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The Benefits of Video Marketing for Alabama Businesses
Video Marketing, The New Frontier
Well, video marketing isn’t exactly “new”, but it is a growing frontier that’s gaining a lot of steam with digital marketing. If you’re sitting there trying to figure out the next step of your marketing strategy on the web, you’d do well to heed the benefits of video marketing campaign.
Did you know that 40% of consumers watch videos in a week?
The benefits of creating video as part of your marketing campaign are endless, but there are a few key points that shatter any excuses you may have, or barriers you’ve up to starting your own video marketing campaign.
Mobile Marketing – Why Now is The Time to Engage Youth
For years we’ve watched businesses slowly move to incorporate mobile marketing into their overall strategies; some doing it based on intelligent design, others doing it simply to follow suit. Skepticism remained even in recent years because many business owners and marketers believed that only a small portion of people actively used smartphones and mobile devices to access the web.
Stats are showing us otherwise now.
With information provided by Walker Sands Quarterly Web Traffic Report and MarketingProfs, we’re seeing that web traffic via mobile is up 12.6% in the last quarter of 2011, which is a 102% increase over the same quarter in 2010.
The majority of that traffic shows a drop in iPhone use and an increase in the Android OS. This information is based on data gathered across a wide variety of industries – from Business to Business and Business to Consumer.
Understanding the How of Mobile Marketing
For many local businesses, mobile marketing isn’t necessarily the barrier in itself, it’s what you would do with it. Even with convincing stats that show people, especially the younger generation, gravitating to mobile web use, some businesses find it difficult to figure out how to leverage mobile marketing. This is particular true when trying to engage the younger audiences that become the major players and loyal paying customers as they age.
Here are some ideas on how to leverage the data above and start engaging the younger demographics of your target audience in order to benefit from mobile marketing.
1. Understand the Key Drivers of Behavior - Remember that marketing is all about providing a solution and delivering value. With youth, you need to let them know how you can help them belong, and how to help them be significant.
2. Not every young individual across the ages is actively optimizing products and services to enable their social lives. Like adults across various industries, youth have key influences as well. A small group of people have vast amounts of social currency, and by targeting these individuals in your audience, you enable these “change agents” – the 10% or so of your audience – to influence the other 90% with your message.
3. Know the Pain Points - Youth customers are no different than adult customers. They have problems, and pain points, and in some cases carry far more weight on youth than an adult – even if the two have similar problems. As with any marketing, even mobile marketing, you need to recognize their pain points in order to find the path to their ideal solution. You may not be able to solve problems like isolation, risk and loss of control but your message and content marketing via mobile may help minimize the impact of these pain points in order to improve acquisition and retention.
4. Attention - When trying to communicate with youth, attention is the biggest cost. It is impossible to buy the attention of youth, or distract them through loudspeaker marketing similar to what we witnessed at the turn of the Millennium through 2009. Now you need to earn it – and that starts with providing something of value they can connect with.
5. Create the Community - One of the best ways to leverage mobile marketing is to build your fans a home. Whether it’s a community, a project, a cause, etc. Create a place via mobile marketing, such as integration with popular social networks, that becomes a house for dialogue. Allow your fans to create their own content and context – this allows you to connect with them as they connect with each other. From there, you can watch it grow as brand visibility improves.
Simple Tips to Make Time for Content Marketing
As a business owner, you know that you should be doing certain things to marketing your business online; content marketing like blogging, creating videos, press releases, building links, connecting with other industry professionals, branding through social communities, consumer and client engagement.
So let’s say that you’re even acutely aware of the need for all of that – but where do find time?
With all the work on your plate, your to-do list probably resembles the pre-trip checklist for the maiden voyage of the Titanic, and “don’t sink” is #1. Everything else is supposed to keep #1 going strong. The problem is getting all of the tasks done in order to stay afloat.
And now we want to add content marketing and mobile marketing…and social media marketing on top of that?
The Top 10 "Do's" of Social Media Marketing
As social media marketing continues to grow in scale, becoming more user friendly for business owners, it’s becoming less of an “if” companies should execute a strategy for social media marketing. There’s no questions about it anymore. Your customers exist in social media across a vast number of networks. If the traditional marketing mantra of “go where your customers go” still holds true, then your business needs to make an effort to embrace social media marketing.
The question that stops most companies from using social media however is “how do we execute a strategy that produces results?” That’s a fair questions, given that there are so many businesses out there putting in all the effort, and getting nothing in return. If you want to find success with your foray into social media marketing then consider these 10 “Do’s” to help you put a killer strategy together.
Social Media Marketing Do #1 – Repurpose Content & Save Time
You don’t have to sit down and brainstorm the perfect topics, attempting to avoid anything that has ever been written before. You can save yourself a lot of time by repurposing old content (like newsletters and articles) or curating content from other sources that can be valuable to your target audiences.
Social Media Marketing Do #2 – Interaction is Key
Real interaction can be a tough cookie to crack for some business owners. You need to find the best balance between self promotion and intriguing content in order to keep your audience members engaged. Quality interaction means engaging in conversations and replying as much as it means starting them. A great start is to ask questions that inspire a response.
Social Media Marketing Do #3 – Try to Vary Your Media
Use different forms of media. Sometimes posting a few questions is great but customers like a little meat to content. If you want to increase how often your posts are shared then use infographics, video, images and even podcasts to improve your engagement.
Social Media Marketing Do #4 – Optimize Your Content
Most businesses operate without any plan in place for optimization, whether it’s their social media marketing or their website. You need optimize every page of content and every post you make if you want to be found. Making your content searchable ensures that people can actually find you, engage with you and give you a return on your investment in social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Do #5 – Keep a Level Head
The last person you need is some random intern having a meltdown in the middle of your social media marketing campaign, flying off the handle at the first negative thing said about your brand. When you keep a level head during a poor review or nasty outburst from customers, and have a plan in place to deal with such incidents, people will have more respect for your brand. It shows a certain sense of class when it comes to customer service.
Social Media Marketing Do #6 – Customize for Different Audiences
Few businesses have only one target audience. You should tailor your various messages to include more than one target audience. Don’t write for one group all of the time, write for all the groups sometimes. Do your homework for your social media marketing and figure out how to speak to each audience, what they want to hear, etc.
Social Media Marketing Do #7 – Choose Your Brand Ambassador Carefully
A lot of companies have learned from their mistakes by letting random employees post to their social media. You don’t necessarily want to discourage interaction or stifle your team but you also want to make sure that the voice within your social media marketing is consistent, and works to further your goals and overall strategy.
Social Media Marketing Do #8 – What’s Your Purpose?
Remember the purpose behind your social media marketing. If you don’t keep your goals in sight it’s easy to get off track and start sharing content or making posts that don’t move you closer to your goals. Those actions often lead you away and reduce the return on your investment.
Social Media Marketing Do #9 – Measure Twice, Cut Once
Your strategy for social media marketing is important. Always remember that anything worth doing is worth doing well, so plan your approach to social media, engagement, posting, responding, etc.
Social Media Marketing Do #10 – Be Open to Innovation
You don’t need to be innovative or cutting edge in order to run a quality social media marketing campaign. With that said, you still need to have your eyes and ears open for the newest trends. Review your strategy regularly and figure out if changes in technology, software or the search and social landscape might make your social media marketing strategy easier to manage.
