Mediaboss Marketing

Not long ago, I invited Christi McNeill on my podcast, All The Social Ladies. Christi is the Social and Digital Strategy Manager for Patron Spirits and is described as a communicator who just gets it by USA Today. After building the social mediaprogram at Southwest airlinesto its current level of success, she was personally head-hunted by Patrons VP of Digital Marketing, Adrian Parker. Being the voice of a trusted and iconic brand is no easy feat, and I wanted to share with you three key insights from Christis interview that reveal her path to success.

Get Buy-In

How do you get buy-in to impact change in your organization through social media? Not all brands view social in the same way, and Christi has experienced both sides of the fence. Early on, Patron had identified the need for a specific digital practice. The brand got it and wanted Christi to do more. Having an executive who is your social media cheerleader and evangelist is key. Patrons CMO, Lee Applbaum, is a frequent user of social media. Having a C-Level advocate can make it easier for the entire company to get behind social. Dont have this? Christis advice is to provide regular education as to why social is so critical and important for your brand.

Bring Social Strategy to Life

There are three areas that Christi thinks are vital for social strategy to succeed:

1. Find your brand advocates and bring them to life. Re-share and re-broadcast what they are saying to show you are truly listening. Its all about maximizing the shared voice online.

2. Resolve misperceptions through education. One of the ways Patron does this is by telling the story of its handcrafted liquor in an authentic way across social channels.

3. Unlock the passion. Provide great content for your brand lovers to make them super fans. Look for conversational trends and tap into them. Mirror your content to be part of these trends and make your participation relevant.

Follow this link:
Social Media Insights From The Lady "Who Just Gets It" - Christi McNeill

Compared to traditional advertising, social marketing lets businesses reach their target audience with greater precision at lower cost. The barriers to entry are so low that the number of social channels and tactics available to small businesses can be dizzying.

With a growing number of available social marketing tools, it can be easy to get distracted from the task at hand: helping your business grow through customer acquisitions and market insights.

Here are some tips to stay on task and make the most of your social media budget:

1. Think of every campaign as an opportunity to gain insights about who your customers are (and arent). You need to generate sales. Along the way, you can learn a lot about your market. If youre spending money and not seeing a return in terms of customer demographic insights, youre probably missing out.

Social marketing can be targeted precisely, measured and tracked. For example, Facebook Advertising offers a number of ways to segment and target users. Running multiple campaigns targeted to different audiences can help you validate your assumptions about your target segments.

2. Content is still king. Social marketing has forced brands to think creatively about content in order to engage their consumers. The trend towards content marketingthat is, sharing relevant and non-commercial content with your followers in an effort to build a loyal followinghas upped the ante for the average business trying to establish an attractive social presence. The need to feed your feed with content can be overwhelming, and the cost of hiring a social media marketer can be prohibitive.

To make your budget go further, Toronto-based startup Blurbi enables companies to find and curate content for their feeds using freelance social marketers at the cost of a dollar per post. Combined with a link-shortening and call-to-action tool like Snip.ly, a content-first approach can provide entertainment to your followers and drive traffic to your website.

3. Join forces with a complementary brand. Marketing partnerships are powerful. By joining forces with another business that is selling different products to similar customers, you can extend your reach at lower cost. This might mean swapping in-store advertising or cross-promoting each others business online.

Partnershop is a Toronto-based startup that facilitates marketing alliances over social media. According to Partnershops CEO, Jason Silver, "businesses that work together to cross-promote each other through social media reach an average of 26 times more new customers per post than they otherwise would by posting on their own."

4. Leverage your influential followers. Followers acquired through Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere can become brand advocates. Take some time to research who among your followers has the credibility and reach to earn you more potential customers, and surprise them with a random act of kindness.

Original post:
Four ways to make the most of your social media budget

With an endless gamut of channels coming into play in todays complex world of marketing, B2B marketers often find themselves reeling under the pressure of which one to choose. Theres digital in general, mobile marketing and how our omnipresent devices are changing everything about marketing. Theres social media marketing and, of course, theres traditional marketing, which still remains an important part of the equation. However, in the B2B industry, not every marketing channel makes sense for every business. No one-size-fits-all-formula works either. What works then? In order to find the right marketing channel for your business, youve got to be a little inquisitive, a little more intuitive and a whole lot more focused.

One goal, many strategies know the difference

While your marketing efforts should be customer-centric, you may go about it through different marketing routes.

Traditional marketing. Display ads, direct mail, banner ads, billboards, TV, radio, and a whole lot of offline tactics are important when it comes to attracting the attention of your target customers. These are traditional marketing tactics and, for a long time, were the only way to do business..

Digital marketing. I like to think of digital marketing as traditional marketing done online, as the basic premise remains the same engaging the customers and responding to their concerns. While digital marketing may seem like a less human interaction than face-to-face marketing, remember theres a human behind every desktop or mobile screen that youre targeting.

Social media marketing. With marketers increasing their social media spending at a steady rate, this has emerged as one of the most popular marketing channels for B2B companies. Great for building a brand image for your business, for listening and gathering insights, and for finding and engaging with prospects and customers, this marketing strategy works best when integrated with other marketing tactics.

Mobile marketing. Mobile has, without question, taken over as the most preferred medium for research and consumption of content on the Internet. As such, a designing and developing all marketing strategies with a mobile first mindset isnt an option, its a necessity.

Marketing strategies must overlap

Originally posted here:
Understanding the Channels: An Overview of Social, Mobile, Digital and Traditional Marketing for B2B

Understanding the audience is key to success in marketing and thanks to our ability to gather data from transactions and social networks there's more opportunity to analyze customer actions than ever before.

Atlanta-based Insightpool is launching a new version of its audience cultivation and conversion platform aimed at giving brands greater insight into and control over their marketing.

Insightpool 2.0 uses predictive analytics and machine learning to drive conversion and return on investment for brands. Instead of needing to piece together multiple tools or services to execute large scale digital campaigns, users can target the audiences most likely to engage with a brand. They can also drill down into the most relevant set of messages to produce the desired results.

The platform delivers real time, goal-specific analytics so that brands can easily understand what resonates with individuals and tailor their efforts accordingly.

"Marketing software is mature enough that ROI should be expected as it is in any other technology category. Because Insightpool is focused on conversion, we can deliver results that drive the bottom line and not just vanity social metrics," says Devon Wijesinghe, Insightpool's CEO. "Insightpool's level of sophistication for social marketing is unrivaled, and completes the full engagement cycle to achieve measurable business results that scale".

Using proprietary algorithms that can be custom tuned for specific organizations, Insightpool can predict social engagement using over 60 variables. It can integrate with existing social media management software so that businesses can take advantage of its insights without upsetting their existing operations.

Key features of version 2.0 include 'social drip' campaign management and optimization designed to generate leads. Social predictor rankings that use proprietary algorithms and machine learning to analyze and identify people with the highest potential for conversion. It also allows easy identification of the most effective messages along with social customer relationship management integration and a real-time dashboard for easy management.

You can find more information on the Insightpool website.

Image Credit:Kidsana Maimeetook / Shutterstock

See the original post:
Insightpool updates its audience analysis tools for marketers

Mobile Social Marketing - Intro Video
Introduction Video.

By: Broadlink Development

Continue reading here:
Mobile & Social Marketing - Intro Video - Video