by 1localbusiness.com | May 10, 2011 | Digital Marketing
After not so much feedback concerning our last post, we decided to do a super simple follow-up examination of how to profit from local Carlsbad small business social media efforts.
While we’re at it we’ll throw in some local search for good measure, the two actually go hand in hand toward taking your marketing digital.
It’s still pretty amazing how many retail establishments and small businesses out there have yet to take advantage of the social media marketing and local search opportunities out there in today’s digital (and increasingly mobile) world.
Local business owners are concerned with how neighborhood mom and pop stores can possibly compete with big box retailers…social media and local search are a good place to start that battle.
Take advantage; develop, nurture, and continually participate in your social local small business identity.
Return on Investment
Return on investment (ROI) is probably the number one calculation most small business owners need to be concerned with when figuring the bottom-line long-term success of their business.
Although calculating and analyzing ROI is sometimes more than confusing, defining that magic number is essential to get an idea of how your products and services are generating profit.
Generating increased profits (more new customers) should be the end goal of any local retail or small business marketing campaign. When it comes to social media for local small businesses, calculating that profit is relatively simple.
A few benchmarks can at the very least give you a clearer picture of how well your chosen marketing avenues are performing.
ROI = (Revenue – Investment) / Investment * 100
For example, let’s say you spent $200 on your monthly Pennysaver advertisement. And taking into consideration the fact that you have accurately tracked the response from that ad…let’s say you’ve grossed $2000 in revenue for the given time period (say one month):
ROI = (Revenue – Investment) / Investment * 100
ROI = (2000-200) / 200 * 100
ROI = 1800 / 200 * 100
ROI = 9 * 100
ROI = 900%
Not bad for a $200 investment…let’s just hope your real Pennysaver ad delivers similar numbers!
Now that we can calculate our success with our Results Oriented Information, how can we go about obtaining it with social media and local search?
Get Started
In order to profit from social media efforts and local search visibility, you first need to be part of the community. Don’t delay any longer; use this simple 3 Step Beginner’s Checklist to move forward with your social local marketing plan. We won’t force you to…but if you like the checklist, then please ‘Like’ us on Facebook and let us know!
By simply initiating social media profiles for your local small business and confirming (probably existing) local search profiles, you are immediately increasing local online visibility for your small business.
But be careful, that’s only the beginning. Now that your business is part of the social media and local search community, you need to take advantage of every single opportunity the media outlets and search engines make available to enhance your listing.
A user-friendly, concise environment inviting conversion from prospect to customer is the end goal.
The key to profiting from social media and local search efforts is controlling your online business identity with a well planned course of action.
The first step in doing so is to join the community – get started with your social media profiles and confirm your local search listings if you haven’t already.
Then be sure to populate your listings and profiles with photos, website links, video, coupons, promotional offers, customers reviews…lather, rinse, repeat for all local search environments and chosen social media outlets.
If you want to start profiting from social media and local search efforts, first you need to start planning for success. Launch your business into the social local stratosphere, then accurately track and calculate your return on investment.
What is your second biggest fear when it comes to local social digital and mobile marketing?
We’re sure the primary fear is losing money!
by 1localbusiness.com | Apr 26, 2011 | Digital Marketing
We don’t mean how much you know about digital marketing, rather how much you know you know.
Get it?
Got it?
Good.
Now onto more pressing tweets about local sandwich crafters, and rifling through all those doggie photos!
OK, done. Let’s explore the digital marketing intelligence quotient of your Carlsbad small business. According to the ubiquitous Wikipedia, Digital marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This now includes Television, Radio, Internet, mobile, social media marketing and any other form of digital media.
Which Carlsbad digital marketing avenues are you using to promote your local retail business?
For those Carlsbad businesses out there that already use TV or radio as part of their retail marketing plan, they’ve most likely already integrated some forms of digital marketing into the mix. What’s a TV commercial without a Facebook and Twitter mention these days?
For the rest of us, we’ll concentrate on Internet, mobile, and social media as the main pillars of our local retail business digital marketing scheme. And we’ll look to identify value and return on investment as our major indicators of success.
But how do we measure that success?
First we need to understand the environment we will be using to communicate our products and services. Secondly, we need to set attainable goals for our retail digital marketing. Lastly, we must track the results and actively participate in the success of our digital marketing, or suffer the consequences.
Understanding the environment will up your digital intelligence IQ immediately.
- How do local people use Facebook or Twitter to communicate?
- Do they share buying experiences of local businesses?
- If you ask people to share their consumer experience with your business, where could you direct them?
- Would an increased knowledge of who your customers are, and why they choose your business allow you to better serve the surrounding community…sell more product or services?
Some easily attainable digital marketing goals for the average Carlsbad retail business could be:
- Build a website. (Kill three birds and get a no cost mobile website app for your small business when you confirm your Bing Local listing here!)
- Use e-commerce solutions to sell your products and services while you’re sleeping – or working.
- Initiate a Facebook Business Page and Twitter account for your retail business.
- Generate 100 (or 1000) Facebook ‘Likes’ and Twitter ‘Followers’ in the span of one year.
- Connect your Facebook and Twitter profiles with your business website.
- Start sending customers an email newsletter – you choose the frequency (monthly, bi-monthly, semi-annual…etc.).
When it comes to digital marketing for the average Carlsbad retail business, the research necessary to understand the environment, and the goal-setting needed to gauge success are the easy and fun parts of owning your digital identity. Tracking your results and actually participating in the success of your localized retail digital marketing is a bit more difficult. Don’t make the mistake of playing around on Facebook all day or waiting for Charlie Sheen’s next tweet. Devote time to all three pillars of your Carlsbad digital marketing plan.
Be sure to track your results and participate in your own local digital marketing success.
If we set goals for using social media and local search to acquire more new local customers, we need to know when we’ve achieved those goals. This means using such things as tracking codes, mobile downloads, referral codes, local phone numbers, or even handwritten notes in a marble notebook.
Whatever your DIY method is, make sure you know what you know about your digital marketing efforts.
We’ve also previously mentioned some low to no cost digital marketing tools to help you calculate success in this old blog post.
- How many Facebook and Twitter connections resulted in actual feet in the door?
- How often do your social connections interact with your business online?
- Have you seen an increase in online visibility of your business across multiple online channels?
- Did that press release result in any check-ins to your business Foursquare profile?
- What is the value of your ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’? (What are your goals for building a group of fans and followers?)
Here’s what eMarketer says about that last one:
How would you calculate the value of your local Facebook Fan?
