear what the the value or benefit is to them, they simply scroll to the next thing. The value proposition needs to be aligned specifically to the target audience for the ad.
  5. Going after quantity versus quality. Going after the most ad impressions or the most page likes or most website clicks is simple and enticing. But it may not be capturing the people who are most likely to engage with your business and eventually make a purchase. Set your objectives and targeting to go after the people who are most likely to be interested and engaged. Big numbers of uninterested or marginally interested people won’t lead to results.
  6. Not capturing and nurturing prospects in email. Someone may read your ad and have some interest, but they are not ready to make an immediate purchase. But they are a valuable prospect for you to capture and nurture until they are ready to buy. The most effective way to do that is to capture their email address. By opting-in they are giving your permission to do personalized, 1-1 marketing to them over time. What a tremendous value. You may need to offer them a bribe to sign up and give their email. Offer something of value – some information or a contest – that creates an incentive for them to spend a minute filling out a web form.
  7. Relying only on Boosted Posts. Since Facebook now only shows your posts to 2-6% of your page followers, I think the Boosted Post has a role to play in getting key content posts to display to your followers (or your followers and their friends.) Beyond that use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to create and target ads. The Boosted Post gives you more space for text and a link, but fewer options for targeting and bidding. It also won’t enable you to do A/B testing to find out what works well with your target audience.
  8. Unclear Call to Action or No Landing Page. An “aha” moment came to me a couple of years ago when I learned that people only do what you tell them to do. I had previously assumed that people would take action on their own. It doesn’t happen. If you want someone to sign up for email or to follow you on social media or call you or take some other action, you have to ask them to do it. When you ask them to take action, they do, if you make it easy. Make sure you have a focused landing page that is simple and clear for them to take the desired action.
  9. No Retargeting. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites. Someone may have visited your web site, but was not ready to make a purchase. Retargeting keeps your business front and center to bring people back when they are ready to buy. Retargeting helps to increase conversions after they have visited your site.
  10. Failure to constantly be testing. One well known web site had a call to action button that was colored green and blended into the overall color palette of the page. They found when they changed the color to red that their click-through rate skyrocketed. It leapt off the page, captured the eye, and more people took action. Test alternative images, headlines, and colors to find out what works best. Constantly monitor and re-test new ad variations to find what works best for your audience.

 

kauai marketing

Kauai Business: Using Kauai Marketing Talent?

I have been blessed to meet many wonderful and talented people on my home island of Kauai. One of the things that has also frustrated me is that I have also met business people who went off-island or to the mainland to hire marketing projects and services rather than use Kauai marketing resources.

One of the weaknesses of our collective culture with word of mouth referrals for awareness is that you may be missing out on a great marketing partner in your own backyard.

Yes, with the Internet, we are a global village and web design and other digital marketing work can technically be performed from anywhere. So there is no technical reason not to hire your sister-in-law in Oregon, your friend’s cousin in Minnesota, or a marketing agency in Honolulu.

However, I would argue that their marketing expertise can also be found on Kauai. And they likely lack the day to day intimacy with our culture, values, and unique characteristics.

I understand that in past years there may not have been the maturity and wealth of digital marketing expertise that there is now. Some of it is home grown and some of it has been imported.

Through the Kauai Chamber of Commerce and in other venues I have met a number of the other people on Kauai who have marketing, web design, graphics, email marketing, blogging, and social media marketing expertise.

I would hope after speaking with me that I might be a good fit to assist you with your marketing. But in some cases, I understand there may be a better fit with one of my competitors.

I encourage you to do some web searches, talk with Chamber of Commerce members, and have exploratory conversations with some marketing people you may not have met before. You might be surprised at the wealth of talent you will find!

Did you know there is:

  • a former Fortune 500 worldwide marketing executive providing consulting, training, and a range of digital marketing services?
  • an Emmy-winning graphic designer on our island?
  • someone who was the CEO of Japanese subsidiaries for major companies?
  • a marketing executive with specific expertise in ecommerce?

For a small island I have found there are actually a lot of us who can design custom web sites at affordable prices. Which one is right for you depends on factors such as

  • time constraints and availability
  • integration with other external systems
  • a one-off web site project versus ongoing marketing assistance
  • personality and fit in working styles and vision
  • recommendations on how to develop a brand and a marketing strategy and plan
  • is up to date with latest web design and online marketing trends

I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. Wouldn’t it be great if local Kauai businesses supported other local Kauai businesses and independent contractors? We also provide world-class freelance marketing projects and ongoing marketing services.

Let’s market Kauai with Kauai marketing…..

instagram marketing best practices

Top 5 Instagram Marketing Best Practices

Instagram is a social media platform that continues to grow in importance to marketers. Especially if your target audience includes 18-40 year olds on mobile devices, this is a place you want to be. But to be effective and generate a return on your marketing investment, there are some Instagram marketing best practices to follow.

Why Instagram?

If you haven’t looked recently at the statistics for Instagram, it’s time to look again.  According to recent studies from Pew Research and  Iconosquare:

  • 300 million people use it and 75 million are active each day
  • 70 million photos are added each day
  • more adults use Instagram than Twitter
  • 53% of 18-29 year olds are on it
  • 70% of users have looked for a brand on Instagram
  • 37% of users follow 1-5 brands and 32% follow more than 5 brands
  • only 28% of marketers are on Instagram

I have to confess I got more focused on Instagram opportunities after two clients in their thirties shared with me how they are active on it, as are their friends. That caused me to re-evaluate my own marketing priorities.

Brands are seeing results from Instagram marketing

Search Engine Journal reported that big brands are achieving impressive results:

And it’s not only big brands reaping rewards. Many small businesses are also seeing value. Food trucks, restaurants, entertainers, artists, architects, coffee shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops, and many others are building a loyal audience on Instagram who help them to spread their marketing stories and messages.

Best Practices to Follow

As social media platforms continue to evolve and mature, there are a distinct set of best practices to follow on Instagram:

  1. Set up a unique profile – Name is the only thing searchable, so use yours or your business. Make it engaging in 150 characters. What is your very succinct value proposition?  Include a link. This is the only place you can include a hyperlink back to your web page or your landing page for an opt-in. Make it so people want to follow you, not just to like one of your random photos. Include something personal or humorous in the bio if possible. Consider using emoticons to make your profile more attention-grabbing and interesting.
  2. Use high quality images and videos – Instagram is about visual content. A picture is worth a thousand words – literally! Use a photo to tell a story about your company, your products, or your services. But constantly posting photos of your products over and over again without telling a story won’t cut it. You’re not there to sell. You’re there to nurture a customer relationship.  Post photos that people can relate to and that they care about. Consider showing a behind the scenes view of your business.
  3. Use lots of hashtags – Unlike Pinterest, Instagram engagement is higher with lots of hashtags. One study claimed that posts with 11 hashtags get the most engagement. You may not need 11, but use quite a few so people can find your content and engage with you. It’s also a good idea to create a brand-specific hashtag or to create one for major campaigns and contests. Hashtags help you to get discovered. Look for trending hashtags that you may create relevant content for. Make sure you use relevant hashtags. Don’t be accused of #hashtagabuse by just latching on to a high volume one. Including your location can also help to boost discovery.
  4. Post consistently and be interactive – Ask questions. Reply to comments. Like and share content from your followers.
  5. Run a photo contest or offer special incentives – One way to boost engagement and reach is also to run a photo contest related to your brand. Use a unique hashtag and offer some prizes. Consider other ways you can reward your followers on Instagram with special discounts and promotions or by highlighting and sharing their content.

Note that you can link other social media platforms to your Instagram account, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare. You can easily cross-post from Instagram to those platforms. Note that Facebook owns Instagram, so expect to see more business and advertising features added over time. Also, it appears that Facebook may currently favor and give higher weighting in the News Feed to content shared from Instagram.

Hope you find these Instagram marketing best practices helpful. Is your business marketing on Instagram? Anything else you would add or tell others to avoid?

 

social media marketing tips

10 Tips for Social Media Marketing Success

When I speak with small and mid-sized business owners I frequently hear objections and questions about the business return from investing in social media marketing. Well, hiring college students to post things for you probably won’t drive results. They are very familiar with social media platforms, but it’s the marketing strategy and content that drive success. And just posting photos of products to sell won’t drive success either.

Consumers are not using social media platforms to be bombarded with sales pitches. They are there to be entertained, inspired, educated, trained, and assisted with some problem.

If your content is not engaging or you are spreading your resources too thinly across too many social media platforms, then you may not see good results. Social media platforms will come and go (remember MySpace?), but your marketing strategy and content should transcend the tools and platforms.

With that said, I have observed these ten tips for social media marketing success:

  • Focus on engaging content – The objective of social media is to engage your audience. You get the maximum business benefit when they share your content and spread your message for you or when they click through to your website. You also benefit if they like or comment. That is giving you opportunity to interact with them on a personal level. Have a catchy headline. Provide some entertainment, but better yet help your audience to see something in a new light, to get educated on a topic, or especially to solve a problem (what to make for dinner tonight, how to build a stone wall, how the use of social media tools can save them time,……..you get the idea).
  • Be social – Don’t just be on social media posting photos. Be social and interact with your audience and in social media groups. Add your comments and ask questions for the benefit of others. Share content that may also be of interest to your audience. Be sure to reply to comments promptly or thank people for sharing your content.
  • Focus on a few social media platforms – Different social media platforms have different audience profiles. For example I recently blogged about the Pinterest audience and tips for that specific platform. You don’t have to be on every social media platform. Some may become more important to you in the future, so you may want to reserve your account name there, but focus on 1-3 that are frequented by your target audience and where you can focus for successful business results.
  • Don’t sell – This may surprise you, but marketing is not sales.  It enables sales. Marketing is about satisfying customer needs profitably over time. Consumers are not looking on social media for sales pitches of goods and services that don’t benefit them at this particular time. But helping them now or entertaining them may engage them so that they become your customer or do repeat business with you over time. For example, I get sales people trying to connect with me directly on LinkedIn to just send me a sales pitch for services in which I have expressed no interest and do not need now. They are wasting their time and annoying me for wasting my time. I wouldn’t be annoyed if they sent me some information that might help to benefit my specific business.
  • Be visual – The most engaging posts on Facebook now are videos that are native uploads to Facebook. The autoplay feature helps them to catch the eye in a cluttered News Feed. A picture is worth a thousand words. Using photos and videos on your selected social media platforms will get you more attention and communicate more information.
  • Use hashtags appropriately – Hashtags help people to find your content. A Twitter follower may not see your Tweet in real time, but may search a hashtag for relevant information.  Be sure they can find your relevant content. It may also help people searching on Facebook. But be careful on Pinterest. That platform doesn’t like lots of hashtags, so limit yourself to one or don’t use them there. You can research hashtags to use with a tool like hashtagify.me
  • Make it easy to get more information – If your audience is engaged and wants to find out more about your goods and services, ensure that’s easy for them to do. Have a link to your website and invite them to click it for more information. But also have a landing page that takes them directly to the information they are looking for. That may not be your homepage.
  • Test and change – One of the benefits of social media is that you can test and change your content pretty easily. Analysis of data from each platform will tell you which content and post types are getting the most engagement. Do more of that and less of the ones not driving engagement. Or test multiple visual images with your content. Certain photos and videos will engage your audience better than others. Once you have posted, monitor the data and be prepared to make changes to be more engaging. I am frequently surprised by what content succeeds or does not succeed to accomplish my own marketing objectives.
  • Ask for feedback – If you’re not getting feedback or you want to find ways to benefit your audience, ask for feedback. This may be informally in a post or you may want to set up a short survey with a few questions. You may want to offer some incentive for filling out your survey. Surveymonkey.com is an easy tool to create a survey.
  • Advertise key content – I’ve blogged before that Facebook (and soon other platforms) will be prioritizing and restricting whether your content is shown to your fans/followers. Your business posts on Facebook now reach less than 6% of your fans organically unless you have a very highly engaged, established fan base. Social media marketing used to be completely free. Now and increasingly in the future, it is pay to play. If you have key content (news, a useful blog post, a great video, etc.), then pay to do social media advertising. If you’re just getting started, pay to advertise how your business can benefit people and make it easy for people to click through to your web site. Social media advertising is still relatively inexpensive compared to traditional advertising. And you can monitor results real-time to make adjustments or to cancel ads that are not working.

I hope these ten tips are useful to drive success from your social media marketing investment. Do you have any comments, experience, or other thoughts about these? Or do you have another tip to add to the list? Please share in comments below so we can all benefit.

Please sign up for my email list to get a weekly email with the blog post of the week. It’s free and no obligation.

 

 

social media for business

7 Key Success Factors for Social Media for Business

I recently got back from the Social Media Marketing World conference. Marketers from 49 countries gathered to network and learn from each other about best practices for social media for business. Some of the information was confirmation of things I am already doing and posting about. But there were also some new tips, tools, and techniques. Equally important was interacting with other marketers to understand their businesses and learn about their successes, challenges, and failures. The world of social media continues to evolve and change quickly. (It was also great to go to a conference for the first time in 25 years that I was just an attendee and not working!)

After some reflection on the conference and recent research I have identified seven key success factors for using social media for business:

  1. Content is your hub: It’s your compelling content that will engage your audience and cause them to interact with your business or brand.  (See our related blog post on compelling content.) And people will pay for your knowledge and expertise if you package it up and distribute it in ways they can easily consume it. It may be a product, but it also may be a service or other format. If you have content that answers a question or solves a problem that others have, you have a hub of knowledge to grow your business. Don’t just think about promoting your product or service on social media. Think holistically about your content. How can you help people? How can you answer their questions? How can you help them save time, be more effective, reduce costs, have more fun, etc?
  2. Re-purpose your content for multiple platforms of distribution: Once you have compelling content, you can leverage, re-purpose, and package it in multiple ways for people to consume it. You may be using your compelling content to create a lead funnel for a product or service, or you may be a consultant selling your knowledge. Know your core message and let people experience that in multiple ways. You may use it for live events. You may use it for videos and webinars. You may use it for blog posts. You may share parts of it on social media platforms. You may re-package it into speaking engagements. You may write an e-book. You may create a guide or recipes. You may record a podcast. It’s NOT a sales pitch. It’s helping people to answer a question or solve a problem or be entertained in a way that they want to share with others. Think about how you can reach your target customers in various formats on various platforms.
  3. Use videos and photos – Visual content gains attention on crowded social media platforms. The data show the most engaging Facebook posts are now videos, ahead of photos and status updates. Not only is visual content eye-catching, a picture really is worth a thousand words. People are looking to consume information quickly and easily. Sometimes that is seeing a picture or watching a short video or listening to a podcast while traveling or driving.
  4. Don’t be on social media, be social: In recent years there was tremendous attention on increasing your number of followers or fans. That didn’t necessarily produce business results. While you want to increase the number of potential customers you interact with, the critical success factor is engaging your audience with your business and brand. Being social makes your business human. People do business with other people who can help them. When your audience interacts, they will see more of your posts organically. They also are more likely to share your compelling content with their friends and followers to extend your reach.
  5. Participate and leverage others’ audiences: Beyond being social on your own Facebook page or Pinterest Board, host or participate in social media groups. Demonstrate your expertise, compassion, and humor. Your reputations and abilities become visible to the audiences of others hosting the group.
  6. Email is still the most effective and the most direct: Social media is great for engaging your audience and extending your reach. But the people most likely to become your customers are the ones who are interested enough in your content to opt-in and give you their email address. Email is still the most personal marketing. People are more likely to see and open your email than they are to see your Tweets or Facebook posts. One of the mantras at Social Media Marketing World was “Content is King and Social Media is Queen.” Maybe we should add, “And Email is still the Ace.” Use your compelling content and social media to extend your reach, but also to give you their email addresses.
  7. Don’t assume people will take action: This was an aha! moment for me when I heard from someone running a YouTube channel. He shared that in the beginning he assumed listeners would subscribe to his channel if they listened to the programs and liked them and got value. It wasn’t happening. So he added an explicit call to action asking his viewers to subscribe to his channel. Immediately there was a spike in subscribers. People don’t take action unless you ask them to! In past job roles I was sometimes amazed working with sales people. I would get the prospect engaged with some compelling content and the sales people would not think to ask for the order as the next step. Sometimes I had to prompt them and then the sale would be made. Don’t assume people will take action on their own. Always have a question, next step, or call to action – visit a web page, share the post, subscribe to the channel, etc.

A final thought: If I have just followed you on Twitter or liked your Facebook page or connected with you on LinkedIn, don’t immediately send me an advertisement or try to sell me something. If someone is just starting to engage with you on social media, it does not mean they are ready to purchase something from you right away. It means that there was some interest in learning more and seeing how you might be able to help them. I think this a key point for many businesses and marketers. The objective of social media for business is not direct sales – although stay tuned as Facebook and others add more ecommerce functionality.

Let me know your experience. Do any of these success factors resonate with you? Have you identified other success factors? If you would like to regularly receive updates, please follow Kauai Digital Marketing on LinkedIn or sign up for our email list on our web site.

 

 

social media ads

Social Media Ads: Why, Where, and How Much?

Why think about social media ads? Isn’t social media marketing free and easy? Most of the business people I speak with still think so. After all, it doesn’t require any special training to use Facebook or Instagram. All you do is throw up some posts to engage your target audience with company products, photos, and updates. You just need a young person to assist you. (I hear that a lot, too, from mature business owners.) They are still living in the good old days of social media marketing.

It used to be that social media marketing was just about posting interesting content for your target audience to read and engage.  But as social media matures, social media marketing also has to evolve.  As we’ve blogged before, your company’s Facebook posts may now only reach 2-6% of your followers organically.  The same thing is happening on Twitter and other social media platforms where user feeds are becoming cluttered and crowded.  Social media companies are 1) trying to cut through the clutter to show their users the most valuable content and 2) ramping up advertising platforms so they can monetize their huge user bases.

Google Adwords (and other search engine ads) are useful, but no longer sufficient.  They are not necessarily the best way to reach your target audience as they go through the purchase decision process.  Search engine keywords tend to target early in the decision process for general awareness. Search engine long tail keywords target more specifically and possibly later in the decision process. Social media networks have different ways to target your audience and at different points in the purchase decision:

  • Facebook: demographics, interests, and behaviors
  • LinkedIn: industries, job titles, and organizational levels
  • Pinterest: demographics and interests
  • Twitter: interests, followers, and keywords
  • Instagram: age, gender, country – they will also be sharing data with Facebook interests and behaviors

Not only does each search engine or a social media network have unique ways of targeting ads, they each have different audience profiles themselves:

  • Facebook and Twitter are both very large and cut across age groups, geographies, genders, and interests
  • Pinterest has a larger segment of younger women – 85% of its users are women
  • Instagram has a large segment of usage among young people – this is the place millennials go to interact away from older family members
  • LinkedIn has users who are business people

Wishpond has a good summary of user profiles for each social network that can help determine where you should focus for your target market.

Social media advertising means looking at which social media networks:

  • Have users in your target audience
  • Give you effective ways to select and specifically target them
  • Are cost effective for achieving your marketing objectives

Otherwise you are doing “spray and pray” advertising and wasting your money.

Internet ads now make up 25% of the entire ad market in 2015 (source: Social Fresh). One million small and medium sized businesses advertise on Facebook.  And there are 2.5 million Facebook promoted posts.  Twitter has not ruled out changes to its news feed algorithm to prioritize posts the way Facebook does. Instagram (owned by Facebook) is expanding its advertising platform to both deal with cluttered feeds and to monetize the user base.

Ad costs on different social media platforms do vary.  A Facebook ad will likely be more expensive than a Google Adword, but less expensive than a LinkedIn ad.  The ad costs reflect the specificity and effectiveness of targeting for your audience. Match your marketing to the right social media networks for your business. Then look at how social media ads can get your message consistently in front of your followers and your prospects. It’s not like the old days of just posting some interesting content for free.

social media marketing video

2015 The Year of Social Media Marketing Video

2015 is the year of social media marketing video. If you look at the statistics of organic reach and engagement, I should be doing this blog post as a video. Video is taking off in 2015. Marketers are jumping on the bandwagon to gain organic reach and to cut through social media clutter to engage customers.

Last week Socialbakers released survey data showing that Facebook photo posts now have the lowest organic reach. Video posts are seen twice as often, followed by text status updates. Here is how  Socialbakers’ breakdown of post-based organic reach looked in the fourth quarter of 2014:

socialbakers-organic

Why is this happening?

One reason is clutter. Your customers’ social media feeds are overflowing with content. Marketers are all competing for share of attention and engagement. Video is still less common, so it stands out. And the motion of video (in auto play) catches attention while scrolling. Some marketers are even going back to paper catalogs in the mail to cut through the clutter and integrate with other social media channels.

Another reason is because Facebook, Twitter, Vines, and Instagram are pushing social media marketing video. In 2014 the number of native video posts on Facebook exceeded the number on YouTube. Mark Zuckerberg stated last year that if you look to the future, a lot of content that people will share will be video. Facebook’s algorithm now prioritizes video over photos for display in news feeds. It’s not just Facebook. Twitter is also pushing native video this year.

A third reason is that video is just a better medium for some communications. Explanations, screencasts, and webinars are often more effective ways to tell a story or to show product or service features and benefits. Micro videos via Vines or Instagram may be very effective for a short burst of humor or beauty or amazement.

Social media marketers have historically talked about and striven for video virality. But the data show that after a short viral period engagement goes back to pre-viral levels. I believe the goals should be:

  • match the medium to the message
  • strive for engagement and shareability

If marketers just read the headlines, we would all migrate all future content to video. But that will just shift the social media clutter to video instead of photos. What will we do then to break through the new video clutter? It’s the latest fad, but I would argue to think more about matching the medium to your message. Use video when it makes sense and will help you to not only capture attention but also to engage your audience.

Use video when you need to:

  • explain and demonstrate something
  • do a webinar to go in depth on a subject
  • tell a story
  • show something beautiful
  • share a heartwarming experience of interaction
  • interact with people or animals
  • amaze people with a stunt or feat of adventure

I believe 2015 is the year of social media marketing video. I also predict that many marketers will jump onto the bandwagon blindly. What have your video marketing experiences been so far on social media? What are your plans for 2015?

 

 

facebook ads mafia boss

The Facebook Ads Mafia Shakedown: Pay or Suffer the Consequences

Facebook ads can be a very effective way to gain awareness of potential customers and to engage customers and prospects over time.  It is a critical digital marketing tool for most businesses to establish and nurture profitable customer relationships over time (there’s that definition of marketing again!).  Facebook used to be the village square where people and merchants met freely to exchange information and goods.  On the small island of Kauai where I live we do this at the local Costco.  But Facebook allowed us to do this globally.

The Start of the Shakedown

Ah, the good old days.  But then the Facebook ads mafia decided the village square didn’t have to be free for merchants and businesses.  They could cleverly extort money from them in order to stay in place or else be relegated to the back alleys.  This shakedown scheme began a couple of years ago now.  If you were a business on Facebook back in February 2012, you saw an average organic fan reach of 16% with your posts.  By March of 2014 you saw an average organic fan reach of 6.51%.  (Source: Social@Ogilvy study.)  It was even worse for pages with more than 500 likes.  In other words, if you didn’t pay up, your reach and performance suffered.  If you are a new business developing your social media marketing strategy, be prepared to pay up and pay for advertising to achieve results that were previously free.

Back in 2012 Facebook started changing their algorithm about what would be displayed in News Feeds.  So while you still may see that casserole recipe post from Aunt Mary on a regular basis, you are not seeing all the photos posted by a big box store you follow.  Many businesses have tried increasing the number of posts in order to tread water with the total reach that they previously had.  But is that achieving the desired business result?  Is your objective just to get something in front of a person with your business name associated, or is your business objective for them to do something (click your website, signup for a newsletter, go to your ecommerce site, contact you, etc.).  Most of us would say the latter.  So where it used to matter how many “likes” you had to establish a fan base, now what matters is the cost per desired engagement.  Note that I say “desired engagement” as opposed to Facebook’s “engagement” defined as like, comment, or share.

Engagement in Facebook’s terms means that someone reacted to the photo or status

Note that Facebook’s reported metrics may still not be accurate for either reach or engagement, although they continue to improve.  I know from my own Facebook ads that in auditing some engagements on posts, I found that the person was not at all in my defined target audience.  So there is still plenty of room for improvement.  Your mileage may vary.

What Can You Do?

You really have two primary alternatives:

1. Create extremely engaging content that will be widely shared within your target audience so that Facebook displays your posts more often.

OR

2. Pay up or suffer the consequences – buy ads and pay for boost posts to your specific targeted audience or be sidelined by Facebook

Extremely Engaging Content

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s algorithm takes a large number of factors into consideration when deciding how much to display your content.  But the main factors for News Feed Visibility are:

  • Interest – Has the user expressed interest in you before or your type of business/content?
  • Post performance – How well did this post perform with other users?
  • Creator – How has other content you created before performed with users?
  • Type – Is it a photo, status, video, or other, and does this match the type preferred by this user?
  • Recency – Is it new or stale?
  • and about 100 other factors

If you already have a lot of “likes” then you have an advantage, but no guarantee of success.

Pay Up - Buy Facebook Ads and Boost Posts

If you’re new to the game or you want to do more than just tread water with your fans/prospects/customers, then it’s time to pay up.  But first make sure you are clear on your business objective and on your target audience.  Otherwise you will be wasting money.  Back in December 2014 Facebook announced a new feature of Call to Action buttons on business pages.  This will help move someone to action if they actually visit your Facebook page.  But how many will?  And how many will just look at your post and move on?  So think carefully about your target audience, what post content will engage them, and what desired action they should take as a result?  In my case, having someone “like” my post isn’t very valuable to my business.  I don’t know if that person will do anything else or remember my company of if they just like the photo that I posted.  I want them to come to my web site, learn more, and either sign up for a newsletter to stay in touch or contact us.  It’s good if they like our page as a secondary objective to have some connection to us.   Your objectives may be different in order to grow your business.

Besides having a Facebook page with a Call to Action button and a page full of interesting content, what makes an individual post compelling for someone to take action?

First, you have to capture their attention visually as they scan through a News Feed or sidebar:

  • An eye catching image
  • A video
  • A compelling quote or status update (some people argue that text posts are now cutting through the clutter of picture posts in order to get more attention)

Once you have captured their attention, you need to have some compelling content that causes them to take action, whether that is to like your post, click through to your web site, like your page, or start shopping.  See our related blog post on compelling content for some ideas on how to keep attention once you have grabbed it!

Finally, be sure to create more than one ad to test and measure.  Be prepared to make modifications based on performance metrics.  It is not a “set it and forget it” system.  Monitor your dashboard and be prepared to cancel, revise, or kill ads based on your testing and results.

Do you have a Facebook page that the reach has declined?  Have you done Facebook advertising?  How did it compare to Google Ad Words for you?  What have been the business results?  Please share.

 

digital marketing strategy

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business.  How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy?  What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy?  Should it be traditional marketing?  Should it be online, digital marketing?  Or should it be some combination of the two?

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

The purpose of marketing is to enable and drive sales.  In my many years of experience as a marketing executive, I believe effective marketing starts with an understanding of your target customer’s buying behavior.  Market research and feedback helps you to refine this.  But there are some useful customer purchase models to help organize your thinking and idenitify where you may need to gather further information or do testing.  A classic customer purchase model was the AIDA one:

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action

But the Internet has changed that.  It is no longer sufficient.  A modern customer purchase model that I find useful is:

  • Awareness
  • Research and familiarity
  • Opinion and Shortlist
  • Consideration
  • Purchasing
  • Champion/Repurchase OR Defect/Detract

Think about this with regard to your own buying behavior for different products and services.  For example, I am planning to build a house and need kitchen appliances.  I have some general awareness of appliance brands, but I have become aware of newer ones through ads and web sites and store visits.  I started to research the brands and how they will meet our needs.  I asked people in stores.  They offered a little insight, but I found a lot more insight and information on the Web.  This is a major purchase that we will live with for a long time so I want to make sure we get it right.  On the Web, I can also see customer reviews and lab tests of products to understand what other people have experienced.  I can see video demos of the products being used.  We have formed some opinions and narrowed down the list of brands we are interested in.  Now we’re drilling down on those two brands to consider features, pricing, reliability, style, etc. to decide which ones we will purchase.  Once we purchase and begin to use those products, we will either be satisfied customers who will champion them to others online and offline and eventually repurchase OR we will be dissatisfied customers who will make that known and detract from the brand.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Customer buying behavior has shifted and so should your marketing mix.  Should it be all traditional or all online?  It depends on your business and your customers.  For many businesses the answer may be somewhere in the middle.  But the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) are no longer sufficient.

What are the advantages of online, digital marketing strategy over traditional marketing?

  1. Lower costs –Traditional marketing is expensive.  It takes a lot of people, lead time, and materials.  Trade shows, direct mail, TV or radio ads are all costly.  Digital marketing is much less expensive.  The cost to create and maintain a web site is much lower.  The cost to write a blog or send an email newsletter is minimal. The cost to run PPC ads on Google or Facebook is much less.  The cost to make changes is dramatically less.
  2. Target your message –  Your targeting is limited with traditional marketing.  Many of your tools are broadcast to a wide audience rather than narrowcast to someone getting ready to make a purchase decision.  You can target the right message to the right person and based on where they are in the customer purchase decision process.
  3. Measure ROI – In traditional marketing you are often guessing which marketing elements contributed to return on investment because it would cost too much to find out.  With digital marketing feedback is immediate and measurable.  Analytics give us data on the performance and conversions associated by different online marketing activities.
  4. Change or refine strategy easily – It’s difficult and time consuming to make changes to traditional marketing elements.  Re-designing and re-printing a brochure takes time.  Re-shooting a television ad takes time.  Digital marketing is much faster to test and refine.  You can do A/B testing and get immediate feedback.  You can see where you are spending money with results and without results.  You can stop and/or change things with less effort and shorter lead times.  Real-time feedback and analytics tell you when and how to change your strategy.
  5. Engage prospects longer – Nobody reads a long brochure.  A TV or radio ad is usually 30 seconds.  A trade show may yield a brief conversation.  But online marketing can grab and hold attention.  It can help to start building a relationship with a prospect or reinforce a relationship with an existing customer.  Online, digital marketing is informative.  It is not just PPC ads.  It is educating and informing your audience so they can take the next step in their purchase decision process.  They can interact with your business via text, images, video, chat.  They can see what others have experienced with your business.  They can learn more about the values of your business or how you work behind the scenes.
  6. Be available 24/7 – If I wake up in the middle of the night I can still engage with your business as part of my purchase decision process.  I don’t have to wait for a store to open or a sales person to call.  And the content is long lasting.  A blog post I write this year may be just as valuable to new prospects next year.   Or it can easily be updated to be always accessible over time.
  7. Be less intrusive – Most of us don’t want to be sold on something.  We want to come to our own conclusions.  We value advice and a small set of alternatives that are tailored to our particular needs and wants.  But we don’t like people pushing something to us based on features and functions that we may or may not need.  Online, digital marketing is available when I want it.  It is informative.  It helps me move through my decision process at my pace.

On the island of Kauai we have many businesses that are targeted to visitors.  One of those businesses is selling activities to enjoy while on vacation (ziplines, fishing trips, snorkeling, etc.)  It used to be that visitors almost always arrived and then met in person with a concierge at a hotel or a shop to be told what the offers and recommendations are and to make their purchase decisions.  But that business model has been shifting rapidly.  Now a large proportion of visitors arrive on the island having already researched activities online, reviewed customer reviews, shopped for discounts and promotions, and made a purchase before they ever got here.

Is the answer today all traditional marketing or all digital marketing?  For a startup business in particular industries all digital may be the right answer.  For some more traditional industries, traditional marketing may still dominate overall marketing investment.  But for many businesses the shift is occurring between the two.  You may still need traditional elements for that face to face connection via trade shows and an outside sales force.  It depends on your product/service and your target customers’ buying behaviors.  But chances are your marketing mix will need to shift increasingly toward online, digital marketing.

What do you think?  Have you shifted your marketing mix or is it all traditional or all digital?  Have you seen customer buying behavior changing in your business?  Please share for the benefit of others working on their marketing strategies.

 

 

free website no such thing

There ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Many small businesses looking at web design on Kauai or anywhere else in Hawaii or around the world are finding free website alternatives online.  But what does free really mean?  Are you being smart and economical or are you locking into something with other implications and challenges?  Over 6 million people and businesses have joined Weebly and have set up many more million websites on their platform.  Websiteooltester.com covers the pros and cons of many of the free website providers.  So wouldn’t that be the way to go?  With them or one of their competitors?  Not necessarily.

In economics the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch is used to denote that everything has an opportunity cost.  The phrase was used early on in the U.S. in the days of saloons that offered a “free lunch” if you purchased at least one drink.  It was also used to talk about government corruption.  But in modern times the economist Milton Friedman helped to make the phrase really popular by using it as the title of his 1975 book.

The concept that nothing is free serves to remind us that there is an opportunity cost to everything.  By choosing one investment you have an opportunity cost of what the alternative would have been.  Even if someone does invite you for a free lunch, there may be some other agenda or obligation on your part.  At the very least there is an opportunity cost of the alternative ways that you could have used your time while eating the free lunch.  Your time has value and that value is determined by how you use it.

What does free lunch have to do with a free website?

There is opportunity cost to accepting a free website.  You are choosing a set of parameters, design styles, contracts, and timeframes for a free website that may sound good in the short term, but have other costs.  After all, who doesn’t want free?  You’re starting a new small business and you’re looking to do everything economically.  However, being economical may not automatically mean taking the free alternative.

What are some of the advantages of the free website?

  • It’s free! (well, mostly anyway)
  • The tools are simple and easy to use
  • It’s fast to do
  • You can do it yourself
  • The complexity of web design tools, domain names and web hosting are masked to you
  • There are a lot of pre-loaded designs available
  • The sites are large and growing and adding features over time

What to look out for with free website providers

  • Is the domain name registered in your name?  Can you take it with you?
  • Are you obligated/required to purchase other services from the free website provider?
  • How long is the hosting contract with the free provider?
  • Is the free part limited to a certain time period?
  • Will they display ads on your site?  Will you be able to control the type and placement?
  • Will they add other external links to your site?
  • What level of support do they provide and in your time zone?
  • Do they provide any system availability guarantees?
  • Do they run regular backups of your site in case of a crash?
  • Do they require a setup fee or other admin fee?
  • Do they charge for monthly hosting and is it a higher fee than the industry average?
  • If you decide to switch later to a custom site can you take the site with you and transfer it to another host?
  • They may say they will submit your site to search engines, but are there any tools or guidelines to optimize your site for search engines to rank highly?
  • Do they provide a branded email address with your domain or is that an additional charge?
  • How much space do they provide?  How expensive will it be to upgrade if your business grows?
  • You have access only to the features they provide
  • There are limits to what you can customize to your business
  • What happens to your site if the company is acquired or goes out of business?

You may be thinking I’ll start out with this free website and then switch to a custom one later.  That may not be possible to do or it may be costly.  You may be disappointed when you are not showing up in search engine rankings, but another web designer can’t help you without building a new website.

Is a free website good marketing?

Free websites continue to improve and add features, but it may still be apparent to your prospective customers that it is a free website.  How serious are you about your business?  Do you look like a business that is investing to succeed?  Or do you look like thousands of other Weebly sites who have chosen the same design template?

Your web site is one of the key marketing tools to reach your new and existing customers.  Are you able to provide compelling content in a way that makes sense to them and that reflects the unqueness of your company?

If upfront cost is the issue, you may be able to work with your web designer or digital marketing partner to bundle the cost into a year long contract that could include web hosting or other social media services.  If they are open to that alternative, you may be able to spread part or all of the upfront cost over a longer contract with them.  You may want to consider alternatives other than just looking at the upfront price and making that your sole decision criterion.

After all, there ain’t no such thing as a free website!

 

 

 

Aulii Luau dancers at Kauai Chamber of Commerce

Kauai Chamber of Commerce Case Study

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting.  I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community.  There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number of industries.

As a new member I had a display table to do some traditional event marketing with other local businesses.  It was great to meet new people and to learn about their business ventures.  I was in between the dancers from ‘Auli’i Lu’au and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas.  While I focus now on digital, online marketing, I have also done a lot of traditional marketing in my prior roles in technology and consulting companies.  You may have a business where you can rely solely on digital marketing, but many businesses still need a mix of both.  As a business and marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend a mix if it were the right fit.  There is still a huge value to connect with others in your own industry as well as in others and to form those relationships both in person and online.

One of the things that I love about being located on the island of Kauai is the common view that we are all in this canoe together.  The canoe is such an important part of Hawaiian history and culture.  It is such a powerful symbol to me that when we row and steer in a common direction we all reach our destination faster and safer.  This is part of the culture and values of Kauai that drew me to locate here.  For the canoe to move forward, we need to work together.  All as one.  One canoe, one ohana, one community. And I believe it is a strong value to guide our business interactions.

KaiKini Case Study of Traditional and Digital Marketing

In learning about the business ventures of others based here, I was especially struck by the story of the founder and CEO of KaiKini Bikinis.  She shared with me how she started with an idea and vision and acquired the skills she needed along the way.  She envisioned designing and making bikinis in her unique style and optimized for wear while being active.  She did not know how to sew, but she bought some commercial sewing machines, experimented, and taught herself to not only design but also to manufacture the pieces.  She used traditional marketing and selling to get some local stores to carry her pieces as part of starting her business.  She also focused on digital marketing and began social media marketing to engage her customers and to gain further visibility.  She got additional retailers on other islands to stock her products.  As the business started to grow, she hired others to train to sew.  And she taught herself to set up a website.  She now has several employees and continues to grow her business as a manufacturer and wholesaler while also selling directly worldwide via her ecommerce website at kaikini.com.  She uses blogs and social media marketing as well as Google Adwords PPC ads in her digital marketing mix.  A consultant manages her PPC ads for her so she can devote her time to other business initiatives.  She uses BigCommerce as her web hosting and tools provider.  What an inspiration that she has built a business to market and sell Hawaiian-made products all over the world.  And the digital marketing and sales are a key growth area of her business!

What a great evening with the Kauai Chamber of Commerce!

mobile first

Mobile First!

Today it is about being mobile first!  If people cannot access your content easily and clearly on mobile devices, you are missing the boat!  This is true all over, but on the island of Kauai, this can be a literal statement.  I was recently chatting with the owner of a rental shop near the port where cruise ships come in.  He was telling me that he had developed a web site, but he had not thought about it being mobile first.  But his target customers all arrive with mobile devices.  He said, “I see them coming off the ship all looking at their smartphone or tablets.”  The same is true of nearby hotel and timeshare visitors.

Nielson reports that over the past year, the average consumer spent nearly seven hours more per month with their mobile phones, and more than 70% of mobile users use smartphones.

Mobile first email marketing

According to Movable Ink’s Q1 2014 US Consumer Device Preference Report email opens continue to migrate away from the desktop.  In fact, two thirds of emails are opened on a mobile device.   Within that, the tablet share of email opens continues to grow.

Movable Ink said that 66 percent of emails were opened on either a smartphone (47.2 percent) or tablet (18.5 percent) in Q1 2014. That’s up slightly from the 65 percent in Q4. By contrast PC email opens were down to 34 percent.

What an opportunity for online, digital marketing.  This means that your email reaches your target audience anytime and anyplace.  Think about that.  But also think about how it must be designed for the customer on the go.  If you don’t grab him/her with the title and the first five lines of your email, they will move on to the next one.   It has to be attention grabbing, get quickly to the value for your customer, and then to the call to action.  In a previous role, I wrote many such emails to be used by the salespeople in our company.  Many of them were surprised that they got a quick response from a senior executive.  It was because it was targeted at them, designed to be read on a mobile device, with a clearly stated value proposition and an easy call to action.

Mobile First Blogs

Don’t be surprised if mobile devices are soon the primary way that people read your blog posts.  You can use Google Analytics to see how they are being accessed today and what the trend line is for mobile devices for your particular site.  Have you looked at and thought about how someone will access your blog from a mobile device?  Do your sharing icons work on the mobile device?  Can users comment?  Is there far too much scrolling to the right required?

The best way to find out is to test your site on a variety of devices. But Google also provides a website called Make Your Website Work Across Multiple Devices which helps you test your mobile website for mobile compatibility.  There is also a link to their PageSpeed Insights tool where you can test performance on mobile and desktop devices and get suggestions for improvement.

Mobile First Design

How do you get mobile first design?  If you are designing a new web site, make sure your developer is enabling responsive design.  There are many tools and themes available now to automatically enable web sites to be responsive to mobile devices and to optimize the display and performance.  If you have an existing web site that is not designed for mobile, you have a few choices:

  • Do nothing – your customers will have to enlarge and scroll on a mobile device
  • Re-design to be responsive – if your web site is a few years old, it may be due for a re-design anyway
  • Create a separate mobile site – you could have a separate mobile site, but then you have to maintain two sites

Mobile First Features

The rise in use of mobile devices also opens new opportunities to think about exploiting unique features of those devices.  A common example is being able to link to mobile turn-by-turn directions.  Not only can they find your business online, their device can guide them to you.  They can touch the screen and immediately call or email you.  They can check back in with you during the day and at different locations.  You may also want to make use of location awareness to push certain information or promotions.  And mobile devices are also good for social media integration.  Making it easy to share on social media directly from a mobile device may increase your reach.

So it really is a new world.  I now carry the Internet in my pocket via my smartphone.  When I travel, I stay connected with my tablet to use in the airport, on the plane, and in my hotel room.  I may search for information about a business anytime and anywhere that I have a connection.  If you are not mobile first, you are missing the boat! (maybe literally!)

 

 

Kauai small business landmark Na Pali coast

Does a Kauai small business need social media marketing?

I have heard the question of whether a Kauai small business needs social media marketing.  On the island of Kauai we have a small town culture.  People take time to talk story with each other.  People know people who know people.  There are a lot of word of mouth business referrals.  But there are also many businesses whose target customers include not only locals, but also visitors.  Small businesses here and in other parts of the world are wondering what to do about social media marketing and whether it is worth the time and effort.  As a small business owner your goal should not be excellence at social media.  Your goal should be to increase your business by picking and choosing some social media marketing that will reach your customers and prospects cost effectively.  You could get social media training to do it yourself or you could hire someone to write and manage marketing content for you.

Why Kauai small business social media marketing matters

  • Gain awareness of your target audience, whether locals, transplants, or visitors: People increasingly look for information online and on the go.  There are local Facebook groups for causes and for rants and raves.  There are locals, transplants, and visitors not only searching the web, but also searching social media for Kauai information, products, and services.  Kauai small business is fortunate to have many repeat visitors.  What are you doing to stay in touch with them and make sure they do business with you on their next visit?  What are you doing to encourage them to share information about your business with friends and neighbors who may also visit sometime?   Social media is another place to find out about your small business and to stay connected over time.  It is also a fast and affordable place to do A/B testing of content to see what your target customers responds to most and where they do it from.
  • Drive traffic to your web site:  Having a web site is a basic start for online marketing.  Getting your web site noticed, though, is the goal for attracting new business.  Social media visibility and sharing useful content for your target audience can help to drive people to your web site for more information and to take action.  Or it may cause their friends and neighbors to become aware of your web site by seeing a “like” or share.
  • Capture contact info for email marketing and newsletters:  Sharing interesting content in social media may be the hook to get someone interested in your Kauai small business.  You now have a reason for them to give you their contact info and to sign up for email updates or a newsletter.  They may become aware of your blog posts and updated useful content that will cause them to come to your web site and fill out a form to contact you.  Yes, it’s good to have this on your web site.  But you can use social media to interest people in contacting you.
  • Induce trial of your product or service:  In addition to generating awareness through social media, you may also be able to induce a trial of your product or service.  Providing useful, interesting content can cause them to take action to request more information or to visit your shop.  You might also offer a special promotion on social media for a free sample at a certain time that creates an urgency and excitement to be shared with other friends and neighbors.
  • Foster customer relationships and repeat business:  Social media marketing is also a great way to retain customers, to deepen customer relationships, and re-inforce their buying behavior with you.  We feel proud as consumers when we see an ad or promotion for a brand that we use and with which we have a positive relationship.  Your customers will feel a much stronger connection to your business by also knowing more about you, your suppliers, your employees, your locations, etc.  We all like a peak behind the scenes and to feel like we are insider.
  • Create social media referrals in addition to word of mouth referrals:  This is a real strength of social media marketing.  Humorous, emotional, or just useful content doesn’t have to go viral to benefit your business.  But having your customers’ friends and contacts seeing and hearing about your brand is an online word of mouth that can spread much faster and certainly much wider than just talking story at the farmer’s market or other local gathering spot.  What are the chances that your small business will come up in conversation?  But if there is useful or interesting information on social media, that can be seen by or shared with others.

How a Kauai small business can get started

Social media marketing for a Kauai small business takes some time and effort.  But you don’t have to be everywhere.  Work with an advisor to pick and choose the platforms that make the most sense for your target customers.  Focus on one or a few.  Don’t try to be an expert on every social media platform.  Focus on the content to be interesting, humorous, emotional, useful (see our other blog posts on compelling content).  It’s not about selling.  It’s about communicating, gaining awareness, inducing trial, and fostering customer relationships.  Test to see what works and to focus your efforts on those that produce real results to grow your business.

So if you are a Kauai small business, you can likely survive without social media marketing, but will you thrive?

 

social media marketing

Couldn’t I do social media marketing and a web site myself?

You may be looking at our site and wondering if you could do all this yourself.  Can’t anyone do online and social media marketing?  The answer is yes.  There is nothing magic here.  It is not rocket science.  But will you or should you do it yourself?  It’s

  • time consuming
  • requires learning new skills
  • needs new tools
  • is easy to forget or de-prioritze

 

Marketing strategy

You know the most about your business.  You’re the one who runs it every day.  You may know the most about your current and potential customers.  You can talk to your own customers and prospects to understand their buying behavior and how they search and use information online related to your product or service.  You can research and monitor your competitors online.  You can create your own logo and brand identity or hire a graphic designer to assist.  You can research marketing best practices and new technologies.  It takes time.  It may take even more time until you have gained some experience.

You could use a soup to nuts digital marketing platform, like HubSpot.  It will cost you more money, but it will provide all the tools and already has them integrated.  We looked at HubSpot for our business, but thought we could be more economical, have more flexibility, and do our own integration to achieve a higher return on investment.   Many small and medium-sized businesses are going this direction for digital marketing.  It’s not cheap and it will take time.  You will be locked into their tools and integration platform, but it may easier and faster to do it this way.  And you have complete control of what or what isn’t done.

Web site

Yes, you can develop a web site.  There are tools available now to do a simple web site using drag and drop.  It will get you a web site, but will it communicate in the way your audience looks for information?  Will it lock you into using one particular company’s technology?  Are they stable and well-established or are they a start-up that may disappear?

We use WordPress to develop a web site.  You could install and learn it, too.  It’s the most popular web site development tool.  You could take a class on it.  It will still take some trial and error to learn the ins and outs.  And there are lots of options, like themes and plugins to consider and choose as part of your design.   You will also have to register a domain name, select a web hosting service, and install whatever web design tool you choose.

You can choose the topics and write/edit your own blog posts.  You can keep your site up to date both with the latest technology updates and compelling content.

You can also learn and do SEO (search engine optimization).

Email newsletters

You can also do this on your own.  You will need to manage your own email list.  You will need a design for your newsletters.  You will need to write and edit.   You could use a service for this, like Constant Contact.

Social media marketing

You can decide which social media platforms you want to use for your customers.  You can write, schedule, and post compelling updates.  You can decide whether or not to run ads on social media.  You can create and post ads and monitor their results.  It just takes getting familiar with each platform, best practices for using it, etc.  You can also get a tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help manage and monitor your social media marketing.  We use Hootsuite so that we can schedule posts across multiple social media sites at once.

Analytics

You can set up Google tracking code for your web site and use Google Analytics to analyze its performance (and performance of your social media to drive web site traffic)  relative to your marketing strategy.  You can get and monitor analytics for ads placed on social media sites.  It’s all available online.  You can read about it or take a course.  It takes some time and some analytical skills.

 

So yes, you can do all this digital marketing stuff yourself.  Do you have the skills or the time to acquire the skills?  Is it where you want to use your management time and creativity?

online marketing

What is Online Marketing? Inbound? Digital? Content?

When I moved from the mainland to Kauai, I needed to find new resources to assist me.  I didn’t listen to broadcast ads or read a newspaper.  I went online and searched for information.  In the process of searching for information, I formed impressions of service providers based on what I was learning from them.  I also was looking for providers who had simple, well laid out web sites, with up to date information.  Not only did I search the worldwide web, I also searched on Facebook for local businesses.  I “liked” some that I found interesting.  I signed up for email newsletters.  I read blogs and learned a great deal that influenced how I planned my move and possible vendors for me to contact that would fit my needs.

It’s a new world for marketing your business. Consumer and business behavior is evolving to be much more like my personal experience above.  Will your potential customers find you and be compelled to engage with you?  Will your online, digital content show up high in their searches?  Will your existing customers feel that they have an ongoing relationship with you, recommend you to others, and do more business with you over time?

If you are presenting no online information or stale, out of date information, I would not probably contact you.  I would look to your competitors who provide me with information and insight and who show they want to have an ongoing relationship.

If you already have a Web site for your business, that’s great.  Is it easy to find information?  Is it regularly updated?  Do you have a blog that provides background, context, information, and insight?  Are you educating your audience, not just selling to them?  It’s a new model of marketing that goes by different names such as online marketing, digital marketing, and inbound marketing.  It’s not just a technology project. It’s a new way of engaging prospects and customers for your unique business.

Layout mode
Predefined Skins
Custom Colors
Choose your skin color
Patterns Background
Images Background