Stephen D. Gross

Now that the first decade of this century is over, small businesses are waking up to find themselves in a quandary trying to decide on traditional marketing versus online marketing and the means to finance either one.

Traditional Media Advertising and Marketing is often times out of the financial reach for most small business owners.  Even if they have the resources, small business owners get caught up in the need to justify and ensure a return on the investment of their time and hard earned dollars.  Traditional Media firms normally require an up front payment plus a long-term commitment before launching any campaign.  In addition, the charge for creative work is passed on as an addition expense to the media buying small business owner.

Internet or Online Marketing, more often than not, follows the same routine as Traditional Media firms in terms of financing the campaign and charging for creative.  The difference is that Online Marketing is typically far less expensive, much faster to launch, and easier to track and justify.  However, many online pay-per-click campaigns are launched by inexperienced marketing agents, and thus cost, and at times exhaust, their clients available budgets before a payback can be achieved.

Enter Social and Content Marketing.  These forms of Online Marketing can be seem elusive and untrackable for the small business owner.  Many times, the small business owners lack of understanding of the philosophy behind authority, trust, and communication keeps them from participating and committing financial resources towards this form of marketing.

Small business owners are looking for a low cost of entry solution for marketing for 2010.  The Internet can and will offer a pay-as-you-go alternative to the old fashion no-risk traditional media firm financial model.

Small Business owners seem poised and ready to commit the necessary dollars to get their business growing again.  However, they will only do so if the marketing channel is proven and offers a high opportunity for success and/or has some assurances built-in for controlling and tracking the marketing expenditures.

Brookstone Marketing Group has now released a marketing campaign that fits such a requirement, PayGo Marketing.  For more information concerning PayGo Online Marketing release click here.

What is your struggle with online marketing?  Leave a comment.

PayGo Online Marketing is a campaign offered by Brookstone Marketing Group.

So what is all the magic about the number 37?

Very simply stated, the number 37, in our opinion, is the root of success for almost all sales and marketing.  Every web designer, content writer, and marketing guru should know and understand the power of this number!

Ok, so what the heck is the magic in 37?  Did it originate from some super-duper magic show in Las Vegas?  HA!  Not really.

It really should be shown as 3-7.  These two numbers are somewhat separate in terms of how they perform their magic.  You probably use these numbers everyday without knowing it.

Had enough?  Give up yet?

The first explanation concerns the use of getting the buyers attention and making them sticky.  In other words, getting them to return to your website.  So here are the forms of magic:

You have no more than 3 seconds to gain the customer’s attention on your website, page, content, offering, and/or pricing.  Additionally, you have no more than 7 seconds to verify their decision to commit their attention and gain their trust. That’s right, you only have a maximum of 10 seconds to gain their attention and prove they made the right decision to commit their time.

Secondly, during these economic times and under non-emergency conditions, its takes an average of 3 visits to your website, etc. to get the customer to believe in your offering.  It may take as many as 7 visits for the customer to take the action you want them to take.

The “Marketing 37″ concept has been applied, in many different forms, throughout marketing history.  No the magic is not in pasting this number throughout your website (duh).  The real magic is using and applying these two “Marketing 37″ concepts to drastically increase your conversion ratio.  Understanding the need to grab the customers attention, get them coming back, and having them apply the actions you desire is really what the magic is all about.

What is your conversion ratios?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information

During a recent interview conducted by Kurt Vanderahand, posted on SocialMedia.org, Nick Ayres, New Media + Content Manager & Corporate Communications Manager, and Sarah Molinari, Corporate Communications Manager for The Home Depot discuss the basic media approach and online philosophy of their company.  Here is an excerpt of the interview.

4:22 — Nick: It’s easy to forget that we’re a relatively young company, and we’ve only been in business for about 30 years. We’re still learning as a business, frankly, how to best manage our business, not to mention social media.

4:24 — Nick: In our early days, we had a customer who came in to our store and wanted to return tires, but we didn’t sell tires. The cashier tried to tell the customer that they didn’t sell tires, but the customer swore he bought them there. The cashier called the manager, and he said to go ahead and take them back — and from then on kept the tires behind the customer service desk to remind the staff that they were there to serve customers. Nick says this mentality guides them in social media.

4:26 — Nick says we’ve all heard that you need to listen, and that their caveat to that is that you need to really be prepared to deal with those responses.

4:29 — When it comes to monitoring, Sarah stresses the importance on focusing on how to pull out the content that matters, and to figure out what insights you want to walk away with — because that will draw out what tools you use.

4:32 – Sarah lays out the four buckets they use that involve themes like general commentary, customer comments, and employee comments.

4:33 — Sarah says they started very early on Twitter with deals on their website, and says they had some really great early followers who said they didn’t care about deals because those were already well published. They said they wanted to know about the people behind it all.

4:34 — Sarah explains how they really got going in Twitter during the hurricane season by letting followers know important details on things such as where to get supplies, what stores were open late, etc.

4:35 — Sarah says The Home Depot is not in a race to gain Twitter followers, and shows a chart highlighting steady, modest rise in Twitter followers over the past 20 weeks. She says the importance is developing relationships and connecting on a deeper level.

4:35 — In one example, Sarah shows how they reached out to someone on Twitter who was upset, and fixed the problem — and later, the customer reminded her followers of the great help she received.

4:36 — Sarah’s big point on listening: What are you looking for? Is it actionable stuff? How will you resolve it?

4:37 — Nick says video syndication is another area they spend a lot of time. They realized that people don’t just come to HomeDepot.com for videos, but they also go to YouTube and Google — and since syndicating content on these channels, they’ve had great results.

4:38 — Nick: It’s not just about YouTube. There are also sites out there, like 5 Minute, Howcast — and sites like this that are all about helpful videos that their target audience looks for. Nick recommends remembering the niche sites that the people you’re trying to reach might use.

4:39 — Nick: Really think about content based on what the customers are seeking. With your listening tools in place, you can find what your customers are looking for as well as how to get it to them.

4:40 — Nick: We didn’t do that much with internal blogs and wikis. Much of our stuff, was forward-facing. In retrospect, if we could have started over, we might have approached it differently, because we’re really having to dig down to find internal evangelists.

4:41 — Nick says it’s important to be remember that while you may have short-term wins, it’s really going to take a long time to develop relationships.

4:42 — Nick says you need to work past the reality that some folks just will never get social media. It’s important to work with them, as well as focusing on the people within your organization who do get it.

Q&A

Q: What would you say was the tipping point in getting senior management to realize that social media was important?

A: Sarah: We’re a very entrepreneurial brand, and if someone has an idea, our culture supports them. Nick: It’s probably been a series of moments, and probably around the time we helped with the hurricanes was when execs really saw how we could effectively use a new tool to help customers in real time — it really helped capture a lot of people’s imaginations.

Q: How do you handle staffing?

A: Sarah: It takes passionate people who are willing to do this — whether it’s between meetings or after hours. But also, we’ve had great success with our customer service team — and the idea overall of having our company focus on customer service is what’s helping us be successful. We’ve been able to take some people who were working on the phone who we’ve been able to take off the phone and help with social media outreach and response.

Q: Do you have a policy that allows employees to be online ambassadors for employees?

A: Sarah: It’s been great. We have folks on other teams that have approached us and said, “OK, we need to make some changes.” We’re excited to pilot an internal social collaboration tool, and that’s help some people warm up to the concept. Nick: We swing very dramatically from one direction to another on that issue, and what we focus on is what the bulk of customers expect from The Home Depot — and the reality is that as customers walk in to a store, they expect an associate to help. The last thing we want to do is block that for our associates who are trying to help customers online. We’ve got to think about how our policies at the corporate level affect our associates in the field.

Q: Are the training programs home-grown? Or are there resources out there we can look to?

A: Nick: It’s a mix of that. The Social Media Business Council is a great resource for that — and we’ve been able to leverage our peers for help on how to create these policies. But there’s also some stuff we have to do internally, and stuff we have to create on our own. There’s different degrees of training for say, someone in the marketing department vs. a store manager.

Click for more information Brookstone Marketing Group

The top seminar question these days is: how does someone decide on a strategy for Internet Marketing if you don’t have a starting point?

The answer is somewhat difficult to answer.  Brookstone has identified over 15 marketing channels available within the online marketing environment.  Picking which one or better yet which ones are best suited for your business requires more knowledge and experience than a typical small business owner possesses.

The easiest general marketing channels to understand are Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, and of course SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Free Listings.  Of these three, generally speaking, Social Media Marketing requires the least amount of expense.

PPC can absorb anyone’s budget very rapidly if not monitored on a daily basis.  In addition, the knowledge required for success in combining the affects of keywords, Ad copy, page quality, content relativity, and ad positioning can be a somewhat daunting task for the beginner.  PPC can provide a very rapid increase in revenue and profits if performed wisely.

SEO requires a lot of patience and skill to get your listing anywhere near visible.  Getting your listing on the front page often requires a lot of testing and many months of waiting.  The end result can be very lucrative if your listing appears on the front page and top listing.

Social Marketing has the lowest cost of entry for both cost and time.  A beginner can usually make some impact on their customer leads within days.  However, the avid Social Marketer knows how to employ a solid overall strategy to optimize the results in a very big way.

The best social marketing strategy includes reciprocity, a commitment to scheduled postings, the ability to listen, transparency, community, and above all honesty.  Failure to include, at the very least, these main criteria can drastically damage your results and possibly your reputation

To get additional information click here: Brookstone Marketing Group

.

We have been involved with Online Marketing for over 15 years and have seen the dramatic effects on business in general by search engines like AltaVista, Excite, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and of course Google.

However, in our recent blog post, we talked about the seismic changes occurring as a result of social marketing.  To reiterate, the Social Media Marketing channels have risen to the top of consumer confidence and purchasing decisions.  Only word of mouth ranks above Social Marketing in consumer confidence.

So who are the slowest adopters into these rapidly expanding marketing channels?  Yet again, like many past opportunities, small business is trailing far behind in implementing a solid social marketing strategy.  Even worse are the multi-location and franchisers and franchisees.

A strong solid social marketing strategy combined with strong brand and brand awareness is becoming paramount among the soon to be top performers in any business.  Losing control of your message and brand identity can and will cause a heavy burden when attempting to correct or turn around the negativety imposed at a later date.

Most major social marketing outlets offer the ability to brand your business.  Youtube, Twitter, Wordpress, and others offer your business the opportunity to present a common brand.   Smart business strategists are rapidly understanding how to use  online outlets to forward and spread their message and brand in a unified and common approach.

Many large franchisers, institutions, and firms are contractually demanding their franchisees, license holders, and or agents subscribe to a corporate level branding and messaging campaign. Many are even prohibiting the use of individual web pages, marketing campaigns, and content submission.

The window for small business to implement a strong message and brand within the social media marketing platform is wide open!  However we suspect, like many other open marketing opportunities in the past, this low or no cost window might start closing within 1-2 years.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group, click here.

In a recent report posted by Neilson their research shows a surge in consumer confidence with online search and buying trends.

The Nielson survey shows that 9 out of every 10 (90%) Internet consumers trust word of mouth or people they know for recommendations of an impending purchase.

The report also shows that 70% trust online opinion (Social Marketing, etc.)

However tied with online opinion is websites or business with strong branding coming in at 70%.  Online Brand confidence has rose from 48% to 70% in just two years.  Thank you Social Marketing with Branding!

Content in articles, press release etc comes in a close 4th with 69%.  However it is unclear whether this statistic includes offline content as well.

Traditional forms of advertising, TV, Newspaper, Magazines, Billboards, and Radio fall into the ranking of 6-10.  Their percent of confidence falls between 55-62%.

Search engine result ads, online banner ads, online video sales ads, and phone text ads fall to the bottom of the barrel.  Their percent range is 24-41%

All of this is great news for firms who are active in Social Media Marketing and Branding.  Unfortunately these 2 opportunities for growth are normally far beyond the reach of the small business owner.  The need for quality online marketing firms to reach out to the small business community to provide these services has come of age.  However the greater need for the small business owner is one of education and conversion from traditional advertising into the online marketing arena.

Vistit BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com today!

The questions surrounding how to apply and what to say when using Social Media Marketing are growing exponentially. Many would see this as a signal of failure for people to understand in general the whole concept of community participation, branding and Internet sales.  However, I see it as a very strong indication of how the new phenomena of social marketing is gathering its well-deserved attention.

It has been recorded in history that any major change in society and/or business may take as long as 7-10 years to fully be understood and mature.  Over 50% of the US population continued to ride horses for an estimated 15 years after the first car was deemed road worthy — not to mention the fact that the roads weren’t fully modernized for over 30 years.

Social Media Marketing has only been in real world existence for roughly 1-2 years and we are already experiencing a tidal wave of small business interest.

The idea of having a real-time method to brand your business and at the same time promote a special event or product launch is not an easy concept to mentally digest. We are all accustomed to traditional means of separating sales from marketing and marketing from advertising.

A branding or marketing campaign will take at least 3 months to get any meaningful data right? Wrong!  The Internet allows a business the opportunity to bundle Sales, Marketing and Advertising in a cohesive fashion.  This cohesion tremendously advances the time element of the campaign and permits almost real-time feedback.  The best advantage is the low cost of entry into the marketplace.

The single biggest issue, for this new way of marketing and advertising, going forward is trying to tear down the linear thinking process involved with traditional marketing.  Thinking outside the box will provide the small business owner the opportunity to vastly broaden their scope of potential customer base.  Instead of thinking of directly targeting people who ride bicycles, if you sell bicycles, a business owner might begin a social media campaign centered on low impact ways of exercising or maybe even how to get to work without spending money on gas.

The real advantages with using Social Media Marketing aren’t found with identifying one target market and hammering on it until its dead.  The answer is to apply both horizontal and vertical approaches to marketing penetration and use the information gained to further advance the growth of your business.

Visit our website for more information: Brookstone Marketing Group