WebProNews

Tag: Inbound Marketing Summit

  • Why Email Marketing Still Trumps Social

    Social media has been at the center of marketers’ attention for years now, as many still grapple with finding their ideal strategies. There’s no question that social media has opened up many new doors, and should not be ignored. That said, email marketing is still one of the most effective channels.

    Have you had more success with social media or email marketing? Comment here.

    WebProNews recently had a chat with Chris Brogan at the Inbound Marketing Summit, and while most of the discussion centered around online video, email marketing came up, and some pretty good points were raised.

    As our own Michael McDonald noted, “Social’s great, but not everybody goes to Twitter everyday, and maybe I have Twitter and Facebook, but not LinkedIn…but all of these people have email, and they check that every day.”

    “I’ve got a stat like that for consumer brands,” said Brogan. “93% of people have a daily opt-in relationship with at least one consumer brand. 15% on Facebook. 4% on Twitter.”

    “93% of people say, ‘I would like to get mail from this company every day…15% Facebook. 4% Twitter,” Brogan reiterated. “…and there’s no age skew in that. It starts at age 13, I think, in the study. And it’s young people just the same…maybe don’t want to be friends with Coke, but they do necessarily want the deals…”

    “Send me an email, and tell me, you know, if I can get a deal on Mello Yello this week…” Mike agreed.
    (more…)

  • Will The Web Do for TV What It’s Done For Print?

    TV is going through a revolution right now. That’s going to be felt more on a mainstream level over the next couple years. Connected TVs and TV-related devices are coming out faster than ever, with major offerings from Apple and Google leading the charge. 

    Do you have a connected TV or device? If not, do you intend to get one? Let us know. 

    At the Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxborough, MA, WebProNews spoke with Steve Garfield, author of the book "Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business",  about how businesses and people in general can get easily get video online and gain exposure. With this connected TV revolution, it’s going to be more more of an attractive idea than ever. All of a sudden, your next door neighbor’s show about cats is available right alongside Animal Planet. WebProNews Video is on right alongside CNBC, the Wall Street Journal’s web videos and CNN. Netflix is available right alongside HBO. Those funny videos Tosh.0 always shows will be available right alongside Tosh.0. You get the idea. 

    People and businesses who wish to establish large viewerships are going to want to get on as many web channels as possible. YouTube’s obviously the big one, but it’s not the only one. Do some exploring and find new places where your videos can be seen.  Blip.tv, for example, will let you upload a video, and create iPhone, iPad, and Flash versions for you. You can hit a button and it goes to YouTube, Yahoo Video, Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

    Social media and blogs will play a huge role. Make sure your videos are embeddable. Garfield recommends building a community before you put your videos out there. You can do this through Twitter, Facebook, and email. Share your stuff with your friends and followers, and if it’s good, they’ll share it with their own, and it can spread from there. 

    Build a community and share your videos.

    Garfield says a lot of people think they have to hire a crew, get expensive software, etc., but often times, they can just use cameras they already have. A lot of phones these days take pretty good video. The real key is in the passion. If you’re passionate enough about what you’re doing building an audience might be easier than you think. 

    As far as businesses specifically, videos can help humanize your business. You can use video to show poeple how you’re different from your competitors. You can show off your place of business, your team, etc. It just helps customers get to know you, and that can help create a positive reputation in their minds. 

    Here’s the interview with Garfield:

    Ramifications for the TV Industry? 

    So far, the web hasn’t had quite the impact on TV as it has on print. Sometimes it’s simply more comfortable and convenient to read from a computer or a phone than it is to watch movies or television programming. That’s because a lot of people don’t have connected TVs or set-ups enabling them to watch  online video from their televisions. Obviously, that’s on its way to changing. I think it’s safe to say we’re going to see increased adoption of such devices, making watching online programming more convenient and more enticing to more people than ever. 

    As that happens, one has to wonder if we’re not going to see a similar trend to what we have seen with print (or music for that matter).  With so many more options available, people will look more and more beyond what the major networks are offering, and what the cable/satellite providers are providing.  

     

    Funny or Die - Now it's a TV Channel.

    With the entire web on TV, the number of channels you get simply becomes unlimited. It also means that unedited and commercial free content increases. As more people watch online video, more producers will create more high quality content, because they know they can find an audience. It’s going to be a snowball effect.

    Marketing in general will be easier and better than ever thanks to various forms of online marketing – search, social media, email, etc. Imagine a new web show starring Justin Bieber. Such a show could find a massive, targeted audience without spending  a dime on marketing. Bieber could simply tweet about it and his entire audience would know about it. Plus, they would spread the word to their friends. 

    It seems clear that we are just gearing up for a powerful change in TV, and it’s going to be great for viewers and for businesses. 

    What do you think? Comment here. 

  • A Cloud of Missed Opportunities

    A Cloud of Missed Opportunities

    Cloud computing is responsible for a large amount of untapped marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes. We tend to think about enterprise level businesses when we think of cloud infrastructures and implementations, but in reality, small businesses have just as much reason to turn to the cloud than the big companies, if not more. 

    In  fact, according to Yuchun Lee, CEO of IBM’s Unica, less than 10 percent of software spend is going toward cloud solutions, and Unica is seeing adoption more on a department-by-department basis as it is. "It’s amazing, but most companies I’ve talked to…there’s no standard processes for marketers," says Lee. "There’s no standard organization structure, no standard technology, so this need for standard, I think, will greatly benefit the whole industry of marketing." 

    Watch our interview with Lee from the Inbound Marketing Summit:

    Small businesses don’t always think they have the resources to have the online presence they have, when in fact there are many tools at their disposal, via the cloud, that might be more cost-effective than they think. In fact, this was something of a running theme at the summit – there are simply so many tools online now (with more being developed seemingly everyday), that you can put together effective marketing campaigns for next to nothing. The same goes for managing marketing. 

    The cloud offers opportunities that make it so businesses don’t have to invest their own resources as heavily, to develop the online presence that they want. 

    "A company should focus on, strategically, what they’re good at, and what’s core to their business, and sometimes managing computers and hardware may not be the core for some of these companies, so the cloud’s a great option," says Lee. 

    Do yourself a favor and explore the cloud options that are out there. Last week, we talked about Appmatcher from RackSpace, which aspires to be something of a Match.com for business apps. That might be a good place to start. That’s not an endorsement, just a suggestion. I’d figure out what you’re really setting to accomplish and do some searching. 

  • Humanizing Your Brand is Inexpensive and Can Pay Off

    Humanizing Your Brand is Inexpensive and Can Pay Off

    Consumers like brands that they can identify with, and it’s hard to identify with a business itself unless you can get to know a little bit about it. Social media and online video are pretty powerful tools for helping consumers get to know a business, and it can cost next to nothing. 

    As mentioned in another article about how businesses can utilize video as the TV industry is revolutionized by connected devices, WebProNews spoke with "Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business" author Steven Garfield about humanizing your brand with video. 

    For example, you can use video to show people how you’re different from your competitors. You can show off your place of business, your team, etc. It just helps customers get to know you, and that can help create a positive reputation in their minds.  

    We also spoke with Tim Washer, who  works on Cisco’s social media marketing. He shared some examples of how Cisco does this. One way is through humor. For example, Cisco once had a Valentine’s Day campaign about how an $80,000 router would make a great gift for your lover.

    Obviously, they don’t expect to sell expensive routers as valentine’s gifts, but they do leave an impression with such an ad. People remember it. One issue with using humor, as he mentions, is that you need to keep getting funnier. Here’s the slideshow from a presentation Washer game on humor at the Summit:

    Ims10 tim washer

    View more presentations from Tim Washer.

    Humor isn’t the only way to get through to people, however, it might be easier than you think to humanize your brand through video, without using up too many resources. Washer mentioned a Cisco employee, who was going on a trip to Malaysia and India, and they sent a flip camera with her, which she used to make a little Travel show of her trip. She used the camera to take shots of different foods she was trying, different places she was going, etc. She also slipped some business in there. She talked about the business people she met with, the challenges they were facing, and what Cisco’s products could do to help. 

    Cisco is a large company, but it takes very little resources to do something like this. With online video in more living rooms, it only adds to the incentive. 

    Another interesting point Washer made, is that the cost of something like this is essentially the time of the people involved. This employee was taking the trip anyway. The only added cost (other than the camera, which you might already have anyway) is the time it takes to put something together. For something like this particular campaign (or show, if you will), that’s not too much. 

    The benefits? Letting customers get to know you, and possibly like you. That’s worth a lot. 

  • What’s Going on in Search and eBusiness

    At SMX East in New York, Bing announced new Webmaster Tools features including a link report. Google also added percent change data to its own Webmaster Tools query reports. More on these here.

    Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee liveblogged a keynote with Yelp COO Geoff Donaker, who shared some interesting stats about Yelp. He says they got about 38 million unique visitors last month on the web site, they have about 13 million reviews, and they have about three million users per month using Yelp apps. He also commented on Yelp’s algorithm, saying, on a business page, recency is one of the primary factors. To quote Matt’s notes, "They want the most recent, trusted reviews showing up top."

    As you may know WebProNews attends a fair amount of industry events to cover in both video and article format. While, we can’t make it to all of them (we couldn’t make it to SMX this time), that doesn’t mean we ignore all the ones we don’t attend. 

    We have a new Events page available here (you will also see an Events tab at the top of  WPN that goes there). This page shows upcoming industry events that we’re keeping our eye on, and which ones we’re actually attending. 

    WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson also keeps a blog on the page. As time goes on, she will offer insights beyond her video interviews as she attends various events. 

    WebProNews Events

    The Inbound Marketing Summit starts tomorrow in Boston. WebProNews is a media partner of this event and WPN’s Mike McDonald will be reporting. Then late next week, Abby and WPN’s Chris Crum (and the rest of our video crew) will be heading to Vegas for BlogWorld (where WPN is an official video provider). Shortly after that, WPN’s Mike Sachoff will be hitting Search Engine Strategies Chicago. 

    Check back often to see what events are on our radar, and stay tuned to WebProNews and WebProNews Videos for coverage.