Popular Advice

Marketing is designed to change the behavior of your audience. Taking them from inaction to action. Successful (and I would argue all) marketing should take prospects from not buying to buying. This can be taken in one giant leap (not often) or a sequence of events.

The ultimate measuring stick is sales - ie dollars in your bank account.

Is a campaign really successful if it doesn't reach your end goal?

You could for example have prospects go from not clicking on your facebook 'likes' to clicking. These likes are great, however meaningless as a marketing tactic if your next step is not in place to ultimately take them to a place where they are taking action that ends in a sale.

The most important thing is setting your goals ahead of your marketing efforts (or at least setting them before your next marketing effort). You need to have things to track against, however, you also need to select the right things to be tracking.

What would items would really indicate whether your business was growing, flat or struggling? Those are probably the best key metrics that you should be tracking. Every business (and every industry) have different success indicators.

Hi Maria, I love hiring virtually. In fact, I currently have on staff an accounting assistant, sales assistant, 2 editorial assistants and 2 project scheduling assistants.

The key for me has always been to have adequately defined roles, and adequately defined processes.

I think a lot of people expect to hire a VA and have all their problems solved magically, but hiring someone to do a clearly defined role with properly written documentation can dramatically decrease the hassle and risks associated with outsourcing work.

"The general public" cannot realistically, commercially of culturally be considered a target market (or as customers).

All media (social or otherwise), claiming to be for the general public, is by its very definition far from focused. You can only ever focus on customers, a microcosm of a specific section of the general public.

I believe the biggest question is why are you looking to hire a company to do the social media marketing for you?

Is it because you are not sure what is involved?

You don't have time to do it?

You expect a quick ROI if you pay someone else?

There are a number of tools available to help people with social media marketing. Tools that allow you to post on multiple social sites at the same time, track comments and likes etc.

If you expect a quick ROI chances are that may or may not happen even if you hire a company to do it for you. If your business is not yet active on social media you will have an instant result by starting to be active.

What are the first steps:

Before you hire a company to do it for you I would recommend starting yourself, that way you can measure the success more accurately.

If you are not sure what is involved in social media marketing call the companies that offer the service. Ask them what they will do, what type of results you can expect. They will tell, it is part of their sales pitch. Once you have called a number of companies you will know the basics of what they do.

With this information you should look at the different social marketing tools that are available. Try some of the things the companies told you they would do then look at the success you have achieved.

Now you have something to base their success on. And most importantly you now know what they should be doing. I have never hired a company to do something that I don't know how to do. The main reason is I want to know if they are doing their job!

If I don't understand the job I have hired someone to do, how could I possibly know if they are doing the right thing. It doesn't mean you have to be a professional at everything, it just means you understand what they are doing and you will quickly be able to work out if someone is just taking you for a ride or not.

So the best questions you should ask them? None! Let them do the talking and explain the industry to you. Whoever gives you the best explanation will most likely know what they are talking about.

You will know if the company is a good fit if you understand what they do and they take the time to explain what they do in clear and simple terms. If you are happy with how they treat you and don't feel pressured into signing up, they will probably look after you and do the right thing.

Feel free to ask some more direct questions, if my answer was too general...

Thank you so much,

you have answered more than i asked, I have a clear understanding of what my profit and loss will be

I don’t think newsletters are dead in email marketing, but maybe it has gotten competitive in certain industries. It’s why your newsletter need to have a point of difference instead of doing a run of the mill job. You must think of newsletters as a long-term game. It’s about understanding the issues your subscribers are facing and helping them out or educating and inspiring them regularly. You’re regularly engaging with them and nurturing them, building credibility and trust in you until they are ready to do business with you or buy your products. Before you start a newsletter, you need to sit down and hash out a plan that is tailored to your audience. I suggest looking at other newsletters to see what they offer and if there are any gaps you can find. And always monitor your newsletter’s performance, checking stats such as open rate, click through rate and where your readers are clicking in the email to gauge their interest. MailChimp regularly publishes benchmark numbers for email marketing, and you can see where you are faring to the industry average. For example, if your open rate is below the average of say, 18%, then you know that you need to try something new, such as A/B testing your subject lines. As long as you monitor your email marketing, then you can decide whether newsletters are worth running for your business or using other email marketing strategies to nurture your audience and get sales or leads. You can try working with an email marketer who has more knowledge and skills to help you out, as I feel that email is an important marketing channel for small businesses. 

If you are producing useful information that people want to read then no - newsletters definitely aren't dead. If you are producing newsletters just for the sake of it then there isn't really much point. You could be putting your time into something which is going to give you better ROI or is higher on your to do list. Write your newsletters from the point of your readers and before you put anything out think would I be interested in this if I were in their position? Is it adding any value or would it make them want to stop what they are doing in their busy lives to read it? Newsletters help keep your brand top of mind for your customers and when they have that problem you can solve they are likely to think of your organisation first. 

Skeeve,

Your dream is no longer a dream :) In a hosted desktop environment everything is kept separate, no company data on the BOYD and therefore no personal data on the company servers. In the Windows environment all you need to do is ALT-TAB between the to environments and this applies to the Windows mobile devices as well. In the Mac world you would move between spaces and again this applies to the Ipad and even the Google tablets. I have a Mac and when I am at work or for that matter at home working I have my personal environment open in Desktop 1 (spaces) and my work environment open in Desktop 2 (if you have a mac you will have a better understanding of this).  When I am in the hosted desktop environment I have access to all my company data and printers etc no matter where I am traveling. For example I was in NZ traveling from the South Island to the North Island on the ferry. I was able to log into my hosted desktop on my Google tablet via 3G and was able proof read a document in Word make the changes (attach a diagram from Visio) and email it off. Close down the work environment and return to sending off a picture of the scenery to my family from my personal email using the native email client. 

Skeeve - the new Blackberry OS offers this. It has distinct "corporate" and "personal" partitions (for lack of a better word) that allows the enterprise side to be controlled by the enterprise, and the personal side to be offlimits to enterprise. This means the enterprise could wipe all the corporate data when an employee leaves, without damaging their personal information.

to my understanding, there obvioulsy has to be some communication between the two sides but it's kept fairly separate..