Category: Social Media

In a previous post, I described the SaaS Sales Funnel where marketers can help customers emerge from the murky ooze of the world wide web and drive towards paying for products and services. Now, let's apply customer loyalty measurements to creating accelerated and sustained revenue growth. There are three ways a company can make money: 1) Getting existing customers to buy from you again -- in SaaS pricing models, this is typically on a recurring monthly basis. 2) Getting new customers. 3) Getting existing customers to buy more things from you -- in SaaS, this means enticing customers into the next ...

A new report from Michael Stelzner and his team at Social Media Examiner reveals that social media adoption by marketers is growing steadily, but that we still have room to do more and have plenty of questions when it comes to measuring effectiveness. The 2012 Social Media Marketing Report found that and much more after surveying over 3,800 marketers from both the B2B and B2C worlds and from companies of all sizes. You can find the full report here, but I'll share my key takeaways.

When it comes to social media platforms, the marketers’ top five social media choices are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and YouTube (and other video) as reported by both Awareness, Inc.’s research and Social Media Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social media marketing tools marketers are planning to use in 2012: This post covers Google+, Facebook, Blogs and most all social networking and geo-location websites. This report from eMarkter is good as well. Also the Soci

Canadian Business contributor Melissa Edwards is part of a large and growing club: professionals whohave slapped together a LinkedIn account but aren’tsure exactly what to do with it. We asked three socialmedia experts—Nichole Wesson of recruitment-marketing firmMidlynDay, Vancouver IT executive Jenn Smyth and DanielleRestivo of LinkedIn Canada—to cast a critical eye on Melissa’sLinkedIn profile to help her improve her online image andmake the most of the world’s largest social network for career

Everything we do in a company is about selling. We all know that, right? ABC. "Always Be Closing," is the infamous sales motivation line from Alec Baldwin's character in the movie "Glengarry Glenross." I’ve been spending a lot of time with Go-To-Market strategies, campaigns and launches with my Stephdokin clients and other companies I pal around with -- I’ve been thinking about the journey of building awareness for your product and brand all the way to a happy customer giving you money on a frequent basis. I present to you … The “Stephdokin SaaS Sales Funnel-On-A-Page.” 

“Let’s say this is your first day at Urbanspoon and I show you the following data. We’ve just launched an A/B test of that I’d like you to evaluate. [The example can be almost anything you want to test different results for – from almost any search element, PPC campaigns, email subject lines etc. In this case, I’m using a PPC example.] Imagine you are running two different ads on a campaign with 50 kewords. We’ve been running Ad A for a while and have 17,235 impressions and 272 clicks. I started running Ad ...

Have you noticed that everyone around you now seems to be an expert at something? How your boss gives you unsolicited career advice, based on his own (self-proclaimed) stellar career? Or how your annoying colleague emails you stock tips after reading the morning news headlines? Welcome to the age of the Everyday Expert. In the past, if you were a career adviser, relationship counselor, strategic business consultant, or financial planner, you had to spend years acquiring specialist skills or knowledge in a particular field to be recognized as an expert.

The folks at CMO.com have put together a good analysis of various social media platforms from the perspective of i) Customer Communication, ii) Brand Exposure, iii) Traffic to your site and iv) Impact on SEO. Here's a link to a .PDF of the report:http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/images/2012/03/SocialMediaCheatSheet2012.pdfAnd, the CMO.com site has the original data, which is updated from time to time ... you should Pinterest it, fer shure: http://www.cmo.com/social-media-guide/2012/

Are you an accountant thinking of using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media tools to promote your accounting firm? You may already have a website and personal accounts with the various social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but have you created a strategy that ties them all together to further promote your accounting business? This article will show you some of the many ways you can use social media marketing for accountants to effectively grow your practice.

What it means to be a truly social organization and tips on how social collaboration can lead to innovation and a competitive advantage. One of my favorite sessions from SXSW Interactive last week was Gartner analyst Mark McDonald’s session discussing his book The Social Organization. McDonald discussed building a cross-functional collaborative environment within an organization using social media as the catalyst. In order to do so successfully, a company needs to understand the energy, potential, and innovation that’s possible through social collaboration. This understanding lowers the barrier for doing things in new and different ways and can fuel ...

Earlier this week I spoke at a financial advisor retreat in the stunning Margaret River region of Western Australia, a region of wide-open beauty that is the source of many extraordinary wines. Around 15-20% of the audience had Twitter accounts, so my suggestions were intended as a high-level introduction on how to get started on Twitter, though the advice is relevant to anyone. The recommendations are based on my own thoughts as well as a range of research, notably the excellent Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value from Carnegie Mellon University. This is what I suggested:

Do you have a full understanding of what social media marketing does for your business? MarketingProfs blogger Jason Falls says companies today don't---despite all the analytics. We blog, we tweet, we post. Our measurement systems tell us how many people read, click, and retweet. If we’re smart, we can tell how many people are seeing our messages and how many people are responding to them in some relevant way. We know how many people clicked through and downloaded whitepapers. We know how many people may have clicked through and purchased something we sell online. But for all the ...

"Leadership" has changed when a decentralized group of people can take down a government. "The Value Chain" has changed when the customer is no longer just the "buyer" butalso a co-creator. "Human Resources" have changed when most of the people who create value for your organization are neither hired nor paid by you.

Google Spreadsheets is an excellent tool for campaign tracking, reporting, automating, and aggregating complex SEO and social media tasks. Learn invaluable tips for using Google Spreadsheets more effectively. I've been using Google Spreadsheets for ages... for campaign tracking, reporting, automating, and aggregating some of the most complex search engine optimization (SEO) and social media tasks. In this article, I'll share the three most useful, yet easy-to-implement, Google spreadsheet tips any online marketer would find useful.

As compared to Facebook and Google PPC, LinkedIn provides much better ad targeting for B2B companies. LinkedIn has proven to be a fruitful lead source for thousands of companies. So fruitful in fact, its paid advertising program has helped grow the company’s revenue in 2011 at a faster rate than Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Why are marketers flocking to LinkedIn paid advertising? They are using LinkedIn pay per click (PPC) because it simply works.