Every person is unique. As marketers, it is critical to know that people are different, for this concept applies to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Not all people use the same keywords to search for something. It all starts with the audience.

Who’s your audience? Many people worries too much about SEO without knowing their audience. How can you choose the best keyword without knowing your audience? Do a market research (e.g. surveys, etc) to know more about your audience, so that you can make a personalized marketing campaign for each persona you identify (group them).

“Every search is a question in disguise.”

Every search engine has their own algorithms and they are changing all the time. Instead of worrying too much on these algorithms, people must focus on “analytics and customer feedback”.  I’m not saying to totally ignore algorithms, yes understanding them is helpful. But what’s more important is publishing the content that is relevant for your audience.

In addition, corporate blogs, for instance, that is published often can create stickiness to the website, making customers to go back to the site. This is the “community” aspect of a website and other ways to increase stickiness is to enable people to give reviews of products/services. You can share your blog/testimonials on your Facebook page also, for example. In other words, the 7Cs are great guidance to create a good website.

In essence, when it comes to SEO, it’s all about content marketing (i.e. quality content publication).

Source: http://www.ask-kalena.com/articles/are-you-over-thinking-seo/

“It’s no longer about reach and frequency. It’s about how you get the community to engage and build overall loyalty.” Do you agree?

Measuring ROI (Return on Investment) in marketing is especially challenging. In this article, Constellation, a large wine producer, is using a combination of traditional marketing tools (e.g. survey) and new technologies to quantify ROI. Surveys are posted on social media to gain insight about the market. For example, the survey found that 48.9% of people increase their purchases of the brand since becoming fan. However, in my opinion, this method is not specific enough to know which of the company’s marketing campaign that made them fans of the brand in the first place. Yes, this can be used to measure success, but it is still far from a good measurement.

In class, I learned that marketing needs to have specific objectives, which is based on the overall organization’s goals, and the appropriate measurements or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). For instance, increasing brand awareness/online presence can be the objective and the KPI would be gaining 50 new followers each month. An ROI explanation written by Avinash Kaushik made it crystal clear on how to measure performance in detail.

And another key point, it is good to know how and where your customers are. If your customers are more engaged in Twitter, then do more marketing (and customer service) on Twitter. On the contrary, if they are more engaged on Facebook, do more marketing on Facebook.

In a nutshell, building overall loyalty through engagement with community is important, but we still need to be specific (i.e. able to quantify) in measuring performance.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhuyghe/2014/08/25/wine-tech-measuring-the-roi-of-digital-media/ & http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

“But marketers are still struggling to find the most effective way to cozy up to a consumer via social media”

I, personally, can relate to the statement above. Positioning myself as a marketer, I think I would find it pretty difficult to get people to “like” my facebook page, for instance. As the article elaborated, people, including me, do not usually “befriend” with brands online. 55% to 63% respondents in the study refused to “befriend” with them since these people do not find it beneficial for them and they only use social media to resolve issues (see my previous blog post). I usually follow, for example, a band/musician on facebook to see the schedule of their concerts and new songs/albums.

In my opinion, people who like to shop would follow their favorite brands to see promotions/ads. Further, I think the brands that would be followed by people are companies like apparel companies, for their products are changing constantly (short life cycle); and some people would like to keep up with the latest trend.

Other people simply “like or follow” brands on social media just for the sake of supporting their brands or because they have ever been a part of them before (they are not really commenting/looking at their posts). For instance, I liked “The International Baccalaureate” facebook page simply because I was in this program in high school and I don’t follow their news anymore.

Therefore, I think some of the ways that marketers can do to increase followers include, posting useful wall posts (quality aspect) consistently, increasing engagement, rewarding loyal customers, and integrating facebook page to the company’s website.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/09/18/more-than-half-of-us-consumers-dont-want-to-friend-a-brand-online/

We live in a social media era, in which we have twitter, facebook, instagram, and other social networking sites (SNS). In class, I learned how powerful SNS are and how companies often use these sites to interact with customers (and build relationship! That’s what marketing is about, right?). For instance, a complaint addressed through twitter is more likely to be resolved faster; I believe one of the main reasons is that other people can see that post which would damage the brand of the company. On the other hand, it could also enhance a company’s reputation if a customer commends or say positive things about it. Simply put, it is a double-edged sword for the company. However, marketers need to be careful since, psychologically, people tend to remember and put more emphasis on the negative things.

The report articulates that most people complain about their traveling experience through phone calls; and the least tool used would be social media. (I thought social media is an effective way to get the best customer service?) Phone calls are dominated by people of 35 years old+, whereas social media is used by younger people (18 years – 35 years old). It’s obvious, isn’t it?

Marketers can use this kind of data for a more precise marketing strategy. Younger generation, obviously, are more active in using SNS and as the older generation would be ‘replaced’, more people are going to keep using SNS. In my opinion, since SNS is one of the best ways for people to interact with others (family, friends, and even companies) easily, there will be a growing number of SNS users (given that SNS are constantly improving their services). Additionally, not only SNS, people who are using “online/mobile search” is also dominated by younger generation (and will keep increasing). This increases the importance of digital marketing.

Source: http://skift.com/2014/09/15/travel-habits-of-americans-social-media-is-the-least-popular-method-of-customer-service/

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