ROI on Various Marketing Channels
With over 6K people calling themselves everything from “Social Media Guru” to ” Social Media Super Hero” I’m just gonna call it like it is. 90% of you are full of crap and have no idea what social media is or where it’s place is in an overall marketing plan and are generally spouting personal dogma and there is a high likelihood you are socially and physically retarded. Ouch, huh? And yeah, I’m gonna be controversial and obnoxious, just the way you like your Mary McKnight. Here’s the skinny. I am a marketer. A REAL marketer. Meaning, I have directed large scale integrated online and offline marketing campaigns and budgets for REAL enterprise sized businesses and in a REAL business we measure results on each campaign and budget accordingly. In a real marketing environment, there are some accepted budgeting standards. Take a look at the chart on the left (courtesy of Hubspot). Hmmm, social media and blogging are ONLY 8% where a company or brand’s leads and sales come from. Meaning they are only spending a maximum of 8% of their marketing budget and time there and they EXPECT to see a return on that investment. So, if they expect to see a return on it, social marketing is a lot MORE than just Twitter and Facebook. And they EXPECT the people they hire to do social media to have a handle on marketing as a whole discipline!
It means you need a SOLID strategy that involves social profiles that not only offer something people will want but also directs them to where they can get it. Yes, that means your Twitter and business Facebook pages need to CALL people to action and drive them to a page on your website that offers them the ability to convert. These conversion or landing pages should be single purpose pages. That means – there is only ONE thing people can do on that page – enter in their info to a form that dumps into your lead database so you can re-market them or have your sales team follow up or flat out sell them something from your shopping cart. Each one of these conversion or landing pages should have a tracking system installed like MINT, VisiStat, CrazyEgg or worst case/cheapskate scenario, Google Analytics. This is how you measure how well your call to action worked and how well your conversion page performs. In an ideal situation, you will use something called “split testing.” Split Testing is where you have 2 calls to action that direct visitors to a single landing page. You see which one generates more traffic. You use the best performing call to action then you test the conversion page. Meaning, you create 2 and test 1 for 1 week and 1 for another week with the same call to action. The better performing conversion form is what you stick with. Now, you should have an ideally performing call to action and an ideally performing conversion page.
And because I feel “bitchy” today, below are my social media, blogging, SEO, “guru” pet peeves that are totally “twucked up” and directly related to most “gurus” lack of any and all knowledge of marketing, it’s purpose, how to implement successful campaigns, how to measure results, prove ROI and make critical decisions when a campaign fails to produce ROI.
Twuck Up 1: You need to interact with people to get them to convert. (one size fits all advice is for the Jaqueline Smith collection at Kmart not marketing)
Um no. Check out @jetblue. Minimal and automated interaction that mostly tweets deals of the day that call people to action to visit the deal of the day site and BUY. And you say, “but Mary, that’s a recognized brand that had some PR behind it, surely a small business of individual like me cannot generate that kind of following, traffic and conversion.” Let’s take @shitmydadsays. Just 1 guy with about 1 tweet per day with half a million followers and only following 1 person. Puts “social” media into a new perspective for ya, eh? Now, I am not saying you should NOT interact, I am just showing that it is possible to be successful without the level of engagement most social media “experts” advise. I actually whole-heartedly agree that talking to others 12 x more than you talk about yourself and your offers like ProBlogger suggests and tweeting at the optimal volume of 23 tweets per day as Hubspot suggests are effective. But, there are other methods that have proven effective and we should not neglect them. What I have learned from Fortune 500s and celebs is that not ALL want to engage or tweet or update their Facebook status constantly. It’s just not who they are as people and it doesn’t interest them or they simply do not have the time for it. That’s where services like Tweet Later and RSS 2 Twitter come in or having a a shtick, an offer, or, for shame, a ghost tweeter…
Twuck Up 2: Stop calling some guy who wrote 1 book about Twitter a “rockstar.” (it’s an insult to real rockstars that ARE on Twitter)
Seriously, there are REAL Rockstars on Twitter. It’s an insult to them. Maybe being that I work with real rockstars and know how hard their jobs really are, I take offense to it or maybe because it was celebrities like Ashton Kutcher that really made Twitter mainstream that I take offense to some low level marketer that never really had any success before saying they know best how to use Twitter and everyone should buy their book to learn how he/she had such amazing success. Fact is, celebrities brought twitter it’s “cool.” Lindsay Lohan went bat shit crazy over her dad and Samantha Ronsen, Katy Perry flashed her ta tas in a tub and Ashton Kutcher posted wife, Demi Moore’s toned tush on it. Alyssa Milano, Chris Cornell, John Mayer, Kathy Ireland, Katy Perry, and Kirstie Alley are just a few of the cool celebs on Twitter that actually engage with people, share valuable information and let us into their inner worlds (I recommend following a lot of celebrities to watch how they build Twitter cred). These people KNOW how to effectively use Twitter for their own brand benefit, the benefit of causes they support and provide value to their followers. Hmmm, maybe we should be LISTENING to and WATCHING these people! And it would NOT be cool to call someone a “Doctor” if they didn’t go to MEDICAL SCHOOL unless they are Doc form the 7 Dwarves and he’s freakin’ creepy because he is a Doctor and for no apparent reason lives with 6 miners. <– That has always creeped me out. If you have thoughts on that one, please tweet me. It worries me and keeps me up at night.
Twuck Up 3: Content is King (this is the all the eggs in one basket FAIL of the decade)
Is good content important? Yes. Should you blog, yes. But do not be fooled. You can be successful without a ton of content. If you have a huge brand name, good PR, a small amount of viral content, or a single purpose website that allows people to do something very valuable, you don’t need huge volumes of quality copy. In these cases, you can acquire tons of backlinks and you are good. Check out Million Dollar Homepage. It’s 63 pages, almost never updated and the content kinda sucks, but it made a million dollars, celebrity status for Alex Tew and generated thousands of backlinks (909 of which are still recognized by Google), tons of publicity and great Google results. Now, I took an example from a time when everyone was CLAIMING content was king. Clearly, this site proved the case against that. And today, many are calling “context” king. I’m going out on a limb here and saying – NOTHING is KING – most all these things will work for one or more businesses or brands. What I am saying is there is an Oligarchy and many things in power can bring your site traffic, rankings, conversions, leads, brand awareness and sales. You should never rely on one thing and you should never take advice from someone selling you a one sized fits all solution. Just like in math and science and even technology there can be many solutions to a marketing or sales challenge. You need to clearly define the problem, determine what you or your organization are willing to commit in time and money and find the solution that best fits the problem and your resources. How the hell is this so difficult for social media and internet marketing people to figure out?
Twuck Up 4: Let’s Follow and Listen to Everyone with a Book on Twitter (Lemming mentality twucks)
Seems everyone is selling some social media tool, system, follower MLM scheme, etc. I don’t listen to those people. I listen to professionals, AKA people with experience in the real world, college degrees and valuable sites and services and not a slipper clad, stay at home, leach Internet off the neighbor’s WAP, built a few websites and wrote an eBook you can buy from his pop up ad for $9.98 guy. There are REAL marketing professionals that KNOW social media, marketing and SEO on Twitter. There are people that know how to teach social media as one discipline of marketing and how it relates to conversion, leads, brand reputation and/or sales. There are MANY, but below are a few I listen to and respect.
@davidarmano, (I don’t always agree with David, but he is a REAL marketer, knows what he is doing and can explain real marketing and how it relates to social media like nobody else!)
@graywolf,(FYI: follow him. I swear, if it weren’t free to watch him on Twitter, I would pay to do it – he is alternately funny, brilliant, controversial, WTF and irreverent!)
@unmarketing, (another guy with big credentials, marketing know how and a way of making it real – he also has attitude and personality which make him a find in the industry)
@scottmonty, (Guy responsible for all things Internet at Ford – and singularly brilliant.)
@andybeal, (Andy is amazing at talking SEO and reputation management in the context of business and personal brand.)
@copyblogger, (Brian is just brilliant. That’s it. He is a copyrighting genius, knows how to market, knows his way around the web and websites and calls to action and, well, all things regarding converting traffic to leads and sales.)
@kellyolexa, (Kelly is just a natural “connector” and gets excited about EVERYTHING and knows how to get EVERYONE else excited about EVERYTHING. Watch her, learn from her on how to be a “personality” online and get people’s attention! Reality check, people – Kelly is so full of online “cool” – Ford used her in their Ford Fiesta Movement campaign based solely on her online influence… )
My point is simply that when a new technology arrives, everyone and their brother, mother, sister, third cousin twice removed thinks they are an expert. Look at these expert’s credentials, results and client list before you hire them, before you listen to them, before you buy their book. If, before or without Twitter they were a nobody, maybe you shouldn’t be listening to them – because, likely, they are STILL a NOBODY.
Twuck Up 5: Let’s just have some coffee and all talk to each other about how funny, great, brilliant and cool we are.
FYI, if your only claim to fame is being a guru on social media, you are NOT funny, great, brilliant or cool. You are just a geek with an eBook! Face it, you might be lame. I’m not judging… no, I am judging and it is completely warranted. I watch all these so called “experts” interact with one another with their lame inside jokes or memes and never do they try to reach out or up. Networking effectively is the power to network up so you can build mo’, betta’, fasta’ relationships that mean more “snaps on the petro so you got mo’ fuel in the wallet” AKA (money for the white peeps in da hood, I know, I’m white too, but I’m feelin’ gangsta right now). My rule is to talk to at least 3 new people on Twitter that I deem better, cooler, more important, smarter than myself. I put more effort into the networking up process than into the networking laterally process. People who are effective on Twitter and social networks do exactly that – they network in the circles they want to do business in. My goals are not to speak on the lecture circuit and network with other marketers. My goals are to network with the people that want to buy stuff from me and the people I want to buy stuff from me.
Twuck Up 6: If you offer me a coupon or direct me to your website to buy something or tell me simply “thanks for the follow” – you lost “cool” points.
Now, I will not say all auto DMs are lame. I’ve seen some funny text ones, I use a video auto DM myself that almost always illicits immediate engagement but for the most people are just lame in auto DMs. What makes the good ones work? They engage – mine is a video warning that never pitches anything just makes people laugh and more importantly warns them that if you can’t handle the F word, you can’t handle following me. 22% of all people that follow me, reply to me to tell me “hey, I can handle following you” or “you crack me up.” Even the ever discriminating Michael Gray commented on it being one of the better auto DMs he’s seen. So, if you are going to use the auto DM feature, test it on your real friends and colleagues first – ask them if it calls them to action, makes them laugh, makes them want to learn more, etc.
Twuck Up 7: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP PREFIXING EVERYTHING TWITTER WITH “tw“
If I hear “twouble” or “tweeple” or “twalker” or “twitterati” one more time, I just want to reach through my Tweet Deck and “twangle” the person on the other side of that tweet. It is no longer cute. It is not longer cool. It is no longer acceptable for every product or service related to Twitter to begin with “TW.” And, more importantly it is annoying and a little gay and makes you sound like you have a really “twucked up” lisp. Yeah, and FYI, I saved this one for last because it was probably the VERY reason you clicked on the link! So, TWUCK YOU, you got PWND! Hey, you should be proud of me for getting through an entire post without saying the real F word.
Anyhow, either way, follow me on Twitter, I say some funny twit.
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