Erik's blog
I am a Partner in a Bloomington, IL based marketing agency, Infinity Print Group, Inc. Our goal is to provide our clients with products that help them brand, create awareness and generate business.
TwitterLinkedInThe paradox of social media marketing. #marketing #socialmedia #roi #b2b
The following quote is from this Mashable article and it strikes me as a real problem for social media marketing: "LeadForce1, an online marketing automation service provider, studied website visitor data for 218 companies with a social media presence from February through April of this year. The results overwhelmingly showed that visitors who arrived at corporate websites via Twitter and Facebook engaged mostly with content – specifically a company’s blog – as opposed to exploring products or submitting a contact us form." So what does this mean? Content marketing doesn't work? After all, in a B2B environment, marketing needs to generate leads. If people are reading corporate content, and those people are not responding to it where is the problem? Is it poor content? Are "contact us" pages/forms too much trouble? Is it something else? At the end of this article, this little nugget appears:"While social media shouldn’t be thought of in the same fashion as more traditional forms of marketing where lead generation happens at the point of arrival, it would be a mistake to write it off as simply a communications tool with no direct correlation to new customer opportunities."Ok...so what is the "direct correlation"? How is this measured? Or should we forget about measurement and just take it on faith that "customer opportunities" will present themselves? I am fairly certain that if you went into a C-suite and said something like this, you would be laughed out of the office (ok, maybe not "laughed out of the office" but you would have a hard time being taken very seriously): "While we are not generating leads for sales, we shouldn't discount our social media efforts as just communicating with our audience. There is a direct correlation between social media campaigns but we just don't know what it is or how to measure our campaign's effectiveness". Actually this person might be praised for speaking the truth about the difficulty of measuring any results of social media campaigns. I am referring to REAL, TANGIBLE business results, not some meaningless bullshit like Facebook fans or retweets. At the end of the day, soft metrics like this are completely useless unless they somehow can be "directly correlated" to revenue. Social media marketing is great. It's fun, exciting - a new frontier. Someone will figure out how to measure its effectiveness at some point. Until then, we will just debate the measurement aspect of it. So for some of you, please put down the Kool Aid and let's find a way to bring real business value to your clients. What do you think?
Please offer your thoughts on this... #socialmedia #ROI
..."ROI analogy: If you're trying to paint a fence, ask yourself if the fence got painted, not whether it made someone buy your stuff." This is a tweet from Jason Falls, a well respected and self-described "social media educator, social media strategist and public relations professional". Do check out his site (previously linked) as it is a worthy read. I saw this tweet on Stephanie Wonderlin's blog and quite frankly, it didn't make sense to me. I asked Steph to explain it and lo and behold, Jason Falls himself answered the question. Here is his response: "If you don't mind, Erik, I'll clarify. Social media ROI is a measure asked for out of ignorance. ROI is a financial metric, not a media metric. What you should be asking, and the question is different though it doesn't seem so, is "What did I get out of social media?" Asking ROI means you only expect to get money in return. Social media does many things: Aides in branding and awareness, builds community, facilitates customer service, research and development, protects your reputation and (yes) drive sales. But only in the last one is your goal about money. Ask what it is you're trying to do with social media, then see if you did it. Your reporting is done. Did you try to paint a fence? Yes. Did you paint it? Yes. Success.Make sense?Before I comment, what are your thoughts on this?
#insanityworkout - Fit test, day 2 and day 3...
My wife and I made a decision a few weeks ago to try this crazy infomercial workout called Insanity together. A little over the top perhaps, but a tough workout nonetheless. In an attempt to start blogging more, I thought it might be nice to chronicle a few details about the workouts.
FIT TEST
This is the first thing you do. Shaun T. (guy who made this thing) goes through some basic moves that are done throughout the entire workout. Then the fit test. There are 8 exercises you will do, each one for 1 minute, then a minute break where he explains the next exercise, and so on. You count how many of each you can do and chart your progress throughout the workout. You will do this every 15 days. This test is a pretty good workout on its own.
DAY 2
This workout is a plyometric cardio workout. Yep, 20 minutes of jumping around. This is after a 10 minute warm-up that resulted in me pouring sweat. Absolutely brutal. This You Tube video, while edited, will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. It was really fun, in spite of the sweat and the feeling of being physically spent with about 5 minutes left in the workout.
DAY 3
When I woke up my hamstrings were killing me. I'm not very flexible anyway, so I generally have tight hamstrings. This was ridiculous. I was scheduled to play tennis for an hour today as well. Great...too late to back out, plus I really wanted to play. I figured that after an hour of tennis I would be pretty warm, so I went ahead and played. It took about 40 minutes of singles to get my hammys finally loosened up, but even then they were still sore.
Anyhoo, so I get home and immediately put in the day 3 workout - "cardio power and resistance". My wife had already done the workout so I asked her about it. She said it was tough but not as tough as the cardio plyos from yesterday. She tells me this while she is still sweating after having finished about 15 minutes earlier. This workout still had a lot of jumping based moves, with some pushups and triceps extensions thrown in. Again, this one is about 20 minutes with 10 minutes of warm-up and a cool down strech at the end.
The good news? My hammys aren't quite as sore...
2010 apparel catalog
We have just launched our 2010 apparel catalog. Most of these items are sold blank (unimprinted) but we do source screen printing and embroidery. Take a look and let me know what you think! 2010 apparel catalog
Promotional Products Effectiveness Study: A Summary
Some pretty interesting info from PPAI, a promotional products industry trade association I came across recently. Granted, it is skewed a bit since it was published by a trade group, but there are still some good takeways.
In an effort to better understand the effectiveness of this medium from the consumer’s perspective, PPAI designed and conducted a study which was fielded through MarketTools Inc. in San Francisco, California, to evaluate the action, reaction and relationship of promotional products and their recipients.
The final sample consisted of a panel of 1,005 consumers who recalled receiving a promotional product in the past 24 months. If they had not received a promotional product in the past 24 months they were screened out of the sample. All questions were answered by 1,005 respondents.
The Reach:
• Of an audience consisting of the average American consumer, a little less than half (44% or 1,005 people) reported receiving a promotional product in the last 24 months
• What’s more, 90.4% reported either currently owning or possessing a promotional product received within the last 24 months
The Response:
How do recipients feel about receiving a promotional product? Why do they think they were given the item? What actions do they take? These are crucial questions every advertiser should know and understand, as the answers can have a dramatic impact on their ROI.
How they feel:
• 83% of respondents like receiving a promotional product with an advertising message
• 48% would like to receive promotional products more often
• 30% like receiving personalized promotional products (i.e. with their name/personal info on it)
• 25% like getting promotional products to refer to the advertiser’s contact info if needed
• 38% feel promotional products serve as a constant reminder of the advertiser
• 49% are not bothered by seeing a corporate logo on a promotional product
• Only 2% dislike receiving promotional products
What they think:
• 73% of respondents think they were given a promotional product to promote a service, a product or a message
• 63% think it is to create brand/company awareness
• 63% think it is to serve as an advertiser/business service reminder
• 56% think it is an expression of gratitude for business/ action taken
• 53% think it is to solicit support for a cause
• 32% think it is to create good will
• 26% think it is to spread awareness of safety issues
• 25% think it is to commemorate person/event/occasion
• 23% think it is for prevention education
• 16% think it is to urge action
• 13% think it is in recognition of an achievement
• 3% think promotional products are a waste of money
• 2% other
The Impression:
When it comes to promotional products, advertisers want to know that 1.) the method is effective and 2.) that the cost over time doesn’t outweigh the results. So, the question is: What is the cost per impression when it comes to this particular method of marketing? Consider this: More than half (58%) of respondents keep a promotional product anywhere from one year to more than four
years. Even if the recipient uses the item only once per week, that’s a minimum of 52 impressions made over the course of a year with the possibility of more than 208 during a five-year window. And,
this doesn’t factor in the countless number of impressions made by others who view the promotional product when in use by the recipient.
In general, how long do you keep promotional products you receive from companies?
• 21% keep the promotional product more than 4 years
• 10% keep the promotional product 2-4 years
• 27% keep the promotional product 1-2 years
•21% keep the promotional product 6-12 months
• 15% keep the promotional product 2-5 months
• 6% keep the promotional product 1 month
There is a lot more to this study than what I have listed above. The main takeaway here is that if an organization uses promotional products that serves organizational marketing objectives, there can be a positive impact.
In our rush to market via the latest and greatest channel, we sometimes forget that offline advertising still works. It works even more effectively if combined with online marketing activity. The cost per impression (especially over time) is extremely low which is key with most clients, especially as we see more and more ad hoc marketing budgets and upper management demand measurability of all marketing activities.
Please let me know if you need any assistance with your next promotional marketing campaign!
Experiments in retweeting...
I'm currently involved in a small-scale retweeting experiment with @bnedguy and @JeffreyAStewart. I found a fascinating article a few days ago about retweeting as it relates to article marketing. I found it worthy of sharing so I tweeted it. Simple, right? After all, many of us do this all day (and night) long. What I found interesting was that these two fine gentlemen retweeted the link within about 15 minutes of my initial tweet. The interesting part is that I was hoping this would happen just to see what kind of "tweet velocity" an article about retweeting might get (random, slightly related thought: whenever I hear "velocity" used in a non-physical sense, I am reminded of my undergrad days when I studied about this and this in many of my Economics classes).
As I type this, I see that the three of us have generated 88 clicks. That isn't a great deal of clicks for many bloggers, but it is about double what I usually expect.
Have you ever had a tweet get retweeted several times? If so, please share your story below. I'd love to hear of it.
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A really bad sales approach
There are as many sales approaches as their are salespeople. I always enjoy hearing and reading of different approaches since part of my professional activities include sales. It's always good to share tips and "war stories" with people going through much of the same challenges.
There are several approaches that are just plain bad, especially this one: an assistant to "Mr. X" calls, wanting to "schedule a meeting". This is pretty much all the information that is provided by said assistant. Let's do a little deconstruction of this approach:- Why does the assistant call and not Mr. X? Is he too important for such trivial matters as calling to set appointments? Is the assistant qualified to make calls such as this? What if someone has a question that she is not able to answer? How does that reflect on Mr. X and his company? After all, they initiated contact!
- Why is there no more information provided than the fact that Mr. X "wants to schedule a meeting"? What does he want to meet about? Tell me so I can be prepared when we meet. Be respectful of my time and my desire to know a little more about the meeting agenda. By not providing more detail, most people are inclined to think the worst. People deserve to know more.
B2B marketing challenges (via www.MarketingSherpa.com)
I always enjoy Marketing Sherpa's Chart of the Day, which can be found by visiting their site every Tuesday or signing up for their newsletter. I like how they structure the chart: a link to larger version of the chart as well as a nice summary. They always do a good job of looking at marketing at a discipline where several channels are used instead of focusing on one channel. This chart illustrates the question, "What are the greatest challenges that B2B marketers are facing?" While I agree with the analysis, I wish they would post a little more info about the methodology. It can be accessed, but I would like to see it explained in a little more detail in context of the chart. The source of the data was 2009 from their benchmarking reports. Of note: While led gen was far and away the greatest challenge, it is interesting that generating PR "buzz" was a challenge to only 33% of respondents. Could this be related in some way to the prevalence of social media marketing? Many marketers understand SM tools, but perhaps we aren't developing appropriate lead gen strategies through SM channels. Also, is it possible that SM PR "buzz" isn't generating high quality leads as many SM experts feel it should? If this is true, even to some degree, then maybe we need to rethink the role of social media and PR in the marketing mix. Are we putting too much emphasis on social media/PR and too little on other marketing channels? Clearly, social media is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps because SM is such a new channel we are still figuring out best practices from a strategic perspective. As time goes on and the best marketing minds find successes with social media, its role in the marketing mix will be better defined. What do you think? What is your best strategy to generate high quality B2B leads? Also, what role does social media/PR buzz play in B2B lead gen?
Practical Social Media Measurement - a recap of #B2BChat
If you are a B2B marketer, or have any interest in understanding the social media challenges of B2B marketing, you really need to read this article. It is the summary of this chat on Twitter. Really insightful stuff. Much of what we hear about SM strategy is B2C based, which is generally thought of as easier to implement than B2B. One of the takeaways from this that jumped out as me was this:"I view SM as an extension of ‘traditional’ communications – advertizing/PR..." This is a good way to look at SM from a practical B2B standpoint. It is also a good way to pitch the adoption of SM to upper management. It is my experience that upper management types have a vague idea of what SM is, but do not understand what the potential business benefits may be. Too many SM types experience frustration that their companies' execs do not fully embrace SM marketing. If you are a SM type at an organization that is pushing back or resisting SM marketing, your job is to build a business case for it that your execs can understand. This doesnt mean they are stupid, ignorant, intolerant, or even against you or SM. You simply need to pitch it to them as a tangible, measurable benefit to the company. If you can't do that, then forget it - you're not going to get it sold to upper management. Do not go in talking about "audience engagement", "social capital", "listening/being part of the conversation" or any of that kind of fluff. They don't want to hear about it and it doesn't really matter unless it can lead back to revenue. To be fair, those kind of things do matter, but they are secondary to driving revenue. So if you are a B2B marketer, how do you implement SM marketing? Are you having a difficult time getting execs on board? If you did get your company's execs on board, how did you do it? Please comment below - I'd love to hear your experiences.
#Blono - Twin Cities Business Showcase pics!
I'm going to play to my local crowd mostly with this entry...If you happened to attend the Twin Cities Business Showcase, we added a few pics to our Facebook fan page photo album. Become a fan if you haven't already!
