By George Whitely, Stephan & Brady, Inc.,  www.stephanbrady.com

Thinking of dipping your toe into the social media pool? If so, you’re probably wondering how you can be assured your strategy will maximize your marketing budget with the greatest impact. Regardless of the medium you choose, you can experiment effectively before you dive into the deep end.

Test and measure, using short-term marketing approaches to yield long-term gains. Here are a few major considerations before you test a social media strategy:

1.  Who is your target audience? As with any other marketing tool, it is important to keep in mind who you are trying to reach. Do you want to build connections with the media? Are you hoping to go directly to consumers? Or, are you speaking to businesses? All of your social media outreach efforts should help you connect with your target audience.

2.  All social media tactics are not created equal. Your marketing team should create specific objectives for each channel based on your specific target audience. Do your research. Understand not only the differences in each outlet, but also your customers’ behavior in each medium.

3.  Be sure that your marketing team fully understands how to analyze the results. Social media tracking is constantly evolving and different outlets require different metrics. Your marketing partners need to be able to review the results against current measurement standards – and your objectives.

Designate a portion of your budget for testing.

Understand that the results will dictate how to modify your strategy to either improve upon what you just tested, or move on and test the next logical option.

Why does this work? The great thing about social media is that you can monitor results immediately – think hours and days rather than weeks or months. And, you can test multiple approaches at the same time, microtargeting your audience to get immediate, real-time results.

Leverage this knowledge to develop a longer-term online strategy designed to reach your marketing goals.

Make sure you’re not using social media “just to use it.” Treat social media like you would a traditional marketing tactic and set measurable goals. Determine what you want the social media tactic to do: Drive traffic to your Web site? Improve your reputation? Provide coupons and promotions?

As an example, consider Facebook. The social networking giant is optimized for marketers to reach their targets via Facebook advertising and fan pages. Facebook Ads can promote products and services and drive traffic to your Web site or fan page. Ads are served up based on user demographics and personal preferences, making it easy to find your target. It’s easy to optimize based on performance by microtargeting multiple messages and creative. Facebook can be quite cost-effective—ad cost can be pay-per-click (CPC) or per impression (CPI). And fan pages are “free,” although, using them effectively does require investment of staff time or a marketing partner to effectively leverage your presence.

Regardless of where you choose to focus your marketing efforts, keep in mind that due to its ever-evolving nature, social media lends itself to affordable and convenient testing. Do your research – figure out where your target audience is gathering and participate in the conversation. If you find that the ROI is not meeting the goals that you had set, step back and tweak your approach to better suit your needs. Adopt a “let’s try it” approach to your social media efforts and you’ll be surprised at how quickly it will turn into “let’s go for it!”

By Dave Jentz, Exhibit Systems, www.exhibitsytems.com

The future is looking brighter every day. The indicators are everywhere, with positive signs showing recovery is on its way. In the trade show industry, even though the number of exhibitors is down, attendance at the shows is up, according to Tradeshow Week. Even as the economy continues to improve, trade show exhibitors are always on the lookout for ways to stretch their dollars. I put together a quick list of 10 cost saving ideas that will help as you begin planning for your upcoming show schedule.

1. Design your new display using cost effective materials such as lightweight aluminum support structures and break-down kiosks and counters. You’ll save on shipping, drayage and on-site set-up labor.
2. Refurbish your existing exhibit using bright colors, new graphics and video monitors to make a big bold statement. Make sure to allow enough production time to avoid rush charges and overnight shipping costs.
3. New techniques in printing on fabric are incredible, with greater detail and more vibrant colors than ever before. And fabric graphics are lightweight, easy to change, and a snap to set up.
4. Consider renting all or part of your display. You can add flexibility with new counters, towers and monitors; allowing you to adapt the components of your new ad campaigns and/or products.
5. Downsize your square footage, utilizing attention-getting ideas and stressing quality over quantity. You should be able to get your brand the attention it deserves using well designed graphics, video monitors and well-trained booth staff.
6. Consider smaller, regional shows instead of the large national events. You’ll save with less shipping and lower travel costs.
7. Drayage is a costly expense and every crate and pallet will cost you depending on the weight of each. But when you ship boxes separately, not on pallets, you are charged a “special handling fee”. It could be as much as $50 per box, and that’s in addition to your UPS/FedEx charge.
8. Schedule your set-up time to avoid overtime charges for union laborers, electricians and riggers. Some show management companies are now charging double time after 5:00, instead of time-and a-half. Plan ahead to avoid the after 5 OT.
9. Make sure you have your orders for show services in by the deadline date, which is usually 3-4 weeks prior to the show opening. Labor, electrical, carpet, phone and internet connection providers will charge up to 35% more when ordered after the “due date”.
10. Arrange your return shipping of your display with the same shipper you used to ship it to the show. The show management “designated shipper” will cost you more in additional fees.
11. And a bonus idea, put some effort in gaining attention of your show presence with pre-show mailing, e-mail blasts and unique websites. Give the attendees a reason to seek you out at the show.

And of course, work with a reputable exhibit house to help you with all your show requirements, they will partner with you to provide these cost-effective measures.

Remember to take notice of what your competitor is doing. It’s better to be at the show with a scaled down display than not to be present at all. You may not be able to outspend the other guy, but you can outsmart them.

By Jim Cross, J. Cross Associates, Inc., www.jcrossinc.com

Last summer, my wife and I hired a house sitter while we transitioned from our previous home to our new one. In exchange for full use of the house for the summer, the house sitter was to maintain the yard, using our lawn tractor and equipment. Sounds simple, right? As it turns out, the individual had no previous experience caring for a lawn or using lawn and garden equipment, so she had no idea what expectations were associated with caring for a lawn. The resulting bruised egos and blown lawn tractor engine taught us a valuable lesson in managing expectations.

It’s been my experience both in life and in business that many disagreements simply result from misunderstood or poorly communicated expectations. One party expects one set of circumstances to occur, or not occur, as the case may be, and the other party expects a slightly or totally different set of circumstances to occur. How well you manage the expectations created by your brand, and deliver on those expectations can be a distinct competitive advantage for your company.

Let’s take a look at your brand first. Is your brand promise aligned with your organization’s value proposition? I previously worked with a specialty vehicle manufacturer that described itself as a “premium lifestyle brand”. Notice that there is no mention of vehicles in the brand promise despite their being a vehicle manufacturer. Unable to compete feature for feature with mass produced performance/luxury vehicles such as the Chevrolet Corvette, BMW M3, and Dodge Viper, they instead focused on the brand experience. They drew heavily upon their successful road racing history and focused customers’ attention on the performance and racing heritage of the vehicles. The result was to create an expectation of exclusivity and pedigree about the brand. Ongoing support of the brand expectation was facilitated through limited production runs, an owner’s registry, exclusive owner’s club, and regional and national owner’s events that leveraged the celebrity of the company’s founder and President.

Contracts and sales agreements aside, your brand has several less formal opportunities to create and manage your customers’ expectations.

1.  How did the customer hear about you? Expectations are already being formed by the manner in which a customer comes to you. A customer originating from social media marketing may expect their brand experience to be more communal and personal, while a customer who finds you through more traditional marketing channels may expect more of a customer/vendor experience. A close alignment between the customers’ expectations and their actual experience may even shorten the sales cycle.

2.  How well does your organization understand your value proposition? When a customer comes to your door, literally or figuratively, what do they see? In the case of the vehicle manufacturer mentioned earlier, they supported dealers with exclusive merchandising to separate their vehicles from the balance of the vehicles on display. Interested customers were directed to “specialists” who were trained in the sales process for their high end performance vehicles.  From the beginning, customers knew that the brand experience was different from any they’ve experienced before.  Make sure that all of your customer touch points are clearly communicating what the customer can expect and what is expected from them.

Countless articles have been written about customer service, and all of us have experienced the best and worst of it at times. By thinking farther upstream and managing your customers’ expectations, your organization can mitigate the misunderstandings that can destroy customer relationships and ruin lawn tractor engines.

By Brian Molstad, Molstad Consulting LLC, www.molstadconsulting.com

Everybody knows that money talks. It’s no different in the world of web analytics. When dollar values are assigned to site behaviors and other key metrics, the value of user actions and traffic sources becomes immediately clear.

Monetization isn’t just for ecommerce sites. Other user actions such as contact form submissions, file downloads, page views, and email newsletter signups are also excellent candidates.

If it’s your job to convince stakeholders to act, or if you’re an executive looking for more clarity in your key performance indicators (KPIs), this post will offer you some ammunition and help get you started.

Monetization’s Impact on Language

Monetized language is much more effective than un-monetized when communicating to decision makers why a certain site update should be undertaken. Take these examples for instance:

Un-monetized: “After mapping user traffic trends to goal completions for our site’s primary lead generation form, I found that the percentage of site visitors who find their way to the lead generation form is low and the conversion rate of visitors who access the form itself is less than optimal. We should work to improve these metrics.”

Monetized: “We’re leaving money on the table. With minor adjustments, we could significantly increase the number of leads we get through the website. Our web analytics and past order data shows that each lead we get through the site is worth $730. With some minor changes, we can increase our visitor-to-lead conversion rate by 10%, conservatively speaking. This would mean an additional $190,000 per month or $2.3 million a year in revenue. We should act soon. If we wait three months, we’ll be passing up $570,000.

Which example gets your attention?

The Benefits of Monetization

Here are some reasons why your organization should take a monetized approach to your data gathering and reporting.

1. Concretely know the impact of web development efforts and missed opportunities
2. Clearly prioritized initiatives sorted by those that drive revenue
3. Less time spent on updates that don’t impact the bottom line
4. Removal of internal politics and guesswork from decision making
5. Knowledge of your site’s true ROI

Examples of Monetized Behaviors

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the most commonly monetized behavior and rightly so. This is the bread and butter of sites that complete their sales through reps or agents.  The calculation of a lead value is as follows:

(leads closed x average revenue per sale) / total leads = avg. lead value

For example, if your site produces an average of 500 leads per month, and 100 of them result in sales with an average of $2,000 each, then each lead is worth $400.

Customer Service

Use unique phone numbers and track those calls that originated from the website. The conversion rate (to be reduced) here is those visits to the support section that resulted in a call center call. Use this data to frame any proposed improvements to the support section in clear dollar terms.

Ecommerce

With ecommerce, it’s obvious to begin optimizing the checkout process, however increases in other actions, such as views of product detail pages, can also be monetized. By analyzing clickstream data patterns and ultimate purchase rates, you should be able to determine the value of a visit that includes one or more product detail page views. Once this value is established, it will be clearer which improvements that drive traffic to detail pages (such as internal ads, better search results, etc) are worth the effort.

Take advantage of monetization to create powerful reports that get noticed and acted upon. Then get ready to calculate the financial benefits of vastly shorter prioritization meetings and fewer internal debates.

By Jill Schmidt, Finn Digital, www.finndigital.com

What You (And Others) Are Doing Now

Are you a marketing decision maker?

Would you like to find out how hot (or not) your company is when it comes to the interactive marketing mix? 

If so, we invite you to take our online survey.  We’ll report back in a follow-up article with a summary of findings. Survey participants will receive the special full report. 

And if that’s not incentive enough for you, we’ll randomly choose one respondent to receive a $75 Amazon.com gift certificate.

Take our survey here: www.surveymonkey.com/s/D77NDFH

No matter where you fit in the interactive marketing mix, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the hottest trends in technology.  Two platforms topping that list – mobile applications and barcode technology.  And although both formats are making headlines, the most buzz-worth applications stem from a combination of the two technologies.

Mobile

There are currently over 50 million active smartphones (e.g., iPhone, Android) in the United States.  The hottest mobile apps, like foursquare and Gowalla, make use of location based technology.  These apps encourage “check-ins” at restaurants, events, and any other place with an address in order to collect digital badges.  After its first year, foursquare acquired over 725,000 users across the country, with 22+ million check in’s.  Local businesses have been cashing in by offering special discounts to the “mayor” of their location, a badge received by achieving the most visits/check-ins at any given venue. 

Mobile and Barcode

Barcode marketing allows for machines to scan and read a digital representation of data.  Although this technology has been around for some time, the recent marriage of barcode and mobile technologies has caused it to quickly rise to the forefront as a medium for consumer conversation.  Perhaps one of the most promising uses of this technology is the ability to attach marketing messages, web links and videos to actual barcodes.  Users who scan a barcode with their smartphone cameras have the ability to pull up a related website or coupon.  Clever advertisers have begun extending the life of their print ads by attaching a barcode and incentivizing readers to scan it to receive related bonus material online.

stickybits is a mobile app that makes use of both mobile and barcode technology.   Attach a unique digital barcode to real world objects (e.g., the UPC on a bottle of mustard or a book) and users can add digital “bits” such as comments, video or images.  When other users scan the same barcode they‘ll be able to view existing bits or attach some of their own.  Giving a presentation?  Add a barcode to it and allow attendees to add questions and comments.  Looking for a job?  Attach a barcode with your resume to your business card.  Hosting a book club?  Have members scan one book with their mobile smartphones and attach their questions and comments prior to the meeting.    Check out stickybits in action: 

1. Go to www.stickybits.com

2. Download the app on your mobile phone

3. Scan the barcode
4.
4. Use the stickybits app on your phone to “attach a bit” to this article.

• Tuesday, April 20, Networking After Five Superheros of Waukesha County featuring nonprofits will be held at Milwaukee Marriott West, w231 N1600 Corporate Ct., Waukesha. Cost to attend is $15 for pre-paid chamber members and $20 for members at the door, $30 for future members.

• Wednesday, April 28, and Thursday, April 29, BizTimes Media presents its annual BizTech Conference and Expo at the Wisconsin Exposition Center at State Fair Park. Come experience the largest business to business expo in the region, and hear insights from the region’s most innovative leaders during five keynote events, more than 40 business strategy seminars and more than 200 exhibitors. For details and more information visit www.biztimes.com/expo.

• Thursday, April 29, The Annual BMA Bell Awards Ceremony will take place at the Bell Lounge at Potawatomi Bingo & Casino in Milwaukee, beginning at 5 p.m. For more information or to register for the event visit bmabellawards.com

• Thursday, May 13 through Sunday, May 15th, UnGeeked Elite, a Nationwide Marketing and Branding Event will be held at the University Club in downtown Milwaukee. The event will feature eight social media gurus and mavens including: Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Sally Hogshead, Olivier Blanchard, Hubspot, Visible Technologies, Dan Schawbel and Scott Stratten. Cost to attend the event is $550 for three days or $250 for one day. Cost includes, breakfast, lunch, books by Brogan, Hogshead and Stratten. For more information visit: http://budurl.com/UnGeekedMay2010