Increasingly, online video has become an important part of every digital marketer’s toolkit. Online video is mostly being used to educate as well as to communicate, interact and build stronger relationships with consumers.
When approaching online video, some companies take the more traditional, advertising-oriented, approach. They post their T.V. ads on online video sharing sites like YouTube, hoping that more people will watch their commercials. I have to accept that this approach has been useful for some companies. However, some marketers have been able to utilize online video to engage consumers and establish more profitable long-term relationships with them.
Some companies are posting videos of their members discussing industry-related news, talking about specific trends, or simply showing new products and services. This positions the company as well as its members as experts in their field. People watch their videos to learn about their industry, and the company and its members are viewed as knowledge resources by the public.
Other companies are creating how-to videos for their customers. For example, Word Press offers short videos explaining, step-by-step, how to set up a new blog. Their purpose is to show consumers how to get the most out of the company’s products and services. This gets the customers’ attention and helps them have a more enjoyable product/service experience.
Moreover, other organizations are using video to interact directly with consumers. The most relevant example at the moment is Old Spice’s now famous Old Spice Guy campaign; the Old Spice Guypersonally responded to comments and requests posted by his followers using short videos on YouTube. Old Spice sales skyrocketed!
Now, people are consuming videos on their mobile devices, which means that they could be watching (and sharing) your videos wherever they go. We should all pay attention to that area of digital marketing in the upcoming months; there is great potential
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In his latest blog post, entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and marketing guru, Seth Godin makes an excellent point: need’s not always lead to demand. The same idea does not only apply to the offline world, but also to the digital world.
When marketing your products and services through digital and social technologies, don’t try to make your customers find you and your company by using the keywords you think they should be searching for on Google or Bing. Don’t email them information they don’t want, even if you know they need it. Moreover, don’t add content you think your customers need, but are not interested in, to your site.
Instead, try to truly understand your customers. Build a better relationship with them by helping them find you and your business by using the keywords they are already using when searching for you on Google. Only email them information that they have requested or that they will actually find interesting. Offer them the content they demand.
If you do this, you will be offering them more value, they will be more likely to do business with you and your company, and their level of satisfaction is likely to go up.
Learn more about what you can do to offer your customers what they demand through digital marketing.
A website is like a hammer.
A hammer is just a tool, not a solution. A new hammer does nothing by itself; it offers no value to you. To solve your problem, you need to use it to hit a nail, and not only that, but you need to know where to put the nail in the first place. In addition, if you do not use it correctly, you can get hurt.
A website is like a hammer; contrary to popular belief, a website is just a tool and not a solution by itself. For a website to offer you and your business its full potential, you need to actively develop it and constantly add new, fresh, and relevant content to it. In addition, you need to understand why you want it, and set measurable goals for your website that are directly derived from your marketing and business objectives.
After you understand how to utilize your website, find the nail, and place it in the right spot. To do this, you need to understand your target audience and know what they are looking for when they visit your site. Similarly to how you measure the amount of force you use to hit a nail with a hammer, you need to measure your audience’s needs and offer them valuable content that they find relevant to their needs. With this, you can establish a better relationship with your customers and generate more conversions.
Contact us and our team will be happy to help you create a digital marketing plan that will yield clear and measurable results.
With sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn revolutionizing the way we interact with people and do business, social media is having a strong impact both online and offline. These sites are not just a channel for social and informal interaction like they were just a few years ago. Instead, these and many other social media resources are changing our lives and behavior.
We are consuming news from blogs and social networking sites, listening to music from sites like Pandora or Last.fm, watching our favorite shows and movies on Hulu, getting consumer reviews from Yelp, and sites like LinkedIn and Xing are becoming our new resumes. Social movements are started on sites like Facebook. New celebrities rise on YouTube. Businesses are finding new ways to communicate with their customers. Even U.S. President Barack Obama leveraged the power of social media to reach his followers and win the 2008 Presidential Election.
Moreover, this means that your customers are going online to learn about your products and services before making buying decisions. They can communicate with each other and talk about their personal experiences with your company, brand, or products and services, and they are listening to what each other has to say.
We cannot stop this. However, there is great potential for you and your business if you are able to adapt to this new business environment and get involved in that conversation. So what are you waiting?
WSI Digital Marketing — Solutions for the Modern Business
Are you a business owner looking to reach a new plateau in digital marketing success? Welcome to WSI, your home for professional, results-driven digital marketing strategies. For nearly 20 years, we’ve helped clients just like you discover the power and profits of effective digital marketing. Our approach is both time-tested and cutting-edge, incorporating proven fundamentals of marketing while taking advantage of the very latest in Internet technology.
The Internet has grown exponentially since WSI started in the mid 1990s, and the potential benefits of marketing on the web have grown just as dramatically. With the proliferation of social media platforms and the explosion of mobile marketing and tablet computing, there’s never been a better time to establish your presence online. WSI Digital Marketing Consultants have developed winning strategies for clients across a wide range of industries, and we are ready to be a part of your own winning strategy.
The WSI Digital Marketing Approach
Great marketing positively impacts your company’s growth and your bottom line. This is true with traditional marketing, and it’s equally true for digital marketing. You expect and deserve tangible results, and that’s why we are committed to using our experience to get you those results. When you’re looking for any of the following, WSI is the right choice:
- Business growth and expansion
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- And much more!
Explore our services, and discover why so many business owners have relied on WSI for timely, effective, and affordable digital marketing strategies.
Contact us today!
Customers are going online in search of products, services, and even ideas to fulfill their wants and needs. However, they are not only searching; they are starting conversations around companies, brands, products, and services, creating brand communities, and rating your offerings on different sites.
According to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler of Forrester Research and authors of Empowered, 62% of all messages about products and services are posted via Facebook. However, this is a generalization, and as a marketing and business professional, you must be careful. Instead, you need to understand where your customers interact online, what they are saying and how they are saying it, but, most importantly, who they are. Only then, you can figure out how to approach them and, if you find it appropriate, join the conversation.
Entering the conversation has many advantages. Although controlling the messages and communications is impossible, it gives you more control and time to respond to consumer reactions; you can influence the conversation. It also gives you an opportunity to establish a more direct contact with your fans, those customers that talk positively about your brand and spread the word about your company. Moreover, it gives you the chance to empower those fans by providing them with the content and materials that will help them tell their friends about your company. Empowered, and with your support, they will find your company more credible, they will feel better about doing business with you, and they will tell your story, communicate your messages (for free) to people you would not be able to reach (in an effective and profitable way) otherwise.
Learn how to establish your online brand and enter the conversation your customers are already having.
This morning, 26-year old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his team held a press conference at Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto, California to announce major changes to the world’s largest social network. These announcements came at a very interesting time, when the hype about the social networking site has increased due to the launch of The Social Network, the movie depicting the story about the founders of the social networking site.
Some people had speculated that Facebook’s young founder and would announce a partnership between Facebook and Skype. Others thought the company would unveil changes to its privacy options. Instead, the company has announced a major overhaul to the platform. The company announced better application control and is making it possible to download all of the content and information that you have added to Facebook, among other things. Yet, the change that most got my attention was the introduction of the new version of Groups.
New Facebook Groups
The new Groups functionality will have a strong impact in the way we use Facebook. The new Groups only shares its name with the old Groups functionality, but the way it works is completely different. As some people have described it, it creates mini-Facebooks within Facebook and offers you more control over the distribution of your messages.
Groups allows you to map all your real-world groups, acknowledging that people belong to different social groups and that they interact differently with each of them. For example, you will be able to update your status announcing your last jogging achievement, but only letting your friends that belong to the “friends interested in jogging” group know. In addition, the new functionality allows group members to chat among themselves, share documents, and even tag group photos.
The company said that the new Groups functionality is fun and easy to interact with, and therefore could become useful in several contexts. Even though the old groups will continue to exist, from now on, we will only be able to create new Groups.
So how will the new Groups affect you and your business?
Facebook considers that the new version of Groups will change the way people interact within the platform; now, social norms will govern activity. From a marketing perspective, this change offers great potential. It means that in the near future, your communications could be better targeted to specific groups of people with the same interests and that you could learn about consumer psychographics, lifestyles, consumption constellations, and demographics of those groups that have open privacy settings. If you are ready to listen to these new groups and adapt, you and your business could be rewarded.
Learn how social media and Facebook can help your company.
