Video Interview: Top Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

We had the pleasure of interviewing Bill Carmody, founder of Trepoint. The year's half over and your business may be struggling to understand how to generate more effective marketing campaigns. How to gain consumers who are more engaged and who advocate for your brand can be a daunting task. Don’t get left behind with archaic marketing methods, when you could be saving money, increasing ROI, and avoiding common blunders. Don’t waste any more precious time and budgeting on ads that are being abandoned, ignored, or blocked outright!

Changes in Digital Marketing Over the Past Two Decades

In the mid-90s, the first banner ads had a whopping 44% click-through rate. This was crushing direct mail and other marketing methods. Now, the average click-through rate today is a measly .04%. Consumer sophistication has advanced so much in the past 22 years, wasted marketing dollars are becoming much more common.

• Say “Bye-Bye” to Banner Ads - 90% of Americans ignore digital advertisements.
• Major Bot Fraud - $7.2 billion lost to bot fraud.
• Millennials Love Blocking - 40% of ad revenue lost to websites targeted to millennials, who are ad blocking.

Consumers Don’t Want to Be Talked At

Past marketing methods were very one-directional, ramming messages down consumers throats. Banner ads have become outdated, even with advancing technology. Keep in mind no matter how efficient the marketing is, it can still be ineffective. Also, metrics do matter, and you need to have a more sophisticated plan beyond the advertisement.

Compliance Perspective

What is the main goal? What are you doing with your advertising dollars?

Either you are trying to build your brand or you are trying to move the prospective customer through the customer journey.

Moving Through the Ultimate Customer Journey

It begins with building trust. From discovery, to engagement, to transaction, to advocacy, businesses are constantly striving to funnel customers along this path. If a consumer can’t discover your company, how are they expected to engage, transact, and advocate? Avoid wasting money at the top of the funnel, because how can you expect it to translate to sales and advocacy without effective marketing to begin with? The goal is ultimately advocacy, because this will drive further potential customers into the cycle.

Reliable 3rd Party Reports for Compliance Experts

Two Types of Reports :

In order to have a successful campaign, you need to know what is happening righ now with the marketing you are spending your dollars on and also how it compares to your peers.

You need both industry and campaign reports in order to fully optimize your marketing campaigns. These macro and micro reports paired together provide the big picture.

1. Industry

Industry level reports help with context. You can look at Harris Interactive, Gartner, Forrester, research services to tell you industry-level trends and specifics. For example the average click-through rate of a banner campaign. This will allow you to have a baseline against competitors. Use these reports to examine how your performance stacks up.

1. Campaign Level

This level goes one step further than the general industry data. Platforms such as Omniture, Adobe Tests and Targets, Nielsen and IRI track for rich transactional data. Specific, deeper insights allow business to map everything back.

The stats we are in:

62% of people trust brands less

32% trust strangers more than brands

73% wouldn’t care if brands disappeared

88% of marketers want to measure the ROI of Social Media but don’t know how

Businesses are used to obsessing with impressions and likes, because of Facebook and Twitter. Instead, you need to be working backward from the sales process.

The Appeal of Influencer Marketing

Customers still want to hear the story of the brand or the marketer, but NOT from them directly. Today you can’t generate enough interesting content fast enough, which is where influencer marketing comes in. This is the authentic content that customers really want.

Steps to Successful Influencer Marketing

1. Find the Right Influencers - These are NOT mega-celebrities like Hollywood Stars. They are specific individuals that have built the exact audience you want to market to. This ranges from several tens of thousands to millions of engaged consumers. 
2. Keep it Real - Give a message to the influencers and so they can say it in their own language so it is real. Influencers need to disclose it is paid so it is more authentic, not a “dupe”. This leads to the halo-effect for your brand. The message delivered in this way is not an interruption, but an engagement.
3. Auditors Open Invitation - Invite questions, and get the dialogue going. Ask, “How do you view influencer marketing? What is the main objective? Walk me through the journey of critical reports to be leveraging.” These answers are critical for further understanding and better auditing processes.

Growth of Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the last place where digital marketing is effectively engaging customers and driving sales. Content breaks through when people are looking for answers. People do their homework, before even trying to close the deal with a real person. 80% of today’s business decisions is researched online, before even contacting the brand. As long as your brand is credible, and has the answers, consumers will utilize your resources.

Address the Customer Directly 

Content marketing should not be a chest-beating exercise. If the content is strategically written, to “you” without the use of “I” or “we” it will draw the customer in. It is important to make the content exclusively about solving the audience’s problem. This method moves customers through the buyer's journey most effectively. You don’t just want to churn out customers, you need that last step of advocacy.

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