by Marcus Ledbetter | Aug 14, 2014 | Email Campaigns, Social Media Marketing
If you want to use the interwebs to build your business, you have some decisions to make. What do you want your potential customers to do when they get to your website?
You want them to either buy now or come back later.
Let’s talk about the come back later option. You have a couple of choices–get them to like you on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. or join your email list.
Everybody knows social media marketing is hot. It’s where the cool kids hang out, right? Not so fast.
The Importance Of Email Marketing: Reading The Signs
So you’re a small business and you don’t have the discretionary resources to do your own testing to find out whether building social media fans or building your email list is the best use of your time and money.
The beauty of the interwebs, of course, is that you can watch how the businesses who do have the resources to do that kind of testing go about it. And if they all happen to be doing the same thing, you can bet your marketing dollars that one thing is working a lot better than the other.
I took the unscientific approach of checking a bunch of major retail sites to see what they are up to, and I was so surprised at the uniformity of results, I am convinced there must be $cience behind it, which makes me think my unscientific methods are, therefore, scientific. 🙂
I’m leaning on the market to tell me what’s working and the market is screaming one thing over and over again: email marketing is beating social media like nobody’s bu$ine$$.
12 Big Brands Using Popups To Snag Email Addresses
I captured screen shots from the home pages of a bunch of retail stores for your perusal below. What you’ll see is that companies are offering big incentives through pop-ups to get an email address and market to the inbox. Not once did I see a large call-to-action to get the visitor to follow a social media account.
American Eagle
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by Marcus Ledbetter | Dec 10, 2013 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
If you have a Facebook page with a solid number of followers, you might have noticed that your posts haven’t been reaching as many people as before.
Facebook has just admitted that they are decreasing Page “reach” in the news feed algorithm and that trend will continue. They are suggesting that Page owners “boost” reach by paying for the boost through sponsored posts.
If you’ve paid for your fans, you’re probably ticked off. You paid to get the fans, now you have to pay again to reach the fans you already paid to get! Frustrating, aint it.
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by Marcus Ledbetter | May 21, 2013 | Author Rank, Consumer Trends, Email Campaigns, Facebook, Google, Hubspot, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Managers, Marketing ROI, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Web Marketing
In this post, we’ll explore 15 surprising digital marketing trends that you need to know. The charts below are pulled from Google Trends and show search interest over the last decade.
Inbound Marketing
This is the phrase that is changing the way marketing is done. You’ll see a VERY close resemblance to the graph below for “HubSpot”, the all-in-one Inbound Marketing software (and marketing content giant). (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | May 6, 2013 | Facebook, Hubspot, Inbound Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking
Enough with the cute kittens and pictures of what you are eating for lunch!
Grumpy Cat is Frustrated with Social Media
In the last installment, we looked at reasons that business owners and marketers are often frustrated with SEO, and the lack of results they see from their efforts. We concluded that the main problem was that the primary goals associated with SEO alone, were not in line with the overall goals a successful marketing plan will exhibit. In the same way, many business owners and marketers are frustrated with social media. They are frustrated with keeping up with it, as well as seeing the apparent lack of results for their effort. If the solution lies in realigning our social media goals with sound marketing goals, how do we go about doing that? That is the topic of this post.
Social Media, by itself, is not a marketing strategy.
The wisdom of the day used to sound something like this. “You need to engage your customers in meaningful conversation through social media channels to build interest in, and loyalty to your brand.” Countless books and manifestos were written on this subject. Conversation and engagement were the big buzzwords during the early days of the social media revolution. But, what exactly does conversation and engagement get you? The goal of generating this type of buzz about your company int he social media channels is to gain exposure – or in social media terms, reach. The simplified version of this is if you have 10 friends who are talking about products to at least 10 of their friends, then all of a sudden – you have reached an audience of 100. This is the viral power of social media, and this is why it is an integral part of a comprehensive inbound marketing plan What is reach, though, and does this “reach” put any money in your pockets? Here is where we have to hone our social media strategy into a sound marketing strategy, and here is how we do it. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Apr 5, 2013 | Consumer Trends, Email Campaigns, Facebook, Google, Inbound Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing, The Gravity Strategy, Twitter, Web Marketing
We are pleased to introduce a new video we produced to go along with The Gravity Strategy eBook and blog posts. We are excited about this concept because it makes it super easy to explain Inbound Marketing and it’s benefits for your business. Enjoy!
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by Marcus Ledbetter | Jan 24, 2013 | Author Rank, Facebook, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter
Want to know how Google is going to get users to leave Facebook and use Google Plus? They are going to pay them to do it (indirectly).
Author Rank is only being talked about in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing circles at the moment, but the effects of the coming SEO earthquake it causes could be felt by everybody before it is over. It is not just a tool to improve their search engine. It is an asset they intend to use to take over social media. I’ll explain . . .
If you’ve followed social media over the last few years, you’ve seen Google launch round after round of social platforms, each with a characteristic belly-flop ending — Friend Connect, Lively, Wave, Buzz, and Plus. But slow down. Maybe we’ve written Plus off too quickly.
A Bunch Looked, The Geeks Stayed
Plus launched in 2011 and didn’t gain a lot of marketshare. The tool itself seems to be excellent, but there wasn’t a good enough reason to leave Facebook and Twitter for the (more…)
