photo credit: adria.richards
If you’re not using Twitter, you might be missing out on a great opportunity to expand and develop your business connections; promote your online promotions and blog posts, communicate in person events or sales; and speak with key players in your field without having to cold call or schedule a meeting.
Some strategies:
Development:
Follow influencers of your business community and learn from them; join conversations with the media, bloggers, potential customers; keep up to date with bloggers who you currently read.
Promote:
Start up a blog and promote your stories on Twitter; tweet about upcoming events and gain online exposure for them; develop contests and prizes and give them away online; broadcast your sales, daily specials or anything else you’d tell customers in person.
Communicate:
Even though you might want to just shout out what you’re selling, remember that conversations and trust will lead to sales. Talk to people you follow. Answer their questions, give free advice. Create a good mix of promotional dialogue and helpful information and you’ll cultivate more followers.
Remember, Twitter is only a part of your marketing strategy. It is your space to remind your audience about you in a non-intrusive way. Paired with other online marketing efforts like Google Ad Words, Blogging and Facebook, in person and in print marketing, you’ll have a well rounded marketing campaign with further reach and broader depth.
Feel free to follow me, I’ll likely follow back 
www.twitter.com/marketing_girl
photo credit: ArtemFinland
There is nothing worse than investing time and money in a marketing campaign without the ability to track its effectiveness. Here are 3 scenarios, and some suggestions on how to track them.
A newspaper ad or direct mailer
In the past, you may have put an ad in a local newspaper with your website’s home page and phone number. Or perhaps you went another step further and suggested your reader clip the ad as a coupon or used urged potential customers to “Call for more details.”
By automating your print advertising you’ll be able to see the effectiveness of your advertisement and potentially increase your email database. That means, if the offer is good, but not good enough for them to buy right away, you can retain their information for further offerings or useful information. You can use landing pages to achieve this.
A landing page is a “hidden” page on your website – meaning it’s not on your navigation bar. It has a specific URL, like http://www.vancouvermarketinggirl.com/[insert page here] that is linked to a specific campaign.
Ask for some key information on a landing page – like name and email address. Walk through this promotion if you’d like to see an example in action. Visit ZipLocal and find Salon Montage. Click on the URL on their profile. Fill in the information and within moments you’ll receive an email coupon. (PS, if you did this, you just received a $15 certificate to use on their services). You’ll also be added to their email database which is how you can track how many people participated in your campaign (Don’t worry you can unsubscribe right away if you don’t want to receive their monthly updates).
Ask your web designer or email me for more information on how to create your own landing page.
Many companies also use different phone numbers for each specific campaign. This works well as you can track received phone calls. This could be a good route to go if your company isn’t participating in email marketing.
A Facebook ad campaign
This method can be tracked through Facebook statistics and through your Google Analytics. You can easily see how many people viewed your ad and how many responded. This way you can adjust your message accordingly. Facebook does an excellent job of allowing you to target your campaign by selecting the demographics that fit your criteria.
Email Newsletters
Email campaigns are a brilliant way to keep in touch with current, past and potential customers. Email marketing should be permission based. It’s a good idea to utilize a third party newsletter provider. I use Icontact almost exclusively. I like their pricing, customer service and the ease of their website.
With IContact you can send as many emails and have as many lists of subscribers as you wish. Two good lists to start with would be Current Customers and Potential Customers. This way you can address various topics that are of interest to each group.
When you send your marketing message Icontact takes care of the tracking. You can see in detail how many people opened your email and clicked on links. You can also see who has unsubscribed. I use this as an indicator of the usefulness of the message. In this genre, a straight promotion will usually result in more unsubscribers than a message with useful information as well as promotional.
Feel free to utilize your landing pages through email marketing as well.
There is a lot of stuff you can buy or download for free online. I know, I spent a lot of my time investigating new ideas for clients and for myself. But I have found that focusing on these areas (because you can’t do it all at once) has proven successful.
(caution – this is for online newbies – if you’re already well on your way to being online – check out the online marketing blog for lots more in-depth information)
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Get tweeting with Twitter. Follow people online, start discussions, promote products and services and link back to your blog and website.
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Write articles. Submitting articles and press releases will increase links back to you – which search engines l-o-v-e. We have been having success using Article PR’s directory for submission sites.
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Build your links on search engines like ZipLocal and submit your business details there. If you advertise on ZipLocal, you’ll also be able to take advantage of their features – links to Facebook, user written reviews, voting and much more.
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Install landing pages. You’ll likely receive more lead conversions– not just page clicks. Make sure your landing page gets people signed up for your newsletter. Copyblogger has a great post explaining landing pages and giving some examples.
Choose to invest ¼ of the dollars you spent on traditional advertising last year on online techniques and focus time (or hire someone) on nurturing your online efforts. You’ll see changes because you’ll be able to track them using programs like Google Analytics.
Found a new way to spread the word!
by chenrickson on March 1, 2009
in fresh marketing
Wow, where have I been this last week? I have definitely been writing, just not blog writing and Yelp is why:
I recently discovered the “funness” of Yelp! and I’ve been having a great time writing reviews for local restaurants, shops and services, that I haven’t been blog writing. However, all of this review writing is definitely considered some random acts of kindness.
You can check out all of the businesses I’ve been Yelping about by clicking on my profile over on the sidebar. You can set up a business page with them if you’re a business or just write up reviews on places you like to shop, eat and play.
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