Last week I had the privilege of attending MarketingProfs’ Digital Mixer in Chicago. For two solid days I enjoyed sessions and keynotes from some of the brightest stars in the digital marketing universe. Just Google the conference and you can quickly see that there’s been no shortage of excellent summary posts. For mine, I’d like to add a take from our unique perspective. First, we are an advertising agency as opposed to an in-house marketer. Plus, while we work with businesses of all sizes, we counsel several small businesses that are very interested in how new media can grow their business. Thus my post will look at some of the best conference takeaways by area (social media, search, blogging, email marketing) through the prism of agency and small business. (more…)

There’s a story that Dean likes to tell. Let’s see if I can get it right …

There’s this entrepreneur who runs a successful store and comes to the conclusion that it’s time to open a second location. So the business owner goes through all of the steps — site selection, building, etc. — and soon he has a bright and shiny new store. The owner flips over the ‘Open’ sign and gleefully takes a seat behind the counter waiting for that first sale. And sure enough that sale eventually comes but it takes longer than expected and the steady stream of traffic that the owner expected would follow never materializes. So the entrepreneur sits in his second shop and rather than watching a steady stream of customers, he watches the tumbleweed.

Seems like a sad tale right? Well, we forgot to tell you a few things. First, the owner built outside of town where he could get a good deal, which is great for the pocketbook but not so great for traffic. Then the owner decided not to put any signs up pointing people to the new store because as he said, “everyone knows about my first store.” The owner also opted not to run any additional advertising campaign to drive traffic to the new store and didn’t include the new store’s address on his current ads. And worse still, the owner never even put up signs in his first store telling existing customers to be sure and check out his new store. When you take these strategic blunders into consideration, it’s no wonder that the sad owner sat watching the tumbleweed blow rather than listening to his cash register ding.

The really sad thing? This parable is acted out all the time as successful offline businesses hungry for a piece of that lucrative internet action, hang out a shingle for their online business. The problem is, often times that’s all they do — hang out the proverbial shingle which in the online world equates to merely building a website. The point of this parable is to illustrate that you would never think of opening a physical store without a plan for how to generate revenue.  The same is true for your online store. Before your ‘opening’ you need to consider the following:

• New Traffic — Hopeful internet entrepreneurs think that traffic will immediately materialize once they go live with their new website. Many seem to think that there is a man who simply pulls an “internet switch” when sites launch that makes them appear on Google, drives a bunch of traffic to the site, and all of a sudden the money starts pouring in. Not so, you need to carefully plan for delivering traffic to your website, both through organic search optimization, and, yes by spending some additional ad dollars on pay-per-click search. These are the signs you put up when your store first opens up that help people find you.
• Current Customers — As mentioned above, one of the easiest things to do (that was missed by the owner in the story thus making it one of the larger strategic blunders) is to simply let your current customers know about your new website. It can be as easy as putting up in-store signage or complex such as offering a bounce-back deal on receipts for a new purchase at the online store. Another great way to drive customers to your online store is to catch them when they are already online via email (you are collecting your customers email right?). Remember that the old adage is true — it’s easier and cheaper to sell more to your current customers than it is to acquire new customers.
• Social Media — Another great way to catch customers when they are online is via social media. Make sure you have a presence for your site on relevant social channels. Not only is this a great way to connect with current customers but it provides them with an easy medium for sharing your business with their network.
• Campaign Integration — You have campaigns going on for your physical business, right? If so, make sure that your website is a meaningful part of that message. Ideally you can find some time to speak to the value that your site adds to the customer experience rather than just limiting it to the ubiquitous URL at the end of the ad. But even that is better than nothing.
• Additional Launch Campaign — In addition to all of these efforts, you may need to look at spending additional dollars outside of your current activities to help launch the site. If you expect the website to be a meaningful part of your business, you need to put the resources behind it to help it do so. Look for high-traffic display ads to help build awareness and clicks for your new site.

These are just a few things you can do to avoid being that lonely shopkeeper. Bottom line: You need as big of a ‘grand opening’ for your new website as you would plan for your a new store location. And it’s more than just a secondary store. As we so often tell clients, your website is a branch of your store that’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year … It deserves attention and dedicated resources to meet this potential.

Do you have launch strategies that have worked well for your site or online store? We’d love to hear about them.

For those of you who haven’t done so already, take a minute and set up a Google Alert or two or ten. Set one up for your name, your company name, your clients, your competitors, etc. Once set up, Google will email you the latest  results (news, web, blogs) for your queries at intervals of your choosing. It’s a great way to see what’s really being said online about you and your brand. Go ahead and do this. It literally takes a minute.

If you were on Facebook this past weekend you no doubt noticed some changes. About a week or two ago those of us with Facebook (fan) pages were invited to transition our content over to the new format. Late last week regular “profile” users were migrated to the much discussed new homepage. Whatever your personal opinion is (though one of my favorite friend status updates from the weekend was ‘Where IS everything?!!! Curse you facebook!’) there are some exciting developments that marketers utilizing Facebook should know about …

1. Pages = Profiles As you can see, pages for organizations and businesses now look more like profile pages. This is a good update for brands with pages as the old layout was clunky and difficult to update and leverage. This means your business can have status updates that are supposed to start appearing in fans news feeds soon (no word from Facebook on when ’soon’ is). This also means that your page will feature profile-like tabs for users to easily navigate plus a wall for you and your fans to interact. Very cool as all of this allows for more frequent interaction with your fans — giving you the potential to build even stronger brand advocates via Facebook.
2. The Need for Speed Definitely a behind-the-scenes update but you will notice it instantly. The ‘new’ Facebook features news feeds that are updated pretty close to real time vs. every 10 minutes as before. So users will now be even more in-tune to the goings on in their network.
3. Cutting the Clutter So with all of this new info coming at users much faster than before the logical progression will be that the quantity of updates will increase as well. To protect against this new onslaught of info, users can now create filters on their homepage (now being called a ’stream’ like that other social site that starts with a ‘T’ …) in an effort to cut through clutter.
4. Relevancy Rules What do filters mean for you? If you start spamming your fans you could get banished to that filter they never check. However, if you keep your messaging relevant then you could make your way into a more frequently monitored filter. Like email — and most online marketing anymore which is becoming more personal by the minute — relevancy is king.
5. Face Time Making pages more like profiles and moving to an almost real-time news feed means that you will probably have to increase your time investment in Facebook. Gone are the days when you could set up a fan page and watch it grow like a garden. You’ll need to get in there and prune it more regularly to keep your updates in this bigger and more competitive ’stream’ high on the wall.
6. More Metrics In addition to the general fan counts page admins had before, you’ll know get more rich metrics on comments, posts, etc. More measurement is always a good thing especially since the new Facebook may require a bit more time thus giving you a better handle on your ROI.

So as you can see, for marketers, these updates are very advantageous though they seem to be raising the ire of many Facebook users. Unlike the toppled terms revision of last month, these updates are probably here to stay as Facebook searches for ways to stay competitive with Twitter and, like all social media sites, strives to monetize.

What do you think of the new Facebook changes? Is it too much like Twitter or just the natural evolution of the online conversation?

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who works for a local social services non-profit that I am on the board of. I also do some ad-hoc marketing consultation for them as well. I was struck at the profundity of a simple statement that she made about their organization as we discussed a website revision and social media opportunities that could be leveraged. She said, “Our organization is led by baby-boomers, staffed by Gen X-ers, and caters largely to millennials. And that’s not always easy to navigate.” At first, I merely thought it was a striking analysis of their organization. Then I took a step back and realized that this paradigm could be applied quite broadly — to clients, communities, the government, and maybe even your business.

And yet later when I shared this with my frequent sounding board, Mike, he replied with an even more sobering analysis. In short, he said that the technical gulf that is growing between these groups is becoming wider by the day. As new media gains more and more traction with the younger demographic the other end of the spectrum complains of “getting it” less. It’s not enough for folks to just “know how to do email” anymore. The internet is becoming — scratch that — already is the hub for connecting with friends, shopping, getting from point A to point B, etc. for a growing majority of the public.

It’s a different form of revolution when compared with other emergent media through the years. With the advent of radio and TV you, if you could afford one, you got one and turned it on. It was a socioeconomic divide. No special skills or training were required. And while you think the same may hold true for new media — just login and manage your account — talk to the other end of the spectrum. They increasingly feel that they don’t have the skills to understand how to do all of this. And granted, they don’t have to as it’s not at the epicenter of life for their generation as it is for those younger. But what if they own a business who’s target market is a younger demographic? If so, then bridging this divide is critical.

There are promising signs, though. Facebook’s fastest growing user segment is the 30+ set. Over 50% of self-identified Twitter users are between the ages of 30 and 49. The challenge to marketers now is to look for ways to bridge this gap. Create a presence for yourself/your business on the most prevalent social media sites (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) because (1) it’s free and (2) it speaks to one end of your pool of constituents. As for the other end — the Boomer+ folks who don’t know what to make of the “SpaceTubeBook”? Help them out. Have a social media 101 mixer at your business. Get some snacks and work through new media together. Or simply do write ups on each type of media in your email newsletter.

If you do this right, you’ll not only do them the service of educating them about new media. You’ll also position your brand at or near the hub of their online networking.

Photo credit: akahodag