Marketing Strategy | Justin Levy

Determining Social Media ROI

October 12, 2009 By Justin Levy 20 Comments

A few weeks before the Inbound Marketing Summit took place, Chris Penn and I were discussing what he should speak about. Of that discussion came the decision to do the presentation on how to determine the ROI of social media. Figuring out social media ROI continues to be a very hot topic not only for the social media geeks but also for big brands that want to determine success measurements of their investment into the space.

Outside of this conversation I had been bugging Chris to analyze my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, for some time now. Other case studies have focused on what we’ve done but not tearing apart the metrics. Chris is a genuis at analysis and analytics. So, I really wanted him to expand my knowledge and ability Google Analytics and other tools to properly analyze our efforts at the steakhouse and determine our ROI. For those that don’t know, approximately 1.5 years ago we cut out 80% of our traditional marketing budget and turned our focus to our website, SEO, social media and other digital initiatives as a way to drive sales. Surprise, surprise, it worked. Since then we have seen a minimum of 20% increase in sales when comparing the same month the previous year. But, one thing we never did was break out and track those individual efforts between the website, social media, and other areas we were spending our time online.

As part of his presentation Chris asked if he could use the restaurant as an example and do an analysis of our ROI. What Chris found, in terms of hard dollars, surprised me and I think it will surprise you too.

You can check out Chris’ presentation, both slides and videos below:

Video

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Slides

As I said, I was surprised at the actual dollar values but I wasn’t surprised at the result that Chris found. For us, our entire focus has been on SEO. We have used social media as a tool to augment that but not as a primary vehicle to drive revenue for the restaurant. For instance, we have made a conscious decision to not set up a Twitter account where offer discounts. It is something we’re considering doing in the future, but right now we aren’t utilizing social media in that way.

While this presentation gives you some information about my brick and mortar and the decisions that we face and have to make, have you taken these steps to determine the ROI of your efforts on your website, blog, or social media profiles? If you have done this exercise, did you change anything about the way you spend your time post-analysis?

Note: This is the first post of many highlighting videos from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009. All posts will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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Are You Marketing to Buyer Personas

May 11, 2009 By Justin Levy 5 Comments

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a profile of who your exact customer was? Imagine all of the things you could do with that information. You could do research specifically on that ideal customer. You could design your marketing creatives and programs around exactly what that ideal customer likes and is receptive to. You could get rid of the fluff and only target those leads who fit that ideal customer profile. No more wasting time having to call, email or meet everyone…you only seek to interact with those who meet that profile. Sounds great huh? Sounds like something impossible or that you have to pay tons of money to a consultant to develop a lengthy report right? Wrong.

This “ideal customer profile”, as I refer to it, is actually called a “buyer persona”. A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents your audience – an archetype of the ideal customer. The word “buyer” actually represents whoever your target customer is. As Adele Revella explains:

The goal for buyer personas is to make them so real and persuasive that the company will be willing to take direction from them…Their [the buyer persona] purpose is to tell a story to internal audiences about how a particular type of buyer views the decision to buy the company’s product, service or idea. The story must be real, even though the persona is not. Persona developers need to continously interact with buyers to keep the story real, reiterating the buyers’ perspective whenever an internal decision loses its focus.

Want to see what a buyer persona looks like?

David Meerman Scott highlights Kadient, a SaaS application provider, who have successfully implemented buyer personas. To check out a couple of the buyer personas they have developed, check out David’s post.

How can you develop your own buyer persona(s)?

While there are a bunch of ways to develop your buyer personas, here are just 3 that I think will keep you pretty busy for a little while and will help you to start to gain a better detailed picture of your ideal customer.

1. Analyze you current customer data – If you collect any demographic or user data, analyze to see what your average customer looks like. Of course, the more information you collect during the customer acquisition phase of your sales cycle, the easier this will be to develop a complete picture.

2. Listen to your team – Listen to what your internal sales and marketing team tell you about interactions they have with people about your company’s products or services. Are consistently noticing that they’re talking to a middle-aged woman with kids yelling in the background and who always seems to be in a rush? That’s important to note. You have a lot less time to get your message across with that person then you might with others. Maybe your marketing team runs into the same type of people at every conference you set up a booth at. Again, important to note, analyze and target your messaging towards.

3. Ask for feedback – Ask your customers for feedback on what they would like to see. Did they really like that last website refresh because it made their life easier to find some information because of how busy they are in meetings all day? That’s important to know. Then you need to make your messaging snackable. Marketing delivered to that persona in any other manner will crash and burn because they’re too busy to read it and just delete it or never get around to it.

Have you developed buyer personas at your company? If so, have they been successful? If you’re not using buyer personas at your company, what are you waiting for?

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Photo by: emery.josh

Filed Under: Business, Business strategy, Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: Business strategy, buyerpersona, Marketing, Marketing Strategy

Walking a Dog and Marketing Campaigns

February 22, 2009 By Justin Levy 3 Comments

This morning I was walking my dog, Sasha, as part of my normal early morning routine. Every morning I always seem to see the same people also outside walking their dogs. What is interesting to me is that even when I’m running a little early or a little late, it seems that I run into the same main group of people each morning. This got me thinking about marketing campaigns.

Do you think Nylabone or any other dog food/treat company would be highly successful running a television, radio, or email marketing campaign just before AM rush hour or just after PM rush hour? My guess would be that they would have marginal success. Why? Because just before leaving for work and just after coming home is when people usually walk their dogs. So, they have to think differently. Come up with new methods. I know my dog would love a treat if there was a little station that had a trial of the newest Nylabone flavor near where I walk her. Catch my drift?

When it comes to marketing campaigns, everyone has an opinion and a stat to back it up. Whether it’s that 100,000 people drive past a particular billboard or Mondays suck for sending email campaigns or this radio spot is targeted right at 7:56a because that’s when the radio has determined the most listeners are tuned in…there is a stat for everything. Don’t get me wrong, stats matter a lot and I rely on them all the time. But, what if, in addition to stats, we just used some common sense or talked to our friends, family or colleagues and got their opinion? What if we experimented and then analyzed the results afterward thus creating our own stats?

I’m not sure if this all makes much sense but it’s at least what I’m thinking about right now. What are your thoughts? What do you use to decide what marketing campaigns to run with and when to launch them?

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Photo by: Cocoabiscuit

Filed Under: Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: Marketing, Marketing Strategy, sasha

Don’t Forget About the Importance of Internal Marketing and Communication Strategies

November 10, 2008 By Justin Levy 6 Comments

So you’re really psyched because you’ve been working hard on the marketing plan for your company’s hot new product. You’ve worked on creating catchy packaging with eye-popping colors and a really cool, trendy logo. You created a social media press release that you’re going to launch on PitchEngine. You’re planning on setting up a Facebook fan page because thousands of people are going to flock around this product. You’ve even started to figure out this whole social media and blogging thing that everyone keeps talking about. This is definitely going to be the next coolest thing that everyone never realized that they needed but now won’t be able to live without.

A few weeks later your company launches the product and your inbound marketing plan is working perfectly. People are subscribing to your opt-in newsletter, signing up for demos, tweeting, commenting and digging everything they can find about your company and this new product. The phones are ringing constantly. But, then you find out something pretty disturbing. The sales team is having a hard time converting all of these leads to customers. Immediately you begin to blame them. I mean, they’re wasting the leads that you worked so hard to get for them! Finally, one night you’re out for drinks with a friend of yours who is on the sales team. You ask them why can’t the sales team convert any of these leads and they tell you it’s because they never received any training on the product, they didn’t know about the timing of any of the marketing campaigns, and that made them unprepared. So, when they’re talking to leads, they’re fumbling through the call because they’re learning as they go.

This little story highlights something very important but often overlooked. As marketers we sometimes get so wrapped up in planning and executing our marketing plan to the rest of the world that we forget that we also need a marketing and communications plan for our staff. We can’t just assume that they know everything that’s going on just because we do. It is important that we are constantly aware of this so that we avoid operating in a silo or out on an island.

As I was thinking about this stuff over the past couple days, I came across a post by Douglas Karr on this very same topic. Thanks to him, I found this funny video on the topic of internal marketing and communication plans.

If you have problems viewing this video in your RSS reader, you can view the video here.

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Photo by: hulksjedi

Filed Under: Communications, Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: Communications, internal marketing, Marketing Strategy

Crafting a Successful Buzz Strategy

November 5, 2008 By Justin Levy 2 Comments

Today Maria Elena Duron takes over my blog for a guest post on creating a buzz strategy. Maria is CEO of Buzz to Bucks which provides online profile management, social management and reputation management services to its’ clients.

This week I sat down with several clients to talk Twitter. Their questions ranged from “how to?”, “what’s this?”, and “how much time do you spend”? Developing a great buzz strategy begins with the greatest questions of WHY and WHO/WHOM.

Who do you want to be seen and know as?

This is the beginning necessary for an effective BUZZ STRATEGY. WHOM is it important for you to interact with? WHO needs to see more of you to get to know you? WHO needs to know what you do and how you save the day? WHOM can you engage to speak positively on your behalf? WHO can do business with you or refer business with you? WHO would be a good contact for you?

Answering these questions provides direction as to what methods to use to connect with the WHO, and even how often to connect with them. Identify WHO they really are and include their likes, dislikes, and activities, along with the standard demographic stuff. Then, go out and find groups of them. Where do bunches of them hangout? Is it online? In Twitter, in a forum, or in a chat room? Is it in LinkedIn groups, Rotary, Mother’s Day Out? Where you find many of them congregating is where YOU want to be.

Why do you want to be seen and known by them, and interact with them?

Every English paper that reviews stories always starts with questions like “what’s the purpose?” or “what’s the plot?” These are the same questions you need to ask yourself, and then you can craft your success story on interacting with the WHO. What’s the overall outcome you want from this? Envision the happily ever after of this. And ponder on whether the tools you’re using to get there are actually getting you there or whether they are just interesting.

Do not go any further until you, quite in detail, answer the first two questions of WHO/WHOM and WHY. Doing anything else without answering those questions is merely a waste of time.

Visibility is first so that people will get to see you or even know that you exist. Next comes developing credibility.

What can you do to create visibility with whom you want to interact with?

Easiest answer is to hang out where they hang out. Frequent their hangout spots! Watch and identify how often people need to hang out there to be noticed. For example, if you’re considering Twitter as one of your visibility tools, then check how often people that you know (who mirror the people you want to know) are Twittering. Now, if they’re not Twittering, why are you there? If it’s interesting research, recognize that it is and move on. It’s not a visibility tool – it’s something you’re checking out, that’s it. As you choose visibility tools, it’s important to remember not to confuse “activity” with “accomplishment”. Where do you really need to be to be seen? Pick TWO and get really good at being seen on those. Think of things that you want people to know about you and that you wouldn’t mind repeated.

How do you develop credibility?

Credibility comes from interaction. People need to sample your character and competence. There’s an old saying that states, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” How do you show you care? You interact. Let’s say someone sends out a great link to a site that’s very helpful for you? Then, let the person who sent it to you know. Give them feedback. Be lavish with gratitude. Be helpful. If someone is seeking resources, has a question or a need, help them. Send links or articles or another connection you have that would be able to help them. Refer them to books. Recommend sites. Be helpful. There’s a myth that “You give – then you get” in networking. And, while I think “Givers gain” is a catchy little phrase, I believe it leaves the impression that if you give to someone then you can expect to get something from them. That expectation may taint the interaction and actually keep you from gaining anything. It can leave someone with the taste that you’re not helping sincerely.

Better to think “give, give, give, give, give, and you will get from the great feeling of giving”. Then, when you get something directly from that, it’s a delightful extra! The goal in building credibility is creating relationships. Relationships, whether online or offline, still take time. In our instant gratification microwave society, relationships still take time, yet they are solid when built. People speak positively about people they know, like and trust. It’s important to find a few that you feel compelled to help and connect with, and develop, know and like – trust will come.

The object is to help people learn how to carry the message of you to people they know – that’s what BUZZ STRATEGY is about. Write down the WHO/WHOM and WHY. Then, find TWO avenues that you will use to connect with them. Then, find TEN people that you’ll interact with and watch the BUZZ grow. Establish this first – then we can talk more about EXPONENTIAL BUZZ GROWTH!

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Photo by: Unhindered by Talent