3 Web Marketing Trends That Will Accelerate

3 web marketing trends

It will be increasingly difficult for brands to ignore the web when making marketing decisions. The brands that get ahead will be the ones that harness the web to work in conjunction with their existing offline campaigns while adopting more social marketing strategies to generating new consumer insights.

Customers will continue to increase their time spent online and they need to be reach where they prefer to be reached.

Even for companies marketing entirely online or B2B businesses, the question will be how to benefit from blogs, social media and search engine to achieve the marketing goals?

How to take their brand message online and into web communities that will create new business opportunities?

Here are 3 web marketing trends to consider:

1) A Shift in Web Properties to Blend Online With Offline Campaigns

There are two parts to this trend. First is the optimization of web properties, specifically efforts in blogs, social media, search engine optimization and email.

Second is the strategic usage of those web properties within an overall campaign that may or may not include offline media (e.g. direct mail, catalogs, print ads, TV, radio etc.).

Benefits to consider:

Both online and offline campaigns have similar concepts in reaching target audience with different processes so define your desire outcome first.

More touch points (frequency) to reach target audience throughout the buying process
Lowers marketing costs by shifting more campaigns online from offline (plus flexible payment models)
Faster time-to-benefit in tools and planning
Find out more about your customers via two way conversation online
More strategic options with online campaigns (e.g. brand awareness campaign, call-to-action campaign, lead-generation campaign)
Target new customer base across multiple demographic for wider reach

Ideas for action: For consumer brands – build and drive traffic to your own community, identify and communicate directly with your fans to help close the sales with promotions, coupons or rewards.

This is a popular approach to get opt-ins and many consumers actually look for these value-added deals.

Aggregate your social media profile on all outbound materials both online and offline to support the decision and buying process of prospects and customers.

Own the relationship and be platform agnostic with you network of customers, focus on supporting the needs of the community as a priority before promoting your offerings. As always, enlist someone that will take ownership in this role.

For B2B brands – Leverage content marketing strategy to drive sales leads from search engine ads, email campaigns, social media communities, affiliate blogs or offline media to a highly targeted micro-site for prospects to opt-in for webinars, podcasts or free resources (e.g. whitepaper, reports, presentations).

The goal is to pre-qualify leads that can filter through the sales cycle to improve the probability to convert the sales efficiently.

When you’re able to convert sales efficiently, it saves time and money allowing your operations to be more productivity.

2) New Measuring Matrix: Hybrid Measurement

Unlike traditional forms of gathering consumer insight, online tools are often cheaper, based on much larger sample sizes, and are quicker to deliver results.

For the past few years the value of search engine marketing (SEM) are measured largely by ad impressions, page views and click through rates.

However, as internet users are more willing to input additional data online, companies are now looking to measure key metrics of engagement on a person-level.

According to a recent comScore and Starcom USA’s study on how U.S. Internet users click on display ads, “Only 8% of internet users now account for 85% of all clicks… The results underscore the notion that, for most display ad campaigns, the click-through is not the most appropriate metric for evaluating campaign performance. Rather, advertisers should consider evaluating campaigns based on their view-through impact.”

That’s just one of the examples that web analytics can be misleading.

It will continue to be challenging for marketers to abstract reliable data as social media adds another pile of data to the media measurement mix.

The future trend to measure more accurately will be to combine technical web analytics (server logs) with a sampling of user surveys (opt-in by visitors) that visits the site. Although there will be sampling errors, it certainly beats making assumptions that doesn’t reflect real user behaviors.

Benefits to consider:

Provides more realistic feedback that extends the meaning of web analytics
Rich information aggregation from online surveys/feedback forms provide personal data and demographics to better understand your audience
Keep track of page(s) users frequent and the duration can help you benchmark it against server data to find the delta in errors
Can be utilized across multiple platforms including mobile, gaming, ad networks and offline campaigns

Ideas for action: Create a web survey on your site, put them on different pages then compare them with your web analytics.

Develop your own dashboard using hybrid measurement by choosing one that’s has the API integration with your Google Analytics account (most of them do now).

There are a number of online survey tools such SurveyMonkey, Checkbox, SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, GetResponse, Vovici, QuestionPro, Kampyle, and you can even use Google docs as your survey tool.

Reward visitors that take the survey with coupons, discounts or gifts (sometimes it’s not even necessary, just a thank you will do).

Switch out the questions, put them on different pages and try different styles of asking from stealth at-the-corner feedback button to in-your-face pop ups.

3) Marketing Platform Extends to Mobile, Social, and Local in Real-Time

There is no question with 13 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every minute and over 900,000 blog posts every 24 hour, you can definitely count on the continuation of information overload over the social web.

This means content has to be tailored to fit the lifestyle of today’s digerati on smart phones that can accessible the web via faster and more available network.

Accordingly to The Niesen Company, “U.S. mobile subscriber base grew 7% to 277 million by the second quarter of 2009, which represented 221 million unique users…. Social networking drove the growth train for mobile Internet, with a 187% increase in audience for the year ending July 2009. The distribution of 18.3 million unique social network users by the top three sites is Facebook (26% reach), MySpace (13% reach) and Twitter (7% reach).”

What does this mean? It’s means that the growth in social networking will accelerate as mobile technology advances to embrace emerging trends in mobile social commerce, on-demand interaction from the real-time web, and fascinating concept of augmented reality.

Brands should leverage mobile marketing strategy to drive sales and cultivate customer engagement.

There are a number of ways to do this but ultimately consumer brands will have an easier time in adopting the usage of the mobile platform than B2B companies.

The opportunities for B2B companies remain the same – to generate leads and shorten the sales cycle.

Marketers will need to rethink content marketing strategy that aligns with the business objectives to deliver a dynamic mobile consumer experience.

Benefits to consider:

More opportunities to engage with customers (new or existing) means brand building and top-of-mind awareness
Smartphone owners tend to be affluent with expendable income, making it a prime target for product and service marketing (ready-to-buy candidates)
Aggregate rich user information (e.g. user profile, ratings, recommendations, tags etc.) from location based mobile apps
There are numerous mobile apps that can push out information across all social networks by authenticating with your Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube account, making it mobile and real-time viral
Deliver superior experience with augmented reality

Ideas for action: Leverage the mobile platform to provide unique location based experiences (e.g. services, games, ads, commerce) for your audience via instant customer support (e.g. assist in the buying process like check inventories or availabilities), real-time product information (e.g. price check, health labels), or event promotional notifications (e.g. cause marketing programs for non-profits, or buy-it-now via SMS or mobile web app/browser).

Another idea is to create downloadable coupons to promote offline activities to drive traffic to local events. According to RetailMeNot, “coupons are now the deciding factor in purchases for nearly one-third of consumers.”

In today’s economy, coupon is the call-to-action that can produce rapid, favorable results to drive sales. Offer coupons based on location also helps your customer to discover new retail locations, making marketing as a service via alerts.

The take away: These Web marketing trends will reshape your marketing efforts as more conversations, engagements and experiences are delivered via the internet.

In order to stay relevant, brands must transition to become more social on the web and use mobile platforms to gain competitive advantage or risk of loosing opportunities.

Are you thinking about moving your marketing efforts online?

If you’re already doing the mix and match of online and offline marketing, how are you measuring your ROI? Do you have a mobile marketing strategy?

5 Keys to Incorporate Social Media in Your Business

by Eric Tsai

Last week BusinessWeek published its 100 Best Global Brands 2009 and to no surprise, financial brands were largely untrusted which dragged down all brands across the board with them.

Moving forward, brands are rethinking how they can win back the trust focusing on the psychological aspect of marketing and advertising in an attempt to rebuild its relationship with customers.

You can see from the gradual shift in magazine ads and TV commercials using regular everyday people to lead advertising campaigns instead of celebrities with messages such as the “we’re here for you in this economy” (Hyundai guarantee programs, Subway’s $5 foot long, Gieco’s money saving tips), or the “we stand by our product and services” (GM’s may the best car win, Carl’s Jr.’s value comparison with McDonald’s Big Mac) that centers around authenticity.

Serious Trust Issues

What’s interesting is that with more marketers embracing social media, the actual adoption bottleneck are brands themselves.

I’m not speaking about the Fortune 500s but mainly the small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs).

Why is this important? Because small businesses represent 99% of all employer firms and employ nearly half of all private sector employees, small businesses span all aspects of our economy.

Digital marketing is no longer a fad and has a solid track record of proven success even in this economy but what brands must realize is that building trust takes time and innovation.

It’s nice to see marketers are quickly to embrace social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, creating their own online community focusing on customer acquisition and retention.

I’m a big believer that social media is in the process of reinventing PR, marketing and advertising by integrating some of these processes into one multi-functional, all encompassing vehicle to engage consumers.

But this is not the answer to earn back the trust, in fact as I’ve mentioned before, these are simply tools and tactics that has evolved due to the shift in consumer behavior and technology innovation.

Companies should re-evaluate their brand strategy to focus on ROI and profits by doing something tangible that align with their core mission while demonstrating ethics and transparency.

Social media is like the hot new gadget that you just bought but haven’t quite figured out what all the buttons can do and the hidden features beneath it.

To some brands, they’re uncomfortable with having conversation with their customers, while others simply refuse to hear the negative comments from the community.

To marketers, some are starting to figure out how to integrate it with their existing offering, while others are grasping the idea to demonstrate ROI to their clients.

One thing is for certain, social media can help brands in accelerating its reputation (good and bad) and the real question is how to best leverage it to improve an organization as a whole.

Social Media and Business Intelligence

It’s no longer difficult to collection data on customers, data such as conversion rate, click-through rate (CTR) and eyeballs (page views) are nothing new. The real challenge is to identify useful data to help drive business success.

Analytical data are only as good as developing a strategy and execute against it not to mention taking into account broader factors such as advertising ROI, media weights, distribution, in-store activities, promotions and even closely examining competitors’ brands.

It takes an enormous amount of effort to aggregate meaningful data to build a case for cause and effect correlations between buying and not buying.

Web 2.0 and social media practices is actually a narrow focus in evaluating ROI unless your business operates primarily on the internet.

Social media marketing can certainly build influence and trust, but they should be part of a business intelligence initiative.

Businesses should consider integrating social media tactics with CRM (customer relationship management) tools in a collaborative effort to improve business processes visibility while helping customers in the process of buying.

This kind of business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social ROI, will invite the new generation of social customers (particularly Gen Y, 18-27) into the conversation (that they will own anyway).

Integrating social media into traditional channels of engagement requires risk and change management, but that’s exactly what innovation is all about – taking calculated risks, implement unconventional approach to create a trusted and transparent business environment to drive exceptional customer experience.

The goal is to streamline business processes to give the customer a voice, bounce ideas within the organization, leverage crowdsourcing to cultivate an authentic community.

Done right, this can ease the transition for organizations (new and old) into the growing social media-centric business environment that will continue to test the boundaries of trust.

And trust is what drives pricing power, profit margin and customer retention.

It is what your community thinks and shares with one another. Growing trust will be more important than growing the customer base.

transitioning

5 Keys to Incorporate Social Media

1. Transition into hybrid business model by integrating social media with existing marketing strategy that aligns to business initiatives both online and offline

Drive print/radio/TV traffic to your social network that can spark conversation with your team, or leverage hyperlocal blogs/media for regional advertising/promotional campaign to drive traffic to retail locations.

2. Identify an internal social media administrator candidate to spearhead social media strategy that can examine the processes for failures at the moments of truth

Preferably someone that truly cares about your brand that gives real feedback, not someone from an agency or an consultant that just get paid by the hour to care.

3. Provide analytical capabilities to capture customer insight and purchase processes with CRM tools to enhance visibility into key business processes performance

Cross reference social media statistics/dialogues/behaviors with CRM telesales or retail sales data to find correlation in campaign effectiveness, tie it back to ROI and resource allocation.

4. Leverage crowdsourcing to drive product and service innovation by providing a platform for ongoing engagement, evaluate customer retention

Combine email campaign, direct mail campaign and events to encourage call-to-action feedback with incentives to reward participants, identify the fans and new sources of expertise within the community for word-of-mouth marketing.

5. Pinpoint fact-based data related to more areas of the business decisions and take action to increase the success of change initiatives, create pilot programs, let the customer take control of the purchasing experience

Say one of your product sells really well during a specific time with a specific demographics, figure out why and where it’s coming from; conduct a survey to abstract relevant data on buying pattern and the source of sales reference to improve the purchase experience.

Organizations looking to transition into the social business model will need to think outside the box, get out of the comfort zone and adjust current models to find the right balance of people, process, and technology to fully realize the benefits of this emerging medium.

Are you transitioning your business into social media?

Are you experiencing success or having issue?

Social Media 101: Choosing the Right Tools

by Eric Tsai

I went over the high-level overview on social media in the article “What is Social Media and Why Should I use it,” now let’s look at some of the popular social media tools and how they work.

The approach in building a social media profile is the same for businesses and individuals.

In both cases, the desire outcome is to create new opportunities and connect with other relevant profiles to create a valuable network.

When I say opportunities, it doesn’t always have to do with making money, it can simply be finding a new people with the same interest as you or potential joint venture partnerships.

Types of Social Media

Before you dive into all the social media websites, you need to understand the different types of social media and their functions.

Once you have a basic understanding, it’ll be easier to realize its networking power.

I won’t address every social media platform but in general there are three major categories you can build your social media profile in:

Communication

Blogs and micro-blogging: This is usually web content updated regularly and can be written text, videos and graphics.

It usually provides commentary or news on a specific topic that allows people to interact with the content provider.

Example: Blogger, WordPress, Twitter, LiveJournal, TypePad, Posterous, Tumblr

Social networking: An online community focuses on connecting and exploring people who share similar interests and/or activities.

It has specific means to connect people with each other such as classmates, colleagues, interest groups, events, or find people randomly from their profile of interests.

Example: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Hi5, Meetup

Multimedia

Photo, video and audio sharing: Multimedia sharing is made popular but Flickr and YouTube which provide a unique platform for people to distribute multimedia content across the internet.

Users can easily comment and rate on videos watched, images viewed, or music heard.

Example: YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Skype, Last.fm, Pandora, Tubemogul

Collaboration

Wikis: A wiki is a website that allows for easy creation and editing of linked content.

Similar to the concept of an encyclopedia, wikis have a wealth of specific information and are often used to create collaborative websites to provide intranet and knowledgebase systems.

Example: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint, Wikileaks

Social bookmarking / social news: These are tools for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet in the form of tagging, the process by which many users add name tags in the form of keywords to shared content.

People can rate, comment, and share bookmarks easily with others with similar interest.

Think of it as a “popularity contest” for links on the internet ranking them based on how many times it has been bookmarked and its rating.

The same applies to social news, websites let users submit and vote on news stories or links to determine its ranking and popularity.

Example: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, Digg, Reddit

Typically multimedia and collaboration tools are utilized as an enhancement to the communication tools. People share videos, podcasts, photos and bookmarks they like to further personalize their brand to others.

The Power Of The Network

I’ve created some visuals below to better illustrate the effects of social networking.

Imagine each “level” is its own community where everyone knew each other.

In this case, level-1 community has two people willing to promote your brand.

They could be your family, friends, business partners, vendors or affiliates.

Notice that not everyone in level-2 participated in sharing your information to the next level.

At level 6, that may be someone very interested in your product, services or your personal brand.

As long as a community has people connected to people in another community, it’s just as easy for that level-6 person to reach you.

The possibility to connect is endless. All the networking happens on the internet making the connection painlessly fast.

Are you convinced yet?

Ready to do some networking?

Keep reading designdamage — next we’ll get into the step by step setup and how to build your profiles.