Forrester, a leading US research firm, produced a report “Purchase Path of Online Buyers’ report” in 2012 showing a number of startling conclusions concerning the usefulness (or otherwise) of social media as a sales lead generator.
Forrester tracked 77,000 purchases online and the report’s author, Sucharita Mulpru, found that
“While the hype around social networks as a driver of influence in ecommerce continues to capture the attention of online executives, the truth is that social continues to struggle and registers as a barely negligible source of sales for either new or repeat buyers.
“The reality is that even the most popular social image-sharing sites (like Pinterest) have failed to move the needle with respect to sales for most retail sites.”
He also found:
“The reality is that even the most popular social image-sharing sites (like Pinterest) have failed to move the needle with respect to sales for most retail sites.”
The best sources of sales, according to the report, are “search” and “email”.
Here is how new customers came by their purchase:
Direct visits to the website: 20%
Organic search: 16%
Paid search: 11%
Social media: <1%
Here is how repeat purchasers bought:
Direct visits to the website: 20%
Email: 13%
Organic search: 6%
Social media: <1%
Social Media Strategy for 2013?
If you are a small business owner and are considering an aggressive social media strategy in 2013 you would be well advised to ask yourself and your marketing advisor some questions.
Some inconvenient, awkward questions.
Questions about evidence of success of social media marketing for small businesses, questions about a direct correlation between your Twitter or Facebook account and sales, questions about proof of previous campaigns for businesses like yours.
You will be surprised at the answers you receive.
You will be even more surprised when you refuse to accept assertions as facts.
In the meantime take a look at this useful video when deciding on a social media strategy for 2013; if it doesn’t educate it will certainly entertain 
Filed under Social Media Marketing 
Facebook advertising is appallingly ineffective.
And unlike many other sweeping assertions you will have come across trumpeting Facebook advertising, “engagement”, brand building, and other buzzwords which have nothing to do with selling your stuff, I will show you compelling evidence of it’s veracity.
1. for every 10,000 ads that Facebook delivers, they deliver 5 (yes, five) clicks to you, the advertiser.
Take a look at the graph below (and it is actually to scale).
©The Ad Contrarian 2012
2. a recent experiment reported by AdAge magazine in a piece entitled “How Blank Display Ads Managed to Tot Up Some Impressive Numbers” found that blank display ads showed a better ctr (click through rate) than the average Facebook display ad.
In fact the click through rate on the blank display ads containing nothing but..white space..showed a ctr of .08%.
The ctr on Facebook ads has been estimated by industry experts at .05%. It is instructive that Facebook does not publish data about it’s ctr…
The average ctr of all display ads on the internet is actually .09% which means that the blank ad attracted only one click less per ten thousand impressions than the average banner ad.
3. “It’s not about selling, it’s about building your company’s brand and getting likes”
There are two big problems with this assertion:
a) 38% of “likes” come from the 18-24 age group and 29% come from 13-17 year olds meaning 67% of likes come from people with very little money (CBS Moneywatch)
b) You can buy Facebook fans for 10 US cents (250 fans for $30).
Dippin’ Dots, a US based ice cream, is one of the top 50 brands on Facebook with 4.5 million Facebook fans.
Dippin’ Dots filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
Two things that should be remembered if you are a small business owner in Ireland:
- People use Facebook to engage with other people, not advertising or marketing or companies promoting their products and
- No “digital marketing guru” is likely to go bust by advising their clients to advertise on Facebook.
A better way to sell your wares on the internet is to rank well in “search” (be it Google or Bing) and be there in the search engine results page when interested searchers are actually searching for solutions to their problems.
Shameless promotion: If you sell office furniture or carry out computer repairs click on the relevant link and learn how you can put Google search to work for your business
Filed under Online Marketing Ireland, Social Media Marketing
Bullying on social media sites is all too common nowadays. The most recent tragic case in Donegal at the weekend leading to the tragic suicide of a 13 year old girl shows the insidious and harmful nature of such bullying.
Listening to Morning Ireland this morning on RTE Radio 1 I heard the advice being given that “doing a screen grab” was necessary to gather the evidence necessary to confront the bullies. And it struck me that many parents and children may not actually know how to do this.
It is very simple. The video below shows you how to gather the necessary evidence by capturing screenshots of your computer screen so that you can give them to parents, teachers or Gardai.
You need 2 things only (and they are both free)
1. This button on your keyboard-the Print Screen button. It will look something like this..
PrtScn
SysRq
It is normally beside the f12 button.
2. Paint programme (preinstalled on the vast majority of computers)
Simply follow the instructions in the video and give me a shout if you have any difficulty.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is hot right now. It has spawned a massive industry of self-proclaimed social media experts whose mission is to free you from the dark and dangerous concept that as a business owner selling stuff should not be your primary goal.
No. You should be “having a conversation” and “creating engagement” with your customers on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube etc.
The Pepsi Refresh Project
Pepsi-Cola did this in 2010 in spectacular fashion. They ditched their traditional Super Bowl advertising and shifted in excess of $20 million from traditional advertising to “having a conversation” on social media sites.
The Pepsi Refresh campaign involved the consumer having their say and voting on their favourite Pepsi Refresh projects on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and various Pepsi blogs.
The result?
By social media standards it was a massive success: 60,000 Twitter followers, 3.5 million likes on Facebook, and 80 million votes registered for the various Pepsi Refresh projects.
Sales?
For the first time ever
- Pepsi fell to no. three in the most popular soft drink ranking in the United States behind Coke and Diet Coke-it was traditionally number two behind Coke
- A 5% loss of market share in 2010 for both Pepsi and Diet Pepsi
- An 8 fold acceleration of loss of market share in 2010 compared with 2009.
Ballad of a Thin Man (1965)
Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” contains the refrain
“Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones”
Just because “something is happening here” does not mean that you as a small business owner should be swallowing the bullshit about social media marketing.
Not if you want to sell stuff rather than have a conversation..
When did you last “have a conversation” with a brand on Facebook?
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Picture this. You are a small business owner. You fix burst pipes or washing machines or repair mobile phones. You are advised by some social media “guru” that Facebook advertising is great. Facebook gives you all sorts of demographic data to allow you to target your advertising very tightly.
But there is a problem-what demographic do you target? 25-35 year olds? Male/female? Which socio economic group?
Are burst pipes or broken down washing machines or mobile phones in need of repair confined to any specific demographic? Clearly not.
So who do you target? Target the person with a burst pipe or broken washing machine or broken mobile phone.
How do you do this? You make sure that your website shows up when they do a search online for a plumber or mobile phone repair business in your area.
And they will search when the washing machine or mobile phone breaks down or the pipes burst after a hard frost. Until this happens they are busy on Facebook..socializing.
They won’t notice your ad on Facebook when they don’t have the problem outlined above and they are chatting with their friends about the latest movie, going out at the weekend or an upcoming party.
Save your money and invest it in getting ready for the time when they search online for a solution to their problem.
Filed under Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Social media experts tell us that we need to “engage” in social media. Deciding on a good Twitter marketing strategy for example is a necessity we are told. As pointed out recently in the big lie in social media marketing there is no one size fits all when it comes to social media.
And for many businesses it is a costly and time consuming distraction which may be of little or no use to your business.
In fact one of the few genius internet marketers on the planet has the following stunning statistics on his Twitter account:
Followers-191,000+
Following-0
And his Twitter stream consists of an auto generated feed from his blog pushed out through the Twitterfeed service (which is free).
His name is Seth Godin and here is a look at his Twitter profile.
Twitter Clickthrough rate (CTR)
The Seomoz.org site reported a click through rate of 1.34% in 2010 and all industry data since then has indicated a reducing ctr on your tweets in the succeeding years with the growth in traffic and noise.
This means that if you are lucky approximately 1% of your Tweets are clicked on.
I don’t know about you but this seems to me like an incredibly inefficient way to build a following for me or my business.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Videocast (Videos Podcast)
The biggest lie in digital marketing for small business owners in Ireland is the notion that you must have a social media marketing strategy.
The idea that you are missing a golden opportunity if you don’t have an active (and time consuming) presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and whatever is the flavour of the month in social media is a dangerous one.
And potentially costly in terms of time expended and money spent.
Many business owners, completely confident with how to conduct their business in the “real” world, are bamboozled when it comes to the internet and it’s potential.
They are assailed with buzz words like “social media marketing strategy” and are led to believe that they are completely behind the curve if they don’t “get it”.
There are a huge number of small business owners who would be far better served spending their time developing their website into a useful hub of information for their target market rather than sending out tweets on Twitter or seeking “likes” on Facebook.
Informing their market about the benefits of their product, how it will improve their lives, reduce costs heating their home, how it will add value to their property or business, answering common and frequently asked questions, teaching them-these are all activities that will show a real return for their business.
And these activities can best be pursued on your own website. Your own virtual real estate.
The internet generally and social media portals in particular are means of communication-nothing more.
They offer great and cost effective methods of communicating with your target market but there are two significant differences between using your website versus social media sites to meet your market-on your website you are in control and your traffic should be targeted.
On social media sites your traffic is not targeted and you have no control over the interaction with the massive risk of changing terms and conditions on somebody else’s site.
Post and telephone are also means of communication.
Do you have a post strategy?
Do you have a phone strategy?
Don’t sweat the “social media strategy”.
If you are a small business owner you know better than anyone who your target market is, how to communicate with them and how to close the deal.
Don’t lose sight of the big picture worrying about the latest fad in social media; the fundamental principles of persuasion and doing business-converting strangers into customers- haven’t changed for a long time.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Much has been made of social media marketing.
It is a buzz phrase, sexy and can leave you feeling that you are really missing out badly if you don’t have a social media marketing strategy for your business.
Social media marketing can play a role in your marketing of your business.
But there is no one size fits all solution and no, you are not a neanderthal if you don’t have one.
This video takes a look at social media strategy for small business in Ireland or elsewhere and suggests a qualitative differentiation between social media sites before deciding on the right social media strategy for your business.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Just last week I received an email from an old friend. He was asking me to “like” his new page on Facebook. It was promoting a new business that he has just bought. So I clicked on the link which took me to Facebook and I liked his page. It took all of 5 seconds.
I haven’t been back to Facebook since.
Most of my friends and family are on Facebook-they actually use Facebook for the purpose it was intended..”socializing”.
So they put up photos of their new baby, the house they are building, updates about their great weekend away, exchange and share stories, share jokes and all the other stuff that makes up..life.
My brother is on Twitter-he follows Barcleona FC, Peter Aliss the BBC golf commentator, Lionel Messi, Kildare GAA and other stuff that interests him.
The Biggest Mistake in Social Media Marketing
The biggest mistake for you as a small business owner trying to promote your business on the internet is to send your website traffic into these environments and expect it to be a winning strategy. It would be similar to gate crashing a party and handing out business cards.
Epic fail.
There are some other significant problems with expecting to generate business from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
The first of these is the distractions/noise on these sites because whatever you have to say or whatever offer your business has faces the distractions inherent on these sites ranging from advertising on Facebook to constantly updating streams of news/updates on both sites.
Twitter has promoted trends and promoted Tweets-can regular advertising be too far behind?
It just isn’t a smart strategy to attempt to overcome these distractions to deliver your commercial message.
It makes far more sense to do this on your own website. On your own website you can do a number of things which are critical to generating new business from the internet.
These include
- Ensuring there are no distractions between your message and the visitor
- Encouraging people to sign up as a subscriber by giving something of value for free
- Continuing the conversation, on your terms, on your website or through email marketing without distraction. This allows you and the visitor or subscriber to ascertain whether what you have to offer is a good fit for them.
There is another difficulty with social media sites and one which is likely to become a bigger issue in the future-their terms and conditions which have changed regularly in the past and likely to continue to do so in the future.
Investing a significant amount of your time building what you hope will be an asset on someone else’s site leaves you wide open to changing terms and conditions, privacy policies and so on over which you have absolutely no control.
This is akin to opening a shop on somebody else’s land and hoping they won’t decide to evict you or jack up the rent.
Not smart.
Investing your time and energy in your own virtual real estate, your website, is a smarter strategy.
Your goal should be to attract visitors from these sites, not send traffic to them.
A number of great things follow from this:
- It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate authority/knowledge/expertise in your industry
- It allows you to build trust with your visitors
- It helps you, eventually, to generate new business.
This isn’t a flashy or sexy strategy-but it works incredibly well and is a much more effective strategy than sending people to sites where your visitor will be bombarded with distractions and whose terms and conditions are open to change with absolutely no input from you.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing for your business can be time consuming and a major distraction from more productive activities. However with the increased emphasis being placed by Google on “social signals” to assess the value and rank of websites, ignoring the benefits of utilizing social media to promote your business would be foolhardy.
The Pareto Principle which teaches us that 20% of your activity will be responsible for 80% of your successful outcomes and that 20% of your time will also result in 80% of wasted effort and outcomes.
The key is obviously to increase the 20% of time that you spend on the activities that bring you most success.
2 Free Social Media Marketing Tools
Two great free tools to allow you to optimize your time spent on your social media marketing are provided at
1. HootSuite.com and
2. AddThis.com.
HootSuite
HootSuite.com is free and will allow you to manage many of your social media profiles in one, screen interface. The huge benefit of HootSuite.com is that it will allow you to manage your accounts at
- LinkedIn and other popular sites that you may use in your marketing efforts to extend your marketing message and build your brand.
The single biggest benefit of using HootSuite.com is that it will allow you to schedule your Tweets, Facebook updates and LinkeIn shares.
This is a huge time saver and an hour of concentrated effort once a week in scheduling your shares and tweets can be a very efficient use of your time and free you up to concentrate on other activities.
AddThis
AddThis.com is a free sharing service-it allows you to share content with a huge number of social media and content sharing sites but the best part of this service is that you can get an AddThis extension for your browser such as Firefox, Google Chrome and other browsers.
Once you get this add on from their site it allows you to share content on hundreds of sites by right clicking your mouse.
Again, this can be a huge time saver as it saves you the time in surfing to these sites in different tabs or windows-right click in your mouse and all of the options are there in front of you.
Once you set it up in the first place you can pick and choose which sites you wish to share content on and typically these sites will be ones on which you already have an account and which are well trafficked and crawled by Google.
These 2 free services from AddThis and HootSuite are truly useful and, best of all, free tools to allow you spend more time on the productive activities in your internet marketing efforts for your small business.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
