Thursday, July 30, 2015

How B2B Marketers Can Leverage Facebook,Twitter

Business-to-business marketers remain leery of advertising on consumer-oriented social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, assuming their value is limited to targeting small businesses and sole proprietors. So our thanks to a recent Forbes.com post by Mike Templeman, who offers tips on how to turn Facebook and Twitter into more effective B2B lead generation tools. First, he advises, optimize your Twitter and Facebook business pages with branding, messaging and organic posts in an active posting schedule. Next set up remarketing tags on your website using Facebook and Twitter ad platform tools, which will allow your social ads to appear in a website visitor's Facebook newsfeed and Twitter stream. Then create social media ad campaigns that engage and entice traffic to your website--via promotion of interesting content such as blog posts, downloadable white papers and guides, or a webinar. You can extend the reach of these ads by uploading your own customer and prospect e-mail lists into the social media platforms, which will automatically match against existing members. Templeman advises that you can expect a 30% to 60% match rate for business e-mail addresses on Facebook and Twitter. Plus, your custom audience will now be able to view social ads on mobile devices, where 80% of social users view content. You can also use digital tools to build personas of best customers to better target your ad campaigns. But remember, the key to social marketing success, B2B or B2C, remains targeted, quality content. For more, read  http://www.forbes.com/sites/miketempleman/2015/07/23/how-facebook-and-twitter-fit-into-b2b-marketing/

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Tips on How Mailers Can Optimize QR Code Use

Direct mail QR codes, mobile-device-scannable code storing an online url, have been both touted and declared "dead" by various marketing pundits in the last few years. For mailers pondering QR code inclusion, a recent Target Marketing magazine post by Summer Gould, president of Eye/Comm Inc., provides a useful discussion of the whys and hows of QR code use. Before marketers include a QR code in a mail piece, they need to decide what they hope to achieve with it, Gould points out. QR codes can drive online engagement, facilitate a phone call, provide a coupon, provide access to additional information, or allow order placement. If a QR code isn't doing any of those things, there is no benefit to the recipient (or the mailer), so it's not a useful response device. But once the direct mailer has a clear goal for the QR, the next step is to design the code for maximum results. Gould provides six key design guidelines: include instructions for mail recipients on how and why to scan; keep a 1/16-inch buffer of white space around the code; keep the code between a half inch and 1.5 inches in size for easy placement and scanning; use a url shortener to keep scanning time short; and make sure the user is taken to mobile-friendly online pages. Finally, of course, test the code with different devices and lighting conditions to make sure it works before mailing! For more QR code optimization tips, read http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/qr-code-qr-code/