Keep Your Lead Generation Campaigns Alive During The Holidays

Somehow, another year is quickly drawing to a close. Many businesses are working hard to end the year on a sound note, while keeping their staff motivated and productive during the holidays. When you’re the business owner, though, your focus rarely wavers from keeping your sales pipeline full, no matter the date on the calendar. Not only can you continue your lead generation efforts during the holidays – you should.

End the year strong and start the new year with a bang. The following are suggestions for staying the course during the holidays and all the way through the end of the year.

Embolden lead generation campaigns with some festive fun

The holiday season creates perfect opportunities for marketers who don’t mind mixing a little fun with their work. Mandy Edwards of ME Marketing Services offers the following holiday marketing advice for social media marketing:

‘Get festive! You want your business/brand to be relevant, so that means “decorating” your social media accounts! Change out your Facebook cover photo to something Christmasy (if you celebrate that) or have your Twitter background be a field covered with snow. Show the world that you are ready for the holidays.’

Another fun holiday marketing suggestion is accomplished in an “old-fashioned” way. In his article for Autodesk, Ken Micallef shares several great tips for lead generation during the holidays, including snail-mailing holiday cards, gifts or gift cards to your current clients. This often makes a good impression and keeps your name on their minds for referrals and future business.

Heat up lead generation campaigns by firing up your sales team

Sales people who are worth their salt appreciate incentives. A fun contest or two around the holidays should help motivate and energize your sales team while fostering teamwork. For example, award the person who makes the most phone calls, the one who generates the most leads and/or the one with the best attitude. Of course, the rewards of lead generation benefit the entire team.

Invigorate lead generation campaigns by making connections

Many parties and other similar social affairs take place this time of year. Take time to network with your friends, colleagues, family, clients, and so on. Being social this time of year, whether online or off, increases your exposure – and your opportunities for lead generation.

What are your best suggestions for avoiding the holiday slump for your lead generation campaigns? I would love to hear what works for you!

3 Mobile Tools to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Have you figured out how to engage on-the-go prospects and customers?

Is more of your audience interacting with your business from their mobile phones?

If you want to enhance your mobile marketing, then keep reading.

I’ll show you three awesome tools that make mobile marketing easier.
Why Mobile?

Mobile is no longer something you can afford to ignore.

As customers’ adoption of mobile grows, you need to find ways to leverage mobile marketing tools to optimize their experience, no matter what device they’re on.

Whether you’ve already been experimenting with mobile marketing or are just getting started, the right tools help increase leads, engagement and sales.

In this article, I highlight three tools that offer easy ways to mobilize your social media marketing strategy.
#1: Send SMS (Text) and Video Messaging With Mogreet Express

One of the most powerful mobile marketing channels available today is SMS or short message service, which is also known as text message marketing.

SMS is a permission-based messaging tool that lets customers receive messages from you after they text a keyword or sign up using a web form.

SMS may not sound sexy, but it’s highly effective. Studies have indicated that 97% of mobile subscribers read an SMS (text) message within 15 minutes of receiving it. 84% respond within 1 hour.

Many top retailers actively use SMS to send out sales or product updates, special coupons or other important announcements. Coca-Cola focuses 70% of their mobile marketing budget on SMS/Text messaging.


Coca-Cola embraces the power of SMS to reach consumers.

So what does this have to do with social media?

Conversations with your customers shouldn’t end on Facebook, Twitter or any other social platform you currently use.

Mogreet Express lets you quickly create SMS (text) or video messaging campaigns to incorporate into social media and build a database of customers who want to receive your information and offers.

First, you create a keyword to title your campaign, and then Mogreet Express pairs your keyword with a shared short code. Make your keyword short and easy to remember.

After you’ve decided on a keyword, you’re guided through the process to set up the response customers receive when they opt in.


Mogreet Express lets you set up keywords in your dashboard to promote campaigns to your audience.

Now you’re ready to promote your campaign on Facebook and Twitter. The easiest way to do this is by using language such as:

“Become a Mobile VIP. Just text YOURKEYWORDHERE to 12345″ (this would be the short code that Mogreet Express provides to you).

Lane Bryant incorporates their call to action on a Facebook tab to connect with them. Their keyword is LBGB and their short code is 23705.


Lane Bryant added their SMS call to action to a graphic.

Once you’ve promoted your new SMS (text) campaign and customers begin to opt in,message them with valuable offers. This helps you stay top of mind, drive increased traffic (both physical and web) and create a new way to drive sales.

Set up a message to send to your customers in four steps:
Pick a send date and time. Use a marketing calendar and in just minutes, you can schedule messages for the next few months .
Choose your message type. MMS (video or picture) or SMS (just text). Adding short videos to your messages makes your communications personal and engaging.
Identify yourself in the message. Use your name, your business name or your brand, but clearly show who is sending the message.
Create your message copy. If you choose SMS, you only have 160 characters.




Mogreet's dashboard makes setting up campaigns easy.

You should include opt-out language in every message and Mogreet does this for you so you comply with the best practices of the Mobile Marketing Association. The opt-out looks something like this:


No more than X msgs/mo. Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel. Msg&DataRatesMayApply.

Overall, Mogreet Express is a very easy-to-use SMS/MMS marketing tool for any small business owner. Incorporate your mobile call to action throughout your social media and you extend conversations with your customers beyond Facebook or Twitter. It’s a great place to start when adding mobile marketing to your social media strategy.
#2: Run Mobile-Friendly Facebook Contents With Heyo

Heyo makes it easy to build a contest on mobile that integrates seamlessly with Facebook. Not to mention it looks beautiful with the easy-to-use tools Heyo provides.

Nathan Latka, founder of Heyo, shared that Lilly Pulitzer worked with Heyo to mobilize their “Want It To Win It” tab right on Facebook because they didn’t want to miss out on all the traffic received from mobile Facebook users.


Don't miss out on all the mobile traffic to your contest pages.

To make sure mobile users receive the best user experience, Heyo’s smart URL automatically reroutes mobile users to the right location. If users are on a desktop, they’re sent to the native Facebook tab. If they’re on a mobile device, they receive the mobile contest application.


Lilly Pulitzer contest page from mobile.


Heyo's easy-to-use dashboard lets you create beautiful pages in minutes.

Heyo is the easiest way to create engaging campaigns that are social and mobile. Check out this tool if you want to drive traffic, leads and sales with a Facebook contest.
#3: Measure the ROI of Mobile Marketing With LogMyCalls

Did you know that people who search the Internet for food using their phone or tablet have nearly a 90% conversation rate? Or that 64% of searchers with smartphones convert within one hour of their mobile search activity?

One of the top converting metrics is a phone call. With such high odds of a mobile searcher clicking to call your business, tracking and measuring calls are vital.

LogMyCalls gives you a full suite of tracking features to track every call generated by your mobile advertising and measure the return on your investment.

Here’s how you get set up and start measuring which campaigns are performing the best in 4 steps.

Step 1: Select your numbers. Use your current phone number and convert it into a tracked number or choose new numbers and have calls to those phone numbers routed to your business or call center.


Select a local or toll-free number for your tracking.

Step 2: Name your route. This is where you associate the number with a specific marketing tactic. In this case, Facebook PPC.


Connect your numbers to your marketing campaigns.

Step 3: Set up your DNI. When someone clicks through from a Facebook PPC ad, a unique phone number is dynamically generated on your landing page. This allows LogMyCalls to track which online marketing efforts produced the phone call. This is done via a provided snippet of JavaScript.

Step 4: Track mobile calls generated from Facebook ads. This is your first and most basic report indicating call volume, date, time, etc.


Measure your call results with easy-to-read reports.

That’s it. When your customer is mobile and calls your tracking number from a Facebook ad, a billboard or any other mobile advertising unit, you easily identify which media outlets perform best and which convert leads to sales.

LogMyCalls makes it easy for you to understand how many leads and sales are generated from people who call via a mobile phone.

Your Turn

These tools help you reach your mobile customers no matter what device they’re on. There are more tools out there and as you use them, you need to make sure your website is mobile-friendly as these tactics ultimately drive people there.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these tools before? What other tools have you used? I would love to hear your thoughts about what works and what doesn’t. Please share your favorites in the comments box below.

9 Web Marketing Tips To Help Your Small Business

Web marketing is one arena where small businesses can compete against larger companies within the same field. While the size of a budget does influence the amount of money that can be directed towards marketing costs, on the Internet, every company performs on the same stage. With these web marketing tips, you can help your small business thrive and succeed.

1. Build Out Your Brand
Establishing a recognizable brand image is critical to the growth of your company. Part of a building a brand is associating the name and image of your company with quality in the minds of your customers. When people see a brand image they know, they are reminded of the reasons they trust the company, and they may feel compelled to choose your products or services over those of your competitors. To begin building your brand, place your logo on company social networking pages and use the image in all of your marketing materials online.

2. Make the Most of Your Marketing Budget
To compete against larger companies who may have a marketing budget that is exponentially larger than your own, choose your marketing avenues wisely. For example, paid search campaigns are one arena that can be easily won by throwing large amounts of cash at keywords. Instead, your money may be better spent on other strategies that stretch the value of your marketing dollars, such as content marketing or natural search engine optimization improvements. You can also use social networking sites directly to speak to customers instead of paying to advertise on them.

3. Stay Ahead of Search Engine Updates
When a search engine updates the way it returns search results for keywords, businesses everywhere can experience massive losses or impressive gains in rankings. For buying-orientated keywords in popular niches, this can substantially change the amount of a traffic directed to a site from search results. To avoid being on the losing end when Google releases an update, keep the content on your site fresh and interesting. Update your pages frequently, and optimize each page according to best practice standards. Quality content never goes out of style, and search engines will reward you for making it enjoyable for visitors to read your site.

4. Engage Your Customers
Social networking sites offer your company the opportunity to interact with your customers in ways that were not possible a decade ago. Customers with problems can contact you directly on Twitter, giving you the chance to positively resolve their issue in a very public way. You can use Twitter and Facebook to open up a dialogue with your customers to find out what they want from your company and get feedback on the services you offer. When your company releases new products or has news to share, you can post the updates on social networking sites. Customers that find the information useful may share it with others, and you can use this to your advantage by announcing sales and deals to people willing to connect with your company on social sites.

5. Combine Strategies
To succeed with web marketing, you need to use more than one strategy. A killer web page is great to inform customers about the services you offer, but without marketing they will never find your page to know about your company in the first place. You need to combine social, search and content strategies to reach your customers in every way possible. Additionally, within each marketing area there are more approaches to take.

6. Include Testimonials
Potential customers that read glowing testimonials of your company are likely to be interested in learning more about what you provide. Testimonials are powerful, and you can feature them on your site by linking to review sites such as Yelp, or you can ask your customers who give you feedback if they are willing to allow you to display their comment on your site. Google reviews are also important to building trust in your company. It is a good idea to stay aware of the reviews your company has received, so you can make improvements and learn what is working for you and what needs to be changed.

7. Update Old Content
Today, visitors to your website will arrive expecting to learn something from you in addition to finding out more about contacting your company or the services you offer. You can give them a reason to work with you by refreshing your existing content. You can create videos to feature on your site, and you can integrate content that is likely to be shared on social networking sites. Adding useful content helps build your brand image as well. When you provide potential customers with tips or tricks that are relevant to what they knew they needed when they searched for your site, you begin building a trusting relationship with people that may ultimately convince them to give you a call to find out more about your services or products.

8. Test New Site Features
The changes you make to your site by incorporating new web marketing strategies should be tested for viability. Customers become used to the way a site operates, and changes often cause a temporary dip in sales as people learn to interact with your site in a new way. To minimize the impact of changes on your company, test each feature as you roll it out. User interface changes can lead customers towards the areas of your site you want them to see, and you can try out the placement of calls to action within your content pages to discover any changes that should be made.

9. Try Different Approaches
As the web marketing industry grows, new and innovative techniques are being developed to help you expand your business. Even if the tried and true methods are working well for your company at the moment, you can stay one step ahead with a willingness to try out new ideas and take different approaches to the same problems. If you are unsure of where to go next with your web marketing strategy, consult an Internet marketing company. The industry is old enough at this point that many companies are highly specialized in a specific area, so you can benefit by finding out the different approaches taken.
What other tips would you give when it comes to helping your business gain more exposure through web marketing?

image: small business/shutterstock

Brands Can Better Target Fans With TV Ad Targeting On Twitter

To help marketers coordinate their Twitter and their television advertising strategies, Twitter has announced the availability of TV ad targeting: a new feature which helps brands to better target potential customers by intelligently monitoring the airtimes of commercials, while simultaneously tracking relevant conversation on Twitter.

Last week was a busy one for Twitter, who announced a number of new features to help marketers better target fans across multiple screens by coordinating TV and Twitter advertising: with Twitter Amplify, marketers can partner up with broadcasters to display commercials prior to media content embedded in tweets, while the lead generation card allows brands to advertise offers which users can apply to without having to leave the site.

Both Twitter Amplify and TV ad targeting allow brands to coordinate their message across multiple screens in real-time. By including hashtags in TV commercials between the instalments of popular shows, brands can ensure that they are part of the conversation on Twitter. In fact, 64% of US Twitter mobile users are active on Twitter while they watch TV, a statistic Twitter’s Michael Fleischman is quick to acknowledge in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog. In the post, Fleischman also explains how TV ad targeting on Twitter works:

TV ad targeting works by using video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring that advertiser to do any manual tracking or upload media plan details. Whenever a commercial airs during a TV show, Twitter not only determines where and when it ran, but can identify users on Twitter who tweeted about the program where the ad aired during that program. We believe a user who engaged enough with a TV show to tweet about it very likely saw the commercials as well. 

Twitter is providing marketers with a new TV ads dashboard, so that they can monitor and react to the targeting data Twitter’s video fingerprinting technology produces. From this dashboard, marketers can work out when best to send out promoted tweets and trends in order to get the most engagement on Twitter.


TV ad targeting is the result of Twitter’s acquisition of Bluefin Labs, a television/social media analytics company, which occurred in February – in fact, before becoming a Twitter product manager and authoring the announcement post, Michael Fleischman was one of Bluefin’s co-founders.

TV ad targeting is currently only available in a limited beta to United States-based companies running national TV ad campaigns, but Twitter advises that if a company wants more information, they should contact their account manager.

Do you think brands will benefit from TV ad targeting?      

5 Tactics to Grow Your Email List

Back in January, many email marketers said increasing their lists was their top goal for 2013. Well, spring is here. Is your mailing list growing as fast as your flowers and lawn? If not, it's time to execute a new plan.
Many marketers have email addresses only for 30% or less of their customer and prospect lists. They're tempted to revert to their direct-mail experience and reach for a quick fix like email append ("e-append") and list rental/purchase.

But in today's engagement-based inbox placement world, this "quick fix" approach can give you more headaches than new sales.

If you seek quantity over quality in list growth, you're practically inviting the ISPs either to block your entire opt-in mailing list or route everything to your recipients' bulk folders, where they'll languish in obscurity until the ISPs dump them automatically.

So, what should be in your email list growth plan? Below are five tried-and-true methods to ignite your email list growth, in a safe, permission-based way.

1. Make It Easy to Opt In on Your Website

Your customers and prospects must be able to find your opt-in form easily on your home page. This advice has been around for years, but today's web designers apparently didn't get the memo. They position Facebook and Twitter icons prominently but send you on a search-and-rescue mission to find the opt-in field.

Many websites undersell the email value proposition, using just a link saying "Sign Up for Email" relegated to the homepage footer. Worse, the email opt-in call-to-action isn't even on the page. Make your forms stand out. 

If you want to get more opt-ins, make the email invite more visible. Use a benefit-based call-to-action, and test an offer that you subsequently deliver in your welcome series.

2. Don't Stop at Just One

Add more opt-in forms throughout your site and in various placements: above the fold (the horizontal halfway point on your website, like the fold in a newspaper), below the fold, in the right rail, in left-hand navigation and on a dynamic layer that displays according to visitors' site activity.

Test these locations to see how many more opt-ins you can drive, each one alone and in combination with each other. One opt-in form on a page might drive X, while having two opt-in form placements on a page might drive 1.5X to 2X. 

At the EEC Summit in 2012, Tommy Hilfiger reported that his company drives 2% of all site visitors to opt in by using a dynamic opt-in layer served to new site visitors on site entry.

3. Collect Emails at Your Stores

Ask your customers to opt in for email at your checkout counter or when requesting an email receipt. However, be sure you are collecting high-quality names. 

You'll have to develop a request procedure that helps you overcome two big pitfalls of point-of-sale requests: phony addresses, either provided by reluctant customers who can't say no to the request or keyed in by sales associates who have to meet email quotas. 

Mistakes, which happen when sales people misspell a written address, misunderstand a customer's spoken address or omit a crucial detail like the "@" symbol. 

Here are a few suggestions for collecting more and better addresses:

• Let customers type in their email addresses on a POS touchpad or credit card terminal. 
• Give them an offer or benefit for signing up in-store. 
• Explain what they'll be receiving. 
• Get explicit permission before adding the address.

 

4. Make It Mobile

Consumer adoption of mobile sites and apps makes mobile another important collection point for opt-in for both email and SMS text. The best mobile site home pages have two opt-in forms: one for email, one for SMS. Remember the constraints that mobile puts on viewing and data input. 

Don't ask users to fill out lots of form fields. Keep the form short and simple. You can collect more information later in your welcome series using progressive profiling.

5. Remember Your Social Networks

Give your Facebook followers a simple opt-in form page. Call out the benefits and differences between your social experience and your email communications.

Consider using social login, also known as social sign-in. This uses existing login information from social networks such as Facebook or Twitter to sign in to a website without having to create a separate login account specifically for your website. 

You can also use this process to allow your site registrants to quickly and easily sign up to receive your marketing emails.

Internet Marketing Goes Nowhere Without Search Engine Optimization

Maximize your business efforts by paying attention to the following essential SEO techniques:

Constantly review your links.
Links that are no longer valid or relevant impede the success of your business. They mislead potential customers, causing business loss. Invalid links are similar to debris or clutter on your website and need to be eliminated. Clear and clean content is what search engines value.

Continuously add new links.
If your product lines or the services you offer expand, so should your links. Demonstrate you are a valid player in your field by linking with other major suppliers or service providers. Especially link with authoritative forums and business organizations with which you are affiliated. This is very helpful in establishing credibility in your niche and is a growing influence on SEO. Besides looking for popular keywords, search engines also check for authenticity and credibility of a website. Links and backlinks are important in establishing credibility. Make and carry out a plan to set up links with a variety of quality websites. Just as it is important to continuously refresh the content of your web pages, it is important to refresh your links periodically.

Make sure each page of your site has a unique and specific title.
Also, your URL at the top of each page should reflect the specific content of that page. This facilitates your customer's ability to search for items without scrolling through irrelevant pages. For instance, if your URL reads "Great Recipes," add "recipes for tofu" if that is the page's content.

Have a presence on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
The popularity of social media has changed search engine algorithms and shifted it toward an emphasis on interactivity and participation. This has become a major factor in establishing credibility. Because social media sites generate popularity, search engines pay attention to them.

Use surveys to obtain information about your customers' likes and dislikes and ask for their suggestions for improvement.
Give participants an incentive to take part, such as a discount or special offer. Find out how they found your site, their experience on it and recommendations for improvement. Are their needs being met? Can you offer a new product or service to satisfy unmet needs? Although Google data provides a bare-bones version of how and why visitors came to your site, a survey can give you much more detailed information. It may even give you good ideas for new products. Additionally, interactivity is desirable to search engines, thus a survey can help your page ranking.

Operating a successful online business demands you use good search engine optimization techniques. You must familiarize yourself with SEO and its various strategies the same as you studied your business product or service and keeping abreast of new techniques and methods used by search engines is crucial. Constant updating is required. Apply the above SEO strategies to build and grow a successful internet business. If you feel unprepared to assume SEO functions for your business due to lack of experience or time constraints, consider having your site developed or revamped by a professional web designer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7520681