An excellent survey from the smart folks at Marketing Sherpa. Here is their summary and survey results:
SUMMARY: We asked more than 900 B2B marketers how they expected their marketing budgets to change for 2011. Learn which marketing tactics are receiving an increased level of investment, and which are not in this week’s chart, including social media, email marketing, d
irect mail and more. Click on the image for a better view.
I often discuss books with our clients and business partners that I think can have a major positive impact on their businesses. One title which has consistently been on the list for the last couple years is Joe Jaffe’s “Join the Conversation”. His most recent book, “ Flip the Funnel”, is equally powerful. The assumption in this book is that many traditional marketing approaches are getting it all wrong. In other words, the focus has been on customer Acquisition as opposed to customer Retention; on the fat side of the funnel, as opposed to the skinny one.
Jaffe passionately argues , and backs it up with statistics, that investing in existing relationships is far more profitable than devoting the bulk of your budget to acquiring new customers. “Retention is the new Acquisition”.
I know what you’re thinking – how can I possibly find the time to read another book? Fear not, we’ll do that for you, and more. Below you will find a link to a video where Jaffe himself gives an overview of the book.
Length of the video – 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The impact it will have on your bottom line – Priceless.
Here is the link to the video – http://bit.ly/beh1xP
Here is the link to the book – http://amzn.to/alaDJT
Just kidding. You know we love our clients. But someone, somewhere on the vast network we call the Internet, may be saying this about your company. The better known your brand and your products, the greater the chance that someone is taking a pot shot at you. The issue is not whether the criticism is justified but how quickly you find out about, and respond to, it. The difference in finding out within hours as opposed to days or weeks can be measured in millions of dollars and, once in a while, can even become a matter of survival.
If your company was “slammed” for no good reason, you can set the record straight. If the criticism is justified, you can fix it quickly and win points for your lightening-speed response and exemplary customer service — a perfect opportunity to make lemonade from the lemons you’ve been handed.
So how do we find out as soon as possible? By using a set of tools readily available online. We’ve covered some of these before, but they are worth mentioning again:
1. Google Alerts — http://www.google.com/alerts. A content monitoring service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user. The service is free with a Google account and is easy to set up. The key is to set up alerts for numerous terms, including product names, as well as those of key executives. I would even go as far as to suggest that one of your alert terms should be “your company name sucks”. Most of our clients have been using Google Alerts for a while and we are working with them to gain even better leverage with this tool.
With Twitter growing by leaps and bounds on a daily basis, you absolutely have to monitor conversation in the Twitterverse. Recent stats tell us that users currently generate 2 billion (that’s a “B”) per month.
I previously recommended in this space Tweet Beep (www.tweetbeep.com) which enables anyone to receive alerts by email whenever a specific word or phrase is tweeted on Twitter. Here are a couple of other options for Twitter:
2. Tweet Alarm – http://www.tweetalarm.com/
3. Tweet Alerts – http://www.twitteralerts.net/. With this service, you have a number of options when it comes to notifications, including SMS.
To see the effectiveness of Twitter as a customer response and service tool, Comcast is the classic example. Read the these stories and you’ll become a believer:
Savvy online service can win back customers – http://bit.ly/apZlyP
My @ComcastCares Customer Service Story – http://bit.ly/dqx3L7
A number of clients have been asking us about social media tracking and monitoring tools. Over the last little while we’ve been recommending HootSuite.
It allows you to create a dashboard of your most important social networking apps including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and monitor them all on the same Web page.
This is a huge time saver for any company that want to keep tabs on its brand in the fast expanding social media universe.
Hootsuite received a good write up in today’s Financial Post. You can read it here – http://bit.ly/ceicL2
If there are other tools you use, let us know buy leaving a comment below. If you need help setting up HootSuite for you company send me an email at michael@ar-com.com
With March break upon many of us, my mind is onto more metaphysical questions – thus the subject line. What I am referring to here are metrics and measurement, a subject whose importance cannot be overemphasized. One of my favourite business mentors taught me that “what you do not measure cannot be improved”. It is a lesson that we constantly convey to our clients, as well as applying it internally. When you consider that improving conversions from 2% to 3%, for example, can mean a 50% jump in revenue, you start to take it seriously.
In the Web 1.0 world, there are numerous software measurement and metric packages that vary in sophistication and price. The one you choose depends on your type of business and the metrics you look for. In our business, and for clients, we use Google Analytics, as well as a server–based package that acts as a check and balance, so to speak. In my book, when considering data richness, ease of use, and price (free!), Google Analytics is unrivalled.
In the social media world, measurement and metric software is a fairly nascent space but it is developing rather quickly. One option I have been testing and will deploy in a number of upcoming social media campaigns is Ubervu, which measures “conversation”, “reactions”, and a variety of other metrics in the social media universe. Go to www.ubervu.com, input your company name in the “Search for Social Media Conversations” window, and click “Analyze”.
At the end of the day, it’s the not the software you pick but the fact that you do it consistently and continuously adjust. Remember: “you cannot improve that which you do not measure”.
Last week, Matt Hartley, the National Post tech reporter, interviewed Patrick Pichette, the Canadian-born chief financial officer of Web giant Google Inc., and formerly BCE Inc. In the interview, Pichette is quoted as saying: “Canadian companies do not spend what would be required to actually capture the [Internet’s] advertising opportunity; they are staying traditional in their behavior and mindset.” What I find particularly interesting in his comments is the vast amount of analytics to which he has access. Keep in mind that Google currently controls over 85% of global search traffic (Netmarketshare) and is know to meticulously gather every bit of information on each search. That gives Mr. Pichette a pretty good perch from which to draw his conclusions.
The article is well worth a read. You can find it here – http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2605570
Huh? How can that be? Well, according to the book What Would Google Do?, in a “google universe” most information is both public and transparent. That means you can save a lot of anxious moments down the road (not to mention revenues) by knowing your worst customers and finding out what they have to say. Imagine a world where customers could not pan your products or services with a few clicks of the mouse. A world where bad product and service reviews could not be easily tracked or discovered. In that world, negative news would spread slowly and stealthily by word of mouth and, by the time you found out about it, it could be too late (and infinitely more expensive) to fix.
What’s the lesson here? Leverage the Web and social media tools to get as much feedback from your customers as possible. Give your worst customers the opportunity to speak up quickly and easily so you can fix their grievances in the same fashion. Here is author Jeff Jarvis’s description of a restaurant run according to Googlethink. Once you read it, ask yourself how it applies to your business. What can you do to find your worst customers/best friends?
“What would a restaurant run according to Googlethink look like—other than being decorated in garish primary colors with a neon sign, big balls for seats, and Fruit Loops and M&Ms on every table?
Imagine instead a restaurant—any restaurant—run on openness and data. Say we pick up the menu and see exactly how many people had ordered each dish. Would that influence our choice? It would help us discover the restaurant’s true specialties (the reason people come here must be the crab cakes) and perhaps make new discoveries (the 400 people who ordered the Hawaiian pizza last month can’t all be wrong??? Can they?).
If a restaurateur were true to Googlethink, she would hunger for more data. Why not survey diners at the end of the meal? That sounds frightening—what if they hate the calamari?—but there’s little to fear. If the squid is bad and the chef can hear her customers say so, she’ll 86 it off the menu and make something better. Everybody wins. She’ll also impress customers with her eagerness to hear their opinions. This beats wandering around the tables, randomly asking how things are (as a diner, I find it awkward and ungracious to complain; it’s like carping about Grandmother’s cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving). Why not just ask the question and give everyone the means to answer? Your worst diner could be your best friend.”
By all appearances that is exactly what happened. Scott Brown’s upset, come from behind, win in the Massachusetts Senate race now represents the 41st vote in the Senate, breaking the Democrats filibuster-proof majority in Washington. In another word passage of President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation is now very much in doubt.
When you dig a little (which we did) you’ll find not only that a Canadian orchestrate the victory but he utilized social media tools to pull off what some referred to as one of the biggest political upset in recent memory. Whether you support or oppose healthcare reform in the US, the lesson is that social media marketing, properly leveraged, can significantly affect the outcome of a political race or, for that matter, the success of you company
For a good article on this check today’s National Post here or go to – http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2493174