Social Media Marketing Myths

Social media platformsNo doubt, social media marketing is hot. It is also confusing thanks to multiple social media outlets, changing SEO strategies, and conflicting advice from dozens of self-proclaimed social media gurus. To help you break through the confusion, we’ve busted the following social media marketing myths:

  • You need a presence on ALL social media sitesBUSTED. There are far too many social networks to effectively leverage all of them. Plus, each social network serves a specific purpose, so some may not be appropriate for your business. Go where your best customers hang out, and start there. The big three are: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Email is obsoleteBUSTED. There’s a saying in the Internet marketing world, “decisions are made in the inbox.” Building a list should remain a top priority. Your prospects may hang out on, and generally prefer, Facebook or Twitter, but they still use email.
  • Automation is the key to successBUSTED. In theory, automating all of your tweets and updates sounds smart and efficient. In reality, your followers will see right through your attempts and perceive you as robotic, fake, or uncaring. Remember, social media is social. Robots cannot converse nor can they fake sincere interactions. Some automation is helpful. For example, you can set up automatic updates whenever you publish a new blog posts; however, make sure to be interact as people comment and ask questions. While you’re at it, avoid the temptation to blast each post to every single social media site you’re on. Each platform has its content preferences – and your prospects may be following you on several sites.
  • Your prospects aren’t using social mediaBUSTED. While recent research shows that the majority of adults spend time on social media. Whether your customers are teens or great-grandparents, chances are good that a large percent of them are using social media. In addition, people close to them such as parents or adult children are also influenced by companies on social media sites.
  • Social media is freeBUSTED. Watching TV using rabbit ear antennas is free too, but producing and broadcasting ads isn’t. Even if you don’t run ad campaigns on your social media sites, you or your employees will spend a great amount of time interacting with followers. In addition to the human resources costs, it often makes sense to invest in social media management software and analytical tools.
  • Social media for business should focus only on the business and its achievementsBUSTED. If your social media accounts are used strictly for patting yourself on the back and telling the world how wonderful your products and services are, none of your followers will stick around. Remember, people want to know, “What’s in it for me?” The more you can make your posts relevant to your customers’ problems, challenges, and concerns, the more engaging your social media efforts will be.
  • Create a profile and fans will flock to youBUSTED. If you build it, they may or may not find it. Make sure to let your customers and prospects know where to find you. Whether you wrap all of your company cars with your Facebook info, use QR codes, hand out fliers, include social media buttons on your website, or purchase “get more likes” ads, you must let people know your social media sites exist. Take it even further and give them a compelling reason to like or follow your company.

Social media continues to evolve and is no longer considered “new.” Now that it’s been around for several years, myths are being challenged – and busted.

Webinar Content Marketing Tips

webinar in marketing consulting office setting

 

Thinking about holding a webinar as part of your overall content marketing strategies? Webinars are a terrific tool for getting in front of a large number of interested prospects. However, there’s more involved than launching webinar software and speaking into a microphone on your computer. Use these tips when planning your first webinar.

  • Understand the webinar’s purpose – Many first-time webinar hosts make the mistake of approaching free webinars as platforms to pitch their products and services. While a short pitch near the end is generally acceptable and expected, avoid turning the entire presentation into a sales pitch. Make sure your presentation is useful, informative, and valuable to attendees. Otherwise, they’ll flee and you’ll be speaking to an empty audience.
  • Understand the audience – Who do you want to attend the webinar? What are their needs and problems? How can you help them? For example, if you know that you want to reach technically challenged CEOs, this understanding will drive everything from the title of the webinar and its content to how you advertise it – and more. Using personas is one way to understand and attract prospects.
  • Promote your webinar – Once you understand who you want to reach and what your webinar will cover, it’s vital to spread the word. Use email campaigns, blogs, social media, your website, and your sales team to spread the word.
  • Make every slide count – Whether you’ve carefully scripted the webinar from scratch or are repurposing material from an earlier presentation you’ve held, realize that your audience is paying to participate with their time and/or money. Unlike a live presentation where it would be rude to get up and walk out in the middle of a presentation, Webinar participants can exit the webinar with a click of the mouse button.
  • Encourage interactions – Webinar software often includes chat channels where participants can interact with one another as well as ask questions of you. This is a great way to build camaraderie and maintain momentum. It can also alert you to areas of confusion or interest. If the software doesn’t include such a feature, use Twitter with a hashtag. In fact, using Twitter could expand your reach and arouse curiosity among your participants’ followers.
  • Consider creating a second tier for interested prospects – Your initial webinar should go light on the selling. However, some prospects will be genuinely interested in learning more about your solution. Consider holding a second seminar, or series of seminars, for these prospects. These will likely attract a smaller audience. However, the audience will consist of quality leads who want to learn more about your offer.
  • Don’t do it alone – While technology makes it possible to host a webinar virtually anywhere, make sure you have a support team to handle technical issues, troubleshoot log-in problems, monitor conversations via the chat channel or Twitter hashtag, answer questions, and so on. This way, the entire webinar won’t be interrupted just because one user can’t hear your voice.
  • Archive your webinar – Though your webinar may have initially been a live event, it still has value long after its conclusion. Make sure to post an archived version of all of your webinars on your website or on social sharing sites such as YouTube for future prospects.
  • Repurpose webinar content – In addition to posting a video of your webinar on your website and YouTube, think about how else you might reuse the material discussed. Ideas include creating an eBook or special report based on the material, a series of blog posts, and podcasts. You can also use the questions and answers session for inspiration for future blog posts, articles, reports, and webinars.

When approached correctly, webinars are a fantastic form of content marketing. A single webinar can get you in front of a large audience both during the event and long after.

Internet Marketing: CRM, Marketing Tactics and IT Alignment

Internet marketing and sales strategyInternet marketing continues to evolve, becoming both more viable and more complex. Customer relationship management software (CRM) has become a must due to the complexity. It plays an important role at all stages of the sales funnel. With a solid CRM system in place, your Internet sales and marketing teams can more effectively manage contacts whether they’re in the engage, convert, or nurture stage. Where the sales funnel was once the realm of the sales and marketing team, today’s Internet marketing strategies require a robust CRM solution – and IT involvement.

To add to the complexity of CRM and the Internet sales funnel in general, social media has emerged as a major channel for customer service, tech support, sales, and marketing alike. Integrating social media into your Internet marketing CRM program allows everyone to see the larger picture. For example, is a contact complaining about your service? Is she raving about your products? Has a contact expressed a need that your company can fill? By tapping into these channels, your sales, marketing, customer service, and tech support teams can respond appropriately.

Opinions vary on the best approach to CRM with some Internet marketing experts favoring a single, shared database for both marketing and sales and others preferring separate databases to ensure that leads are managed properly according to where they are in the Internet sales funnel. Other experts advocate using marketing automation software to first clean up the sales funnel data before importing it into CRM software.

Can a single CRM solution handle everything your Internet sales and marketing teams need? The answer varies from company to company. In most cases, sales and marketing need to work with the same data and contacts; however, they tend to interact with that data differently.

Integrated CRM solutions that include marketing automation and email marketing software may be the optimal choice by allowing sales and marketing to access shared data without duplication or conflicts. For example, with an integrated Internet marketing CRM platform, when an email subscriber unsubscribes from an email marketing campaign the contact will be removed from the mailing list and relevant information appended to the contact’s record.

No matter which option makes the most sense for your Internet marketing strategy, one thing is clear: you need IT support. With multiple databases, automation software, and lead sources (such as cold calling, opt-in lists, special events, and social media channels), managing the sales funnel requires software and systems that perform to their fullest potential.

While many Internet marketing platforms are offered as “software as a service” and imply that minimal IT intervention will be required, aligning marketing with IT is essential. While installation, updates, and support tasks may be minimal with cloud-based Internet sales solutions, IT should be involved in selecting the solution to make sure it is compatible with existing systems along with the company’s security and privacy policies. If your CRM solution includes social media information from contacts based in European Union countries, stricter privacy regulations may apply.

By including IT in the Internet sales and CRM conversation, you’ll benefit from a broader perspective that extends beyond the sales funnel and better aligns with the organization’s objectives. In addition, IT professionals tend to have more experience in purchasing software. Thus, they may be better equipped to evaluate the terms and conditions and negotiate the contract.

No matter which CRM solution you use to nurture prospects through the sales funnel, stronger Internet sales require alignment between your Internet marketing, sales, and IT teams.

B2B Video Marketing: Using Video to Reach Other Businesses

With decision makers relying on the Internet and social media as top information sources, B2B marketing online is bringing new opportunities. From articles and press releases to online B2B video marketing, the Internet delivers multiple ways to reach business customers. Thanks to improvements in online video technology, it’s no longer necessary to send a customer a corporate video on DVD in the mail. Instead, post your videos online and extend your reach.

B2B Video Marketing vs. Consumer Video Marketing

Just as B2B marketing is different than consumer marketing, B2B video marketing has its differences, and similarities, from consumer-oriented videos. For example, your corporate video for a B2B marketing campaign will be geared toward business customers rather than consumers. However, no matter who your business video is targeting, it is targeting a real person. In the case of a B2B marketing video, that person is likely a decision maker.

When planning your corporate video, try to visualize your target audience. Ask yourself: What’s important to the decision maker? What does that person need in order to make a decision? How does your product or service make that person’s job easier? How does it solve problems? By understanding your business customers’ needs and problems, you can produce an effective business video to match.

Leveraging Business Video Channels

Video sharing sites like YouTube provide businesses with a platform for B2B video marketing. In fact, you can create an entire “channel” focused on your company, products, and brand. Once your channel is established, consider embedding your videos into other B2B marketing materials such as email campaigns, press releases, and articles.

Using corporate video in your email campaigns adds another dimension to your B2B marketing efforts and can build trust and credibility. Depending on your email campaign management software, support for B2B video marketing may or may not be available. However, there’s a way around this: Insert an image of your corporate video and hyperlink it to your business video hosted elsewhere.

Many press release distribution sites support B2B video marketing, making it easy to include corporate video in the body of your press release. If you’re using a press release site that does not support video, providing a link to your business video where appropriate can yield results.

If your B2B marketing plan includes distributing articles, consider adding complementary video segments to your article. From useful tips to testimonial videos, short video clips can enhance your articles and influence decision makers.

In addition to using video sharing sites and incorporating business video clips into other B2B marketing channels, it’s not a bad idea to create a corporate video channel on your website. Depending on your goals, you could embed your existing YouTube videos on your site or host each business video on your own servers. If you’re attempting a viral B2B video marketing campaign, it’s smart to choose an embeddable video format so that users can easily share your business video.

B2B Video Marketing as a Search Engine Strategy

Not only can your business video be shared using YouTube, email campaigns, press releases, and articles, corporate video can also play an important role in terms of driving search engine traffic to your site. Many decision makers use search engines specifically to find business video clips. If you do not have a B2B video marketing presence, you won’t be found by this segment of searchers! In addition, a keyword-optimized corporate video clip could show up significantly higher in the search engine results than a standard article or webpage optimized for the same phrase due to a lighter focus on B2B video marketing.

These are but a few highlights of B2B video marketing. How are you using business video in your B2B marketing efforts? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.