Thursday, August 25, 2011

Need A Social Media Expert?


After our blog of yesterday “Bing To Index Facebook” I have to ask the leading in question, Do you need a Social Media Expert on your staff or team?


As Social Media grows as an accepted form or marketing, advertising and sales do you need a Social Media Expert? If you are a Social Media enthusiast you are probably jumping up and down saying Yes! Yes! Yes! If not, you’re sitting there thinking ya right. Social Media is a bunch of busy bodies sitting around with nothing else to do.


I doubt if you even have to guess where I stand on this issue. Yes!


No matter what side your on, pro or con I think that we can all agree that when a SM program fails it is because of 1 of 2 reasons, either the company went out and set up a Facebook pang with a twitter account in a loud voice declares “We are doing Social Media” and does not work to be established and noticed and makes no consorted effort to become a involved player or a company goes out and tries to buy their way to the top without any real strategy. Wrong platform, wrong content, and they push out there message thinking it works like traditional advertising does.


Think again, Social Media heavy on the SOCIAL.


I have found and seen that companies that are doing well in Social Media Marketing for the most part have a person or group of (excited) people who serve as the core to their program. This is a person or people who want to be using the social channels any way they can, tying to push the envelope to deliver the kind of INTERACTION MESSAGE that the F’s (friends, fans, followers) want to see, hear and interact with.


Now the key question for me, Can this function or should this function be outsourced? IN some ways yes and others you better think about it.


Using a company like mine can help you plan out your attack, organize it, putting together the strategy, policies and general education of your employees on what to do with this new tool. Some people say that what they, an outside source might not be able to do is actually speak for the company, but again I question that. In the Larson plan there is 1 person and1 person alone that works on any given account. They know you, love you, understand you. They can get so close that they are able to speak as “the company” would. Then you need to trust them to do it. Can you? If you hold the leash too tight your Social Media will stagnate and stall.


Larson Notes & Satire: As a company I have for the last 13 years devoted myself to lead generation and the kind of advertising and marketing the gets customers to my clients FAST. Today, not tomorrow. They don’t have time to wait, and I don’t have the patience. So where does Social Media fit in? When we started at it was a little more each year, then the year became a little more each month and the month became a week and the week became a day. Will the day become an hour? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve you if you want us.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.








Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Bing To Index Facebook

Bing has made an announcement that might prove to be a big hit, I mean a very big hit for those of us now are using Facebook as a Social Media Marketing tool and at the same time huge blow to Google’s dominance. Starting now, yes now, Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its search results. Been there and did some searches and yes it is up and running on the Bing search engine! So now if you search for something on Bing and you have activated Facebook results, you will see the pages, products and websites your friends (even their faces show up) like and recommend way up in results, no matter if that website normally ranks first second or heaven forbid, the last page on a search.

Perhaps even more interesting is that these results will appear totally independent of any traditional and what we thought of as normal SEO practices. If your friends like it, it will appear on the first page. Magic?


More than ever for companies engaged in Social Media Marketing “It's Not What you Know, but Who you Know”. Content is important but it is who you are rubbing elbows with that will be making a major difference.


The more your business is visible on Facebook, the better chance of your website being Liked and your content, products and services being pushed higher up on this new social search results.


If your business has not been active in Social Media Marketing you better get it going. (A pause for a commercial message: At Larson’s we know what we are doing and we can get you going on a Social Media Marketing campaign, quickly, easily and completely)


Yet, content is still King, long live the King. The only way a page will be Liked by the masses on Facebook is if it contains great content. So don’t think you can park your content on the side and get all your friends to like you and you will be projected up onto the heaven of web search pages, the first page. It is still going to take work, lots of work. Varied content, blog posts, videos, images and audio, not to mention content that is optimized. And not to add more challenges but this does not kill off traditional SEO. Pages will still need to be "found" in order to be Liked from this new Bing button. Total strangers to your business can still influence search results, so SEO still matters.


It's easy to see that Bing is relying, or are they hoping and praying on using Facebook for social search. You might think that, because it's focused only on Facebook, this news is not totally earth shaking, as Facebook goes past three-quarters of a billion users across the world, but, it is. At least to Bing. Consider now that Facebook users 750,000000,000 (looks more impressive when you type out all the zeros) of them now have a reason to use Bing rather than Google.


Another interesting thought is that Facebook could technically block Google from indexing any or all of its content. This would and could kill Google’s need to heavy Facebook users.


In the words of Bing:
"At Bing, our mission is to help you make faster, more informed decisions. We designed a new way to experience search, focusing on great design, task completion, instant answers, and vertical categories like shopping and travel to help you make decisions faster. While we’ve made great strides in these areas, there is a huge opportunity for improvement. Today, search remains largely driven by facts and links – we think it’s time to change that.


Research tells us that 90% of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process. This “Friend Effect” is apparent in most of our decisions and often outweighs other facts because people feel more confident, smarter and safer with the wisdom of their trusted circle. A movie critic may pan the latest summer block buster, but your friends say it’s the feel good movie of the year, so you ignore the critic and go (and wholeheartedly agree). Historically, search hasn’t incorporated this “Friend Effect” – and 80% of people will delay making a decision until they can get a friend’s stamp of approval. This decision delay, or period of time it takes to hunt down a friend for advice, can last anywhere from a few minutes to days, whether you’re waiting for a call back, text, email or tweet.


Today, Bing is bringing the collective IQ of the Web together with the opinions of the people you trust most, to bring the “Friend Effect” to search. Starting today, you can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.


You can quickly see what your friends like and are sharing. Find and connect with the right friends faster. Pick the brains of friends of who live where you’re traveling and share shopping lists with your own team of retail gurus. And, return the favor to your friends by liking more things on the Web. With one click you can let your network know that you like a brand, an article, a celebrity or even a place. Because we know the best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and recommendations of your friends."


If you are a heavy social or local Social Networking person Google search results, while complete are now less relevant as my person search needs become more social and localized. How many online socialites are there? Now you can start to understand why Google has been frantically trying to enter the social space with Google +1. Maybe, for once it's too little, too late for Google.


Larson Notes & Satire: Ill just let the above words set in and let you think on it for a while. If you are not hammering away at Social Media Marketing like we have (active since 2006) you better. I’ve been saying it over and over. Get involved in Social Media Marketing for your business, and then Google started doing “Real Time Search”. At that time the Larson web site http://www.larsonassociates.ws/ saw a 1000% weekly hit increase, yes you heard me 1000%. Now with this new Bing deal? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve ourselves and you. Will we see another 1000% increase? That would be nice.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Holiday Email Planning

HO! HO! HO! Its’ that time of the year. Yes it’s time to start planning your holiday emailing.


If you have been at this a while you already have a list of email addresses you can use. If not here are some holiday tips to get you in the right direction.


Start with building your subscriber list with your Social Media F’s (you know, Friends, Fans, Followers) this might be your greatest resource in securing email address fast. IN addition it will cement your Social Media and your business marketing together giving you a maximum reach with your Social Media Marketing and (hopefully) fewer kick backs and spam digs on your account. If you are providing content that is worth their, your recipient’s interest with things such as educational tips, valuable coupons or time sensitive discounts you on the right track. At the same time, through Social Media alert your F’s that you have special offers heading their way and that they should be on the lookout for them. At the same time if you are hitting multiple Social Networks you should be tailoring your offer and content specifically for them. This is not print (like we talked about yesterday, and it is not as costly or difficult to change copy. Be flexible like the channel demands and always end with a call to action! Tell them what to do to BUY!


At the same time you can be testing the format and different kinds of offers to see what entices your customers and prospects to take the action you want, do they want $10.00 off on a large purchase or does a 25% off grab their attention more? Give it a try.


As for make-up and the visual aspects of your email, test where to put a call to action (buy) button, up, down, right, left? Color, red, green, blue, yellow, pink (?). Then clean up those navigation bars Make them visible and make sure they work!!! No I’m not kidding, check the links!


Then as stated above, segment your target audience into categories, site you got them from, age, sex, geography. If you want to take this down deeper, take a look at the activity of your F’s on your list. At the active or inactive? Another step is to find out (dare I say ask) how often you’re F’s want you to contact them. Not that they can’t change their minds on how much email they want from you but at least you are engaging them and teaching them to talk to you.


As with any marketing campaign the key word is always engagement. You want to have as many people as possible talking and interacting with you. Only in this way will your message, your brand, your offer(s), penetrate the marketing noise that bombards your customers and prospects.


Larson Notes & Satire: Start now friends. If holiday marketing is important to your business now is the time to get into gear. If it is Halloween your almost too late. Thanksgiving, run fast. Christmas, you have enough time if you start out as a good pace. It can get easier. If you started working on this a year ago, yes look back I did a blog like this about a year ago, you would already be working on what you need to be doing to have it all in place. Heck you might have made the Back to School blitzes that were going on in July and early August.


Email does work. Its cheep so you’re ROI can be very good. But if done wrong, you will get a black eye to how not just your customers and prospects see you but how the search engines and internet providers see you has well. Do it wrong and you will end up with 2 black eyes.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.






Monday, August 22, 2011

Profit Loss Of Direct Mail

Ampersand Graphics


Most of you know that direct mail is one of the 3 legs of a Larson Target Marketing Plan. If you have been following us for any length of time you know the 3 parts are Direct Mail, Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing.


Most of my clients and maybe even you want to shy away from Direct Mail. I understand, there are (necessary) expenses involved. Yet it is or can be a crucial element to a complete program working on multi channels and levels. So let’s take a look at the P&L of a direct mail program.


You need to start by measuring each individual marketing campaign as a unit not part of a monthly or quarterly figure. The application of overhead expenses depends on the nature of the marketing campaign and the elements you are using.


You want to know is Response Rate %, Average Order Value, Sales Per Piece, Complete Costs, Cost of Order Fulfillment. It is in finding out or knowing these fugues that you can make educated choices on what is happening, what to do, what to change and how to get and make it better.


By being able to analyze all the metrics you are able to implement the actions needed to either take corrective actions during the campaign or to take advantage of new markets that unfold as the campaign goes on.


Average Unite Price and Average Order Value. The average unit price is calculated by dividing your gross sales by the number of orders.


Response Rate and Service or Unites per order. This is a way for marketers to rapidly fix any P&L imbalances. You measure this by the total number of orders by the total number of mailed pieces. If you add in current clients, they should be higher than if you only use new clients or prospects.


Your Cost Of Goods or Services. As a main part of your success you need to be monitoring all the elements of your Cost of Goods and Services. These costs include things like, product/service costs, freight, shipping, mark downs, etc.


Fulfillment Costs. These costs include everything that is involved with not just receiving a client’s orders and inquiries but shipping them out as well. Remember the costs of returns as well.


Advertising / Production costs. In a direct mail or print campaign this can be the largest cost center. Creative costs, print costs, mailing costs. If you look at your response rate, as it goes up (or down) the % of the campaign as a % of sales goes up and down. This is the number that scares away most potential direct mailers from working on and with this channel.


General Overhead. Can’t get away from running the company and the costs involved. Even if you did nothing these costs exist. Do you know what your break even is, if you do NOTHING? Rent, salaries, gas, water, electric, waist removal.


Once you have identified all your costs you can start to go to work. As you do your first and them more campaigns you will start to have a personal company benchmark, until then you might be able to pull out competitors results or industry averages. With this benchmarking step you can evaluate your program and your current position.


Larson Notes & Satire: Start talking real numbers in sales. Don’t be using Monopoly money but real dollars that can make or (sorry to say) break your company. With knowledge comes power. If you’re going to jump into direct mail be smart about it. More and more the mail box is become empty. Why do you think the US Postal Service is losing money at such an alarming rate? No one is sending mail. This is why it has become, if for no other reason such a powerful channel you your overall marketing plan. If you do nothing else and have put a solid offer together you should expect 1.5% to 3% return. To me that is not good enough. All you need to do is put in a little telemarketing to call up each and every one of those mail recipients and your numbers should at the least double.


You got to hammer down your attack and make it pay, else go and blow your money, your competition will be happy to see you waist your efforts.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.









Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Are Likes A Positive ROI On Facebook?

While ROI can be hard to calculate on and in Social Media, one of the top ways people and companies are doing it is by the 3 Fs, friends, fans and followers. With over 500 million people going in and out of Facebook alone it is a sizable place where you need to be in your Social Media Marketing attack, no matter if your B2B or B2C.


You are betting that your biggest fans are going to become your biggest marketer proponents in social media. That being said the more “LIKES” you get the more your sphere of influence becomes. In addition “Likes” are valuable because they help you get to know who your best customers are as well as who your best influencers are and (here is the biggie) what they want to see out of your postings for your company. The more they “like” the more you and your company get sent out into the Wild World of the Social Media world.


If you start to offer specialty coupons or discounts you can see how your promotions work out in real time. You can figure out transactional data like order history, time of day, kinds or promotions that work in Social Media. The possibilities are endless. If you keep up the attack posting information, promotions, special “fan” deals you should not only see monetary increases to your bottom line but see a better longer ROI in a shorter amount of time.


Larson Notes & Satire: Ok so it might not be all rosy in the land of Social Media Marketing, at least as much as you want it to be. Sad truth is that 3% to 10% of your fan base is going to opt out and or make your posts “hidden” at a minimum. So make sure you are relevant and inspiring each and every day!


Real ROI is about sales. It is about your Friends, Fans and Followers taking action of some kind on your behalf. You don’t want to be spinning your wheels; you need to dig in and cash in. you need action, you NEED sales!


In and of themselves Fans and their Likes do not make for a strong ROI, but it is a start. Without them you have already lost the battle. The more of the 3F’s the merrier. If you haven’t started call us, and we can make it happen for you. If you have already dipped your toe into the Social Media Marketing world, and need a push, again call us and we can help take you to the next level.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates


https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.










Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Social Media ROI


I have been spending way too much time pondering and thinking, reading and studying about Social Media and ROI. But then I am spending time, more time than it is worth (maybe) on this marketing channel. So where is the pay back? Where is MY ROI?


Is it the 3 F’s (fans, friends, followers)? Is it the number of calls or emails of interesting in your product of service? Is it the number of actual sales? In all my studying and real time experience, it is or has become all of the above. Yes the more exposure the more hits the more hits the more prospect inquiries the more inquiries the more sales. Makes sense doesn’t it? To my simple mind it does.


Now it seems that most marketers want to put a hard number on what this site is doing this for me or how that site gave me this hit, and while that is important and should be kept track of I tend to look at it as how many hits am I getting in my overall Social Media Marketing efforts. I am in over or on 100 sites some I work some I do nothing with unless I get an inquiry. I try to set them up on automatic postings and getting an email saying I got a reply as much as possible. Is it working? Sometimes.


That being said a report I read somewhere said that over 70% of respondents expect that they will be able to tie in Social Media Marketing into some form of ROI. To date another report said that as of now only 40% of respondents can put a ROI number on their efforts now.


For me I still say the best strategy is to put your ROI in terms of what it is doing to your sales funnel. Yes I still believe in the sales funnel. Silly me huh?


Last May Facebook introduced their version of an ads dashboard which shows not just the number of people who clicked on a “sponsored” ad but how it compares with its potential reach. Pretty neat. It also lets marketers look at the clicks as compared with the number of connections or those actually taking action on the click. So maybe there is progress being made. Or not.


Larson Notes & Satire: Yes friends throw that Social Media Mud! The more mud you throw the more is going to find a wall to stick on! As I said above I am on some 100 or more sites and growing (found a new one yesterday) and with each new week I am getting more inquiries about my serves directly from my Social Media Marketing efforts. Not as many as I should get or deserve to get but it has seen a marked improvement. That does not mean I am abandoning telemarketing and direct mail. No not at all, I am ADDING to my already well oiled machine of multichannel marketing attack methods. If you can handle it the more channels the merrier. Just remember if you’re going to add do it well or don’t do it. If you can’t do it with at least a 90% proficiency level drop it our outsource it to someone like me. If not you are only wasting your time!



“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.










Monday, August 15, 2011

Reach Out And Call

We have more marketing choices than ever before. Yes, there is mail, there is email, there is SEO, there is Social Media, but don’t underestimate the phone. You can twit all you want, you can blast away you can fill a mail box but until you talk to the prospect and sell something nothing is going to happen. It can be their dime or yours but some way shape of form someone has to reach out and make the connection.

Those businesses and marketers who put all their eggs in one basket, who fail to put together a well balanced multi-channel attack will miss out on connecting with some their prospects. Systems that want prospects to opt in to receive content can help a marketing harvest names and numbers, if they opt in. Systems that ask and ask and ask, but give back almost nothing.


Social media might be a wonderful thing (jury is still out) but until you pick up the phone and actually speak to the prospect you will never know.


In one survey put together by Rasorfish an interactive agency, people are STILL more inclined at a when they want something to go to a company’s actual web site or make a connection over the phone and talk to a rep.


Larson Notes & Satire: Telemarketing, telesales call it what you want, that is the main focus of how we help companies attract new clients. Sure we do mail, we do social media marketing, we can email blast, we get involved in SEO but in telemarketing we can go out and get the prospect rather than sitting back and waiting, hoping that they will call us. Now between you and me, I’d rather be more proactive in my sales rather than reactive.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.