Are you one of the many magazine readers who have been scanning up a storm while flipping through the pages of favorite publications? According to Nellymoser, a mobile marketing firm, the use of their QR codes by magazines has spiked by 228% over the last year.

QR code to view our packages.

What does this mean for the publications? “It’s clearly a great opportunity for the print industry to keep up with the ever-increasing use of technology,” said Online Marketing Strategist Caroline Melberg. “Since 40% of mobile phone users have smartphones – and that number is increasing – the use of QR codes will most likely continue to grow.”

BizReport.com reported on the findings, sharing that 2011 saw a major increase in the printing of QR codes. “In 2011 almost 4,500 QR codes appeared within ads and editorial of the U.S.’s top 100 magazines. The year started off with 352 codes in Q1. It grew to 1,899 in Q4, which is 439% growth,” reported Helen Leggatt of BizReport.com.

So if printing QR codes in a magazine has a positive outcome, is it better to add more codes per issue, or will that overwhelm readers? The information showed that the more QR codes that were added in a magazine, the higher the response rate.

“QR codes are a powerful business tool because their results are very measurable,” said Melberg. “It’s very simple to use a QR code creator that allows you to track the results to see how many readers are scanning the code. You can test the effectiveness of your ads by comparing their numbers to one another to see which ones have the highest response rates.”

Do you think QR codes are helpful? Do you think they will have longevity in the online marketing world?

A YouTube video based on a #1 international best-selling book, Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman, has recently been released.  Social Media Revolution 2011 is a three-minute video with the latest facts on how social media affects our communication, business, and the way we live our lives overall.  While the new video is full of remarkable information, we found the following statistics especially fascinating.

How have you seen social media connect people around the world?

1. YouTube is the 2^nd largest search engine in the world.

YouTube is a powerful search engine that generates a massive amount of traffic from all kinds of viewers – some of whom could be your potential clients.

2. The latest Ford Explorer ad on Facebook generated more traffic than a Super Bowl ad.

Compare the cost of a Super Bowl ad to a Facebok ad.  That’s a no-brainer.

3. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations.  Only 14% trust advertisements.

Online resources, such as Yelp!, are changing the way people are deciding to buy.

4. 93% of marketers use social media for business.

Your competition is most likely active in social media – are you?

5. “We don’t have a choice in whether we DO social media.  The question is how well we DO it.”  – Erik Qualman

Qualman hits on the purpose of social media.  If you are still wondering how social media is worth your investment, now is the time to learn how measurable social media can impact your ROI.

Social media is strategic.  Are you involved in the social media revolution?

Groupon is The Small Business Owner’s “First Time Home Buyer’s Incentive.”  Sure, the First Time Home Buyer’s Incentive increased the sales of new homes to first time home buyers last year – up until it expired.  Now, sales of homes to first time buyers are down, and it’s contributing to the overall housing crisis.

Is that a huge surprise?  Once you discount your product over an extended period of time, you condition your target audience to expect to pay that discounted price.  The lower price becomes the “new normal” and your buyers are going to wait until they see a deal like that again before they spend their money.

This is what is troubling about Groupon and other “deal” sites.  Not that they offer “deals” – everyone loves a deal, and pricing incentives can be a great way to drive new business for a business owner.  However, Groupon deals tend to be at such drastically reduced prices, the business owner is barely able to make a profit on the sales.  Sure, they bring in lots of new customers to get the deal, but what happens the following week when prices go back to “normal”?

Let’s take Posie’s Bakery & Cafe as an example. The owner researched Groupon and thought the idea clever, a great marketing tool. She connected with a Groupon rep who told her when the customer pays less than $10.00, Groupon usually takes 100% of the money, but then reassured her most customers pay more than $13.00. Also, by taking advantage of Groupon’s network, she’d never have to advertise again.

Does a major discount benefit the customer or the business? Or Both?

From her experience, the owner learned there is no cap on how many Groupons are sold to help protect the business from too much loss. A good deal for Groupon, not necessarily so for the business owner.

She also learned not every Groupon customer was a perfect one-time customer, much less a candidate for a long-term customer. Those were the ones who didn’t follow the Groupon rules, tried to push the envelope to get an even better ‘deal,’ and who complained about everything.

After three months of offering Groupon, the business owner found the results were hurting them financially. At one point she and her husband had to take $8,000 out of their personal savings to cover payroll and rent. You can read Posie’s story here.

If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan to convert these deal-seeking buyers into long-term paying customers, you may simply be giving away your product or service for free, with no hope of a return on your investment.  Worse, the influx in volume may be too great for some small businesses to handle, resulting in customer service issues and alienating existing customers who no longer receive the service they have become accustomed to.

The one that benefits from every promotion is, of course, Groupon. Mashable reports they make $800 million in annual revenue.
Here’s the main point; deals are great, but don’t let “discount-itis” get the best of you.  Make sure the deals you create are a “win-win” for you and your potential customers before you take the leap.

Many people suggest that social media is not measurable – we’d beg to differ. The old saying, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” has never been more true than in social media.  To demonstrate social media return on investment (ROI), you must first determine what goals you want social media to help you achieve, and set measurements that track your progress toward your goals.

Measuring Social Media ROI for Retail (or Business-to-Consumer Sales)

Head of Marketing for Lane Bryant and creator of the Supergroup network, Jay Dunn has developed an equation that attempts to quantify your network’s value.  Called “Dunn’s Equation,” it is Network Value = Annual Value x Network.

To use this calculation, you need to know what the annual value of a new customer means to your bottom line.

Find the ROI in your social media efforts.

For example, let’s say a customer’s annual purchase from you is $500.  Assume that each member of your network has 100 followers, and 5% of those followers have similar interests.

That means your network value is:

Annual Value:  $500

Network:  100 Followers

% with Similar Behaviors:  5% (5 x $500)

Network Value = $500 + (5*$500) = $3,000

That is, $500 for the first customer from your network, and $2,500 for the referral potential from your network because of the viral, word-of-mouth nature of social media.

Jay is quick to admit that this is not highly scientific, but it is an interesting look at what the value of your network is to your business – if you’ve built your network properly.  Notice that the equation assumes that 5% of the people within your customer’s network have similar interests.  If you’ve built your network strategically to attract your target audience (as opposed to focusing on quantity over quality, for instance), then this percentage could well be higher.

As you can see, as you grow your network strategically, your network’s value grows with it.  Focusing on quantity over quality could reduce the percentage of members with similar interests, and will have a negative impact on your network value.

In our next post we’ll address measuring ROI for business-to-business sales – stay tuned!

Openness with clients and customers on the web is must for brands, according to Jamie Pappas of Information Week. Last week Pappas posted an article that discussed the average consumer’s need for honesty from companies and their brands.

“As consumers investing in these products and services, we demand that businesses be honest with us about their features and functions, as well as potential pitfalls,” wrote Pappas.

The quintessential example of honest transparency is the recent marketing campaign of Domino’s Pizza. By listening to customer feedback – both positive and negative – Domino’s openly addressed their weaknesses and changed their products.  The results? Pappas article stated that Domino’s shares jumped from roughly $9 to $23 after the new campaign.

Yes, it can be difficult to admit the faults of your business and/or products, but bankruptcy is even more difficult. Domino’s did what they had to do in order to change the opinions of their target market.

Are you utilizing social media as a tool for two-way communication between you and your clients?

A common misconception about social networking sites is the idea that they exist in a virtual playground.  Sure, they are entertainment, but some individuals question whether or not they are a tool for businesses.  More specifically, many business owners are concerned that the average Facebook user is not typically part of their target audience. Others even stereotype avid online users as apathetic about reality and label them as being cut-off from actual relationships, or anti-social. However, new research has proven otherwise…

A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that Facebook users are trusting, supported by many, and are more politically engaged than those who do not use the social networking site.  This means that the average social-networking consumer is more often grounded in the real world, expressing himself/herself openly and shares valued opinions in a network where friends are easily influenced.

Since this study reveals that the typical Facebook user is a loyal friend and consumer, it is evident that the site is an ideal market to create buzz for business. Reaching your target audience through Facebook is another powerful marketing tool for your brand.

Are you using social media to increase your return on investment (ROI)?

New social media sites are popping up all over. As a business owner you need to have a strategy for every social media site you engage in, not just run willy-nilly into them because they are “new”.

What points are beneficial to keep in mind as you explore new social media sites?

Know why you are participating in social media. Do you want to engage in more conversation with your potential clients? Are you looking to build brand awareness with social media?

Explore the site and see if the prospects you want to reach are spending time there.  Determine how the new site fits into your overall strategic plan for social media.

Keeping these tips in mind, we wanted to investigate 3 new social media sites that clients and folks attending our workshops have been asking about lately:

-       Referral Key

-       Branch Out

-       Empire Avenue

We’ll cover Referral Key today – stay tuned for part 2 in this series for our review on Branch Out and Empire Avenue.

A recent article in AdAgeDigital stated,  “As it turns out, many people in social networks don’t want to talk about your product, they just want to talk.”

That statement can and has been countered by business owners with the question:  What’s the point of being on social media if not to promote my products/services or myself?

Social media is about developing a personal relationship with your clients and understanding how strategically developing that relationship through apparently random posts and tweets leads to your social media followers learning about, knowing and trusting your company’s brand and character.  People buy things from people they like, know and trust.

Minnesota company Caribou Coffee does a nice job of intermingling information about their products with trivia questions and fun facts that keep their 200k+ fans engaged and active.  On Memorial Day, they asked their Facebook community to post thank-you messages for military veterans and service-members.  When they referred to all military personnel as “soldiers” in their Facebook post, one person took offense and let them know in a post on their wall that “soldiers” were applicable only to the Army.  Far from being a devastating blow to their brand, over 100 of Caribou’s fans responded to the offended person that it was obvious Caribou had no intention of offending anyone, and expressing appreciation for Caribou reaching out and supporting the military.  This resulted in an increase in new “Likes” to their page, and a strong commitment to Caribou’s products as a result.

Try these pointers to help you increase your business social media relevance and engagement:

• Be strategic without talking about your product all the time. Find something that is bigger than, yet relevant to, your product, and talk about that.
• Be conversational – don’t make a sales pitch.  Respond to the people you connect with on social media sites
• Be authentic and true to your brand’s key messages.  Be yourself!

Brian Wallace, VP-global digital at BlackBerry parent Research In Motion says “A Facebook fan has no value. Getting a Facebook fan to do something does.”  By using social media strategically, and engaging with your online community, you’ll be able to forge a strong bond, and reach your customers and potential customers where and when they want to be reached.

Search engines, such as Google and Bing, use a variety of factors in their algorithms to determine where to rank your web pages within the search engine results pages. A couple of those factors I’ve talked about before are how relevant your web pages are to the keywords searched, and how many inbound links you have pointed to your website from other relevant web pages online.

But there are other factors the search engines consider as well – namely, how popular your website is (how many visitors you receive), and how long they stay on your website. If you get very little traffic to your site, or if your visitors leave your site quickly once they do visit, this will impact how relevant the search engines consider you for the keyword terms you wish to rank for. (And sites considered less relevant are positioned lower in the search engine results pages).

So the design of your website – the look and feel, the way the pages are laid out, how easy it is for your site visitors to find what they are looking for – all of this has always been important in determining whether your visitors take the action you want them to take when they visit your site.

Once someone comes to your website, you have about 8 seconds to convince them they are in the right spot – if you don’t, they’ll likely be gone in search of a site that more closely matches what they are looking for. And this increases what’s known as your “bounce rate” – which affects how relevant the search engines perceive you to be.

With the launch of “Instant Preview”, Google has upped the ante in terms of the value of quality web design in terms of where your site will rank. With Instant Preview, a magnifying glass appears next to each result on the search engine results page that allows the searcher the ability to preview your web page without even visiting your website.

And this is where the importance of a well-designed website is critical: when viewing your web pages in a thumbnail preview, a site that is designed to be clean, uncluttered, simple and easy to navigate will win out over a poorly designed site every time.

This means that a poorly designed site will likely receive far fewer clicks; as a result, the search engines will find you less relevant and penalize you by lowering your ranking. And more importantly, the lowered amount of traffic to your website will result in missed opportunities for new sales to your potential clients.

A well-designed website has always been important; in the age of Instant Previews, it’s imperative to your success online.

Caroline Melberg
Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization & Social Media Strategist

Did you have a good Labor Day weekend? Hopefully you had the chance to take Monday off and relax – but just because you took the day off, that doesn’t mean your business had to! Make your social media do some work for you.

Think of your company’s social media sites as 24/7 advertisements for your business. Clients can visit these sites at any time, which means you’ll definitely want to make sure they accurately represent your brand. Try to include helpful answers for your clients when you can, such as your hours of operation, both during the week and on holidays.

Social media presents many opportunities for your brand. Are you making them work for you?