5 Crucial Elements of an Effective Online Lead Generation Strategy

The ultimate objective of any marketing and branding activity is to attract potential customers to your brand and convert them into qualified leads that can be targeted to generate sales.

A survey by Forbes found that more than 500,000 internet-based small businesses and startups pop up every month in the US.

But the majority close down within a few months. Lead generation is one of their biggest challenges.

From available data evidence, you can safely assume that most businesses struggle at meeting this challenge.

Related Article: Simple Steps to Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

From collecting visitor email addresses to social media marketing, there are hundreds of different ways to generate qualified leads for your business. But in this post, I’ll focus on the five key areas that can make any lead generation strategy effective and powerful. In fact, if you look closely, every successful lead generation campaign has these five elements.

Make sure you have them in place.

1. Identify Your Target Buyer and Build the Right Personas

Before anything else, you need to identify exactly who your target customer is and the kind of leads you want to generate. Without understanding the needs, preferences and buying habits of your prospective customers, you can never develop an effective lead generation strategy.

This is why developing buyer personas is so important. A buyer persona is a sample profile of your ideal buyer. When developing a buyer persona, you’d need to list down everything from the average age of your prospective customer, to his annual income, buying habits, preferences and the major reasons why your product provides him value.

You can gather information for developing your buyer persona from

• Your existing sales and marketing stats


• Online forums and groups like LinkedIn and Quora


• Previous customer interactions


• Your own experience and judgement

Create this sample profile and then devise all your strategies around it. The more accurate your buyer persona, the better chances you have of generating the right kind of leads. You can use this free template by HubSpot to create buyer personas.

2. Offer a Memorable User Experience

According to Salesforce, 55 percent of customers are ready to pay more for a better buying experience. On the contrary, it takes a business almost 12 exceptionally good experiences to overcome one bad customer experience.

The verdict is clear, if you want people to land on your website, stay on it and explore your product, you need to provide them a memorable experience. For an online business, user experience majorly depends on the performance and speed of your website, and whether you’re using responsive website design.

A responsive website design adjusts according to the device of your user, and since more than 50 percent user queries generated on Google search now originate from mobile devices, using a mobile ready design is crucial for user experience.

If you’re running an E-commerce website, user experience will also depend on the way you display products, the comprehensiveness of product information, the payment options you offer, the number of redirections involved in the checkout process, and the time it takes to complete the order.

In short, a memorable user experience is created with the right combination of technology, design and your business goals.

3. An Optimized Lead Generation Process

The key to an effective lead generation strategy is to have a well-defined and optimized lead generation process. This means that every step involved in your lead generation process should have a clear objective and should contribute to the overall strategy.

You need to define the steps you want your visitors to go through, the actions you want them to take and the goals you want to achieve from them. For example, you may want them to download a free eBook and sign up to your email list, or you may want them to use a discount coupon on a product, or have a consultation call with you. Whatever it is, it needs to be well-defined.

Bant.io, a B2B lead generation startup, recommends developing a well-researched process that qualifies your leads from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the other, similar to the inbound marketing methodology.

In short, develop clear goals and actions that you want your visitors to complete. This will allow you to segment and target your prospects in a much more effective manner.

Related Article: Two Sides of Content: Lead Generation vs. Demand Generation

4. Data Driven Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just a buzzword used by fancy marketers. It’s a proven methodology to convert even complex information into easily understandable content that people can consume and, as a result, learn more about your product.

Research shows that more than 51 percent marketers use content marketing for lead generation and brand awareness.

However, making well-researched data a part of your content marketing mix can really help you stand out, even if you’re in an industry that’s not known for content marketing. This data-driven blog post on private vs. public college ROI, or this article on adopting law as a profession are great examples of how well-researched content can simplify information that is otherwise difficult to understand.

An even better approach is to mix up visual content like infographics with conventional blog posts. Infographics are packed with data and make even dry subjects interesting and easy to understand. This eye-catching and data-rich infographic by a black mold removal company is a great example. They’ve combined text content with stunning visuals to create content that stands out and gets noticed.

The same approach can be replicated when generating leads for your business, whether you’re offering services or products on an E-commerce site. A prime example is how Shopify, one of the leading E-commerce apps in the world, is using blog content to generate leads and customers. In fact, the Shopify blog has become one of the top E-commerce thought leadership platforms.

5. Targeted Social Media Marketing

The role of social media in online lead generation is constantly evolving. While Facebook is still clearly the leader when it comes to sales and lead generated from social media, other platforms like Pinterest and LinkedIn have also become a great source of qualified leads for businesses.

But Facebook ads in particular are a great way to zoom in on your target buyer personas and generate qualified leads for your business. The audience targeting features of Facebook ads make it a much more viable option as compared to other paid ad networks.

E-commerce businesses in particular have found a lot of success in driving traffic to their online stores and converting first time visitors into subscribers and leads. Intelligent use of these ads can really skyrocket your lead generation process.

Related Article: 6 Hacks to Turn Your Blog Into a Lead Generation Machine

Wrapping Up

Generating qualified leads for your business requires you to understand the needs of your prospective customers. You need to have a process in place through which your visitors can consume information, learn about your product and approach you for more information. The accuracy of your leads will depend primarily on how well you can perform the steps I’ve discussed in this post. There are many different ways to generate leads, but these five elements will be a part of most successful lead generation strategies.

5 Crucial Elements of an Effective Online Lead Generation Strategy

Can A Hybrid Email Sending Strategy Give You The Best Of Both Worlds?

A very long time ago — at least in “Technology Time,” where huge leaps of evolution can seem to happen practically overnight — businesses began to use email as a fundamental tool to reach and engage consumers.

How they implemented it was pretty straightforward: They invested in their own on-premise software systems, so they could self-manage their email programs.

But soon thereafter, those marketers began running up against deliverability issues. The root of the problem? Spam.

To combat it, ISPs developed hurdles and safeguards designed to keep spam out of the inbox, but those measures made it more and more complicated for in-house email marketing systems to cope with the complexities that became an increasing part of ensuring deliverability.

Even today, we see an average deliverability rate of 87 percent, which means 13 percent of potential revenue is getting left on the table.

One View Of The Future: ESPs

Cloud computing brought a promising potential solution: the Email Service Provider (ESP), which allowed companies to outsource their sending capabilities so they could concentrate on strategy and messaging, not on infrastructure challenges.

ESPs offered flexibility, deliverability advances and the potential for getting beyond in-house infrastructure headaches. For many companies, they seemed to offer a perfect sending solution.

But if anybody expected ESPs to be a panacea, they were wrong:

• Even with an ESP, deliverability can still be an issue. A business should never simply hand off its sending duties and expect optimum results without some degree of oversight.


• Using an ESP can be excessive if a business handles its own database and targeting, and all that is needed is a reliable sending platform.


• When email volumes grow, so can ESP costs, to the point of impairing cost efficiencies.


• Security and privacy needs can prohibit some marketers from sharing sensitive data outside their company’s own walls — or servers.

Blending The Best: A Hybrid Email Infrastructure

If you’re trying to optimize email deliverability and scalability but also hedge against costs and maintain data security, to name just two considerations, what you need most are options.

The sending infrastructure that gives you the best options? A hybrid, where your own in-house, on-premise email system is integrated with a cloud-based ESP.

It’s a setup where the strengths of each platform smoothly complement those of the other, and more importantly, give you flexibility and efficiency you won’t obtain by relying on just one or the other:

• Use separate sending options for different mailstreams. A hybrid approach lets a company pick the right solution for each mailstream.

An e-blast to all or some segment of your audience might be better handled via your ESP, while transactional email such as payments, shipping confirmations, password resets and the like might belong within your on-premise system, particularly if they need to be integrated into other in-house transaction systems.

• Outsource the hassles of deliverability and hardware without an overhaul to your on-premises systems. The original advantage of ESPs still holds up, and leading-edge on-premise software products are designed to capitalize on an ESP’s ability to expertly address deliverability concerns by integrating with those cloud-based providers.

By doing so, you can also right-size your own in-house hardware and network infrastructure to handle just those needs that have to be done on-premise and maintain the business rules and integration you have built over the years.

• Achieve easy scalability. This might seem like one of the most obvious advantages an ESP can offer, but it deserves to be restated.

Message volumes can spike both predictably and unpredictably across your marketing calendar (Anybody who’s been through the holiday season can attest to that!), and it doesn’t make sense to maintain an on-premise hardware footprint predicated on spikes or periodic plateaus.

A cloud-based ESP on standby can take up the slack whenever or however it happens.

• Protect yourself through redundancy and recovery. In a hybrid sending structure, a marketer has two active sending environments on hand, so it’s simple to switch from one to the other if there’s a failure on either side. That can be seamlessly automated, depending on the degree of integration between on-premise and ESP.

• Gain flexibility in security and privacy compliance. Data security is paramount nowadays, and your firm may not think cloud-based platforms are as secure as on-premise servers.

Moreover, many heavily regulated industries are required to keep specific types of data strictly in-house, so a hybrid architecture lets you choose which approach suits your security concerns.

Cross-Breeding Benefits

Just as in animal husbandry or farming, where cross-breeding two species or strains is designed to merge the strengths of each, a hybrid email sending infrastructure creates a smarter, more agile solution for a lot of businesses.

By hybridizing its sending infrastructure, a company won’t wind up with a Labradoodle or a drought-resistant wheat, but they’ll capture email marketing benefits they’d never be able to leverage by just keeping to one approach or the other.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

Steve Dille is the senior vice president of marketing at SparkPost, a provider of digital messaging technology. He leads the company’s global product marketing, demand-generation, branding and communications operations.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)

Can A Hybrid Email Sending Strategy Give You The Best Of Both Worlds?

Ovation TV Taps John Malkin to Head Cross-Platform Content Strategy

Arts-focused network Ovation TV announced today that it has appointed John Malkin to EVP of content distribution for both its linear TV and digital platforms.

Malkin replaces Brad Samuels, who recently joined Bloomberg TV.  Malkin will report to Ovation CEO Charles Segars, and Ovation’s SVP of content distribution and partnerships Mike Pons and VP of Affiliate Marketing Randy Rovegno will report to Malkin.

“John joins our network at a pivotal time in our industry, as well as in Ovation’s evolution,” said Segars in a statement. “While being an independent network comes with its challenges, it also affords us the opportunity to move quickly, try new strategies and reach out to our passionate, arts-loving community to create new, exciting ways to develop and distribute content.”

Malkin comes to Ovation from the NFL Network, where he was VP of affiliate distribution, managing key components of the NFL’s television networks, NFLN and NFL RedZone, including affiliate sales, TV Everywhere and content distribution on both linear and OTT platforms.

Earlier, Malkin held positions at Fox News, where, as VP of affiliate marketing and local sales, he oversaw the marketing of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network across affiliate and consumer platforms. He has also done stints at E! Entertainment Television, MTV Networks, and Times Mirror Magazines.

The news of Malkin’s hire comes as Ovation prepares to unveil the half-hour, cross-platform special “Holiday Entertaining with Kin Community.” Produced in collaboration with multi-channel network Kin Community, it will premiere on Ovation TV tonight at 10 p.m. ET and be available in various formats on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Following its U.S. premiere, it will air in Canada on Corus Entertainment’s women’s channels, including W Network and CosmoTV.

Tags: Kin Community, Ovation TV

Ovation TV Taps John Malkin to Head Cross-Platform Content Strategy

A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media

Almost no one had heard of social media a decade ago, but today websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more than 1 billion users and account for almost 25 percent of Internet use. Practically overnight, social media seems indispensable to our lives–from friendship and dating to news and business.

What makes social media so different from traditional media? Answering that question is the key to making social media work for any business, argues Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, one of the world’s leading experts on the business of social media. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as Nike and American Express.

Drawing on his analysis of proprietary data from social media sites, Piskorski argues that the secret of successful ones is that they allow people to fulfill social needs that either can’t be met offline or can be met only at much greater cost. This insight provides the key to how companies can leverage social platforms to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Companies need to help people interact with each other before they will promote products to their friends or help companies in other ways. Done right, a company’s social media should benefit customers and the firm. Piskorski calls this “a social strategy,” and he describes how companies such as Yelp and Zynga have done it.

Groundbreaking and important, A Social Strategy provides not only a story- and data-driven explanation for the explosion of social media but also an invaluable, concrete road map for any company that wants to tap the marketing potential of this remarkable phenomenon.

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A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media

3 Ways to Integrate Video Into Your Marketing Strategy

This story first appeared in the October issue of Entrepreneur. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

There has never been a better time to think about how you can make video a bigger part of your online marketing strategy.

Facebook is advancing aggressively into video (giving YouTube a run for its money as the top platform). Newer live-streaming platforms like Periscope (owned by Twitter) and Meerkat are finding traction, allowing users to effortlessly integrate video into social media. And the video tools and apps on your smartphone allow you to tote what’s practically a full production studio right in your purse or pocket.

So how do you make video a regular part of your marketing program, in a seamless way that feels like it’s not just bolted on but an integral part of your online presence?

1. Use video to promote other content you’ve created.

Say you’ve produced a “pot roast” piece of content—a weighty, meaty asset like an e-book or white paper that you’d like users to download, perhaps in exchange for their email address.

Create a short video to embed on the landing page of Facebook or LinkedIn—or wherever it is that you’re promoting it. The key here is to make the video not just promotional but educational: Feature the author or a subject-matter expert sharing an insight or two; don’t simply implore people to download the content.

It’s hard not to love video-hosting company Vidyard’s cheeky video that promotes its video marketing handbook. (Yes, that’s meta!) Kitchener, Ontario-based Vidyard gets points for making a video that carries off a hat trick: It’s funny; it’s creative, marrying old-school ’80s workout gear with Rocky-style training; and—most important—it’s useful as a tool for those looking to up their video marketing game.

2. Live-stream comments and discussion.

Video live streaming is beginning to gain momentum, with Periscope and Meerkat emerging as the frontrunners. These platforms allow you to broadcast video to anyone in the world. Early adopters are still testing it, and a few have amassed significant followings. (Amanda Oleander, a Los Angeles artist, has been called Periscope’s “breakout star.”)

The options are limitless. You could stream live events or openings or record a podcast live. Even better: Consider using live streaming to share thoughts you have about developments in your industry and to get immediate feedback from your social audience.

For example, entrepreneur and marketing consultant Marcus Sheridan wrote a thoughtful piece on his blog (thesaleslion.com) about the implications of live-streaming video—in particular, how transparency will transform business. Then he took to Periscope to discuss the findings with his followers, sharing the same content with a new audience in a new format, fielding questions and comments and extending the life and reach of his blog post.

3. Use video as the source for other content assets.

Video interviews or web series are fairly commonplace—you might interview an expert or thought leader, then publish the video on YouTube or Vimeo or your own site via a marketing platform like Vidyard or Wistia (to name two). Or you might create a regular series in which people from your company answer questions. Sheridan regularly makes videos answering common questions like “What’s the formula for writing a perfect meta description?” His answers are short (around two minutes) and specific—which makes them useful and easy to consume.

An even better approach is to use that video as source material to create even more content—reimagining it in various ways to reach new audiences. For example, you could syndicate the audio portion on iTunes and transcribe the video (using Rev or CastingWords) and edit it into a Q&A text interview for your blog. That way, your single video will have a bigger footprint that reaches more people in multiple formats.

San Francisco entrepreneur Mitchell Levy publishes a series of interviews with successful business leaders on a microsite called Thought Leader Life. He records each half-hour interview as a live-streamed Google Hangout (which is archived on YouTube). Then, he adapts the interview in four different formats, published on up to 10 platforms. So from a single conversation he can create a video published on YouTube and SlideShare; a blog post; a podcast (published on iTunes); a syndicated podcast (published on a PR network); social messages (posted on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn); a series of tweets (Twitter); and a collection of key points or messages in the form of a curated e-book.

Now, take these tips and apply them to your own business, considering how you might utilize video geared toward your specific market. Perhaps you can use Instagram video to give a sneak peek of a new release or to film answers for your FAQs. (ExpertBail does this.) You may want to use video to breathe life into your products, like gift site The Grommet.

Try something new. Have fun. Explore. Because as marketing strategist and writer Barry Feldman says, “If you’re not experimenting with video, you’re simply sitting on the sidelines watching the big game unfold.”

3 Ways to Integrate Video Into Your Marketing Strategy

Bacardi social media marketing strategy adds Facebook immersive mobile ads

This effort is mean to help the brand’s messages to be delivered on a quality global level.

Bacardi has now become the first among brands of alcohol to implement a social media marketing strategy that includes the new mobile ad format from Facebook called Immersive Canvas.

This is meant to enhance the quality of Bacardi’s creative when it comes to the mobile sphere.

Now, Bacardi is hopeful that this new component to its social media marketing – which will make it possible to use an experience somewhat like a microsite without ever requiring users to have to leave Facebook – will make it possible to provide more engaging content, when taking into consideration that the creative must be designed specifically for that precise mobile ad format. The claim made by Facebook about the Immersive Canvas service is that it will make it possible for marketing firms to design native speed experiences that are relevant and captivating.

This addition to the social media marketing strategy is meant to help the brand reach the millennial audience.

This new mobile marketing component is a part of a larger campaign that has been launched by the brand. It started on October 12 and has been aiming directly at the millennial demographic as Bacardi works to alter the way it markets its own brand. The intention is to step away from the outline of its lengthy history in favor of a statement that is geared toward cultural relevance.

The latest campaign that has been launched is themed as a party that is located on the back of a truck. As the truck keeps driving, it continues to pick up more people.

According to the global lead for Bacardi rum chief and the marketing officer for North America, Mauricio Vergara, the Facebook social media marketing campaign is going to target a number of different passion points among the millennial generation. These will include arts, music and sports in order to create an approach that has been designed for both relevancy and a dynamic nature for consumers. Through this channel, the hope is that it will encourage a great deal more interaction with the brand than is possible over television commercials, said Vergara.

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Bacardi social media marketing strategy adds Facebook immersive mobile ads

Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy

As the landscape of recruiting changes, different methods are needed to reach talent, and social media is a key channel.  However, many HR and recruiting professionals are not equipped with the expertise to create a social media recruiting strategy.

In a series of easy to follow chapters and manageable steps, Social Media Recruitment covers the essentials from the beginning to the end of the process, including: how to implement a social media strategy; the crossover between HR, recruitment and marketing; measuring ROI; HR policies and procedures needed; big data and HR; using technology in recruiting, such as video interviewing; social media as an internal collaboration and communication tool across companies; how social media will impact recruiting and HR in the future.

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Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy

The Most Effective Hyperlocal Marketing Strategy

I’ve had several discussions recently about Facebook and its effectiveness as a marketing tool for local businesses. It reminded me of this blog from Forrester Research that described strategies for local marketers now that Facebook was killing organic reach. One suggestion was to “add social relationship tools to your own site.” This is a great idea, but it doesn’t scale well for hyperlocal businesses – after all, how likely is it that you have a product or service that will generate a consistent and loyal following that will engage every day like they seem to do on Facebook?

However, there very likely is a place locally where daily engagement occurs and where social relationship tools could make a very big impact on their ability to more deeply engage and provide discovery tools for local businesses – the hyperlocal digital publisher. These sites have a loyal and demographically desirable reader base for local businesses. They also have great local authority with search engines. Here’s three reasons why these sites should be an important part of your hyperlocal engagement strategy:

1. There’s no better way to reach a higher percentage of people that you want to touch – If you recall from last week, we talked about ways to touch your current and potential customers more often. If your customer base is made up of people in your own community, there is no more focused place than hyperlocal destinations. But you have to do more than just advertise on those sites! Again, an ad is great but it’s just a single “touch”, and the likelihood of that one touch making an impact is very low by itself. But that one touch in addition to active engagement on the hyperlocal site dramatically increases your chances of being noticed.


2. It’s your most effective “Citation” strategy – We’ve also blogged about the importance of keeping your Name/Address/Phone (NAP) info consistent on directory sites. It makes sense that the most local sites to you should be ones where you have this NAP info displayed, doesn’t it? Being listed on a national directory is important too, but how many people using that national directory are interested in your specific community? An up-to-date listing on a directory that is focused on your local community will certainly be more impactful. It’s shocking to me how many people have incorrect NAP information surfaced on hyperlocal sites. This should be Step 1 in your citation effort (actually, Step 2, right after you get listed on Google My Business).


3. You have more influence – I hear many stories of small businesses that complain that they can’t get anybody from Google, Yahoo, Yelp or other global sites to return their calls or emails. It’s frustrating getting them to remove spammy reviews or to fix problems with your listings, especially if there are duplicates! But your local publisher is somebody you know, a physical presence you can speak with and influence. The biggest value of hyperlocal is the intimacy and personal attention – it’s what separates the small business owner from the big box retailer, and it’s what separates the hyperlocal publisher from the national directories and platforms.

Hyperlocal publishers give you the ability to be a “big fish in a small pond.” Facebook and other social platforms are certainly powerful and there’s a lot of great reasons to use them as a part of your marketing effort. But remember this analogy the next time you think about focusing solely on Facebook:

• A Facebook organic post is like screaming out your post in the middle of a sold out Mets game at Citi Field (yes, it would have to be a day when Matt Harvey is pitching )


• A Facebook boosted post is like having somebody grab all the people at that Mets game who fit the demographic you want to reach sitting in your section of the ball park. You are still screaming and they are still distracted, but at least the people who can hear you are the people you want to reach


• Engagement on a hyperlocal site is like being at a local baseball game in your town with 50 other folks, where you could (if you want) scream out to all of them, OR speak one on one with each of them before the game is over.

The most effective small business owners know that targeting is one of the most important marketing strategies. Anything that can get the attention of a highly qualified group of potential customers should be a top priority, and doing it on a public forum where everybody can see is even better. Your hyperlocal publisher gives you the best of both these worlds. Even Facebook doesn’t give you a forum where everyone can see you – only those in your “network.” There is no single perfect platform to reach everyone you want, but one of your best options is your hyperlocal publisher. They have the highest percentage of potential customers right there, waiting to hear from you. You will find them to be the most effective hyperlocal marketing strategy!

Author: Scott Barnett

Scott is a serial entrepreneur with 25+ years experience in Software Development, Product Management, Sales and Marketing. Scott excels at working with customers to find unique and long lasting solutions for their business using technology. Scott is currently Founder of Bizyhood, a startup focused on Customer Engagement and Marketing… View full profile ›

The Most Effective Hyperlocal Marketing Strategy

'Real Estate Marketing': New Sales Strategy In This New Media Age : News : Realty Today

Posted by mlca (media@realtytoday.com) on Jul 22, 2015 07:30 AM EDT

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(Photo : Morsa Images/ Getty Images)

Real Estate Marketing Strategies always vary from one sales agent to another. However, there are some approaches that can be common to all.

Blog Zurple has shared recent approaches in real estate marketing. The article says that everyone is always selling. Time and Energy are always spent on trying to influence others either selling a product or agreeing with one’s ideas or reasoning.

But as for real estate professional, the person is always on the frontline concerning sales and marketing. Daniel H. Pink, an acclaimed best selling author who writes about social science and its impact on work and business, has written a book entitled “To Sell is Human.”  The book’s focal point is on the historical protocol for selling which is said to be dead because information is already accessible online. Thus, there is a shift in marketing strategy. “From the world of caveat emptor (buyer beware) and into a world of caveat venditor (seller beware) where honesty, fairness and transparency are the pillars of success,” Pink explained in his book.

Some old mantra in selling has been replaced too. One of these is “Always Be Closing,” which has now been changed to “Attunement, Buoyancy and Clarity,” the new ABCs in sales.

The principle of this sales pitch is not instantly convince clients to take on your idea and buy it for themselves. But the major goal is to “offer something so compelling that it starts a conversation,” and in the process make your client be the participant and in due course would bring them in a mutually beneficial result.

The bottom line is to replace “selling” with “serving.” It is making your real estate business personal and purposeful. “Selling is human after all,” says Daniel Pink.

In addition, Debbi DiMaggio of InMan says that “our signature marketing is one of the key elements and the value proposition we offer our clients.” For her, there are 5 ways to attract client. These are: professional rendering is ideal for specific types of marketing, property-specific websites are key, professional photography is imperative, print marketing should not be overlooked, and internet marketing is a must.

© 2015 Realty Today All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

"Real Estate Marketing": New Sales Strategy In This New Media Age : News : Realty Today

Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing - 2nd EDITION - How To Build And Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy (Social Media, Facebook, ... Selling On Amazon, FBA, Online) (Volume 1)

Social Media Marketing – 2nd Edition: How to Build and Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to use social media to market your products and services. Social media has evolved rapidly and turned into an important part of our life and how the world functions. Only a few years ago people said that if as a business, you are not on social media, you are missing out. Today nobody says that because it’s a given that every business, no matter how big or small, has an online presence. It’s no longer just an additional source of leads or just a side note in the marketing plan of a business. Social media is now at the center stage of how businesses run and how they market their products and services. By reading Social Media Marketing, you will learn: The basics of social media marketing How to form a good social media strategy. How to start a good blog that will be the cornerstone of your social media empire. How to optimize your strategy on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram etc. How to execute and manage the system without getting overwhelmed by it. Thousands of indie artists, musicians, writers, and creators of all kind are making a living doing what they love, because of the internet. Even more people have started small businesses that are completely online and completely automated and earn quite a decent amount of passive income. All they do is market their business on social media and keep earning week after week. With an understanding of social media marketing strategies, you can cash in on these opportunities as well. ACT NOW. Click the BUY button at the top of this page! Then, you can read Social Media Marketing: How to Build and Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy on your own Kindle device, computer, tablet or smart phone.

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Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing - 2nd EDITION - How To Build And Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy (Social Media, Facebook, ... Selling On Amazon, FBA, Online) (Volume 1)

Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing - 2nd EDITION - How To Build And Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy (Social Media, Facebook, ... Selling On Amazon, FBA, Online) (Volume 1)

Social Media Marketing – 2nd Edition: How to Build and Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to use social media to market your products and services. Social media has evolved rapidly and turned into an important part of our life and how the world functions. Only a few years ago people said that if as a business, you are not on social media, you are missing out. Today nobody says that because it’s a given that every business, no matter how big or small, has an online presence. It’s no longer just an additional source of leads or just a side note in the marketing plan of a business. Social media is now at the center stage of how businesses run and how they market their products and services. By reading Social Media Marketing, you will learn: The basics of social media marketing How to form a good social media strategy. How to start a good blog that will be the cornerstone of your social media empire. How to optimize your strategy on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram etc. How to execute and manage the system without getting overwhelmed by it. Thousands of indie artists, musicians, writers, and creators of all kind are making a living doing what they love, because of the internet. Even more people have started small businesses that are completely online and completely automated and earn quite a decent amount of passive income. All they do is market their business on social media and keep earning week after week. With an understanding of social media marketing strategies, you can cash in on these opportunities as well. ACT NOW. Click the BUY button at the top of this page! Then, you can read Social Media Marketing: How to Build and Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy on your own Kindle device, computer, tablet or smart phone.

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Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing - 2nd EDITION - How To Build And Execute Your Own Social Media Strategy (Social Media, Facebook, ... Selling On Amazon, FBA, Online) (Volume 1)

Is Influencer Marketing a Trendy or Smart Strategy?

Around 2003, many businesses were built by buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads on the cheap.

A similar opportunity exists today, but this time around, social media influencer marketing is the trendy strategy. It’s a strategy to which advertisers — including small businesses — are paying close attention.

If the history of PPC is any indication, influencer marketing ad budgets — and prices — will continue to rise as more businesses pile on to what works. So it makes sense to get onto this trend early for your own advertising needs.

In an introduction to the 2014 Influencer Marketing Benchmarks Report from Burst Media, the company explains:

“On average marketers who implemented an Influencer Marketing program last year received $6.85 in earned media value for every $1 of paid media.”

Facebook is an obvious channel for some of this influencer marketing. Facebook advertising has been considered a game-changer. But concern exists that Facebook ad prices have risen to levels which might limit the potential for large returns.

And so the hand-wringing continues over which mix of channels and content-type can deliver the best ROI for influencer marketing.

Sponsored Selfie Added to Influence Marketing Mix

Influencer marketplace Tomoson is adding a new option to that mix in the form of so-called sponsored selfies.

As the name implies, influencers creating sponsored selfies just post a photo of themselves using, wearing, or posing with an advertiser’s products.

There’s an attempt to avoid the inconsistency in disclosure problematic in some influencer marketing campaigns too. Tomoson sponsored selfies are always marked with the #ad hashtag, along with #TomosonSelfie.

Businesses have paid Tomoson members to create sponsored tweets, blog posts and videos. So selfies are merely the latest option being offered to the company’s advertisers.

Why selfies?

Selfies are arguably the fastest to create and they’re a normal part of life for millennials and Generation Z.

In an email interview with Small Business Trends, Tomoson CEO Jeff Foster says simple product pics fall flat on Instagram. And when that happens, there’s abysmal social engagement — or none at all.

Selfies, on the other hand, have a record of promoting engagement on the photo sharing platform.

“We have influencers of all sizes, which is perfect for small businesses. Selfies drive real engagement and provide an excellent ROI.  If you have a budget of $500 to $1,000, that can go very far,” says Foster.

His company expects to roll out sponsored selfies to other platforms, including Facebook and Twitter too.

Not a Guarantee of Success

A few caveats must be mentioned, of course.

The success of an influencer marketing campaign will depend on the creativity of the influencers with whom you choose to work. For example, their ability to create engaging content is important.

Images, ideally, should be strong enough to convey a message with one glance, in contrast to a blog post which has the advantage of many paragraphs to make a point.

And even Tomoson admits the selfie method will work better for some products than for others. (It’s probably easier to promote a pair of sunglasses or a line of handbags than a new social network or CRM software.)

Instagram selfies are also not a magic bullet for boosting sales. Like any other marketing effort, you’ll need to use analytics to determine effectiveness.

But it is also a marketing strategy that must be committed to over time in order to see results.

“Influencer marketing is not something you can just buy, like at the grocery store,” says Dennis Yu, CTO of BlitzMetrics. “It’s something you embrace fully,” Yu says in an email interview with Small Business Trends.

Yu adds that marketing messages will still depend upon proper optimization and upon being targeted for an audience likely to convert.

Selfie Image via Shutterstock

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Is Influencer Marketing a Trendy or Smart Strategy?

Hurricane Marketing Enterprises Unveils New Website and Branding Strategy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 04/16/2015

Tony Ferrara

Hurricane Marketing Enterprises

1-877-843-3973

tony@homecaremarketing.net

 

Hurricane Marketing Enterprises Unveils New Website and Branding Strategy

HME Blows Away the Competition with New Site

 

Manalapan, NJ: Hurricane Marketing Enterprises (HME) took a big leap forward in their marketing and branding strategy this month by unveiling their new website, HomeCareMarketing.net. This new site enhances their commitment to home care sales and marketing training, nationwide.

 

“Our desire to serve more clients in the home care market with coaching, sales and marketing training, and other services was the catalyst that spurred us to re-evaluate our online presence. We decided to turn up the volume online. The new website is fabulous!”, states Steve “The Hurricane” Weiss, Owner of HME.

 

HME’s products and services are streamlined, easy to navigate, and the calls to action help the visitor learn more about how HME can help.

 

Hurricane Marketing Enterprises engaged the services of LTC Expert Publications (LTCEP) for a complete site over-haul. LTCEP is the leader in online marketing and website design for home care agencies in the U.S. and Canada.

 

About HME: Hurricane Marketing Enterprises is the one and only marketing company providing expertise on all things Sales and Marketing in the Home Care Industry. Founded in 2012, Hurricane Marketing Enterprises has been taking the nation by storm and helping Home Care, Hospice and Private Duty companies grow their businesses to the next level and beyond.  Visit HME at www.HomeCareMarketing.net

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Hurricane Marketing Enterprises Unveils New Website and Branding Strategy

12 Strategy Questions for Picking a Marketing Platform

Picking a marketing platform is no small undertaking. The first inclination of many business teams is to dive right into all of the options available for each platform, but there are several strategic questions you need to consider before reviewing features for your investment. If you don’t answer these questions, you’ll quickly get lost reviewing the nearly 2,000 companies out there offering some form of marketing automation.

1. Why do you need a marketing platform?

Do you need to make an investment, or can you simply accomplish the same strategy with enough time and people? It’s far too easy to become busy with marketing efforts without actually accomplishing anything that drives your business forward.

2. How do your customers communicate?

Take a look at your customers. Are they the type of people to spend all day on social media? Are their inboxes always open?

Don’t start spending until you know the answers.

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3. What is your budget?

No, budget isn’t the first consideration, but it is still incredibly important.

While you may want Salesforce or Marketo, your business might have to stick to much smaller solutions for the time being. Evaluate what your business can handle at the moment, but also consider how important this marketing effort is to your business. You’ll want to make sure that the solution you pick will scale with you.

Additionally, if you are selecting an interim solution, make sure that you will be able to easily export your data once you are ready to move to the next stage of your business evolution.

4. What, exactly, do you need your marketing software to do?

Ten minutes of reviewing marketing options will reveal how similar marketing platforms are to one another on the surface. It’s not until you start really digging that you see the differences: available integrations, template quality, etc.

To make a good decision, you need to write down every requirement that you can think of. Keep this in a running list because you’ll be able to better define your target as you look through what the market has to offer.

5. How many users will you need?

Will multiple people need to access your account? Just you? Decide upfront, because pricing structures differ accordingly.

6. How many contacts do you need?

Your pricing also depends on how many clients you need to track. For small businesses, this component will not be as critical, but large client lists can certainly affect the necessary budget for a marketing solution.

7. Are you ready to import your contacts / leads?

At some point, you’ll have to do the hard work of collecting enough information to make your CRM or email marketing system worthwhile. The more that you can collect before involving other software, the better off you’ll be.

One of the real benefits of these types of marketing systems is the ability to segment your audience to customize your offers and your messaging. If you don’t have information about your customers, then your segmentation abilities will be near useless.

8. How much will the testing process cost you?

Lots of time goes into trying out each system, so you’ll want to ensure that your requirements are as clear as possible. Still, it takes time to determine which system best meets your needs. The cost of testing will certainly be less than the cost of making a poor decision, but you will need to budget time towards the exploration process.

9. How long will it take you to be operational in the new tool you select?

Think through what steps will be required to adopt a new marketing platform into your workflow. How difficult is it to import your clients’ contact information? How long will it take to set up the necessary templates for your email marketing, your deal types in your CRM, and whatever other templates your business requires?

10. What are the reviews for your proposed marketing platform?

Most marketing platforms look good when you read their materials about the available options. Find some outside opinions like customer reviews to get a sense of where limitations may lie. You may find out about a crucial limitation that you had not even thought to test yet.

11. What limitations are you willing to accept in the software of your choice?

There will always be limitations. Always. Some feature won’t perform exactly the way you’d like, and you’ll need to decide if the software is worth the cost without having that particular feature.

One area where you may be able to work around this limitation is in the platform’s ability to integrate with other services. Test out your integrations during your trial period to see if you can get the results you need.

12. Does it make sense to try to develop / cobble together something on your own?

Some platforms like Mailchimp natively offer integrations with a variety of other systems. If your software doesn’t integrate, then you might be able to quickly tie together available API integrations via services like IFTTT and Zapier. If you can get what you need out of this framework, then by all means go for it. Keep your costs down as long as possible.

Making the Decision

Take the time upfront to answer the questions of “why” and “how” before you start the marketing platform review process. You’ll likely have to convince others in your company that the new solution is worth displacing whatever processes you have now. Think through the possible objections to help make the best decision you can, and bring in your teammates whenever you can.

12 Strategy Questions for Picking a Marketing Platform

Kim Martin named new Chief Strategy Officer at Meredith

Most recently, Martin served as President and General Manager of WE tv for nine years

Press Release:

DES MOINES, Iowa and NEW YORK, March 30, 2015 — Meredith Corporation, the leading media and marketing company serving more than 100 million unduplicated American women and 60 percent of U.S. millennial women, announced today it has named Kim Martin as its new Chief Strategy Officer. In this role, Martin will work with Meredith’s senior management team on developing corporate and business unit strategies – with a strong focus on Meredith’s millennial strategy across the Company’s multiple media platforms – and leading other key strategic initiatives. She will start April 13, and report to Meredith Chairman and CEO Steve Lacy.

Martin brings a blend of senior-level media management, content development, and sales and marketing skills to the position. Most recently, she served as President and General Manager of WE tv for nine years. In this role, Martin oversaw all aspects of the network, including marketing, programming, production, scheduling, digital media and new business opportunities. She was responsible for evolving the network brand to attract young, professional contemporary women. Martin shifted the programming strategy, expanded the digital footprint, updated the network image and attracted celebrity talent, which all contributed to substantially increasing revenue from both affiliates and advertisers.

“Kim brings outstanding skills and experiences to this position, particularly in the video content creation field,” Lacy said. “She has a proven track record of successful media leadership on a senior level, and cut her teeth in sales and marketing roles. Kim will serve as a valued advisor, particularly as it pertains to increasing our already strong reach to millennial women – as well as expanding our video strategy – across all our media platforms.”

Prior to running WE tv, Martin spent five years with parent company Rainbow Media, eventually becoming Executive Vice President of Distribution and Affiliate Marketing. In this role, she was responsible for the distribution and marketing of all the company’s networks, including AMC, Fuse, IFC and WE tv.
Before joining AMC Networks, Martin spent 10 years with Discovery Networks, rising to Senior Vice President of Affiliate Sales. She was instrumental in helping Discovery grow from a single network with 18 million subscribers to a multi-network company with over 300 million subscribers and brands such as Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health and Discovery Espanol.

“I am excited to join Meredith and eager to work with the senior team on developing strategies to grow its already strong millennial audience that’s engaging content on multiple platforms and devices,” Martin said. “Given my background, I’m particularly enthusiastic about the video content creation opportunities for the Meredith brands.”

Martin holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Georgia College and State University. Martin has served on the Women in Cable and Telecommunications’ (WICT) national Board of Directors as Treasurer. She also is a graduate of WICT’s Betsy Magness Leadership Institute and Senior Executive Summit at Stanford University, and has served as a WICT executive mentor. Additionally, she has served on the national Board of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

Martin was named by CableFAX as one of the Top 30 most powerful women in cable for five consecutive years, and is a Multichannel News & WICT Wonder Woman. She was also named to The Hollywood Reporter’s “Top 30 in Reality Television” list of honorees.

Martin currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Foundation Board of Trustees of Georgia College and State University. She is a Luminary Circle member and mentor for the Step Up Women’s Network, a national non-profit membership organization dedicated to connecting and advancing women and girls.

Kim Martin named new Chief Strategy Officer at Meredith

How email can underpin an entire digital marketing strategy

For those of us watching the email industry, the last twelve months have been very exciting indeed. High profile acquisitions of specialist email businesses by some of the biggest players in CRM, such as Oracle’s purchase of Responsys, or IBM’s purchase of Silverpop are proof that email is still the most vital element of any digital marketing strategy.

The world’s biggest CRM providers have now woken up to the need to integrate email into their marketing propositions, and their purchasing of existing solutions rather than taking the time to develop their own shows just how urgent this need is.

The reason for this urgency? These businesses have realised what I have believed all along – that without email, targeted marketing simply does not and cannot work. There is no other way to make sure the right content goes to the right person at the right time that is cost effective.

After all, everyone has an email address. To not have one is the digital equivalent of being homeless. Without an email address, you cannot shop online, bank online or engage with social media. Furthermore, iOS and Android devices now require an email address to set up and it will surely not be long before this a requirement on all internet connected devices.

Therefore, email should underpin any digital marketing strategy, partly because it is so universal. A very small percentage of people do not have one and this figure will continue to shrink over the next decade to almost zero.

Furthermore, digital marketers need to understand that email has effects beyond open rates. Email creates brand impressions by their mere presence in an inbox, not just when they’re opened or when links are clicked. Consumers can create associations with brands based on subject lines alone. For example, a consumer might get regular emails with money off discount codes; they might not open these emails, but when they come to think about making a purchase later on, they will have already made the association between the brand and its key message, in this case offering discounts.

Emails not opened are in no way wasted, particularly when you consider how the way we interact  with our email has changed. Ten years ago, most people will have checked their personal emails on a desktop computer only a few times a day at most. Today, however, the explosion in smartphone ownership means that consumers have their emails delivered instantly to their pockets. In most cases, emails can be read from the home screen. Even where they aren’t, people are checking their emails far more frequently, and every time they do they form new subconscious brand connections. Finally, while reading personal emails is still blocked in many offices, smartphones mean most people do anyway, and those who do not work at a desk regularly now have an email checking device with them at all times.

Email is universal and is now accessed far more frequently. For any digital marketer to ignore the importance of email would be mad. It should underpin any digital marketing strategy. After all, only email can provide hyper-specialisation, allowing brands to send personalised messages to every person, all of the time.

How email can underpin an entire digital marketing strategy