Hot! Hot! Hot Strategies for 2010 – Video marketing!

Video Marketing is exploding!

Traditional marketing just can’t reach the size of targeted audience that digital can.  More and more marketers are pulling away from these methods and investing into digital.  For 2010, expect an accelerated move of ad dollars from traditional media to digital media.

Forrester Research says that 59% of US marketers plan to increase their budgets towards digital by pulling funds from traditional outlets.  eMarketer currently is forecasting 5.5% growth with banner ads and online video. Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer states: “media dollars have imploded, media consumption will continue to explode. Due to increasingly empowered consumers and further advances in technology”.

With this being a consumer’s market that can skip or fast-forward through commercials, block out emails they don’t want, use cell phones to tweet, text, bank, shop, get directions…using ratings and reviews to make smart purchases…you can bettcha that video marketing is on the rise where businesses need to use creative, quick moments to entertain and sell their wares or services at the convenience of the consumer.  This is very important as wherever the consumer pauses…stop lights, traffic jams, train stations, subway stations, airports…digital media can reach them right where they’re at.  This is where Traditional media runs into trouble because traditional ad outlets can’t do that.  Most consumer’s are now engaged in their mobile media vehicle whether it’s an iPhone, or one of the other numerous phones available.

Video Marketing is a BIG part of search marketing because people are very likely to watch a video that is part of search results over text results. Also…video’s often show up near the TOP of those search results depending on the number of views they have received.

Video’s are also fun and easy to understand.

Consumer’s are more likely to share fun and easy to understand video’s. Viral videos can and have climbed vertically through out the internet world as people have viewed and shared content that they viewed as compelling. YouTube has rocked the online community with it’s versatility and phenomenal growth along with incorporating comments and ratings thus creating an engaging environment. Another statement made by Geoff Ramsey states that consumers in this digital age simply have too much control over their media environments these days for marketers to be pushing unwanted banners, buttons or video’s.

Marketers and agencies need to develop new forms of messages that are welcomed.

Businesses need: “to create communications that are so compelling, entertaining, informative or useful that the consumer is not only happy to receive them, but also motivated to share them with others.” Geoff Ramsey

As the consumer is empowered to:  accept, view, delete, block, share, rate, comment, in an amazing amount of Social vehicles then businesses need to capture this audience in 2010 with VIDEO MARKETING. As video can be viewed in a greater arena then the home… remember that your online audience has a very short attention span to start off with.  This actually works in your favor because it allows you to save on production time and costs.  Some great video guidelines are offered at ReelSEO.

Have you included video in your 2010 strategies?

Social Media has untraditional ROI’s

Social Media = Positive ROI

Companies that are widely engaged in SOCIAL MEDIA surpass their peers in both revenues and profits.

300,000+ business have a presence on Facebook

Dell sold over 3,000,000 computers over Twitter.

Blendtec quintupled sales with “Will It Blend?” YouTube videos

37% of Generation Y were aware of the Ford Fiesta via Social Media before it even launched.

What these statement speak LOUDLY is Social Media has given POSITIVE RESULTS with low overhead.  THATspeaks volumes by itself.  BUT marketing wants ROI’s drawn up on paper.  In today’s marketing….not happening presently. Traditional marketing has lost it’s high dollar appeal, fueled by this economy, its generating a mass movement to Social Media Marketing.  Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI…old media was Pay to Play…do you think the majority of media dollars will reside there tomorrow?

WHAT ABOUT THE ROI’S?

Good question…but shouldn’t we be answering:

“WHY ARE WE TRYING TO MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE A TRADITIONAL CHANNEL?”

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because:

1. Low Cost Marketing
2. Getting Traction
3. We Have To Do It

Socialnomics blog states really well:  Social media touches every facet of business and it should be viewed more as an extension of good business ethics.  Which, if done properly, will harvest sales down the line.  Enjoy this video by Socialnomics.  It gives you a simple straightforward ROI explanation…

Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

ROI’S?  Most definitely Social Media is moving and keeping up with technology.  Marketing – traditional marketing has just barely started moving in that direction.  Realize that people have taken the power of conversations into their own hands. Most people become informed on whether a product or “brand” is worthwhile by opinions and comments from consumers via reviews, Social site, email, and twitter.

Those can’t be tracked as traditional ROI’s.  So quit trying. Think OUT OF THE BOX!

Mcdonalds says it plainly: “Our head of Social Media is the customer”

It’s a new era, with old value’s…at the speed of the internet = realtime: word of mouth.

What’s your opinion?

4 Important Steps to Internet Marketing

4 Key Steps to Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing…That’s the BIG buzz word lately.  You want to optimize? You want to create a niche market?  Are you branded?  Have you targeted your audience?  All these questions…and your head is spinning…

Where do I start? How do I know what is effective? Who knows how to get there most effectively?

Taking the First Step

Step 1: Research what people are interested in.

Before you develop your product, the best place to start is research…finding out exactly what people are interested in and want.  With the available technology, you have unlimited resources to create and market your product to a global community.

Question:  What sells today?

Some great ideas that sell are:

• Internet services
• Information
• Software
• Private sites
• Interactive Marketing

So now what?

Ok..so you’ve researched, you have your information, you have a targeted audience…so where do you go from here?

Develop a great web site.

Step 2:  Develop your image online

Question:  What is a great web site?…what specifics do you need to know to set you apart?

Let’s start with a great web site.  A great web site targets your audience, it’s designed to sell your product, it specifically draws the visitor in to become your customer.  When you write your site, write specifically towards one person, identifying with that visitor’s need.  Whether it’s a solution, or how-to, or a help guide, write explaining why your product is their solution and explain how it can help them by solving their problems.  Great web sites are also SEO friendly…like WordPress sites.  These are equipped with title tags that can be easily customized for optimum rankings and branding purposes. These along with permalink structure and header strategies are what can make you highly visible in search engine rankings.

Set Yourself Apart

Step 3:  Set yourself apart from others.

Question:  How can you be set apart from all the others?

That is one of the top questions being asked by businesses.  Online businesses are growing by leaps and bounds.  To set yourself apart, you need to stay on top of current marketing strategies.  Current marketing strategies are focused online making yourself available to the consumer-client 24/7. This creates an attraction along with maintaining your consumer/client relationship as you provide helpful information available at all time. With today’s mobile society (via internet mobile devices) that’s becoming a number 1 priority!

Use Social Media and Relationship Management.

Step 4:  Use Social Media Marketing and Relationship Management.

Question:  How can we use Social Media Marketing and Relationship Management?

SMM – Social Media Marketing which includes Search Engine Optimization and Relationship Management.  It is a know fact that consumers feel a stronger connection and feel better served when they are able to interact with companies.

Interactive Marketing – According to Forrester Research, Interactive Marketing is on the rise…it invites more efficient interactive tools: via search marketing, Display advertising, Email marketing, Social Media and (the new kid on the block) Mobile marketing.   It also includes:  consumer participation with “value-added benefit”, Service, Focus on meaning and making a positive impact.

Marketing…Internet Marketing, Relationship Marketing, SMM, Interactive Marketing… it all leads to this:

“the process of attracting, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with key individuals over time.”

I conclude with this great conclusion quoted from the University of Florida’s IFAS Extension:

“Relationship marketing is one of the most time-consuming, but most effective strategies for marketing Extension programs. Relationship marketing is a process, not a one-time event; clientele must understand that you are committed long-term and that they can depend on you to provide education.

To be effective, you must establish a relationship with the audience you are targeting by making a connection with them over time. In order to build a relationship, as with any other relationship in life, Extension needs to be constantly in touch with its audiences. By making a connection with diverse audiences, Extension can build strong community networks that promote the programs we market beyond the limited scope of small workshops and community meetings.“

How is your relationship building strategy working?

Social Media Management and Training – SMM

REALTIME Social Media MARKETING

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the future of marketing and advertising in REALTIME.  

SMM (Social media marketing) predicted to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums…Social Media Marketing Management integrated with your traditional marketing starts to develop your digital “word-of-mouth” brand awareness (Fans/followers spread your message).  Informs in realtime, with relevant up-to-date information. This creates realtime web presence when partnered with Social Media Marketing.  

• Social Media 101 - Realtime SM Training – basic training course helping employees understand the hows, whys and where to engage in socialmedia…Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
• Social Media Train-the-Trainer 201 – course introduces more complete tools and helpful tips to help ‘Make Conversations’, ‘How to Listen’, authorized to train fellow employee’s along with strategy building from the ground up…how to design your social media campaigns, action plans and organizing your time effectively in SM. 
• SMM Management - set objectives, updates, targeting audiences, polls, event promotions
• Basic SEO - optimize and site reevaluation, rewebbing.
• Branding Monitoring - market research, what works-what doesn’t, 
• Mobile Marketing - mobile twitter updates, facebook updates, mobile marketing strategies

SMM Training – Seminar’s:  Provides Realtime training by Targeting Online Searching, Marketing information, Problem-solving and getting results.  

Contact for pricing based on needs -

[easy-contact]

Social Media and what is SEO?

Recapping what Social Media is and what SEO does to help businesses.  

As Social Media embraces a wide variety of formats, each format provides users with a personal preference appeal means to interact and share information.  

• Breaking News:  Places like Twitter, FaceBook and blogs give ordinary people the ability to share news and events before the news media even gets there.  Items like iphones and blackberries, laptops, along with these sites have increased the news sharing so much that online news or traditional news has almost become snail paced.  
• Information Distribution Center:  Depending on the format, Social media allows one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many communications.  Information can be distributed in multiple fashion, including Twitter updates,  RSS feeds, blogs and podcasts, postings on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Ning and YouTube.
• Building online communities around people, events and brands: Using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace along with blogs, enables people to gather and participate with like-minded people. 
• Consumer input:  Enables user contribution serving as information filters by content sharing and ratings, using the strength of comments and submissions on Twitter, blogs and video sites, also known as wisdom of the crowds. 

Social Media has forever changed the traditional content marketplace making it readily available in a large variety of formats.  This way the individual or business can mold it into whatever their needs are, making this a very appealing change where companies are in charge of their own personalized media content.

So how does this tie in with SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization brings you to higher rankings in your Search engines like Google, Yahoo, ect.  As more and more businesses are launching web sites, blogs and venturing in the online arena, page rankings have become increasingly important.  How to get higher page rankings?  Have a clear and precise strategy using SEO and Social Media.  Why do I need both?  Because you can’t succeed at one without the other.  

If you venture the SEO path, great…so now your optimized and everything is in place.  So how do people find out about you?  Answer:  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon,  these are just a few examples of important avenues to use in Social Media.  One Tweet on Twitter can drive up your traffic.  As YouTube and Facebook have become daily routine for most people, an informational video clip of 2 min or less can broaden your traffic, along with increasing your page rankings.  So can a Facebook page or blog, inviting discussions, comments, and reviews/share your story places.  People are looking for quality, caring and real places.  

A great “quick to the point” read would be Ian Lurie’s article about You can’t Separate Social Media and SEO.

I also really like how Lee Odden states in his blog-”if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?” His Social Media Readiness:  6 Questions is also a great information site and a must read.

Are your Social Media Strategies compounding results?

Marketing & Strategy

With power shifts continuing…marketing is morphing itself into a world that influences your brand, your product and your services.

Consumers have grabbed ahold of Social networks in such a frenzy that those networks have skyrocketed in growth five-fold.  Building Social Strategies is vital to businesses surviving in this crucial time. To be successful, marketers must use a strategic, systematic approach in setting up this process.

*Listed below are seven practical ways to be efficient in this strategy.

1. Socialize content.
2. Word of mouth with Twitter
3. Aggregate existing content.
4. Crowdsource your support.
5. Sponsor bloggers.
6. Sponsor events.
7. Let go with APIs.

*Additional things to do:

• Manage social media for the long term.
• Start small but plan for the long term.
• Accurately prove effectiveness through social application metrics.
• Measure based on objective
• Develop the right roles.
• Social media strategist and community manager
• Educate through social media supplements.  Like Procter & Gamble’s social media lab

*Courtesy of Forrester’s Research.