Evaluating Your Marketing Plan

In today’s economic climate, every edge is important. That’s why you need to make sure your marketing plan is up to speed. It’s a good idea to go over your marketing plan periodically and audit it to ensure your plans and methods match with the overall goals of your organization.

 
One of the most powerful tools of any marketing campaign is the measurement. Metrics are the most reliable and unbiased way to test the effectiveness of your campaign and any changes you may make. You need to decide exactly what needs measuring and why. If you aren’t sure, you can measure a number of metrics until you determine which are the truly important ones. Then, keep careful track of those metrics and set reasonable goals to improve them.

It is also crucial to ensure your marketing team is being maximized for its effectiveness. Ensure people are being used for their strengths and are motivated to produce their best efforts for your company. People are what make up a company, so you need to fill your company with the best and then make the most of them. That means keeping tabs on the strengths and productivity of your personnel is just as important as tracking the success of your website directly.

Overall, the most important thing to keep in mind with regards to your marketing plan is whether each aspect of your plan is in keeping with your primary company goals. Do your metrics reflect a general trend in the direction of your goals? Are your people all on the same page, whether they be marketers, technicians, or the CEO? Do you have a plan in place to continuously move the company forward? Each of these areas should be evaluated regularly to ensure your company is progressing along the right track.

Building an Outstanding Brand

When you are starting a business or building up an existing brand, you need to make it your goal not to be simply “good,” but to be absolutely amazing. You need to think big, plan big, and design your entire branding strategy around blowing your competition out of the water. As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” So how, exactly do you go about this lofty goal? Here a few things to keep in mind as you build your brand.

From Oskay on Flickr

First and foremost, develop a solid core company value and belief system. Far more important than logo and design (and foundational to them) is the core driving force behind your company. Once these are established, the rest flows more naturally. Not only that, but the people working on other aspects of the company will be encouraged to protect the brand on a deeper level than simply following color and style guides.

Once you have a core value system, you can be bold with your vision. Put aside your fears and dream big. Don’t just dream big, however -- act big. When you embark on a marketing campaign, you need to put forth a message of confidence through every channel you choose. This doesn’t mean you should pour every dollar you can access into your every campaign until your business has been bled dry; it does mean that whatever avenue you choose to pursue should be done with gusto and confidence.

Finally, don’t be afraid to be strict with how your brand image is being handled when it is in your control to do so. Don’t let people off the hook with “good enough” when it’s your business that’s being represented. Make sure everyone working for you puts forth only their very best efforts.

These suggestions only just scratch the surface of the intricacies of brand management, but they should give you a beginning from which to start building a truly outstanding brand. Let FindYourSearch partner with you in getting that brand more exposure and helping you find success!

Engage on Facebook for Greater Returns

It can be tempting as a business to create a Facebook page and never visit again, but this ignores the true power of Facebook to market your business and connect with your customers. A recent article on Web.com discusses the importance of engagement with fans in order to build followers and influence. Fans of a business on Facebook are probably some of the most loyal it has, and engaging them will cement this brand loyalty and a positive perception of the business.

So how does one go about engaging fans? Remaining active is the most important thing you can do. Updating regularly is critical, even if these updates are pulled from your Twitter or blog feeds. Be careful the conversation is not one-sided, however. It’s very important to monitor the activity on your page and respond promptly to comments, questions, and complaints. No one likes talking to a brick wall, and that’s exactly what your company will appear to be if you do not respond to viewers. Of course it never hurts to offer incentives for engagement, either, such as contests, free gifts, or discounts for your Facebook followers.

Follow these tips and you’ll no doubt see a marked increase in loyal customers generated from the company Facebook account.

Guest Blogging Tips

There is no denying guest blogging as a great way to get your ideas before a wider audience, especially if your own blog is not yet widely known. It’s also a way to put your name and your brand in front of your target community and build lasting relationships. Finally, it gives you a chance to link back to your site, which is great for SEO. Recently, a few folks around the industry have shared their thoughts about guest blogging, including The Blog Herald, Richworks and DKS Systems.

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When considering guest posting, first give some thought to your own site. Does it have a lot of entries already, or are you still building up your content base? If the latter, you should probably use every article you write as content on your own site. Assuming your site is solidly packed with content and you do decide to guest post, is it ready for the influx of visitors? You can be assured you will see an increase in traffic to your site as people seek more information about the topic or the person behind the article. Be sure your contact information is up to date, your content has been recently updated, and your design is user-friendly.

As with any form of promotion, you will see results based on the amount of effort you expend. Research your niche for blogs that best suit your target audience base, then spend some time on those blogs getting to know their style and the community which follows each. Leave meaningful, well articulated comments regularly and the editors may recognize you when you make your guest post request. In addition, the community might also recognize you when they see your name or brand in the byline.

Guest posting is a powerful promotion tool when used effectively. Consider spreading your content before a wider audience, but don’t forget the simple tips above.

A Quick Look at Optimizing for YouTube

Do you have videos on YouTube or another video hosting channel? Videos are a great way to engage viewers and build fans, as well as provide links back to your company. However, with millions of videos already posted, how can you make sure yours gets found? SEOptimize has published a great guide for optimizing your YouTube videos. Their checklist of ten steps can help ensure your video gets the best possible exposure.

Writing descriptive titles and relevant tags is perhaps the most basic step in video SEO. As with blog posts and site titles, careful crafting and keyword inclusion is a must. Internal linking, important in any campaign, can be achieved on YouTube through video responses and playlists. Link out to your main Web site through the video description, and don't forget to build external links as you would in any campaign. Comments and ratings are another important factor, so consider adding an annotation reminding users to leave their feedback. Finally, perhaps the most frequently forgotten step when posting a video is to remember YouTube isn't the only online video hosting service; don't forget to post to various places like Google and MySpace.

Be sure and check out the original article for more in-depth information about each of these steps, and remember to treat your YouTube channel with as much care as any other site in your SEO campaign.

Marketing and SEO with Google Squared

Nearly nine months ago, Google Labs released Google Squared. Rather than displaying a list of correlating websites in the usual fashion, Google Squared combs the Web and attempts to display relevant information in tabular form, organizing that information according to item, image, description, and a number of item-specific headings. For example, a search for “roller coasters” returns the following square, with capacity, height, and speed as the additional fields:

Google Squared has particular value for product comparison searches - just search “iPod” or “digital camera” to see what I mean. Prices, capacity, and video playback values are all displayed side by side from across the Web. Due to this exceptional potential for product comparison, product websites should pay special attention to further developments in Google Squared.

Optimizing for Google Squared should be much like optimizing for regular Google queries. Attention to semantic layout would appear to be of paramount importance so Squared can easily discern the relevant information and categories to include for a user query. Content, as always, is king and should be treated with particular care. It is unclear as yet if or how inclusion in Google Base, Google’s structured online database, will impact ranking on Google Squared, though it certainly can’t hurt. Rich Snippets, a type of microformatting technology introduced by Google last May, could also play a role.

Google Squared is by no means perfect, reflecting its status as a Labs project. Included columns and rows are not always relevant, nor are they always populated. The displayed data itself is only as accurate as the source from which it is pulled. Sometimes, the results themselves are downright strange. Searching for “Persian cat” seemed to include intelligent data about every feline breed except Persians -- although “Persian kittens” was included some distance down the page, with descriptive data not about the breed, but about breeders and distributors of Persian kittens.

One important feature of Google Squared is its ability to accept and adapt instantly to user feedback. Rows or columns can be added and deleted dynamically, and a completed square can be saved for future viewing. The “Persian cat” query resulted in only one additional column, “eye color,” besides the three default, so I imagined that I had been searching for a comparative display of cat breeds and added “fur type” and “temperament.” Squared found relevant possible values for the majority of breeds it listed, though it required me to select the best choice for each before displaying it in my square. Despite requiring this further user interaction, Squared provided me with a way to compare cat breed data much more quickly than if I had compiled it myself.

Google is not terribly clear on exactly how Google Squared functions. Still, it is safe to say that Google still reads pages based on their semantics and SEO-friendly content. When adding my columns to the cat search, the values I was presented to choose from were essentially highly specified keyword search results, as though I had typed in something along the lines of “Burmese cat temperament” into a normal Google search. In fact, selecting “search for more values” opens a normal search results page with “Burmese Temperament” as the query.

Google is legendary for its long beta times, but the smart SEO will keep an eye on Google Squared long before it leaves the Labs. While its specialized, comparative nature makes it unlikely to replace traditional search even once perfected, Google Squared provides another window into the increasingly complex, ever growing Web.

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