May 22

B2B Social Media is Here!!! It’s Important!!! No More Excuses!!! Here’s the Proof!!!

Posted on Friday, May 22, 2009 in Design World,marketing,video,web 2.0

So I was scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning on my Blackberry Storm (using UberTwitter) and came across a tweet about using social media as a business resource. The article, Marketing gets social by Mary Duan was a good one, it really lays out some ground work for how and why businesses NEED to pay attention to Social Media as a useful and important resource to reach and sell to their customers.

I have to say, at the very end I read some statistics that really blew me away. These were from the 2009 Social Media Marketing Industry Report and I had to go directly to the source. WOW! Some really great data here, talk about a Goldmine of information on Why & How to use social media to directly market to your audience. Talk about ammunition to make the case for the NEED to be involved with Social Media at all levels.

Two-thirds of our clients are spending 5 HOURS or MORE on social networks! And it is not just the kids, nope average age of 30-39 years young are using sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Engineering Exchange, etc. etc. Think of the leads, think exposure, think about what you are missing if you are not utilizing these tools and the competition is!?!?! I linked back to the website of the report as well as provided a direct link to Michael Stelzner’s report in a downloadable .pdf.

Above is a video by Michael Stelzner , he shares some of the more important findings from this very valuable resource.

I am lucky and proud to say that Design World has been developing and using these tools for some time now. We have made these tools and resources available to both our users/readers as well as to our clients/advertisers. Please take sometime to look around:

- Engineering Watch (DW branded video site, also have a YouTube Channel)

- Engineering Exchange – The EX (Social network for Design Engineers)

- Twitter Feed

- Podcast Site

- Widgets Site

Marketing gets social

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal – by Mary Duan

If you have a Facebook page, consider the information you’ve placed on it: hobbies, age, hometown, favorite books and movies, where you went to school. On LinkedIn, you’ve listed where you work now, where you’ve worked in the past, the people you know and what opportunities you’re willing to entertain. On Twitter, within the confines of your one-line bio, maybe you’ve shared an e-mail address, a blog address or your iPhone coordinates.

This information can be a gold mine for companies that want to find new customers. Experts say although not many are using social media as an outright sales tool — yet — they’re using it to increase brand awareness.

For example, when Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. wanted to increase brand awareness coinciding with the release of its BlackJack II smartphone, it turned to Mountain View-based Watercooler-inc.com, an online sports and television entertainment social network with more than 40 million registered users.

Samsung sponsored Watercooler’s Beijing Olympics content and had 2 million users interact with its site as a result, said Watercooler CEO Kevin Chou.

“We think of ourselves as a media company first, and when we build product online, we’re building relationships with the 42 million people who have signed up. We started to build something similar to Yelp or Facebook, but specific to sports and entertainment,” said Chou, a former venture capitalist at Canaan Partners. “We monetize through advertising.”

Watercooler launched in July 2007 and raised $4 million in Series A funding the following September. The company has reached break-even status, Chou said, and is now reinvesting significant revenue.

Ramping up

According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 88 percent of 900 marketers surveyed said they use some form of social media to market their businesses. The report listed Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook as the top tools used, in that order.

Almost half of the marketers surveyed found social media generated qualified leads, but only 35 percent reported that it helped them close business. About 72 percent of those who use social media to market have been using it only a few months, according to the report.

Clara Shih, author of “The Facebook Era” and director of social networking alliances and product strategy at Salesforce.com, points out that the new skill needed by online marketers is knowing what to measure, and not to get overwhelmed by what she calls “the tyranny of data.”

“There is so much data out there, you can become overwhelmed,” Shih said. “It’s the new cultural norm to share information, and when you aggregate that information, that’s when it becomes powerful.”

Still, Shih says, many companies have yet to capture the power of the social Web and use it to monetize. For the generation that has grown up with such tools as Facebook and LinkedIn, “it’s a no-brainer,” but for the rest of us, it’s something that has to be learned.

More communication equals more business

Some companies are finding that just by communicating in general, they’re attracting business. At Page One Public Relations, which has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, a blog post by Kim Terca about whether Twitter is the right tool for a company brought the firm a meeting with a major moving and shipping company. Page One is now in talks to land the company’s account.

Page One has also developed social media campaigns on Twitter and Facebook for Wine.com, and it manages the Twitter feed of Cisco Systems Inc. Social media management is generally part of the client’s retainer, and the minimum Page One retainer for social media is about $5,000 a month, Terca said. The minimum for a one-time social media project is $20,000.

Page One is in hiring mode, looking to add three social media consultants and a videographer to its roster. It now runs Twitter threads for most of its clients.

“Internally, we’re finding that most of the leads that come in from social media are generated from our blog. It generates about half of our Web site traffic and generates more traffic than anything,” said Page One partner Craig Oda.

Brent Arslaner, vice president of marketing for Unisfair, a virtual events company based in Menlo Park, said Unisfair’s clients with increasing frequency leverage Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to bring audiences to their events.

Arslaner said that about 120,000 — or 10 percent — of the attendees who came to one of Unisfair’s 600 virtual events arrived there via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or a combination of all three.

“I increasingly see companies in the valley leveraging social media tools to drive promotion,” Arslaner said. “It’s not just about the quantity of leads, but the qualification of that lead and generating them in a cost-effective way.”

Making money

Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst covering interactive marketing and social marketing at Forrester Research in Foster City, said the next five years will see the social Web evolve to include a new kind of social commerce in which brands will cater to communities, and power will shift to consumers.

Right now “who is monetizing is a very tough question to answer because I don’t hear a lot of that happening. Most companies are using social media for marketing purposes, not necessarily sales,” Owyang said. There are exceptions, of course. Through its Twitter thread DellOutlet, Dell Inc. made $1 million in reported revenue, according to Owyang.

In a report he issued in late April, “The Future of the Social Web,” Owyang said new metrics will arise when brands recognize that developing a fan generates more business than making a single sale.

“Companies now are experimenting and trying to anticipate how tools work, but they don’t necessarily apply it to their whole enterprise,” Owyang said. “If you take your customer seriously, you shouldn’t hesitate in using this technology, because your customers are talking to each other and leaving opportunities for your competitors to swoop in.”

Who’s doing what online

The 2009 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, a survey of 880 people, looked at how businesses are using social media and what results they are seeing.

Most common tools:
Twitter: 90 percent

Other popular social media tools include blogs (79 percent), LinkedIn (78 percent), Facebook (77 percent), and YouTube (41 percent), among other sites

Biggest benefits:
Generated exposure for the business: 81 percent

Other benefits included increased traffic/subscribers (61 percent), new business partnerships (56 percent), helping company rise in search rankings (52 percent), and generating qualified leads (48 percent).

Other findings:
• 64 percent of marketers are using social media for five hours or more each week; 39 percent for 10 or more hours each week

• People between the ages of 30 and 39 are most likely to be using social media marketing.

• Of those who have only invested a few months in social media marketing, 61.8 percent report new partnerships from the venture.

• Men were more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women.

Comments (4) | Tags: Design World, facebook, internet marketing, LinkedIn, marketing, media, new media, social media, twitter

May 21

Well Said…

Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2009 in Other,marketing,podcast,web 2.0

From the good folks over at 90Octane!

I was going to comment on the Lead Nurturing post found over at 90Octane Blog but before I had a chance – another really good post came across my RSS feed. To be honest with you – I believe the two posts together tell a really good story (so I have copied them both below).

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Online display advertising for lead generation still kicking

Posted by: Jenny Bachner, Media Specialist

We’ve always known that banner ads provide good overall branding exposure for a company, but what we really need to know is how effective they are in driving click-throughs for lead generation. And it seems in the past year we’ve witnessed a decline in users clicking through on ads intended to drive conversions.

This is due in part to the lack of targeting techniques available in early 2008, and I also think that banner blindness set in when the users’ need for information was not being met by 90% of the ad units served to them. However, with the integration of more useful targeting techniques, such as behavioral and demographic targeting, perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of an upward trend in click-though rates for banner ads. Take a look at these results from the “Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Advertising Study” recently posted to eMarketer.com:

As people begin to find ad units served more relevant and actually find value in them, they’ll begin to pay attention and be more likely to respond again. I have already witnessed an increase in click-through rates on niche websites that are able to contextually target ad units, and I look forward to following this new trend as we progress through 2009.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Lead nurturing: A vital element of B2B marketing strategy during a recession

Posted by: Gloria Dutton, Marketing Coordinator

It’s no secret that times are tough. But mandatory spending freezes and budget cuts are not insurmountable. Your customers’ current spending trends will eventually turn around. Now is the time to put your company in a position of strength as a thought leader and partner, so that when the good times return, your company’s products and services come to the top of your prospect’s mind.

Lead nurturing is one of the top ways to prevent an overall downturn in customer acquisition during times of recession and to ensure more business when the economy improves. By continually keeping your prospects in touch and informed while they are unable to buy, your company is looked at as more of a long-term partner and smart long-term business choice. It also will help customers to see that you are there in support of their interests and will most likely not end the relationship once the sale is final if you did not drop interest in them when they were not even making a purchase.

With lead nurturing, relationships have already been created with prospects that have shown an interest in your products or services and in the information you’re providing. They have opted in for email communications, registered for an offer, attended a webinar or searched for your products. Don’t let this interest dwindle; continue to nurture these prospects. Don’t stop sending information-rich emails, for example, simply because the sales cycle is taking longer than usual. As you maintain nurturing efforts you can analyze which offers leads are showing interest in and which ones aren’t as popular. Use this information to build additional marketing and sales efforts that gain more traction. Then, when prospects are in a better position to buy, you have touched on all of their pain points, making your company an obvious solution provider and contender for their business.

By continually keeping in touch with your prospects and helping them get through tough times without expecting anything in return, when the financial outlook shifts, your continued presence as a long-term partner and thought leader will be rewarded.

Comment (1) | Tags: advertising, B2B, internet marketing, marketing, pay per click, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web analytics

Mar 6

Twitter – What is in it’s Future? A True Test for Web 2.0

Posted on Friday, March 6, 2009 in Misc.,marketing,web 2.0

I was having lunch yesterday and for some reason we started a conversation about Twitter & what its overall business model. What is it? Individuals and Businesses alike are all sending Tweets, signing up, adding followers, and following others.

Local & regional businesses and news outlets are all taking advantage of the short, SMS-like, headline distribution. I can see where the value is there…heck I was notified the other day that Litts_Plumbing was following me…who is Litt? Well he is a local plumbing company…and he is pushing out his name and being relevant to an ever-changing media market…I applaud you Litts_Plumbing.

It still begs the question though…what is in it for Twitter? When I did a Wiki search on Twitter I found this interesting tidbit:

Finances

About USD 57 million of Twitter is owned by venture capitalists. Williams raised about USD 22 million in venture capital.^[22] Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions (led by Jeff Bezos of Amazon).^[23] Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital backed Twitter in 2009, investing an additional USD 35 million.The Industry Standard has pointed to its lack of revenue as limiting its long-term viability.^[24] As of January 2009, the service sold no advertising and produced no revenue. On February 13, 2009, Twitter announced on their official blog^[25] that they closed a third round of funding in which they secured more than USD 35 million^[26] When asked about how he was going to use the additional investment funds in an interview, Williams said:^[update]

“

We don’t know all the ways we’re going to use that money, hopefully we’ll keep a lot of it in the bank. If we never need a lot of it, that’s great, but in the climate we’re in we don’t want to assume too much, and we don’t want any short term concerns to distort the potential of our long term vision, and our investors and the boards and everybody is very on board for building a very long term viable company. We need to do that step by step, and we need to invest a lot to get there.

That is some pretty heavy funding and capital…and as of January 2009, the service sold NO advertising! I guess I’m not the only one questioning the business-model, Here are a few other posting that I found…but I think they might all miss the mark.

Here are my thoughts…Twitter is in a holding pattern. They are building a following, building a network of carefree users…I think probably working with some really smart people…much smarter then me, the likes portrayed in the blockbuster…21…MIT types! They are sitting in a cube somewhere working out an algorithm to profile users based on a long history of Tweets (anyone else feel creepy when a grown adult types or says Tweets?) and then sometime in the not to distant future, they will roll it out…a Grand Plan – - – PREMIUM TWEETS! Okay so they will probably need to be a little more creative with the name side, but hell I’m just an ad sales guy, what do I know about creativity!

No but really, image being Verizon Wireless, or Southwest Airlines, Pepsi, GM (well maybe this is a little forward thinking for GM)…okay Honda, and having market research on the “ideal” customer, a profiled customer and being able to hand pick those profiled users to blast a PREMIUM TWEET at

a pretty penny! I think I remember another small little company that folks questioned their business model, having a not so common name, sitting back for years, building a following, being one step ahead, not really monetizing their product…then BAM – Google is embedded in every aspect of our virtual life. How’d that plan work out?!?!??!

But really..when I sit back and think about it, the answer was always sitting right in front of me. It is something that I talk about all the time; Web 2.5! In today’s web 2.0 world it is not about how you monetize every aspect, and every product on the web…that’s so Web 1.0 (that will be $1,000 per month for a banner ad please…would you like a hyperlink with that? Can I super-size your ad from an automated .gif to a flash ad for an extra $50?)! Web 2.5 is the usage of all of these great tools we have…it is building a network, a following…its about being RELEVANT! When you can show that you have a captive audience, and audience that trusts and believes in you, an audience that you can profile down to any detail based on their usage…then, well then you will never have to worry about asking the question: What is the business model, how are we going to make money here?

Speaking of Twitter, don’t forget to follow me and Design World:

- Follow ME

- Follow Design World