Idiomatic » Tony Simpson

How To Measure Your Company’s Web And Social Media Presence

Tony Simpson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:57:40 +0000

Social Media like Twitter and Facebook are hot, hot, hot right now — being used for everything from marketing to market research to customer support. But for all the buzz, the activity taking place in social media remains hard to measure, and there are still no clear standards on how to evaluate it. Web Metrics Guru Marshall Sponder takes you through social media measurement tools and helps identify the right Web-metrics choices for your business.

Marketing Budget – Decision Time

Tony Simpson — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:51:14 +0000

The other day a CMO told me she didn’t have budget to fund her Conversation Marketing initiative. She explained budgets are already tight…and now we have to layer Conversation Marketing on top of our other marketing initiatives.

Yes. Smart marketers will find a way. It’s not a matter of jumping on the bandwagon with the unknown destination…it’s a matter of using conversation marketing with existing content to increase your page rankings, improve your SEO, or better target your leads…which conversation marketing done the right way does.

So yes, Mrs. CMO — you do have to include Conversation Marketing in your marketing strategies…well, if you want to increase your SEO and rankings, yes you do.

How do you fund conversation marketing or social media initiatives?

Why B2B Companies Need to Participate in the Market Conversation

Tony Simpson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:39:57 +0000

The ability to interact with prospects, customers, industry analysts, industry journalists, investors, employees, colleagues who are participating in the market conversation. Those who participate in the conversation fall into three categories:
• Influencers – Individuals and organizations who influence customers and prospects
• Participants – People who respond and contribute to the topics raised by Influencers
• Listeners – The largest group. They look to Influencers and Participants for purchase advice

The benefits to joining the conversation are many. Some of the best sales tools and product features ideas can come from participants who take the time to offer feedback. This provides valuable user generated content to help drive your business and most important, been able to extract content to offset sales objection. However, the prevalent benefit I see is that providing a platform for your customers and prospects, and leveraging that feedback in the form of actionable insight for product, marketing and sales strategy on an ongoing basis. Remember, this does not give companies a license to plastering their marketing messages in the different social media locations. Your customers and prospects are looking to fulfill their wants and needs, provide relevant information, NOT your products and services marketing pitch.

More importantly, companies will find that they become an increasingly important player in their industry, an influencer themselves when they become a trusted advisor. They will find that surprising and disruptive opportunities materialize that would never have been there if they hadn’t been engaged in the market conversation.

To actively participate in the conversation require an ongoing investment of employee time and effort, but the benefits can be tremendous:
• Build relationships with influencers
• Raise meaningful industry topics
• Increase brand visibility
• Increase direct inquires that are also more qualified leads
• Increase sales
• Increase sales win ratios
• Increase customer retention
• Reduce impact from negative user-generated content
• Decrease market research costs
• Increase equity of your created content

Join this conversation and share with us on why B2B companies should participate in the market conversation. I will share the “how” in my next blog post.