If you haven’t thought about search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO) yet, it’s time to jump onboard the search train. Think about some of the goals of your marketing campaigns – building awareness, boosting ROI, and increasing conversions. What do you think your company’s website is for?

Reach

One of the most important goals of marketing is to increase brand awareness. The great thing about online advertising is that marketers can target consumers at any time during the buying cycle. Social media allows us to reach our consumers in a timely, efficient and measureable manner.

ROI

Analytics help you make decisions about your brand. When we optimize new insights and data, we optimize our marketing budgets. This is why it is important to select relevant keywords for your SEO campaigns. Your consumers (potential and current) use search engines like Google, Bing and YouTube to find information regarding your products/services.

YouTube has over 3 billion views every 24 hours.

Think of the influence YouTube has had on musicians, brands and reputations – Justin Bieber, Orabrush and Domino’s Pizza have gone viral via video marketing. As marketers, we need to understand that not everyone is going to be influenced by traditional media alone. With the increase of fan and follower participation through social media, consumers are clearly interested in interacting with brands and businesses.

Video marketing can help enhance your SEO campaigns and maintain a strong social profile. An important aspect of videos is that they can be picked up by both social media and search engines. They can even rank higher than your brand’s website in search engines. “You Tube is actually the biggest social media site […] it’s bigger than Facebook or Twitter” (Scott Imbrie, “6 Best Practices For Small Business YouTube Marketing”, 11.6.2011).

When it comes to video marketing, I say go big or go home. Marketers need to constantly experiment and test ideas. We don’t know what really works until we try. Test and tweak ideas as much as needed to get your consumers excited and involved.  After all, the use of videos is a great way to boost visibility and drive engagement.

When you get a chance, check out this really cool interactive film by Chris Milk ft. the Arcade Fire (built in HTML5) – The Wilderness Downtown

I attended Pubcon last week and learned a lot about where the marketing industry is headed. Here are a few trends (that were discussed in nearly every session) that companies should be thinking about moving forward into 2012:

Painting a portrait with data

Most people in marketing are familiar with the concept of a persona. The idea is pretty simple. Using known information, research and customer interviews, you create a detailed character that best represents your target. The persona has a name, a photo and a well-developed back-story that makes him more “real.”

While there are differences of opinion about how much data you need to gather to construct a useful persona, at its simplest level, you are taking an abstract representation of your target—female, 18-34, income greater than $30,000—and turning her into a “person” you can consider when developing marketing messages and new product offerings. Here’s an example:

Stacy Jones is 24. She recently graduated from college and moved to the city. She shares an apartment with two roommates in a newly gentrified neighborhood.

Stacy is working for a national retail clothing chain while she looks for a job in her field. She really enjoys the interaction with customers and gets a lot of satisfaction helping people fine-tune their style and create the perfect outfit.

Stacy is very social. She is constantly sharing photos with her 300-plus Facebook friends, but doesn’t get why people would waste time on Twitter. With limited income, Stacy also spends a lot of time online looking for the best deals on designer-label clothes.

Stacy likes trying new things and having new experiences. Even with limited resources, she feels it’s important to experience what life has to offer …

You should have as many personas as you do meaningful targets. You can get as detailed as you want. The idea is to identify relevant patterns that are present across your target audience, and flesh those out in a personal description.

Often times, the process of developing personas reveals important differences within a target group that allow for multiple, more meaningful segments to emerge. Armed with a persona, you can now consider how Stacy—rather than a “female, 18-24, income greater than $30,000”—would react to new ideas or product offerings.

Why use personas for social media content creation?

Marketers have been using personas for advertising and product development since the 1990s, but they have an important new role in social media. It is becoming clear that using social media to simply broadcast marketing messages is not an effective use of the channel. The key to success in social is to garner engagement from your customers.

Social media is online word-of-mouth. People interact with content that is interesting, funny, entertaining or helpful to them. It’s hard to create content that will resonate with someone if you think of that person simply as a customer or some other demographic segment.

What do “white-collar men, 35-54” click on and share with their friends and colleagues? It’s hard to say, but “NASCAR Bob,” who owns a manufacturing job shop in the Southeast and is always looking for ways to help his employees make metal parts more efficiently, would probably share a link to an online tool that helped him figure out how to cut aluminum faster.  He would also likely be interested in stories about companies using automated production processes to win business from offshore competitors.

Boost engagement or risk becoming invisible

On a more practical note, engagement is becoming vital to securing visibility in some key social properties. Facebook’s Edge Rank algorithm weighs interaction—clicks, likes, sharing, viewing—very highly when determining if and when your post will be visible in your fans’ news streams. Since 85 percent of people who “like” a company page never return, triggering interaction has become important for enabling ongoing visibility.

This makes creating truly relevant, share-worthy content for your customers and prospects more critical than ever. Evaluating your ideas against a persona can help your team come up with great new content that may not have otherwise occurred to them—content Stacy and NASCAR Bob will be excited to receive and share with others.

What about you? Are you using personas as a tool for creating more engaging, share-worthy content? I’d love to hear your success stories (or missteps) related to using personas for social media.

David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)

Google+ Devotee

Call me a brand evangelist, an ambassador, a hired goon but I am a proud Google Plusser and here’s why.

1. Conversation – I can actually have an engaging conversation in Google+ about issues that are meaningful to me.
2. Circles – I can curate to whom I listen. I can mute posts I have no interest in reading or block them completely. I can follow whom I wish and they don’t have to follow me back. I can unclutter my stream from the get-go and throughout my span of time on G+.
3. Content – I can restrict who sees and shares my content. I can edit my content once published. And all within my stream, with a handy drop-down menu to the right of my share. I can link to a website, attach a picture/video/location, all within the share window.
4. Privacy – I don’t have to look over my shoulder every time Google updates its platforms. I don’t worry that my information is owned and controlled by them as I do with Facebook who decreases my privacy with every upgrade. I have the control – which makes me more willing to share, follow people, and engage with others in a public and digital social space.

Social Media As It Should Be

For me, G+ blows every other social media platform out of the water. It is my blog, Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and almost LinkedIn all within one incredibly clean and intuitive user interface. Within the G+ community, users have likened Facebook to high school where you mostly talk about yourself and Google+ to college/university where you talk about ideas. Perhaps here is where I diverge a little from other Plussers: I believe there is room for both Facebook and Google+ in both personal and business pages. Facebook can remain your ad space but meaningful engagement can be framed in Google+.

After attending The Google+ Project presentation during Chicago’s Social Media Week, I learned that business pages on G+ would be rolled out from October through early 2012. This was something I’d been thinking about since August when G+ first started testing their beta version with invite only users.

Google+ Business Pages

The possibilities in G+ are incredible for business pages. Companies can keep their Facebook pages which are more ad-focused, talk about themselves, and test out G+ to connect with their peers and customers. I believe this is the platform dedicated to thought leadership. It offers curation and segmentation of targeted audiences with its “Circles” feature. Within G+ you can target your most relevant content to those whom it would be most relevant.

If we look at this from an end user standpoint, how many times have we received emails that mean nothing to us? It’s no wonder click through rates are plummeting given the amount of emails I am subscribed to that deliver irrelevant content. Here is where G+ business pages will distinguish themselves with highly relevant and highly targeted messaging, and conversations.

The Almighty +1

Remember when Facebook and Bing collaborated and showed how searching on Bing enabled you to see what your friends “Liked”? Well Google+’s +1 makes that thumbs up look like child’s play. Google is the largest search engine out there and now whatever you “+1″ shows up in Google searches, including for display ads. Think of the boon this is to advertisers and how this ratchets up peer recommended products. Now with the advent of Google Ripples, you can see in real time the reach of any publically shared or “+1″ posts.

I could wax rhapsodic about Google+ for hours, and many who know me can attest to this, but for now I’ll leave you with a simple question … what’s your Google+ strategy?

Happy Halloween!

Are you ready for the big Halloween scare? Facebook and Twitter do not define social media.

Social media refers to a core strategy in which we create content to engage consumers. The idea is that marketers should use social media (Facebook, Twitter and the like) to leverage their content strategies.

Top performers use social media for customization – segmentation based on both behavioral patterns and demographics. Your consumers deserve personalization because they are loyal and rely on your relationships with them. Not only will this increase customer involvement, but it will keep the customer up to date on what your brand is doing in relation to their specific wants and needs.

Chicago’s Best TV produces episodes with relevant content through the use of social media. The hosts go to restaurants in or around Chicago to find the best eats based on fan and follower suggestions. At the end of each segment the hosts say something along the lines of “if you know a place where we should go to find the best [insert food here] hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, ChicagosBestTv.com, you know the drill.” This encourages customers to get in on the action and support their favorite Chicago bites. Chicago’s Best TV’s integration of website and social engagement encourages their fan base to scope out their personal local favorites.

The most important thing marketers can do is keep content relevant. Send the right message at the right place and time and use the right platform. Don’t just jump on the social media bandwagon because everyone else is. Strategies still need a content marketing blueprint.

Whether you’re an ad agency looking for new business or a supplier serving the marketing needs of businesses, you need to be aware of the challenges CMOs are facing today. A new IBM study of 1,700 chief marketing officers reveals that respondents are feeling stretched, but are also excited about the future of marketing.

The study reveals that top marketing executives recognize a critical and permanent shift occurring in the way they engage with customers, but are not sure their marketing organizations are ready to manage the change.

Expectations of CMOs are greater today than ever. They have to understand and engage with more empowered customers, adopt and adapt to more sophisticated technologies and tools, manage data from disparate sources and be more financially accountable to their organizations.

The study’s findings point to four key challenges that CMOs everywhere must address:

1. The explosion of data – 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years alone.
2. The rise of social media – 56 percent of CMOs view social media as a key engagement channel.
3. Channel and device choices – The growing number of new marketing channels and devices, from smart phones to tablets, is quickly becoming a priority for CMOs.
4. Shifting demographics – New global markets and the influx of younger generations with different patterns of information access and consumption are changing the face of the marketplace.

The rise of social media is of particular interest for agencies. Currently there are very few global or regional agencies that are leaders in this space. Agencies need to improve their social I.Q. and become leaders to assist CMOs in understanding, measuring and growing revenue from the social space.

Carolyn Heller Baird, CRM research lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value and the global director of the study states, “The inflection point created by social media represents a permanent change in the nature of customer relationships. Approximately 90 percent of all the real-time information being created today is unstructured data. CMOs who successfully harness this new source of insight will be in a strong position to increase revenues, reinvent their customer relationships and build new brand value.” 

The customer relationship is one of the top priorities identified by CMOs, yet most marketing organizations are stuck in traditional approaches to CRM, not taking advantage of real time data and social media. The sooner marketers adopt social media and the insight it provides, the better they will be prepared to anticipate future shifts in markets and technology.

IBM 2011 Global CMO Study Compilation

To access the full 2011 IBM Global CMO Study, visit http://ibm.com/cmostudy.

Mark Hollingsworth is the Vice President of Consumer and Interactive Divisions at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mark)

The value of human interaction in business is as important as ever today.

Marketers need to incorporate PR, advertising, traditional and direct marketing into their multi-channel campaigns if they want to be consumer-centric. It is important to produce different types of campaigns and allow many ways to exchange ideas. The cookie-cutter model of marketing is out – what works for one consumer/client may not work for another. Consumer behavior changes and as marketers, we have to adjust and adapt to their needs (or as Michael Scott from The Office would say “Adapt, react, re-adapt, act”).

To remain fully engaged in the customer experience marketers must be present in the entire process – from the beginning to POP (point-of-purchase) or POS (point-of-sale). Here are a few tips to stay current:

1. Follow the consumer along their purchasing journey – build trust and cultivate deeper relationships between marketers and consumers.
2. Position your business as industry experts – be relevant and appeal to different types of consumers (not just the computer or social media savvy).
3. Enhance the experience – consumers expect to be engaged through rich, interactive media but they don’t want to be bombarded with heavy content.
4. Be available and flexible to answer questions or reply to comments – customer service will continue to be one of the most important aspects of your business.

I’ve said it before, but consumer power will continue to grow. Customers can provide your business some really exciting and unique ideas to help your business grow. Loyal customers want to help the brands they buy/love to keep them alive.

The most important thing we can do as marketers is listen to our customers. After all, the best marketers are the best listeners.

Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager at Marketing Sherpa, recently published an article highlighting survey results about perceived 2012 marketing challenges titled “Top barriers to overcoming B2B marketing challenges.” Marketers listed “Lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time” as their number-one challenge—by a large margin. While it may seem like a rather encompassing challenge (who doesn’t want more money, time and people?), it may be worthwhile to analyze the factors that contribute to this challenge.

The last few years have been remarkable in several ways. In the 23 years that I have been in marketing, I have never been though a more exciting and challenging time. We are in the middle of a turbulent economic period while experiencing a fundamental shift in how we need to think about and execute marketing.

The second most common challenge listed was the “Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically.” This challenge runs deeper than simply being too busy to stop and think. We need to make sure we’re looking at the big picture—in the right way. Marketing today requires more strategic thinking and planning than ever before for three primary reasons:

1. Most marketers have not fully mastered online channels such as search-engine marketing and social media.
2. Marketing team members are still trying to catch up or catch on, and the rest of the organization doesn’t really understand the changes that have taken place.
3. There are rapidly emerging tools and technologies to measure, analyze and integrate marketing- into sales- and service models – This is a big one, and it is complex.

The third most commonly referenced challenge is key: “Limited ability to develop content.” Branded content is a largely underutilized marketing tool, and clients and agencies need to change their marketing support models to address it. Branded content builds and reinforces company reputation and messaging and bolsters lead generation and it is only getting more important. We need content managers and producers on both sides of the client-agency relationship and we need to ensure that content development is prioritized in the marketing plan. Buyers rely on the content they find online to inform their spending decision – this will not change.

Those of us in the trenches need to stay diligent about our craft, but also realize the importance of continued learning, sharing, training and repetition. Support for marketing needs to flow from deeper within every organization, and it is our job to champion this. Customer service needs be online, technical experts need to come out of the lab, opinion leaders need to speak up, and marketing needs to align with sales. Customers expect to be able to see who we are and what we have to offer before they invite us to be considered. .

As marketing leaders, we need to stomp our feet and wave our flags to get the rest of the organization to join the party. It may feel like pushing an elephant up the stairs, but it’s critical to our success.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Dancing hamsters + the top summer song of 2011= awesome!

KIA®’s Share Some Soul campaign encourages dancing…lots of dancing. To enter, consumers can submit videos of themselves getting down to Party Rock Anthem via KIA®’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. What’s at stake? The winner earns his/herself a $10,000 cash prize and a chance to dance with LMFAO on stage. And who better to decide the winner than consumers.

Contest marketing is a social, interactive strategy that grabs user attention and increases brand awareness. “We really see the world shifting from a world focused around information to one focused on people” (Ethan Beard, 9.20.11, AdAge). Consumer power continues to rise as the influence of social media amplifies. Marketers are able to control the level of consumer involvement, build their brands and take advantage of some great exposure to both target and under-served markets through the use of contest marketing.

But contest marketing should not be your only strategy to create brand buzz. Social media is a tool used for communication and should not be the objective of your marketing strategy. To remain engaged in the communication process across all channels, B2B marketers need to expand their online footprints. Thought leaders and lead generation marketers need to merge their once-siloed strategies with traditional and online marketing – align social, mobile and email initiatives to enhance your B2B strategies and secure brand loyalty.