The Top 5 Trends for Optimization to Increase ROI

Adobe recently released results of the 2012 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey in which they compiled global responses from over 1,700 digital marketers. The survey reports that digital marketers need to excel in four key areas to achieve success: social, mobile, personalization and the customer experience. The survey also uncovered areas of opportunity for improving conversion through optimization and, in turn, improving your ROI.

The five biggest trends for achieving optimum conversion are:

1.       Make optimization a strategic process – with just a few small adjustments, double-digits lifts in conversion can be achieved, resulting in deeper customer loyalties and a greater competitive advantage. 

2.       Utilize a data-driven approach to optimization – balance acquisition and optimization efforts to drive higher returns and include tactics like optimized site search, personalization, automated recommendations and testing.

3.       Implement a video marketing plan – video can educate, entertain and engage customers; 61% of survey respondents named video as one of the top rich media features to focus conversion efforts on this year.

4.       Optimize mobile channels – customer experiences that are device-appropriate will generate a higher ROI, especially for tablet users. Adobe’s survey found that consumers who access retail websites via tablets spend more than customers on other devices or computers and are 3 times more likely than smartphone visitors to make a purchase.

5.       Capitalize on social engagement - encourage social sharing within your social media networks and implement tools for moderating and measuring your social media channels.

You can download the survey results here. Strategic optimization can boost conversion rates through the entire sales funnel. Is there any room for improvement in your customers’ experience?

How Consumers Use Multiple Screens to Get What They Need

In our “always on the go” lifestyles, consumers have evolved their digital consumption behaviors to reflect our current multi-screen worlds.

As a result, it’s imperative that you understand consumers’ behaviors across the multiple platforms. In Google’s new report, The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior, they provide the statistic that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV.

What does the multi-screen approach mean exactly? Say for example that you need to book a dinner reservation for a big meeting. You start searching on your smartphone for the best hot spots in town to get a better idea of where to host the meeting. Later on in the morning, you continue the search on your laptop now that you are in the office. And finally, once you have the perfect restaurant in mind, you book the reservation on your PC later on that night. The multi-screen approach proved to be more convenient in your search for the ideal restaurant.

The importance of structuring your online presence for mobile, tablets and multiple screens becomes more of a necessity every day. It’s crucial that you understand how consumers want to interact with your brand and adapt to those needs.

Google’s full research report explains further useful statistics and findings on the topic.

How is your business accommodating this behavior?

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image Credit: lorisflickr

New Google+ Business Features

Do you have a Google+ account yet for your business? Although some debate on whether or it's a useful social media platform, it's always a good idea to get control of your branding across as many major social media sites as possible - especially because someone else may snap up your desired brand name if you don't. Here are some of the features that Google is introcducing:

• Control the privacy of your organization's posts - individual posts can be shared internally or with specified outside parties.
• Google+ Hangouts now allows you to video conference up to 10 people at once - how's that for simplifying meetings?
• Meetings can be made more private with custom default settings for company posts within the admin controls.
• More features are on their way over the next few months!

Does your business have a Google+ account? Do you find it a useful marketing tool?

InternetMarketingClub.org presents: How to Create an Instagram Marketing Campaign

We are pleased to present another installment of the Wednesday Webinar series with Justin and Roxanne of TPG. These two will be discussing the advantages of creating an Instagram marketing campaign, a further extension of our past two weeks of presentations. Not quite sure how the social image application can help your current marketing campaigns? Tune in this Wednesday at 12:30pm and find out how!

Click here to register (9/12/12 at 12:30pm)
http://bit.ly/TPGreg 

About Justin Freid:

Justin leads TPG’s media department and is a thought leader in all areas of online and offline customer acquisition media planning and buying, including DRTV, SEM and Display and the social media marketing space. Justin recently published his first book, “Blogging Made Simple” and is a frequent contributor to top media-industry publications. Justin plays a pivotal role in crafting digital and media buying strategies for all of TPG’s clients. Justin’s experience crosses many industries having worked with clients in the entertainment, education, insurance and financial industries.

About Roxanne Pogue:

One of the newest members to the TPG team, Roxanne plays a strong role in the content creation and social media departments, developing social media strategies tailored to clients’ needs as well as producing content for our clients’ blogs, websites and social media sites. Roxanne plays a vital role in increasing TPG’s clients’ social presence, driving traffic to the appropriate landing pages and staying up-to-date on the latest social media
trends and emerging platforms. Roxanne has experience in the healthcare and auto insurance industries. 


Click here to register (9/12/12 at 12:30pm)
http://bit.ly/TPGreg 

Content Marketing for Your Business

Not sure how to combine approaches when getting your linkbait online? While you may want to consider getting Hootsuite to jumpstart your social media campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more, you may also realize that you need some sort of plan to get you social media and company blog to all work together. Never fear - SEOmoz has come out with a handy guide that offers you ideas on the perfect way to plan content.

The only hint that's missing? Don't forget to disseminate your content across all of your social media. Your blog post can become a few tweets or Facebook posts without you struggling to come up with original content across all of your social media.

What are some strategies that you already use when planning your content?

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents: Instagram for Webinars Part 2

Matt Wooddy is back with Part 2 of his Instagram for Brands webinar series. Part 1 explored the basics of Instagram and how an intuitive strategy can help boost your company's online reputation, but Part 2 dives deeper into how to organize a strategy for success.

Click here to register:http://bit.ly/R2X434

About Matt Wooddy:

For the last five years, Matt Wooddy has used his social wizardry to completely turn around the presence of over 200 Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts. Understanding that social media is more than just a place to promote your brand, he uses personal interaction and entertaining messages to improve the branding and interest of any given company.
Click here to register:http://bit.ly/R2X434

The Facts About Yelp for Small Businesses

Yelp tends to be the primary go-to site for people wanting reviews on businesses. Whether your business is on Yelp as a form of online reputation management or simply because that’s where your customers/potential customers hang out, it’s important to understand the facts about Yelp.

So, it’s time to get the facts straight:

1. Most of its traffic is from its homepage
2. Restaurants aren’t the biggest category
3. Encouraging customers to post reviews is a bad idea
4. Those “People Love Us on Yelp” stickers? You’ve gotta earn them
5. Yelp provides free signage via Flickr
6. Yelp has paid for reviews in the past
7. Customer service appears to have a strong effect on reviews
8. Every star in a review leads to a 5-9% jump in revenues
9. Yelp tends to favor independent businesses over chains
10. Business owners can dispute reviews on Yelp
11. Legal threats for bad reviews can trigger “The Streisand Effect”

To read more details, check out this post on Mashable.

There are two points on this list that I found surprising. One being that restaurants aren’t the biggest category but that shopping is. The second point that I found surprising was that encouraging reviews is considered a bad idea. Yelp actually discourages against this practice. Rather than consumers potentially feeling as though they are being used in a promotional means, Yelps prefers the reviews happen organically and not because of any form of coercion.

What Yelp fact were you not aware of?

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.