Optimize and the Confluence of Search and Social Media
Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, content marketing, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Excerpt of my interview with Lee Odden. Video production by my friends at Candidio. Fast, inexpensive, quality video production. Transcription services from Speechpad. For full conversation, watch the video!
Jay: Hey, everybody. It’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert joined today
by a very special guest, my friend Lee Odden, live from somewhere. . .
Lee: Somewhere.
Jay: In the United Kingdom. A secret location in the United Kingdom. Lee
is the author of the brand new book, so brand new that the official release
date was yesterday, called Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing
Lee: Great to be here. Doing great. Having a good time at a search
conference here in Leeds and really happy to talk about Optimize
get tired of it.
Jay: You do a lot of conferences. I tell you what, you guys in the
search business, you like to confer. There are conferences, there are confabs, there are a lot of that kind of thing
in your business.
Lee: You know, it changes so much. And there’s a lot of black box, so to
speak, in terms of how things work and that’s the search engines’ fault, I
suppose, and so, you know, to keep people guessing and that sort of thing.
So folks get together and try and figure it out, you know. And even people
like myself, I’ve been in the business for 15 years, you know, there’s
still new things, you know, you learn at these events. Because there’s so
many ways to answer the question.
Jay: Very nice. Very nice. As you said, your background
is in search. And, of course, now you do a lot of social and the
confluence of social and search, which is what the book is about. Do you
think being from a search background is the best possible historical
precedent to be good at social, or is it the worst possible background to
be good at social?
Lee: If you’re asking a search person, then clearly there’s a very obvious
answer to that. I came in as an online marketer search guy to a PR agency, as a contractor that
became an employee that became a partner and then I’m doing what I do now.
But, so I had the influence of public relations and the content
there. The importance of messaging and influence hit me on one side and
then search and data and all that propeller hat kind of SEO stuff that was
going on. And that’s kind of where I come from, I think. And I found,
interestingly, that the media relations efforts, the outbound calling of
journalists, emails of journalists to get media placement for our clients,
is something that I really recognize as a powerful
tactic, you know?
I think there are some search people,
who, by their nature, are adaptable. The long time search folks
that are successful are extremely adaptable. And I said this morning those
SEOs were making money in ’97 by optimizing for Altavista, Hotbot, and
Lycos. And they’re going to be making money-and I mean for their clients or
for themselves next year or ten years from now from whatever the future
Google Facebook Pinterest conglomeration is.
Jay: Yep.
Lee: Now, that’s a small percentage. And so those folks, you know,
they’ll be great as social. They’ll be great at content. They’ll be great
at search or a conglomeration of all of the above. But there are plenty of
people who are tactically practicing SEO and they’re going to suck at
social.
Jay: Just because they take sort of the relationship side out of it and
it’s too formulaic?
Lee: Yes. It’s mechanical, not meaningful.
Google Handles 11 Billion Inquiries Per Month. Twitter Handles 350 Billion Tweets Per Day.
Jay: One of the stats
that you had in the book which blew me away, I actually had to read it two
or three times, and I know it’s not a misprint because I’m sure you’ve
checked it. But I think you said in the book at Google has 11 billion
queries a month.
Lee: Yeah, that’s from Comscore.
Jay: And Twitter has 350 billion tweets a day?
Lee: 350 billion tweets a day.
Jay: But the reality is, the reality is that we think about Google as this like all-knowing, all-seeing cyborg. But yet, in terms of actual level of inquiry, level of chatter, Twitter and Facebook and those guys are right there.
Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers
Lee: Yeah, you know, there’s an info-graphic that documents 60 seconds on
the web, right? And, you know, it’s kind of an information
overload kind of thing. And someone coming into the content marketing
space is not only competing against other companies that are creating
content, but they’re also, you know, competing against the consumers that
are empowered to publish.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah, I talk about that all the time. Your brand is competing
against my mom and my wife and my best friend for my attention. And brands
have never had to really experience that in the past. That’s really a
first. You know, my mom doesn’t buy magazine ads, right? And my friends
don’t buy radio time, right? But all the sudden, now we’re in the same
sandbox, which is crazy. So it seems like a lot of companies are like,
great, well we’ll just make more content, right? But your belief, i.e.
this book, is don’t necessarily make more content. Optimize that content.
And how does that yield better outcomes?
Personas, Content Marketing Segmentation and the Buy Cycle
Lee: Well obviously, it’s being thoughtful about a particular audience and
a particular outcome or a category of outcome. A lot of interesting,
interestingly, I’ve seen a lot of the SEO folks that are jumping on the
content marketing bandwagon. What I was getting at with the SEOs is that they’re
responding to the content issues by saying you should make more content.
So their perception is leaving out the customer. They’re leaving out
empathy. They’re leaving out who actually buys the stuff. And they’re also
not talking so much, although I think they will be, so much about buy cycle
optimization. So it’s one thing to segment customers and kind of think
about what their paying points and their goals are and then create a
content plan around that and that’s a qualitative effort, I think, right?
And so therefore, not only by understanding actual customers and what
they’re interested in, but also taking a look at a segment and documenting
the buying cycle, buying behaviors are, right?
Awareness, call it whatever you want, awareness, interest, consideration and purchase. And then
actually develop, craft the editorial plans, you know, specific to that buy
cycle. And of course, anytime there’s content, there’s an opportunity for,
you know, search and social media optimization.
Jay: Yep, yep. One of the things that was really interesting in the book,
you talk about buy cycle optimization is, you know, you talk about using
personas. I’m a big fan of that and used to do a lot that in my web
strategy consulting practice in the last company that I was in. But you
really talk about creating personas from a place of data inputs, right?
Where it’s not just like, let’s sit down and come up with an interesting
caricature of our customers, but using a lot of data and analysis to then
take that information and create personas based on that.
Lee: Right. Yeah, doing research into, you know, not only surveying
customers and doing some primary research, I guess and getting a sense of
what their preferences are. And I like to split it up into their
preferences for discovery of information, consumption of information, and
sharing or action. But understanding through web analytics, through other
data sources like social monitoring. I mean, there’s site-specific
information that have demographic information associated with it. Going to
social platforms that offer advertising, they usually have demographic
information about who visits that site. And by comparing that demographic
data or behavioral cycle, whatever, with information you have on your own
customers, you can make some good decisions in terms of persona
development. And the thing that folks need to understand is that there’s
not a start/stop with persona development, right? It’s you’re always
refining it. The other thing is the notion of creating a negative persona
and that is, you know, people that you don’t want to be your customer
anymore or that you don’t want to attract so that you make sure that you’re
not optimizing for them.
Editorial Calendars and Content Planning
Jay: You know, we talked about editorial plans in the book-and you
mentioned it a moment ago-how does that work with your blog? The Top Rank
Blog, of course, is one of the finest blogs out there on the interwebs and
I read it. In fact, I just read an article a minute ago about some cool new
Pinterest stuff. It’s a great, great blog. Super useful. How do you
apply editorial calendaring, editorial planning to the blog? What does
that process look like for you?
Lee: Well first, over the last six month I’ve had some help from Ashley
Zeckman, who wrote the Pinterest post. And we follow long term guidelines,
and some adaptive guidelines. So I like to plan things out a couple of
months in advance. And so we use sort of a
matrix. There are, let’s say, vertical markets or topics on one axis and
on the other axis are things like applications or industries and things
like that. So, for example, I might have well, Pinterest and optimization,
Pinterest and B2B, Pinterest and consumer, Pinterest and this, and so
forth. Or I might have, you know, retail and Facebook, retail and Twitter,
retail and SEO, retail and social media.
And when we follow sort of a
matrix like that is one input for inspiration on our editorial plan for the
blog. The other thing we look at is we have sort of a weekly calendar. So
on Monday, I’ll do a certain type of post, usually try to be thought
leadership. And on Fridays, it’s a news roundup. On Tuesdays, it’s
something else.
Jay: Brilliant. We do the second one with the weekly sort of editorial
calendar. But the X Y topical axes is really fascinating. Because what I
do is say, I think that’s interesting. I’m going to write about that.
Which is not terribly focused, which is why your blog has a lot more
traffic than mine does. Because you’re actually like, OK, we know what
people want and let’s give them that.
Lee: I’m not trying to be a platform for self expression as much as content that
supports our agency’s objective. We don’t run advertising. We don’t
monetize the blog in any way. It’s been free for all, for eight years now.
The only way we monetize the blog are the inquiries that occur directly or
that use the blog as part of inspiration, so offline, online, you know how
it goes, for consulting gigs. So to inspire those kinds of inquiries, you
know, we follow that kind of guideline.
Instagram, Pinterest and the Image Economy
Jay: Yeah, love it. So you are a photographer. I always see you around
conferences with a camera and you’re on Instagram all the time. You do a
great job there. Because you have this crazy, insane travel schedule,
you’re in Europe, you’re in Hong Kong, you’re on the moon. What’s your
take on the whole Instagram Facebook scenario? Are you running for the
hills? Are you freaked out? Are you going to stop using it?
Is THIS Lee Odden's best-looking audience?
Lee: Well, Instagram is my favorite app to use, personally. I don’t do
anything marketing oriented there. I do take photos of conference
attendees. Like when I’m on stage I do this little fun thing where I say,
to break the ice, I’m looking for the best looking audience in the world so
if you could all get good looking . Then I take a picture and then I pop
it up. So, yeah, because there’s a personal connection to me and I love
the content that the images that other people are putting up on Instagram,
that’s something I enjoy. It’s quick. It’s mobile. It’s obviously not on
the web. But I actually try and use a lot of my photos for blog posts, like
I did for a blog post today.
However, compared with Pinterest, when there was buzz about Pinterest
doing, you know, selling your personal photos, I deleted all the photos,
all my personal photos that I had uploaded. But that’s a little bit of a
different topic. Because the behavior on Pinterest isn’t something I’m
personally interesting. Curating other’s photos. I tried it. It’s not
for me. I like taking photos and, you know, refining and reacting to other
people’s photos that they’ve taken.
Jay: Yeah. Well the thing is, I mean, nobody freaks out about Google
buying YouTube at this point. You know, that’s worked out OK for all
involved. So just because Facebook owns Instagram I don’t think means that
they are necessarily going to kill it or screw it up or roll it in. Now
they may do all those things. But I don’t think it necessarily means that.
Lee: Yeah. I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, you know, you’ve got-
that’s a lot of money. And they’ve got to monetize, right? So something’s
going to happen.
Optimize Spills the Beans
Jay: This book is really fascinating to me because, you know as we said, coming from the digital side of it,
like, you kind of, I mean, you told the whole tale in here. I mean, if you
really want to get good at optimizing search and social and content, I
mean, you can read this book and keep it around and you’ve got a really
good blueprint for doing so. It was amazing to me in comparison to other
books out there in our category who are a little bit more pontificating and
here’s the way the world works. I mean, this is very down the line, you do
this and then you do this and then you do this, which is admirable. But
did you ever have anybody on your team say, “hey, boss, maybe we shouldn’t
write a book that tells people exactly what we do for a living?” Was there
ever any concern there?
Lee: Well, you know, everything’s not in there.
Jay: ”All the good stuff is not in Optimize
Lee: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s like anything, I suppose. If people
don’t think a certain way every day, and you give a taste of that, it does
seem like, “Holy crap, they’re giving all this stuff away.” And the
reality is it’s an iceberg. The other thing is there’s a lot of value in
execution. I mean, this is a creative business more so than people
realize. And it’s not just creative on the, you know, storytelling aspect
which is obviously important, and will continue to grow in importance. But
the creative content planning, the creativity, and the political issues you
have to deal with, as you know as a consultant with organizations, with
execution. And then also the insight that comes from data. That, you know
I can give even more detailed instructions about what one should do in all
those areas. But when it comes down to a human being actually turning that
into value, that’s requires experience and knowledge, not just information.
Jay: Yeah. Just because you give somebody a list of ingredients doesn’t
make them a chef.
Lee: Exactly. And my goal in the book was to give something to people
that would be valuable, right? I mean, I’m not looking to sign every
company up in the world to be a client.
Jay: Yeah, it was really, really good. I loved it. It’s singing the song
that I like to sing. You’ve done a great job
and I think a real service to a lot of people. And I hope folks will take
the time to really read it carefully. Because you can learn an awful lot in
that book and from the man, the myth, the legend, Lee Odden. Thanks so
much for being here. Congrats.
Think Narrow and Harness the Power of UnPopular
Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, branding, humanization, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Video Interviews
Excerpt of my interview with Erika Napoletano. Transcription services from our friends at Speechpad. For full conversation, watch the video!
Jay: Hey everybody it’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert, joined today by a very special guest, Erika Napoletano, author of The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You (and why no one else matters)
Erika: Any better and I would be twins.
Jay: Wow, I don’t even know what that means. It’s freaking me out a little bit actually.
Erika: If the world could handle two of me, there would be two of me right now.
Jay: There you go. How’s the book doing? I loved it. It was such a refreshing read. I really, really enjoyed it. I tore through it. It was great.
Erika: The book is doing great. The publisher is absolutely stoked about digital sales. You know from when your book 
Jay: No kidding. Surprise!
Erika: Somebody’s like, “Hey, I just ordered your book,” and I’m like, “You, you, you did?”
Jay: No email, no notification. It’s just appears. It’s the craziest thing.
Erika: So, it’s boom. Kindle edition just manifests, but the feedback from the Kindle edition
Jay: It is exciting. One of the things that you actually say in the book is that the book itself didn’t turn out how you had planned it necessarily. What did you mean by that?
Erika: Well, anybody who follows my online persona, which is RedheadWriting, is probably opening the book. Even the early feedback I’ve gotten, they were expecting me to smack people around. Because that’s what RedheadWriting does and people who are fans of that brand enjoy that style. But this book is by Erika Napoletano, and when I went through the book and even through the editing process, I got to the end and I looked at it and I was like, I learned something in this process.
It’s really cool to get to the end of your project and go that’s not where I thought it was going to go, but I’m really happy with where it’s at. It’s a lot like owning a business because when we start a business, and you have started multiple businesses yourself, some successful exits.
When you start a business we have these, I’ll call them daydreams, about where we think things are going to go and how they’re going to be on a day-to-day basis and the reality is much different. So when you can get to a place where you’ve got your own project and you go, not what I planned on, but it’s in a really awesome place. That’s a great place to wake up to every morning. It was a great place for me to end the book and that’s what the epilogue of the book talks about. Not what I planned, but a really cool place to be.
Jay: Fantastic. I love the examples in the book, too. Tons of great companies that you used as examples of how to brand and how to be unpopular on purpose, and a lot of companies that are not household names intentionally and I think that’s really interesting. How did you come up with those? I saw at one point you sort of reached out to HARO and asked people if they knew of a company who kind of did this sort of thing. Talk about that a little bit.
Erika: I don’t know about you, and I’m a huge fan of Zappos and I fly Southwest Airlines all the time, but if I read one more case study about them, I’m probably going to explode all over my screen. And I thought that maybe my readers were going to be exactly the same way because the target audience for this book, even though it applies to brands of any size and scale and whether they’re new or established, most of us wake up every morning and we just want to run a business that makes us happy, that gives us the time to do the things that we love doing and allows us to own a business instead of have our business owning us.
So what I did is I went out and found businesses that were privately owned, and in a lot of cases family owned, and asked for examples of, especially with HARO, which is Help a Reporter Out. It’s a place where anybody who’s writing or researching anything can ask for resources and I asked for companies that thought that they fit the mold. Two of the companies in there actually came from research for my column for Entrepreneur Magazine, which was Narragansett Beer and Marination Nation.
Jay: And when you talk about branding and brand personality, I think it’s oftentimes easier for smaller businesses to do that well anyway because you’re closer to the customer. You get into big corporations and it’s like layer, layer, layer, layer, layer, layer and the founder or the sort of C-Suite is so far away from the front lines that it’s hard to get that kind of cultural alignment. So it’s usually easier to sort of turn that battleship when you’ve got a little smaller company anyway.
Erika: And what businesses can take away after reading the book is how do I build a brand that has an audience robust enough to support it through any economic cycle? And that’s where I came up with the five principles for the unpopular brand. A lot of people think that being unpopular means being unlikable, In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The blog that I just put up on the website for the book today, with is unpopularbook.com today, talks about a recent ad campaign by Reebok which was actually just pulled because it advocated infidelity and it alienated 50% of that brand’s audience base.
So to me, that’s an unlikable decision because it degrades and insults your audience. When you make an unpopular business decision, it’s about honoring your audience. It’s about saying, I appreciate the fact that you’re here. You are the reason that I get to be in business today, tomorrow and the next day. This decision I’m making, while it may not resonate with everyone, it’s going to ensure that we’re here to do business for you and with you long into the future. That’s what being an unpopular brand is about.
Jay: Yes, there is a big difference between being unpopular and unlikable. So much of what I was reading in the book and the theory of being unpopular is you say stop focusing on pleasing people who are never going to like you. It’s this notion of really segmentation and focus. A lot of things that we do are with agencies, and that is very typical agency problem, where it’s like, well, we’ll be the agency for anybody who will hire us. And that is a sort of road to ruin, right? You’ll be great at one thing instead of being okay at a million things, and I think that’s the key.
You’ve got a little chart methodology in the book where you actually have an exercise where you say, “Let’s figure out who is never, ever going to hire you.” Right? So you do it opposite. It’s really hard for people to say here’s who this business if for. That sounds easy, but it’s a hard exercise to do. It’s easier to say here’s who this business is definitely not for. And by a process of elimination you get to your core audience. I love that mechanism. Do you do that with your clients?
Erika: I do. We come across businesses all the time that are in the middle of a life cycle. They’re not just starting off, they’ve been around for a while and they’re wondering why they’re not growing. How can I get traction on the next level? I’ll go all the way back to, why are you here? You know the Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why,” hugely powerful concept, and from that why we figure out whom are you talking to. A lot of times they go, well, everybody needs what we have to offer. That’s when you put the brakes on. It’s an ah-ha moment because once you figure out that that’s the problem.
Jay: I think there’s this pervasive belief that niche means lesser, and all it really means is focused. Right?
Erika: Right.
Jay: In addition to the sort of focus on a particular audience, which is sort of a theme of the book, there’s a lot in there which was really resonate for me because it’s similar to the things we talked about in The NOW Revolution
Erika: For me, personality is job one for a brand. Ford thinks its quality, I think its personality. But think about, you know if we want to use Ford as an example, why would they come out and say that quality is job one? Because they want you to understand that their products are reliable, they’re there. They’re concerned about your experience as a customer and that quality is something that you’re never going to have to worry about throughout your ownership and your experience with their brands.
Think about the friends that you sit down to dinner with every now and then. You have the friend who, without fail, every time you call him, he’s there to take you to the airport. It doesn’t matter what time of the day. You have a friend who will go off the grid for a week, if he even catches wind that you’re moving. You have the person who will always add extra money to the tip when you’re eating as a group, and you have the person in your group who just has the best jokes, hilarious. Your world is a collection of those personalities, but those people aren’t just the joke teller. They’re not just the reliable ride to the airport. There’s people behind them, but those leading qualities are what makes you go for everything you are, and more importantly, for everything you’re not, I’m glad you’re in my world.
If business owners think about their brands the same way as they think about the people in their lives, then you can begin to understand how people keep brands in their lives as friends. When you have that friendship established, there’s a whole other world of dialogue that opens up to you, and it’s having a brutally honest customer base.
Jay: It’s a challenging concept for a lot of companies though because they assume, because they’ve been taught to believe this, that business is about transactions and that it’s about talking about yourself and marketing the business. What you talk about is that we need to sort of transcend the transactional and that 80% of the things you talk about should not be about your company.
Erika: Without a doubt. I’ll go back to the people that you sit and have dinner with. You don’t invite the person who is a me, me, me, me, me, me and you do this, you leave. It’s the same when you’re at a business function and somebody walks up and interrupts your conversation and derails it. You want to be surrounded by people who don’t just, they empower you to talk about yourself when it’s appropriate because they’re genuinely interested in what’s going on, but you’re way more interested in what’s going on with them because as a business owner, that’s data. That’s the most powerful information you can have to shape your future business decisions because if you audience is saying, responding to things and going, “God, you know, money’s tight,” or “God, you know what? I love this product,” or “I wish it came in orange,” or “I love it. I would pay twice as much for it.”
Jay: The book was awesome. I really, really enjoyed reading it. It is a breath of fresh air, as are you. It was really, really useful. Very well written, too. No surprise given your background. But I’m super proud of it and I know you are, too. Everybody should pick up a copy of it.
Erika: Thank you so much. It’s been a labor of love and I’ll tell you this – not all of you who decide to buy the book you’re going to love it, and that’s okay. But, hopefully, you take some great things for your business out of it and the one thing that I’ll close out by saying is remember how I said there’s no case studies by those behemoth brands that we’re tired of? There also aren’t any of those crappy end of the chapter workbooks, which some of us have publishers that say we have to put those in and I was like, “No! I’m not going to do it!” So what I did is I built a fully interactive forum.
So if you have ideas to share about the book, head on over to unpopularbook.com and click the tab “Get Into It.” Also, at the end of the book there’s also an appendix that tells you how to use the forum. We want to hear from you.
I thought it would be great to just have the conversation start when somebody closes the back cover and to carry on those ideas and have it be a continually growing kind of wiki knowledge base for other entrepreneurs, even if they’ve never read the book, to go to the forum and go, “Hey, I have that question, too.”
Jay: Look at Erika, eating her own dog food. How about that! Nicely done. I will be on the forum. I’ll be in there. I’ll mix it up.
Erika: Please, go start stirring some stuff up.
2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Posted on 03. Apr, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Book Reviews, report, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing, social media research
Click the image above to download your copy of the report.
While the speculation, pontification and monetization of social media is reaching momentum of tsunami proportions, many businesses looking for practical advice are asking, “Exactly how are marketers using social media to grow their businesses?”
Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner has posed that same question and others like it to a sample of marketers on the front lines of the social web to help bring some clarity to what works, what doesn’t and where to focus.
When asked about the bearing of the report on the intersection of search and social, Mike said, “With Google integrating results from its Google+ network into search, we’ll begin to see an Amazon type social proofing of search results based on the activity of friends. This will make search even more important.” We agree!
The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is out today and offers 42 pages of insights, tables, graphs and examples of tactics. Over 3,800 respondents provided their advice on the who, what, when, and where of social media marketing. They also shared where they plan on investing in the future.
Key subject matter covered in the report includes:
- The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered:
- The time commitment
- The benefits of social media marketing
- Commonly used social media services:
- Social media sites people want to learn more about
- Social media outsourcing
- B2B vs B2C
- Changes since the 2011 report
How much time should you spend on social media marketing tasks each week? It’s a reasonable question and the responses broke down as:
- 59% – 6 hours / week or more
- 33% – 11 hours / week or more
- 15% - 20+ hours / week
Other key findings from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report include:
- 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
- Top benefits of social media marketing:
85% Generating more business exposure
69% increasing traffic
65% providing marketplace insight - 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing
- While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities
This report is a perfect compliment to the upcoming Social Media Success Summit online conference coming up on May 1st. You can get your basic questions answered and some alignment with what others are doing from the report and then get practical advice, tips and training from consultants and practitioners from the online conference. It’s a great example of content marketing to promote an event actually.
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Top Online Marketing Books for 2012
Posted on 28. Dec, 2011 by AHall in B2B, Blog, Book Reviews, content marketing, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
The New Year will soon be here and we are looking forward to continuing to learn from some of the top marketing minds on the web about the strategies and tactics that will shape online marketing efforts in 2012 and beyond. To help you get a jump start, I have compiled a list of books coming out in 2012 that cover a range of online marketing topics including: mobile, social media, content and search engine marketing. Enjoy.
[Note from Lee: We didn't include second editions, re-releases in paperback or books that didn't have cover images uploaded yet.]
Mobile, Local, Location Based Marketing
Mobilized Marketing: Drive Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Marketing (Wiley) by Jeff Hasen
Jeff Hasen, CMO of mobile marketing forerunner Hipcricket, provides timely mobile strategies and tactics leveraging his experience from more than 130,000 past campaigns. As mobile marketing continues to move to the forefront of the marketing world, the insight Hasen provides into mobile optimization, budgeting, and measurement should prove to be indispensable in 2012.
Go Mobile: Location-Based Marketing, Apps, Mobile Optimized Ad Campaigns, 2D Codes and Other Mobile Strategies to Grow Your Business (Wiley) by Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner
Go Mobile offers a step by step guide for mobile marketing in 2012. It includes practical campaign instructions in order to develop a mobile website, deploy SMS for business, utilize QR codes, leverage mobile apps and more. One can also benefit from strategic instructions to use location based marketing in order to build your customers base and how to integrate social media into mobile campaigns.
Search & Social Media Marketing
Social Media Intelligence: Extracting Knowledge from the Fire Hose of Conversations (Que) by Sally Falkow
Upcoming in June of 2012, Social Media Intelligence illustrates how to use the leading social media analytics tools in order to gauge the effectiveness of social media marketing and make strategic decisions. Sally Falkow will guide you in moving from reactive brand monitoring to proactive information gathering in order to take advantage of business opportunities. This is a great read for those looking to progress from just doing social media to using it as an effective piece of their marketing strategy.
Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything (Que) by Chris Brogan
The much buzzed about Google+ seems likely to have a big impact on search in 2012. Author, Chris Brogan, discusses how businesses should be taking advantage of the newest social network and defines those strategies and tactics to use for business.
Content Marketing
Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customer by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing (Wiley) by Lee Odden
TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden helps companies develop an optimized and socialized content marketing strategy to attain new levels of customer acquisition and engagement in 2012. Balancing the practical with the innovative, Optimize is ideal for those marketers that want a more effective content marketing strategy that wins and retains more customers, builds thought leadership and dominates the competition. Scheduled for release mid-March 2012.
Content is Currency: Developing Powder Content for Web and Mobile (Nicholas Brealey Publishing) by Jon Wuebben
Already receiving great reviews, Content is Currency, by Jon Wuebben delivers practical instructions and step by step guides to manage content through four key phases: Creation, Optimization, Distribution and Curation. This book is a great opportunity for business owners and marketers to understand how to create content which will engage their audience and drive results.
B2B Marketing
The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More (Wiley) by Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen
The B2B Social Media Book is the ultimate reference guide for B2B marketers looking to expand their knowledge of social media strategy and contribute to their business growth. Readers will discover actionable items for leveraging blogs, LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and more to form the cornerstone of their B2B marketing strategies.
B2B Digital Marketing: Using the Web to Market Directly to Businesses (Que) by Michael Miler
B2B Digital Marketing looks to be a great resource for B2B marketers interested in learning how to sell directly to other businesses using digital marketing. Leading with a broad summary and then diving into individual channel tactics for strategy, implementation and measurement, B2B Digital Marketing is another good guide for those looking for a B2B marketing overview.
There are many books publishing in 2012 that promise to introduce us to new ways to strategize, develop online marketing plans and deploy campaigns across a variety of channels. What books are you anxiously awaiting in 2012?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Top Online Marketing Books for 2012 | http://www.toprankblog.com
Top Online Marketing Books for 2012
Posted on 28. Dec, 2011 by AHall in B2B, Blog, Book Reviews, content marketing, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
The New Year will soon be here and we are looking forward to continuing to learn from some of the top marketing minds on the web about the strategies and tactics that will shape online marketing efforts in 2012 and beyond. To help you get a jump start, I have compiled a list of books coming out in 2012 that cover a range of online marketing topics including: mobile, social media, content and search engine marketing. Enjoy.
[Note from Lee: We didn't include second editions, re-releases in paperback or books that didn't have cover images uploaded yet.]
Mobile, Local, Location Based Marketing
Mobilized Marketing: Drive Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Marketing (Wiley) by Jeff Hasen
Jeff Hasen, CMO of mobile marketing forerunner Hipcricket, provides timely mobile strategies and tactics leveraging his experience from more than 130,000 past campaigns. As mobile marketing continues to move to the forefront of the marketing world, the insight Hasen provides into mobile optimization, budgeting, and measurement should prove to be indispensable in 2012.
Go Mobile: Location-Based Marketing, Apps, Mobile Optimized Ad Campaigns, 2D Codes and Other Mobile Strategies to Grow Your Business (Wiley) by Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner
Go Mobile offers a step by step guide for mobile marketing in 2012. It includes practical campaign instructions in order to develop a mobile website, deploy SMS for business, utilize QR codes, leverage mobile apps and more. One can also benefit from strategic instructions to use location based marketing in order to build your customers base and how to integrate social media into mobile campaigns.
Search & Social Media Marketing
Social Media Intelligence: Extracting Knowledge from the Fire Hose of Conversations (Que) by Sally Falkow
Upcoming in June of 2012, Social Media Intelligence illustrates how to use the leading social media analytics tools in order to gauge the effectiveness of social media marketing and make strategic decisions. Sally Falkow will guide you in moving from reactive brand monitoring to proactive information gathering in order to take advantage of business opportunities. This is a great read for those looking to progress from just doing social media to using it as an effective piece of their marketing strategy.
Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything (Que) by Chris Brogan
The much buzzed about Google+ seems likely to have a big impact on search in 2012. Author, Chris Brogan, discusses how businesses should be taking advantage of the newest social network and defines those strategies and tactics to use for business.
Content Marketing
Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customer by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing (Wiley) by Lee Odden
TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden helps companies develop an optimized and socialized content marketing strategy to attain new levels of customer acquisition and engagement in 2012. Balancing the practical with the innovative, Optimize is ideal for those marketers that want a more effective content marketing strategy that wins and retains more customers, builds thought leadership and dominates the competition. Scheduled for release mid-March 2012.
Content is Currency: Developing Powder Content for Web and Mobile (Nicholas Brealey Publishing) by Jon Wuebben
Already receiving great reviews, Content is Currency, by Jon Wuebben delivers practical instructions and step by step guides to manage content through four key phases: Creation, Optimization, Distribution and Curation. This book is a great opportunity for business owners and marketers to understand how to create content which will engage their audience and drive results.
B2B Marketing
The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More (Wiley) by Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen
The B2B Social Media Book is the ultimate reference guide for B2B marketers looking to expand their knowledge of social media strategy and contribute to their business growth. Readers will discover actionable items for leveraging blogs, LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and more to form the cornerstone of their B2B marketing strategies.
B2B Digital Marketing: Using the Web to Market Directly to Businesses (Que) by Michael Miler
B2B Digital Marketing looks to be a great resource for B2B marketers interested in learning how to sell directly to other businesses using digital marketing. Leading with a broad summary and then diving into individual channel tactics for strategy, implementation and measurement, B2B Digital Marketing is another good guide for those looking for a B2B marketing overview.
There are many books publishing in 2012 that promise to introduce us to new ways to strategize, develop online marketing plans and deploy campaigns across a variety of channels. What books are you anxiously awaiting in 2012?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Top Online Marketing Books for 2012 | http://www.toprankblog.com
Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones
Posted on 22. Dec, 2011 by Ashley Zeckman in Blog, Book Reviews, Keyword Research, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
In my search for a new book to read on keywords I went straight to the source, Lee Odden’s office library. Right away I noticed Ron Jones’ new book “Keyword Intelligence” while standing in front of a bookcase full of titles to choose from.
What I appreciate about Jones’ book is that whether you are a search marketing guru or you work in another marketing/communications field, it paints things in a light that you may not have thought about before. Besides a deep dive into keyword research and it’s overall impact on SEO, social media and content marketing, there is a little something in this book for everyone ranging from simple explanations of social networking sites to more detailed information on site migration and architecture. Curious to know what useful tips I found in Ron Jones new book?
“Keyword Research is a Strategic Function”
To most professionals keyword research can seem like a monotonous task. Jones does a good job of really highlighting the importance of keyword research and how it should affect your overall Internet marketing strategy. The position of the book is that much of your content creation should be based upon a list of tried and tested keywords that are meant to bring people to your site and draw them in. A point about thinking big picture with keywords that hits home: “Without a strategy, you will become lost in the depths of random pages of web content without a core meaning or focus.”
“Setting up SMART Goals”
Goal setting should not be a new concept to Internet marketers. An approach that Jones recommends is setting “smart” goals for each online channel you are using to market. He says that these goals may take more effort to setup but they help to ensure quality. SMART goals are defined as:
S= Specific
M= Measureable
A= Attainable
R= Realistic
T= Timely
A simple goal may be to increase the number of conversions that your site sees on a monthly basis. If you are implementing SMART goal setting, you may focus on something more specific as increasing site conversions by 10% each month for the next six months on your contact page, about us page, and solutions page.
“Mind Mapping”
Keyword brainstorming can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task to tackle. No more! Jones suggests breaking down your brainstorming tasks into mini assignments which will encourage you to work on one level of keywords at a time. Mind mapping is a great visual aid for marketers who tend to like to see plans illustrated. You begin by selecting a seed term, draw a circle around it, and brainstorm additional words related to your seed term.
Below is an example of mind mapping that I started with my seed phrase being “Marketing”.
“Role of Keywords and Social Media”
We know that keywords are an essential part of an SEO or PPC strategy but many overlook the roll of keywords in social media. An in depth analysis of keywords will help you pinpoint the specific needs and wants of your target audience. A keyword plan for social media will help you communicate more effectively with your audience. Jones does note that a strategy created for SEO or PPC may not translate exactly the same for social media so there are some differences to keep in mind. An example would be search query variances between Google and a social networking site.
“Developing a mobile strategy”
This section highlights the importance of considering the entire customer experience not just the optimized content that we provide. Jones recommends a six step process for outlining your mobile strategy. That process includes:
- Define Target Audience & Personas
- Conduct Your Research
- Develop Your Mobile Solution
- Design Your Pricing Model
- Develop Your Support Model
- Develop Retention or Loyalty Program
“Defining Metrics for Success”
One recommendation in particular that stuck out to me was his emphasis on the importance of defining success up front with any marketing campaign. Some of the goals that Jones recommends for a successful outcome include:
- Increased overall website visitor traffic
- Increased keyword rankings and top keyword placement
- Increased brand awareness
- Increased generated revenue and ROI
- Specific behavioral insights from your target audience based on keyword usage
In my opinion “Keyword Intelligence” does a great job of getting the reader to think intelligently and strategically about basic keyword choices. By taking a moment to step back and analyze why keyword research and brainstorming is important, you are better able to see what a large impact it can have on your overall search and online marketing strategy. This is the only book that’s specifically focused on Keywords and for those that really want a deep dive on the subject, it’s worth checking out.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones | http://www.toprankblog.com
No B.S. Social Media Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway
Posted on 12. Oct, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, Infusionsoft, Jason Falls, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Book, social media books, social media marketing
Video transcipt:
Hey everybody, it’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert. Hope you are doing great. Today we’re going to talk about things that are no bullshit.
First thing that’s no bullshit is it is a Saturday here in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. Going to go to the IU game with the kids. Go Hoosiers. However, it is also no bullshit that we are terrible. Playing Illinois today. Illinois 5 and 0, undefeated. IU, 1 and 4, with a victory over mighty South Carolina State. We’ve been soundly beaten by everybody else, so it could get ugly. But the weather’s beautiful. We’re going to tailgate and it’s going to be fantastic. (note: we lost 41-20)
A Great New Social Media Book
The other thing that I want to talk to you about today is this book, No Bullshit Social Media
I tell you what. There are a lot of social media books out there, as you know. In fact, I co-wrote one, but I really believe that this book is the best book out there for the small business owner and/or the company owner or manager who is still on the sidelines about social media, the doubting Thomases, the people who still say things like, “I don’t want to know what you’re having for lunch.” For those folks, and there are a lot of them out there as you know, this book is tremendous.
It really is an easy to read, easy to understand, compelling case about why social media and social media marketing make sense for business. How you make money, how you save money, or both. Great sections in the book about social media policy, social media resources, social media metrics, and ROI, all of it written in a way that’s very approachable for the small business owner who probably doesn’t have a ton of extra time to be reading blogs like Convince and Convert, etc.
If you’ve been doing social media professionally for several years, you probably won’t learn a whole bunch of new stuff, but that’s okay. That’s not who this book is for. It’s for those people who really do not believe in social media yet or just really haven’t experienced it. Give them a copy of it. They will thank you for it, absolutely.
Virtual Book Tour
The other thing that’s no bullshit is I’m really excited to announce that in conjunction with the book, we are going to have the first ever virtual book tour here at Convince & Convert. It’s going to be 11/1/11, so November 1st at 1:00. It’s a virtual book tour and giveaway sponsored by Convince & Convert and our friends at Infusionsoft. They’re a new sponsor here at Convince & Convert, really fantastic email and CRM software for the small business owner. So a great marriage between the book and Infusionsoft. We’re delighted to have them on board.
Free Book Giveaway
Jason Falls is going to present via GoToMeeting the highlights of the book and a giveaway. First 250 people who register for the webinar and show up, you can’t just register and blow it off, you have to register and show up for the webinar. The first 250 are going to get a virtual copy of the book for free. A PDF version of the book. You can read it on your iPad. You can read it on your Nook, on your Kindle, on your laptop, on your iPhone, on your Droid. It’s going to be great.
So check this out. Free webinar from the amazing Jason Falls and you get a free copy of the book. So how about that? Thanks again to Infusionsoft for making that happen.
I really do recommend the book, check it out. It’s on store shelves everywhere, or hang out for a couple weeks and get a free copy from us. But you ought to buy one anyway to give to your friends and cousins and bosses, things like that. You ought to support these guys. It’s a good book.
(Reserve your spot for virtual book tour and free book giveaway here. It will sell out, so don’t delay)
The Power of Consumer Choice Drives Social Media Importance
Posted on 02. Oct, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
I love the strategy of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, which is reinventing the publishing business by making hard cover books easier to find, remember, and digest (the average Domino book contains fewer than 100 pages).
The most recent Domino book to be published was by Godin himself, and unfortunately I didn’t find it particularly good. Called We Are All Weird
I don’t disagree with the premise, but We Are All Weird reads like it was written in a weekend, and is primarily a mashup of the preferable The Long Tail
For a more considered, practical book on niches and the granularity of modern business, I recommend Kelly McDonald’s How to Market to People Not Like You
Despite the fact that I didn’t love We Are All Weird on the whole, there are two passages that I positively adore, and that have substantial social media relevance.
On page 34, Godin writes:
“If you want to sell $900 handmade rifles to obsessive collectors, the easiest way to grow your sales is to grow the market of obsessive rifle collectors. That means that marketers evangelize this particular weirdness to those who might be entranced by it.”
This is precisely the way companies need to think about their social media initiatives, most especially anything in the brand community (Facebook and otherwise) category. The objective isn’t to breed new customers, but rather to increase the temperature of current customers from luke warm to a roiling boil. This deepens interest, builds loyalty, and creates advocacy – turning customers into volunteer marketers.
Stop talking about your products and services as objects and items, and talk more about who and how those products and services are used to do amazing things. Build a culture of accomplishment around your offerings, rather than a culture of availability.
On page 49 he writes:
“As soon as consumers enter the marketplace, they gain power, because power comes from choice. Consumer power is a brand new force, and it’s growing exponentially as a result of more affluence running in parallel with more choice.”
This is so dead-on it’s scary, and it’s a topic that’s not covered nearly enough. I’d love to see a whole book about this. What drives social media is the fact that modern consumers care about what they buy and from whom enough to investigate, interact, and associate with brands. Did we want to “engage” with Kellog’s in 1975? Of course not. Why bother? When you only have a small number of choices and those choice are fundamentally undifferentiated, your selection of one vs the others says NOTHING about your tastes or preferences.
We want to engage with brands today not because doing so is fundamentally pleasurable or advantageous, but because doing so sends social signals about us that we deem important.
The ability to choose drives the desire to promote that selection (and is at the root of Facebook’s new applications system that will have us clicking “drank” “ate” “read” and “watched” buttons soon).
Towards the end, Godin talks about the billions of information channels now available, and our ability to customize our news and content precisely to our own selections. This is a concept that fascinates me, and I’m not at all sure it’s a net benefit to society that we can now consume “news” that fits 100% with whatever belief system we choose to support.
I wrote about that a while ago here “Why Blogs Kill Dissent“.
I don’t suspect you’ll love We Are All Weird
17 Location-Based Marketing Tips To Drive Word of Mouth & Referrals
Posted on 16. Sep, 2011 by Lee Odden in Aaron Strout, Blog, Book Reviews, foursquare, Gowalla, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, yelp
Note from Lee: When I heard from Aaron Strout that he and Mike Schneider were writing a book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, I knew it would be a great resource. We often do book reviews here on Online Marketing Blog but Aaron and I decided on this format instead, focusing on specific tips and tactics you can use today.
Writing a book takes a lot of work, but with the work is done, it’s satisfying to look back and read all the content that got created. One downside to writing a physical book, however, is trapping all that content between two covers, especially for anyone that decides not to read the book. Rather than let that happen, we are unlocking 17 of the best tips from Location-Based Marketing from Dummies.
Before diving it, we should probably start by explaining what location-based marketing is. In short, location-based marketing is the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR and Gowalla to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals. While the tools (location-based services) may be new to some people, the approach and execution behind creating a good campaign are not that disimilar to that of any other strong marketing program.
Now that you have a little bit better sense of what location-based marketing is, let’s dive into the tips. As a frame of reference, these tips appear in the order they occur in the book and range from the strategic to the tactical. For any of you that already have the book (or plan to pick up a copy), we’ve included the page numbers next to the tips if you’d like to read more about that particular topic:
- Align your goals with the right platform: Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and understanding the platforms allows you to pick the right platform for a campaign or tailor your marketing campaign around a platform (p. 42).
- Make sure your business is set up correctly on Google Places: Because one in three Google searches is conducted with local intent, and Google Places Pages are prominently displayed in Google results, claiming your Google Places Page is vital to your online marketing (p. 64).
- Ensure your own location(s) are “check-in” worthy: Would you check-in to your own location a second time? While it’s always dangerous to form a focus group of one, nobody knows your business better than you. Is your check-in experience as good as other memorable experiences (p. 69)?
- Need help merging multiple foursquare venues? Get a superuser to do it: If someone else set up your company’s venue(s), you may need to edit the details or even merge multiple venues into one. Look no further than the list of foursquare superusers or active users who have been designated with special administrative powers. Request a venue merge/change by a supersuser here (p. 79).
- Create a Budget for your campaign: This may sound like we are stating the obvious but like any good marketing program, creating a budget for your location-based marketing campaign will help you stay focused and measure your success over time (p. 85).
- Make sure your employees are ready: One of the most important things you can do when you set up a location-based campaign is to make sure your employees are prepared and aware of the rules. Sometimes printing up a one page cheat sheet with all the details can be a great way to ensure everyone’s on the same page (p 86).
- Encourage employee participation: While you don’t necessarily want your employees owning the “mayorship” or other top designations awarded for those that check-in the most to your venue, you also don’t want to discourage their participation. In fact, some of your best “tips” and overall campaign suggestions may come from your employees as they are the ones that know your day-to-day business best (p. 87).
- Surprise with badges: Not all offers need to cost money. In the case of several location-based services, there is a “badge” option which rewards things for a first check-in, check-ins at several similar type establishments or multiple people checking into the same place at the same time. (p. 99).
- Transform loyalty programs into social loyalty programs: By incorporating location-based services into your loyalty program, you give customers additional ways to earn points, rewards and recognition. You also provide them incentives to share their check-ins across other social platforms like Twitter and Facebook thus broadening your reach (p. 104).
- Understanding the difference between paid, earned and owned media: Understanding the differences between paid (advertising), owned (your website, Facebook account, etc.) and earned (media coverage or conversations about your company on the web) is key to any good integrated marketing campaign. Understanding how this “holy trinity” of media affect your location-based marketing campaign are equally important (p. 119).
- Create an ambassador program: Tap some of your best customers (particularly those that check in regularly) to form an ambassador program. Get them together regularly — monthly or quarterly are good frequencies — either on the phone or in person. Ask them to help you create the best offers and program possible (p. 125).
- Learn from what other businesses have done: The saying goes that “mimicry is the highest form of flattery.” That being the case, why not check out what some of your peers are doing for their location-based marketing campaigns. That can be as simple as walking around your downtown and checking in OR if you’re using foursquare, you can see some examples of brands using the service here (p. 125).
- Specify which geographic areas you cover in Google Places: If you’re a service business that travels e.g. a plumber, you can specify on Google Places which areas you cover. This is also helpful for pizza/food delivery businesses (p. 131).
- Review your favorite LBS “places” database: Every location-based service has a location database called the “places database.” This places database lists every variation of your company’s name; you need to search for each variation to extract all the data pertaining to your business (p. 158).
- Monitor your competitors traffic: This may seem a little shady but keeping an eye on your competitors check-in traffic can give you a sense of how many people are checking in and what they are saying. This is fairly easy to do using a tool like Tweet Deck or Hootsuite. (p. 161)
- Think about which key performance indicators are critical: Any good program should have key performance indicators that it tracks. These include metrics like daily check-ins, check-ins cross-posted to Twitter, comments and tips, photos, offers/deals redeemed (p. 165).
- If your business is a restaurant or bar, think about table tents and placards: Many businesses fall down when it comes to cross-promoting their location-based campaign with other types of marketing and advertising. If your company is a restaurant or bar, you should absolutely remember to print table tents and placards describing your program — remember to include which service(s) you support, what offers and how to download the app if necessary (p. 221).
What location-based marketing tips do you have for businesses? Be sure to include them in the comments. As a bonus, we will randomly pick one of the “tips” to receive a free copy of the book.
Mike Schneider is the senior vice president, director of digital incubator for allen & gerritsen. Aaron Strout heads location-based marketing efforts at WCG.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
17 Location-Based Marketing Tips To Drive Word of Mouth & Referrals | http://www.toprankblog.com
17 Location-Based Marketing Tips To Drive Word of Mouth & Referrals
Posted on 16. Sep, 2011 by Lee Odden in Aaron Strout, Blog, Book Reviews, foursquare, Gowalla, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, yelp
Note from Lee: When I heard from Aaron Strout that he and Mike Schneider were writing a book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, I knew it would be a great resource. We often do book reviews here on Online Marketing Blog but Aaron and I decided on this format instead, focusing on specific tips and tactics you can use today.
Writing a book takes a lot of work, but with the work is done, it’s satisfying to look back and read all the content that got created. One downside to writing a physical book, however, is trapping all that content between two covers, especially for anyone that decides not to read the book. Rather than let that happen, we are unlocking 17 of the best tips from Location-Based Marketing from Dummies.
Before diving it, we should probably start by explaining what location-based marketing is. In short, location-based marketing is the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR and Gowalla to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals. While the tools (location-based services) may be new to some people, the approach and execution behind creating a good campaign are not that disimilar to that of any other strong marketing program.
Now that you have a little bit better sense of what location-based marketing is, let’s dive into the tips. As a frame of reference, these tips appear in the order they occur in the book and range from the strategic to the tactical. For any of you that already have the book (or plan to pick up a copy), we’ve included the page numbers next to the tips if you’d like to read more about that particular topic:
- Align your goals with the right platform: Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and understanding the platforms allows you to pick the right platform for a campaign or tailor your marketing campaign around a platform (p. 42).
- Make sure your business is set up correctly on Google Places: Because one in three Google searches is conducted with local intent, and Google Places Pages are prominently displayed in Google results, claiming your Google Places Page is vital to your online marketing (p. 64).
- Ensure your own location(s) are “check-in” worthy: Would you check-in to your own location a second time? While it’s always dangerous to form a focus group of one, nobody knows your business better than you. Is your check-in experience as good as other memorable experiences (p. 69)?
- Need help merging multiple foursquare venues? Get a superuser to do it: If someone else set up your company’s venue(s), you may need to edit the details or even merge multiple venues into one. Look no further than the list of foursquare superusers or active users who have been designated with special administrative powers. Request a venue merge/change by a supersuser here (p. 79).
- Create a Budget for your campaign: This may sound like we are stating the obvious but like any good marketing program, creating a budget for your location-based marketing campaign will help you stay focused and measure your success over time (p. 85).
- Make sure your employees are ready: One of the most important things you can do when you set up a location-based campaign is to make sure your employees are prepared and aware of the rules. Sometimes printing up a one page cheat sheet with all the details can be a great way to ensure everyone’s on the same page (p 86).
- Encourage employee participation: While you don’t necessarily want your employees owning the “mayorship” or other top designations awarded for those that check-in the most to your venue, you also don’t want to discourage their participation. In fact, some of your best “tips” and overall campaign suggestions may come from your employees as they are the ones that know your day-to-day business best (p. 87).
- Surprise with badges: Not all offers need to cost money. In the case of several location-based services, there is a “badge” option which rewards things for a first check-in, check-ins at several similar type establishments or multiple people checking into the same place at the same time. (p. 99).
- Transform loyalty programs into social loyalty programs: By incorporating location-based services into your loyalty program, you give customers additional ways to earn points, rewards and recognition. You also provide them incentives to share their check-ins across other social platforms like Twitter and Facebook thus broadening your reach (p. 104).
- Understanding the difference between paid, earned and owned media: Understanding the differences between paid (advertising), owned (your website, Facebook account, etc.) and earned (media coverage or conversations about your company on the web) is key to any good integrated marketing campaign. Understanding how this “holy trinity” of media affect your location-based marketing campaign are equally important (p. 119).
- Create an ambassador program: Tap some of your best customers (particularly those that check in regularly) to form an ambassador program. Get them together regularly — monthly or quarterly are good frequencies — either on the phone or in person. Ask them to help you create the best offers and program possible (p. 125).
- Learn from what other businesses have done: The saying goes that “mimicry is the highest form of flattery.” That being the case, why not check out what some of your peers are doing for their location-based marketing campaigns. That can be as simple as walking around your downtown and checking in OR if you’re using foursquare, you can see some examples of brands using the service here (p. 125).
- Specify which geographic areas you cover in Google Places: If you’re a service business that travels e.g. a plumber, you can specify on Google Places which areas you cover. This is also helpful for pizza/food delivery businesses (p. 131).
- Review your favorite LBS “places” database: Every location-based service has a location database called the “places database.” This places database lists every variation of your company’s name; you need to search for each variation to extract all the data pertaining to your business (p. 158).
- Monitor your competitors traffic: This may seem a little shady but keeping an eye on your competitors check-in traffic can give you a sense of how many people are checking in and what they are saying. This is fairly easy to do using a tool like Tweet Deck or Hootsuite. (p. 161)
- Think about which key performance indicators are critical: Any good program should have key performance indicators that it tracks. These include metrics like daily check-ins, check-ins cross-posted to Twitter, comments and tips, photos, offers/deals redeemed (p. 165).
- If your business is a restaurant or bar, think about table tents and placards: Many businesses fall down when it comes to cross-promoting their location-based campaign with other types of marketing and advertising. If your company is a restaurant or bar, you should absolutely remember to print table tents and placards describing your program — remember to include which service(s) you support, what offers and how to download the app if necessary (p. 221).
What location-based marketing tips do you have for businesses? Be sure to include them in the comments. As a bonus, we will randomly pick one of the “tips” to receive a free copy of the book.
Mike Schneider is the senior vice president, director of digital incubator for allen & gerritsen. Aaron Strout heads location-based marketing efforts at WCG.
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