Why You Can’t Expect Instant Results With Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has become essential for organisations who have been told, time and again, that they need to be on social networks, because that is where their customers are.
But what many marketers and company executives fail to understand is that, unless you start with paid advertising on social networks, social media marketing takes time to deliver results.
Sure, you can throw a whole lot of money at it and hope some of it will stick. But, like the old saying in marketing, chances are that you are wasting at least 50% of your budget in ads that may or may not be working.
That’s because social networks are not about marketing. They were not created for that purpose. The purpose of social networks is connection. They connect people to one another, helping messages spread faster through a community than ever before.
This is the aspect of social media that marketers want to capitalize on, but it is not going to translate into a significant return on investment (ROI) unless you have already built a community of people who like and trust your brand. And that takes time.
Even if you are willing to spend money on Facebook ads to get more likes or promote your products, it takes months to build a following of genuine fans who will respond to your posts and take the actions you want them to take.
In the early days, it was easier to build a large community of followers on Twitter, but of late they have begun to suspend accounts for following too many people in a single day and for other ‘suspicious practices’.
No one can blame Twitter for cutting down on this either, because when companies use it solely as a broadcasting medium for news and updates about their products, it detracts from the user experience on the network, and that is what Twitter, as a company, cares about most.
So if you start creating a presence on social media today, expecting that you will be able to get a massive response in a few weeks or even a month, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Just like a garden that must be nurtured one plant at a time, you need to nurture your relationships with your community, one person at a time.
So start using social media for all the right reasons –
For genuinely listening to your customers
For conducting research on their needs
For answering customer queries
For providing great customer support
For sharing remarkable content
For offering exclusive deals and discounts
For creating brand advocates
If you use it for the reasons above, you will end up creating a very valuable resource, in terms of a social media community that will return the love and respect you give them many times over. And that is something that money can never buy.
How To Warm Up Your Cold Email Marketing List
Do you currently have a cold mailing list, unresponsive, low open rates, even lower click through rates?
Don’t worry most affiliate marketers suffer from that very same problem.
It’s most likely that the reason your list is cold is because you have not effectively grown your relationship with them.
I will now discuss three ways that you can warm up your list and help you improve on your poor email marketing results.
First, you have to inject some passion into your email subject lines.
Ask questions.
Try shock tactics.
Be very real with your subject line, ensure your email contents are relevant to minimize spam reports.
To improve your subject lines, check out popular sites so as Digg and mimic their headlines, or start a swipe file from more successful marketers and base your own subjects lines loosely on theirs.
Second, your email contents must be of value.
There is no point getting a person to open your email if the contents are useless.
It is simply not good enough to send people on your email list promotion after promoting.
The 2 to 1 ratio is quite a popular method, which means you send 2 emails containing free, valuable information and the third email is a promotional email.
Lastly, structure you email correctly.
Make it easy for the reader to know what action to take.
Always include a ps.
Try to write your emails as if you were talking to a friend, keep them friendly.
Story telling is highly effective too if you can take a real life situation and blend it into your email content.
Above all you should always be honest.
Never make false claims or lie in an email.
Keep it real!
Now you know three ways to improve you email marketing success, head over to your autoresponder and amend your current emails.
One last point, know your numbers, most autoresponders provide very detailed statistics on open and click rates, be sure to monitor them and adjust if required.
[Top]An Unbiased Skinny Body Care Review
This Skinny Body Care review is intended to help you decide whether or not starting an MLM business is right for you. Before investing your time and money into a business opportunity, there are some details that require your attention. This review should highlight those details and prepare you to make an appropriate decision. I applaud your due diligence. Let’s take a close look at what kind of products and business opportunity this company has to offer.
The Skinny Body Care Product Line
The product line consists of products that encourage weight loss and limit the appearance of ageing. Whether you are intrigued by the business opportunity or not, the companies product line has some appealing items for those of us who wish to improve our physical appearance.
The headlining product is Skinny Fiber. Skinny Fiber is marketed as an incredibly efficient weight loss manager. This weight loss supplement is said to simplify the pound shedding process. Skinny Fiber contains an ingredient called Glucomannan. This special ingredient is a unique fiber that makes you feel full and consequently eat less food. By controlling your appetite, you can have a stranglehold on weight management. Over eating is the number one cause of obesity. Attacking weight loss at the source is crucial.
The Skinny Body Care Marketing System
Active participants of the companies marketing system have free access to landing pages and a proven presentation video. As with all multi-marketing companies, Skinny Body Care encourages duplication and modeling. The belief is that modeling your business off of a successful business will result in positive results.
It should be noted that most companies charge extra for use of their marketing system. Because this company doesn’t, you can essentially look at the opportunity as a business in a box. The name of the game is exposure. Considering active distributors in the company have access to online marketing tools, using the internet for prospecting reasons is encouraged.
The Compensation Plan
Skinny Body Care is a multi-level marketing company. This marketing model allows for distributors to earn an income on various levels; hence the name multi-level. The first level of earning is obviously based on personal sales. Each marketer is paid a percentage based on the amount of personal sales volume they generate. That being said, very few entrepreneurs have ever built a successful MLM business by solely pushing products.
Recruiting fellow distributors is undoubtedly the quickest, most efficient, and most profitable way to build a successful multi-level marketing business. Why is this the case? After enrolling a new distributor, that person is placed in your downline. The company works with a 3 X 5 forced filled matrix. Distributors are then paid a commission based on the sales volume produced by those in their downline as well as being compensated for their own sales volume.
To be clear, consistently recruiting and enrolling new distributors is the only way to build an MLM business quickly. Doing so efficiently will undoubtedly result in the establishment of passive residual income. A passive residual income is definitely the goal of all entrepreneurs who give Skinny Body Care a try.
[Top]Golf Course Marketing Has Changed
Golf course marketing has changed! Private club marketing has changed! Times have changed and now its time that you as the owner, general manager or board member realize that the old way of golf advertising or golf marketing is no longer valid to generate additional golfers and members. It is time to look at what is really working in our technology age and be able to track our results. Any good golf marketing expert will tell you that what gets measured accurately, improves. The problem is that most golf courses or clubs dont know have a Golf Course Marketing. Plan and for sure dont know how to track their ROI. Thats about to change.
Understanding that most daily fee courses or private country clubs are working from a limited budget or in some cases no budget at all, it is imperative to make sure that every dollar is accounted for and you can verify Return on Investment. That way, you can determine what is working and what is not and spend more time on what is working and less on what is not. You will also be able to go to all decision makers and show proven results and feel confident that your golf club marketing is heading in the right direction.
What I am talking about is Internet Marketing for courses and clubs. This is the missing link for most golf marketing programs. What specifically am I talking about? #1) Having a marketing plan. Most clubs dont have one and wing their efforts day to day. Create one that is simple, cost – effective, consistent and measurable. #2) TRAFFIC!! Everything starts with traffic. Generating more online traffic to your website using strategies like SEO, PPC, Blogging, Facebook or educational article and video marketing. #3) Capturing lead information while they are on your site but also taking advantage of the traffic already at your course using offline email capture strategies with your staff . #4) Getting reviews and testimonials from your happy golfers and members and posting them online for the world to see. #5) Asking for referrals from your happy golfers and members.
Understanding what your perfect golfer or member life-cycle looks like will dramatically help change and put you on the road to success, but choosing the right tactics and strategies to get the best measurable ROI is absolutely critical!
Increase Club Profits is a unique Golf Marketing and Cost Reduction company that helps drive sales and membership while reducing clubs operating expenses without sacrificing quality or service. Our typical client will receive $50,000 of bottom line measurable savings in the first 12 months and page one rankings on most search engines.
[Top]Marketing Study Background Color Vs. Profitability
Ive had this study on the back burner for ages and finally decided it was time to check it out. Heres the deal Tons of marketing gurus tell you that the best way to sell something is with a sales letter. Im not disputing that (at least not in this study). These gurus then tell you that you should set up a one-page web-site that simulates a piece of white paper against a _____ background. That blank is what has been bothering me for awhile. Heres why
I keep seeing different colors for major marketers. I even see some major marketers switch colors from one site to another. It makes me wonder if they have done any testing. Does the color just not matter? If so, why do so many use dark blue, light blue and black?
Then I consider the major money makers on the net and wonder why only one uses a colored background. Im talking about Yahoo, Google, Ebay and Amazon. They all use a white background surrounding their page that is set in a limited width table in the center of the page. Only MSN.com uses a medium blue background.
It was high time for a study to find out the real answer. I did it in the usual way. I built a list of profitable and unprofitable sites by looking at the duration of ads being placed on Yahoo (Overture) and Google. If an ad had been shown for six months or longer, I placed the target page on a list of profitable sites. If an ad was placed and completely dropped in less that one month, the site was placed on an unprofitable list. The latter list would be less reliable, but the comparison between the two lists would still be statistically valid with a sufficient sample size. The latter list might only represent average sites, but even average sites would be less profitable than the known profitable list.
The results were very mixed. First of all, the white background sites were the vast majority on both lists. You simply cant go wrong with a completely white background. However, it wasnt actually the winner. Here is the breakdown:
Profitable sites with a white background: 85.2%
Unprofitable (or average) sites with a white background: 92.6%
A non-white background actually was more profitable a higher percentage of the time. I then studied the darkness of the background in those minority sites for both profitable and unprofitable sites. Looking at the RGB values, I split the colors into two buckets those that were dark (191 or less average RGB value) and those that were light (192 or higher RGB value). The results were even more clear:
Looking only at non-white backgrounds of profitable sites with dark colors: 92.8%
Looking only at non-white backgrounds of unprofitable sites with light colors: 96.1%
Wow! Thats quite a correlation. Although a vast majority of profitable (and unprofitable) sites have a white background, those that do have a non-white background have a dark background whereas the unprofitable sites were more likely to have a light background both with an extremly high correlation. Thats hard to ignore.
I next had to get the actual answer. What color background had the highest correlation with profitability. Whats the bottom line? The answer was just as clear:
53.3% of the profitable sites with non-white desktop background were black.
Now; I should be very clear about this result. The area under study is NOT the actual web-site text area. We are NOT talking about having white text on a black background. In a vast majority of cases, these sites actually had black text on a white background. The area under study is the theoretical area AROUND the virtual piece of paper. It is the desktop color if you pretend the web-site area is a piece of paper sitting on a virtual desktop. It isnt the color of the piece of paper that is under study. It is the color of the virtual desktop that the piece of paper is virtually laying upon.
So what am I going to do about this result? Ill probably eventually implement it. I dont like it, but the result is very clear. Why dont I like it? Well, take a look at one of my sites:
http://www.Glyphius.com
I use a virtual piece of white paper on a virtual white desktop. I like the fuzzed shadow I use around the edges. That fuzzed shadow wont be possible with a black background. The shadow will simply disappear leaving (in my opinion) a less professional look of a crisp piece of white paper against a black backdrop.
The other reason I dont like it is that it puts me out of the majority of profitable sites in general. It will make future studies more difficult. Instead of simply grabbing profitable sites and comparing them to unprofitable sites, I will need to grab only profitable and unprofitable sites that have a black background. Otherwise other results might not be valid if they come from the majority white background dataset. A good example would be a study of headline color. The most profitable headline color might be different between those sites with a black background and those with a standard white background.
I simply havent decided what to do yet. Will I stick with the safe standard white desktop behind my virtual piece of paper? Or will I go with the black desktop that is less standard, but has a higher correlation with profitability? What will you do?
One result from this study is very clear though. If you do choose a non-white background, it is foolhardy to choose yellow, blue (light or dark), pastel green, or any other color. The correct color for highest profitability is clearly black. The 2nd place color (and the color of the vast majority of sites) is white. All other colors failed miserably in this study.
[Top]