Archive for the ‘Social Marketing’ Category

Four ways to make the most of your social media budget

Compared to traditional advertising, social marketing lets businesses reach their target audience with greater precision at lower cost. The barriers to entry are so low that the number of social channels and tactics available to small businesses can be dizzying.

With a growing number of available social marketing tools, it can be easy to get distracted from the task at hand: helping your business grow through customer acquisitions and market insights.

Here are some tips to stay on task and make the most of your social media budget:

1. Think of every campaign as an opportunity to gain insights about who your customers are (and arent). You need to generate sales. Along the way, you can learn a lot about your market. If youre spending money and not seeing a return in terms of customer demographic insights, youre probably missing out.

Social marketing can be targeted precisely, measured and tracked. For example, Facebook Advertising offers a number of ways to segment and target users. Running multiple campaigns targeted to different audiences can help you validate your assumptions about your target segments.

2. Content is still king. Social marketing has forced brands to think creatively about content in order to engage their consumers. The trend towards content marketingthat is, sharing relevant and non-commercial content with your followers in an effort to build a loyal followinghas upped the ante for the average business trying to establish an attractive social presence. The need to feed your feed with content can be overwhelming, and the cost of hiring a social media marketer can be prohibitive.

To make your budget go further, Toronto-based startup Blurbi enables companies to find and curate content for their feeds using freelance social marketers at the cost of a dollar per post. Combined with a link-shortening and call-to-action tool like Snip.ly, a content-first approach can provide entertainment to your followers and drive traffic to your website.

3. Join forces with a complementary brand. Marketing partnerships are powerful. By joining forces with another business that is selling different products to similar customers, you can extend your reach at lower cost. This might mean swapping in-store advertising or cross-promoting each others business online.

Partnershop is a Toronto-based startup that facilitates marketing alliances over social media. According to Partnershops CEO, Jason Silver, "businesses that work together to cross-promote each other through social media reach an average of 26 times more new customers per post than they otherwise would by posting on their own."

4. Leverage your influential followers. Followers acquired through Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere can become brand advocates. Take some time to research who among your followers has the credibility and reach to earn you more potential customers, and surprise them with a random act of kindness.

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Four ways to make the most of your social media budget

Understanding the Channels: An Overview of Social, Mobile, Digital and Traditional Marketing for B2B

With an endless gamut of channels coming into play in todays complex world of marketing, B2B marketers often find themselves reeling under the pressure of which one to choose. Theres digital in general, mobile marketing and how our omnipresent devices are changing everything about marketing. Theres social media marketing and, of course, theres traditional marketing, which still remains an important part of the equation. However, in the B2B industry, not every marketing channel makes sense for every business. No one-size-fits-all-formula works either. What works then? In order to find the right marketing channel for your business, youve got to be a little inquisitive, a little more intuitive and a whole lot more focused.

One goal, many strategies know the difference

While your marketing efforts should be customer-centric, you may go about it through different marketing routes.

Traditional marketing. Display ads, direct mail, banner ads, billboards, TV, radio, and a whole lot of offline tactics are important when it comes to attracting the attention of your target customers. These are traditional marketing tactics and, for a long time, were the only way to do business..

Digital marketing. I like to think of digital marketing as traditional marketing done online, as the basic premise remains the same engaging the customers and responding to their concerns. While digital marketing may seem like a less human interaction than face-to-face marketing, remember theres a human behind every desktop or mobile screen that youre targeting.

Social media marketing. With marketers increasing their social media spending at a steady rate, this has emerged as one of the most popular marketing channels for B2B companies. Great for building a brand image for your business, for listening and gathering insights, and for finding and engaging with prospects and customers, this marketing strategy works best when integrated with other marketing tactics.

Mobile marketing. Mobile has, without question, taken over as the most preferred medium for research and consumption of content on the Internet. As such, a designing and developing all marketing strategies with a mobile first mindset isnt an option, its a necessity.

Marketing strategies must overlap

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Understanding the Channels: An Overview of Social, Mobile, Digital and Traditional Marketing for B2B

Insightpool updates its audience analysis tools for marketers

Understanding the audience is key to success in marketing and thanks to our ability to gather data from transactions and social networks there's more opportunity to analyze customer actions than ever before.

Atlanta-based Insightpool is launching a new version of its audience cultivation and conversion platform aimed at giving brands greater insight into and control over their marketing.

Insightpool 2.0 uses predictive analytics and machine learning to drive conversion and return on investment for brands. Instead of needing to piece together multiple tools or services to execute large scale digital campaigns, users can target the audiences most likely to engage with a brand. They can also drill down into the most relevant set of messages to produce the desired results.

The platform delivers real time, goal-specific analytics so that brands can easily understand what resonates with individuals and tailor their efforts accordingly.

"Marketing software is mature enough that ROI should be expected as it is in any other technology category. Because Insightpool is focused on conversion, we can deliver results that drive the bottom line and not just vanity social metrics," says Devon Wijesinghe, Insightpool's CEO. "Insightpool's level of sophistication for social marketing is unrivaled, and completes the full engagement cycle to achieve measurable business results that scale".

Using proprietary algorithms that can be custom tuned for specific organizations, Insightpool can predict social engagement using over 60 variables. It can integrate with existing social media management software so that businesses can take advantage of its insights without upsetting their existing operations.

Key features of version 2.0 include 'social drip' campaign management and optimization designed to generate leads. Social predictor rankings that use proprietary algorithms and machine learning to analyze and identify people with the highest potential for conversion. It also allows easy identification of the most effective messages along with social customer relationship management integration and a real-time dashboard for easy management.

You can find more information on the Insightpool website.

Image Credit:Kidsana Maimeetook / Shutterstock

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Insightpool updates its audience analysis tools for marketers

Mobile & Social Marketing – Intro Video – Video


Mobile Social Marketing - Intro Video
Introduction Video.

By: Broadlink Development

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Mobile & Social Marketing - Intro Video - Video

CodeTactic Announces New Affordable Web Design Plans Starting at $19/mo and Digital Marketing Plans at $95/mo

Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) November 03, 2014

Small business owners can now take advantage of CodeTactics low-cost web design and digital marketing plans with the new pricing plans unveiled. Today, CodeTactic announced that it is introducing new affordable plans for web design starting at just $19/month, and digital marketing plans as low as $95/month. Users can sign up for a free 14-day trial on the companys web site. If satisfied with the results at the end of the trial, they can move onto a monthly plan of their choice.

CodeTactics free 14-day trial serves as a model for businesses to get a glimpse of what this company offers in terms of web design and digital marketing. For the free trial of web design, users will be provided with a mock-up of their home page. This will give them an idea of what their page would look like.

The free trial allows us to showcase our strengths as a company, explains Gonzalo Ortiz de Zevallos, Co-Founder of CodeTactic. In order for businesses to entrust us with their brand, we need to prove to them what we are capable of. Likewise, we understand how important a brand is to a client. Thats why when we take on a project, we know we are not just building a website, but rather a portal to a brands voice online. In the case of the digital marketing trial, users would be shown where their business stands in Google searches in relation to designated keywords related to their business or industry.

These new plans will not only allow small businesses without a website to get a jumpstart on their presence online but expand and maintain it through known digital marketing techniques such as content marketing, social media management and search engine optimization - all elements essential to getting noticed online. A lot of companies focus exclusively on SEO or web design, but few try to do both, says Gonzalo. We are one of the few that dare to do both. We strive to lead businesses all the way, from the inception of their online presence by designing their website, to marketing their brand, all at an affordable price.

On the realm of web design, the plans CodeTactic offers entail everything related to web development: from the design and structure of the site to web hosting, all in an easy-to-use, responsive content management system that can be seen across a series of platforms such as mobile and tablet. The digital marketing plans include the creation of a social media management plan for platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as content creation for ones blog or website. In addition, CodeTactic monitors the progress of your websites Google ranking.

CodeTactic is a Vancouver-based digital marketing and web development company that offers affordable, low-cost solutions for small businesses. Known for their low-cost social media management plans for small business, they specialize in social media management, content marketing and search engine optimization. Furthermore, they design and provide custom web designs for customers wishing to engage online.

About CodeTactic:

CodeTactic is a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver BC which develops social media management and online marketing initiatives for small business and organizations that wish to participate in Social Media Marketing.

For more information on CodeTactics affordable web design and digital marketing plans, please visit http://codetactic.com.

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CodeTactic Announces New Affordable Web Design Plans Starting at $19/mo and Digital Marketing Plans at $95/mo