One way we can reach our customers is through social media marketing.

We are inherently social creatures. We work, live, talk, and play together. Social media is a blending of technology and talking to each other…anywhere, anytime, with anyone. Today we can reach our customers by earning people’s interest and talking with them when, where, and how they want! Social media marketing includes using tools like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

Companies using social tools report more customers at the cash register and spending 60% less per lead than using traditional marketing. Using social media is proving to be good business.

Start earning more of your customers through social media marketing today.

Listen to the podcast of this here: How can social media help my business?

By the Numbers

As of 2011, 92 percent of US Internet surfers use search engines.

In December of 2011, 18.2 billion searches were conducted with the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. (Google alone had a staggering 12 billion, followed by Bing with 2.7 billion, and Yahoo! with 2.6 billion.

Google has about a 66% (yep, a full two-thirds) market share on searches performed.

Local Business Search

That means most of your customers and potential customers are using search engines…a lot. And they’re using it for everything from nationwide searches to, increasingly, local business. Search engines are now used to find local business information more often than the old surefire ways.

• 74% use search engines
• 65% use print yellow pages
• 50% use Internet yellow pages
• 44% use traditional newspapers

What does all this mean for your business?

It means that like it or not search engines are affecting your business. Your business needs to be listed in them and come up at the top of the results. Why? Because it pays to put your business where people are looking for it. People are looking for what you have to offer. If they don’t find you, they will find your competitor. Being invisible to a huge customer base costs your business big time.

This is true whether you are marketing in Kona, Hawaii or marketing in Fort Collins, Colorado. So, get out there, learn how to rank well, and do it.

Listen to this as a podcast here: Why do search engines matter to my business?

Online marketing uses the web to tell people who you are, what you offer, and how they can get it. Instead of offline options like newspaper, fliers, and radio, online marketing uses websites, email, social networks, and more to get and keep your customers.

Nearly 80% of the US uses the Internet! That includes everyone, kids through seniors. 97% of us use the Internet to research products and services in our local area! That means most businesses can’t afford not to invest a healthy portion into marketing online. It can cost you less and bring in more, faster. Of course, if you do the wrong things, it can also cost you an arm and a leg and give you nothing.

The goal with any marketing is to bring you more potential buyers and keep the ones you already have happy.  A good plan includes both online and offline marketing. The two build off each other, giving you more bang for your buck. Commit to using online marketing for your business today!

  Listen to the podcast of this here: Web Malama Online Marketing Minute: “What is online marketing?”

What is An Online Marketing Plan?

I believe that an online marketing plan is the way you intend to use the web, mobile, and other digital resources to support your business’s overall marketing plan. In that sense, it’s just one piece of the pie that may also include non-online slices like radio, print, television, and publicity.

This post briefly describes the pieces of a marketing plan as I see it.

Setting Your Online Marketing Objectives

The objective addresses the “big picture”.

How will I overcome my main marketing challenge(s)?

If your company’s main site-related challenge is figuring out how to use your website to help build client business, for example, an objective for your online marketing plan could be, “To enhance online client service as well as build site awareness and interest with clients.”

Set Your Online Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy supports your objective.

The strategy defines general approaches you will take to meet your objective. These are determined by understanding your business and your customers (research, SWOT, competitive analysis, market analysis, etc).

For example, strategies to support the above objective could include

1. improve online communication, information, and education
2. build awareness of and interest in your company on the Internet
3. communicate the Website’s existence and advantages to existing clients.

 Select Your Online Marketing Tactics

A marketing tactic is where the action takes place.

Also called marketing programs or action plans, they are the things you will do to bring each marketing strategy to life.

Tactics for strategy 2 in the above example (improve online communication, information, and education) could include

1. sharing experience and observations in your industry through participation in discussion boards
2. offering an email newsletter
3. listing/submitting your site to targeted search engines and directories

Online Marketing Tactics to Consider

Online lead-generation program

• Established process for handling inquires

Search Engine Optimization

• Natural search optimization
• Link building
• Search engine submission
• Posting content around the Web
• Participating in discussion groups
• Pay per click advertising
• Google AdWords
• Bing Ads
• Yahoo! Ads

Public Relations and Article Writing

• Press releases
• White Papers
• Newspaper, Magazine Articles

E-mail

• Footers
• Newsletters
• Auto-responders
• Auto-series

Website

• Keyword-focused content development
• Interactive product demos
• Contact form
• Calls to action
• Special offers
• E-commerce site

Social Media

• Viral strategies
• Blogging
• Video Ads
• Informational Videos
• Podcasts
• Webcasts
• Networks
• Microblogging
• Customer Listening

Paid Advertising Networks

• Banner Ads
• Text Ads
• Video Ads

Share/Bookmark

Here’s how the site widget looks in real time:

The site concept is simple: post good pictures of Hawaii to help people discover, be inspired, and be refreshed–daily.

The site is built on WordPress and integrates tightly with MailChimp for e-newsletter subscribing and sending. Just publish a new post and an email with the post’s content is automatically generated and sent to the list.

The site is also integrated with Facebook so that new posts automatically create a status update to the site’s companion Facebook page. Additionally, all posts can be “liked.”

I hope you enjoy it!

Share/Bookmark

There are also unbelievable amounts of complexity, nuance, and unadulterated bull. What’s a person to do?

Instead of all that, let me give it to you plainly.

Your priorities for using social media successfully are:

1. Audience
2. Content
3. Brand

Simple, right? You can call it the ABC’s if it helps, just keep the C second.

First, keep your audience in mind–always. They are the folks you’re serving, your customers and potential customers, the reason you’re in business. They should be the ones constantly in mind as you go about creating content and positioning your brand. Ask yourself, “Who are they? What do they care about? How can I help them?”

Next is content. What is your audience going to get from whatever social media you’re putting out? Is it valuable to them? Does it entertain, answer questions, give an emotional high, save them time or money? Whatever it is, it has to be valuable to your audience. If it is, they’ll use it and spread it to others for you.

Branding is third. If you’ve kept your audience in mind and created valuable content you’re already quite a ways down the road toward a good brand. After checking that whatever you’re putting out fits your audience and is valuable to them, make sure it meets your brand standards. Does it sound like you? Does it look like you? Will your audience immediately recognize it as you?

And that’s it. Keep it simple.

Image via Wikipedia

Although I normally focus on online marketing, print is still an important part of the marketing mix. I thought I’d take a quick look at yellow page phone books because 1. they used to be the gold standard, and 2. they now have online versions.

Yellow page phone books seem to have been losing relevancy over the past decade or so. Dex’s own advertising recognizes that more and more often yellow pages are being used as doorstops and booster seats than finding a business.

Last night my wife became frustrated looking for a local business’s phone number and business hours online: “I can’t believe this place. They let their website expire, they don’t have any directory listings, and they don’t even have their number or hours on a Google places page. How am I supposed to find them?”

We thought for a minute and realized that we could use the phone book, call them up, and hopefully get a recording with their hours. We called this the “old fashioned way,” complete with air quotes and a funny voice.

So, how much are people using the yellow pages nowadays? How many people are using the yellow pages to find and decide on using your business? More importantly, is it worth it for your business to pay to be listed in yellow pages?

Recent Yelp Research

Yelp (@yelp) sent me an email this morning with a survey report from some of their business users. I’ve pasted most of the email’s content here (I didn’t see an online version of it to share):

Last week, we presented a survey to gauge how business owners feel about yellow page phone books in the digital age. Only 24% of our 3,500+ respondents said “Yes” to the question, “Are yellow page phone books still relevant?”

That’s quite a find. Here are some others:

1) Most business owners don’t think yellow page phone books are useful to them:

“Yellow page phone books are useful to me as a business owner.”
Agree – 11%
Somewhat Agree – 17%
Somewhat Disagree – 19%
Disagree – 52%

2) Only about 10% of business owners use yellow page phone books more than once per month; 3 out of 4 don’t use it at all:

How many times per month do you rely on a yellow page phone book to find a local business?
“Zero” – 75%
“Once” – 14%
“Between two and four times” – 8%
“Five or more times” – 3%

3) Very few business owners believe customers find them using a yellow page phone book.

Estimated percentage of customers who find me using a yellow page phone book.
“0%” – 43%
“1-25%” – 47%
“26-50%” – 5%
“51-75%” – 3%
“76-99%” – 1%
“100%” – 0.1%

The conclusion: Business owners have clearly observed the shrinking relevance of yellow page phone books. As we continue to move away from printed phone books, online and mobile directories will continue to grow as the customer’s choice for local business information.

I think that Yelp’s conclusion is pretty accurate (yes, I know that these results serve Yelp and come from an audience already using the Internet as a tool so the results can’t be projected to everyone). Many of us simply don’t even think of the yellow pages as an option.

Local Search Usage Study

TMP Directional Marketing and comScore released an annual joint “Local Search Usage Study” (I couldn’t find a primary source link for this still up) on 10/9/2008 that found:

• 30 percent of respondents still rely on directories as their primary local business research source, despite a 3 percent decline from 2007 to 2008.
• Traditional Internet Yellow Pages sites such as Superpages.com, YELLOWPAGES.COM, Yahoo! Yellowpages.com, etc. account for 60 percent of local IYP business searches.
• Local Search sites such as Google Maps, MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, etc. account for 40 percent of local IYP business searches.

That’s 60% using Internet Yellow Pages and 40% using search engines as of 3 years ago. To me, that’s a compelling argument for still being listed with a phone book company, if they are giving you an online listing in addition to paper.

Survey Says!

It makes me wonder if a question like, “How do you find a business” was asked on the game show “Family Feud” today how far down the list “Yellow Pages” would be. I’m guessing it would be something like:

1. Search Engine
2. Online Directory
3. GPS
4. Ask someone
5. Phone book

I believe that phone book companies see this as well. Which is why if you own a business you’ve likely received a few dozen calls from them trying to sign you up for their new online services. You also see it in advertising that focuses on being available online or in print.

My Conclusion

My conclusion is that because phone books offer online versions, yellow pages are still an important factor for many businesses. If you get listed in the physical book, you’ll be in the digital directory as well. You’ll still need to decide if paying for a listing is worth it though.

You should be sure to list your business in massive, massively used, free directories like Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, CitySearch, and Yelp in addition to any local online directories you’re aware of.

Bottom line, you need your business to be listed where eyes are looking for it.

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re reading this you know a couple of things:

1. It’s easy to start a Twitter page
2. It’s much harder to get people to follow you and spread the word

Here are a few ways to build your following (audience) on Twitter and to reach new people. I’ve broken it into the basic requirements, the more compelling and difficult, and promotions.

Bare minimum tweeting tips

• Use # hashtags – In the world of Twitter, hashtags (the # symbol) are used to indicate a subject or idea, like #tweeting or #happy or #awesomepost. They make it possible for anyone (if you have a public profile) to find and see your tweets as they search for subjects they’re interested in. The only rhyme or reason to what words you use immediately after the # is to be sure it will make sense and be helpful to others.
• Use @ at symbols -  @ symbols followed by a Twitter user name (like @WebMalama) is the best way to mention someone. Using the @ before their username automatically creates a link in your tweet to their Twitter page, thus passing on the aloha. It also makes it easier for the person you’re referencing to know that you mentioned them.
• Have a link to Twitter on your webpage/blog – This is basic, but sometimes overlooked. If I can’t find your Twitter page or name, I likely won’t tweet to you or about you. [Here's a great, brief social research piece on asking for people to take an action versus just dropping in a link to your Twitter page (thanks Dustin Curtis, @dcurtis). Bottom line? Directly asking for an action works best.] You should follow me on twitter here.
• Say thank you – If someone mentions you or retweets you, return the aloha by sending them a tweet mentioning them to say thanks.
• Be brief – You need to leave some room so people can retweet without having to edit your post. Editing a post means work, which means I’m a lot less likely to pass it on. Keep in mind you don’t want to go past about 140 characters.
• Use a url shortener – To help you be brief, several sites have created tools that replace a long link that you’d like to post with a post-friendly really short link. I prefer bit.ly or ping.fm, but there are a bunch out there.
• Ask for retweets – Sometimes we need some prompting to take action, like “Please RT”. The fact is, more people will do it if you ask.

The hard stuff

• Be interesting – Think of it as a great Discovery Channel special. Have a great title and catch people’s attention. Tweet things that are interesting to your followers: facts, news, events, stories, whatever. Don’t just post junk to have something there.
• Be entertaining – Think of it as a show. Tell about the funny things, dramatic things, shocking things, and encouraging things.
• Be relevant – Think of it as a one-on-one conversation with a friend. Only tweet things are relevant to your followers. This means you need to know about your followers, or at least about who you want your followers to be. Only post things out they’re going to care about. And only post as often as they’d like to hear–over-Tweeting causes people to ignore.
• Be helpful – Think of it as giving local insights to a friend visiting town. Give information that will help them have a better time than they would have otherwise.

Promos

• Give offers – Give offers, free stuff, coupons, and discounts that are valuable to your followers. You can even make them exclusive only to your Twitter followers. This can garner a lot of retweets as word spreads of a great deal.
• Host competitions – Run a posting competition of some sort. Let your imagination run wild, but make sure it gives your followers a reason to post about you or to you.
• Play games – Do an online scavenger hunt, quiz, or wordgame.

Share/Bookmark

Enter social media.

Social media gives companies a way to reach customers cost-effectively. Instead of designing a mailer and paying postage to 10,000 customers at a cost of about $6,000, or printing a newspaper insert at a typical cost of $1000′s, a business can open a free Facebook or Twitter account, type a message and press the send button.

All you need is to know your audience, have some creativity, and make good offers.

A recent look at the number of Twitter followers and Facebook Fans of grocery stores by Pace Communications is a fun example. (see the chart at the bottom of this post)

In the grocery store battles, Walmart, Target, and Whole Foods have the most fans and followers by a large margin. We’d expect that, right? They’re big stores with big budgets able to hire the best and pay for the goods.

But I wondered about the number of fans or followers by grocer size. What if a smaller grocer is gathering a huge fan base while a much larger chain is not. If so, maybe the smaller chain is the one to watch for innovate, effective use of social media.

So, I took the liberty of tabulating Facebook fans per store and Twitter followers per store to get a feel for who is building an audience well. (see the full table below)

Per store, Wegmans (75 stores, 1,066 Facebook fans per store, 119 Twitter followers) is beating Walmart (2,906 stores) almost 2 to 1 in Facebook fans and 10 to 1 in Twitter followers.

Meanwhile, Whole Foods (279 stores) beats out every other grocer measured by more than 50 to 1 in Twitter followers per store. This includes beating out Walmart (2,906 stores), Safeway (1,486 stores), Kroger (2,470), everybody.

Whole Foods is attracting, on average, nearly 6,500 customers per store. That has got to help save on ad costs and bring in new business. Maybe there’s something we should pay attention to there.

So take heart smaller companies, social media may level the playing field. The continuing question is, how to use it well.

Share/Bookmark

While driving in the country the other day we passed several cattle guards.  I was struck by how they work. Basically it’s just a few piece of steel separated by a few inches each.

Like any good piece of engineering, the cattle guard is simple yet effective.

If I had been asked to design a way to keep cows out let cars through easily, I probably would’ve come up with something very complex involving gates, hinges, levers, pulleys, or some sort of electrical engine.  Just think about all the potential points of failure in my complex design. More complexity equals easier to break and more maintenance required.

A cattle guard, on the other hand, is not likely to fail.  It has no moving parts, no engine, and is made of steel.  All while accomplishing its main objectives.

Online Marketing Plans

This made me consider typical marketing plans.  I know I’ve created some that were extremely complex with hundreds of pieces.  You could argue that I was just trying to cover all the bases and that it’s smart to get leads from as many sources as possible.

But I recall the complex plans causing a lot of stress while trying to manage all the details.  I also recall the large majority of the leads coming from only one or two sources.  What if I had kept it simple and really focused on those one or two sources?

One brilliant advertising campaign that comes to mind on the national level, is Coca Cola’s Olympic polar bear campaign.  If you recall, the ad had very little music, some arctic creatures, and no voices whatsoever.  This meant that every country understood it and Coca-Cola only had to make one version.  Simple yet effective.

I think one reason we create complex online marketing plans it because it’s easier and it takes less time.  Mark Twain once wrote something to the effect of, “Sorry for the long letter, I didn’t have enough time to write a short one.” Oftentimes producing a simpler marketing plan means spending more time on it.

What does your online marketing plan look like?  Is it pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets?  Or, is it so simple and effective that you can put it down in just a couple lines?

Shoot your plans our way and show us how brilliant you were able to be.  We’d love to help consolidate, reduce points of failure, and take some of the work load off of your mind.