It’s no secret that Gatorade has all the advertising dollars in the world to spend on sponsoring top athletes and creating cutting edge, highly visible campaigns that dominate the Sports Drink market. Whether or not they are creating the most effective and efficient means of hydration, like our client Vitalyte (which we are currently in the process of re-branding), is a question we will have to put to rest until another time. All Sports Drinks can learn one thing from Gatorade however, and that is how to most effectively monitor the efficiency of their advertising expenses, from youth community training seminars with athletes to Social Media efforts such as Facebook and Twitter, Gatorade has its finger on the pulse of all activity across a broad spectrum of media avenues. The bottom line; it is all about conversions.

Introducing Gatorade Mission Control:

By Les Kollegian
Jacob Tyler Creative Group
www.jacobtyler.com

Of all the Internet marketing trends that have come to light over the past few years – developments like social networking, the rise of mobile devices, content management systems, and so on – there’s one that seems to be growing in strength every day, and yet is hardly ever mentioned: utter confusion.

For all we are learning about how to do business online, getting our arms around it all is tougher than ever. Ten years ago, we figured out that search engine marketing and optimization was important; then we discovered that we could reach more customers through article marketing, and then blogs, and eventually social media sites. Along the way we integrated video, Tweets, real-time RSS feeds, and an ever-growing number of apps to stay in touch with customers and colleagues. Every single one of these is a valuable tool, and there are more great ideas every day. But the one thing we’re really missing is focus, a way to keep our online marketing plans on track and under control.

I know a lot of executives and business owners who are exhausted by their online marketing plans. They know they need to do search engine optimization, or maintain a strong Facebook presence, but they couldn’t tell you exactly why – or if it’s working. If this sounds familiar to you, I promise you aren’t alone. Thousands of companies, even well-run enterprises at the front of every marketing curve, are struggling to put their web strategies into a manageable format. It isn’t that they aren’t trying hard enough, there’s just too much to keep on top of.

To help you gear your online efforts towards results, not frustration, I’d like to offer five professional-grade tips for creating a web strategy that’s as profitable as it is manageable:

Make a goal, not a plan. Here’s where it all starts. It used to be that companies would have an overriding goal – something like fifty new Internet customers per month, or so many thousands of dollars in increased online revenue – and then work toward that. Now, it’s not uncommon to have a director of search marketing, another person focusing on social networking, a third developing apps for iPhones and Droids, and so on.

There’s nothing wrong with having a committed team working on different aspects of your online marketing, but everything they do should boil down to – and be in line with – some stated goal. If you don’t have that kind of focus, then you might do well in one or two areas, but the bottom line is going to suffer.

It’s worth mentioning that your goal should be reasonable… as in, realistic. Deciding you want to add a million new online customers by next month might be fun, and it might even bring you focus, but it’s not going to yield the kinds of results you’re praying for. Stick to what can be done, rather than wished for, and work up from there.

Get a shopping list. Knowing what you’re trying to accomplish in a business sense, you can begin to pick and choose which tools are worth devoting time and money to. Yes, there’s certainly a risk in ignoring something that’s cutting-edge, like next generation mobile apps, but there’s even more in pouring resources into projects that won’t actually yield any revenue. Not everything that’s possible is profitable, so try to divert your marketing dollars to areas where they’re most likely to come back from. There’s always room to build once you’ve got a working base, but a company that overspends or over commits will quickly find itself fighting an uphill battle.

Designate and delegate. It’s absolutely critical that each piece of the marketing mix have someone who’s responsible for it. Whether your point person is in house or outsourced, there has to be someone keeping things on track. Otherwise, your plan will quickly transform itself into a wish list. Even at a smaller firm, there’s usually too much for one or two people manage alongside their other duties, so spread the responsibility around.

This is an area where an outside firm can be a huge help. Lots of customers decide to save money by handling as much as possible in house, only find that it costs them a great deal more in the long run. Why? Because programmers, designers, and other professionals are stuck trying to juggle their normal work along with new Internet marketing initiatives. The end result is that both projects suffer – their day-to-day work becomes slower, less precise, and more mistake-prone, while the new ideas never get off the ground. If your design or marketing team has a creative team ready to jump in, take advantage.

Add pieces. With the instantaneous nature of the internet, this article will be outdated virtually by the time it hits your screen. Next week, next month, or next year will bring a new development or platform that most of us haven’t even heard of yet… and one that might turn out to be a big piece of your marketing mix. Recognize that it’s going to happen and handle it the way I’ve already recommended; figure out if and how the new idea is worth trying, and then find a way to work it into the mix to reach your bigger business goals. No matter what, however, resist the urge to jump in and try something just for the sake of “keeping up,” as that’s the quickest way to post a loss.

As you might have gathered by now, balance is the key. It’s not unusual for a business to actually hurt itself by picking up a new technique or idea, since it causes them to lose track of other campaigns that were working, or about to, before they switched gears and directions.

Measure and maintain. You’ll never know how you’re doing online if you don’t keep track. Of course, if you have a professional Internet marketing firm like ours working on your behalf, they’ll get these metrics to you automatically. If not, though, keep one eye on the speedometer, so to speak. Hard as it might be to believe, we regularly come across businesses that aren’t even monitoring their web traffic, much less keeping strong analytics to find out what’s working. Watching, evaluating, and testing your web marketing isn’t something you can do once in a while, or even once a week – you have to do it daily if you’re going to keep up.

The right marketing mix has more ingredients than ever, so you’ll need to follow this advice if you’re going to have a shot at cooking up some bigger profits this year.

By Les Kollegian
Jacob Tyler Creative Group

This is an interesting time to be in marketing. Technology isn’t just changing the way we reach our customers, but the new mediums available mean that even our messages themselves have to change if they’re going to be effective. Nowhere is this more true than with social networking. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are starting to actually live up to the expectations that advertisers set for them years ago, but not necessarily in the ways we originally expected them to.

Instead of updating profiles and treating tweets like segments from an online newsletter, businesses are finding that social media is the means to start a conversation, not a lecture. Customers aren’t content to sit back and hear what we have to tell them – they want to be involved, give feedback, and shape the direction of the dialogue.

There are some exciting shifts taking place, but like all changes in trends, there are going to be winners and losers; companies that take advantage, and those that fall behind. Here is what you need to know to make the most of social networking this year:

Marketing takes on a new meaning with social networking. There’s still a time and place to promote your relative strengths, show off your unique selling proposition, and hook potential customers with a targeted headline… but it’s not on Facebook, or any similar site. What people search for on social networking platforms is different even from other websites: they don’t just want information, they want cutting-edge news, reactions, and insight.

That means these are good places to be an expert and build your brand, be it personal or corporate, but a terrible forum for flat-out promoting products and specials. While tweeting about a special you’re offering, or mentioning it in your profile, may be acceptable for every seventh or tenth time you make a post, doing it more often is the social networking equivalent of spam (or suicide, as I like to call it). It won’t make people hate you; they’ll do worse and ignore you. Use the majority of your real-time space to position yourself as an expert authority or source of industry insight. Do not just hawk your products.

You have to flip the format. For the past ten years, web designers have lost sleep fretting over the way pages load on this browser, that browser, or worse yet, on multiple versions of the same browser with different configurations (i.e., Microsoft Explorer 6.0, 7.0, 8.0… those of you in the industry know what I am talking about). Every web designer’s compatibility nightmare is bound to continue for at least a while longer, since now we can’t even say whether a visitor will even be using a small touch screen or a mouse. The newest generation of mobile devices has finally taken them completely to the mainstream, meaning that your site and profile had better work in a variety of formats.

Mobile platforms work particularly well with social networking because both encourage instant updates. Neither are about what you’ve done, but what you’re doing. As a marketer, that means your customers are expecting rapid-fire updates and availability, so take advantage of the media and use it regularly to reach clients on the go.

The message is more important than the source. Being famous isn’t what it used to be… at least online. A plumber from Cleveland, or a grandmother from Grand Forks, can gather more friends and followers than a music producer or Fortune 500 CEO if they speak to subjects that people care about. This is the kind of thing that drives public relations people crazy, but it’s also why the opportunities in social networking are so strong.

Online, everything runs on attention. If you can build a following, you can always find ways to profit from it. To do that, though, you don’t have to spend a fortune or get yourself on the front of a magazine. You do have to come up with something that’s more interesting than what people are reading now. There’s no secret, but there isn’t any shortcut, either.

It’s all connected. There’s not really any such thing as a “social networking strategy” anymore, just like search engine optimization, blog marketing, and other online marketing strategies are fading away. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they don’t still matter, but that they’re ceasing to be separate things. The way to come out ahead in today’s marketplace is by viewing each as just another piece of the entire media and marketing mix – separate instruments combining to play a tune your buyers want to hear.

As I said, social networking is finally starting to show some of the results that marketers and business owners hoped for when they started using them years ago. By using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (among other social network platforms) effectively, what you’re really doing is creating a low-cost opportunity to market virally – to not just tell someone something, but use them to tell someone else. It’s the 21st century equivalent of word of mouth, only better, because it can multiply your message exponentially in the blink of an eye.

For those still wondering if Social Media implementation can help your business, inquire no further. The kind folks at Socialnomics created a followup to their “Social Media ROI” video that we blogged back in February. Once again, we felt compelled to point this video out, not only because of the wealth of information they make available in this presentation, but also because we even can’t believe how much the statistics have changed from the first video we posted only 2 months ago! Are you still worried that implementing a Social Media Strategy could be too expensive?