Posts filed under 'Online Marketing 2.0'
LET’S GET SOCIAL!
Attract and Retain Your Donors with an Integrated Online Strategy
by Angela Hill, President and Creative Director INCITRIO | Creative Solutions for Global Brands
In today’s marketing environment, “social media” has become an all-encompassing buzzword that excites and terrifies professionals everywhere. What is it exactly? Why do I need it? And, most importantly, what exactly can social media do for me without eating up all of my valuable time?
In this workshop, Angela Hill from Incitrio will teach you the basics of social media as well as share cutting edge techniques to help you kick-start your online marketing campaign. Listen to non-profit case studies, large and small, to discover fascinating ways your peers are using social media to leverage their internal teams. Learn how to create your own social media plan that is scalable and attainable. Discover best practices for training your staff and volunteers to communicate online. Discuss how social media can leverage and augment your existing content. And, lastly, use social media as a powerful tool to manage ongoing donor relationships, engage your volunteers and attract new funding.
What Attendees Will Learn:
o Social Media – terminology, tactics and tools
o Best practices case studies from small and large non-profit organizations
o How to create your own social media plan
o Best practices for training staff/volunteers to communicate online
o How to leverage existing content across multiple platforms to create “buzz”
o Tips for managing ongoing donor relationships, volunteer engagement and fundraising online
About the Presenter
Angela Hill is the President and Creative Director of Incitrio, a boutique graphic design and branding agency. Incitrio specializes in brand strategy and brand implementation via design for print, design for web, and fully integrated marketing campaigns.
Since 1992, Ms. Hill has worked in the graphic design, branding and marketing industry within in-house agencies, advertising, marketing, and design firms in St. Louis, San Francisco, and San Diego. In 2008, she received the YWCA’s TWIN Award. The Tribute to Women of Influence (TWIN) Awards Program honors not only women who demonstrate excellence and top leadership within their companies, but also the companies that employ these women.
Ms. Hill has experience creating and implementing brand strategy for organizations located throughout the world. Prior to starting her current firm, Ms. Hill’s national clients included: Hallmark, Williams Sonoma, Mars Candy, Energizer, Ford, Intel, Pepsi, Foster Farms, Sega, Merrill Lynch, Visa, and PG&E.
Ms. Hill currently provides brand analysis, strategy and implementation to such corporations as: 3ECompany, The American Council on Exercise, Barney&Barney, Capstone, California Center for Sustainable Energy, Claritas (a division of Nielsen), Open Energy, Marsh, Nanogen, and the Veterinary Specialty Hospital.
Presentation Download
Click here to download the Social Media for Non Profits presentation or view online. For additional questions, please contact startfresh at incitrio dot com or call 858-202-1822.
August 7th, 2009
5 ONLINE MARKETING SECRETS TO INCREASING YOUR REVENUE AND PROFITABILITY
Through Search Engine Optimization and Website Design Optimization
In today’s economy, a marketing plan that’s not performing is unacceptable. No longer can you afford to leave any aspect of your budget unexamined. If you’re spending any money whatsoever on online marketing vehicles such as: your website, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC or paid search) or email marketing, it is absolutely vital that your sales team and more importantly, your bottomline, are seeing results. The following are 5 must-read online marketing secrets that are 100% guaranteed to radically increase your sales funnel, revenue and profitability.
1. ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE
Behind every great business is a strong business plan. Equally true, behind every great online marketing campaign is a strong marketing plan and performance metrics. Establish your baseline with regular monthly analytic reports from your marketing dept. or vendor.
Websites: Setup a Google Analytics account (free) to measure and analyze site traffic. Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Review reports from your Google Adwords account (free) to measure campaign performance. Email Marketing: Request reports from your email dashboard (free) to review click thru and open rates. Use the information to optimize your online efforts and ensure your marketing dollars are working hard for you.
2. DETECT BUDGET LEAKS
Challenge: Your website analytics show a bounce rate higher than 50%. Visitors are leaving (aka bounce-ing) because they are not finding what they need. Solution: Rewrite your content or alter your website design to ensure they find exactly what they are looking for…immediately.
Challenge: Your keyword traffic or terms don’t make sense and you are repeating the wrong words over and over on your site. Solution: Align keywords with the pages visitors are visiting the most. Determine new keywords based on relevant terms and rewrite that page’s content.
Challenge: Your email newsletters are not delivering (aka going through) at least 90% of the time. You’re likely using an email provider that is blacklisted because they allow other clients to send spam. Solution: Switch email service providers. Make sure they are whitelisted and can send your emails in html and text versions to guarantee a much higher delivery rate.
Challenge: Your website is not converting (prospects are not contacting you). Solution: Determine a measurable conversion point (what does sales need as a signal that a viewer is a qualified prospect) and make sure it’s easy to find – request a demo, download a white paper, etc.
3. OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE
Challenge: Sales prospects are not contacting you. Solution: Look at ways to redesign your site, check to make sure relevant content falls into a “Z” or “F” pattern – it has been scientifically proven that this is how visitors interact with sites. Integrate a strong call to action – 800#, request a quote, etc. on every page.
Challenge: Potential prospects are not qualified appropriately before contacting you. Solution: Develop optimized landing pages (a hybrid between: about, features/benefits and your contact form). Perform A-B testing (different variations) based on design, content and time of day to discover the best performers and tie them to your PPC campaign to increase conversions.
4. INCREASE YOUR SALES BY 480%
Maximize your online efforts by determining your cost per customer acquisition (how much you’re willing to pay for a sales lead from your site). When you optimize this expense, you can actually predict performance and determine which variables need to be modified for optimal efficiency.
Radical sales growth begins when you factor in your cost per customer acquisition with your sales team’s close rate and your pay-per-click campaign to generate incredible results within 6 months or less.
How does it work? Review Company Z case study for the formula.
By inputting your own variables, you can accurately project the amount of revenue you will generate from your online sales efforts. (Results may vary.)
5. REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT
After all of the steps are complete, go back to Step #1 and begin again. Through careful evaluation, like a car’s engine, you can tune-up your online marketing efforts to guarantee that they are producing optimal results.
If your acquisition cost is too high simply because your keywords are expensive or your site is not converting, then it is absolutely vital to re-assess your online marketing efforts and push your marketing department or vendors to improve results. Use your monthly reports as a means to drive that discussion and find budget leaks.
Lastly, remember the golden rule: If prospects are not buying from you or your competitors online, then don’t waste your money on online marketing. Save it for whatever vehicle works best for you – tradeshows, advertising, brochures, pr, etc. to ensure your sales team is converting every prospect and building long-term revenue.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For the past 17 years, Angela Hill has worked with global business and consumer brands. Today, as president of the award-winning graphic design and branding agency Incitrio, she partners with clients to build and grow strong, innovative brands that consistently outperform their competition.
Incitrio
10951 Sorrento Valley Road, Suite 2C
San Diego, California 92121
858.202.1822 tel
startfresh@incitrio.com email
incitrio.com web
This article was originally written for Smart Business magazine in April 2009.
Click here to request the PDF version of this article.
June 3rd, 2009
Incitrio is proud to announce that our design for blog site: iLuvTrees.org was just selected from hundreds of competitors to win one of Graphic Design USA’s American Web Design Awards.
For four decades, the editors of Graphic Design USA have sponsored national competitions that focus on areas of special opportunity for the creativity community. The goal: to highlight emerging areas of expansion, to recognize great work by often underappreciated creative professionals, and, most importantly, to trumpet the value of design to business and society.
Our newest annual competition — the American Web Design Awards — is firmly in this tradition. It celebrates the power of a well-designed site to attract audiences, communicate information, generate engagement and response, and market products and services. The emphasis, in light of our expertise, is on visual design and aesthetics.
Every winner will automatically be published online in the American Web Design Awards Web Edition, with images and full credits on our popular website, hosted on our popular 100,000 visitor-a-month website, for the entire calendar year 2009. Winners will also be listed with links to their winning work in a special article in Graphic Design USA magazine and in a special enewsletter sent to the entire creative community.
To view the winning entry, click on the GDUSA Link and then click on Incitrio (winners are categorized by design firm name).
April 20th, 2009
Reprint of original appearing in San Diego Daily Transcript, a local business online journal, August 29, 2008. You can access the original here.
Economic times are tough, marketing budgets are tight and cash flow is unpredictable. Regardless of the economic situation, your clients still expect you to find them and communicate with them on a regular basis. Using the following strategies are a great low-cost, low-risk way to attract and retain clients without spending a lot of money. All it takes is discipline to create a system and protected time on a regular basis to implement and maintain the following strategies.
1. Web sites are now part of the cost of doing business. Create a basic brochure-ware site that communicates your core expertise and controls user experience. Segment by size, industry or service to make sure that your visitors are finding exactly what they want. Then, make sure to set up a custom data collection form that gives prospects an easy way to pre-qualify themselves before contacting you, and make sure it links up to an online database for your html newsletter system.
2. Online marketing collateral is the next evolution in marketing. Save money on printing and post your brochure in online PDF form for (free) downloading. Create a (low-cost) electronic template in Word that matches your brand and allows for customization. Add datasheets that relate to your different services and case studies per industry, and you’ve just completed your online marketing collateral system.
3. Analytics are a great tool to measure traffic to your site. Google has a (free) tool that you can download and link up to your site called Google Analytics. Look at them regularly to determine the top five reasons prospects come to your site and add content based on that.
4. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is just a fancy name for the (free) non-paid links that come up in Google or Yahoo. Analyze your competition to see where they are ranked compare to you. Perform a search of the top 10 keywords that best describe your business and/or service. Then, create a chart of how your competition compares to you on a per keyword ranking, optimize one page per keyword on your Web site and use that word at least three times or more. Don’t forget to put it in your meta tag for the page as well.
5. LinkedIn is a (free) online social networking site designed specifically for business professionals to communicate and do business with one another. To get the most out of the site, create your complete profile and add all of your contacts. Answer questions within industry sections and post questions to your contact database, then leverage contacts to connect you to prospects and develop strategic relationships.
6. Blogging or Weblogs are online mini Web sites that provide a (free) way to attract prospects, post content and position yourself as an expert within a category. It’s also another great way to drive traffic to your Web site. Create your own blog on wordpress.com, jot down topics over the week that spark your interest and create a folder to archive interesting articles to reference. Then, schedule one hour a week to write a well-crafted article on that topic and reference it within the other blogs, LinkedIn and your html newsletter.
7. Twitter is just a mini-blog. Following the right people and getting followed is the key to success. The key is good content. Use Twitter to talk about the cool projects you are working on, and use it to promote your blog or newsletter every time you post new content.
8. Html newsletters are another great (low-cost) way to stay connected with your clients and referral sources and integrate into your overall retention strategy. Promote yourself as an expert in your field by posting case studies and link ing to articles and trends within your industry, and use your newsletter as a tool to promote your strategic partners as well. Measure traffic and click-throughs via your online management system to determine who is reading your newsletter and what content is most important to them.
In order for your tactics to produce fantastic results, just remember two rules:
1. Content is king. The more valuable the information, the more traffic you will drive to your various online platforms.
2. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep a regular schedule that works for you, once a month or every week, and maintain it to position yourself as a credible, reliable resource.
Hill is president and owner of Incitrio, a boutique branding agency located in Sorrento Valley.
September 2nd, 2008
One of the best articles that I have read in a long time is on User Generated content and the future of Online Business in the latest Inc. magazine article on Threadless, a user-generated t-shirt company from Chicago. In it they describe a model currently being analyzed by the Harvard Business School as the future of online business and possibly business as a whole.
As the current generation of social media savvy consumers evolves from myspace, facebook and twitter to embrace mobile media and content on-demand, very soon (if you haven’t noticed already) we will begin seeing a major shift in how content is produced and requested by audiences.
While many large corporations have already jumped on the band wagon and started blogging or hiring ad agencies to produce blog worthy videos for viral marketing campaigns via YouTube combined with innovative micro sites, already they have lost major footing and decreased their brand equity by missing one critical component: Truth.
The key to successful user-generated content, will lie in brand alignment and authenticity. Telling the truth with regards to your brand, who created your WOMMA campaign and what your intentions are. No longer, will traditional advertising or corporate entities be allowed to hide behind empty promises as we enter a generation of savvy consumers ready to do the online research, google the product and find out what other consumers are saying.
The truly successful online business that creates a model of flexibility and open source collaboration, while not able to control the process, may end up creating an online thinktank capable of producing results 10x better than a traditional corporate structure. It is entirely possible that in this virtual workforce future, we will all be creators, designers and inventors collaborating with one another to solve commercial and global problems in real-time on a scale never seen before.
Hill is president and owner of Incitrio, a boutique branding agency located in Sorrento Valley.
July 8th, 2008
