What are the main costs in your marketing plan?

it strongly depends on who heads marketing in the organization and how open the organization is towards exploring new trends.

This openness will then result in some maverick thinking towards exploring new ideas of marketing, for instance one concept I developed together with a client which consisted of significantly declining budget for PI.

We then went ahead and all contacted relevant blogs run by private people and got fixed cost ad-space for a 100 EUR or less.

You see, there are too many variables, and I believe that trends are thus not really doable in detail.

Generally speaking by now EVERY marketer, regardless of their quality, has understood that social media is the place to go (it’s not only) but not figured out that there is more to success on the web.

Social Media Strategy? Or Policy?

I have implemented about half a dozen in the last 12 months with clients around the globe.

The cool thing was all the insights that you get into all the legal issues involved, specifically in context to one of the most important issues, the social media policy.

Thing about it is that all organizations are different.

So during the process you have to involve large amounts of the organization to make the whole thing fly.

Incentivising datacapture with existing customers – does anyone have evidence as to which reward will drive a better response: multiple smaller rewards for all respondants vs. one big prize draw

Look at the long haul, instead of throwing money in the wind.

Build a substantially growing community around your brand through a unique strategy, upon which you’ll get a very responsive crowd down the line.

The comparison that comes to mind is that of SEO and PI – yes, PI brings you immediate results, but the initial investment in SEO will bring you lasting results.

Plus, the community you build will increase the value of your organization should it ever come to a merger or acquisition.

I want to add facebook fans with a sweepstakes. My colleague thinks it’s terrible idea to drive people away from our own site. Advice?

Based on my past experience on numerous assignments around the globe it’s about putting a sustainable strategy behind it.

This knowledge is based on the discussion you’ve been having with your colleague, which I’ve had with several entities, yet I don’t concur with either of you.

Yes, your website should be your prime focus in your strategy, but it’s also important to gain visibility for the brand on platforms like Facebook, et. al.

Does anyone know any best practices for b2b social media? Lots of b2c out there but b2b seems a much braver new world.

B2B requires a bit more detail.

It depends on such a variety of factors, factors which do not count for your standard, off the rack B2C soc med campaign (of which most fail ’cause a lot of the consultants on that topic are idiots).

Further, I’ve seen a variety of organizations throw all of their resources and budgets at this hype. And it should not conceived to be more than that.

Social media is A PART!!! of a general marketing campaign to increase visibility, thus driving a bit of traffic.

Social media policy essentials

I’ve helped during the creation of about half a dozen socmed policies and there is no essential nor is there an off the shelf solution.

It’s a highly individualized piece of content, primarily developed for AND WITH the employees, HR, legal and the unions under the supervision of someone who knows their way around social media.

Hope I was able to help, feel free to give me a call if you need further info.

Weekend Reading: Free White Paper for Web 3.0 and Customer Centric Internet Platforms

I published this white paper to outline the definition of Web 3.0 which resembles a customer centric approach on internet platforms.

Here is an excerpt from the Table of Contents:

Step 1: Attracting (the right) people to your website ………………………………………………………….. 6
1.1 Speaking to over 2 billion prospects …………………………………………………………………… 6
1.2 Social Media Marketing……………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
1.2.1 Facebook …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
1.2.2 LinkedIn ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
1.2.3 Twitter ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
1.3 Corporate Online Reputation Management ……………………………………………………………….. 9
1.4 Search Engine Optimization …………………………………………………………………………………10
1.4.1 The technical aspect …………………………………………………………………………………….10
1.4.2 The Keywords and Content …………………………………………………………………………….10
1.4.3 Your Competition …………………………………………………………………………………………11
1.4.4 Mobile Search Placement ……………………………………………………………………………….11
1.5 Email Marketing ……………………………………………………………………………………………….11
1.6. Mobile Marketing ……………………………………………………………………………………………..12
1.7 Search Engine Marketing & Paid Inclusion………………………………………………………………..12
1.8 Offline Marketing and the internet …………………………………………………………………………13
1.8.1 Offline Advertising ……………………………………………………………………………………….13
1.8.2 Event Marketing ………………………………………………………………………………………….13
Step 2: Your Website…………………………………………………………………………………………………15
2.1 Advanced Web & User Interface Design …………………………………………………………………..15
2.1.1 Accessibility ……………………………………………………………………………………………….15
2.1.2 Mobile Devices ……………………………………………………………………………………………16
2.1.3 Navigation and Menus …………………………………………………………………………………..17
2.1.4 Search Ability on your site ……………………………………………………………………………..17
2.2 User Experience ……………………………………………………………………………………………….18
2.3 Web Analytics ………………………………………………………………………………………………….18
2.4 Proactive Website Visitor Engagement…………………………………………………………………….19
2.5 Corporate Blogging ……………………………………………………………………………………………19
2.6 The Community Aspect of Your Website ………………………………………………………………….19
Step 3: Your Customer Relationship and Knowledge Management ………………………………………….20
Step 4: The Community Metric in your Strategy ………………………………………………………………..21
Free Market Research ……………………………………………………………………………………………..21
Improving Your Products & Services (crowdsourcing) ………………………………………………………22

Have fun reading over the weekend and make sure to call me on Monday to call so that we can make YOU a digital economy leader

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DIGITAL ECONOMY

ABOUT
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DIGITAL ECONOMY is the premier and soon to be largest group uniting thought leaders, professionals and subject matter experts from digital marketing, e-commerce, web analytics, SEO, SEM, SMM, CRM, ERP and other related fields.

MISSION STATEMENT
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Our mission is to make the DIGITAL ECONOMY more efficient and productive by unifying all aspects of conventional commerce and their digital counterparts.
On this platform we will exchange ideas on all aspects of increasing effectiveness of related business processes and decrease risks of digital economy related issues like privacy, IT infrastructure security, et. al.

MEMBERSHIP
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Please apply for membership with your current affiliation and a brief description of what makes you a subject matter expert, professional or though leader and what your intentions are.

This link will lead you to the application for the DIGITAL ECONOMY group on LinkedIn.

Free Market Research

The internet offers us many great things, but probably one of the greatest is access to free market research data based on our customers.

Free market research based on social media tools is fairly simple. You can use portals like Facebook, LinkedIn and XING to create so called groups where you surround yourself with other likeminded users.

Because of the relationship with their network which you currently don’t have access to, they will spread the word about your product or services to their peers just by “liking” or sharing certain articles you publish.

The articles your members like will then be featured and, in turn, spread to their network.

The free market research part comes in, when your community has grown to a size of multiple thousand users which – in context to your efforts – is not a hard goal to reach.

Major brands like Coca-Cola have developed communities of a few million users following and thus spreading their brand on social media portals like Facebook.

But back to the free market research and how you can get representative results.

Once your community has reached a size you’re comfortable with, you can start engaging them, asking questions about latest products and informing them about updates.

Each of these updates will be featured and visible to them when they logon to the community, bringing your brand back into their mind.

The part where you start acquiring free market research data from is when you start asking them about reviews for your products, for instance where they have last had a Coke.

Coca-Cola, for example, managed to get thousands of responses from their community sharing pictures of their last drink. Among those were images were some from remote locations like people hiking in the mountains, others having a BBQ and yet others just having a casual drink at the office.

Bose, the sound specialists and loudspeaker manufacturer is another company doing a terrific job getting free market research from Facebook.

While the community they have built is by far not as large as that of Coca-Cola, the free market research data they get through social media is even more valuable to their efforts because of their specialization in the market they serve.

Recently they asked their community where they last listened to music which got a tremendous response, the answers superseding the thousands, spreading the word of the question like a wildfire and engaging third party members until then not accessible to the company which lead to a significant increase in brand visibility.

Another interesting question for them to ask would be which song each member listed to recently. In context to market research it would allow them to determine certain aspects of cross selling in cooperation with portals like iTunes. Or, based on the market research data of music distribution portals, allow the determination of demographics in their in their community.

While these aspects may seem exciting enough by themselves, there is the aspect of getting free market research directly from your community, engaging and involving them instead of hiring an institute or agency to anonymously get you the data. While the data you get from the agency may be more efficient, the social media market research part is more fun to the community and gives them the impression of your brand being the more approachable one.

New White Paper: Corporate Online Reputation Management in the Financial Sector

I have just released a new white paper outlining the importance of Corporate Online Reputation Management in the Financial Sector.

It starts with the introduction about the topic, addressing the problems but also presenting a solution oriented approach for CORM in the financial industry.

The chapters are in the product description. You can download “Corporate Online Reputation Management in the Financial Sector” here.

Looking forward to your feedback.