Everyone's got something to prove -- and that's increasingly true in marketing. But these days, it's less about winning a bunch of advertising awards, and more about getting results. Moving the needle. Showing ROI. That's thanks in large part to the rise of interactive communication channels, which has enabled highly sophisticated means of tracking what’s working and what’s not. It's making John Wanamaker's famous quote (you know the one: "Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half") more and more irrelevant.

But there's one area in which the benefits of “big data” have been more reluctantly embraced – social media. This has resulted in two common patterns of behavior:

1. There are the brands that are late to the social party (if they show up at all) for fear that they won't be able to track the ROI and prove their success to upper management. 
2. And there are brands that jump on the social bandwagon without even considering tracking their success correctly (or how social media even fits their marketing goals). 

But you don't have to fall into either of these traps. We're here to give you concrete metrics to show that social media measurement is a.) very possible  b.) very simple and c.) very necessary if your brand is active in the social world. 

1. Engagement: Although this one may seem like buzz word, it's the most crucial aspect in social media measurement. We stress quality over quantity. If you have 1 million fans, but they don't interact with your brand or share your content, then what use are they to you? Important engagement metrics to watch (all of which can be tracked in Facebook Insights): 

• Post feedback (comments, likes, shares) 
• Post virality rate, impressions, and reach
• Tweet feedback (retweets, mentions, replies, favorites

2. Sentiment: Are fans commenting on your posts and posting to your timeline with happy comments or constant complaining? Dive deeper and discover what part of their experience they're happy or unhappy with. If they're unhappy with your content, change things up. If fans are constantly praising your customer service department, send an internal email out thanking your team.

3. Fan/follower growth: Yes, we said to focus on quality over quantity, but keeping an eye on the number of followers or fans you're losing tells you something about the content you're sharing, too. Important growth metrics to watch:

• New likes/unlikes (Facebook)
• New followers/unfollows (Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.)
• New subscribers/unsubscribers (YouTube)

4. Conversions: Whatever your end goal is for your brand's marketing efforts, social media is just one extension helping you achieve that. Maybe you want to drive more traffic to your website, gain email subscribers, attract new fans, etc. Define a conversion, then track it. Important conversion metrics to watch:

• For web traffic watch your Google Analytics for facebook.com or twitter.com as a referral traffic source
• For email subscribers, maybe you have an application host on your Facebook page collecting that information. Watch to see how many visitors that app has, and how many subscribers and adjust your creative, messaging, or usability of the app accordingly.

Still not convinced? Are there currently holes in social media measurement? Sure. But I guarantee the measurement online is far more advanced and accurate than traditional media measurement. 

Have other quick and easy social media measurement tips or questions? Comment below to share. 

You know the clichés: The grass is always greener, she’s playing hard to get, we want what we can’t have. And as it goes with life, so it goes with marketing. We always seem to be focused on customer acquisition, chasing what’s shiny and new while neglecting our existing customers.  

But that’s an expensive attitude. Acquiring a new customer can cost seven times more than retaining one¹. What’s more, existing customers who are made to really feel the love also share it – with their families, their Facebook friends, their dentists. They become ambassadors of your brand, doing some of the customer acquisition work for you. For free.

So how do you treat existing customers right? A lot of the responsibility rests with your call center or customer service department, but there are several things marketers can do to show you care. 

Get personal. 

Make sure your customer information is robust and up to date. There’s nothing worse than a “personalized” email that completely misses the mark by being either incredibly vague or just plain wrong. It’s embarrassing for you. It’s insulting to them. And it’s bad news for your bottom line. In fact, 68% of lost customers bail because they feel like the brand doesn’t care about them.² 

Take things to the next level.

Develop a messaging strategy for customers who’ve already heard – and bought into – your original sales pitch. What information or advice would make their original purchase(s) more satisfying? Are there any promotions that you can run specifically for existing customers? What’s a logical and relevant cross-selling opportunity? Try to anticipate their needs without giving them the hard sell. 

Be a good listener.

Solicit feedback, and take it to heart. Put together a good social media strategy by closely monitoring what’s being said about your brand and responding in ways that are respectful and genuine. This will require working closely with your customer service department, which can be tough, but it’s absolutely critical. Learn from those who’ve made major missteps, and those who get it right.

Don’t give up.

Go after lost customers – without getting into stalker territory. Find out why they left, and if there’s anything you can do to win them back. The effort is worth it: studies have shown that your chances of winning back a former customer are two to four times higher than landing a new one.³. But even if they’re gone for good, you may learn valuable information in the process to keep future churn to a minimum. 

So start showing your existing customers the love. Once you have a good retention plan in place, you’ll find that the grass is pretty green in your own yard after all.

1. KISSMetrics
2. U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
3. Marketing Metrics

Most of us use social media for primarily personal reasons – keeping up with old friends and getting better acquainted with new ones. But that’s something that businesses in the social media space tend to forget. They post, comment and interact in a very, well, business-like manner. And when a businessy, impersonal post shows up in the middle of someone’s all-too-human feed, it just feels wrong – and turns your audience off.

That’s why developing a strong voice or persona for your brand is one of the most crucial components when launching your social media initiatives. Tweets, Facebook posts, pins, even LinkedIn communications – all online messaging needs to be consistent with branding, and relatable to the audience.

And like any friendship, you can’t neglect things if you want your online connections to thrive. Your persona needs to be revisited by Community Managers biweekly or monthly, just to make sure that everything stays on-brand. It’s also important to take an in-depth look at the persona every year to account for any changes in the audience or the brand itself.

Here are the basic steps to developing a social media persona:

1. Research the audience. 

 How old are they? Where do they live? What are their general interests? Why are they connecting with your brand? What are they hoping to get out of the social connection? If you don't understand the audience, how are you supposed to be able to entertain them, speak with them, and, ultimately, sell to them?

2. Develop personality traits from the audience research.

Now that you know the basics about the audience, you can define their character. By pinpointing 5-7 strong adjectives that describe the brand's persona, you’ll get an idea of just who will be speaking to fans and followers, and what he or she will sound like. A persona described as "intelligent, thoughtful, nurturing, quiet, and articulate" would interact far differently with an audience than a persona described as "gregarious, witty, involved, funny, and enthusiastic."

3. Find a visual (famous) character who fits the persona to use as a model.

A Facebook page for an upscale women's clothing line wouldn't speak in Will Ferrell's persona, and a children's learning center probably wouldn't speak as Chelsea Handler. Find a character who fits the brand's persona, so that visualizing the person sharing updates and responding to feedback and more tangible. 

4. Compose sample posts. 

Get a feel for both the content the brand will be sharing, and the way it will be shared. Does the persona use exclamation points? Does he/she ask open-ended questions? Are posts straightforward and informative, or conversational and light? These also serve as good back-up content when the brand is getting away from the persona’s messaging, or is in a content dry-spell.

So, there you have it! 4 quick steps to helping develop a strong social media persona. Any you would add? Comment below to share.

Photo credit: Darlu Littledeer

I think most marketers today have a puppy problem. Everyone loves a puppy – they're fun, cute and playful. Just look at the above picture of Asher (aka, the world’s cutest dog). 

I had the opportunity to puppy-sit Asher, and he actually taught me a lot about marketing. I would pull out a toy and he would get super-excited. I could almost hear him say, "OMG!!!! That's my favorite toy! I love it, I love it, I love it!" Different toy, same reaction: "OMG!!!! That's my favorite toy! I love it, I love it, I love it!"

Too many marketers have this puppy problem. So often, we miss the big basics because we’re chasing the next trend – Pinterest, Vine, Reddit, etc. For CMOs, this can mean getting seriously off-task, wasting time and, potentially, your company’s money. So what’s really important for CMOs when it comes to technology?

1. Know your audience.

Women are more likely to use Pinterest. Instagram has a younger audience. It's simple: different audiences use online tools differently. Find out where your customers are and start there. Quantcast.com has a lot of great tools that provide demographic information about visitors to specific websites (the image below shows such data for Facebook users).

Or take a look at how visitors are getting to your website using Google Analytics. If you're more likely to get a sale from Facebook than Twitter, it's a no-brainer to spend more time with Facebook. But you should also do it the old-fashioned way: talk to your customers. If you have a brick and mortar store, ask people that come in. If you have an email list, send out a small survey.

2. Test, measure and adjust.

This should seem obvious, but it's VERY often overlooked. I've met with several clients who were enthusiastically trying out QR Codes, without implementing any way to evaluate their effectiveness. You can track traffic from QR codes (and Facebook ads, digital ads, etc.), using Google's URL builder.

3. K.I.S.S.

In the trite but true category: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Just because technology can be complicated, doesn't mean that it should be. Too often, brands try and accomplish too many goals with one campaign or initiative. Focus on one main goal, instead of having a convoluted campaign that no one can follow. 

4. Do something!

The most successful CMOs are the ones that can identify long-term trends, such as social media and mobile, experiment personally (for example, don't expect massive results from Pinterest if you don't have an account set up for yourself) and test professionally.

When it comes to marketing technology, no one wants to be left behind, which makes it easy to be puppy-like -- and ultimately unproductive -- in how we approach the many tools out there. You can avoid chasing your tail by remembering the Big Basics:

• Know Your Audience
• Test, Measure Adjust
• K.I.S.S.
• Do Something!

We don’t shop like we used to. Yet we “shop” for everything. Whether we’re looking for shoes, a doctor, a great burger or where to get an MBA, we dig for information like never before. What does it mean for marketers? Well, forget the classic purchasing funnel.

Here’s what that process looks like today.

Notice we're calling it a "floop" because it's still funnel-y, but it's also more loopy. Here's the difference: The “consideration” step used to involve conversations with co-workers like, “You have a Ford truck. Do you like it? How’s the gas mileage?” Now, we research purchases like we’re writing a college dissertation. Even little things like batteries. Before we go to the store we Google “batteries” on our iPads or Kindles looking for reviews and coupons. We even stand in the battery aisle with our mobile phones pulling up batteries.com, shopping sites or other stores to compare prices. If claims seem too good to be true, we ask our Facebook friends. And when we finally buy the darn batteries, we write reviews and tell our friends just how great (or lame) they are.

That means if you’re a battery brand it’s not enough to be on TV, show up in shopping flyers and have a big display at the store. You have to be where people are actually “shopping” -- and that’s online. (Google has coined this new shopping phenomenon: The Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT.)

Just how prevalent is it? Take a look.

• 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase¹
• 79% of consumers now say they use a smart- phone to help with shopping²
• 83% of moms say they do online research after seeing TV commercials for products that interest them³

So if you haven’t put a digital strategy in play, odds are you’re missing customers.

1. “The New Info Shopper,” Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, 2009

2. Google/Ipsos OTX MediaCT, “The Mobile Movement Study,” April 2011, N=5,000

3. BabyCenter Study on Google Search, Nov. 2009

Thanks to much-buzzed-about tweets by major brands (e.g. Gap, Sears, etc.) during Hurricane Sandy and her aftermath, the term “newsjacking” has gained recent notoriety in the social media and marketing worlds. And while the term may be new, the practice has been around in some form or another for a while.

WHAT IS NEWSJACKING?

David Meerman Scott, who literally wrote the book on newsjacking, defines it as “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

WHY DO IT?

A successful newsjacking campaign can result in your brand and messaging being effectively woven into a larger news story. It can also improve your SEO and boost your reputation – all for a relatively low cost.  

HOW DO I DO IT?

To maximize effectiveness, you must jump in to the news cycle early. This doesn’t mean rushing to throw something together once an opportunity arises. Instead, explore opportunities for future stories and implement your campaign when appropriate.

A great example of successful newsjacking: Oreo’s tweet during Super Bowl XLVII. After a surprise blackout, the brand took to Twitter:

The tweet was buzzworthy not only because Oreo capitalized on the unexpected in a relevant way. The fact that the brand produced an actual ad for the tweet proved to be a savvy move during an event that's watched almost as much for advertising as it is for football.

HOW DO I NOT DO IT?

The difference between scoring points and a potential PR disaster often lies in the news subject itself. Before you decide to newsjack a particular story, ask yourself these questions:

• Could the public potentially react negatively to the association of my brand with this specific news topic?
• Is the information I am providing helpful to my target audiences?
• Is it possible that another opportunity will arise in the near future that is actually a better fit for my brand?

And lastly:

• Is it in bad taste?

Perhaps Kenneth Cole forgot to ask himself these questions before he injected his brand into trending #Cairo conversations on Twitter:

Riding on the coattails of a violent uprising to promote your spring fashion line isn’t particularly helpful and surely doesn’t seem in good taste.

While the art of newsjacking isn’t new, many of the opportunities to do so are. Before you, or your brand, dedicate the time and energy it takes to launch a newsjacking campaign, be sure the circumstances are right and use your creativity to find the absolute best possible fit.

Image credit: Smithsonian.com

A new year’s resolution list should always be a mix of “gimmees” – things that you know you can accomplish – and loftier goals that are going to require a little more commitment.  It’s in this spirit that we offer four marketing resolutions for 2013.

Dance with the one that brought you
By which we mean: focus on customer retention. This one should be easy peasy – after all, these are people that already know and love you, right? It’s cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one, and you can create loyal brand ambassadors who will act as evangelists – effectively doing some of the customer acquisition work for you. 

Find your sweet spot – and stay there
You know the saying: Jack of all trades, master of none. When it comes to your marketing efforts, identify the channels and tactics that make the most sense for your business and perfect them. Don’t spread yourself thin trying to be all things to all people – or trying to ride every trend wave.

Get mobilized 
That being said, mobile is one channel that every business needs to commit to in 2013. For more and more consumers, mobile devices are quickly becoming the linchpin in the buying cycle, while social media mobile apps are growing exponentially in use. To realize the best ROI, get smart about your mobile strategy before investing in a lot of technology. 

Measure up
For many, this is fast becoming a perennial resolution. Our ability to track data keeps getting better – but it also keeps getting more complex, and trends like so-called “big data” can be daunting. But marketing metrics doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition – and the payoffs are more than worth the investment.

You may be thinking, “easier said than done.” Not to worry. In the upcoming weeks and months, we’ll be posting longer entries on each of these four topics to help you make the most of your marketing this year.

photo credit

I had the opportunity to speak at the UNT PRSSA’s meeting last night in Denton (they’re a very fun and bright group of students who are about to hit the job market *wink wink employers*), and thought I’d share a few of the talking points with other prospective graduates.

1. Do your research

This goes for anyone in the industry, not just jobseekers. The key to success as an ad pro or employee is knowing people. Do whatever it takes to understand who you’re selling your product, service, or self to.

2. Don’t be that guy (or girl)

Nobody likes the embarrassing co-worker who tells weekend stories too loudly. Similarly, nobody wants to hire a “frat bro” with the ol’ shirtless beer chugging Facebook profile picture.

3. Don’t stop learning

You’ll soon find that your formal education leaves you unequipped to manage the day-to-day changes of the marketing world. Keep up with blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch, Buzzfeed, follow the news (both global and local), and you just may want to keep up with those Kardashians so you actually hold conversations with the highly intellectual people around you.

4. Hustle

Do what you have to in order to get the job done for a client, employer, teammate, etc. If that means making copies, cleaning the fridge, or videotaping a someone else’s child’s ballet recital... do it. Don’t forget to smile the entire way through, because guess what - everyone’s watching.

5. Everyone loves a good story (and to tell their own)

Not only is this extremely relevant in the advertising world (Facebook’s transition to the Timeline layout is an excellent example), but in our personal lives. Asking other people about themselves is the most successful way to make them like you. Fact. Make sure you have an interesting story to tell too, which leads me to our final point...

6. Be memorable

Whether it’s in a campaign you’re designing, an interview you’ve landed, or a conference you’re attending, make them remember you (in a positive way). Being different isn’t always bad, and being loud isn’t always good. Find a part of you that is important and unique, then build your brand around it.

Have questions about post-grad life or career goals and expectations? We’ve got plenty of Bs who’d love to help you out! Give us a shout in the comments below, or shoot me an email personally at ali@balcomagency.com. Good luck!

Is your website easy come, easy go? You may have optimized your site to get great organic search engine results – and lots of visitors – but if people don’t like what they see when they get there, they’ll bail. The bounce rate indicates how often that happens by giving you the percentage of visitors who view only a single page of your site before leaving. Deflate your bounce rate by making sure you have valuable, relevant content that encourages visitors to stick around – and keeps them coming back for more.

AdWords is Google’s paid search advertising program. Through AdWords, you identify keywords that describe what you’re selling, then write short text ads that include those keywords. When people search using those keywords, your ads show up in the paid ad section on the search engine results page. With AdWords, you bid on keywords to determine the placement of your ad (versus your competitors’ ads) and how much you’ll have to pay when people click on it.