SMS Marketing & Business Owner Adoption

I’ve been digging deeply into the world of mobile marketing lately. Well documented now, this is one of the fastest emerging marketing channels in the realm of digital advertising today. Text, or Short Message Service marketing (SMS Marketing as it is commonly known) represents an extremely low cost and intimate means of reaching customers with highly targeted offers and ads.

A mobile marketing audience is all opt-in, meaning you don’t send messages to people who have not first indicated that they actually want to receive your marketing texts. Think of telling people who walk into your restaurant that by texting “burgers” to 555555 they could join your exclusive “text only” burger club list and receive weekly text coupons featuring your gourmet burger creations. When your patrons send in the text to that number, they are added to your burger club list. They are giving you permission to send them texts about something they are interested in. These people are self-pre-qualified and eager to hear from you.

When executed strategically, text marketing can turn upwards of a 20% conversion rate to your desired action (sale, reservation, appointment, etc...). Clearly when technology can put you directly in the pocket of your most valued customer base, the results stand to be excellent. But I’m less worried about the technology than I am about something else.

Having lived through the rise of local search engine marketing, heading sales for one of the pioneering companies in that space, I can’t help thinking about the adoption rate of the audience that needs to embrace the technology – businesses themselves.

Back in 2003-’04, it made all the sense in the world for small and medium sized businesses to utilize targeted local search marketing, yet getting that point across to the business owners who should do the marketing was as big a challenge as any related to the technology actually taking off. Are we in for the same uphill battle with SMS marketing?

We’ve talked about business adoption issues before. Optimistically, we can hope that times have changed. Small and medium sized business owners are more technically savvy now, right? They won’t be scared off of a marketing medium that seems to be more part of the world in which their kids live than themselves, will they? Could it take more than simply stating a few compelling facts about the technology – facts that are instantly making professional Internet markers’ mouths water now – to give business owners all they need to dive right in?

Optimism didn’t take us very far with small and medium sized business owners trying to understand local search marketing. In fact, even to this day these “proven” marketing channels often catch business owners off guard.

So, SMS marketing technology is here. Is the mass adoption of the audience still two to three years off? Will we have an easier time creating and successfully delivering the buy-in message this time around? I look forward to finding out.

The Future Of Businesses Socializing Online

If it's good enough for all of us, shouldn't it be good enough for businesses too? The explosion of social networking--the connecting, reconnecting, and sharing of our daily thoughts--has quickly incorporated itself into the fabric of our lives. For those doing it, many might say they feel all the better for it. How long until businesses take on this passion for connecting?

Forget about advertising for a second. Doesn't it make sense that businesses should be pining for the chance to congregate online in highly (hyper) local communities to share, learn and benefit from each other's experience? If you were a brand new accountant getting started in St. Louis, wouldn't it be great to find a St. Louis accountants group online to join? If this group was moderated with guidance and insight into all things “St. Louis accountants,” it could be an instant networking tool where information and experience was shared among peers for the sake of helping the community.

We seem to be close, but it isn't quite here yet. Just as nearly every business sector eventually found itself with a local online directory in which to list business information over the last five years, it must only be a matter of time before businesses are given the opportunity to band together--not so much in spaces to do business advertising, but more in places to do business socializing. I'm picturing a 24/7 online version of an annual three-day national accountants convention, but without the hotel bills or bar tabs. There could be one for every business industry in every major metro area.

As is often the case, technology might leap into motion a few years before the small- and medium-sized business audience is ready to adopt it. But maybe that won't be such an issue anymore? Maybe that's the only unclear part of the not too distant future. That businesses should come to find places to socialize and learn together at the local level online seems a crystal clear outcome as we peer into the future's crystal ball.

Did The Small Business Website Really Die?

Going back at least a couple of years now, folks began speculating that the traditional small-to-medium size business website was going to be extinct any day now. The logic was sound: with so many up and coming platforms and directories doing a better and better job of showcasing business information, who would need to waste their time building a website that often couldn't even approach the value that these sometimes free directories could provide?

I talked directly about the importance of businesses making use of these sorts of directories and services in the "Got Business? Get Listed" article, and I will always maintain that a business must find as many outlets for its own web presence as it possibly can. But does this mean the actual business website is useless? Absolutely not.

Potential patrons of any business take it for granted that a business will have its own website on the Internet. It has become much like having a business card. However, unless you have endlessly deep pockets, the days of building a grand and lavish website for a small business are indeed long gone. A business must now be smart enough not to waste money carelessly when building a site.

The key today involves making sure that the website you feel obligated to build provides the very best value for three key parties: your prospects, your budget, and your ability to be found online in the search engines.

Essentially, you have to make sure each of these critical parties gets what they want out of your website. Take care to create content across diverse forms of media, and provide your visitors the ability to engage with you in the manner they desire. Depending on your business type this could mean anything from a video library to a blog, or simply allowing visitors to view and download a pricelist or menu.

Internet users have come to assume a company website represents a critical feature in any business' web presence garden. Make sure you tend to yours appropriately.

Reputation Management Basics

Regardless of how aggressively you might be trying to launch yourself or your company into the realm of social media, and even if you are more comfortable hiding in the anonymous shadows of the Internet, everyone should give some attention to managing their online reputation.

What does this actually mean? Well, think about first impressions. Sometimes, before you've even had an opportunity to define yourself to a new acquaintance, someone is talking about you beforehand (are your ears burning?). It's important to understand that we all have a mutual acquaintance who is constantly blathering on about us to anyone who will listen. It's our good friend Google.

Do a vanity search in Google on your own name. You might want to put it in quotes, or add the city you live/work in to help Google weed out all the other people with your (or your company's) name who aren't you. How do the page one results look? Is Google telling an accurate story about you? Are the web pages that Google lists presenting you in the best possible light?

If you have never done this sort of search before, you may be in for a shock. Google is going to do an awfully good job of finding every scrap of content associated to the phrase you searched. Are you finding "the real you" showing up at the top of the results? Perhaps you're seeing some links to comments you placed on a message board five years ago. Or maybe you are seeing a slightly inaccurate version of you, or perhaps someone who isn't you at all but leaves that distinction a bit hard to discern. Whatever you find, this is the first impression you are leaving when anyone (a prospective employer, client, business partner, etc..) does a little digging on you.

Let's assume that the results you see leave some room for improvement on Google's first page of results. What can you do? And what if there is something that you really wish would go away? How can you get rid of it?

Well, you aren't going to have much luck removing a webpage result from Google's algorithm unless you can reach out to the party responsible for that page and get them to take it down. More likely, your best bet will be to create as many opportunities for Google to see the real you, so the not so "real" stuff sinks from view.

Here's what you can do. Begin by creating accurate profiles about you and/or your company on social sites that Google trusts. Once you have created these, Google will likely start presenting them as its top results for searches about you.

Here is a short list of places where you should absolutely tell your story, and Google loves each of them:

Facebook – Seriously. Regardless of your opinion on the Facebook fad, if you don't have an account there you may as well create one if for no other reason than to give Google something accurate to place as the number one result for a you-specific search. Google's algorithm likes Facebook profiles that much. And you don't have to start "friending" anyone. Just create your profile and make sure your settings allow the search engines to find your page. You'll easily figure this out in your account settings.

You might also want to create a Facebook Fan Page – Google loves these too, and while you might typically think they are intended for businesses, plenty of people have fan pages. They rank very well. You can make one for yourself and it will show up right along with your own profile.

Got a blog? Get it listed in Facebook's NetworkedBlogs directory. That Facebook page can rank too.

LinkedIn – Don't have a Facebook account? Chances are then that your LinkedIn profile is showing up as Google's top result. Don't have a LinkedIn profile? Stop reading this and go get that taken care of right away. This goes for your company as well. Make sure you have built a company profile in LinkedIn and that every employee of the company (all should be in LinkedIn too) is correctly connected to that profile.

Your Website – If you have a site and can make use of its "About Us" section make sure you have an accurate and robust page about you. Google might not hold your webpage in as high esteem as it does Facebook and LinkedIn (which is why you need to leverage those platforms), but your website is a logical place to feature correct information about yourself.

Google Profile – Google allows you to create a profile connected to your Google account. This is handy on a number of levels, not the least of which is that your Google profile will tend to always be placed as the bottommost entry on the first page of search results in those you-specific searches.

There are lots of sites online where you can publish profile content about yourself. To varying degrees these profile pages will also tend to rank well for you in Google. Do a little digging and you're sure to find enough outposts for your personal/professional content that Google will soon be delivering the version of your story that you'd like it to tell. You never know who's out there asking the search engines what they know about you.

Photo by Fraser Johnson

Don't Waste A Drop Of Your Digital Assets

Making an online name for yourself requires a lot of effort. If you're going to do a good job of it, much of that effort will center around content production. Being able to produce content is no small feat. It intimidates companies looking to launch a bold new web face, and it plagues companies struggling to continue the effort long after an initial site is launched.

Don't make it harder on yourself than it has to be. Don't squander the ability you have to leverage and repurpose any and all forms of content you might have on hand. It is quite possible that you have a library of digital assets that are being under-utilized at this very moment. Items such as product photos, videos, whitepapers, sales collateral, and presentation material can all play a strategic role in placing your company in front of an online audience.

Here are some easy-to-implement steps that can help you make the best use of all the digital content you have on hand.

Images
This is a crucial content type that can boost your ability to reach an audience. Applying good SEO tactics to all of your online images can help them rank and lead people deeper into your site.

Make sure search engines can reach the directory level where your images are stored, and be sure to use ALT tags to name your images with descriptive titles (not some numbering system you use to catalog them in a folder).

Also, make use of images across your social media profiles. You might want to create a robust gallery of your images in Flickr or Photobucket (or both). Any way that you can push your visual content out will aid in bringing visitors in.

Video
Do you have video content living a sheltered life on your site? Product demos? How-to's? Company profiles? You should give serious consideration to leveraging this content across a myriad of video portals, not the least of which is YouTube, currently the world's second largest search engine.

Presentations and other collateral
Do you have a library full of PDFs, Whitepapers, Case Studies, and Sales Presentations? These should reside somewhere on your website as optimized content. Plus you might consider self-syndicating some of your favorites via social platforms like SlideShare. This is a great way to allow your already produced content to achieve a second wind while spreading your reputation even further across the Internet.

Not only can your digital assets find a life of their own across niche search engines and social platforms, but now that traditional search engines are all shifting to a more universal presentation which includes ranking everything from web pages to videos to social media statuses, you owe it to yourself to make sure you are getting your fingers in as many different communication media as possible – many of which you might already have waiting in the wings to take the stage.

Web Marketing To Company Goals

For years now most people would agree that the Internet is here to stay. It’s not a fad. It has legitimately redefined the way people communicate and how companies advertise. Yet many small-to-medium businesses remain completely disconnected from knowing how to effectively approach the web as a marketing vehicle.

Even to this day, many businesses view the Internet like a planet in some foreign universe where the laws of physics are completely different from our own. They wrongly impose a distinction between "running their business" and "dealing with the Internet." And it is precisely this assumed separation that stymies so many companies in figuring out their approach at the most basic levels.

Almost without question all small-medium businesses now accept the Internet as a necessary challenge. Yet many companies continue to miss the forest for the trees. I’ve said it before, and it keeps ringing true the more I help clients develop their Internet strategies: The devil is most assuredly in the details. All too often, businesses inadvertently leapfrog themselves into the thick of branches, leaves, and bramble, without giving any attention to what tree they are standing under, or where on the map this forest even stands.

It’s not that the details aren’t important—we must tend them in order to grow and refine tactics. But a business must always be answering more broad questions when it decides where to forge ahead, when to cut, and what to cultivate. How does the current decision serve the ultimate strategic goal of the company? Tying Internet strategy to the foundational measures of a company itself is often missed completely when approaching the online space.

There is, however, a fundamental aspect of Internet marketing that ties the core goals of a business to its online efforts. Use it, and it can clear confusion and guide decisions:

Hold Your Internet Strategy Accountable.

It’s not enough to re-build a website on the desire to improve your company’s image. You must develop an approach which will foster the measurement of this goal as it relates to the metrics your company uses to track success overall. How will your online efforts be tied back to serving the company’s bottom line?

To figure this out, start with one question: Six to twelve months from now, how are you going to know if your Internet strategy is working? The answer to that question reveals exactly which slivers of data will be meaningful to you, and can guide your content development and user path architecture.

Manage your web strategy like you would an employee in your company. Set goals, brainstorm tactics, and don’t be afraid to change direction when needed. Business on the Internet is deeply intertwined with the business most people think stands so separately from it. It follows and responds to the same guideposts. Imposing accountability is a key step in succeeding online, and it can clear the misconception that the Internet is happening on another planet.

Facing Social Media ROI

Are you struggling to find ways to justify social media marketing? Do you dread having to find a way to respond to business leadership as they demand to see a direct correlation between all this Twitter/Facebook hocus pocus and an actual return on investment? Do you wish that they could just see the inherent value that you know is there--the power of building human relationships with your prospects, the strength in cultivating an audience around your brand, the ability to demonstrate your company's thought leadership to the world? Why don't the bean counters appreciate the wonder and opportunity that social media represents for what it is, and leave it at that? The allure alone shows enough potential in social media to justify entire rooms full of practitioners forging ahead on the frontline of the socialsphere, right?

Wrong. In fact, those bean counting business leaders have it absolutely right. That they are concentrating on the bottom line is not an indication that they don't "get" social media. On the contrary, many absolutely see the potential and the need to advance into the space. But they are also rightly looking to hold social media accountable as a sound business practice. You shouldn't need much convincing that if you want to successfully implement social media for a company, you had better get yourself firmly on the side of those business leaders who pay the bills.

Even if you do manage to razzle-dazzle them with what they perceive as smoke and mirrors enough to let you get started, you are only digging a hole for yourself when the unavoidable happens. No matter if it's a big or small company, eventually the entire social media effort is going to have to be equated as a line item on someone's P&L (Profit and Loss) sheet. You had better take steps to make sure social media is seen as a legitimate cost center. Your ability to see social media through the eyes of your boss will actually help you tremendously.

It becomes your challenge to walk the line between the difficult to measure human components of social media and the financial realities of business. On one side you have the intangible wins that slowly grow over time as you cultivate your web presence. These are the true core building blocks of social media which come from "doing it right." On the other side you have the reality that you are actually doing this entire thing for gains that help your company grow. And in business, growth is going to end up as a trend line on a spreadsheet. Get comfortable with that. It's okay.

So now the question is "How?" How can we force the square peg of social media into the very round hole of business ROI? There are countless paths to doing this, but let's look at one that is staring us in the face. Let's appreciate social media for something it undeniably is--a critical Search Engine Optimization element.

With universal search now an implicit component in all the major engines, their ability to serve up a broad result set of authoritative content is greatly enhanced. Now the strides you take into the multimedia dimension of content creation (most all of which is social media driven) can increase traffic to your web presence all the more.

You probably already track the traffic coming to your site and evaluate the results of that traffic whether by cost per lead or some other conversion metric. This gives you an immediate benchmark over which social media can be layered. At the very least, without having to fashion some entirely new measurement dashboard, you can start tracking social media's impact on generating quality traffic to your site. A strong twitter account could easily increase targeted deep-linked traffic into a site by a significant percentage. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Other content types and platforms can also influence the volume of traffic you already measure. And where traffic is being tied to ROI (how can it not be?), it gives you a legitimate starting point for evaluating social media's impact on your cost of conversion.

A twelve month goal to see if social media can increase web traffic while potentially driving down the cost per conversion is a legitimate reality. In your business leader's eyes, this probably fits into a known metric and takes a bit of the mystery out of social media too.

There are numerous ways to tie social media into the established measuring sticks at play in any company. SEO is just one of them. The fact is this: there is every reason to see social media marketing from a business perspective. It doesn't change the fact that doing "good" social media marketing still requires authenticity, human dialogue, and genuine interaction. Doing those well represents a whole slew of challenges in and of themselves. The bigger challenge is in knowing how to serve both sides of the measuring stick while never letting the ball drop on either side.

Trouble Ahead With Real-Time Search

Google announced the roll out of real-time search results into its algorithm yesterday, solidifying what most anyone should understand by now—real-time content is a commodity and is here to stay. Now that Google has joined the ranks of search engines succumbing to the obvious shift in user intent, the debate is over and we can get down to planning just how we will monetize this new facet of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). How to SEO for it? How to advertise within it? And how to potentially turn everyone off on these results for good.

I'm afraid that with real-time results finally making it into the "big leagues," traditional search marketing may steamroll over this authentic user-generated content only to devalue it completely out of authenticity. Authentic user-generated content has turned the search engine world on its ear. Now the engines are combating this by layering these elements into their results. This may be a dangerous day for all parties concerned, and I feel the potential to kick the user experience in the shins is as strong as the excitement surrounding a significantly stellar transformation of the search space.

But rather than brooding over the cloudy visions within the crystal ball of search monetization and the potential to crush authenticity, something far more immediate seems to be ringing a warning bell in my ears—the complete disconnect between getting authoritative, trustworthy results from a search engine along side the newest, freshest stream of conscious flowing out of the gigantic mouth of social media.

While I am all for real-time search results and their ability to keep me up to date on current events and trends, there seems little means for a search engine to evaluate the good, bad, or indifferent when deciding which particular blip of micro-blog to serve me on its page one results. And I have little interest in simply seeing the most recent real-time "anything" being said on anything I might search. There isn't any metric available to adequately evaluate the "authority" of a micro-blogging twitter user. Don't be fooled. It isn't the number of followers. It isn't the balance of followers to follow-ees. And it isn't even the ratio of user lists you show up on. Real-time search results are pretty much just that—the latest spew out of the cloud of "current" content. I'm less interested in the "most current" stream and more in the "most valuable" current stream. Finding that subset takes some significant self-filtering in the search space.

Searchers segment themselves nicely between those doing research, those doing commercial buyer activities, and those looking for the latest news. Unfortunately, when I search "Britney Spears" it isn't really clear to the engine which of those three searchers I am. Is the solution to serve me everything? I see myself needing some massive lever I can flip before doing a search that states my intent to the engine before I hit search. That way I don't have to suffer through those pockets of content for which I have no interest.

Yes, it's cool that engines are now going to give me a slice of photos, videos, tweets, products, web pages, and blog posts whenever I go surfing, but is an all-in-one solution SERP really the best SERP I could ask for? I doubt it. I don't discount that this is a major upgrade. Ranking web pages alone is far from a complete user experience picture. The engines' evolution provides confirmation that there is value in diversifying the results page. But might it be becoming too homogenized at the same time?

Might real-time search be truly valuable only when I can have it show me results from my circle of trusted content sources? As it stands, while exposure to the very most recent chatter about worldly subjects is useful, I'm not sure it is nearly filtered enough for my page one results on a search engine, at least not all the time. User generated content is too susceptible to being over run with unqualified rambling. It's already impossible to sift through my own twitter network stream. Imagine when search results are showing the entire world's stream on page one all the time. Ugh.

2010 is going to be a very interesting year in Search Marketing to be sure.

The ABBs of Social Media - Always Be Branding

One of the oldest acronyms in the sales industry is ABC (Always Be Closing). It's an easy mantra-like reminder that everything you do in a sales relationship comes down to closing the deal. For businesses (and individuals too) in the social media space there is a similar acronym to be followed: ABB (Always Be Branding). It's a softer version than the sales-minded mantra, but no less critical. If you forget this one, you could be risking more than losing a single deal.

Two things the Internet doesn't do: sleep or forget. If you and your company are to successfully develop a web presence, these are two factors you must contend with regularly. As you develop content, know that what you create is always going to be out there, and will forever make up the foundation of your online reputation. So it is important to always consider what you do, what you say and how you say it. Social media is continually shining something of a spotlight on your professional appearance, like the paparazzi lurking behind every parked car and tree waiting to snap a picture. Your social network is always watching.

While authenticity is a key to creating an effective social media voice, there is no denying that what you're doing every day is branding, plain and simple. Through your authenticity you are promoting yourself and your company. However, the social media "sell" is a different beast than that of the traditional sales environment. After all, your win in social media comes from being regarded as a valuable content asset—being someone that others appreciate for the added value you give.

The thing to remember is that this is happening whether you're thinking of it or not. So you'll need to take some precautionary measures to prevent missteps. The best way to accomplish this is by first establishing a content strategy. Having a plan will help you stay on course, and it need not take an inordinate amount of effort to create.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1—Adhere to a short list of goals. As you create any outbound content, make sure it is serving the grand vision of your efforts. This could be to build product awareness, to demonstrate expertise, to improve customer service relations, or any other key driver to your efforts. Before you hit the "publish" button make sure the content is serving your objectives in some way. This ought not get in the way of your producing a conversational rapport with your audience, but rather, ensure that this direct chit-chat doesn't veer off course.

2—Plan for the future. Without getting bogged down so much that it prevents creativity, take a bit of time to structure your efforts from day to day, or week to week. Based on your goals you should be able to decide on the subject matter of your next half dozen blog posts. You can also let your goals drive your decisions to participate in certain forums or groups.

3—Limit the cooks in the kitchen. As best you can, try to control your content outlets to as few people as possible. Make sure these people fully grasp the overarching strategy. It is understandably different from organization to organization, but it will be most effective if the strategists are the actual content producers. In the cases where efforts are mounted on a larger scale, it will become critical to produce comprehensive guidelines that communicate the strategy to the team that is producing content and sets measures and check points to ensure that content stays focused.

Through it all, keep the ABB mantra running in your head. It will safeguard both your reputation and the authenticity with which you build it.

Tending Your Social Media Garden

What is that deafening silence you hear? It’s probably what looks like the complete lack of results coming from the social media efforts you just launched. If you and your company have recently decided to plow into the world of Communitising you may be somewhat concerned by the complete absence of reciprocal energy flowing back your way.

There was no doubt a giant flurry of activity and excitement related to your entrance into the social media arena--studying the space, creating accounts, uploading logos, perhaps even revamping a website. Now that you are there, it may be dumbfounding how utterly under-appreciated you and your treasure trove of industry specific wisdom appears. But hang in there. The world of social media mimics the real word in ways that defy what you might commonly expect from any other sort of online media blitz. The thing to remember is that, like many things in life, developing a strong and beneficial social media presence takes time, patience, and continual attention.

Think of it like starting a garden. Everything you did up until the moment you started posting, blogging and tweeting was akin to all the prep that goes into planting a garden. You shop for seeds. You turn the soil. You add fertilizer. You plant everything. You put little markers down so you’ll know what springs up where. You water. And you wait. And you wait some more. Not to point out the obvious pun, but creating a potent web presence is very much like watching grass grow.

The most trying time comes immediately after you finish all the heavy lifting of starting the garden. You can’t see the seeds under the dirt germinating. You can’t see the little tendrils and sprouts. There is no window into the magic happening within each seed. You stare at the dirt and wonder if it just needs more water. It does. In fact, it needs a lot of water. So you have to keep at it. It will take days (weeks, really), but eventually many of the seeds will produce shoots emerging from the soil and you will gain confirmation that your garden has actually been growing this whole time.

There will be plenty to deal with as your social media plants start to mature. Plenty to measure, prune, and harvest. This garden can easily take a year or more to fully appreciate and quantify back into other parts of your business. For now, know that your instincts were dead on when you decided to plant in the first place.

Even if you feel like you are socializing in a vacuum, keep at it. Continue producing content related to your passion. Eventually it is this passionate content which will lead the community to you. The first days are the hardest days.