Mediaboss Marketing

Email marketing is still the highest-grossing marketing channel per dollar spent, but return on investment is impossible without a list of subscribers to send marketing messages to.

Ascend2, a marketing research firm, investigated the most effective email list acquisition tactics in its latest monthly report by polling 255 B2B and B2C marketers on the list growth strategies that result in the greatest benefits with minimum effort.

Social media advertising was the top-ranking email list growth strategy, according to the study-- with 45% of respondents selecting it as an effective tactic. Social media presents an opportunity for marketers to acquire customer data and curate email lists on a channel where consumers spend a large amount of time, and it does so limited effort on the part of the marketer.

Just 37% of marketers selected social media as a channel requiring the most effort to be successful, likely because Facebook has made people-based marketing a straightforward process for marketers that can afford the ad spend.

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Content marketing presents brands with an opportunity to share news and thought leadership, and was selected as the second-most effective list growth strategy according to Ascend2s report. Following closely behind social media, 42% of respondents indicated that content marketing was a fruitful email acquisition tool.

The problem with content marketing, however, is the large amount of resources that need to be funneled into the channel to create fresh content.

Content marketing was actually selected as the email acquisition strategy that required the most effort, according to Ascend2, garnering 50% of respondents selecting it as a resource-draining solution.

Not surprisingly, many marketers are turning to user-generated content (UGC) to bridge the divide between providing consumers with new material with minimal effort. Stackla, a popular UGC marketing platform, recentlylaunched an email plugin to help email marketers curate content created by fan.

Search engine optimization (SEO) was selected by 38% respondents as the third-most effective email acquisition tactic, but 45% of respondents asserted that it required the most effort. Social logins and sign-up forms were a productive strategy for 36% of respondents, while 30% asserted it drained resources.

Contests and giveaways require the least amount of effort, according to Ascend2, but only 34% of respondents believed they were an effective acquisition tactic.

However, contest and giveaways were viewed as more successful than partnerships or paid search/remarketing campaigns while also requiring less effort.

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Social Media, Content Marketing Most Effective For Growing Email Lists - MediaPost Communications

Kristina: Are we in a strong economy for small business growth currently?

David Pachter, Co-Founder, JumpCrew: Yes, the world is quickly changing and preferences are evolving. People are spending more time at home and money on experiences, with most transactions taking place within a 10-mile radius from home. As the big box stores struggle to connect locally, a window of opportunity exists for businesses to fill the community's needs.

Kristina: Social media use isn't new, by any means, but it seems that more small businesses are turning to social media. What is driving this growth?

David: Businesses have long relied on word-of-mouth referrals as their primary way attract new clients, and today this still works. However, these conversations are taking place on social networks, and businesses realize that they need to have a great social presence to convert these conversations into customers.

Kristina: What do SMBs need to know about social media before diving in?

David: That effective social media marketing for a business or brand is a lot different and harder than having a personal Facebook or Twitter. They need to know more about their audience and their interests. They also need to know what they would like to accomplish and have a realistic plan to be successful.

Kristina: What are your top 3 tips for a sound social media strategy?

David: Know your audience and their interests Know when they're online Optimize your blend of content - social media curation vs. self-promotion ratio- 80/20 is a good standard.

Kristina: What does JumpCrew offer to SMB's and how do you differ from your competitors?

David: JumpCrew offers SMB's the ability to afford a great social media program - Our product leverages our own collaboration software to provide a professional team for less cost than employing a person. We leverage big-data insights to create more effective campaigns and technology to streamline communication with our clients. We maximize a busy executive's creative contributions without disrupting their day.

Tags: JumpCrew, small business trends, social marketing, social marketing strategy

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Top 3 tips for a strong SMB social strategy - BizReport

Unified's report, 'The New Age of Transparency', surveyed 100s of digital marketers from Fortune 500 brands and their agencies. It reveals that this year is "the tipping point" and will be the year where "marketers intend to leverage business intelligence to give them the transparency and context they need to confidently unleash the power of their social advertising investments".

But first, it seems, those marketers need to overcome some challenges. The report reveals that half of social marketers refer to their data as "a kludge" - a term attributed to Jackson W. Granholm, who defined the word in a 1962 issue of the magazine Datamation as "an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole".

Nearly 1 in 4 (38%) of social marketers say they have no capability to "normalize and enrich" social media data to make it usable and 56% have little to no transparency into social advertising performance and ROI.

Furthermore, fragmentation causes challenges and limits social advertisers in reaching their full potential, found the report, with 1 in 3 marketers leveraging 4-10 different buying and/or activation tools for their brand.

Additional findings from the report include:

- 60% have little to no ability to easily share performance analytics with other teams;

- 51% have little to no transparency into which solution is working best;

- 67% of marketers state that "the ability to understand creative and targeting performance at a granular level" is somewhat to extremely important;

- Only 8% of marketers call themselves advanced trailblazers when it comes to business intelligence for social ads - meaning there is a huge opportunity for growth in 2017.

Tags: fragmentation, research, social marketing, transparency

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Social marketers refer to their data as 'kludge' - BizReport

Social media is failing to meet projections as marketers consistently overestimate how much budget they will dedicate to sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

According to a survey of 388 top US marketing execs that is run biannually by The CMO Survey, marketers are now spending 10.5% of their budgets on social media. And they expect that to rise.

Over the next 12 months, that figure is expected to increase to 12.9% while over the next five years marketers estimate that 18.5% of their budgets will go to social media. Consumer product brands expect that proportion to be even higher, at 25.5%.

Yet the survey shows that marketers are consistently failing to meet their own projections for social media spend. Five years ago, marketers estimated they would already be spending 19.5% of their budgets on social media. The actual figure is 10.5%. Marketers have been overestimating their spend by at least four percentage points since the survey began measuring the metric.

Part of the issue could be that marketers are making minimal progress in integrating their social media with their wider marketing strategy, according to the report. Asking to mark out of seven how well the two are integrated, marketers gave a score of just 4.1, a figure that has barely changed over the past five years.

Marketers are also failing to effectively integrate customer information across purchasing, communication and social media channels, with a score of 3.4 the second lowest in the past six years.

The impact of social media also remains difficult to prove. Some 43.3% of those questioned said they havent been able to show impact yet. Some 38.2% claim to have a good qualitative sense of the impact, but not a quantitative impact while just 18.4% have proved the impact quantitatively.

As a result, marketers give social media a ranking of just 3.2 out of seven when it comes to its contribution to company performance, although consumer-focused brands are doing a better job their B2B counterparts.

Mobile marketing is similarly struggling to prove its worth. Marketers say they are currently spending 5.1% of their budgets on mobile, with that expected to grow to 11.6% in the next three years.

Yet how successfully those questioned rate the performance of their mobile marketing has declined. For customer engagement, marketers gave mobile a score of just 3.5 out of seven, down from 3.8 in August 2016. Customer acquisition, customer retention, delivering your brand message, sales and profit saw similar declines.

And mobile still has a minimal contribution to company performance, at 2.7, although this is up from 2.4 a year ago.

The concerns over social media and mobile marketing come amid a backdrop of growing worries about the effectiveness and voracity of digital advertising. Facebook has admitted to a series of measurement errors, while Google found itself at the centre of a brand safety furore after an investigation by The Times claimed brands were funding terrorism on YouTube because their ads were appearing next to illegal or unsavoury content.

Marketers are also beginning to question digital advertising and demand more rigour of its measurement. Most notably, Procter & Gamble issued a call to arms to the industry to demand the clean-up of the digital ecosystem.

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Social media spend failing to live up to expectations - Marketing Week

Walking around any populated environment you would notice most people are on their phones. They are more likely to be surfing the web or scrolling through social media pages. Social media is being used for so much more than simply connected people to their friends. It is being used to organize groups, communicate within a family or church organization, sell products, alert people about nearby events, and can even be used to send out graduation and marriage announcements. Also joining this long list of possibilities is the opportunity social media provides as a marketing technique.

Social media is at our fingertips making it an advantage for business owners to reach people regardless of location, thereby allowing one to expand their business outside of their specific geographical location. Businesses can keep their private information and product lists on an all flash array but their marketing information can be most beneficial when it is posted on social media. It allows businesses to stay connected with their customers and help get their name and product information into the world.

Engage with customers in real-time across every channel, no matter the medium. Use visitor tracking and email analytics to know what your customers are seeing.

Like with many business techniques, social media marketing can be the wrong choice if businesses dont take the steps to use it in the most beneficial way. Four tips to help businesses use social media marketing to their advantage are as follows; ask customer to follow your social media sites, use tools to manage profiles while refraining from automation, expand your social media horizon, and remember social media is visual media.

Ask Customers to Follow You

One of the most important things to remember when starting a social media account for your business is that it doesnt help unless you have followers. Letting customers know that they can follow your business on social media will get your name out there and reach more customers. You can also post about new sales and offers leading to more people visiting your store. Another useful tip is to add a link to your business website. This will allow your customers and followers to buy more of your product from the comfort of their own home.

Use a Tool to Manage Profiles While Refraining from Total Automation

Social media management tools allow users to share the same post on multiple websites. These types of tools work especially well with small business who are struggling to maintain more than one social media account. Social media management tools provide tracking and time-saving features such as message scheduling, merging with other marketing and business tools, and social analytics. Some of these tools include Buffer, Hootsuite, IFTTT, SocialFlow and Sprout Social.

Staying away from total automation and posting something new and unique every so often can keep your followers and customers entertained. By posting without using social media management tools, it can show your followers that you are just like them and that your business is user-friendly. Posting personal things and replying to comments can help build a relationship between you and your followers, leading to a professional relationship between the business and its customer.

Expand Your Social Media Horizon

Avoid limiting your business to the top social media websites and keep in mind that not everyone uses those more popular sites. Social media marketing allows small and large businesses to take advantage of social networking. Expanding media uses allows for an outreach to more potential customers. As you determine what social media websites work best for you and your business, take advantage of management tools to keep your business active across several social sites at the same time.

Social Media is Visual Media

People spend hours scrolling through social media feeds. They scroll pasts long paragraphs and are more likely to stop and look at a picture or watch a video. Knowing this, you can get people to stop scrolling and look at your post by using colorful and creative posts that attract attention. Creating interesting images, engaging fans and posting photos of your business events are ways you can add to the visual appeal of your social media presence.

Social media is everywhere and instead of avoiding all the teenage rants and political rumors, businesses should use it to their advantage. Many businesses have created social media marketing teams to help do just that. The goal of these teams is to find ways to reach out to customers and keep them interested in the business. Social media teams connect with other company employees and customers across the country to help the business continue to succeed. Keeping up with the latest internet trends will help businesses, both big and small, to keep the attention of past and future customers.

RickDelgado

Freelance Writer

Ive been blessed to have a successful career and have recently taken a step back to pursue my passion of writing. Ive started doing freelance writing and I love to write about new technologies and how it can help us and our planet. I also occasionally write for tech companies like Dell.

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How to Do Social Media Marketing Right - Customer Think