In Part 1 of our Ultimate Guide to Search Retargeting, we looked at the players involved in this revolutionary tactic, how it works, and the impressive “Power Ups” it can give your marketing effort.

Today, we’re going to look at how to take your Search Retargeting efforts to the next level through Advanced Prospecting. In particular, we’re going to look at two key levels you need to master—traditional Search Retargeting and Search Retargeting on the Facebook Ad Exchange (FBX)—as well as the villains you need to avoid along the way.

Level 1: Traditional Search Retargeting

As we began to discuss in Part 1, Search Retargeting is a practice that allows marketers to target users with display ads based on the keywords they enter into search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, among others. Unlike Site Retargeting, which retargets past visitors to your site, Search Retargeting unearths completely new prospects.

Search Retargeting, in other words, has brought the power of search engine marketing (SEM) to display. As with SEM, the process is driven by the intent that users reveal when they search for something online—after all, people tend to search for the products and services they’re interested in purchasing. And, as with SEM, marketers can purchase the ads as efficiently as possible through real-time bidding.

For example, say that you’re a company that sells affordable luxury vacation packages. A user searches for “All-Inclusive Caribbean Vacations” on Google, and, a few minutes later, heads over to the New York Times Travel Section. Thanks to Search Retargeting, you’d know that user has a lot of value because he or she just searched for all-inclusive vacations. As a result, you know to bid more for that impression, and you know to show a creative that highlights your sale on all-inclusive vacations. (For more info on how this works on a step-by-step basis, check out Part 1.)

Level 2: FBX

Roughly 25% of Internet traffic in the United States occurs within Facebook, but for a long time, marketers were unable to target users with Facebook ads based on their Internet browsing behavior. In December, that all changed when Facebook named my company, Chango, as a preferred partner in FBX, and we brought Search Retargeting to Facebook.

By anonymously capturing the recent search behavior of over 300 million Facebook users, we allow advertisers to launch keyword-specific social advertising campaigns on Facebook that target purchase intent. So, for example, if someone searches for the “Air Jordans,” we allow marketers to take that search data and subsequently target that individual with an ad on Facebook.

In addition, we allow marketers to target past site visitors with ads on Facebook in order to compel them to return. FBX has opened up Search Retargeting to the social realm, and it should be a big part of marketing on the world’s most dominant social platform.

Villains

When trying to master these two levels of Search Retargeting, there are some villains you have to avoid if you want to stay on the right track:

The Ultimate Guide to Search Retargeting, Part 2 is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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Stop your online marketing right now.

Tell me the truth: have you signed up to SEO, PPC, or social media services in the last few years, paid a couple of grand per month for visibility, and found that you were seeing slow uptake but no ROI?

You and maybe one hundred thousand other small businesses.

Yes, you, small business owner.

The problem with marketing today versus marketing in 2006 is volume. There’s volume everywhere. There are more websites today than there were 7 years ago. There are more SEO savvy folks, so you’re vying for eyes you may never get without investing a fortune. There are more social media marketing experts in the world than there may be doctors these days. Yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Get a Twitter account, amass 50,000 followers by buying them through cheap online marketplaces, RSS port a bunch of popular marketing blogs to give off the appearance of knowledge, and you look like a guru.

Except you’re not a guru.

Yet you’re going to do the same thing to a client who is paying $5,000/month for you.

But they don’t want that. They want money. They want sales. They want conversions.

Does this sound familiar?

More and more businesses these days hop on the “omg, I can get start a business and Google/social media will help me right away!” Not exactly. SEO is a lengthy process that truly takes significant time and money that small businesses often can’t afford to lose since they need results fast or else that $4,000 they’re paying is going to waste — and even if they do rank #1, what next? What if they don’t get the sales they need to justify that huge expense?

Here’s another truth: those marketing firms that do this level of work also charge $150-250 an hour. That $2,500 you’re paying for a full month is less than one single workweek for them and likely managed by a junior employee, not the person who sold you the service to begin with. Who cares if you’re a small struggling business trying to get a foothold in the online space so you don’t have to take out a new mortgage on your house simply so that you can keep paying your employees? You don’t get a break. I don’t get a break either when conveying this to the US folks I have had to outsource much of my work to. It’s why I got out. I’m sorry to offend my industry colleagues, but it feels disgusting and dirty.

When you ask yourself how you’ve been able to hang on so far and how you’re getting new clients, what are you seeing? I’m betting for most of you, it’s all through word of mouth or referrals. Someone has tried you. Someone loves you. Someone wants their friend or family member to try you out too.

Customer service marketing is absolutely paramount. There’s no question that giving a customer the royal treatment will help boost your visibility. Give someone exactly what they want, make them feel happy, and they’ll tell everyone about you. Or if not everyone, they’ll tell the people who care.

I just moved to a new neighborhood and I’ve gone with every single recommendation for service providers given to me by my neighbors. Every single person who has stepped foot in my door has come through word of mouth. They trusted the service provider, so I know I will too.

If you service the online space and much of your support is based on email communications, Real Time Email can thrust you into a realm of visibility never previously considered possible.

Wouldn’t you like to see for yourself?

Image via Bigstock with a few edits done by yours truly.

STOP YOUR ONLINE MARKETING. is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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When Facebook launched Facebook Exchange (FBX) last September, it was an important day in the history of online advertising.  Facebook accounts for some 25 percent of U.S. display inventory on the web. Now that inventory can be purchased with real-time bidding (RTB), and marketers can target their most valuable customers with a display ad on Facebook.

But, though it didn’t receive as much attention as the launch of FBX, Facebook made another critical move in December when it allowed advertisers to target customers based on what they searched for in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. By combining FBX with search data, Facebook brought the power of intent that’s revealed by searches to the world’s biggest social network. Or, put another way, in serving ads against search data, Facebook is now employing the Internet’s most effective marketing tool, the very tool that has earned Google so many billions.

Let’s take a look at how FBX works and how you can serve ads to Facebook users based on searches they’ve made on other sites.

Main Characters

The key variables in targeting customers on FBX based on their search data include users, prospects (data network searches) and the ad exchange itself, FBX.

Users

The first step in a successful search led campaign on FBX is determining the users you want to target. And that means profiling and scoring everyone on your site so that you know which search terms they’ve entered to get to your site and which of those terms lead to the most conversions.

Prospects 

Once you determine the most effective keywords, you need to be able to find the people searching with those keywords so that you can serve your ads to them when they arrive on Facebook.  After all, with search led campaigns, you’re serving ads to people who have never visited your site. Finding these users is possible only when you have enormous amounts of search data.

FBX

FBX resembles other ad exchanges in most respects, but there are some key differences. First and foremost, Facebook only works with a select group of partners. If you want to participate in FBX, you have to go through one of these partners. And if you want to target Facebook users based on the searches they’ve made on other sites, there are very few vendors with such a capability.

FBX Search led campaigns walkthrough

Running a search led campaign on FBX is a four-step process:

1. A user types a search term into a search engine or another site
2. The FBX partner tags the user with a pixel and remembers the search term. (The user remains anonymous throughout the process.)
3. The user visits Facebook.
4. The FBX targets the user on Facebook with a display ad (formatted for Facebook) based on the search term from step number one.

FBX Search-led Powerups

User Scoring

The key to a successful RTB campaign is knowing how much to bid to serve the impression. Companies that run search led campaigns on FBX use a sophisticated scoring system to determine the exact worth of each user. That score then determines how much we pay at auction to serve the impression. The scoring system ensures that the system runs as efficiently as possible so that no marketing dollars go to waste.

Tag Management Support 

Marketers today know all too well that tags, or pixels, can turn into a major headache when not handled by a leading tag management system.  In addition to eating up developer hours, poor tag management can take a serious toll on a site’s performance.

Dynamic Creative

When it comes to FBX, marketers familiar with other exchanges need to make one key adjustment: new creatives. While most display exchanges run a variety of image-based creatives, FBX units are similar in appearance to Facebook’s Standard Ad units. You can think of FBX units as a cross between search engine ads and display ads. They include a 25-character title, 90-character body, and a 100x72px image.  Recognizing which creatives are most effective and adjusting in real time is a critical component of a campaign.

Proprietary Search Data

To run an effective search led campaign on FBX, or any other exchange, for that matter, you need an enormous volume of search data. Google is an obvious starting point, but there are lots of other search engines. And gathering search data doesn’t begin and end with search engines. Data from searches performed on publisher sites is often the most valuable of all. In the US, Canada, and the UK, Google is the largest source of search data followed by Chango 

When to Use FBX

As excited as we are about the new advertising possibilities on Facebook, the introduction of FBX doesn’t mean that brands should now do all of their Facebook advertising through the new exchange. If your goal is to build your brand’s following on Facebook itself, Facebook’s other advertising tools, such as sponsored stories, might be a better fit. But if you want to use display ads to drive traffic to a brand site and increase your conversions, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better approach than Search-led campaigns on FBX.

Ben is VP of Marketing & Partnerships at Chango, where he heads up marketing and is also responsible for expanding the company’s data and media partnerships. Prior to joining Chango, Ben worked with GE Capital for four years to establish and lead the digital media practice. This led to the development of GE Capital’s digital value proposition and its execution worldwide. The new venture re-energized paid, owned and earned media across 70+ web sites. Ben graduated from GE’s Experienced Commercial Leadership program after completing his MBA at McGill University. Before GE, Ben held a variety of Marketing & Business Development roles in the e-payments industry, while working at Gemalto in London. Ben writes frequently for Digiday, CMO.com and Search Engine Watch.

The Ultimate Guide to Targeting Search Profiles on Facebook is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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With intermittent signal, you’ll struggle to build momentum around your product or service.

If you don’t do it right, you might not even want to do it at all.

Social Media is an Answer but it’s Not THE Answer

Those of you who know me know me as someone who was an early proponent about the importance of social media. I was selling social media services before most of today’s practitioners even realized what social media is. My book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, which was published by top tech publisher O’Reilly in 2009, was one of the first books about social media and was translated to German, Italian, Chinese, and Portuguese, becoming a best seller on digital marketing in a number of countries.

Social media marketing still is incredibly important, yet difficult, for businesses to embrace. Many don’t do it well, mostly because they are hiring an outsourced company with staff that doesn’t necessarily have the same passion in a company’s mission as the company members themselves. Most don’t really know what they want out of their engagement; they don’t set clear goals and set themselves up for failure. At the end of the day, social media is important. It can be difficult to do it right between the snake oil salesmen making all kinds of promises and the amount of noise out there compared to the amount of signal. To do it well, a company needs a full time person spending every hour of the workday (and nights and weekends too) engaging in online networking. Small businesses in particular don’t have the manpower for it. Most large businesses have several people doing it. Not everyone will gain their footing and give up altogether. For some, social media simply isn’t worth the effort that it would take.

Clients who have worked with some of the big names in the social media industry and have had miserable results have approached me. I end up being hired to suggest the appropriate direction or to fix the problem. But I realize that the problem may go beyond any social media marketing strategist. Unless you’re able to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe social media, it just may not work for you.

The truth of the matter is, people still think social media marketing is the answer to everything they need for their business, and that can’t be further from the truth.

Social media marketing lets you market (read: raise awareness) for your company using available online tools and platforms. But what it isn’t is an ideal tool for customer service, and social media marketers often are focused on marketing and not on support.

Social Media Marketing is Only as Good as Your Customer Service

Why do companies with poor customer service think that social media marketing will change the public perception of the company? It won’t. If you don’t respond professionally, you can lose a customer and maybe a boatload of other customers too. After all, a satisfied customer tells 3 friends, but an angry customer tells 3,000.

Moreover, we live in a real time society now, thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Being responsive everywhere, especially email responsiveness, is paramount. These days, an email that is responded to quickly is extremely well received. It also still, quite honestly, surprises people. A lot.

I’ve surprised many people with my response times. I also have seen that my promptness has caused people to come back to doing business with my clients again and again over the competition.

I want to continue to surprise people on a slightly larger scale. I want them to be excited to be doing business with you too.

Therefore, I announce the launch of Real Time Email, my new venture with the goal of working with a few select clients to offer real time email support. Email organization is my forte and it’s something that I can easily respond to quickly. Instead of being focused on ROI for programs that may not even amount to anything, we can focus on real problems needing real solutions.

Marketing often loses sight of that.

Companies jump to market their business without addressing communications internally and externally. That’s a fatal flaw.

Customer Service? That’s it?

Exactly. But it’s so much more. Let’s go back to the Cluetrain Manifesto. Markets are conversations. In many cases, those conversations need to touch upon the root of the problem, customer service, before they even think about marketing. If we’ve learned anything in the last decade, it’s that those conversations are happening at a very rapid pace. Now’s the time to outshine the competition by doing the responsiveness in real time.

I thought of Craig Newmark the other day. You know him, right? He founded Craigslist. Instead of electing to run his powerhouse, he decided to work behind the lines, solving real problems worth solving. This is what I aspire to be — and I even told him so.

Customer service often falls by the wayside because people are chasing what’s bigger and better. These days, it’s social media marketing. Social media marketing is put in the spotlight while the customer is ignored, but hey, companies are doing their best at that marketing so it’s okay.

It’s not okay by me.

I find myself more excited about going to work when I am solving problems for customers, the true nature of customer support, than when I am trying to figure out a marketing plan that doesn’t necessarily meet expectations.

Social media isn’t necessarily the answer. Those resources would be better spent with Real Time Email.

Marketing Works, but it’s Not a Silver Bullet

I remember talking to one of my colleagues back in the day and asking him how he addresses his clients as it relates to fulfilling guarantees and promises within social media marketing campaigns. He replied matter of factly, “social media marketing is a gamble. Our efforts may or may not be well received. We can do what we can and fulfill our end of the deal, but it’s up to human psychology to respond to our overtures.” Another one of my colleagues in the digital marketing space worked on an AMAZING charity campaign just a few months ago that I personally was really excited about. The collateral was great. The messaging was great. I observed it from the sidelines and it flopped. It failed miserably. It was then that I realized digital marketing is a substantial investment for which unless you have hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars annually (or a GREAT idea), you will have a hard time seeing the success you’ve invested so much in. Why pour all that money away when you can focus on doing a great job at getting a satisfied customer to actually tell 3,000 friends?

That’s my goal with Real Time Email. Together, with social media marketing, companies will shine again. My goal is to put your company in the limelight again to wow your customers similar to the Zappos experience (without really being Zappos).

Who’s with me?

2013: The Rise of Customer Service Marketing (and Techipedia’s New Direction) is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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There can be few companies that have become part of so many people’s daily lives in such a short space of time as Facebook. Since 2004 it has grown to over one billion users globally, with over half of those logging on daily. What can we learn from founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s incredible journey, and what are the keys to his success? I discuss the answers to this question in more detail in my book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg”, but in this post I wanted to share some quick insights around the five key elements of success.

Passion

Passion is what sets the successful entrepreneurs apart from the rest. Think of some of the top business people – Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates – they might have very different personalities but one trait they all share is passion.

Mark Zuckerberg has always been passionate about using technology to connect people, and this passion has driven him to succeed despite numerous setbacks.

Passion fuels perseverance – one of the key ingredients of success.

Purpose

“Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected.” - About Facebook statement accompanying company’s press release

Great leaders (and great companies) create movements, not just products. Facebook isn’t just a social networking site; it is a way of staying on touch with people around the world, a place to bring people together and building communities, and a tool for sharing information. By always keeping his purpose in mind, Zuckerberg has been able to focus on creating the best product for achieving this. The most successful companies build their products on their purpose, whether it is Southwest Airlines striving to bring affordable air travel to everybody, Apple to create a seamless and stylish user experience, or Dyson to re-invent what we use every day and make it better.

People

“One of the things that we’ve focused on is keeping the company as small as possible… How do you do that? You make sure that every person you add to your company is really great.” - Mark Zuckerberg in his 2011 BYU speech

Facebook’s famously rigorous screening process for new employees is designed to find people with not only the right skills to do the job, but the right attitude. The culture of a business comes from its employees, and Facebook provides intensive training – ‘Bootcamp’ – that teaches new starters to “think like Zuck”. With everyone operating on the same wavelength, Facebook has been able to achieve great things with a relatively small team.

Product

No matter how big it grew, Facebook has always been about people: Zuck’s product stems from his passion for connectivity, and this has kept Facebook relevant despite the fast pace of development. Innovations such as Groups, the Wall, photo tagging or the Timeline have always centered on users’ requirements and have grown out of the Facebook culture of fast, imaginative design.

The most innovative companies give their employees the freedom to experiment and take risks that drive product ideas.

Make innovation personal! Involve your employees and give them freedom to create.

Partnerships

No business leader can run a company all by themselves. Good leaders recognize their own weaknesses as much as their strengths and bring in the right people to form partnerships that drive success. Whether it is investors, a management team, suppliers, distributors or retail partnerships, partnering with the right people is vital.

The partnership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, his COO, has been hugely important in growing the site as a successful business. This partnership of imagination and execution works because both partners have complementary skills and a shared passion for the Facebook mission.

The way people use the internet has changed in the last eight years since Facebook was founded, and will continue to change. Under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, the company has responded to changing user needs. Zuckerberg’s passion and commitment to his product and vision has been central to pushing the boundaries of social networking and will continue to do so as user needs evolve.

To me, “Think Like Zuck” is an analogy of a leader who follows his passion, leads with purpose, builds great teams, and strives for continued excellence in her product (or services). It is a mentality that drives great leaders to building successful business and the approach they use to doing so.

Ekaterina Walter is a social media innovator at Intel, a speaker, and an author of the book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg”. Walter was named among 25 Women Who Rock Social Media in 2012. She sits on a Board of Directors of Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). You can find her on Twitter: @Ekaterina and her blog www.ekaterinawalter.com. 

Think Like Zuck: 5 Secrets of Success of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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The way that we explore and discover content on the Internet has drastically changed in the last decade. The first major step forward was with Google which organized the Internet so that anyone could run accurate searches on specific topics they found interesting. The next evolution in content discovery came with the social revolution. The introduction of social feeds by Facebook, Twitter and other social networks changed the way that people discovered content. Instead of having to actively search for new and interesting things, our friends were doing the work for us. This crowdsourced, automated method of discovering popular content was a drastic improvement in how we found interesting information and media on a daily basis. This change in content consumption and the viral features introduced by many web companies has now created an overabundance of information which in many cases is no better than spam. This post will highlight how the high adoption of popular social and content orientated platforms has resulted in an overwhelming exposure to too much content too much of the time. I will also cover some of the popular ways that power users use useful services and features to better organize and aggregate the constant flow of high quality, popular content.

One of the best examples of how this overabundance has done harm is with daily deal sites. At first, it was great to receive one or two emails in your inbox with some cool deals, but now people are sick of it and consider it a new form of spam. Another new form of spam which many are familiar with is how Facebook applications constantly push triggers and notifications to us through our friends. Fortunately Facebook has enabled users with ways to limit this form of targeting and has changed its policies for app developers numerous times.

Some companies have come to understand that everyone has their own personal Internet and need a range of highly personalized content linked to their interests. Two of the most successful companies in this space are StumbleUpon and Flipboard. Both companies use advanced algorithms to bring highly personalized content right to their users.

Popular blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr have make it possible for anyone to publish content on the Internet in a matter of minutes. Everyone now has a voice online and can create a following. Services like Twitter and Technorati have made it easier than ever to discover the personalities, influencers and top content sources in any niche.

The web has become much more transparent and thanks to the many social platforms out there, people can now create personal brands and scale their activities to millions of people all across the globe. This capability has resulted in a humanization of the web which rewards those who put in the effort to grow their online presence. The beautiful thing is that everyone can benefit from this, from politicians like Barack Obama to rock singers like Ron Weinrich. The web has made it easier to idolize people linked to our interests and this has resulted in even more content constantly flowing to us through the numerous platforms these personalities use to grow their following.

All these amazing platforms have made the Internet by far the best place to learn and discover new, interesting and popular content. As a result of the steady increase in the rate of content being produced every day, it has now become impossible to keep up with all this quality content. Power users, especially those working in the Internet space, are having to spend more time reading and viewing new content in order to stay a head of the game and keep up with trends in the market.
Fortunately there are some ways to help with aggregating and sorting the numerous resources we use online to find the latest and greatest. Google Reader is a great free service which consolidates your blog subscriptions into a single, convenient reader. Instead of receiving an email each time one of the blogs you follow publishes a post, simply add the blog to Google Reader and view the latest posts straight from the service.

We are consuming more and more content from our social feeds. One of the best ways to filter specific posts and updates into interests is by creating lists. Both Twitter (Guide to using lists in Twitter) and Facebook (Guide to using lists in Facebook) have the lists feature which you can use to separate individuals you subscribe to into their respective niches.

I’m a fan of the read later service Pocket which makes it easy to save individual web pages for future viewing. I stumble upon many articles and blog posts every day but don’t have the time to read everything I come across right there and then. I use Pocket to view these articles from my phone during my down time like when traveling on the bus.

The pace of the web is increasing and as a result we are losing out more and more as new content falls out of our scope. What the Internet needs is a service which uses the combined power of all of its users to aggregate the best and most popular content around every interest. Only by leveraging the combined efforts of the entire Internet, can it be scaled down to provide the best out there for every individual. I am excited to be trying to tackle this issue with my own startup, Bmark and hope one day to be able to show everyone the best and most popular of their own personal Internet.
If you use other services to help aggregate content around your interests then please let us know in the comments section below.

Justin Butlion is the co-founder and CEO of Bmark, a content discovery service which brings you the latest and greatest content around your interests. Follow Justin on Twitter at @justin_butlion. Justin also loves to blog at TheGreatGrind.

The New Dilemma: Social Media Exposes Us to Too Much, Too Often is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

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It’s not rocket science – response rates and budget optimization are the crux of a successful advertising strategy.  But, it is surprising the number of businesses we talk to that don’t have a solid plan in place to track leads and response rates so they can accurately tie results back to a specific campaign and budget, and therefore justify the money they spend.

Today, advertising is required to be efficient and meet many expectations; generate leads, optimize budgets and stay one step ahead of the competition.  It also has to be clever, inspiring and unique.  Many of these challenges are addressed by creative executives, designers and media buyers and negotiators.  Other challenges, like ensuring lead generation and a good ROI are more difficult to achieve, but not insurmountable.

So how do you develop and manage strategic advertising programs and be sure you are implementing a strong campaign?  One that tracks ROI in today’s complicated media environment while also producing results?

Get More Calls so You Can Work More Leads

First, you need to incorporate a unique and easily remembered response tools in your advertising so we can remember it and respond thereby becoming a new lead for the business.

A simple but powerful response device – think 1-800-FLOWERS^® or 1-800-GOT-JUNK^® – translates into significantly more leads and sales for your business and will set you on the path to a healthy ROI.  When used in advertising, these easily remembered vanity numbers are proven to increase response rates by at least thirty percent (30%). And, according to a study by Infosurv, Inc. respondents had a 75.4% average higher recall rate of vanity 800 numbers over numeric toll-free numbers, and they had a 57.6% average higher recall rate of vanity numbers over URLs.

So, it’s safe to say that while there is no doubt we are continuing to move towards more digital online communications, there are also a large set of the population that still prefers to have a live conversation, and advertising companies should give that demographic a break and provide them with a 10-digit phone number they can easily remember, instead of a 10-digit phone number that is the equivalent of a bank account number – which no one remembers, right?  Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think so…

There are many benefits to using an unforgettable phone number as the call-to-action in your advertising.  Together, the ads and the response tool establish a strong image in your market segment.  For example, almost everyone recognizes the McDonald’s arches from afar.  The same goes for notable logos like the Nike swoosh. The same concept stands for smaller, local business as well – you can probably think of a few right in your own market.

This concept of image recognition translates to your vanity 800 number if it aligns with your brand, like 1-800-GOT-JUNK.  And when you place a number like this in all of your advertisements, business materials, marketing materials, and promotional items it is going the extra mile – doing the leg-work of identifying your company and maintaining a consistent image in your market.

Analyze Call Metrics to Measure Campaign Effectiveness

Increasing consumer response rates and generating more leads only gets you halfway down the path to a good return on investment.  There is a bit of work that needs to be done to prove out the success of a campaign.

You need to analyze the leads generated by your advertising – or any communications to customers – so you can re-align your marketing strategy and spend your budgets more wisely.

To evaluate campaigns you need to have the tools in place to monitor your advertising performance.  It is very easy to ask new customers or clients where they heard about you, but it’s not always accurate.  Monitor your advertising campaigns based on actual response rates.  It’s easy with the call tracking data that you’ll capture on every incoming call, if you have a sophisticated call tracking software solution in place.

So, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I know how each incoming lead found my company?
2. Am I able to track my company’s return on advertising dollars effectively and accurately?
3. Do I really know which media outlets are working well, and which ones are draining my budget?

If you answered no to any of those questions, it’s time to get on board with a call tracking plan.

With real-time call tracking reports, advertisers have definitive data to answer these three questions and more. You will gain the ability to build a database of leads for future marketing efforts, analyze campaign results for media budget optimization, and examine a wide range of call data such as cost of calls, missed calls, and markets that produce the most results and bring you the most leads.  These are the markets you know you should focus your time and money on in the future.

Best Case Scenario

Here’s a best case scenario. Recently a career college implemented this two-pronged approach of generating more incoming call traffic and tracking the data of their incoming callers.  After featuring an unforgettable direct response tool in their advertising, the incoming call volume to the admissions department jumped seventy percent (70%), and in turn produced an identifiable increase in enrollment opportunities for the organization – “more leads.”
The executive director of the school explains that “Since activating the vanity 800 number we’ve had the best two years in history.  More applications are coming in as a result of our advertising, and I attribute that directly to the vanity 800 number.”

The school not only observed an increase in leads, but they were also able to track their calls and see where they originated – meaning geographically and demographically.  After being approached multiple times by a local magazine to purchase ad space, the magazine’s sales rep switched tactics.  The rep convinced the school’s marketing department to test the magazine’s response rates using free ad space.  To the school’s surprise the magazine generated the highest return of all other media outlets they had been using.  The school admits that they never would have known how valuable the magazine is to them had they not been able to track response with hard data, rather than supposition.

It really is that simple.  Memorable vanity numbers increase response rates, and call tracking data empowers you to monitor advertising performance, learn what works for your business, what resonates with your target audience, and gives you the opportunity to make changes to your marketing strategy and improve your ROI.

Photo courtesy of BigStock.

How More Calls and Conversations Will Provide You with Strategic Business Intelligence is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

The post How More Calls and Conversations Will Provide You with Strategic Business Intelligence appeared first on Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg.

For the last few years, social media has taken the marketing world by storm, if you aren’t engaging with your visitors then you’re probably putting yourself at a massive disadvantage against your competitors who do. However I’ve spotted a disturbing trend amongst many marketers who utilize social media; they don’t know how to track it properly!

Like any other form of marketing, if we want the budget and resources to pursue it then we need to prove its worth. So in this post, I’ll show you how I track my social media campaigns and more importantly, how to prove to clients that it’s worth pursuing.

Stop Being Vague – Use Clear, Measureable Goals Before You Start!

It may sound obvious but no matter what kind of campaign you’re working on you need to be clear on exactly what you’re measuring as your goal. In SEO it may be the amount you increase traffic, in pay per click, it may be the number of sales your ads make, in social media though, this can be a much wider and less “defined” metric. So in order to be successful, you need to know what you’re working to.

Some goals you may consider could be:

• Increasing the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook by 20% over 12 months.
• Getting 5,000 likes on a website over the campaign.
• Generating x% increase of website visits through social media channels.
• Creating X number of posts/tweets during the campaign
• Increasing Brand Awareness (goals like these can’t always be tracked directly but we can measure success in other ways – more on this below).

But as we know social can contribute far more than the number of likes or shares, it can directly contribute to sales, sign ups, contact enquiries as well as contributing indirectly to brand awareness, sharing to friends who then go on to convert. It’s important to remember that social media doesn’t work in isolation to other marketing efforts so in order to get the proper attribution and credit, we need to know how to track our campaigns properly which we’ll explore below.

Tracking Social the Proper Way

See Real Social Traffic with Google Analytics

It’s more than likely if you’re running a social campaign then you’ll have a website. If you’re tweeting about your latest blog post or sharing a new product on Facebook or Google+ then visitors will be coming to your website and showing up as traffic.

However, you may have noticed that all we can see is t.co or facebook.com. When you click into these referrers we only see limited information in “one big pot”. This is very unhelpful for many reasons, although we can do some magic with Analytics and get some additional data like the landing pages this won’t help us differentiate our work from that of our client or team. Multiple people can be sharing and we’re none the wiser as to who’s work is having the most effect (if any!).

However, by taking a little bit of time to correctly tag our sharing URLs, we can open up a whole wealth of information – enter Google tagged URLs; an amazingly simple and easy way to track shares.

By appending a string to the end of your links, you can force Analytics to use your own custom campaign source, medium, term and so on – this will overwrite the default t.co or facebook.com refer and allow you to input a lot more information into each share you make.

This means that within Analytics you can claim the traffic from your shares down to the person, the time of day, the focus of the share and anything else you can put your mind to!

In recent months, Google has also introduced a new social section in Analytics which offers even more insights into what visitors are doing – this can be helpful however it won’t help separate your work from that of your client so it’s always best to use tagged URLs when you can.

Track Visitors Over Time With FollowerWonk

FollowerWonk is a fantastic tool (free if you have a SEOmoz subscription) which really allows you to analyse twitter users but also keep tabs on your own account. If your goal is to increase followers or work out the best times to tweet then this is the tool for you.

Looking back over the last 60 days, we can see how many followers we have gained and lost in the period – not only does this automatically help us measure our performance but it also means that we can look back and compare what is causing our followers to go up and down and begin tailoring our content to retain and gain as many followers as possible.

Many, many great posts have been written on using FollowerWonk to gain followers and measure success.

Track Real Conversions With Topsy

Topsy allows you to view twitter conversations that are happening all around you. If you’re trying to measure how often your client is mentioned or how far your articles have been shared then you can simply search by keyword, brand name, website and any other variations. Just like Google alerts, you can subscribe to email alerts to keep on top of anything that is happening.

This can be very helpful to find conversations that don’t necessarily include your client – not everyone @s you when they talk about you!

Track New Website Links From Social Campaigns

Effective social media usually leads to coverage on other peoples websites. These people may blog about your company for example and give you a relevant link back to your site. This is gold for SEO (read: better positions in the search engines and more relevant traffic) and may have come about directly because of your campaign – great wins for when you’re pitching for renewal! Once again, this is where Analytics comes in handy:

You can see all your referring websites in [Traffic Sources] -> [Sources] -> [Referrals]. You should be able to pair up websites that have given you links with the people you have engaged with on social mediums.

Even if websites look unfamiliar you can use your follower list on Twitter or Facebook to work out if your work has resulted in the link.

This can be an involved process so it’s perhaps best to pick the top referring websites and reporting on the gems in there!

Measure Re-Tweets, Shares, Likes – Both On Webpages & Networks

Re-tweets, shares and likes are usually the core metric for reporting on, they offer a nice clear indication of how successful your shared content is, however it’s important to report on both what you get on the network (likes on a Facebook post) and what you get on your actual website*. They all add up and help contribute to your success.

* You need to be careful to only report on what you can determine is a result of your work – other marketing efforts can be contributing to the likes on a homepage for example. If you’re an analytics guru then you can implement additional tracking which allows you to determine what has generated a like or a share. Very powerful stuff when used in conjunction with the things we have talked about above!

Forgotten But Still Important – Google+ Still Offers Value!

Although the newest addition to the social field hasn’t been a massive success, it certainly is growing and considering how aggressively Google is pushing it, I predict it will be a big player in the future. Content shared on Google+ can be tracked easily in Analytics but the ripples feature allows us to see how far and wide each one of our posts has been shared.

Limited scope in the short term but now is the time to take advantage of Google+ and be one of the first to track it properly!

Google Alerts Can Be Annoying but Also Very Handy

I’m sure that almost everyone reading will have come across Google Alerts at one point or another – although the frequency of alerts can be annoying, they can be a great way to discover where people are talking about you or sharing your content!

These alerts are especially handy if you are looking for links generated by your activities on other people’s websites.

Save Your Budget with Multi Channel Funnels

I love to save the best for last and multi-channel funnels (MCF) is one of the best features ever to grace Google Analytics. Despite the confusing name, the MCF report is sure to prove the value of any marketing channel, especially social media.

If your site has goals and/or ecommerce tracking set up then you’ll be able to view the MCF report:

Typically, Google Analytics will only count the last source/medium to interact with the website as the reason for the goal completion. Imagine this scenario, a visitor finds your client through Twitter, they visit the website, like what they see and save a bookmark in their browser, two weeks later they return via the bookmark and buy a product.

In Analytics, this goal would be attributed to the (direct) source despite the fact it was the Twitter account which generated the initial interest and drove the person to the site. However with MCF, we can look at the previous steps before a conversion and see which channels have contributed to the sale.

This means that if we have been using the correct tracking we can clearly see how our social efforts have contributed to sales, or enquiries and more!

You may be surprised how people find and return to your website however this screen may save your budget and prove that what you’re doing is valuable!

You can see the MCF reporting screen by going to: [Conversions] -> [Multi-Channel Funnels].

Use Your Data – Prove Your Worth!

I really want to stress again that social doesn’t work in isolation! Even if your campaign goal is to increase followers or social traffic, your efforts can contribute to the much bigger picture and this is what we need to demonstrate to our clients using real data!

It can bring you closer to your visitors and using that data, you can refine your efforts. Data is powerful and having a large social graph to interact with can give you some real insights into your visitor base.

By itself, social media is a good resource but when used with other marketing it is great! If you intelligently apply the methods and tools above and use real data to prove the value of your work then you should have no problem convincing others of the power of social media!

I hope that this post has helped you. We’ve covered a lot of ground and each one of these tools has so much more to offer than what we have covered in this post. If you have any tips or comments then I’d love to hear them below! Equally, if you have any questions then please post them and I’ll try my best to answer them.

Ed Baxter is the SEO Manager for Ignition Search based in Sheffield who work in partnership with Vivid Creative, a leading web design agency in Sheffield. During the day, Ed focuses on inbound marketing and analytics. In his spare time he’s an avid mountain biker and loves all things to do with technology! 

9 Actionable Ways To Prove & Track Your Social Media is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

The post 9 Actionable Ways To Prove & Track Your Social Media appeared first on Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg.

If you’re not already familiar with and using LinkedIn, you’re missing out on a great [small] business tool. The world’s largest social networking website for professional workers claims more than 175 million registered members in more than 200 countries and territories around the world — not bad for a service that was launched less than ten years ago!

And now new data indicates that LinkedIn is more popular than ever with small business professionals, making it a free and valuable resource for growing and promoting your business, particularly through the use of a new feature called Endorsements.

The LinkedIn study defines small business professionals as members who currently work at a company with between 11 and 500 employees. The data reveals that there are more than 15.2 million LinkedIn members who fall into that category worldwide, with the United States leading the way followed by the United Kingdom, India, The Netherlands and Canada.

With that kind of reach, you don’t have to have an office, or even a presence, in another country to broaden your global business knowledge and reach, notes LinkedIn. “Get out there and meet these fellow SMBs by asking and answering questions in the Startups and Small Businesses Category of LinkedIn Answers and joining LinkedIn Groups,” it encourages on its website. “You can also find your peers (or mentors) by doing a LinkedIn Advanced People Search by title, company size and a whole host of other facets.”

Small business professionals already use LinkedIn in these and a variety of other creative ways, according to the website’s Connection Director Nicole Williams. “Not only do they leverage the site to make critical hires, but they also use LinkedIn Groups like ‘mini conferences’ where they can learn more about various subjects like advertising and public relations,” she says. “We’ve also heard of small business professionals relying on their networks to find trusted vendors, partners and even funding for their companies.”

And now the new Endorsements feature makes it easier for you to give recognition to your professional connections for their skills and expertise. Leveraged properly, Endorsements also has marketing applications for your small business by promoting your products and services.

LinkedIn users should already be familiar with the feature that allows them to write a formal recommendation for a friend or co-worker (and vice versa). The Endorsement tool is similar except you need only click on the “Endorse” button on a connection’s page to recognize them for a particular skill (think of it like the “like” button on Facebook). You still have the option of writing a longer, more descriptive recommendation, but Endorsements is the way to go for more casual recommendations.

“With just one click, you can now endorse your connections for a skill they’ve listed on their profile or recommend one they haven’t added yet,” explain the folks at LinkedIn. “Think your connection is great at programming AND project management? Let them know!”

The process for submitting an endorsement of the professional prowess of a first degree connection is pretty simple:

• Go to your connection’s profile, at the top of which you’ll see a blue box with recommended endorsements for you to choose from; you can also suggest additional skills.  Suggested skills won’t appear on your connection’s profile until they approve them.
  
• Alternatively, scroll down to the Skills & Expertise section of a connection’s profile and click the name of the skill or the + symbol next to the skill.
  

Your name and picture will appear next to the skill on your connection’s profile, and an update regarding the endorsement will appear in both of your network update streams. The most endorsed skills will move to the top of the Skills & Expertise section.

Individuals are notified by LinkedIn via email whenever they receive an endorsement.  Simply scroll down to the bottom of your profile page under Skills & Expertise to see the names and faces of people who think you’re great at what you do.

Additionally, you can accept any new skills recommended by your peers that you may not have thought to include on your profile, or you can simply add a new skill by clicking on “add a skill” on your profile page.

The Endorsements feature was launched in English across the United States, India, New Zealand, and Australia in late September. It joins the Follow button for brands and a notification system to keep track of network updates, both introduced by LinkedIn earlier this year to boost engagement on the social network. LinkedIn says it will expand the Endorsements tool in all languages to all members in the near future.

In addition to Endorsements, there are a number of other ways that small business professionals can use LinkedIn’s services and features to their advantage:

• Get your company listed. More than two million companies have a LinkedIn Company Page, and so should yours! It’s free and provides key statistics about your business and who’s interested in it while allowing you to keep track of the competition by following their page.
  
• Spread the word about your business. Remind your employees to spread the word about your business by completing their LinkedIn Profiles. This will indicate to prospective clients that you’ve hired high-caliber experts that they can rely upon. Remind your staff to cultivate their presence in the network by including LinkedIn Skills and specialties in their profiles and to participate in LinkedIn Answers. Underscoring your employees’ strengths and expertise in a public forum like LinkedIn gives your company additional exposure that can lead to more business leads down the line.
• If your customer base is happy, make sure they say so online. In the digital world, success is all about receiving positive feedback online. Your customers can become influential advocates for your brand with a little encouragement from you. Simply add a free Products & Services tab to your LinkedIn Company Page and then ask your customers to write a recommendation of your business. By building out this page, more prospective customers will be able to find you on LinkedIn; by reading your customers’ testimonials, they may be encouraged to do business with you.

How LinkedIn Endorsements Can Work for Your Small Business is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

The post How LinkedIn Endorsements Can Work for Your Small Business appeared first on Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg.

If you’re dreaming of a career in SEO, I have two words of advice for you:

Be. Adaptable.

Seriously, if you don’t have the ability to change course on a dime, the SEO world is going to make your life miserable. That’s because Google changes its algorithm, on average, once a day. According to Matt Cutts, sometimes changes happen even more frequently than that! Take February 2012 for example. In just 29 days, the Google algorithm underwent 40 changes!

Not every change is earth-shattering, but whenever a big algorithm change comes out (like Panda or Penguin), a bunch of Chicken Little types run around squawking about the death of SEO. According to them, SEO should have died at least half a dozen times since the turn of the millennium!

Clearly, though, no one in the business world is listening to them. That’s because the demand for SEO professionals has never been higher. According to a recent study by Shareaholic, there were 528,000 job listings on LinkedIn in July 2012 with “SEO” either in the title or the description. That’s more than double the amount in July 2011!

The truth is, if you want to have a career in SEO, you can have a very bright future – whether you work for a big firm or jump directly into the deep end of the pool and start up your own agency.

OK, so it isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago, when you could get clients’ websites to rank in a couple of days and look like a genius. However, if you keep these dos and don’ts in mind, you can become one of SEO’s shining stars:

DO start by figuring out why your clients deserve to be #1

Google is big on “value”. If your client’s website doesn’t offer any value to its visitors, all of the fancy SEO techniques in the world aren’t going to help.

DON’T focus on short gains

Think of SEO like building a house. Sure, you could probably slap something together that may look OK at a passing glance, but will that house actually be able to hold its own against a hurricane (or even an afternoon thunderstorm)?

The same goes for your clients’ websites. Instead of focusing on the latest trends (that may or may not still be “in style” a few months from now), focus on building a solid foundation that will be there for you years from now.

DO resist the urge to go overboard

People are paying you a lot of money to do what you do, so you owe it to them to make a ton of changes, right?

Not if those changes are the wrong ones!

For example, if you shove that awesome-wonderful-can’t-miss keyword you discovered into every nook and cranny of your client’s website, you’re going to do a whole lot more harm than good. After all, the days of keyword stuffing are long gone. Google’s spiders are too smart to fall for that now. Instead, you’ve got to figure out how to legitimately blend that keyword in with all kinds of other useful content. (Remember, it all goes back to “value”!)

DON’T work in a bubble

If you don’t keep up with all of the latest news and developments, you’re going to wind up behind the curve – and your clients are going to wind up behind their competitors. It won’t take long for you to wind up out of business!

Remember, Google changes things up every day. While most of those changes will go unmentioned, you’ve got to keep your ear to ground, so that you won’t be caught off-guard when something big comes along.

DO embrace new technology

It’s fine to have tried and true techniques that you rely on. However, the last thing you want is to become one of SEO’s dinosaurs – you know, the ones who have their heyday roaming around as one of the “big guys”, and then wind up extinct. No matter what, you always need to have one eye pointed towards the future.

After all, there were once SEO professionals who thought “Tweeting” was a ridiculous idea (and an even more ridiculous name) that would never catch on! For their sakes, I hope they got over that notion quickly!

DON’T ever stop working

No one around you will. SEO is the classic “what have you done for me lately” industry. The rankings your clients have today could be gone tomorrow – whether it’s due to yet another algorithm change, a competitor’s video that just went viral, or a less-than-honest competitor who has decided to spend all of his time bombarding them with “negative SEO”.

It doesn’t mean that you have to become a workaholic in order to succeed in SEO. However, it means that you’ve got to make the most out of every single second of your work week. If you aren’t a self-starter who can get things done without a boss standing over your shoulder all the time, forget about being successful!

If you’re looking for a job where you can prop your feet up on your desk and kill time for 40 hours a week, this isn’t it! Your clients are going to depend on you to develop their online presence. For many of them, the exposure you get for them will make or break their business. You owe them your very best effort!

Manish Pandey is an internet marketing consultant and helps small business owners in building a successful business online. His link building strategies can help you gain links easily.

Photo courtesy of BigStock.

Do You Have What It Takes for a Career in SEO? is a post from: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

The post Do You Have What It Takes for a Career in SEO? appeared first on Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg.