In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, our hero, driving a massive steamroller at a snail's pace, bears down on a security guard, about 20 yards away. Despite ample time to move out of harm's way, the guard stays put, eventually flattened like the proverbial pancake.
This is not unlike the scenario playing out between large marketing agencies and their outmoded, outbound marketing methods, and smaller agencies embracing inbound marketing. Big agencies see inbound marketing coming, but remain flatfooted.
The Internet disproportionately benefits small businesses, and that includes small agencies, too. With inbound marketing, smaller agencies aren't one giant sloth of a steamroller, but a fleet of quick-moving little ones.
This disruption boils down to business-model alignment, or rather misalignment, from recent shifts in marketing. Most large, traditional agencies excel at outbound marketing and their business model is aligned for that. They need a large, fixed staff and they charge accordingly.
But what happens when this comparative advantage is no longer advantageous? When what agencies do best (outbound marketing) is no longer best for clients? Smaller agencies aren't wedded to old marketing methods They have no stake in preserving them. In fact, just the opposite since the new world order benefits them in several ways.
1. Today's marketing is about content, not distribution. You don't need big budgets for TV/radio/print ads. You don't need PR agencies' access to gatekeepers. Where distribution is a polo game for the elite, content is a scrappy, pickup game anyone can play. The challenge now is breaking through the cacophony of content online... but that just requires brains, not budget.
2. Marketing tools are freely available. No need for expensive monitoring tools only big agencies can afford when there's a myriad of inexpensive ones (e.g. HubSpot, Radian6, Cision). To create content, you don't need professional equipment or staffing. HubSpot's latest marketing video was born from a great idea, one hour of scriptwriting, and two hours of shooting using a $100 camcorder.
3. You can be a virtual, full-service agency. Inbound marketing doesn't require a huge, integrated staff. We built the HubSpot Marketing Services Marketplace as an eBay for marketing services (open to both HubSpot and non-HubSpot customers). It turns out that marketing agencies also use it to find collaborators for projects. One agency may be great at graphic design, offering call to action buttons or landing page design services, but collaborates with freelancers to provide clients with blog writing services or social media marketing services. Flexible staffing in the virtual agency model makes them more nimble, specialized yet general, and thus able to charge more competitive rates.
4. You can afford -- and win with -- guerilla tactics. Most big firms won't change their practices quickly, even if they see the steamroller (or in this case, many tiny steamrollers) coming. Smaller firms, unencumbered by a broken business model, have little to lose trying new things. Think outside-the-box to take capture business from traditional firms. Contemplate la carte jobs, which often lead to ongoing business. Embrace performance measurements (such as the ones on our Marketplace directories) and consider performance-based pricing from the resultant traffic, leads, or customers from your services.
We've had raging debates here as to whether PR is dead, Madison Avenue's future, how the marketing services industry is broken Parts I and II, and how can help transform the marketing services industry. Not all agencies are in denial, but watch out for smaller, nimbler agencies already pouncing on the opportunities created by this market disruption.
| Feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do to be a successful inbound marketer? Learn from 2 inbound marketers at HubSpot on how to prioritize your days and leverage internal & external resources to get the highest ROI from inbound marketing. Reserve your spot now! When: Friday, March 26, 2010 at 12:00 PM ET |
Article has
8 comments.
Click To Read/Write Comments
For those of you still hesitant to launch your brand's involvement in social media, here's another wake-up call: A new study released by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies surveyed over 1,500 people to reveal that people are more likely to purchase and recommend products/services from brands they follow in social media.
Specifically ...
- People are 67% more likely to purchase products from brands they follow on Twitter.
- People are 51% more likely to purchase products from brands they follow on Facebook.
- 60% of people are more likely to recommend a brand once they become a fan of it on Facebook.
- 79% of people are more likely to recommend a brand once they become a follower of it on Twitter.
If this doesn't convince all the social media skeptics out there to sign up for Twitter and Facebook accounts, I don't know what will.
While these statistics alone are impressive, perhaps the most important takeaway from the study's results is the motivating factor behind people's social media engagement with brands. You guessed it: offers. While some indicated they followed a brand just for the sake of showing support, most people are in it for the goods. They want something in return, such as a discount, new information or remarkable content.
The study proves a valuable point: it's not enough just to be there in social media. Rather, you need to be engaging your followers and fans with valuable content and marketing offers in order to be successful in keeping them -- many of which are potential customers -- engaged with and excited about your brand. Followers desire a brand presence that is worthy of their support and appreciation. In exchange for their support, you need to give them something in return.
Our suggestions? It's simple, really.
- Sign up for Facebook and Twitter if you haven't already.
- Start creating interesting content, whether in the form of blog articles, webinars, videos, etc.
- Share this content with your social media followers. (We think you'll find that you'll be rewarded with more followers, more leads, and ultimately, more sales!)
Successful online relationships are just like successful offline relationships. You wouldn't expect to develop a mutually beneficial relationship by always taking and never giving something back, would you?
 | Learn how to use social media to manage your company brand.
Download the free video and learn how to manage your company brand effectively using social media. |
Article has
4 comments.
Click To Read/Write Comments
Many marketers have a love/hate relationship with Facebook's Pages platform. Pages are Facebook's way of giving businesses and organizations public profiles, allowing them the opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects within Facebook. Tuesday, Facebook snuck out a new weekly email summary feature to users who manage Facebook pages.
With this new feature, if a person manages a Facebook business page, they will receive an email once a week from Facebook that provides the number of fans added in the past week as well as the total fan count; posts, comments and likes for the week and the previous week; and total visits to the page for the week and the previous week. This feature wasn't formally announced by Facebook and has some users on Twitter pleasantly surprised:
Taking Facebook Analytics to the Next Level
While the new email notifications are a good start for Facebook, there is much more they should be doing. For many businesses, weekly isn't enough. The social web has become a real-time environment where daily and instant updates have replaced weekly emails. In addition to only being once-a-week, the emails themselves could use some work. Take a look at the email digest we got here at HubSpot:
That is an ugly email, right? I am not suggesting they have a full-blown HTML template, but take a look at those links. Those are some of the longest links in an email I have ever seen. Likely, when those emails get forwarded to other team members, the links will break, leading to many frustrated people. Facebook could have easily used their URL shortener to solve this problem.
Additionally, data is only as good as the way it's displayed. Users should be able to click on a link for each stat represented in the report, sending them to a dashboard in Facebook that provides information for that specific statistic. One link at the bottom of the email to the general analytics dashboard is not a practical solution for busy marketers and business owners. This point brings up a bigger issue with Facebook.
For a company that has an abundance of data and information, they share little of it with the business users of their site. The analytical data for page admins is minimal.
They're missing a huge opportunity. I'm suggesting that Facebook should give business owners more data, but I am not suggesting they have to do it for free. Sure, it would be nice if they offered better, free analytics, but they could also generate revenue by charging business owners a monthly fee to access a more robust set of tools to analyze behavior and engagement surrounding the pages they manage.
What do you think about these new e-mails? Would you pay Facebook for better analytics and data related to your organization's page?
| Join Dan Zarrella, HubSpot's Social Media Scientist and author of the Social Media Marketing Book for a 30 minute overview of the Science of ReTweets! Date and time: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 1:00pm ET Reserve your spot now to learn what makes tweets contagious and how to create tweets that will go viral and increase your reach and authority..
|
Article has
27 comments.
Click To Read/Write Comments
The economic challenges of 2009 had more small businesses looking for less-expensive marketing tactics, especially social media channels. In fact, social media usage among small businesses doubled from 12% in 2008 to 24% in 2009, according to "The State of Small Business Report" from Network Solutions Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
The method of choice for 75% of the small businesses surveyed was a company page on Facebook or LinkedIn, followed closely by posting status updates and articles of interests to sites like Facebook or LinkedIn (69%). Additionally, 57% use social network sites to build their networks, and 54% use them to monitor feedback about their organizations.
Those large numbers make sense, as an ever-increasing number of people use such social network sites. Facebook says it has more than 400 million active users, with 50% of active users logging on every day; LinkedIn has more than 50 million members worldwide; and Twitter has about 75 million members. You want to go where the people are, and people are on social networks.
Where small businesses are missing out, however, is in creating their own content and sharing their expertise. Only 39% publish a blog about their area of expertise, and only 26% tweet about their area of expertise. When you produce quality content about your area of expertise (blog articles, tweets, etc.) you not only improve your chances of appearing in search engine results, but you also build your brand and your heighten your level of trust. You become an expert in your industry and a name people know and believe in when it comes time to buy.
Yes, it takes time to use social media effectively, but the benefits are worth it. Look at international law firm Harris and Moure, which used its blog to bring in "seven figures worth of work," and software solutions company Lumension, which created an ebook to differentiate itself from competitors and saw the book get downloaded more than 7,000 times.
So, how are you using social media to market your firm?
Video: How to Use Social Media to Attract More Customers
 | Learn how to use social media to attract more customers.
Download the free video and learn how to generate more business using social media. |
Article has
18 comments.
Click To Read/Write Comments
Jack Bauer and YouTube now have something in common: the number 24. Today on its blog, YouTube announced
a major milestone. Every minute that goes by, an entire day of video is added to its site. Yes, you read correctly: 24 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds. Since being founded in early 2005, the site has been the market leader in video sharing and consumption online. With a market share of more than 73%, the service has been dominating all other online video competitors in the battle for online video consumers.
YouTube's Marketing Impact
The steady rise in consumer-generated video provides both opportunity and challenges for marketers. While an abundance of online video means more choices for consumers, it also means more noise for marketers looking to get their messages heard. While more user-generated video creates challenges for marketers, it also suggests several key opportunities:
- User Generated Video Contests -- With people becoming more comfortable uploading video online, it creates an opportunity to crowd-source
video creation around brands. In an online video landscape that is competitive, it is hard to make a dent with 1 video; however, 1,000 videos drastically improves a company's opportunity to be seen. It is likely that more businesses will work to leverage brand advocates to create compelling online video.
- Improved Advertising Possibilities
-- The online video advertising model is still young, and people are still trying out approaches to create the best results for advertisers and consumers. As video production continues to increase, marketers may have the option of more targeted advertising opportunities.
- Video Becomes an Important Part of Content Strategy
-- Creating online video sometimes can be expensive and take much longer than writing a simple blog post. However, with video becoming a growing slice of the online content pie, companies need to plan for incorporating video as part of online multimedia content strategies.
Where do you think YouTube is heading next? Will it service up to 30 hours per minute by the end of the year? As a marketer, how do you feel about online video?
Photo Credit: Will Foster
Webinar: How to Use Online Video for Inbound Marketing
| How do you get started with YouTube, video podcasting, live streaming, or viral videos. Download the free webinar to learn how to use online video to grow your business with inbound marketing. |
Article has
4 comments.
Click To Read/Write Comments