by Daniel Hadaway

If you’re planning to begin marketing your business online, there’s a chance you’ve got a plan laid out for all the different types of marketing you’d like to utilize. It’s important to note, however, that while most businesses will see success from all online marketing channels, different types of online marketing lend themselves more favorably to specific vertical markets.

Remember, that at the end of the day, the purpose of marketing is (most of the time) to generate sales for your business. The best way to do that is by finding users who may be already prepared to buy your product or service. With this in mind, we can look at how the behavior of consumers in specific verticals is uniquely influenced by online marketing and popular website formats.

Mashable recently posted an infographic called How to Influence Purchasing Decisions on the Web, which outlines how consumer behavior is affected by different online channels. For example, we can see that the top influencer in the automotive category is brand websites, followed by search results. So, if you’re an auto dealer you might want to consider focusing your initial efforts on creating an awesome website, optimizing it for SEO, and investing in paid search ads. The influence for baby products is much more social, with the top influencers being forum comments, Facebook, and blog posts. So if you’re ready to launch a new line of baby pacifiers, you might want to invest in reputation management, off-page SEO (inbound links, etc.), and Facebook advertising.

Your business category may not be listed in the infographic, but it’s important to start your marketing efforts armed with some knowledge of the buying behavior of your target audience. The best source for such knowledge will be an experienced digital marketing company (hint hint!) who is willing to help educate you based on their past experience in your vertical market.

Starting out your marketing efforts with thorough knowledge of your target audience, and then acting based on that knowledge is the best method to ensure success from your digital marketing efforts!

by Marcus Snyder

The year is almost over and that can only mean one thing – list season. Every one who is anyone is busy creating their lists of 2011 and Facebook is no exception as they recently posted the 40 Most Shared Articles in 2011.

Most of the headlines jumped out as being extremely familiar. After all, who could forget the announcement of the 13th Zodiac Sign or the homeless man with a golden-voice? Not me.

As I browsed through the list, I noticed a not-surprising commonality to it all. Almost every story is a human interest story, chock full of emotion and highlights tragedies, social issues and unusual news. The fact is, people are inherently attracted to other people, and they’re very open about it.

That said, if you’re looking to improve your link-building campaign, or to promote shared content in general, your best bet is to write with a human interest slant. Not only are people more likely to read your content, but they’re much more likely to share your content with others. Perfect!

Consider this: the average user on Facebook has around 130 friends. By tapping into Facebook’s social graph, a single person can influence 130 other people. When one of their friends shares that same story, it’s pushed out to 130 more people. If the story is good, it won’t take long before it’s flooding news feeds everywhere, rapidly spreading your name/brand and content.

The next time you write something, keep this post in mind and let us know how it worked out for you – we’d love to hear about it!

Consider this: When potential customers look up your business online and see your Google Maps listing, they’re hit with a promotional ad for your services. Genius, right? Well, maybe.

This hypothetical can easily become a reality as Google Adwords recently extended their reach to include their Google Maps service. It’s time to gather your marketing team because with the right approach, there’s a lot of potential here for your business. However, while you’re doing that, you might want to gather your public relations team, too.

So, what could possibly go wrong? The short answer is: everything.

While there is nothing stopping you from running an ad, there is also nothing stopping a competitor from doing the same. Since this service runs on their auction-based ad network, the best you can do is to set your ad placement for Google Maps, add the appropriate keywords and hope for the best. Strangely enough, all Google Maps listings are fair game – including memorials.

That said, if a competitor has a higher quality score, more relevance and a high bid, they’re going to appear in the ad spot under your listing. Imagine owning a small, local bookstore and having Amazon.com advertise on your listing – this is now possible. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be much that you can do about it (there is speculation that Google will allow you to pay them to remove unwanted ads, but nothing is in place yet). The first shots of reputation warfare are already echoing on the internet.

Blumenthals.com compiled a series of screenshots showing the new ads in action, including a completely tasteless advertisement for a tour company on the 9/11 Memorial listing.

Overall, from the small and medium-sized business owner, this service feels like a huge miss. It seems that the real winners will be Google (who will get your Adwords dollars) and large businesses that have the resources to advertise on your business listings.

by Daniel Hadaway

Search Engine Land just posted an infographic based on some research they recently wrapped. The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report provides some key insights into how marketers are viewing the roles SEO, Search and Social Media play in effective marketing:

SEO currently has the biggest impact on lead generation. Marketers (both B2B and B2C) currently view SEO as the most effective tool for generating leads, which isn’t surprising considering the positive perception and emphasis the digital marketing world has placed on it during the past 5 years. But, the current emphasis and “trendiness” of social media as a marketing tool is driving change on this front…

Despite SEO currently generating more leads, social media will receive the biggest increases in spend next year. This marks a significant sea-change in the digital marketing world. Generally, marketers will find out what is generating leads, and plan on spending more on that next year. But in this case, almost as many marketers are planning to maintain their spend on SEO as are planning to increase. Compare this to 60% who are planning to increase spend on social media vs. 36% who are maintaining, and you’ll see an industry that believes social is the future of marketing.

Even though the allocation of spend is shifting to different mediums, people are most interested in learning more about comprehensive, cross-promotional digital strategies- which is a great sign for the future of digital marketing! A comprehensive plan, spanning not only SEO, social media and paid search, but also landing pages, email marketing, display advertising and more is key to effective long-term marketing.

Based on the infographic, the state of digital marketing is as strong as ever- but look for social media to become a more prominent aspect of comprehensive marketing strategies moving into the future.

As crazy as it may seem, the holiday season is almost here. Right now, advertisers everywhere are getting ready to blast consumers from every angle, including online search campaigns. So, what does this mean for us?

The Skinny: It means that now is the time to optimize our campaigns to make sure that our ads aren’t lost in the impending barrage of our competitor’s campaigns. What has traditionally worked well in the past may not be good enough to compete during the holiday madness as the cost of bids are driven up, which can potentially push an ad’s page position down.

The Fatty: Saving a campaign begins and ends with smart campaign management and optimization. Here are some things to watch out for as well as some possible resolutions:

1. Low Click-Thru-Rate (CTR)

• Test multiple ads
• Make ad groups more focused
• Make ads more relevant to keywords and landing pages
• Add negative keywords

2. High Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

• Make sure landing pages are up-to-date and more importantly, make sure that they’re relevant
• Revise ad copy – mention special offers and use call-to-actions
• Lower bids
• Add negative keywords

3. Low Traffic

• Expand keywords
• Increase bids to improve page position
• Expand geographical targeting

4. Low Conversion Rate

• Use dynamic text in ads
• Revise landing pages to better match keywords and ad copy
• Increase bids on well-performing keywords

Keeping a close watch on the performance of running ads and making the appropriate adjustments is essential to having a healthy campaign. By using the above tips you can give yourself the edge over your competition by maintaining or even improving your page ranking and staying visible to your target audience!

What time of day should I post? How long should my status messages be? Is it okay to ask followers to like something?

These are just a few of the question that every page administrator faces daily. There are a lot of “best practices” floating around out there that helps with these inquiries, however, there isn’t a whole lot of data to back them up … until now.

The people over at Momentus Media analyzed the top 20,000 Facebook pages to find out which posting techniques really work and placed their findings online for the entire world to see. For each analysis, they dissected 10,000 – 250,000 posts to find out exactly what drives interaction, and more importantly, how to replicate it.

1. When is the best time to post something?
Weekends and off-peak hours. Most posts are made during the week with the greatest number of posts on Thursdays and the lowest number of posts on the weekends. The engagement graph looks exactly the opposite. The more posts that are out there, the lower the interaction rate is going to be. Want the best chance at being heard and engaged? Post when other people are not.

2. How many times per day should I post?
As many times as you want. Not surprisingly, the more often you post, the more interactions you can expect. Keep in mind that some people may perceive posting more than 3 times a day as being “spammy.” Unsubscription rates rise as page admins post twice or three times a day, however, these rates tend to level off at higher frequencies. Here’s the bottom line: Post as often as you like, just be sure to keep a close eye on your subscribers.

3. What type of content elicits the most interaction?
#1 Photos. #2 Statuses. Fact: Photos generate 200% more interaction than links. The most shared content type on Facebook is links (which also happens to be the most ignored content type). Photos obviously have a visual draw and connect to people on an emotional level. Starving for some quick interaction? Try posting a photo.

4. Should I ask fans to like and comment on my posts?
Yes! Asking fans to like increases interaction 216% It’s not uncommon to see posts asking for comments or likes. There’s a reason for this: it works. Simply asking your audience to like your post can significantly boost your interaction rate. Asking them to comment produces slightly higher engagement than a post without a call-to-action. The takeaway? Be shameless and ask for a like!

5. Should I ask my fans questions?
Questions don’t increase interaction rate, but they do increase commenting rate. Ask fans to answer your questions with a comment. It’s thought that being conversational and asking questions on Facebook would increase your interaction rate. Ends up that question and non-question posts have about the same interaction rate (the sum of the number of likes and comments, divided by the number of page likes at the time of publishing). If you simply post a question, you’ll have about the same interaction rate as you would if you posted a fact. However, if you post a question and ask that people comment on it, you’ll find that your number of comments will go up!

6. How long should my status messages be?
Long or short. There is no found correlation between length and interaction rate. There’s a slight uptick in interaction as Facebook posts get longer, but it’s not enough to base your strategy on. Post however much or however little as you like – people don’t seem to care.

7. How long do my posts last in the newsfeed?
50% of clicks happen within 1 hour. 90% happen within 9 hours. It’s hard to say how long posts last in the newsfeed. It depends on how many people are in your feed as well as the frequency at which they are posting. However, the data shows that the majority of the clicks that an update will receive happens within the first hour of posting. After two hours, you start to see a gradual decline in interaction. Remember that posting during off-peak times increases your chances of being seen.

Obviously the process of connecting with your audience and converting prospects into customers isn’t so cut and dry (we’ll cover connecting and converting in other posts), but the nuts and bolts of the follow through is as simple as you make it.

More often brands that shoot themselves in the proverbial foot with their ongoing marketing efforts, do so after disappearing once the excitement of engaging their audience and selling a few products wears off.

So if you’ve engaged your target audience, sold a few products/services and are not sure what to do next, here are three crucial tips for turning that same audience into rabid fans and not just a bottom line:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of creating a human connection

Don’t be afraid to put your brand’s unique story and personality front and center. Leverage individuality and create a seamless relationship between it and your brand (after all, your story is not just an extension of your business). Put a face front and center so that you can not only engage with your customers on a more personal and intimate level, but listen to them and gain more insight into their needs as well.

You’ll have a story to share, a brand star and an understanding of your audience’s needs and how your business and products can fulfill.

2. Establish Consistency!

A key component to providing for your audience and keeping them happy is to establish a clear and consistent strategy for how you will provide and when. Whether it’s your monthly email newsletter, ongoing content on your site or blog, or how you respond to customer service inquiries, it’s essential that you communicate your intention and what your audience should expect.

Examples would include creating a content best practice guide that sets clear quality and formatting guidelines for every new piece of content you post on your site, or clearly establishing how often you will be updating your blog or sending the latest promotions to your email list.

It is crucial to not only establish consistency, but to reinforce it through action. Simply stating the intention to update your blog once per week means nothing without follow through … and no follow through can jeopardize the trust you’re actively building with your audience.

3. Sticky Content = Rabid Fans

Sticky content is exactly what it sounds like. Engaging headlines that prompt your audience to read past the first sentence. Valuable information that provides insight into how your products and services solve a problem or fulfill a need.  Strong call to actions that provide a clear process for engaging with your brand, whatever the end goal may be.

Best of all, sticky content can create a snowball affect that delivers VALUE  far exceeding the cost of services/products you provide, strongly reinforces your relationship with your audience and has them begging for more.

The answer is behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting is simply a method of customizing the content of ads shown to you, based on your past behavior online. The advertiser knows you’re interested in canine dental cleanliness because you searched on one of their network’s sites for ‘toothpaste for dogs’…

The advertiser keeps track of this and uses it to provide you with ads that you will find more relevant and useful. The upside for you is that ads become an actual useful tool for improving your quality of life. If you’re going to see an ad anyway, why not make it useful to you and your unique likes and dislikes?

As marketers, what excites us about behavioral targeting in advertising is that it is much more effective than standard display advertising. A recent study by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), and reported by eMarketer tells the story:

The study, which looked at ads run on member networks during 2009, showed that among users who clicked on a behaviorally targeted ad, 6.8% converted. That compared with only 2.8% of those who clicked on a run-of-network ad.

Behaviorally targeted ads are more than twice as effective! And they’re effective simply because they are simply more useful, thus more compelling, to the users.

So go ahead and buy that doggy toothpaste! That ad you see could be custom-tailored for you!

While we aren’t purporting to have a magic wand that will solve all of those challenges, we did recently gain insight into an interesting study that shows not only where effective PR is taking place, but also where great marketing is taking place.

Read on to find out where…

A recent study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies found that 60 percent of Facebook users and 79 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend brands that they are fans of or following on those networks. What does that mean?

It means you need to develop and implement a Facebook and Twitter strategy today… Like, now. Don’t wait!

It doesn’t matter if you’re a tire dealership, a day spa, or a law firm- you can benefit from actively participating in social media. Millions of companies are already doing it, and their bottom line is increasing as a direct result.

A word of warning though: Don’t just start a Twitter account and post one update, then forget about it. Social media works best as a long term strategy. Not only that, but if your social media plan (you do have a plan, right?) only includes Twitter, then you’re missing out on most of the benefits of social media.

In upcoming blogs we’ll discuss the key components to an effective social media strategy, as well as methods for developing your goals for your social media plan. Until then, why not break out the calculator and see how your business would benefit from a 79 percent increase in brand loyalty?

Here’s a great (and easy way) to fix that:

Solicit testomonials

Asking people for a few sentences about how satisfied they are with you, or why they continue to do business with you is a great way to get people thinking (thus talking) about what makes your company so great.

“But I already solicit testimonials”

If you’re already soliciting testimonials, we’ll share a secret to solicit testimonials that will turn a happy customer into a raving fan:

Time your solicitation right.

Every customer has a moment where they couldn’t possibly be any happier with your product or service. Marketing-types call this the “moment of maximum satisfaction”. It may be the first time they used your cleaning product and mopping the kitchen took half as long as it used to. It may be that someone used your tax software and saved $1,000 this year over last year.

Whatever that moment is, you need to identify it, and then ask for a testimonial immediately. This has two benefits:

First, you’ll have some great marketing material to use on your website, blog, radio ads, or other mediums. Countless studies show that testimonials from real, live, actual people are some of the most effective marketing tools available.

Second, you’re literally having people come up with a sales-pitch for your company in their own words! Then, you’re having them put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and actually write it down! Your customers will be thinking long and hard about why you’re awesome, and then articulating it! From that moment on, they’ll have an “elevator speech” in the back of their mind.

Now imagine that a mom is talking to a friend, who is complaining about how long kitchen cleanup takes- or, an exasperated, overworked employee is complaining to a coworker about how much he owes in taxes this year. The mom and the coworker will have sales pitches ready to go when they are made aware that someone else needs your product or service.

It’s hard to imagine a more effective sales situation than this – and it’s as simple as paying attention to your customers and asking for a testimonial!

*Did we mention this method is FREE?!