Here are the links from this week’s posts on Marcy Design

The Rule of Thumb for Business Tweeting

A Simple Way to Make Social Media Marketing More Cost-Effective

How Important is a Good Web Design to Your Company?

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

Since sites like Facebook and Twitter first started to catch on with the general public, the challenge for marketers has been clear: how to first generate interest, and then turn it into something that can make a real-world difference in sales.

That pursuit has led to all kinds of different ideas – and even a whole new industry of social media marketing consultants. As valuable as these services are, however, sometimes the best answers are the simplest ones. That’s certainly true when it comes to one of the easiest ways to make social media marketing more cost-effective, which is simply to get more people clicking from your social profiles to your regular web pages.

That’s not a complicated idea, but it makes strong business sense. Why spend so much of your time, money, and attention gathering fans and followers, if you’re only going to remind them that you’re out there once in a while? By sending them to specific product and service pages, you stand a much higher chance of ultimately turning them into buyers.

Look for places in your social content where you can naturally pull people from one part of your marketing campaign to another. The more of them you bring to your regular website, the more profitable your social media marketing efforts are likely to be.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

There are too many “rules” when it comes to social media marketing, especially since the approach and ideas that work well for one company could easily fail for another. Despite that, however, we’d like to share one good guideline for using twitter as a marketing tool…

Before you tweet anything, ask yourself whether anyone would bother to re-tweet it?

That’s a simple question, but it will help you avoid producing the kinds of endless, mindless content that so many businesses and organizations are counting on to help them find customers online. But who wants to bother reading something that isn’t at all original, much less follow the person or group who wrote it?

Thinking about the “re-tweet rule” will force you to come up with something that’s informative, insightful, or even funny before you release it digitally out into the world. In other words, it will stop you from simply being another voice in the crowd.

The best thing about social media marketing is having people pass on your content for you, without any marketing expense or effort on your part. Remember that as you put together your tweets, and don’t waste the 140 characters you have to use.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

Of all the newer social media sites out there, 4Square might be the one with the biggest potential for local retailers. If you aren’t familiar with it, then they concept is pretty simple: it’s social networking combined with next-generation mobile devices – a site that allows people to share great finds while inviting them to explore the geographic area.

It’s not hard to see how this kind of application could help you bring more customers into your retail space. From reviews by happy shoppers to specials, QR codes, and even having a “mayor” of your store or area, 4Square gives business owners something they have dreamed about for a long time: the opportunity to let other people create new customers and fans in an instant.

Like all social networking sites, however, you have to be involved if you’re going to benefit at all, and luckily it’s easy to sign up and get started at 4Square… and you might even beat the rush in your neighborhood. Don’t wait too long, though; while the site might only have 5 million members at the moment, it’s poised to grow quickly.

Retailers have long dreamed of a way to turn social media contacts into repeat buyers. With 4Square, they may have just found the best tool yet.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

If we had some kind of online marketing trend warning meter, like governments have to look out for tsunamis or tornadoes, social media would be sending readings off the charts. That’s because even though it already has hundreds of millions of users around the world, has been around for several years, and is a part of many people’s daily lives, its biggest waves might still be yet to come.

That’s because, for all its might and fun, it’s just now beginning to become useful to most of us as a tool for reaching and connecting with customers. It isn’t only web designers and online marketing gurus who are taking notice, either – in the last few years virtually every major corporation has beefed up its social media platform.

So, with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so clearly being a part of our digital marketing future, what could be the problem?

Well, the problem with social media marketing isn’t one of possibilities… it’s a matter of expectations. For larger businesses, networking sites are just one more way to reach their already massive customer bases. But for the smaller fish, business owners who are trying to compete to raise their profiles, social media represents a different type of animal.

The one thing that pay per click advertising, e-mail marketing, and to a lesser degree search engine optimization all had in common was that they could bring you new customers relatively quickly. If you did that you were supposed to do, and followed the rules, you could be pretty sure your bottom line was going to see improvement.

That’s not the case with social networking. As we mentioned, it is a good way to connect more deeply with customers, and even prospective customers; but, not many people are going to make a buying decision based on your Facebook profile alone. That means social media marketing is going to go a lot slower, and it’s going to need some help from your other online and off-line tools.

There isn’t anything wrong with social media marketing, so long as you go into the process with the right set of expectations. But don’t count on it to work too quickly, or by itself – its true potential is probably still a couple of years down the road.

Want help integrating social media into your marketing mix? Marcy Design can help… why not give us a call today?

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

Regular readers of this blog will already know that we are enormous fans of social media marketing. Not only are the numbers incredibly exciting – with more than 500 million users on Facebook alone, there are bound to be thousands of new opportunities for every company – but it’s possibly the first form of promotion that allows for nearly instantaneous word-of-mouth advertising.
And so, even though it’s something we think every professional should be trying, there are some groups who can stand to do really well from social media.
One of them is professionals who sell products and services in the business-to-business market. Partly because they can’t typically rely on slick television and magazine ads, and partly because the sales processes tend to be longer, more complicated, and with bigger dollar amounts, these industries are ideally-suited for social networking. That’s because, instead of telling prospective buyers how great your company and products are, sites like Facebook and LinkedIn let existing customers do it for you.
The best B2B vendors have always relied on strong relationships, but with Facebook fan page isn’t LinkedIn feedback, they can allow that process to go “viral” in a way that’s never been possible in the past. In other words, they can leverage comments from satisfied customers and use them to grow their client list quickly.
If you work in the business-to-business setting, run – don’t walk – to start using social media as part of your marketing plan. It shouldn’t take long to gather some recommendations from happy customers, and once you do the rest of your sales and marketing process is going to get a lot easier.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

This is a question that comes up surprisingly often. I suspect it’s because so many small and medium-sized business owners and marketing managers see celebrities and huge corporations leveraging social media heavily and feel like they might not be able to get in on the act.

The truth, however, is that it doesn’t take a bottomless pit of money to succeed with social media marketing.

In fact, while a small budget can definitely help you get the right tools, the most important parts of your plan don’t have to cost a lot. Like any marketing operation, having a sense of focus and direction, the willingness to keep at it, and a strong value proposition for your ideal customer will nearly always win out over a big budget.

Don’t let anyone convince you that it takes a huge pile of cash to find customers on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn – it doesn’t. Instead, work on finding a partner who can help you streamline the process and make things as efficient as they are affordable. Money doesn’t hurt in any area of business, but it’s not the first requirement, either.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

Here are the links from this week’s posts on Marcy Design

Are You Making a Classic Online Marketing Mistake?

Can You Really Gain New Customers Over Facebook?

The Easiest Way to Improve Your Website

A Good Rule of Thumb for Facebook Marketing

Are You Promoting Your Small Business Events as Effectively as You Could Be?

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing andadvertising campaigns.

A lot of us can still remember how strange it was to receive those first electronic or e-mail invitations to a party or event. The whole thing seemed pretty novel, but even if you confirmed the appointment right there on your screen, you often had to turn around and scribble the date by hand into a calendar on your desk if you weren’t going to forget.

These days, of course, the exact opposite is true: appointments that are made off-line typically have to be entered into an iPhone or contact manager if they are going to be kept. Most of the world has simply realized that keeping our calendars in computerized form makes them quicker and more convenient.

So what does any of this have to do with your small business? More than you might think. Despite the fact that a lot of us keep our calendars online, we have a tendency to promote our own events with flyers, newspaper advertisements, and other traditional print venues. It’s understandable: why not stick with what has worked in the past?

The reason has to do with the way we are actually keeping those appointments. Savvy marketers can no longer promote their events in print – or at least not only in print. By inviting attendees through e-mail, Outlook confirmation links, Facebook fan pages, and other social media paths, we make it easy for them to see the event coming up and actually make an appearance.

To get the most out of your small business events, leverage the connections and tools you have in social media. It’s a lot less work than posting flyers, and you’ll probably get a much bigger response.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing andadvertising campaigns.

Of all the tools you can use to find new customers online, Facebook is quickly becoming a favorite of a lot of business owners and marketers. Not only does it boast hundreds of millions of users, and offer a unique way to advertise to them, but most of us just enjoy using the site. How many chances do you really get in your day to combine a bit of fun with your Internet marketing plan?

As great as that is, though, it also presents a bit of a catch-22: when you’re having a good time, it can become easy to give yourself too much of a good thing. In other words, it’s easy to let your Facebook time eat significantly into your workday.

So what is the answer? The best way to manage your need for Internet marketing with the other demands on your time is simply to budget small pieces of your schedule for sites like Facebook. Promise yourself that you’ll spend 15 min. each morning on the site, and then stop after that. You might have to set a timer or alarm at first, but before long, you’ll develop a good habit.

After a few weeks or months, if you find that Facebook becomes a major source of new business, that you can increase your time commitment. Until then, follow our quick rule of thumb and budget out the time you spend on social networking.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.