Simple Reasons Why Your Social Media Marketing Fails

I heard from a business person last week telling me she has done social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and listed her products on a very large eCommerce site, but has seen no results. She said, “I’ve tried lots of things, but nothing is working.”

You may be like her or you may be in the group of people who used to do very well on Facebook, but not anymore. You were posting updates and interacting with your audience. New people were becoming aware of your business. People were sending you messages and coming by to buy products or services. But not any more. You are struggling to reach the people who liked your page. Your sales directly attributable to Facebook have declined. You’re not alone.

In my experience there are some simple reasons why your social media marketing is failing in today’s environment. Here are the most common, along with some things you can do about them:

Failing to segment the market and target your specific audiences. You may be doing what I call “spray and pray marketing.” You throw stuff out at everybody and hope that something sticks. You are spending time, effort, and money with low or non-existent results. Success in marketing, especially social media marketing, is to segment the market and create content to meet the needs and desires of each. Social media is “new,” but timeless principals of marketing are not.
Not creating buyer personas. Personas of your typical buyers in each market segment should drive the social media platforms, content, tone, images, ads, and value propositions to communicate with them. It is also the basis for very targeted advertising on social media to augment your organic reach.
Spreading across too many platforms or the wrong platform. In the evolution of social media we are seeing some maturation and segmentation. If you are only using Facebook or Twitter, you may be missing the platform where your target audience spends its most time and engagement. If you are only using Instagram, you may be missing audiences who only use Facebook or LinkedIn. But trying to be everywhere can also backfire. Your content and formats either won’t be optimized or you will spend an excessive amount of time posting natively to each platform.
Focusing on selling something immediately from social media. Marketing is about meeting customers needs profitably over time. I am incredibly annoyed when someone asks me to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately sends me a sales pitch. They know nothing about me or my business. I have expressed no interest in their product or service. They have ruined a potential future business relationship with me by jumping into sales mode. If you have sales people and they are doing this, stop them! They are hurting your business, not helping it.
Driving people to a landing page or web site that is not mobile friendly. As I have blogged before, mobile is where it’s at now. If people go to a page or site they can’t easily read on their mobile device, you have lost them as a potential customer.
Not promoting discovery of your content. You are not using the right hashtags on platforms where they should be used. Or you are using irrelevant hashtags. Or you are not doing keyword research for your personas and creating content that highlights those keywords. Or you are not reaching out to others and engaging on social media so that they may also come and look at your content.
Relying on organic reach. I’ve blogged about this previously. Facebook is now pay to play for businesses. Other social media platforms are moving that direction as they plan and experiment with ways to monetize their users. You must at a minimum pay Facebook to occasionally boost key content to your followers. And you should be considering highly targeted ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You still have tremendous opportunity for your content to show up between photos of friends and family, but you will have to pay for that privilege to go beyond 2-6% of your followers.
Not being social. The mantra at Social Media Marketing World this year was, “Don’t be on social media. Be social!” Engage with your followers. Ask them questions. Thank them for following you. Reply promptly to comments or questions from them. Use a variety of posts. Remember that people are on social media to stay connected, be entertained, and be informed. They are not there for a hard sales pitch.
Not being visual enough. The posts with the highest engagement are photos and videos. I’m still amazed at how many tweets I see on Twitter without an attached photo. Your content is much more likely to be attention grabbing if you have an image or video. Great images are keys to success on both Instagram and Pinterest.
Driving traffic to a web site without an email opt-in or to a landing page that is not optimized. Despite the hype around social media, the data show that email marketing is still the most effective way to deliver personalized marketing to people over time. They are giving you permission to get to know you better even if they are not ready to purchase from you right now. They are more likely to look at your email after opting in than they are to see your social media posts.
Ignoring data analysis, testing, and adjustment. Digital marketing is unique in being able to give you a wealth of data about what is working, what is not, and whether it is cost effective. It is also fairly easy to do A/B testing. Conversion pixels are making it better to track exactly what converts and what doesn’t. Watch the data. Stop what doesn’t work and do more of what does. There is also research data available online to guide you in areas such as highest converting content, highest converting landing pages, social media post types with the most engagement, best times to post on different platforms to maximize engagement, etc. Your mileage may vary, but this data points to useful starting points so you don’t waste a lot of time and effort. And if you have a personal Pinterest account, convert it to a business account so you get data analytics.

Social media expertise is not the same as marketing expertise. Good marketing is still good marketing. But social media gives us new, cost effective ways to target audiences to drive our marketing objectives. Social media gives us some new tools and communication methods. Social media platforms will continue to evolve and change as more commercial, business features are added.

Have you identified any other reasons why your social media marketing hasn’t worked? Are any of these the reason your social media marketing is failing to produce the desired results?

Help all of us learn more by sharing in comments.

Drive More Business with Mobile Local Search Marketing

As some of you know I live on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Our largest industry is tourism. Every day we have more than 23,000 visitors with mobile devices looking for local business information. On top of that we have daily visitors streaming off cruise ships with their mobile devices. And we have 65,000 full-time residents that need to find information about local goods and services. After all, you can’t just drive off the island to buy something! These consumers are increasingly using mobile local search to find information. And people searching on a mobile device are closer to a purchase and more likely to take action than with traditional desktop searches.

Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing are Converging

It’s imperative for most of the local businesses that I serve to be optimized for both mobile and local search. But it’s not just for local, small businesses on my island. Large brands such as Ace Hardware in the U.S. and Argos in the U.K. are using mobile combined with local search marketing to drive customers into their stores. It’s no longer a nice-to-have. Mobile Local Search Marketing is a must-have!

Google has reported that more than 50% of searches are now done on mobile devices. On-the-go consumers are looking for local information.

52% of searches on smartphones are done in the car or away from home and work (source: Thrive Analytics)
60% of consumers use a smartphone while shopping and this number is growing over time (source: Thrive Analytics)
37% of all consumers use mobile search to look for local products and services, but the percentages are much, much higher for Gen X and Y consumers (source: Thrive Analytics)
70% of consumers prefer a mobile website over a mobile app for local information (source: LSA Local Media Tracking Study 2014)
56% of smartphone searches on the go or in a store have local intent (source: Google)
63% of consumers use multiple devices to find a local business and 79% of them are smartphone users and 81% are tablet owners (source: comScore study)
24% of local searches done via a mobile app are done through Facebook (they are number two behind Google Maps – source: comScore study)

The data are compelling. These are trends that will continue to increase.

How to Optimize for Converged Mobile Local Search Marketing

So how do you optimize for Mobile Local Search Marketing? I’ve blogged before about Mobile First Marketing and about Mobile Meltdown Day (that some other bloggers have also called Mobilegeddon!) Those posts also still apply here. But let’s look specifically at some things your business can do to be found on the first screen of a local search on a mobile device:

Have a mobile friendly web site that passes Google’s test – If your web site on a smartphone requires someone to scroll left and right or to pinch and zoom to be able to read something, then you need to update your web site now. As of April 21, 2015, Google started penalizing you in mobile search ranking.
Ensure your Google My Business listing is up to date – If you haven’t registered on Google My Business, do it! If you have, make sure information is up to date and that your business name, address, and phone number are consistent with other places you are listed on the Web. Having a Google My Business listing gives you a better mobile local search position and gives you a listing in Google Maps.
Include images in Google My Business – Make it easy for consumers to identify you and your products/services
Make location prominent on your web site – Have your location in relevant places such as title tags, description, and in your content
Ensure images on your web site are compressed and consolidated – Load time for your site is important, so make sure your images are optimized.
Get listed on other relevant business directories – Get a profile on Yelp, Yahoo, Bing Local, other local directories, plus directories relevant to your industry
Make sure your NAP (name, address, phone) are consistent everywhere on the Web – Google wants to know you are real, accurate, valuable and nearby to its customers in search results
Get reviews and recommendations – Reviews on Google and Yelp will also help your mobile local search ranking (make sure they’re positive!)
Create local content in your blog – Local content in your blog will also help to position you for mobile local search
Create a business Facebook page – For consumers doing mobile local search in the Facebook mobile app, be sure you have a business page with name, address, and phone number

These are some highlights for optimizing for mobile local search, but for a very detailed list of factors and weights specific to Google local search ranking take a look at Moz’s 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors.

Besides the basics, there are some other things you may want to consider to increase the amount of business you get from mobile local search. It may also be a good idea to have a click to call button so people can easily reach you. And you may want to consider other geolocation features that attract people who are nearby.

You may also want to consider PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on mobile devices. These ads typically display at the top or bottom of the screen. If you are not highly optimized for mobile local search, this can be a way to make your business visible on the first screen. And if you are optimized, you could potentially have your business displayed three times on the first screen:

Google My Business listing
Mobile Local Search results
PPC ad

Are you optimized for mobile, but not for local search? Are you optimized for local, but not mobile search? Or are you not optimized for either? An investment in mobile local search, possibly combined with PPC mobile ads, will help today’s consumer to find you. Because they are closer to an action or purchase decision than a desktop searcher, this is an investment that will drive real business results.

What do you think? What have you done with local and mobile search optimization? What have you learned? Are there other tips you would share?

Aspiring Women: 14 Pinterest Marketing Best Practices

Pinterest recently completed another round of funding that values the company at $11B. This is a hefty valuation for a startup that only began selling display ads in January. But growth and demographics have been very attractive. It had been a U.S. growth story, but the number of users outside the U.S. grew more than 135% in 2014.

Pinterest outperforms Twitter and LinkedIn in the time spent on each network. Bing includes Pinterest images in search results. Pinterest has become an important global marketing social media platform.

This is where women go to explore, express, and share their aspirations. 80-85% of users are women and this has been holding steady as the platform grows. 92% of all pins are posted by women. Also, almost half of Pinterest activity happens on tablets.

And Pinterest is one of the fastest growing platforms among millenials. While the average age of users is 40, this is the place to be to reach the desirable group of women buyers who are under 40.

The most pinned categories by women include:

Food and drink
DIY and crafts
Home decor
Holidays and events

So what are some Pinterest marketing best practices to optimize your investment?

Create and name boards using aspirational language of your target audience – Don’t just create a board for each of your products or product categories. Post interesting content. Use aspirational titles like Luxury Spa Bathroom or Dream South Pacific Vacation or Easy Ways to Delight Your Family that will match the searches and aspirations of your target users.
Show a human side to your company – Make it personal. Create a board about your team or your company values and culture.
Use unique images that will capture your audience’s attention – As the user scans over images, make sure yours stand out and catch the eye.
Find the images that capture the most attention and make them cover images for your boards – As you collect data about the most pinned items, look at which images are gaining the most attention and use them as covers for your board.
Don’t push sales, but do include a call to action in your Pins and link back to further information – Users don’t want a product sales pitch. They want interesting content. But be sure to have a link for further information that they can click.
Pin video and audio – 2015 is the year of video on social media. Try some video Pins to capture attention and to show a 3D view or further explanation.
Use “Pin It” and “On Hover Pin It” buttons– with a few lines of code from Pinterest inserted on your web site, users on your site can pin or hover over your images and easily share them on Pinterest. Pinterest provides the Javascript to do this easily.
Add context with Rich Pins – Add additional information to pins for apps, recipes, articles, movies, products, and places. For example, a place pin can include extra information like a map, address, and phone number.
Use hashtags – Hashtags can help you be found in searches, but limit yourself to one or two key ones. Don’t overdo it.
Be social – After all, it is social media. Be responsive and show appreciation to others. Reach out to others to follow them and comment.
Use Pinterest Analytics – Look at the data for which of your pins are most engaging. The images with the most re-pins and clicks are the ones to use for the cover of your boards. This also tells you where to put time and effort for creating new pins.
Join Group Boards – Participate in Groups, but don’t just self-promote. Too much of that will be a turn off. For help with which Groups to join, Pingroupie is a tool that can help to search and sort groups.
Run a contest to generate some buzz – A Pinterest contest can help draw attention and sharing.
Promote Pins with pay per click advertising – Pick pins to promote, specify a target audience, and pay per click for users that click through to your web site.

Don’t forget a couple of other marketing best practices:

You can use Pinterest for competitive research. What are your competitors posting and getting engagement with? How can you improve your value proposition and differentiation?
Cross-promote between Pinterest, your web site, and other social media platforms. Drive complementary engagement across the platforms where your audience can learn more, share more, or take action.

Are you marketing on Pinterest? Do you agree with these best practices? Have you found other Pinterest marketing best practices?

You Know Your Web Site Design is Outdated if. . .

Is your web site design outdated? In the old days, we “Let our fingers do the walking.” The phone book was the go-to place for finding what we wanted so far as goods and services. Today customers don’t normally opt for the phone book when they are looking for goods and services. If you’re like most businesses out there, your website is likely the first point of contact for customers seeking your services.

What is the first impression of your business? What do your potential customers see when they land on your URL? Is your website contemporary and modern or does it provide a dated look that doesn’t show you or your business off in your best light?

Worse still, does it load in several minutes instead of several seconds? If it does then you’ve got to do something to change it all.

Take a long look at your website. Here are a few ways to determine whether or not your website might need a little renovation to be appealing to your customers?

Is your information outdated? If you’re showcasing the employee of the month from 15 years ago, it may be time for an update. If there are staff members on the staff pages whose retirement party you attended 10 years ago, it’s probably time to redesign and while you’re at it, get some updated content to replace the slightly moldy stuff that you’re currently showing to your visitors.

Do you have blinking links or scrolling text? While done in small amounts, it can be effective, the old school sites from the mid nineties offered blinking text, animated images and text that scrolled backward and forward across the site. If there’s enough blinking on your site to bring on an epileptic attack, it’s time for an upgrade. There’s nothing more certain to turn off visitors than an old and obviously outdated website.

Are you showing a splash page? You know your web site design is outdated if you’ve got a splash page as your opening credit. If you’ve got the old school look of a logo and a single page telling your visitors to click here, it’s well past time for an update. Those are one of the best ways to prove you’re a well dated company who has neglected your website. In addition, Google tends to frown on splash pages or doorway pages, so you’re probably not doing as well in search as you could be if you spent some time to update and speed up your website.

Do all of your in-site links tell your visitors to “Click here to. . .” If that’s the case you’re using a 90s method that is not the best way to accomplish what you want from your website. The website links today offer information about the pages that you’re going to be visiting or they offer anchor text. Click here is a sure sign of an outdated page that needs a revision.

Is your entire site built in flash? Do you have an entire website built in flash technology? A few years ago, full sites created in flash were the be all and end all. Today we tend toward easier and faster sites such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. These are easier to update and load more rapidly. If you’re using an all flash website, flash is difficult to read so the odds are good that your customers are waiting for the site to load and you’re lagging in search. Time for an update to something a little more modern.

Are you sporting a custom visitor counter? While a visitor counter was a wonderful thing in the old days, today they are considered amateur night. Counting our visitors is considered a private thing and we do it using analytics or other methods that aren’t quite as public as the traditional digital watch style visitor’s counter displayed proudly on every page. If you’ve got one on a new site, get rid of it. If you’ve got one on an old site, get a quote on a new site. Chances are that you need one.

Last but certainly not least, are you using coding that hasn’t been in use since Homer was a pup? If you’re using fortran, basic or html to create the pages of your site, there’ s a better way for both you and your customers. Getting an updated web site design means that your customers are going to have a better, faster and more modern site that will give them a much better experience. Make it sleek, make it clean, and make it easy to use.

An updated web site design is going to help you to rank better, to draw in more visitors and to bring you a great return on the investment. If you’ve kept the website that you have more than two years, it’s well past time for an update. Take a look at all of the great new designs and themes that are out there and pick one… and hurry.

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?

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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!)

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?

Tag Archives: analytics