The Social Touch

How to turn fans into paying customers

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:39:00 GMT

Facebook is one of the main social media platforms and engaging with your viewers there can help with your social media optimisation program. Here are some more tips for monetizing Facebook:

· Facebook’s core value proposition is connecting and communicating with friends. While word-of-mouth, or “earned” media, helps brands gain Facebook fans, it can only go so far. Companies also need to contemplate using paid advertising to develop their Facebook fan-base.

· Create engaging content. The simplicity of the “like” button means that there may be no actual engagement beyond the fleeting moment of the click. To be successful in this post-“like” phase of Facebook marketing, businesses need to excite their fan-base with compelling posts, interactions that spur a sense of community, and rewards for their ongoing support.

· Give people a reason to become fans. Apps are a good way for any business to have engaging interactions with fans. Everyone wants the latest app, and you can place it for download on your page. The process of sharing will increase your business awareness and deliver good returns on your investment.

· Use innovative apps to help monetize Facebook fan pages. For example, create apps that enable your business to post coupons for promotional discounts on your Facebook page. After clicking on the promotion, fans are prompted to provide their email addresses before receiving the coupon. Thus, you have not only increased the likelihood of a fan becoming a paying customer, but also gained a potential customer’s email address, which you can use for future marketing endeavours.

· Incorporate e-commerce directly into your Facebook page. A Facebook storefront application will enable users to make purchases directly. You can also offer promotional deals to fans, but the storefront app offers the additional advantage of publishing a fan’s purchase on the Facebook news feed. This further promotes the item to your fan’s friends who can then make comments about the item.

Attracting new customers to your brand is a great benefit of Facebook fan pages; but if you have not monetized your Facebook page, then you are missing out on an easy way to generate revenue!

WSI can help create an effective online sales process to convert fans into buyers, get better conversions and increase sales.

More ...

Category: Social Media

Every business can leverage Facebook marketing!

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:07:00 GMT

Facebook is currently THE most popular social media network online. Market-savvy brands are tapping into their Facebook audience to get instant feedback, find ideas on new product design and seek insights on how to market better. It is a great tool to build brand awareness within your target market. No matter what type of business you are in, you can use Facebook marketing to tap into your social network enhancing positive relationships for your business and improving your social media optimisation..

Category: Social Media

How to use Web Analytics to improve marketing results

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:49:00 GMT

Often ignored by the novice internet marketer, website analytics have a key role to play in any successful marketing strategy. Careful analysis of even the most rudimentary statistics will often highlight areas for improvement that can make or break the average campaign.

In this article we'll take a look at some simple steps to ensure you're getting some sort of tangible return on your marketing efforts, and why using analytics might not be such a scary proposition after all...

Step 1: Define the Sales Process
However you refer to the sales process, the first step is identifying each stage of the journey and understanding what is expected of your customer. Consider the following questions:

How is the visitor incentivised to engage with your sales process?
How does each phase of the process relate to your overall sales strategy?
How is the customer guided through the process?

For example, you may be offering a free ebook or whitepaper to capture their information before initiating a classic upsell strategy, culminating with your primary product or service.

Step 2: Create a Measure
A marketing strategy means little unless you have something to measure your success against. These parameters should form a natural extension to your sales process – for example conversion rates, new monthly subscriptions, white paper downloads, webcast attendance and so on. Here's a quick look at some key measurements:

Current opt in rate per website visitor
Email conversion rate
Average membership shelf life
Upsell conversion rate

Identifying your key measurements will enable you to start sharpening your game, beginning with targeted content you can use in your marketing activities.

Step 3: Time to Figure Cost Per Visitor
You are now ready to begin your analysis in order to assess your cost per visitor. Think of it as a funnel effect, with each phase of the sales process channelling your customers to the desired end result.

By working out your conversion rate for each phase of the process and identifying the associated value attached to your average customer, you can calculate your cost per visitor.

Step 4: Set the Right Budget
Now you know your cost per visitor, you are in a position to set an appropriate budget for each of your marketing activities. In simple terms, if you are paying in excess of your cost per visitor, your strategy is not sustainable – unless of course your web analytics are sophisticated enough to identify the source for each online sale you make.

In either case, intelligent use of your website visitor statistics will enable you to set an appropriate budget and – more importantly – stay within it.

Of course every product, service or market fluctuates significantly in terms of customer profile, so try not to focus on what you consider to be 'good' or 'bad' conversion rates, but rather how these compare month on month. By definition a 'good' result will, of course, be growth rather than decline. If you would like more help to understand and get the most from your web analytics please let us know.

More ...

Category: Internet Solutions

Five top tips for building your mailing list

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:03:00 GMT

The advent of social media marketing continues to provide many opportunities for businesses to make real connections with customers. However, your social networking plans should enhance, rather than replace your email marketing activities. While Facebook's usage figures are impressive for example, they are still blitzed by the number of people that own and use an email address.

An effective email marketing strategy still has a key role to play in the modern marketer's online arsenal, working cohesively with other activities in order to create touch points with customers at a level they are comfortable with. The question then is not 'should I use email as a means to stay in touch with customers?' but instead, 'how do I build a targeted, responsive email list?'

There are a number of techniques to help build your email list – most of which can be implemented across your social media presence as well as your website.

1. Freebies
Everyone likes something for nothing – and will gladly part with their email address if that something is of value to them. Your freebie could consist of a number of things, such as:

a course of email tutorials
a complimentary white paper or special report
inclusion into a webinar
downloading a snippet of a lengthy industry report
giving access to membership area
a free prize draw or competition
or simply to receive a free newsletter full of helpful tips, news and resources

This list is in no way exhaustive, but could help get your creative juices flowing. The key is to offer a freebie that is targeted at and therefore of interest to your intended audience, to help 'qualify' your subscribers from the start.

2. Spread Your Net Wide
A useful way to get your content read and promote your newsletter is through the publishing of articles, or becoming a guest blogger. Use your article bio to include an invitation (and maybe offer a freebie) to encourage readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

3. Set Up a Squeeze Page
A squeeze page is a pre-sales letter which invites visitors to sign up to get the full sales message. The idea being to capture their email address before they move on to view the full sales letter. Using this method can also enable you to personalise the sales letter with the subscriber's name or other details you have requested.

4. Encourage Viral Activity
This point follows on from giving something away in order to get something back. This time though the intention is to actively encourage subscribers to share your freebie. It could be a video, an exclusive white paper or report, or even a game. This is especially effective if executed well across your social media properties.

5. Brucie Bonusses
Offer your visitors a bonus if they sign up for your newsletter, "a 20% off coupon" for example, or present a collection of targeted white papers or reports at a 'rock bottom' price. This works off a similar principle of course as our first point (something for nothing), but goes one step further in qualifying your subscribers as potential customers.

In all the above make sure to be transparent with how your subscribers' data will be used by publishing your company's privacy policy. This will go a long way to breaking down any trust barriers right from the outset.
More ...

Category: email Marketing

Steps to local search success

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:35:00 GMT

Here are four more steps to improve your local search marketing capabilities

Category: Search Marketing

Local Search can help many small businesses get noticed

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:30:00 GMT

Local Search can be the key to finding local clients

Category: Search Marketing