Here’s Another Hour of Great Advice For Smallish Companies Wanting to Harvest the Benefits of Social Media
This interview with Doug Mitchell, founder and Chief Brand Amplifier of createWOWmedia (now createWOWmarketing), is full of excellent information on the nuts and bolts of how to run a profitable online marketing effort, even if you’re a fairly small business.
PureDriven’s interview with createWowmedia founder Doug Mitchell, arose as we were researching specifically how flower shops use social media effectively. Our client ran a successful flower shop in Duluth, MN, and at the time was on the cutting edge of using the Internet to drive sales. In late 2010 being cutting edge meant having a good e-commerce site where people could order flowers, along with a Facebook page.
But he wanted to not just remain the leader, but pick up market share. How exactly do you do that, especially if you already have a fully functioning e-commerce website? And how do you gauge success?
That’s what this interview is all about. It’s really the story of how Mitchell’s company assisted a flower shop company in the Des Moines area capitalize on social media, with fantastic results.
While the rest of the industry was losing ground, his customer was gaining it, thanks largely to blogging and other social media initiatives. Here’s a free download of the case study, which we discuss in this interview.
What you’ll learn from listening:
- The web and social media particularly represent a new kind of advertising system. A variety of small digital shops are springing up catering to online and social advertising methods. While in some cases traditional advertising firms are doing fantastic work with online social media initiatives, small organizations like createWOWmarketing and PureDriven can prove far nimbler and more adept at handling these new sorts of marketing initiatives.
- Central Desktop can serve as a great collaboration tool.
- Social media can be outsourced under certain conditions, for far cheaper than an advertising agency would charge.
- Outsourcing content creation doesn’t mean hiring someone in a far off land.
- Creating what’s called a micro-site can be a great way to boost revenue, especially for businesses that need to use their primary e-commerce site as storefronts for shoppers.
- What you’re really trying to do online is not just cycle people to a “Buy Now” button, but building relationships with them, by educating them on aspects relevant to your business.
- When developing an online strategy, being realistic about what can realistically be done by current staff is critical.
- Setting very precise goals – like five more leads a day – is integral to the process.
- You might be catering very well to one demographic online, while inadvertently ignoring another, just based on the tools you’re using today.
- Trust with your marketer develops in stages, over time.
- It’s really difficult for small businesses to rank on page 1 of Google nationally, or through a pay-per click campaign, but a concerted effort to rank locally is normally fairly simple.
- People want to know your company’s story, so be sure you’re sharing that online.
- A blog is an excellent way to build a long term relationship with an audience.
- You can create landing pages that really cater to certain company niches, like weddings, in the case of a flower shop.
- Use free tools like Google Voice, in order to create specific numbers people can call, so it’s clear which customers came from online.
- Track as much as possible using analytics software and other methods, so there’s no doubt how certain results were achieved.
- The web produces considerable phone traffic in the floral industry. For every Internet order, the rule of thumb is three people used the site to study the flowers, before calling in, instead of ordering online.
- Twitter can be used as a short term mechanism to get the word out on great deals. At times it works more effectively than Facebook for this flower company.
- Using banner advertising often can be a waste of money for companies already very well known in their markets.
Ready to listen? Go ahead and click the play button, or download it by right-clicking and saving it to your computer. (For Mac users, click “Control” and your mouse button).
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As always, if you have any questions, be sure to click on the link below to e-mail us, or don’t hesitate to hit one of us up on Twitter @PureDriven, or you can reach us via phone at 218.834.3170.
Photo by Deanmeyers.net
