Is Twitter worthwhile for Business?

Everywhere I turn these days, there are debates as to the validity of Twitter as a business marketing tool. These debates sit alongside critiques of Facebook and LinkedIn as effective networking environments in which to conduct commerce.

So, the question remains: can Twitter help your business?

Firstly, I would advise any company against believing that joining Twitter and posting a few Tweets to gain a couple of followers will make the difference between the success and failure of your business. It won't. For those of you who do not yet know what Twitter is, let's turn to Wikipedia:

"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers."

So, how can 140 characters of text help a business?

1. You can easily drive people to your website or a page of your website. Driving people to your website and changing website content will, in turn, help improve your general search engine ranking. Adding fresh content, making the site content relevant and interesting to your prospective customers will help increase your overall internet presence;

2. You can air your views on subjects that are relevant to your business, and, more importantly, relevant to potential customers. Regular "expert" Tweets can establish you as an authority on a subject and garner an increase in the number of followers you attract;

3. There is an argument that "Followers" of your Tweets are very unlikely to become customers of yours overnight, if at all. That is not the point, and if you think Twitter will bring these types of results, then don't bother with it. We all know that there is no magic wand in the world of marketing. But the more followers you have, the greater the audience you have to address;

4. Twitter allows you to engage with other users. "Engagement" is one of the buzz words in marketing at the moment. Being limited to 140 characters is also a great lesson in the practice of being concise. Learn to get across a marketing message in a short, punchy and interesting way that will attract people to notice you, and leave them wanting to know more...;

5. From a business perspective, Twitter makes you think about the other forms of on-line and Social marketing available, and how you can use them to your advantage, bearing in mind that many of these forms of marketing are absolutely FREE.

For instance, use Tweets to point users to a blog you have written, and in which you can expound on the subject you introduced on Twitter. Blogs are widely accepted as being an invaluable part of any on-line marketing strategy, with cross-references to relevant content on your website, for example.

Links to your Twitter page can be inserted in Blogs, your website, articles and other Social Media sites, creating a tight network of information that you are creating. Having views on subjects relevant to your business demonstrates that you can be taken seriously, and will enhance the overall image of your business.

If you write articles or produce documents on products and services you provide, Tweet about them and link through to them. Get people reading about what you do.

I am not going to use examples of the successes or otherwise of large corporations; I am addressing this at the small and medium sized business looking to find their way into the rapidly growing world of Social Networking.

From personal experience, I don't expect to generate a massive influx of income-generating leads simply by tweeting a couple of times a day (although that would be nice!).

I tweet to drive people to my website. I use URL shortening tools, and can see the instant results as click-throughs are logged in real-time; a lot like Google Adwords but without the cost!

I tweet to point people to articles that I have written on subjects relevant to my business, and that I think might be of interest to prospective customers.

I tweet to offer affiliate deals, or highlight other articles that have been written by other people.

I read other tweets posted by experts and learn a great deal from their articles about emerging trends in marketing and consumer behaviour, and on a day to day basis.

I receive tweets from a wide variety of publication on specific topics that are of particular interest to me, cutting to the chase and saving valuable time.

My advice? Use Twitter and see for yourself. It is a great arena in which to experiment with marketing messages; see what attracts attention. Be patient; don't expect to make £millions, but start to use it as a part of your internet marketing strategy, and employ it with other complementary methods. If the only thing you achieve is increased organic search engine placement for your website, then that can't be a bad result.

It has worked for me, and can certainly work for you.

If you would like to discuss including Social Networking within your on-line marketing strategy, please contact us at design@argentrammedia.com. http://www.argentrammedia.com/

Digital Screen Marketing - a cost-effective route to efficient customer service

One of the buzziest words in marketing these days is engagement; the need to engage with your customers or clients. This imperative, to build a relationship with potential clients, has never been more important in days when marketing messages can be out there in front of millions of people within minutes, circulating around the globe.

Twitter and Facebook and other forms of Social Media, are all about engagement. Your website should ensure that potential clients are invited to engage with you as soon as they hit the homepage. Emails, personalised with clients' names, should entice each recipient to maintain their relationship with you, encourage them into your world. If you like, the days of good old customer service have returned with a vengeance; the days of the grocer who dealt with every customer personally, collecting products for them off the shelves and knowing every customer by name.

But we are not returning to the yester-year of retail; we can't, simply because our customers expect to be served with ever increasing speed and efficiency.

However, the technology is available now for every business, no matter how small, to bring back the best aspects of the golden age of customer service, and those businesses that ignore this technology do so at their peril.

In previous articles, I have talked a lot about web and social media, and today I want to throw digital signage and digital screen marketing into the pot. Mention the word "digital" and many businesses will recoil in horror at the thought of yet another expense. However, let's look at a few examples:
Some years ago, one of my clients was a major private health insurance company. Whenever I visited them, I had to sit in their reception area to wait to be greeted. There were magazines on a coffee table, beautiful photographs on the wall, and Sky News playing on a screen. I could have been in any corporate headquarters anywhere in the world, as there was absolutely nothing that told me where I was, or what type of company I was dealing with. Was this complacency or arrogance? An assumption that the mere company name was enough to tell me all I needed to know.

Another national company had their foyer lined with press clippings of their Chairman greeting the Great and the Good; great for the Chairman's ego, but is this good for the company as a whole?

I thought then that what these companies needed was a television-quality presentation product that did a number of things:

• Entertain waiting clients (in the same way that a magazine on a coffee table might);
• Inform clients, but without the heavy and relentless news content of Sky News or CNN;
• Tell clients about company products and services, without expecting them to read through books of press clippings or corporate brochures; 

In so many instances, businesses leave clients and potential clients hanging around without considering the effect that this might have on the ongoing relationship. Good customer service is all about making every customer feel valued.

If you have an area where customers wait for any length of time, think about a screen. I know that many of you have already got televisions in waiting areas or reception areas, and have a Freeview box so that customers can enjoy "Good Morning" or "Under the Hammer".

What a waste of an opportunity!

By all means, entertain waiting customers; it helps to pass the time. But use that time to tell people about your business; present your new products; show how successful you are as a company; tell that client how valuable they are to you. Above all, engage with that customer as they sit there waiting for you; it is a golden opportunity and one that is too valuable to miss.

If you would like more information on a range of cost-effective screen marketing solutions, please contact us at Argent Ram Media - www.argentrammedia.com. Email design@argentrammedia.com


"The average recall of a brand advertised on Wal-Mart television is 66%, compared with 24% for brands advertised on in-home television."

Social Media: Mind-Blowing Statistics

If YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world.

20 hours-worth of video is uploaded to YouTube every single minute.

According to their own statictics, Facebook has more than 250m active users globally.

Over the past twelve months, Twitter’s year-on-year growth rate has broken the 1000% barrier.

Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.

As a business, you would be mad not to try to tap into this massive free marketplace.

If you would like to discuss the ways in which Social Media can benefit your business, please contact us at design@argentrammedia.com. www.argentrammedia.com

These statistics, and more, were provided by EConsultancy http://bit.ly/PMcTz

Lauren Luke

If you haven't heard of Lauren Luke yet, you soon will.

A bullied teenager from South Shields who left school at 15, and who admits she has very few friends, Lauren has become a YouTube phenomenon, and looks set to become a millionaire.

Google-owner YouTube has extended their Partnership Programme to provide an opportunity for the creators of the most-viewed video clips to earn a share of revenue from advertising attached to their clips.

Lauren, who used to sell make-up products on E-Bay, moved to YouTube and started to give video make-up tutorials filmed in her bedroom. With over 200 clips now on-line, with some of the most popular giving tips on how to achieve the look of celebrities, Lauren quickly became the 2nd most popular YouTube user in the UK. Her "Leona Lewis-look" video has attracted in excess of 2million views.

Despite having never undergone any formal training, it is Lauren's natural style and on-camera personality that has made her so approachable and popular.
I came across Lauren's story in the Daily Telegraph today, and think she is an absolute inspiration. She clearly has an innate talent, and comes across as incredibly likeable.

So, what can a business learn from this? Great rewards can be achieved from the simplest of ideas. Just think outside the box and look at ways of communicating and engaging with your target market. Lauren has done just that, probably completely unintentionally, but what a success story. Good luck to her!

Telegraph Report on YouTube's Partnership Programme - http://bit.ly/hAt3J

BBC InsideOut Video Report on Lauren Luke - http://bit.ly/112xrV

Argent Ram Media - put videos of your products or services on YouTube and get seen by a whole new audience. Contact us for information - design@argentrammedia.com. www.argentrammedia.com

What's in a Name?

It's interesting how the simplest thing can make a huge difference to a business.

In my previous articles, I have talked about consumer behaviour and the importance of understanding what your consumer wants.

There was a report from Tim Muffett on BBC News this morning (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8219540.stm) about the incredible rise in the fortunes of pear cider. Traditionally known as "Perry" and typically made using one type of pear, it has been acknowledged that the name "Perry" means little to today's consumer. Many manufacturers took the decision to rebrand their Perry product to become "Pear Cider". Hardly a major step, one would have thought, but Pear Cider is a description that the consumer understands, whereas Perry was not immediately identifiable.

As a result, Pear Cider sales have risen from £13.4 million a year in 2007 to £46 million this year.

Not only is this great news for the cider manufacturers, but it heralds good news for the fruit farmer. A success story all round.

If you would like to take a fresh look at the best ways of encouraging your customers to understand what you do, then please contact us - design@argentrammedia.com or telephone 01233 611200

SMS Marketing as part of your Marketing Mix

Yesterday, I posted a blog here discussing PR and the need to fill in the gaps in your Marketing Circle.

I have subsequently seen an article by Rosie Baker in Marketing Week (19th August 2009) entitled "Faith to use SMS marketing to drive footfall". This is a perfect example of using cost-effective technologies to fill in the gaps to ensure that customers do not drop off your marketing loop.

If you are a business that takes the time to build customer loyalty, and keeps data accordingly, then use that data; it has such immense value. In the current, "Twitter-140-character" messaging climate, sending out texts to customers to notify them of promotions is a great way of maintaining their loyalty. Faith (the shoe retailer) is using SMS messaging to inform customers about new collections, sales and promotions, and offering voucher codes that are then redeemable in store. This is a powerful tool, aimed at increasing in-store footfall; all part of that marketing loop.

The SMS messages are also designed to drive customers to the new Faith website, launched this week. As I said in my last blog, all these marketing methods should refer to each other, and complement each other, creating a tighly-woven mesh of customer care.

Have a look at the Marketing Week article - http://bit.ly/2Fr13y

If you think that SMS Marketing could be of interest to you and your business, please contact us at Argent Ram Media (www.argentrammedia.com). This could certainly be another cost-effective form of marketing to add to your mix: design@argentrammedia.com.

Never Underestimate the Power of PR

I read a guide to Social Media the other day, and it was interesting to note that a lot of journalists and article writers scour Twitter for anything newsworthy. They utilise the medium to discover changes in consumer behaviour, shifting business trends and topics of human interest. This information then provides the inspiration or theme for a story for their publication.

I have been in marketing for many years, covering industry sectors as diverse as retail, software development, the internet and travel, and one of my seminar subjects has long been the marketing circle. I urge my clients to think of their marketing strategy as a circle made up of the marketing methods they adopt, and the importance of filling in the gaps within that circle. Once they manage to get a potential customer or client on that circle, it is important that every effort is made to ensure they don't drop off.

Some of the elements that might make up this marketing circle include the following marketing methods:

Telemarketing;
Direct Mail;
Email Marketing;
Internet Marketing;
Advertising;
Direct Sales;
Strategic Alliances;
Referrals;
Cross-selling and Up-selling;
Social Media;
PR

Ideally, your circle should consist of at least 10 different forms of marketing, and each should refer, feed off and relate to each other. For example, your telephone out-of-hours messaging service should direct customers to your website when your offices are not open. Your website should then take up the role of sales person or advisor, and make it easy for a potential client to engage with you, leave you their details or buy something. If they leave you their contact details, it is only courtesy to follow this up with an email, and then keep the potential client up to date with relevant emails.

These emails may link in to relevant landing pages on your website, or even micro-sites that have been set up specifically to achieve an end result. The responses will result in further emails coming through to you, or telephone calls from interested clients.

As you build up the relationship with each client, emails can become more personalised. These can be backed up by direct mail communications with special offers or promotions, perhaps as part of a major marketing campaign that includes advertisements both locally or nationally.

And so you can start to see how the circle comes together, and by looking at the strategy as a whole, you will identify the gaps where potential customers may drop off.

However, it is also important that whatever steps you take to complete your circle, you remain focused on the success and ROI of your marketing.

All this, coupled with the snippet about journalists scouring Twitter for useful information, brings me to the subject of PR.

No matter how small your business, never underestimate the power of PR. In essence, much of the success of Twitter and Facebook, as a medium for conducting business, is all about PR. The success of Social Media hangs on the building of relationships and engaging with other users. It is about providing information that might be interesting and useful, getting other users to notice it and then start to engage with you.

When I give seminars to businesses, I always tell them to use the press. Look at the local and national newspapers and magazines, and identify the types of story that they feature in their business sections. Remember, these business writers have got to find interesting stories every day, every week, and every month in order to fill their pages. They need a constant supply of information on which they can build their articles. Have a look at trends within the business press: what is happening financially, what business sectors are currently successful or struggling. Then look at your own business. Do you buck any particular trend, are you more successful than your competitors, and if so, why? At a time of rising unemployment, particularly in the 18 - 25 years age-group, are you employing more than usual to meet growing demand for your product or service?

Whatever is happening within your business, talk about it! Be proud of your achievements and broadcast them. Identify a strong feature of your business regularly, a recent success, a story about a member of staff, a charity event that your are sponsoring....anything that you think would be of interest to anyone reading the publication.

Start to send through these stories to the journalists who write for the various publications, and in doing so, cultivate a relationship with them. I do find it interesting that this is exactly the same principle behind using Twitter for business. You post interesting Tweets and people will follow you, and then you build on those relationships. It is strange, though, that so many businesses never consider the press. They will happily spend £100's on advertising in the newspaper, but wouldn't consider sending through a story that might provide completely free publicity.

If you are not using PR as a form of marketing, you want to start now!

To discuss adding PR to your marketing circle, please contact Ian Rutter at Argent Ram Media - ian@argentrammedia.com. A tailored campaign can be put together to meet any budget and any requirement. www.argentrammedia.com

Don't Ignore Your Website

There is so much talk about Search Engine Ranking, and being found in Google, that it is far too easy to forget about your website and what happens when it is found by potential clients in the Search Engines.

Imagine that your eye is caught by a particularly enticing product in a store window; so enticing, in fact, that you are tempted off the street and into the store.

Firstly, you enter into the perfume department, but your product is in Electrical Goods; where is that? Oh, where are the signs in this place? And a member of staff wouldn't go amiss...

You spend the first couple of minutes wandering the ground floor, finally find a member of staff and are told that Electrical Goods can be found on the Lower Ground Floor. Now, where are the escalators?

Once in the right department, you scan the displays of white goods for the product of your choice. It is not immediately evident. Ah-ha! Another member of staff. Excuse me! Now, where's he gone? Can you tell me where I can find the machine that is on display in the window, please. Oh sorry, you are with another customer...

You stand aimlessly, waiting for help.

Finally, you get to talk to someone and you ask them where you can find the said machine and how much it is.

Sorry, it is out of stock.

Good experience?

This is what happens when the vast majority of internet customers visit websites.

They search for something specific, find a website and are invariably taken to the website homepage.

They then have to look for signs to follow to get to the right "department" in order to find the specific product or service that they originally searched for. Is there any easier way to find information? No, so it looks like they will have to follow links. Is there a form or phone number they can use to make life easier? No, but there is a "Contact Us" link tucked away in the small print somewhere at the bottom of the page.

Each link takes the visitor to another page, and then another, with each page featuring lists of products that do not include the one they are after.

What happens to that potential customer if they finally find your product and either it is marked as being out of stock, or is found to be too expensive? Off they click and move on to the next website. To be honest, the majority of those potential customers probably didn't bother to move beyond the homepage if the particular product was not immediately visible.

You don't even know they have been on your site, yet they probably had money to spend or business to pass your way!

On average, a staggering 99% of your website visitors will leave without bothering to contact you.

So, what can you do to make sure that your website works for you once a customer finds it.

• If you do appear well in the Search Engines, then think about what the visitor will want to see when they click on the Search Engine link. If your Search Engine link features a specific product, make sure the landing page (ie, the page that the customer will be taken to) features that product.
  
  
• If your links all go through to the homepage, make sure you feature any promotions or special offers or new products on that homepage, in order to grab the visitor's attention.
  
  
• Don't worry if you haven't got a full e-commerce site, or if you don't actually sell products. The same principle applies to businesses offering services. What is your key service? For example, if you are an employment law firm, and all your seacrh engine marketing is geared towards attracting clients who need employment law advice, make sure your landing page immediately tells the visitor that you specialise in EMPLOYMENT LAW.
  
  
• Whatever your business, make sure there is a CALL TO ACTION on every page. Don't expect the website visitor to hunt for the elusive "member of staff"; make it easy for them to get in touch by any means.
  
  
• If you have a database of customers, past and prospective, think about running targeted email campaigns with links to specific pages of your website, so that the email takes the recipient to the right page. Even more effective is the use of a micro-site - a separate mini website that backs up the content of your email ensuring that every item of content is relevant.
  
  
• Above all, make sure your website keeps pace. It MUST change frequently to keep it fresh and relevant to your clients. Don't feature content that is "out of stock", past its sell-buy date or no longer of interest. Think about your customers would want to see when they visit your website; more importantly, what they would EXPECT to see.

If you would like a free website consultation, please contact Ian Rutter at ian@argentrammedia.com. www.argentrammedia.com

Postscript

As a postscript to my last blog entry, remember the immortal words of Oscar Wilde:

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

Social Media allows you to talk to other people about your business. It helps you to engage with potential customers, share information, start a dialog. Use it; your competitors will.

Social Networking for Business Growth

33% of all internet users share opinions on-line every week.

It wasn't that long ago that the internet was a display cabinet for static websites that did very little apart from look pretty (and many failed at that!).

Now, there are millions of consumers talking about topics that affect them, products they like and dislike and service (good or bad) that they have experienced. The internet is an open forum, a no-holds-barred soap box where views can be aired with approbation.

"Social Media is everywhere. Quite literally...Covering a vast swathe of online activity from blogs to social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, to the micro-blogging activity on Twitter, social media is growing at an astonishing rate." Morag Cuddeford-Jones, Marketing Week.

So, how can businesses dip their toes into this maelstrom of consumer chat?

Large brands have discovered the power of social media as a way of identifying consumer trends and changes in behaviour. Many of you will have heard the story of Cadbury Wispa. It disappeared from store shelves in 2003, but Cadbury subsequently learnt that there was a growing campaign on Facebook calling for the bar's return. By 2007, there were 93 "Bring Back Wispa" groups with around 14,000 members, all fans of the confection, and the bar was reinstated.

Cadbury responded: "We had noticed the web interest for some time. It reveals a consumer passion which swayed our opinion about relaunching Wispa." Tony Bilsborough, Cadbury Spokesman.

There are some key words in the above statement - "web interest", "consumer passion" and "swayed our opinion".

Cadbury built a relationship with those people discussing Wispa on Facebook; they listened to the consumer and reacted.

This is exactly how every business can benefit from Social Media. Use it to build relationships. Start by simply tapping into these vast networks, and sharing your opinions and ideas, providing useful information or helpful tips and build a fan base; above all, listen to what consumers are discussing.

I will conclude with some advice from Dan Cobley, Google Marketing Director:

"History tells us that economic slowdowns are when winners get ahead. The performance gap between the most successful companies and their competitors becomes greater than during a growth period. The winners continue investing in growth and focus on profitable products and customers, while carefully managing costs.

The slowdown is likely to fuel further adoption of digital technologies and greater use of the web. By understanding today's consumer, companies can take advantage of digital technology and media to be more flexible, effective and targeted in growing their business during the slowdown."

Marketing Week

We have written a paper entitled "Social Media - An Introduction to Facebook and Twitter for Business" and this can be found at http://www.argentrammedia.com/downloads.html, along with several other articles on Internet Marketing and Website Design. If you find these articles useful, please feel free to post a comment on this blog page; we'd be delighted to hear from you.

Free Marketing Guides

As part of my attempts to help small and medium sized businesses through tough economic times, I am writing a series of articles on some of the most cost-effective ways of getting business. The first four of these are available on our website at http://www.argentrammedia.com/downloads.html.

These "guides" offer tips on the basic steps you can take to get seen in the Search Engines, the Importance of your website homepage, identifying changes in consumer behaviour and marketing in a difficult economy.

If you'd like to comment on these articles, or share opinions, then please send me a tweet on Twitter.

Also, if you know of any business that needs help with their marketing (new website, improved website effectiveness, design for print, email marketing, micro-websites etc) then please complete one of our Referral Forms (find this at http://www.argentrammedia.com/downloads.html) and we will pay you £100 cash for every lead we convert.

A Marketing Success Story

Did you read the Sunday Times Magazine this week (2nd August 2009)?

In it, there was an article, "Shifting Sands", about the need for British seaside towns to reinvent themselves for the increase in UK stay-at-home holidays. Attention was focused on Torquay, and there was one story that particularly caught my eye.

There are two rival ferry companies that run up and down the Torbay coastline linking Torquay, Brixham and Paignton. The Western Lady Ferry Service took the decision, 3 years ago, to sell two elegant second-world-war naval ships, and then invest in two new 170-passenger vessels at £500,000 a-piece. As a result, they need to have healthy passenger numbers just to break even and when fuel costs rise, and the weather turns inclement this has a significant knock-on effect. Despite having been in business for 64 years, they are finding it a struggle.

The rival company, Greenway Quay and Ferry Service, is not having anything like the same problems. Profits are up 50% on last year. In the 4 years the company has been in business, some shrewd investments have been made, including the purchase of one of the naval ships that Western Lady offloaded. Naturally, the question was posed "How has Greenway done so well, and Western Lady so badly?" The answer..?

"We offer more trips than anyone else, and we spend more than anyone else on marketing...because we know we've got to speculate to accumulate. That is not the attitude of everyone in the area." Will Ford, Greenway Quay and Ferry Service.

You will hear every marketing expert expounding on the need to "market your way out of a recession." The above story is a prime example of the success that can be achieved by thinking outside the box. Greenway have done different things; they have not been complacent. They offer a greater range of services, and by keeping control over his costs, Will Ford only needs to fill 35% of his boats to be profitable. It says much that he is close to capacity on almost all services he runs.

Don't make the mistake of ignoring the need to market your business. I have written four articles on how you can make the most of some of the most cost-effective forms of marketing you have at your disposal:

Marketing in a Difficult Economy - Employing a Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy

Search Engine Promotion - Getting your Website seen by Potential Customers

Effective Websites - the Importance of your Homepage

Consumer Behaviour Changes - An Introduction to Google Insights for Search

These articles are all available for you to download, free, from our website at:
http://www.argentrammedia.com/downloads.html

If you would like to discuss any aspect of your marketing, please call us to arrange a free initial consultation.

Argent Ram Media is a company that specialises in providing a range of marketing solutionsfor all businesses, from the small one-man-band up to the largest of multi-nationalcompanies.

Website Design & Development
Design for Print
Email Design & Campaign Management
Micro-Site Marketing
E-Commerce
Internet Start-Ups
Marketing Consultancy
Search Engine Marketing
PR
Digital Advertising
Digital Screen Marketing

0845 009 5396

Acknowledgement - The Sunday Times Magazine, 2nd August 2009.