Local Reputation Management

Posted on by September 12, 2013
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9-13-online-reputationConsumers Trust in Online Reviews Skyrocketing!

Myles Anderson of BrightLocal just released the 2013 Local Consumer Review Survey at SearchEngineLand. What is eye-catching within the study is that there are very clear and indisputable results that we can easily see.

What we learned offers us four distinct takeaways.

  • More people are trusting online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. A full 79 percent (up from 72 percent just a year ago!) say that genuine online reviews (emphasis on genuine) carry the very same impact if not more than a recommendation from someone they know.
  • The trust in online reviews is growing. A stunning 72 percent are of the opinion that genuine, positive customer reviews make them trust a business more. This is up from 58 percent in 2012! It’s very apparent that buyers are seeking and taking note more than before and are placing their trust in reviews. At the same time, only some 12 percent of consumers said they pay no attention of online reviews, down from 17 percent in 2012.
  • Also, people are viewing far fewer reviews before making their buying decisions. Notably, 67 percent of consumers read 6 reviews or less, up from 52 percent in 2012. Consumers are also reading less than 7 reviews – 22 percent now vs. 35 percent in 2012.
  • It’s now more significant than ever to make sure you manage your online reputation. Since the number or reviews read are shrinking, as well as the impact of those reviews heightened, it’s important to make sure you are monitoring your online reputation for all current activity. As the most recent reviews are swinging the buying decisions, you’ll want to find out if anything negative shows up and act on it. Create a policy for handling negative reviews in an open manner, and a system for generating new, positive reviews which will send those less than desirable reviews further down the page . Be sure that these are genuine, as consumers are getting better at ferreting out fake and corporate-generated “reviews”.

Take this and run with it!

Information such as this is pure gold, and clearly actionable. Kudos to Myles Anderson and the people at BrightLocal for this very beneficial and eye-opening study. read more

5 Surefire Tips for Location Based Marketing

Posted on by May 2, 2017
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5surefireways-aug-2013As business moves more and more in your local direction, you will want to make sure that you’re doing all that you can to ensure that not only is your business being found locally, but that you’re winning the space!

Here are 5 great tips to help get your location based marketing on track!

Optimize and complete your listings – According to Yext, businesses are losing out to the tune of some $10.3 billion dollars a year as a result of missing or sketchy listings. This one should be a no brainer. Take the small amount of time it takes to get your business listed correctly on sites like Google+ Local, Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook, MapQuest and others you are using. Not only does this ensure you’ll show up in local search, but the correct images, addresses, phone numbers and additional information can result in actual money coming in. Small price to pay! read more

Why Not Use Vine To Make Short, Shareable Videos for your Biz

Posted on by May 2, 2017
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vinevideo-aug-2013You might have heard about Vine, the latest video app available form Twitter, and wondered how in the world a six second video clip could possibly do any wonders for your business!

You’d be surprised!

In fact, smart business owners are using Vine to share these 6-second clips to help them brand, announce, introduce and otherwise promote their businesses in a way nothing else does.

Marketers are always moaning about ways to use Twitter for their business; well, here you go!

A couple of recent examples would include RedVines, Urban Outfitters and Nintendo. read more

Groupon and LivingSocial aren’t the Only Players in the HyperLocal Scene

Posted on by August 27, 2013
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july-article2Hyperlocal marketing is not new, but the term may be unfamiliar to many. Christened sometime in 2009, hyperlocal refers to the immediate area that your business serves. This will be different for every business, but in general it means your street, part of town, rural area or within reasonable walking or driving distance from your location.

For example:

California (CA): not hyperlocal.
Los Angeles County, CA semi-hyperlocal.
Westwood Village, CA truly hyperlocal.

So now that we’re clear about that, you may be thinking that your only answer in grabbing your portion of the hyperlocal market is through the likes of Groupon or LivingSocial. In reality, there are a slew of smaller players in the daily deal business that can serve your needs as well. Let’s see who some of them are. read more

How to Make Your Copy Much More Persuasive

Posted on by August 22, 2013
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july-article1How to Make Your Copy Much More Persuasive
Marketing automation

So what are the hallmarks of great copy today?

You know it when you read it. Makes use of emotional triggers, images and anything else it can get its hands on to hit you where you live.

The sickening truth for marketers is that it is damn hard to write great copy. The days of throwing up (apt phrase) for what passed for good web content even a few years ago are long gone as we find ourselves competing for slices of people’s time that are getting ever smaller. read more

Social Media Smackdown: Facebook vs Twitter

Posted on by August 20, 2013
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7-13-facebook-vs-twitterBetter for Marketers? Facebook or Twitter?

Twitter recently announced that its paid ad platform is now open to any who would like to use it. In testing for over a year, Twitter has been evaluating user feedback and refining Twitter ads. The most noticeable difference in this ad platform vs. Facebook’s is that you are only charged when anyone follows your promoted account from your ad, or someone retweets, replies, favorites or clicks on your promoted tweets. So now that Twitter has ads, does it qualify as a valid alternative to Facebook? Who wins this battle? read more

New Mobile Marketing Tools

Posted on by August 15, 2013
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7-13-new-tools-for-mobile-marketingEnergize your Mobile Marketing with These New Tools!

Mobile marketing is changing as quickly as the phone models are, and keeping up with all of the cool gadgets to help us traverse this useful and now-indispensable technology is challenging but fun. So to help you stay informed, here are 3 new tools we’ve found that we now wonder how we ever did without them!

Red Stamp – Red Stamp characterizes themselves as your modern-day social secretary. And they couldn’t be more spot on! Red Stamp is a free Apple app that allows users to send wonderfully customized electronic and printed cards or notes in the blink of an eye. With lots of templates to select from, you are never unable when it comes to finding the perfect design or messaging to send out. Red Stamp integrates together with your contacts, and remembers your name and address. The coolest part is though, is the cards sent via email, text or Facebook and Twitter are free! If you would like send a printed card, it is physically mailed to the address of your choice for only $1.99 each. That’s good, since I can’t ever remember what happened to my stamps. Red Stamp is indeed a time saver! read more

How NOT To Engage Using Social Media

Posted on by August 13, 2013
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7-13-what-not-to-do-with-your-social-media

What Not to Do On Facebook

Anyone watching “Kitchen Nightmares” starring Gordon Ramsey a few weeks ago in the episode featuring Amy and Samy Bouzaglo of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz. must still be shaking their heads in amazement at the social media fiasco that has ensued. It seems the owners didn’t think much of the recommendations offered by the often outspoken Ramsey, then took to their Facebook page to begin an all-out flame war with their critics, huge numbers of Reddit commenters that descended upon their page, and at last count have left some 45,000 comments. This developed into a classic lesson in how NOT to do social media. The always stubborn owner Amy, joined in by her husband, opened fire in an epic flaming match with the commenters, including salty language in all caps, to boot. There is no doubt they’ll be dealing whith this for a while, as the vast majority of the comments were, how should we say, less than complimentary. This was an epic social media train wreck if there has ever been one. read more

Marketing Metrics You Can Ignore

Posted on by August 8, 2013
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7-13-metrics-that-are-safe-to-ignore

How to Safely Ignore Metrics and Get a More Accurate Picture

The term “vanity metrics” has made its way into the marketing vocabulary lately, and for good reason. What a great many use to measure “results” can quite often be misleading and because of this, it’s worth examining some of the marketing metrics you can (and possibly should!) disregard.

Those you can safely ignore:

  • Likes, Followers and Connections – The one with the most followers wins, right? If only it were that easy. In reality, more followers translate to a better bottom line only if you are actively engaging with them, and building a relationship leading to conversions. Merely developing a massive number of likes or followers who don’t make the transition to customers is relatively pointless.
  • Comments – Again, with the objective being to increase conversion,  merely creating a blog post that titillates and produces a large number of comments, but generates no leads, is a waste of a blog post. Make the reason they comment have something related to leading them further along the path toward conversion, such as a topical question.
  • Impressions – Mainly used in your advertising, the sheer number of ad impressions is relatively useless, as it will not indicate any measurable action. Simply having your ad display in front of a couple of million computer screens is no real measure of how it performs. Rather, take a look at click-thru rates and conversion rates.

A terrific piece about this is available at HubSpot.

Those you ought to keep an eye on:

  • Shares – Having people share your content, emails and other media is a step in the right direction. This means that not only is your content making an impact, but it’s also being passed around.
  • Social mentions, citations – Especially now that Google is including social signals (mentions) into the search algorithm, these can be most helpful. Not only will it help with search, but also authority as your content continually gets shared.
  • Conversions – The endgame. You must make sure that your social media and sharable content is actually resulting in more conversions.

Read more about this at Mashable. read more

Make Your Email Marketing More Effective

Posted on by August 6, 2013
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7-13-5-steps-to-better-email-marketingSimple Ways to Breathe New Life Into Your Email Marketing Efforts

You probably have heard all sorts of disparate predictions about the demise of email marketing, but what the evidence shows is that it’s still an integral component of your online marketing mix, both now and down the road. As reported by Sign-Up.to’s 2013 UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report, there has been a strong increase in average email open rates, rising from 18.35 percent to 21.47 percent within the past year. Also, (and more exciting) the average return on your email marketing investment is currently a mind-numbing $44.25 for each dollar spent. (iContact) read more