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By Sissi Cao

A summer job Michael Dell had when he was 16 gave him a “an early lesson in direct marketing.”

Dell (DELL), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of personal computers, is known for inventing and pioneering the “Dell Direct Model,” which fueled its astronomical growth from a dorm-room startup to a global tech powerhouse in the 1990s and early 2000s. Dell didn’t begin pursuing its famous direct sales model until the mid 90’s, but the idea was deeply rooted in the mind of the company’s founder and CEO Michael Dell, who first experimented with it when he was just 16.

Like many well-known tech founders of his generation, Dell started his company in college (and later dropped out), but his entrepreneurial journey started even earlier. “When I turned 16, the employment opportunities expanded quite a bit because I had a car—my parents handed me down an old station wagon—and I could drive to different places,” Dell, now 59, spoke about his formative years at SXSW yesterday (March 14) in Austin, Texas during an onstage interview with the tech analyst Patrick Moorhead.

That summer, Dell got a job in Houston making cold calls to sell subscriptions to the Houston Post, a now defunct local newspaper. “What I learned from talking to these people was that, oftentimes when people bought the newspaper, they were either moving into a new house or they were getting married,” Dell said. “That sparked the thought of how to find more people who were moving into new houses or getting married.” 

After some research, Dell learned that there were public records of people who had applied for mortgages and who had applied for marriage licenses, a requirement in Texas, and these records contain the applicants’ addresses.

“I figured, let’s send them all a direct-mail offer to subscribe to the Houston Post. That worked really well,” Dell said. “It was an early lesson in direct marketing, for sure.” Dell then hired a few friends from high school and expanded the newspaper sales effort from Harris county, where Houston is, to 16 more counties surrounding the area.

Dell started what would later become the Dell Computer Corporation in 1983 when he was a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin. The 19-year-old had been upgrading IBM PCs in his spare time and realized he could just buy components and assemble PCs and then sell them at a lower price than established brands. He soon started advertising in trade magazines and business boomed. Within a year, Dell had to drop out of college to attend to his business full time.

At the time, all PC manufacturers were selling computers to customers, primarily corporate clients, through distributors, who would customize the computers by installing additional components or software. Dell initially operated by this model, too. Though sales were growing, the company wasn’t making money. So in 1994, Dell ditched distributors to sell computers directly over the phone.

The direct model not only eliminated middleman fees, but it also reduced Dell’s inventory cost and allowed it to build direct relationships with its customers. Between 1994 and 1999, Dell saw its sales grow from $3.5 billion to $25 billion and profit surging more than 60 percent annually.

Dell changed his company’s name from Dell Computer Corporation to Dell Inc. in 2003. In 2016, a new parent entity called Dell Technologies was created after Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corporation. Dell has served as the parent company’s chairman and CEO ever since. The entrepreneur’s net worth is estimated at about $95 billion, making him among the 20 wealthiest people on Earth.

Feature Image Credit: Kike Rincon/Europa Press via Getty Images

By Sissi Cao

Sourced from OBSERVER

 

By Shubham Sharma

The power of Networking: How to build lasting business relationships.

This article will explore the power of networking and how it can be leveraged to build lasting business relationships. We will discuss the benefits of networking, from making new contacts to establishing valuable partnerships. Additionally, we will examine the various strategies that can be employed to create a successful relationship. Finally, we will discuss the importance of maintaining and nurturing these relationships for long-term success. By the end of this article, you will have gained insight into the power of networking and the tools to establish and maintain meaningful business relationships. Together, we can unlock the potential of networking to build lasting connections and achieve professional success.

The Benefits of Networking

1. Increased Brand Awareness — Networking can help spread the word about your business and increase your brand awareness. Connecting with other professionals in your industry, attending trade shows and conferences, or engaging in social media can help you reach new audiences and create a buzz around your business.

2. Establishing Authority — Networking is an effective way to establish authority in your industry. Connecting with influencers and thought leaders can help you gain recognition and credibility. Participating in industry events, speaking engagements, and online forums can help you showcase your expertise and form meaningful relationships.

3. Finding New Clients — Networking can help you gain access to potential clients and partners who may be interested in your product or service. Developing strategic relationships with people in your industry can help you find new leads and stay up to date on market trends.

4. Learning From Others — Networking is an excellent way to learn from others in your industry and stay informed on the latest developments. Participating in industry events and dialogues can help you get feedback on your work, discover new ideas, and identify potential opportunities.

5. Maintaining Professional Relationships — Networking is a great way to maintain and strengthen professional relationships. Reciprocity and mutual respect are vital in building long-term relationships that can benefit you personally and professionally.

Tips for creating meaningful connections and utilizing networking platforms:

1. Attend Business Events: Networking opportunities can be found in various places; attending business events, conferences, and seminars will help you expand your network.

2. Connect with Relevant Professionals: Once you have identified your target audience, reach out to people in your industry who share similar interests or goals.

3. Challenge Yourself: Networking can be intimidating, so challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and connect with new people.

4. Follow-Up: After a conversation with someone, it’s important to follow up and ensure that a relationship is established.

5. Utilize Social Media: Social media is an excellent platform for making connections. Reach out to people in your industry on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.

6. Make Quality Connections: Don’t just focus on the number of your connections; make sure that the connections are meaningful and build relationships.

Conclusion

In conclusion, networking is a powerful tool for building lasting business relationships. It is important to be open and honest in your conversations, take time to listen to others, and establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Networking can help you gain valuable contacts, discover new opportunities, and build a strong business foundation for the future. Taking the time to build relationships through meaningful conversations can help you create success for years to come.

Feature Image Credit: cottonbro studio on Pexels

By Shubham Sharma

Sourced from Medium

By Shubham Sharma

The power of Networking: How to build lasting business relationships.

This article will explore the power of networking and how it can be leveraged to build lasting business relationships. We will discuss the benefits of networking, from making new contacts to establishing valuable partnerships. Additionally, we will examine the various strategies that can be employed to create a successful relationship. Finally, we will discuss the importance of maintaining and nurturing these relationships for long-term success. By the end of this article, you will have gained insight into the power of networking and the tools to establish and maintain meaningful business relationships. Together, we can unlock the potential of networking to build lasting connections and achieve professional success.

The Benefits of Networking

1. Increased Brand Awareness — Networking can help spread the word about your business and increase your brand awareness. Connecting with other professionals in your industry, attending trade shows and conferences, or engaging in social media can help you reach new audiences and create a buzz around your business.

2. Establishing Authority — Networking is an effective way to establish authority in your industry. Connecting with influencers and thought leaders can help you gain recognition and credibility. Participating in industry events, speaking engagements, and online forums can help you showcase your expertise and form meaningful relationships.

3. Finding New Clients — Networking can help you gain access to potential clients and partners who may be interested in your product or service. Developing strategic relationships with people in your industry can help you find new leads and stay up to date on market trends.

4. Learning From Others — Networking is an excellent way to learn from others in your industry and stay informed on the latest developments. Participating in industry events and dialogues can help you get feedback on your work, discover new ideas, and identify potential opportunities.

5. Maintaining Professional Relationships — Networking is a great way to maintain and strengthen professional relationships. Reciprocity and mutual respect are vital in building long-term relationships that can benefit you personally and professionally.

Tips for creating meaningful connections and utilizing networking platforms:

1. Attend Business Events: Networking opportunities can be found in various places; attending business events, conferences, and seminars will help you expand your network.

2. Connect with Relevant Professionals: Once you have identified your target audience, reach out to people in your industry who share similar interests or goals.

3. Challenge Yourself: Networking can be intimidating, so challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and connect with new people.

4. Follow-Up: After a conversation with someone, it’s important to follow up and ensure that a relationship is established.

5. Utilize Social Media: Social media is an excellent platform for making connections. Reach out to people in your industry on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.

6. Make Quality Connections: Don’t just focus on the number of your connections; make sure that the connections are meaningful and build relationships.

Conclusion

In conclusion, networking is a powerful tool for building lasting business relationships. It is important to be open and honest in your conversations, take time to listen to others, and establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Networking can help you gain valuable contacts, discover new opportunities, and build a strong business foundation for the future. Taking the time to build relationships through meaningful conversations can help you create success for years to come.

Feature Image Credit: cottonbro studio on Pexels

By Shubham Sharma

Sourced from Medium

Sourced from Evening Standard

Everything you need in one place to get your business off the ground

Whatever you’re thinking of selling, from candles and cakes to life coaching sessions or spare car parts, if you want your business to succeed, you need to be online.

Your business is all about you, to a degree, you’ve been there from the start and poured your heart and soul into its creation but it’s also about your customers. Where they are in the world, what they like to do, what makes them tick and (most importantly) how they want to shop.

Growing a successful business is a delicate balancing act. You’ve already got the product – creating that is often the easiest part – but if you want to make an income now you need the tools to connect it with your customers.

But before you start dreaming of where you’ll spend your first million, or how many countries you’ll visit when you retire early, you need to go back to basics and create an online marketplace for your company.

Squarespace connects the dots and provides an all-in-one platform to stand out from the crowd.

It’s a one-stop-shop making it easy, convenient, and quick to create and manage an online shop in four easy steps.

Visit Squarespace to create a free website today.

Create a website

(Squarespace)

You’ve probably already got a name, so now just choose from a new domain or link an existing one to your lovely new website. Then, choose from award-winning templates to give your business the presence it needs online. You’re free to pick professionally designed website templates that you can then customise to your heart’s content. Once it’s up and running you’ll then have the tools to analyse how people use your site to find out exactly what makes your customers tick. How long they spend on your website pages, what they’re looking for, how often they’re coming back and even what time of day they’re coming to you. These are the details that really give you an insight into your customers so you can learn the best way to connect with them.

Start selling anything

There really are no limits when it comes to selling on Squarespace. From poodles to purses and everything in between. The same goes for the size of your company too, whether you’re selling brownie boxes in your spare time, or you have an industrial-sized oven and you post out baked goods all over the world. Customers can select the products they want, pay, and checkout safely and securely all in one place. If you need a calendar, you can give your customers the ability to book appointments. You can even add an extra income source by charging for access or downloads if that’s what works for you.

Create a website with Squarespace today

Build your brand

(Squarespace)

Now you’ve got the foundations in place it’s time to shout about your company from the (virtual) rooftops. Reach people through a variety of networks with professionally designed social content and keep fans of your company up to date with email lists that match your brand. You’ll also have access to built-in SEO tools to maximise your visibility and give yourself the best chance possible of creating a thriving business.

Experiment with extra channels and services

Every business is different and that’s why you’ll have the flexibility to add the tools that will really help you. Choose from third-party services to manage your business and fully customised tools to suit your business’s needs. There’s also a marketplace when you’re in need of hiring some extra help, from designers to developers. Businesses aren’t all 9-5 so if you get stuck, need advice, or just someone else to chat to, there’s also a friendly community and help and support available at any time of the day or night.

Visit Squarespace.com to start your free trial. Visit the website for full Ts&Cs

Sourced from Evening Standard

Sourced from IssueWire

Jeremy McGilvrey Gives Tips for How Small Business Owners Can Grow Their Customer Base with Email Marketin

If you’re among those who think that email marketing is past its prime, then think again. Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is still one of the most successful digital marketing strategies used by companies such as Amazon and HubSpot.

Statistics have revealed email marketing is a lot more successful than SEO, paid search (PPC), social media marketing, and affiliate marketing.

Many successful small business owners use email marketing to grow their customer base. You can either choose to outsource your email marketing or select a staff member to execute it for you.

With the right techniques and the correct use of the data, you can achieve success with email marketing. Let’s dive into some tried and tested email marketing strategies.

I’ll also discuss how these methods can drive leads to your small business.

3 Email Marketing Strategies:

Some businesses are unable to succeed with email marketing because of their lack of segmentation. Segmentation allows businesses to put different customers and prospects into different categories and send email messages that are tailored to their subscribers. When you segment your email list you exponentially increase your odds at succeeding with email marketing.

Segmentation can provide benefits of email marketing as it allows you to create more targeted campaigns for audiences in different phases of their consumer cycle.

According to HubSpot, segmentation works wonders as email marketing KPIs work better when segmented.

Let’s look at an example to understand this better. An email with the same subject line and the same content sent to two different groups (different consumer cycle phases) will result in different outcomes. That is why it is important to segment your mailing list and then create email marketing campaigns that target each list individually to get better results.

  • Personalized Messages

For a consumer named Tom, an email starting with Hey customer and an email with Hey Tom is going to resonate differently. A carefully curated email will give the consumer the right impression. Make them feel that you care about them and that they aren’t receiving randomly generated emails.

Amazon uses this strategy, and the success of the company is in itself is evidence of the success of personalized messaging.

According to Experian marketing services, personalized emails have a 6X higher transaction rate, but 70% of brands fail to use them. This is where many businesses don’t properly gauge the importance of personalized email and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.

Additional research I discovered stated personalized emails can result in a higher ROI, up to $20 for every $1 invested. As I’ve mentioned above, the most basic yet easy route to email personalization is to address the reader by their given name. You can request the first name in your opt-ins to gain this information and start doing something that 70% of the brands aren’t – using personalized emails.

  • Automated Email Campaigns

With a high number of subscribers to your mailing list, automation becomes a necessity. Knowing when to automate your email campaigns is going to give you an edge over others. The most basic form of automated emails are confirmation emails or welcome or thank you emails.

These are also more commonly known as trigger emails. Interestingly, research shows that trigger emails perform much better than traditional emails. These emails have higher open-rates when compared with conventional emails. Forrester reports that trigger emails-based email marketing strategies can generate 4 times more revenue and 18 times more profit.

Benefits of Email Marketing

I’ve shared some strategies that can be useful for creating effective email marketing campaigns. Now, let’s further solidify those strategies by stating the benefits of email marketing.

Email is still one of the most commonly used platforms of communication. Did you know that during the year 2020 alone, 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day?

Add in the fact that there will be 4.3 billion email users in 2023. This staggering growth can be communicated as a growing benefit of email marketing as well.

Low Costs

One of the benefits of email marketing is its low costs. You don’t have to pay a premium to have your message appear on a billboard or in a magazine.

All you have to do is invest in software that will automate your emails and track and analyze the data gathered. However, the cost would be significantly less when compared with traditional marketing.

Effective and Easy Communication

Email marketing is your self-curated platform to communicate with your audience and engage with them.

This communication can also result in your targeted audience getting closer to your brand and becoming more loyal. It’s an easy way for your audience to keep in touch with you and stay updated with your latest updates and offers.

Targeted Messaging To the Right Audience

A good email marketing solution is a timely one. And with email marketing, not only can you reach your targeted audience with a personalized message but also target them at the right time.

Segmentation, as mentioned above, can prove to be beneficial in targeting the right audience. Add in the right timing, and your email marketing strategy is fool-proof.

Revenue Generation

The bottom-line of all marketing campaigns is to generate revenue for your company. Email marketing does that, and with lower costs. Add an excellent copywriter to your team and see your call to action resulting in significant revenue for your brand.

According to marketing week – for Virgin Airlines – email marketing was the second largest revenue driver for them after PPC.

Self-Promotion

Promotion is not an easy feat to achieve. That is why brands have to come with unique and new ways to keep promoting themselves. But self-promotion can easily be a part of an email marketing strategy.

It is undoubtedly a tried and tested method of reminding consumers of your presence. And with email marketing, you have a low-cost platform to do so.

Source : Jeremy Mcgilvrey Digital Marketing Services

Sourced from IssueWire

By Marc Bain.

Groceries and cleaning supplies aren’t the only things Amazon is selling during the pandemic.

The e-commerce giant is peddling plenty of advertising space to companies hoping to give their items prime placement in front of Amazon’s legions of shoppers. The demand has kept Amazon’s ad sales strong amid Covid-19, even as its big tech competitors in digital advertising, Google and Facebook, suffer slowdowns.

Those two companies have dominated the online ad market, accounting for roughly 61% of digital ad spending by one estimate. But Amazon has been making inroads in recent years, and Covid-19 has pushed companies to devote more dollars to retail media, according to market research firm Forrester.

“Retail media—which, in its simplest form, refers to digital ad placements on eCommerce websites bought by consumer goods brands to influence the customer at the point of purchase—is booming during the pandemic,” the firm said in an Aug. 12 report. “In fact, Amazon’s advertising revenue didn’t miss a beat in Q2, growing at 41% year over year, while Facebook recorded its slowest ad revenue growth since going public and Google’s ad revenue declined for the first time ever.”

Amazon doesn’t report advertising revenue separately, but it does report “other” sales that it explains “primarily includes sales of advertising services, as well as sales related to our other service offerings.” In the quarter ending June 30, those sales jumped to $4.2 billion, while Facebook’s and Google’s ad businesses struggled over the same period.

Amazon has defied a broader slowdown in digital advertising as companies in hard-hit industries such as travel cut their expenses and marketing budgets.

In its report, Forrester pointed to retail media benefiting from factors that include e-commerce adoption, the large budgets consumer packaged goods companies maintain for retail marketing, and the fact that more retailers are offering media platforms. CVS, for example, is said to be readying its own ad network, and Walgreens is testing digital displays on the doors of coolers in its stores.

Whether the shift of ad dollars toward retail continues may depend on how e-commerce fares as the pandemic plays out, and on advertisers’ willingness to move money out of Google and Facebook.

For now, at least, it’s another way that Amazon looks poised to emerge even stronger than before.

By Marc Bain.

Sourced from Quartz

By

This post is part of TED’s “Build Back Better” series, featuring thought leaders and change agents evaluating our systems and practices to create a more sustainable, efficient and just world. To see more ideas from the series, go here.

What will the world — and specifically, the world of work — look like over the next decade?

While most of us are content to guess, there are other people who are actively figuring it out and their findings and educated assumptions could help us all prepare for the future. Among them is Ben Pring, IT futurist and cofounder of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, which tracks trends across technology, business and society.

Practically every industry in the world has been forced to adapt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown and economic fallout. It’s an understandably disorienting time — but it’s also one in which new careers and jobs are emerging.

“If you can position yourself and acquire the right skills, there’s a lot of opportunity, certainly if you’re a tech-centric person,” says Pring. “There’s a huge explosion of education and training material available to every one of us. Why not take advantage of that? There’s so much you can learn.”

So, which new jobs will be created in the coming years? Which jobs have already been invented in the last three months?

Here are 10 potential career paths that could become highly relevant, according to Pring.

WFH (Work From Home) Coordinator

During lockdown, millions of people had to quickly learn how to set up their home office, manage their schedules, and interact with their children and family members without getting distracted. These challenges could be made easier with a guide or assistant. “For big businesses who are suddenly scrambling to manage a huge explosion of people from home, this is becoming a dedicated role,” says Pring. This coordinator needs good managerial skills in order to support a company’s collaborative culture and morale, while also helping employees maintain their productivity.

Virtual Sound Mixer

If a baseball player hits a home run but there’s no one in the stands to see it, does it still make a sound? Thanks to the work of virtual sound mixers, the answer will probably be yes. Pring noted that European soccer leagues have been the first sports teams to come back, but their stadiums are empty due to social-distancing concerns. But while watching a recent match, he noticed that the empty stadium was far from quiet. To give it a sense of atmosphere, the producers added sounds that were sophisticated and relevant to what was happening. “I could imagine the sound engineers doing that real-time mixing,” says Pring. “Five weeks ago, no one ever thought of that job.”

Voice UX Designer

Where do you think Alexa gets all her answers? Someone has to write dialogue for voice-activated devices, and demand for this already-existing job could be accelerated by our current reality, says Pring. As people want to touch fewer items around their house and in public, they’ll be turning more and more to voice-activated gadgets. This job is good for playwrights, creative writers and journalists who can script human-like conversations.

Telehealth Facilitator

“While there’s a lot of technology in health care, the consumer experience of it has been really unchanged for a long time,” says Pring. Until now. Since doctors’ offices were largely closed — except for emergencies — in recent months, many people turned to telehealth consultations which was a radical change for most practitioners and their patients. “For millions of people, telehealth has completely changed the healthcare experience, and I can imagine the genie doesn’t go back into the bottle,” he adds.

Chief Purpose Planner

“Today there’s a need for businesses to articulate their purpose much more clearly,” says Pring. This person would set the high-level strategy and direction of a company. A creative role that’s similar to marketing and public relations, this job could help banks, airlines or other large, international corporations craft top-line goals and ideals.

Clean Hygiene Consultant

Who among us walks outside without carrying hand sanitizer now? With the public’s greater focus on health and cleanliness and the expectation that pandemics will keep occurring, there’s a growing need for people who can turn making the world a cleaner place into an actual career. “Wellness consultants” have been around for a while, and this would be its newest iteration — one that fuses well-being with public health. For this group of people, their mandate would be to make the world a cleaner, healthier and more livable place.

Virtual Events Planner

Video conferencing platforms like Zoom and BlueJeans have exploded in popularity since the pandemic began. However, as anyone who’s been to a glitchy Zoom party can tell you, there’s a lot of room for improvement. “People are thinking about how to create a virtual event that’s more sophisticated” with better socializing and networking, says Pring.

Subscription Management Specialist

Many people have reevaluated their budgets and tightened their belts during the last few months. What if there was someone who could do it for you? Pring imagines this idea as an online service or app that people would use to look at all of their subscriptions and see where they could cut their expenses. It would also simplify the subscription process and facilitate relationships between brands and customers. The skills for this job would align with those of social media managers, business analysts, or product managers, according to Cognizant.

Socially Distanced Office Designer

“Companies and hotels are having to think about redesigning their offices very seriously and in a very strategic way,” says Pring. If many workers continue to work from home, that will lead many big businesses to have excess capacity in their real estate portfolio, he says. As offices condense their holdings, they’ll need interior designers who can recalibrate and redesign interiors for a safer and more efficient and more flexible future.

Uni-for-life Coordinator

This job doesn’t really exist yet, and it depends on a major shift in college education. Traditionally, young people go to college for four years, where they study a particular field and then try to monetize their knowledge for the rest of their working lives. But Pring points out this model has been eroded by many factors, including the gig economy, rapidly changing technology and the high costs of higher ed. He wonders: What if instead of going to university for a single concentrated period, you’d go through alternate periods of learning and working after graduating from high school? Coordinators could offer “lifetime learning for all alumni,” according to Cognizant’s prediction, and they’d help manage a person’s learning over the course of their life. “This might be a completely new job that would help reconceptualize higher education to align it with change and volatility,” says Pring.

Go here to learn more about Cognizant’s Future of Work and Ben Pring’s work.

Feature Image Credit: Jenice Kim

By

Kara Cutruzzula is a journalist and playwright and writes Brass Ring Daily, a daily motivational newsletter about work, life and creativity.

Sourced from IDEAS.TED.COM

By

What’s the best way to measure Return on Investment when planning social media campaigns? How can you justify the time and the budget spent on them?

Ever since social networks showed up in our lives, there has been an ongoing discussion among marketing teams surrounding whether social media is worth the time and effort invested into it.

Many of us recognize its benefits as part of a digital marketing strategy, but it isn’t always easy to measure its effectiveness. This has become even more challenging as budgets have grown larger.

As social networks have grown (both in size and in number), so have the expectations from their usage. It’s no longer enough for a company to justify social media marketing by counting the number of likes or comments they receive.

There is a need for a proper analysis of each platform, along with the right use of metrics that can establish which are the most effective social networks for each company.

The Challenge of Finding a ROI for Social Media

Return on Investment (ROI) has rapidly become a buzzword among marketers: a phrase that is often used, but rarely defined.

Not every company will see the same ROI from using social media. In fact, not even every campaign will yield the same ROI for a specific company. This makes it harder to answer the question:

“What is the ROI of social media campaigns?”

Measuring Return on Investment doesn’t have to be about putting an absolute figure on the value of a social media campaign; it’s more about gauging whether or not your campaign has achieved the goal that it set out to achieve, to an extent that justifies the resources you invested into it.

Thus, the best way to respond to this question is by splitting the answer into three types of campaigns. This makes it easier for every company to find the goals that fit their campaign and thus, the ROI that they should expect from them.

Image: Quicksprout

Brand Awareness

A campaign that aims for brand awareness is attempting to increase a company’s exposure to a particular audience.

The KPIs for a brand awareness campaign are usually an increase in:

  • reach
  • followers
  • traffic

The idea is to use the campaign to reach a wider audience that might be interested in the brand’s particular product or service. As social media users become more demanding year on year, it’s important to create such campaigns to try to grab their attention, until they are ready to start the process of becoming customers.

The ROI in this case has to do with the time and the budget spent on brand awareness, and the change in KPIs that resulted. Campaigns that aim for brand awareness may require a large budget invested in reaching a wider audience, so it is crucial to be able to show results that justify this.

  • Did the campaign actually increase the number of followers and interest towards your brand?
  • Did traffic towards your site increase during the time of the campaign?

Increased Engagement

A campaign that aims for increased engagement for a brand is trying to spark discussions about that brand in the most genuine way.

The aim of increasing engagement in a brand’s social network has to do with a wider attempt to boost social media interaction among the target audience. Engagement serves as a good indicator of a user’s sentiment and interest in a brand, and it can be monitored through:

  • number of likes
  • number of comments
  • number of shares
  • type of reactions (on Facebook)
  • brand mentions

The ROI for the campaigns of increased engagement has to do with the proof that the time spent towards engaging with the audience had an actual value.

  • How has the engagement increased during the time of the campaign?
  • Was there a genuine interest from social users towards the brand?
  • What are the chances that these people will continue interacting with your brand in the future?

Lead Generation

A lead generation campaign is one that uses a tangible hook to direct social users towards a specific landing page. Whether it’s a free gift, a report, or an ebook, brands use lead generation campaigns to increase:

  • traffic to the site
  • number of email subscribers
  • number of downloads for a specific piece of content
  • number of form completions

Lead generation campaigns can be used to grab the audience’s attention and make it easier to have a further discussion with them. The other advantage of running lead generation campaigns is of course gaining the “lead” – the customer’s contact information – that gives you a means of marketing to them more over the long term.

It’s important to aim for relevance and value when generating leads, as these two elements combined increase the chances for a social user to turn into a customer further down the funnel.

The ROI for this type of campaign is to justify the budget spent on the hook and the actual campaign, towards the set goals. It’s good to start the campaign with specific numbers in mind, as the ideal metrics that a campaign can reach. This estimate helps a brand have a clear goal without losing the focus on metrics that are not the primary goal.

For example, if a brand offers a free ebook in a lead generation campaign with the goal of increasing the number of email subscribers, the key metric is the actual number of people who were interested enough in the content to volunteer their email addresses.

If there is an increase of social followers along with it, that can serve as an additional success, but it’s still not the primary goal that the brand was seeking to achieve.

When examining the ROI for such campaigns, it’s a good idea to ask:

  • Is my brand closer to reaching its established goals?
  • Was the hook effective for the particular campaign?
  • Did I set the right goals to measure the effectiveness of the campaign?

Social Media ROI Is Not A Myth

During the early years of social media marketing, establishing ROI was more challenging, and this led to the misconception that social networks are not as effective as other forms of marketing.

However, times have changed and we’re lucky enough to discover every day all the creative ways that social media marketing can be part of a wider digital strategy.

As social media usage increases, it’s more exciting than ever to come up with the best campaigns that will help you get closer to your goals.

All you need is the measurement that will justify your efforts.

By

Sourced from Jason Houck Media

Love him or hate him, he seems to have a personality perfectly suited to the White House.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Researchers have analysed the tweets of Donald J. Trump. They compared his personality traits with other influential business leaders.

The Twitter messages of Donald J. Trump, the entrepreneurial businessman turned US president, show that he is creative, competitive and a rule-breaker. But no one is perfect (especially not Trump!). He also has neurotic tendencies. (But who doesn’t?)

Since joining the social media platform Twitter in 2009 to May 2017, Trump has issued more than 35,000 messages. This amounts to about twelve tweets a day. With 30 million followers, he is the second-most followed politician on Twitter after his predecessor, Barack Obama, who on average tweeted about four times a day.

The researchers, Martin Obschonka from QUT in Australia, and Christian Fisch from Trier University in Germany analysed how aspects of Trump’s personality are revealed in the language he used in 3200 tweets issued by October 2016 (before he became president). They used established software for assessment of language and text for psychological purposes.

Trump’s language use and online personality were also compared with that of 105 other influential and famous business managers (including Google’s Eric Schmidt, HP’s Meg Whitman, and Apple’s Tim Cook) and entrepreneurs (including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Dell’s Michael Dell, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos) who are not on the political stage.

Their results indicate that Trump is indeed a distinct type of person who shows strong features of a so-called Schumpeterian personality that is said to be typical of successful entrepreneurs. This personality was described by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s as being very creative, change-orientated, competitive and rule-breaking. The analysis further indicates that Trump has neurotic tendencies, and experiences underlying low well-being.

“These traits are rather untypical for entrepreneurs,” explains Obschonka. But he adds that neuroticism isn’t necessarily all bad, for it can also stimulate competitiveness.

“Maybe this high neuroticism is a major motivator to succeed in Trump’s entrepreneurial projects in his business life, but also in his role as political leader,” speculates Fisch.

“If social distinction is a core principle of the entrepreneurial personality, then we clearly see this principle reflected in his unusual personality profile,” says Fisch. “Many experts agree that really successful entrepreneurs not only dare to be different – they are different.”

The researchers speculate that having entrepreneurial personality traits could be advantageous in leading and governing an entrepreneurial society as a top-down process. But they stress that leading a company is very different from leading a country and it is unclear whether political leaders with an extremely entrepreneurial personality can indeed act strictly entrepreneurially in their highly responsible role.

Time will tell if an entrepreneurial person can indeed make a country’s overall success more likely. And if so, everyone, everywhere in the world, needs to think about who we will vote for in the future.

 

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

In an age where digital media is constantly changing, public relations practitioners and business professionals still see the benefits of traditional media coverage. This is according to study conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia.

The study finds those who use news sources to convey certain information about their products prefer independent media coverage.

Lynne Sallot is a professor of public relations of Journalism and Mass Communication. She says, “We have this intuitive idea that getting our messages covered by the news media makes those messages more credible than when we put them out there ourselves. Everyone believes this, but it’s been difficult to prove it.”

Independent media coverage is a more traditional form of news content like a TV broadcast, newspaper article or radio show, whereas more controlled sources of media are paid media such as advertisements or an organisation’s own website.

Pauline Howes is an associate professor of communications, and conducted the research. She says, “When asked directly, public relations practitioners and businesspeople in this study said they see independent media coverage as more credible than controlled, or paid, media. This seems to support the value of news coverage as part of a communications plan.

“Both types of communication are used by businesspeople, but an independent source may be viewed by audiences as having more credibility because it is not controlled or influenced by the subject of a story.”

When determining what goes into a business’s story, the editors and producers behind these independent news sources have no vested interest in the company or its products.

Differing from past experimental studies, this research looked at real world perceptions by interviewing public relation practitioners as well as business professionals.

Says Sallot, “There is some truth that to some audiences, messages covered by the media are more important. Until now, most of the research has suggested that that’s not true.”

Because of the conducted interviews, Howes and Sallot were able to get more personal feedback from those in the field. This study supported the belief that corporate/ PR messages that are carried by news media do have enhanced news credibility.