A New Social Audience for SMBs!

Small and medium size business owners: Have you’re figured out (yet) how to make your voice heard among the thousands, if not millions of online conversations occurring all at once?

The whole buzz about using social media to get new awareness and create a following is real, but you have to be remarkable. If what you’re saying is the same as 10 or 100 other businesses out there, why should anyone zero-in on what you’re saying?

In order to garner someone's attention you have to either make a loud a statement, or just have something they absolutely want or need - or both. So how do you do that? Give something away!

With over 70% of consumers researching products and services online before making a buying decision, what do you think they are searching for? Certainly they're trying to ensure that what they are about to purchase is a quality product from a verifiable business. But what they're really searching for, more now than ever is a discount or a way to save a few bucks. EVERYONE wants to cut costs. And don't mislead yourself into thinking that wealthy people don't care about savings. A majority of the wealthy became so through frugality.

So if you truly want to be found online, make it easy for someone to find you. Offer steep discounts for a trial period. The relatively new and still growing coupon site is all the proof you need.

But there are other ways too. If your product isn't a consumable, how do you attract your target audience? How do you draw in an audience that could one day need your product or service? The short answer is, branding and awareness - right? Those typically take a lot of time and a substantial investment. Who has that? SMB's need and want the exposure in real time.

What's the hottest electronic device on the market today? Try offering one or two as part of a giveaway promotion and watch your traffic explode. Sweepstakes and giveaways are good short-term attention getters. But there's actually one addition tactic that produces both short and long term results. Scholarships.

Business branded scholarships haven't been a common term in the SMB vocabulary until lately. Historically, larger corporations have held the term and used scholarships purely as a way to give back to their loyal customers.

With the growth of the internet and social media sites, SMBs can also capitalize on the fruits that scholarships produce. Those being a constant flow of fresh new leads and traffic to your business and social media websites; visits by friends and relatives of those applying for the scholarships because they want to help the student and/or they need it just as badly; and, long-term commitment. If you're questioning long-term commitment, consider this. Have you forgotten the name of the first person who either extended or gave you financial support?

The going-to-college audience, 18-30 year-olds is the next generation of consumers. The sooner you can get to know them, and them to know you and your business, the sooner you can begin to instill your brand and its commitments in their minds.

What are you doing today, to reach the audience that will propel your businesses through tomorrow?

Jump-Start your Social Media Marketing!

Social Media has helped level the proverbial playing field and regardless of your business size and marketing budget, you can effectively and efficiently give your online presence a boost with a branded scholarship.

And for your efforts, you will get:

Recurring, unique visitors on your website

Countless Facebook fans

A relationship with Gen-Y and their friends & family

Higher search engine rankings

And, community acknowledgement for "giving back"

This ingenious interactive strategy captures the next generation of customers and jump-starts your social media marketing.

Download our FREE whitepaper to see how to laser-target your online efforts and engage the most-social online audience, 18-30 year-olds.

Get ahead of your competition by acting today.

Here's how we can help jump-start your social media marketing:

Guide you in creating a scholarship program

Write compelling copy that grabs and holds your audience's attention

Target your scholarship marketing campaign to engage the going-to-college audience (18-30 y/o)

Connect your online and offline marketing efforts

Optimize your business and social websites to maximize traffic

Emineo Media is a full service interactive marketing and web services firm. Yes, we develop award-winning web sites, but our specialty is developing, implementing and promoting business-branded scholarships across social media channels.

Contact us today for a free consultation.

info@emineomedia.com

Sherpa: Changes in 2011 Email Marketing Budgets!

Have your email marketing budgets increased, decreased or stayed the same for 2011?

Take a look at this week’s chart from MarketingSherpa to learn how the changes planned for your 2011 email marketing budget compare to those of more than 1,100 marketers.

The extent of changes to email marketing budgets for the coming year



There's no question about it -- email budgets will continue to rise in 2011. As organizations become (cautiously) optimistic about the improving economy, purse strings are starting to loosen, and email marketing is a primary beneficiary.

In addition to economic forces, email is earning increased investment because it continues to prove itself as one of the most (if not the most) effective tools in the marketing toolbox.

Multichannel (B2B2C) organizations are much more likely to increase their email budget by a significant amount than are single-channel organizations.

B2B organizations, particularly in the industrial sector, are often considered conservative marketing spenders. While a majority of those marketing exclusively to other businesses are increasing email budgets, B2B marketers are also more likely than other marketers to keep their 2011 email budget the same as 2010.

For additional research data and insights about email marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report.

by Jeff Rice, Research Analyst

MarketingSherpa: New Chart: Changes in 2011 email marketing budgets.

Emineo Media

Google Analytics, Meet Webmaster Tools!

Google continues to provide amazing ways in which search marketing professionals can improve their campaign efforts. The latest is this week’s announcement that webmasters using Google Analytics to track site data can link verified sites in Webmaster Tools when using the same Google account. What does this mean to you?

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of connecting the two services is that users are able to access the Google Analytics Referring Pages report from within Google Webmaster Tools. This means that you will be able to “understand the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals, as well as the sites driving those trends,” according to Google.

This is quite the important development for a few reasons, but perhaps most notable is that webmasters will be able to use the data to see if the sites that link to them most frequently or the content that is linked to the most on a website are actually driving traffic. Why is it important to know that? Well, should you be witnessing links that are not driving traffic you can assume that there is not a lot of value in them which might in turn encourage you to seek out those that do.

This might just be the first value proposition from connecting the two account - in the future you might see others. For example, it is completely possible that Google could take data currently available in Webmaster tools (information on impressions or average position for example) and show the relationship between a number of variables including unique visits, time on site, etc.

WM won’t go into detail about how to link a verified site in Webmaster Tools to a Google Analytics profile but we will say this – the entire process takes just a few minutes and you’d be nearing foolish not to do so. Expect a lot more to come from the Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools connection in the near future.

Website Magazine

Emineo Media

Strategic Use of Social Media 2011!

Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in transforming customer conversations into long-term business value, released the second-annual Bazaarvoice Social Marketing Survey conducted with The CMO Club. The new study charts the progress of CMOs against their 2010 social media goals and benchmarks projected social investments, challenges, and expectations for 2011. The survey shows that social media had become an essential component of executive marketing strategies by the end of 2010, with 90% of CMOs participating in three or more social media activities. CMOs still focus on measurability and ROI but are recognizing there’s even more business impact to uncover. Nearly all (96%) are beginning to look beyond sales goals and web metrics to focus on how social media can deliver strong insights that fuel improvements across the business. This is consistent with Forrester Research’s recent finding that more than 45% of all companies now use social media assets for product development in addition to customer engagement (83%), and indicates a sea change in the strategic value that CMOs place on social today.

Key Findings:

The 2011 Survey points to a big shift in the power of social media and user-generated content, as brands begin to organize these voices into strong insights that serve as the launch pad for innovation and business change. In 2011, 93% of CMOs plan on using some form of user-generated content to inform product and service decisions. Top forms of user-generated content used in 2010 include customer stories (59%), product suggestions or ideas (54%), polling (49%), and customer reviews (47%).

CMOs were optimistic about tracking ROI for social in 2010 -- 81% of those who participated in the 2010 Survey said they planned to track social media to revenues in 2010. However, standard ROI metrics proved difficult to measure for many social efforts; only 40% of CMOs surveyed in 2011 successfully tracked ROI on their social initiatives. Still, measurability remains a top executive priority, with sales conversion and revenue attribution standing out as the #1 and #2 growth opportunities in social measurement.

The 2011 Survey indicates that many CMOs still use social media tools without clear insight into the ROI that tool is delivering. More than half of CMOS still don’t know or don’t see ROI across many social media tools, in particular Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Bright spots include product ratings and reviews (59% see average or significant ROI); company / brand communities (56%); and company or brand blogs (48%).

Bazaarvoice

Emineo Media

The 2010 Inc. 500 Update: Most Blog, Friend And Tweet But Some Industries Still Shun Social Media!

A research report conducted By: Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. reveals the growing social media trends with the Inc. 500. 

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the fourth consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies.

The new study compares adoption of social media among the 2010 Inc. 500 with previous years. The Inc. 500 is a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. For details about the 2010 Inc. 500 and the complete directory of the included companies, please visit Inc. Magazine's website at http://www.inc.com/.

In 2007, the Center’s first study of this group and their use of social media was released and revealed that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional Fortune 500 in their use of social media. For example, at that time, research showed that 8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500. This difference continued in 2008 with 16% of the Fortune 500 blogging vs. 39% of the Inc. 500. This trend held in 2009 with the Inc. 500 blogging at a rate of 45%, while the Fortune 500 had 22% of its list with corporate blogs.  The new data shows adoption of blogs leveling off in the Fortune 500 but continuing to grow among the Inc. 500 companies.

Read full report

Download full report

Emineo Media

Solution makes global SEO an option!

For just over a year, experts have been issuing notes to publishers and advertisers that they needed a global platform. Translated content, logos and messages have been touted as a huge benefit for brands, but many brands havent figured out exactly how to complete this translation in an economical way. by Kristina Knight. A new release gives brands a solution for the search arm of campaigns. This month BrightEdge released their global Search Engine Optimization solution, which allows brands to tap into a single solution to manage their brands rank across search platforms around the globe.

"Our clients asked us to extend the platform's reach so they can drive the same ROI globally that they are seeing in the U.S.," said Jim Yu, BrightEdge CEO. "At home and around the world, the Web is increasingly cluttered and complex. Our clients use BrightEdge to break through this clutter and use natural search as a major revenue driver. Bringing our platform to international search engines will give companies a means to scale and drive new business in ways simply not possible before."

The number of search queries continues to increase month to month. The latest numbers from comScore finds that more than 15 billion searches were queried through search giants Google, Yahoo and Bing. Queries from Bing and Yahoo have potentially the highest accuracy rate, with users clicking through to a website after querying Yahoo or Bing more than 80% of the time.

According to eMarketer, the overall US ad spend will reach $36.3 billion by 2014, a 9% increase over 2008. According to Efficient Frontier, SEM spending is on track for between 15% and 20% growth in 2011. Researchers found that, year to year, SEM spending increased by 23% in 2010.

Solution makes global SEO an option - Search Marketing

Emineo Media

What Makes Facebook Fan Pages Successful?

Engagement, interest and constant connection keep fans coming back on Facebook!

Well-known brands like Coca-Cola and Starbucks have had success turning their Facebook fan pages into popular sites with millions of fans. Local businesses are also leveraging the site and can learn from their global neighbors.

Local businesses make up 17.6% of Facebook fan pages, according to financial services firm Wedbush, while companies come in at 6.3% and products at 3%. Interests, musicians and public figures are also high on the list.

Starbucks has 18.5 million fans as of November 2010, and Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy, talked to Marketing Week in the UK about how the brand uses Facebook.

“It’s about making sure that we do our job every day to give those fans some sort of meaningful value,” she said. “Having 10 million people on Facebook who like us would be useless if we did nothing with it.”

What Makes Facebook Fan Pages Successful?

Emineo Media

Marketers Experiment with Social Games!

Social gaming exploded in 2010. Addictive apps like FarmVille and Mafia Wars grabbed the attention of social network users, the press—and marketers. eMarketer forecasts social gaming revenues will surpass $1 billion this year.

Most of those dollars will come from virtual items purchased by the 61.9 million internet users who will play social games this year, according to eMarketer estimates. That represents 27% of the US internet audience and will rise to 29% by 2012.

“That is a spectacular number considering that this form of gaming took off in earnest less than two years ago,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Social Gaming: Marketers Make Their Move.” “Next year’s growth will be modest compared with the meteoric rise of this form of gaming in its first two years, but the projected increase will be healthy enough to sustain multiple opportunities for game developers, publishers, investors and marketers.”



For that reason, eMarketer’s projections are cautious. Data from Inside Social Games shows there were sequential decreases in cumulative worldwide monthly active users for the top 15 games on Facebook in the last four months of 2010. The index bounced back in January 2011 as a result of CityVille’s instant popularity, but there was a 9.6% year-over-year decline in January 2011.

How Marketers Can Experiment with Social Games

Emineo Media

Website and Email Critical B2B Investments!

In a recent survey of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, traditional online tactics remain key to marketing success.

Just over half of B2B marketers surveyed told BtoB Magazine their budgets would go up this year, mostly by less than 15%. With a primary marketing goal of customer acquisition (69%), the greatest number of respondents expected spending increases to come from online (78%). By contrast, 44% said they would be spending more on events and 36% on direct mail.

Online, B2B marketers were most likely to report planned increases in marketing spending on their websites and email programs, followed by social media. These results differed in priority from those of a survey of general US marketers by RSW/US.

Among that group, 65% planned to spend more on social media, followed by 47% on email. RSW/US did not report on increases in website spending.



More than two-thirds of B2B marketers already used social media marketing as of December 2010, where the main focus of marketing efforts was brand building. Despite customer acquisition being B2B’s top goal for the year, less than half of respondents were using social media for lead generation.



In 2010, social media, websites and email each received a median of 10% of B2Bs’ online marketing budgets. Spending levels were higher on display and video advertising.

 Article

Emineo Media