Social Marketing—The Executive Summary

Once word of mouth was the best advertising. Once only Reuters and the Associated Press controlled and distributed breaking news, photos and video. Welcome to today’s world of web 2.0—which means every can one publish information easily on the Internet. And, every advertiser needs to add these “social marketing” methods to the traditional marketing and media mix. What is the cost to use these services? Only your time!

Here’s the executive summary:

Facebook—355 million worldwide users. It takes minutes to open a fan page for your business and a personal page for yourself with photo galleries and information. You’ll post upcoming event and product news. Customers will comment, share information about your service. These reviews are more believable than any ad you can create and are essential to the growth of your service. To promote your Facebook site, link to your e-mail signature line and website home page, include in all traditional advertising, e-blast customer database, download customer and prospect data base—ask customers to become fans. When an individual becomes “accepted friend”, you gain access to invite their entire list of friends—hence, the remarkable power of this media.

Twitter—22 million users, 80% from mobile phones. Used initially by celebrities and athletes reporting on daily activities. But holds potential for all kinds of business promotion. Will grow to 40 million by end of this year. Establish an account at twitter.com for your company. Post status updates of 160 characters or less. To be successful, you must publish news/activities of interest, and choose to follow groups with similar interests. By following a group, you expose yourself to its members who, if interested, then choose to follow you.

Blogger.com -- Publish a weekly informational or editorial piece. Embed this in your website. Search engines favor current information, so by simply attaching this to your website, it appears higher in rankings.

Ezinearticles.com- Publish information of any kind as a readable story. It can and will be picked up by bloggers, newsletter publishers.

You Tube—You Tube is second only to Google in popular usage. Users search for “How To” information. Don’t post your commercial. If you want to be successful, create a “how to” demonstration related to your product. Include your website to the title to give viewers a link they can click on to your web site.

One of the best aspects of “Social Media” is that the media is completely democratic. Small budget advertisers can make the same impact as multi-million dollar budget advertisers. The creativity of the message determines who is viewed! If you’d like to discuss a creative marketing campaign, we can help. Call Bob Gibson at 561-741-1441 x108.

Gibson/Roscoe/Owens Advertising

The Basics of “Pay Per Click”

Everyone now knows that “google word searches” are a primary way customers find products and services.

So how do you have your web site appear in the top listings? Buy a “Pay Per Click” plan. Where? on Google where 80% of all searches are initiated.

In this example, Jupiter Medical Center wants patients seeking information on bariatric surgery to visit their site.

A monthly budget is set, you provide Google a list of “Key Words” and a target price per word. In this case the words/phrases chosen were Bariatric Surgery, Bariatric Surgeons, Gastric Bypass Surgery, Lap Band Surgery, Weight Loss Surgery and the “auction rate” for the words fluctuated around $5.00.

Other advertisers paying to be the top search words in the chosen market area are competing with you for the top positions. The plan can be focused to as narrow as a county. Jupiter was only interested in searches are initiated within Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties (Florida).

Each time an individual “clicked through” the listing to get to the web site, Google charged the “auction price” until the daily budget was exhausted. (The monthly budget was divided by 30 to provide a daily budget).

At the end of each month, a report is generated a report that shows which keywords create the most click-throughs, and shows how the budget was spent. The budget can then be adjusted upward or downward.