Marketing Professionals are trying to size up and evaluate every potentially relevant new marketing channel the web produces. The purpose of this blog is to help marketing professionals cut to heart of what they need to know about Google Buzz.

Facts

• Google Buzz was released February 2010.
• It’s a Social Media tool geared for sharing information, including photos and videos.
• Currently, a person must have a Gmail (Google Mail) account to use Google Buzz. This may change in the future.
• The biggest differences Google Buzz has over Facebook:
  • Fused to your Gmail email address
  • If you are mobile, Google Buzz has some additional functionality based on your current location
  • Makes is easier for people to engage in ongoing discussions
• There are currently major privacy concerns with the way that GB makes a user’s connections public. Read more about these privacy concerns on Wikipedia.
• The percentage of those who actually Google Buzz is currently unknown. GB was immediately available to Google’s 170 million users. Facebook has 400+ million users.
• Gmail demographics according to Quantcast show the audience is very general with the exception that 51% of users are between the ages of 18 and 34 and 23% being between 35 and 49.

Opinions

• There are drastically, mixed opinions about Google Buzz’s long-term impact from “Facebook-killer” to “another me-too product”.
• Many people aren’t sure how they would maintain all these channels. People seem generally tired of too much noise from Social Media networks. I believe that, like anything else, people will evolve how they perceive and use Social Media tools and must optimize the quality while generally lowering the frequency of their posts.
• I believe that Google Buzz will help evolve Social Media, but is not the “end-all”.

Recommendations

• Like anything else, understand your purpose and objectives clearly before investing much into Google Buzz.
• If you are selling a product or service customers typically buy again and again, Google Buzz may be worth testing and measuring.
• See if and how “competition” is using Google Buzz by using the 3rd party, public search engine http://buzzzy.com.
• Like other Social Media venues, Google Buzz should be approached much more as a way to engage your target audience, than an announcement center.
• There are many ways in which Google Buzz may evolve. Check on it from time to time.

Conclusion

If we boil it down: Google Buzz is Social Media channel with the potential for marketers to engage their target audiences. It has the potential to become a big, fast, but that is yet to be seen.  With Google Buzz just released, there is very little data available.  There may be greater opportunities for some business types over others. For example: a classy local restaurant may have much more potential leveraging Google Buzz with their location-specific sharing features for reviews and recommendations, than a company whose target audience buys once in a blue moon (like with heating and cooling systems).

The big question is: How can your company/product/service be share-worthy?

We’ll continue to publish “Sized Up” blogs to keep you in-the-know. We love constructive criticism. Please share your feedback on how this blog could better summarize Google Buzz for marketing professionals?

We asked Linked In members of the “Marketing Executives Group“:
What’s the #1 thing you need to figure out about the web?

Over 100 marketing professionals responded. We’ve sifted through all the responses to group and quantify them into an insightful list. Here are the top things marketing professionals want to figure out about the web in descending order:

• Understand who your target audiences are and how they see and use the web.
• How to measure ROI.
• Have a strategy for how the web should work in the overall marketing plan.
• How to leverage Social Media effectively.
• How to integrate marketing.
• Making sure your objectives are clear.
• How to leverage Search Engines.
• How to harness the myriad of tools available effectively.
• How to adapt or reinvent a business model to the new world.
• How to balance inbound and outbound marketing dollars.
• Use your website to present your brand and offering well.
• How to convert visitors into leads.
• Don’t get caught up with the band-wagon mentality, but focus on your specific situation.
• How to leverage your website as a direct extension of your sales force.
• How to get your target audience to find you.
• How to get people to engage my brand.
• Leverage mobile channels.
• Become a trusted authority or source of solution.
• Find a web specialist partner.
• Get Sales and Marketing teams to work together on strategizing the web strategy.
• How to provide genuine value to your target audience.
• How to make your website easy to use.

What’s the number #1 you need to figure out about the web? Post your thoughts below.

Large consumer giants like Coke and Unilever are switching up their digital strategy again. According to a recent article from New Media Age,

Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

This move comes as no surprise as many companies are now relying on full-throttle, web strategies and not just a corporate website.

Microsites will not be eliminated completely, but rather serve as a method to drive users to social applications and sites. As proponents of social media, brands like these are relying heavily on being active in the social space so they can “fish where the fish are.”

Prinz Pinakatt, the Coca-Cola Company’s interactive marketing manager for Europe, said, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there.

“We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,” Pinakatt added.

Aggressive reliance on social media well help these companies achieve great brand awareness and loyalty, while participating in conversations that are already taking place in the customers’ backyards (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

One question I have is how these mega brands are going to pull off a rich, engaging experience that is often created through microsites, if they must stick with the current design constraints that are in place at most of the social networking sites.

What do you think? Are corporate websites and microsites a thing of the past and will companies rely solely on social media, or where there be a hybrid model that includes reliance on both social sites and websites/microsites? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

We recently published a white paper for marketing executives who want to understand the risks and consequences associated with not fully embracing the web. As the web has become the central hub of all communications, no longer can marketing executives afford to take a casual approach to the web by relying on an ineffective corporate website. Rather a full-throttle, all-encompassing web strategy must be in place in order for a business to grow. A holistic web strategy includes components like social media, search engine optimization, video and multimedia, campaign based micro-sites, email marketing, and methods to track and measure ROI, in addition to a results-based corporate website.

For marketers who do not choose to put a solid web strategy as the foundation for all other marketing efforts they face many business-altering risks. In addition to the obvious risks wasting time and money other risks include:

• Lack of brand awareness and visibility
• A negative brand perception
• Missing out on engagement opportunities with potential customers

The white paper also uncovers the huge rewards that come with approaching the web full-force.

You can download the white paper for free here.

I recently began reading Malcolm Gladwell’s, What the Dog Saw. In the first chapter Gladwell takes an in-depth look at brilliant marketer Ron Popiel, founder of Ronco, and inventor of popular kitchen gadgets such as the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ.

While I found it interesting to learn about the Popeil family legacy of inventing and entrepreneurial spirit, what fascinated me the most was the fundamental reasons behind Popiel’s marketing success.

Gladwell attributes Popeil’s empire to the fact that Popeil consistently positioned his products as the star of the show. Popeil designed products that could easily sell themselves and didn’t need a whole lot of explanation.

His infomercials focused on how simple and user-friendly the kitchen gadgets were to use.  Popeil passionately showed his audience how his products worked and provided visual demonstrations of why Ronco products, while often higher priced, were better than the competitors.

Since infomercials are a thing of the past, one way to leverage the Popeil approach is to create a microsite focused on one or two of your products. Since there is much more creative flexibility and freedom with a microsite as opposed to a corporate site you can put your product in the spotlight.  Here are three tips to keep in mind when using the web to make your product the star.

1. Show them how it works

The is no substitute for showing someone how something works. Utilizing video to demonstrate your products capabilities, differences, or ease-of-use is priceless. Think about it this way, if you are buying some sort of gadget would you rather buy it from Company Z that sells the product for $100 but you have to read 10 pages of web-text to figure out how the product works and if it’s right for you. Or, would you rather buy the gadget from Company X that sells the product for $25 more but has a plethora of videos on the site that detail how the product works in a variety of applications and shows you how easy it is to use. I’d gladly pay the extra $25 to not waste my precious time reading and gleaning through gobs of text when I could watch a few short videos instead.

Just as users have ADD about reading, they have ADD when it comes to length of video. Keep video segments short, no longer than 3-4 min each, and separate them out by topic or feature. That way if someone is interested in only knowing how one small portion works, they can just watch that one video rather than having to watch an entire 20 min segment about your product.

2. Get out of the way

Chances are your customers don’t really care about you or your company.  They are looking for information about your products or services and they don’t truly care about how great your CEO’s are or how your employees raised money for charity. Those things are important but they come secondary to your products and services and should be treated as such. Get out of the way and let your products be the star.

3. Keep it simple

The genius part of Popeil’s marketing message is that it’s so simple. A seven-year old can easily grasp how his products work.  While his infomercials can be a bit cheesy, they work because they keep things simple and focus on the most important selling points of his products. He doesn’t go on and on about how the gadget is made and how he got the idea for the invention-blah, blah, blah. Instead, Popeil focuses on what the customer wants and needs to hear in order to make a purchase. That should be your focus too.  Keep it simple. Be continually looking for ways to cut the fat out of your marketing message and you too will have your customers reaching for their wallet.

For marketing managers measuring return on investment (ROI) for their various marketing efforts is a big part of the their job. With the right web partner providing effective tools and analysis, measuring ROI with web-based marketing efforts is easy compared to traditional channels where audience interaction is much more obscure.

The first step toward measuring results is setting goals. According to search marketing expert Carrie Hill, “The most successful online marketing campaigns use an idea and a goal and leverage that idea and goal as much as they can before it’s exhausted.”

Effective goals need to be SMART Goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. Solid examples of SMART web goals include: “Increase traffic by 60% in six months” or “Add 1500 new subscribers to the newsletter over the next year” or “Connect with 10 people per week on Facebook.”

Defining web goals is a job best completed before designing a website or other web based marketing tool. Setting goals as an after thought can lead to extended development time, additional incurred cost, and poor performance. Also by proactively establishing goals, web designers can tailor the site structure in a way that will best help achieve the goals set forth.

Planning how to reach these goals is surprisingly simple by breaking the down the goal into more easy-to-understand steps. Let’s use XYZ company who sells printing press machinery as an example.

Establish a SMART goal
- Increase web-based revenue by 20% ($20 million) in 12 months

Knowing the average annual customer purchase amount, determine how many customers are needed to make up the increase in revenue.
-$500,000 average annual purchase x Y customers = $20 million
-40 customers are needed

Using historical business data, the average rate of converting a perspective into a client can be determined. Let’s say the conversation rate is 30%.
-30% conversion rate x Y number of perspective customers = 40 customers
-133 perspective customers are needed

Knowing on average that 2% of website visitors will convert into perspective customers, determine the number of web visitors needed.
-2% x Y number of web visitors = 133 perspective customers
-6550 web visitors needed annually or 554 web visitors per month

You can also use our online goal calculator to figure out how many visitors and leads you need in order to achieve your web goals.

For many years a company’s website was the most important tool in a marketing director’s toolbox.  However, as the web has grown it’s no longer enough for a company to simply have a static website. There is a great need for companies to employ a holistic web strategy that encompasses things like social media, search engine optimization, video, and mobile capabilities in order to reach their audience and grow their brand.

The need for an all-encompassing web strategy combined with the fact that the web has become the focus of all communications, means that marketing directors (not IT directors) are in the best position to effectively execute and control a company’s web strategy.

To learn about the five key components of a  successful web strategy you can sign up for our free webinar that will be held on Wednesday, January 27, from 1pm-3pm. You can sign up using the form on our website.

We recently had the pleasure of developing a web strategy which included an eCommerce site for Green Boomerang, an eco-conscious start-up looking to revolutionize the shipping industry with their sustainable handling and storage systems. Their goal is to be the Amazon.com of the shipping industry.

The main objective of the web strategy was to make things as easy as possible for Green Boomerang’s target audience of engineers and sustainability leaders. Engineers traditionally have to spend a lot of time researching and buying containers for their products, often from several different manufacturers.

The new site offers a one-stop shopping experience because Green Boomerang is unique in the fact that they offer products from 10 different manufacturers, thus engineers will no longer have to buy from multiple sources. The site structure and navigation is also tailored toward the mindset and search habits of engineers, helping them to quickly find and confirm the right product for their applications.

The site is built on the award-winning Magento eCommerce platform. We chose to use Magento over other eCommerce platforms because of it’s ability to grow and expand alongside Green Boomerang, as well as its natural search engine optimization structure.

Future plans for the website include the addition of an interactive tool that will aide the engineer in narrowing down product possibilities based on their application and some advanced GPS capabilities.

Our ongoing relationship with Green Boomerang will allow us to track the performance of their site and modify their strategy to ensure their continued growth and success.

Green Boomerang, a local company based out of Elkhart, Indiana, was recently featured on WSBT News as a new company which promises to bring growth, innovation, and jobs to our community.

In my previous post about social media ROI,  I talked about establishing a baseline as one of the first steps. Remember, after you establish your baseline it’s important to track those metrics on a monthly basis. The next step in calculating social media ROI is to create and maintain a time line of all of your marketing activities.

By creating a time line you can overlay your sales data and start to determine trends that will help you connect your investment to its impact on the bottom line (connect the “R” in ROI to the “I”).

Start today and from this point forward record all marketing activities that will be viewed by the public on your time line. Record things like:

• Blog posts
• Webinars
• White papers
• Speaking events
• Press releases
• New product launches
• Advertising
• Tweets (group tweets per day, and record how many there were in a given day)
• Video posts
• Start of social media activity (i.e. begin Tweeting, answering questions on LinkedIn, etc)
• Media mentions
• Social mentions
• and more

I recommend using Excel or OpenOffice Calc to record the activities and additional data for your time line. In addition to the date and marketing activity you should also include a cost for each activity to make calculating the cost of your investment easier.

Here are some suggested column headings for your spreadsheet:

• Date (month, day, year)
• Activity
• Category (to help segregating data easier. ex: Twitter, Blog, PR)
• Team Member
• Cost

You can download a sample spreadsheet that you can modify and use in your own business here.

It’s worth noting that depending on what version of Excel or OpenOffice you are using, there will be limits to the number of columns you can have in a given spreadsheet. I usually break my time line up by quarter and have a separate sheet or tab for each quarter to eliminate the worry of running out of columns.

Outside of Excel or OpenOffice there is another great tool for creating time lines call Dipity.This tool can pull in Twitter, RSS feeds, and other social updates automatically which can be a huge time-saver. The downsides are that you cannot currently print or export your time line (although the developers say there are plans for these features in the future). Also if you choose to use this tool you will have to keep track of the cost of each marketing activity in another format.

Between updating the metrics we talked about in the previous post and recording your activities in a time line it may sound tedious and time consuming. However it is the one of the best ways you can begin to make connections between your marketing activities and the impact on the bottom line $$$.

If you have interns you can consider having them update the time lines and metrics spreadsheet as a great way to engage them in the practice of measuring ROI.

I am curious to know what other uses you have found for time lines in your business.  Let me know in the comments section below.

After you have defined goals for measuring social media ROI the next step is to establish a baseline, or internal audit, of where your organization stands now. You need to take an inventory of a variety of business variables (both financial and non financial) that you can use to determine social media’s impact on the bottom line $$$.

It is best to establish the baseline before implementing your social media strategy. However, if you are already engaging in social media it is still important to establish a baseline of where you stand right now so that you can best determine future successes and opportunities for improvement.

Although ROI doesn’t equal analytics, variables such as Twitter followers and web traffic are important to measure to see how they affect the bottom line $$$. For example it would be important to analyze how the number of Twitter followers affects web traffic and consequently how volume of web traffic leads to increased sales.

Here are some suggested variables to include in your baseline:

• Avg. monthly sales
• Avg. dollar amount per transaction
• Blog comments per month
• Cost to acquire a new customer
• Current YTD sales
• Customer conversion ratio
• Facebook friends
• Keywords ranked for on the first page
• LinkedIn connections
• Monthly new customers
• Monthly transactions
• Monthly unique visitors
• Number of links from social bookmarking sites
• Press mentions per month
• Previous yearly sales
• RSS subscribers
• Social mentions per month
• Twitter followers
• YouTube channel subscribers

I created a spreadsheet on Google Docs with the metrics above that you can download for free and modify for your business. If you think there should be additional variables that are measured in a baseline you can add them to the comments section below and I will add them to the spreadsheet.

After creating your baseline I recommend measuring these metrics on a monthly basis. In my next post I will discuss how creating an activity time line, in conjunction with your established baseline, will help you look for trends and demonstrate ROI.