Archive

The marriage of offline and online marketing --direct mail drives higher online sales and increased revenue.

Calling out the online marketing avenues that have been the most ineffective for some small businesses and why.

The world of technology is ever-changing. New ideas are emerging in the marketplace each day. Here are a few of the promising technologies you should expect to be using for your business in the near future. QR codes A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by QR bar code readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL or other data. QR codes are popular in Asian countries and are gaining ground in the US. They are being used in many ways to convert print advertising into foot traffic.Today you can create a Facebook “like” button using QR codes.  In no time at all, you should expect creating coupons and business cards with QR codes. Mobile based payment Mobile banking is common place and now cell phone are charging forward to replace your wallet. Many companies are working on products that will allow cashless cardless purchases. Visa has a contact-less iphone based payment system called In2Pay and is working on a system to make payments by waving the phone at checkout. Starbucks has an app that allows its patrons to use iphones for payments. Google along with Citi and Mastercard has Google Wallet which facilitates funds transfers by tapping the cell phone. Given the foray of big companies in the world of mobile based payment you should expect to see more of your customers paying you through their phone. Cloud Computing Simply put it is the ability to use any web-friendly device connected to the Internet to access/borrow computing power, storage, applications and files from the internet.Cloud services are pay per use software and/or hardware. You would no longer need to purchase licenses for the software you need nor would you have to worry about data back up. Most of the prominent players in the software industry like Google, Microsoft offer cloud based services. Salesforce.com offers many apps for small businesses on pay per use basis. This technology in conjunction with tablets will take the place of your PCs,Macs and Laptops. Tablets The new breed of tablets that are making  it to the market are competing head on to provide all the capabilities of a laptop. In a tussle of companies to offer more than a web surfing device the consumer is the clear winner. The latest addition to the tablet features is an USB port that should allow easy transfer of data between devices and enable printing capabilities. Battery life is steadily improving too. That said you would soon be doing everything from your business checklists to your taxes on the go with your tablets. Personalized TV Advertising Personalization on the internet is now an expectation and now the same technology is set to make into our homes. Personalized TV ads allows different households to be shown different advertising in real time. The advertisement shown will be chosen based on the tracking information gathered from the internet and other traditional tracking sources.Although I expect this technology to have a higher price tag than the rest of the upcoming technologies mentioned in this article, it still needs a mention because of its reach and inevitability.And also because it could open up national television for local advertising. Adoption of these technologies can give a boost to your business.

In my last post, I gave you three tips for generating leads with social search. Now it’s time to think about measuring the return on social marketing. There’s no question that social media has value. In a May 2011 online poll conducted by social marketing platform company Roost, more than 71 percent of the local businesses polled said that social marketing is their most effective channel, compared with just 15 percent who ranked paid search as their tool of choice. What’s the draw? With few barriers to entry, low start-up costs and the ability to stay top-of-mind with customers, social media makes bottom-line good sense. Yet even though these businesses are on board with social media, 45 percent of them reported that they’re unclear how to measure their social marketing efforts. And while metrics remain one of the key challenges of social marketing, it’s not impossible to calculate them. Let’s consider a fictitious example of a marketing promotion where you offer 30 percent off regular-priced items for one weekend only, both online and in your store. You write about the promotion on your blog and Facebook page, Tweet it out and post a YouTube video related to the promotion. To measure results, you can look at:  How many bloggers wrote about the promotion The number of comments, likes and shares on the posts Pre- and post-promotion traffic and sales on your site The number of retweets and how often your hashtag was used The number of times your vanity URL was used The number of new followers and fans Page views for your video In short, use the very mediums that are promoting your sale to measure your promotion’s effectiveness. While not all of these measurements come down to dollars and cents, they do give you an idea of how your campaigns are faring. They also will help to guide your future social marketing efforts. Got a great idea on how to measure social marketing returns? Share it with us.