Key Factors of Marketing 2.0
Define the Target Customer
In the first chapter of this book, reference was made to the importance of defining the profile of the target customer when designing the company's website. This profile must be kept in mind to focus the marketing 2.0 campaign for this type of client.
Some questions that we must ask to get to define the target customer are:
• What is your age and sex?
• What are your hobbies and interests?
• What do you expect to get from the product or service that the company provides?
• What problem do you want to solve by acquiring that product or service?
• What keywords do you write to Google when you are looking for a solution to your problem?
• Which are the most important blogs or websites that you usually read and which are the "opinion leaders"?
• What is your emotional need in relation to your problem?
• What are the future trends related to the target customer?
Commercial differentiation
Today there are thousands of products and services, so that consumers have more and more options to choose from. Therefore, the company must differentiate itself from the competition in order to attract attention in the market.
Some ideas to differentiate the company from its competitors are:
• What part of marketing can be done differently from the competition?
• What part of communication can be done differently from the competition?
• What type of visual image will you use in social networks to differentiate yourself from the competition?
• What part of the videos that the company will create can be done differently from the competition?
• What part of the articles that the company writes can be done differently from the competition?
Networking and denationalization
Interestingly, one of the most important factors for success on the Internet is the activity that takes place outside the network, more specifically the fact of meeting executives from other companies, entrepreneurs and clients in different events and conferences, where networking is possible .
In USA there is a wide range of different events where entrepreneurs can devirtualize and acquire new information related to marketing 2.0.
A key element in the implementation of marketing 2.0 is to personally know entrepreneurs who are already successful with some of the social media tools , such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Different entrepreneur events in USA
In USA, a large number of interesting events are organized where participants can meet other people who use the Internet in different ways and establish strategic alliances.
Some of the most well-known events are:
Initiator: several Spanish cities
First Thursday: Barcelona and Madrid
Monday Reading Club: several Spanish cities
Iweekend: several Spanish cities
Eats & twitts: Several Spanish cities
Cava and Twitts: Barcelona
Create collaborations with other companies
Collaboration between different companies is very common in the world of Web 2.0 and a very fast way to get results. Strategic alliances can provide multiple benefits to an SME. Using strategic alliances, a company can enter a new market in which it is not known, creating an alliance with the company that has the most confidence and credibility from the point of view of the clients.
It is about finding the company with a good image in the market where you want to enter and through a collaboration agreement, have visibility and presence and be able to access the customers of that company. A very common way to carry out this type of alliances is the creation of an affiliation agreement, where part of the profits is given to the company that recommends us. In this way, you can enter new markets quickly.
Another way to encourage collaboration with other entrepreneurs and SMEs is simply to get to know people who have the same interests and exchange ideas and knowledge. In the United States it is very common to form masterminding groups , that is, to form a group with other entrepreneurs and meet periodically using virtual conferences or in person to talk about specific topics and exchange ideas. The masterminding group works well when all individuals contribute ideas and knowledge and in turn receive new ideas. One way to find people with whom to form these groups can be going to meetings or events of entrepreneurs.
The effective management of time is currently one of the great challenges faced by SMEs, since to create videos, write articles and be active on social networks you have to spend a lot of time. The factors that must be taken into account to promote an efficient use of time as a resource are the following:
• Optimization of time in relation to communications: that is, managing the time used to perform basic tasks (such as the use of electronic mail), to use it efficiently. This will achieve a control of time that will help maintain a professional and personal balance, while promoting the achievement of objectives. Tim Ferriss, in his book Four-Hour Work Week , in which he talks about effective time management, recommends spending just enough time to check email, and advises to perform this task no more than twice a day. With this, an efficient use of time is achieved, and more hours can be devoted to other tasks, such as marketing activities 2.0 and presence in social networks.
• Define the time spent and set it on a weekly calendar: companies that use social media effectively have a weekly calendar in which they plan the time they spend on each activity, determine which tools they will use and pursue the achievement of objectives.
For more information on time management for companies and entrepreneurs, we recommend reading Alberto Pena's book entitledManage your life better: keys and habits to be more productive .
Assign tasks and define those responsible for marketing 2.0
You can not start a marketing 2.0 campaign without clearly defining which person or persons will be responsible for the relevant tasks in terms of promotion for positioning in Google, Adwords and actions in social networks. To specify all this process we must ask ourselves some questions, such as:
• Who will be responsible for the accounts and for creating profiles on social media or Google Adwords sites?
• Who records, edits and uploads the videos?
• Who writes articles for the company's blog?
• Who is responsible for the Facebook page, LinkedIn and Twitter account of the company?
• Who measures the results and calculates the impact?
Some companies decide to designate a worker of the own company as the person in charge of the marketing process 2.0, for which they usually choose someone who shows interest and skills with the new technologies. In spite of that, the company must be actively involved in this process.
Outsourcing of marketing services 2.0
For an SME, the application of marketing 2.0 involves time and work, and usually small companies do not have all the necessary resources to implement it effectively. Therefore, we must consider the option of outsourcing part of the actions in social networks.
The outsourcing of services is becoming increasingly common, since there is a large number of professionals who offer their services as freelancers, regardless of their country or geographical location.
Practical tip: Focus attention on priorities
Javier Rivero-DÃaz is a specialist in professional development and offers the following advice for SMEs:
"One of the most frequent mistakes that companies make is to focus attention on low-value activities. According to the Pareto principle, 20% of our shares produce 80% of the results, so you should plan very well the actions undertaken in the company, because it is a very useful way to increase productivity in the company. »
Practical tip: Manage campaigns with Google Docs
The free Google Docs tool (http://docs.google.com) is very useful for group work so it can be very effective to manage and track marketing campaigns 2.0.
Google Docs allows you to create and manage spreadsheets and online presentations and access them from any computer.Additionally, different workers of the company can collaborate in the same document in real time. To start using Google Docs, you only need to have a Google Gmail account
First, you have to identify the tasks that could be outsourced. That is, before starting with the search for professionals, it is necessary to define specifically what type of area or specialty is sought. It is convenient to analyze our business in detail and delegate all those activities that, due to their specialization or technical content, the company can not carry out, or those that for lack of time it is better to delegate to other people.
Some common tasks that can be delegated to self-employed professionals
• Creation of articles: it is about hiring people with good qualities to write content (copys) that can be responsible for writing the articles. The work of the company would be limited to reviewing these articles before publishing them to make sure they are correct.
• Video editing and marketing: video marketing is a task that will take some time; for that reason you can use people specialized in video editing.
• Webmasters: we can also use professionals specialized in Internet technical issues to install a content manager, a blog or perform any type of technical activity.
• Graphic design: currently, the visual image presented on the Internet is extremely important, and graphic design should be one of the most common outsourcing services.
How to search and work with freelance providers
• Document the outsourced project: indicate the instructions, expressing step by step the process that the person who will carry out the work has to follow. Once we have perfectly documented the work that must be done, we must conserve that material, since those same instructions can be used in the future when it is necessary to commission that same work to other professionals:
• Create a description of the qualities that the ideal person should have to carry out the work : it is necessary to describe in detail what skills are sought.
• Search for the ideal professional: for the search of the ideal professional you can use platforms such as the one offered by the www.odesk.com site, for contracting jobs related to the Internet that can be carried out by professionals located anywhere in the world.
Another way to do it is to start the search in our network of contacts, so that someone who is already known puts us in contact with the right person.
• Test and select the provider: once the candidate is selected, it is recommended to carry out a test work to make sure that he is the professional we are looking for. For example: if you are looking for a video editor, you can request as proof the realization of a small part of editing a video to check the quality of the work.
• Keep an open communication and document the process: it can be developed by email, instant messaging or by phone (Skype), to keep an open communication throughout the process.
• Control and manage projects: the last step is to establish a process of monitoring and control over the jobs that are outsourced and set the timeframe very well, indicating start and end dates
Learning to calculate the return on investment of money, resources and time employees is the fundamental key of any business, as this will guide us about its operation, indicating which concepts should be improved to obtain optimal performance.
Below are some of the main factors that should be analyzed by the company to calculate the return on investment of each action undertaken in marketing 2.0. Thus, there will be enough information to adopt the best decisions for an effective use of marketing 2.0:
• Number of potential customers generated through marketing actions : this refers to the number of people who have accessed the information of the products or services and are interested in obtaining more information about it, but have not yet acquired no product or service offered.
• Conversion percentage : this concept refers to the percentage of potential customers who have become buyers.
• Average price of the purchase unit: that is, the average price that people pay when they buy the products or services.
• Earnings from the same customer: that is, how many times do we record sales from the same person.
Once these main factors have been identified and analyzed in depth, we can begin to examine another series of elements that help translate this volume of data into relevant information that allows us to understand what is working and what is not in the development of marketing 2.0.
Among the elements that serve to indicate the performance of marketing actions, we must highlight the information on the origin of visits converted into sales.
One way to investigate the origin of visits on the web is to use online forms or surveys, in which the customer is asked directly where he has obtained the information necessary to purchase the product or service and why he has chosen it. This information will be very useful for companies when it comes to finding out which websites have more acceptance by users.
Because there are several social media pages that are used in the marketing 2.0 promotion, there is not a single tool that can show the results in all of them, but there are several that must be used for this purpose. The following chapters discuss how companies can take advantage of YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and company blogs; A section at the end of each chapter explains how to measure the results in each of those sites.
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