How to Identify Productive Marketing Channels

The biggest challenge in running a profitable business is discerning who to market your product to. A company that I worked for over the summer, Call Tracking Metrics, has developed software that makes online and offline promotional tracking ridiculously simple. They accomplish this feat through online and offline custom source tracking.

What is online and offline promotional source tracking? Lets say your business launches the same ad on three radio stations, two television channels, Facebook, and a Google display ad. With Call Tracking Metrics, each advertisement would be assigned a unique phone number, seven in this case, each redirecting the customer back to your business’ actual phone number. Now every time someone calls using the number shown on the TV ad, Call Tracking Metrics generates and stores data for that call. You can review all the data generated from your phone calls through the custom reports created by Call Tracking Metrics and decide which marketing channels are generating the most traffic.  This allows you to maximize the efficiency of your marketing budget by cutting the costs of unproductive ads.

This is only the first step in the process of determining the real ROI generated through social media in combination with traditional marketing methods. There is a whole world out there that is waiting to be tapped if someone could just figure out how to do it. Quantifying the amount of money that the implementation of social media marketing brings into a business has never been done, this is only the tip of the very lucrative iceberg in that process.

"Everyone Has Klout!"

These days social standing is a big deal. It matters a lot what kind of car you drive, where you live, where your kids go to school. Something that drives a lot of the people in our society today is the 'Keeping up with the Jones' mentality. The competition that propels us to work harder than the guy next door in order to be recognized in some regard. Today a company named 'Klout' has recognized that drive and brought forth a product that is used to measure each person's 'worth' on social media. The entire score is out of 100, so if a person is veiwed as a valuable producer of great content that is connected within social media then their score will tend to be pretty high. These people are generally celebrities or experts in a specific field such as SEO.

For most of us our Klout score is never gonna reach above 55 or 60. The highest i have ever gotten was 49. To increase your score it simply takes the right kind of influence. Things such as retweets, mentions, increase in followers, active production of quality content (NOT SPAM!), are all things that can dramatically help your score rise. Things like excessive tweets about useless information, or asking for retweets from famous people, or just letting everyone know things about your life that no one should ever know, "Just trimmed my toe nails, man those things were getting long," should never find their way on to your feed. It doesn't increase your followership which sure doesn't help your Klout score!

So what is the aim of Klout? In my opinion it is a very useful check of your own presence on social media. It provides the answers to the questions like does anyone actually read what i'm writing or am i just tweeting into oblivion? Advances like these are what help create better metrics that enable companies to track the success of individual ad campaigns. Klout is a stepping stone to creating an easier measure of progress for companies and individuals and should be used in that manner. The real question is will it stand the test of time... what do you think?

SEO, You Are Now Entering The Twilight Zone...

Only a few years ago the no one had any idea what SEO was, it was an ambiguous term that had not been brought into the spotlight. Still today for a vast majority this term means little more than 'something to do with Facebook marketing or corporate twitter campaigns,' but for an ever increasing number of people SEO is a way of life.

For my part, I encountered SEO over the summer during my internship with a company named Captico, which specializes in bring simple solutions in marketing optimization to local and international businesses. While i was there we used a platform called SEOmoz in order to check the efficiency of the tasks we were preforming for these companies, along with keeping up to date on all the techniques and run arounds used to bring companies page rankings high on google. A few years ago companies such as this were not a thought in anyone's mind and now they are springing up everywhere. Not only are there new SEO 'Specialists' companies popping up everywhere but the profit margin on creating a successful version of one of these companies is huge! The IT sector of the business world is booming because of this entire new field that has been born from internet marketing. There are going to be new specific job fields created entirely within this new sector as marketing moves closer to complete digitalization. SEO is currently the thing of the future but how long will it be before people will remember SEO as a thing of the past?

The advances within internet marketing are moving faster today than ever before, Universities are just now catching up to the idea of 'Social Media Marketing' but how long will it be until there are degrees in SEO. So what does this mean to you? well if you are reading this blog you're probably my mom or dad so in that case not very much, but if you are a college student like me than you need to recognize the way the world is moving. Having just a basic marketing degree and trying to find a job in the real world is similar the the needle in a hair stack metaphor. Expand your mind to these new concepts, learn SEO and never stop relearning it because what it is today will be a thing of the past tomorrow.

Lessons Learned through Big Name Social Media Mistakes. 3 Part Series- Case 3

3. Honda’s Secret Agent

The Story: Honda took to advertising through social media in late 2009 with the release of their Crosstour CUV (crossover utility vehicle). They created a Facebook fan page for the vehicle and then released several photos in an attempt to introduce this new car into their fleet. What they received in return was a slew of negative feedback from less-than-impressed fans. In response to all of this feedback, Eddie Okubo decided to write a comment stating his positive view of the car – how he found it novel and useful. (See image to left – taken from CNN Money) The only problem was he did not disclose the fact that he was the manager of ‘Product Planning’ for Honda, and more importantly, participated in the development of this vehicle. Needless to say his opinion was skewed.

The Repercussions: Within two minutes of his posting, Okubo was being outed in comments on the page. People even linked to his LinkedIn profile and called him out on his purposeful lack of disclosing who he was. Honda ended up deleting his comment and releasing a press statement diverting attention from his comment stating there would be better pictures of the vehicle out soon.

Lesson Learned:

1. Never let the success of a product be overshadowed or influenced by your own personal ego. Okubo thought it was about him and forgot that he represented a brand. As marketers, it is not our job to try to boost our own self-image and ego through our jobs; we are supposed to boost the image of our product and brand, always. The moment this is forgotten is the moment a mistake of huge proportion can be made. Okubo could have simply disclosed his position at Honda and stated his positive comment and it would have been taken for what it was worth, but instead he tried to deceive to create positive feedback about something he was invested in and it didn’t work.
2. Do not delete comments. Face the music and accept criticism – it can be very helpful. When you make a mistake as a marketer don’t try to hide it – use the negative feedback and respond to it. Most of the time there is some good that you can take away from the feedback. The minute you start deleting comments or try to hide the negative is when your brand and/or product looses all credibility.

Social Media Lessons Learned: Summary of all cases

• Do not forget that the world is watching you as a marketer, with every ad or promotion you run be sure it represents the company in a positive way.
• If a mistake is made in a marketing promotion you can never be too quick to admit it and apologize. The faster you do this the faster you can go back to marketing the actual product instead of doing damage control.
• Never let the success of a product be about your own personal ego. When that happens you are unable to see clearly what is usable criticism, it becomes all about you and not your product.
• Finally do not delete, or try to hide from the public eye, mistakes that you make. Simply admit them and move on, deceitfulness will never take you far.

Lessons Learned through Big Name Social Media Mistakes. 3 Part Series- Case 2

2. Kenneth Cole Offends the World

The Story: In an effort to create a clever advertising campaign Kenneth Cole capitalized on globally trending topics (often around tragic situations) with tweets like this, sent out to his nearly 13,000 followers:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available” (Image taken from Mashable)

The Repercussions: Facing an overwhelmingly negative response, Cole later apologized for making light of a bad situation.

Lesson Learned: It is never okay to base your advertising schemes off of unstable current events, they will blow up in your face and you will end up making a public apology like Mr. Cole. If something like this does happen the best way to handle it is to face the facts immediately. You were wrong and you must apologize as quickly as possible. Many times the press generated by a big mistake, coupled with a quick turn around, and truly remorseful apology will help build your company’s image back to what it was before the comment. History has shown that sometimes this technique even leads to a boost in public opinion of your brand. The worst thing that could happen is if you try to hide something from the public, or to act as though you were right. In these situations types of situations you can never be ‘too quick’ to apologize.

Lessons Learned through Big Name Social Media Mistakes. 3 Part Series- Case 1

Twitter has brought a new phenomenon to the social media/micro blogging world. Companies, large and small, have been using Twitter and Facebook asmarketing channels to run their campaigns. Some have greatly benefited from the use of these tools and others have destroyed the public’s opinion of their company. Loads of companies have made highly publicized mistakes, and here we will address three of them: 

1. Chrysler’s F-Bomb

In March of this year, a tweet emerged from the Twitter account held by Chrysler, that read as follows:

“I find it ironic that Detroit is know as the #motorcity, and yet no one here knows how to (expletive) drive.” (Image taken from Forbes)

The Story: An employee of the marketing firm that managed the Chrysler account had posted content to the account earlier in the day from his phone. Later, having forgotten to log out, he unknowingly posted to the company’s account thinking it was his own.

The Repercussions: The backlash was intense. The marketing firm fired the employee responsible and Chrysler firing the marketing firm the next day.

Lesson Learned: The world is watching your every move when you market through social media. These new social media tools are out there to connect people, and to allow everyone to post things that are important to them. When you post something on Twitter it is ‘out there,’ so be mindful of what you are writing. Don’t post things that you wouldn’t want your boss or employers to see because those types of things have a way of coming back around. With a few clicks or retweets your content can be seen by millions of people.