How socially effective are you?

No, I don’t mean whether you invariably spill drinks on people at parties or find it hard to start up conversations with strangers (although there are probably virtual equivalents to both). I’m referring of course to your social marketing efforts.

Plenty of businesses spend lots of time on social marketing. Some measure effectiveness by the amount of followers or likes, how many comments they get, reach, or how many “influencers” they create (people that can affect other people’s purchase decision). Others even trot out the vintage Larry Tate (of Bewitched fame) or Madmen adage of brand awareness. Few can tell you what they're actually getting out of it when it comes to booked business.

Many do it because they read they should be doing or because they like it (hey, I’m on Facebook and Twitter all the time anyway). This is the equivalent of a job candidate saying I like to work with people because I’m a people person.

This article from Web Marketing Today makes a valiant attempt to give you a framework for putting some metrics around social. What strikes me is that of all of those listed, only one -- clicks to the website from social channels and the resulting conversions -- are hard metrics. That’s not the fault of the author, it’s simply the nature of the beast. From social interaction through engagement to the sale is a complicated chain and it can be difficult to discern what generated the behavior that resulted in a sale. A person could go to your website directly or through branded search (typing in your business name). There is no definitive way to know what generated that behavior -- advertising, social influence or even a prior search.

So the bottom line is, you have to be careful to calibrate the money, time and resources you put toward social with what you think you are tangibly getting out of it. Now if you can marry social with the search dynamic, that’s a whole other story. And yes, the topic of a future blog post.

Why Paid Search Advertising Still Rules

I have many clients, in fact all of my clients who have tried it, that have been very successful with paid search advertising, which, let’s face it, has become synonymous with Google Adwords. Still they can't help from wondering if a really cool rich media ad with a racing car that runs across the screen or a banner ad with a dancing leprechaun will somehow be more effective. I tell them, based on both click-through rates and conversion rates that this kind of online display advertising is unlikely to be more effective and now there’s research on user preferences that also supports this point of view.

A new study from Adobe indicates that the overwhelming majority of people prefer television ads and other forms of off-line advertising to ads in online media such as banners ads, social media ads and online apps. Over half (54%) said banner ads don't work, just 3% said they prefer to view ads in social media and literally 0% said they like ads in mobile apps. Whew!

Needless to say this should give businesses and their marketing providers pause. Just like banner ads when they were first introduced back in the day (and they have yet to live up to the hype) ads on social media and mobile apps have failed in delivering on the heavily-promoted promise.

But with online space occupying more and more of people's time and attention, what's the best way to reach that very large and responsive audience? I would say search marketing, particularly paid search -- yes, those stodgy, boring text ads on search results pages. They may not be as interesting as the dancing leprechaun or the race car that flies across your screen obscuring the the text you're trying to read, but they consistently perform better with both click-though rates and conversion rates.

Paid search combined with a strong local search presence on Google+ Local will get you seen by the critical audience of mobile users whose searches are expected to dominate activity within the next two years. Click here and here to learn how we can help you succeed with search marketing and if you really want a dancing leprechaun, we can give you one of those too.

A Domain by Any Other Name

Is still just a domain. Back in April I wrote in this post about the poor unfortunate soul who invested a huge amount of money in what amounted to an exact match domain (EMD). It didn't work out all that well for him and now, with Google's new algorithm update that affects EMDs, it's even more unlikely that it will work for anyone else.

According to this article on the SEOMoz blog, early data indicates many sites that had exact match domains (domains that match exactly the desired keyword, e.g., teethwhitening.com) took a significant fall in search engine results with the update. My take on it is that the sites that did drop probably were not that strong in other ways, so when they lost the advantage of having an exact match domain, they took a tumble.

The moral of the story is that having a strong site that is properly optimized with informative content will carry you a lot further than any particular domain name (you can learn more about how we handle SEO here). So ignore all those resellers hawking the dream domain, or even those registrars trying to push the dot whatever on you as they're barely a step above the former. Build your site with quality content, optimize it and keep it fresh. Then no matter what your domain is, the business you get will still smell as sweet.

Google+ Local Update

This is both an update to my latest post on local search and a post about an update to Google+ Local so that we're all, well, up-to-date.

As promised when Google rolled out Google+ Local in uncharacteristically clumsy fashion back in March, there is now at least some integration available for those small business early-adopters who opened up a Google+ Business page for a local business or place and then found themselves blindsided and befuddled when  their Google Places page suddenly became a Google+ Local page. The result was that they now had two Google+ business pages: one with full functionality but couldn't be found that easily in local search and another that was basically a Places page skinned to look like a Google+ page, but with very limited functionality.

But the sun does rise, the cloud cover breaks, and now you can merge the two. What these means for you  is that you now have the best of both worlds -- a page that customers can find easily on the map and where they can post reviews plua a true social media page for you where you can post regularly, gain followers, create circles and so on. To merge the two, just follow these simple steps:

• When you visit your Google+ Business page you'll see a radial that says Verify Now in the right column. Click on it and follow the instructions
• You will, unfortunately, have to go through the postcard verification process again
• Once that's completed, Google will merge the local data from Places with your Google+ Business listing.

If you've claimed and populated your Google Places (+ Local) page but have not created a Google+ Business page, I recommend you do so to get more utility to connect and sell along with a better experience for the user. Then you can go ahead and merge the two but make sure you open your Google+ Business page as a local business or place.

If you haven't yet claimed your Places listing (see my last post) then it appears you'll still have to go through the Places interface, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Local Search: Location, Location, Location

It's not just about real estate anymore (then again, even real estate is not just about real estate anymore but more on that in a future post.) If you're a business that trades in a defined local market area, your location is becoming the critical factor in customers finding you in the search engines, particularly Google, who over the last several years has been elevating local results displayed on the map.

And now, with Google+ Local (formerly Places) that emphasis is even greater. If those reasons aren't enough, more than half of Americans now own smartphones (a percentage that's expected to grow rapidly) and some projections say that in a couple of years nearly 75% of all searches will be conducted on smartphones. Local search results dominate the returns on these devices.

Now that I have your attention (or have at least inundated you into submission with facts) here are a few simple things you can do to improve your performance in local search:

• Claim your Google Places/Google+ Local listing here if you haven't already done so. Don't let the changing terminology confuse you, everything you will see still says Places when you work with your listing, even though Google has "transitioned" these listings to Google+ Local. It's free, but you'll have to open up a free Google account if you don't already have one. Google will also take you through some steps to verify that you're the business owner. 
• Whether you're just claiming your listing or are updating an existing one, fill out the listing as completely as possible, even though some fields, such as the additional information fields, for now don't appear on the Google+ Local listing. 
• Choose the categories that most closely relate to your business. Although you can enter a custom category, you're better off going with the existing Google categories. 
• When describing your business, use the words that you want your business to be found for, the words that people search on. And that's not to be confused with your business name. It's what you do, not who you are that counts here. 
• Upload several photos if you have them and also video if you have any into those sections. Get your customers to review you on Google+ Local, ideally they should be positive ones. 
• Update your listing from time to time; adding new photos is a great way to do this. There's also a "share an update box" you can use but currently that does not appear on the Google+ Local page either. 
• On your website, it's best to have your address and phone number in text on your home page. Having variations of the city you're in combined with your keyword variations won't necessarily get you there. 

Or you can have us do it. We'll set up and optimize your Google+ Local/Places page for just $149 or we can optimize for local search both your Google+ Local/Places page and your website for just $399. Click here to learn more about our local marketing special.

Why Direct Mail Works for B2B

Recently on Google+ there was a posting, by Google Analytics I believe, passing on an article that basically stated that b2b and b2c were really no different, since everyone is essentially just a consumer. I took issue with that premise and further suggested that the most effective b2b tactic was actually physical direct mail. I was surprised at the reaction that I got, how audacious I guess it was in the online space to suggest that an old warhorse like direct mail was the way to go. (And no, the increasingly beleaguered USPS did not pay me to write this, although I would welcome the opportunity).

I've already expressed my skepticism when it comes to b2b social in this post and I wish I could link the Google+ thread to this blog, but I still haven't found a way to link my blog to my Google+ business page, not the personal account that it's under, as this thread was under my personal Google+ profile (anyone who knows how to do that please let me know). So I'll just excerpt my response here as to why physical direct mail was a more effective b2b tactic than say, paid search, with one of the reasons being that in search, the person doing the searching is different than the decision-maker :

"...Generally speaking (and I'm only making general inferences here) the CTRs (click-thru-rates) in paid search for b2b and b2c are comparable and at times for b2b they're higher. However, in my experience the abandonment rate on the form and/or landing page for a b2b product is much higher and since most times you're talking about generating leads, you have to factor how many clicks you have to generate to get a sale into your ROI equation. (Even for b2b products that can be self-served, like software trials, data backup or cloud services, I've seen this general pattern hold.) So that buttresses my theory of the discoverer being different than the decision-maker.

With physical DM, using a good hand-compiled list, you can get directly to the decision-maker for the product/service in question -- finance, IT, HR and so on. A couple of years ago -- after a long, long time away -- I briefly took a Director-level position at a corporation (although director is not what it used to be) and there was nobody opening my mail (I wish there was because I invariably forgot to approve invoices and so on). Even at an executive level where there is an assistant opening the mail, if you create a piece with a high-enough perceived value the gatekeeper is going to be very reluctant to toss it. So I find physical DM to be the most efficient tactic when it comes to ROI against a b2b target."

So there you have it, you heard it here first (or last since DM appears to have gone the way of vinyl records, but as any audiophile will tell you, they sound a helluva lot better). Oh, and by the way, b2b direct mail is one of the things I specialize in and I do it because it works. Considering the decline in popularity, I can't be doing it for the money and excuse me because I have to go meet my friends from the PO for a beer to commiserate.

Building A Social Media Plan

Here's a really good article from Social Media Examiner on building a social media plan. It contains a lot of good commonsense advice and steps that every small business can take.

Just a couple of things that I would like to amplify (and I would feel a little guilty or lazy if I just blogged a link; it seems like an unbloggerly thing to do). One of the best points this article makes is about committing the effort to social media and I find that many clients are ill-prepared to do just that. Too many businesses don't post enough or when they do, it's self-promotional material that doesn't engage the audience. Contests and exclusive expert information go a lot further to building a following than doings at the business or "hi, we're really excited to be us."

Businesses also don't realize that this is a long-haul effort with results that are likely to be incremental and supplemental rather than monumental. This is sometimes an outgrowth of misguided expectations as social media proponents and the media have been pounding this for so long as the next big thing that people almost jump in as a reflex reaction. However, just because you won't get huge results doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, it just means that social should be one component of an overhaul marketing plan, with the amount of resources you put against it (including sweat equity) in line with the potential return on investment. (Another related point that the article also makes: pick your spots, find the social channel that makes the most sense for you to be in based on your customer profile. Trying to be in all the social spaces or to make a splash in the biggest of them may not be the best place to focus your efforts).

In any case, enjoy the article and by the way, helping you build and execute a social media plan is part of what I do, in conjunction with an overall marketing plan that includes things like advertising, promotions and even direct mail. But more on that in another post.