My Response (Selected as “Best Answer”):

Twitter strategy should build a base of engaged followers through reciprocity of sharing content and engaging in interesting conversation.

- Tweet 10-20 times throughout the day.
- Express gratitude for those that mention or retweet.
- Learn what the best Tweeple are doing.
- Give 10x more than you receive.
- Be interesting and relevant.
- Use hashtags for events, webinars, activities, and popular topics.
- Tone is educational and appreciative.
- Consistently provide value to all those who follow you.
- Both personal and business.
- Test and revisit what works for you.

My Response:

I’m not convinced that you can do just ONE marketing tactic and consistently market a great event. However, there are a number of things you can do, in combination with each other, than could really drive up your attendance.

Leverage Personal Relationships – If contacts at your company know some people personally, then a simple personal email will typically almost always work if the target is available that date/time.

Email Lists – If you have a list of contacts who would be interested in the event, send them an email and ask them to register. If you can give them incentive (such as an exclusive preview or free content) then you’ll surely grab their attention to register.

Social Media – If this is a public event then create a mini social media campaign on whatever networks you have. Create a Twitter hashtag around the event, create a FB “Event” and invite all of your followers, announce it on Google+, or post it on your LinkedIN Group. Get the word out.

Cool Technology – Half of events are successful because of the unique experience. Okay I made that up, but my point is people like to interact with technology and see things done in clever ways. Allow people to scan QR codes. Track their badges and sign them up for door prizes. Have them interact with your products/services via the latest tablet or touch screen.

Follow Up – If you’re like most companies you probably put on that event to make some money. Make sure you’re collecting the attendees information and if they agreed, follow up with them by sending your best content. Email works great here. If you keep sending them valuable content after the event, you can extend the event experience and add more even value.

My Response (Selected as “Best Answer”):

In my experience, to create the best user experience, your ad and your landing page should align graphically and with similar copy text. You certainly don’t have to use the same exact copy as that may not make sense. The ad limits you to 25, 35, 35 characters. Why limit yourself on a landing page when you don’t need to? I typically try to worry less about the quality score and more about the experience you are creating for the user. In the end, that’s what Google wants. They created the Quality Score so you don’t create an ad about “shoes” and send people to a page about “dogs”, aka spammers. If your ad has a good CTR and drives to a page with a good conversion rate, then you’ll be fine. Of course I’d encourage you to shoot for better than fine with optimization by testing multiple ad copies and multiple landing pages (maybe some A/B or Multivariate Testing?).

I like to tell the visitor in the ad copy call-to-action what to expect and what I want them to do on the next page –> “Buy this product”, “Download this whitepaper”, “Watch this video”, “Register for this webinar”, etc. Then when they get to the next page you can reiterate what you are trying to get them to do. Another best practice I live by is to focus on ONE conversion per ad. Don’t send them to your homepage with dozens of links. Give them 1 thing to do and give them all the reasons why they should do it. Of course, make sure that what you want them to do is valuable to them and is worth their time and effort. If you are asking them to give you their email, make sure they get something VERY valuable for that exchange.

My Response (Selected as “Best Answer”):

Online media can certainly target the correct group of individuals whether you’re going after a small B2B group or a large B2C audience. The trick with getting more efficient is optimizing your online media spend to as close to the end of your sales funnel as possible. If you buy your online media, such as display ads, on a CPM (impression) basis, then you’re going to get a broad range of prospects that may or may not be in your target. You’ll most likely run out your marketing budget before you can get to those targets unless your advertising is on very niche websites.

If you can get further along the funnel and close the loop in your reporting, you can start to target through very specific mediums. The next level would be buying CPC (clicks) advertisements. This strategy only spends your marketing dollars if someone is interested enough in your advertisement to click on the banner or link. If you make your copy and call-to-action very very specific, then you can eliminate a large portion of the audience that isn’t interested. You only pay for their interest. This is why many companies, big and small, find search engine marketing so effective.

Finally, the dream of online marketers, is to target by individual, online demographics, or simply put someone raising their hand via their “digital footprint”. Some sites are getting closer to this type of targeting. Facebook allows you to target by any content on a user’s profile. LinkedIn is also has this type of detailed targeting that looks at industry, title, company, skills, work experience, background, job description, etc. More and more online publishers are realizing that if they are to receive marketing ad spend, then they need to produce results.

You can certainly achieve success today with online media. I’ve personally experienced it in both the B2B and B2C space. The more relevant and targeted you can become by only paying for the leads you need, the better your ROI will be.

My Response:

Social media is another channel that companies can use to communicate with their customers and prospects. If done well, it can drive visits back to your other web properties, such as micro-sites, landing pages, or your main website. Social media is also about going where the people already are. Much of the target audience may be already utilizing social media for business or personal use. If a company wants to be part of the conversation, then they need a presence. Websites and day-to-day business hasn’t drastically changed for companies. It’s more about another medium of to communicate. In order to stay ahead of the “(social media) game” companies need to test. What works for one company may not work for another, and the reverse is also true. Start slow and find out the best way to build an audience and add to the conversation. Whether it be contests, product launches, business tools, or customer support, a company can see additional benefit from adding social media to their digital portfolio.

My Response:

As a marketer, when I think of content I think of anything that a company purposefully develops that adds value to their prospects or customers. Good content is content that solves a problem, provides insight, or helps them in some way. This could be information from an online tool, whitepaper, or website. Content could also be a service and your content is the solution to the problems you’re solving. On the web “content is king” because it’s cost effective, mass distributed, and measurable. That is why companies spend so much time and money developing online “content”. A business can identify what content it needs to create by looking at it’s customers. Can you save them money? Can you save them time? Can you make their lives easier? If in addition to your products you can answer any of these questions, then it’s probably worthwhile content to create.

My Response:

I wouldn’t say every message must have only one call to action, but in my experience it’s better to keep a prospect/customer focused around a simple action you’d like them to take.

Whether that be filling out a form, downloading a whitepaper, or ordering a product, you can find out what works for you. I’ve done a good amount of A/B and multivariate testing and the more options you give someone, the lower conversion rate you’ll have.

It’s different for every company but that’s why testing is important. You might have multiple messages, but in the end you might find one alone works. It’s also possible that multiple messages resonate with your audience and give you the greatest return.

It’s a great question and something that you can figure out through structuring a measurable digital or direct marketing campaign.

My Response:

Webinars are great because they can accomplish multiple goals at once.

1) They provide value and content for the audience. They are great for thought leadership and education of a registrant. If the webinar is successful, it reflects positively on you.

2) They can also be a gold mine for a digital marketer in regards to a person’s state-of-mind. It’s basically them raising their hand and saying “I’m interest in [this topic] so much that I’m willing to give up an hour of my time.” As we all know, an hour is very valuable.

3) Most, if not all, webinars require registration. That means you know the person’s name, title, company, and more if you ask it. This is huge for targeting and nurturing a customer/prospect.

In my experience, a webinar can drive a large number of registrations at a very effective cost per registrant. If promoted correctly and of valuable content, a webinar can work for you and your company.

My Response:

If you want to drive traffic to a new website quickly then you’re probably going to have to pay for it. One of the most efficient ways is through Pay-Per-Click advertising in a search engine. Google has the most volume so I’d probably start there. Go to Google AdWords and set up an account. Even someone who’s never done it before can probably get a campaign live and running in about 15 minutes. You’ll want to identify your keywords, focusing on both high volume and long tail keyword phrases. Answer, what will someone search to find my type of site? One of the great bonuses of PPC advertising is you can get very targeted. You can target by geography, mobile vs. web, time of date, and of course search query. You can also exclude keywords you don’t want to rank for and there are different types of keyword matches. Then write you ad copy attempting to be as relevant to the keywords you chose as possible. Your destination URL should also contain those keywords when possible. In my experience, PPC advertising seems to be more effective that pay by impression banner advertising. If you make your ad copy specific enough and very focused, you’ll only pay for your targeted and interested (because they clicked on your link) visitors.

The “most effective” strategy for getting traffic to your website is probably not the quickest. I’d put a lot of effort into Search Engine Optimization. Try to build your site in a way that is easily crawlable by search engine spiders (clean navigation, minimum directories, etc.). Create a lot of valuable content and pages (interlink between them), and have a good sense of your audience. Who will be on the site and what are they interested in? You’ll also want your site shareable. Do you have social media accounts? Link from your site to your social accounts and link from your social accounts back to your site. Encourage people to share your URLs and pages. This will start to snowball and if your content is interesting, relevant, and valuable you will ultimately drive traffic to your website.

My Response (Selected as “Best Answer”):

B2B marketing campaigns can be very difficult to close the reporting loop and prove ROI. It’s even more difficult when that B2B service has a long and complex sales process. I’ve found that the trick to closing the loop is to take your digital/direct marketing campaign go as far as you can and optimize off of that conversion point. If you’re doing Paid Search, maybe it’s as far as a visit to your website or a registration page. If you’re doing display advertising, can you get them into a CRM database? Optimize to that. On print material, you can use a QR code or a vanity URL to get them sign up for something of value. What print material got more sign ups? Or make the call-to-action to contact a sales person. What caused the most sales?

After that you know how many actions you’ve created but are still a step away from proving that you made money for the company. The next part is specific to your company, and you need to work backwards. How many calls does a salesman receive before they make a sale? How many registrations do you need before you get a customer? How many times do you have to show a person your ad before they turn into a prospect? If you can determine an average sale at your company and answer any of these answers then you can close the loop.

Take the amount you’re spending on advertising and divide by your conversions to get a cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Then multiply your CPA by the ratio to close a sale. Say it costs you $50 in Paid Search to call a sales representative (CPA), it takes 20 calls to convert to a sale, and an average sale brings in $5,000 in revenue. You just spent $1,000 in advertising and generated $5,000 in revenue. You have a 5/1 ratio on dollars spend to dollars earned.

This is a very simplified model and it may not be specific to your company’s operations, but hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to get that much closer to developing an ROI.