Internet Marketing Post

Guerilla Market Research: Discover Your Prospects on a Budget

Who drives the marketing messaging in your company, really? The engineers? The marketing people? The CEO? The company mascot? The web master? Hopefully your answer to all of the above is "no" and many of you are answering, "our prospects, our market research methods, our online media results". So what's wrong with the technical writers deciding what to call a product?

I find over and over again that companies, especially small and medium size ones, drive their messages and venue approach to their prospects based on who they are and not on their targeted market. We are all better off asking  "Are our prospects watching TV?" "Reading online content?" "Blogging?" "Where are they found?" "What language do they speak these days?" "Do you use that language?" "Are we in their venue?" Or are they trying to find usand once they do they don't understand the language we are using to reach them?

No one has extra market research dollars sitting around these days, so here are some simple steps to take to get to the prospects you are after in their language and in their venue.

1. Online media results. Paid search, web site clicks, banner clicks etc. Which clicks turn to sale? What was the verbiage of the ad that got the click? Or the image? Paid search ad testing is a gold mind for new messages that work in other media t ypes.

2. Talk to your prospects. Have you called back the people who called you last week and didn't buy? Find out why they didn't or who they bought from? Did your process turn them off? Was your web site too confusing? These are all valuable questions to have answered.

3. Surveys Survey Monkey is inexpensive and easy to use. Use it to create simple surveys that survey your prospects and clients on their opinion of your brand and work. Be ready for he honesty the written word brings and put what they say to work for you.

4. Use social media to casually survey your prospects. Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can provide a wealth of detailed insight into your customers wants and desires, irritations and even feature requests for your product!

Do you have a Twitter account yet? Think it is a waste of microchatting? Thank again. Search on Twittersearch for your brand name and industry terms. What are people saying on those topics? Once you have a Twitter account, search people to find your typical prospects. Follow a few of them for a week. What are they talking about?

 

Are your prospects runners? chocolate lovers? vacation takers? Fan a few of those types of pages on Facebook and observe and participate in the discussions. Where are their passions and motivations? Are they spending according to those online and in retail outlets? Yes.

There are many other means of surveying your prospects interests - these are a few low cost methods to get you thinking their direction, and have a little fun with social media outlets while you are at it. Have fun!

Follow me on Twitter

So the hottest social media tool right now is Twitter. So that is what they say. The growth rate is quite impressive.

So. After much ado, and experimenting, "tweeting" and "retweeting", "deleting", "following", and "unfollowing" - I have a Twitter community that is valid and valuable to my business. I network with others doing what I do, meet potential new clients, exchange services. It is also just a fun part of my day to share newsworthy items, read the same and stay connected to folks across the globe.

Recommend as a must for your brand stability, not yet, think necessary for your marketing team to monitor your competitors and the thoughts of your target audiences, absolutely. (I even hired a cartoonist to lighten up my profile page, take a look) Look for more from "her" later.

So tell me,  I know you have an opinion, what do you think of all the tweeting?

This Post's Header Credit - and check out Siah's free Twitter buttons while you are there. 

Plant Your Social Media Focus

Social Media: Where first?
With literally hundreds of social media sites to explore and exploit today, and more being introduced all the time, how does an online media manager or business owner decide where to focus?  If you are a late comer to the social media scene and are recently convinced you can no longer let it soar by without your brand, this post might provide some direction. (or further confusion, I hope the former.)

Let the Numbers Do the Talking
It is difficult to conclude for most of our clients that "social media just doesn't fit their demographic" or "isn't worth the time quite yet."  Here is why:

If you plan by the numbers like we do, your customers include internet users and you see the value of online marketing---social media should be in your plan. To over ride the "this is all new to me, I am busy can you cut to the chase factor" plant your focus on the most frequented social media sites that include your demographic. Here is the list of the most frequented to get your started: 

 

Carolyn McCarthy does a fine commentary after speaking with Compete about how these numbers were arrived at - her notes indicate that because these are U.S. only numbers that Twitter is likely even larger then what is reflected. As Twitter makes choices to commercialize their offerings (did you read Twitter's plans to charge corporations) it will be interesting to see their reach trend. For now, they are hot, growing and certainly difficult to ignore.

So where from here?
The recommendation we have is to still build a Social Media plan based on a business and marketing objective i.e. increased exposure in X market, within X demographic over X time period to yield X results. With the reach of FB and Twitter, it would be surprising if your demographic can not be found there - and getting started on both of these sites is neither terribly time consuming nor difficult. Like any media it needs a strategy, execution and measurement. The cost now, is time and money - the cost later is lost exposure and late arriving to a powerful new media type that is swallowing up millions of traditional media dollars (online video alone 26% growth in 2008). Can you afford to watch from the sidelines much longer? 

Your Media Plan Reflects Your Social Media Decision
Did blogging, online video and twitter sales strategy make your online media plan this quarter?
Some see social media as repetitive banterings, some see it as the most crucial time and money you can spend in a recession. Replacing email, I doubt it but worthy of attention, I would say, yes. You made your decision with your media plan, what is next quarter's decision?