Video, audio, microblogging, social media, online social networking, blogging and user generated content are a few of the business applications examined in this guidebook.

This case study is the definitive reference for the use of social media as it applies to effective business promotion. (more…)

“Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, and whether you agree with his policies or not, I’d say you should agree that he did a masterful job using the Web to develop relationships and cement his candidacy. In the 2004 election, everyone remarked how well Howard Dean leveraged the Web. Today Dean looks like a rank amateur compared to the level that President-elect Obama brought it to. Lots of lessons to be learned. And I agree, those lessons translate well for small businesses because the underlying principles are timeless and involve human nature. And after all, business is ultimately about relationships.” Anita Campbell, Editor www.SmallBizTrends.com

Q: What’s the Most Successful “Small Business” Internet Marketing Campaign of All Time?
 

A: The Election of Barack Obama

Here’s what your small business can learn from it…
 

Small Business…?
 
 
Barack Obama…? 

After being elected the most powerful man in the free world he may not be "Small Business" anymore. But the free social media tools his campaign used so adeptly to   energize his supporter – YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and many more – are 100% FREE tools that any small business – like yours – can use to win.  President Obama used them to outwit and outhustle his competition. And now you can use them to connect with your customers on a deeper, interactive, relational level at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

 
Intrigued by this quote, internet marketing veterans David Bullock and Brent Leary decided to analyze Obama’s use of social media from a small business perspective. What lessons could entrepreneurs like you could learn from the meteoric ascent of our 44th president?

Zero Political Rhetoric, 100% Business Insight

  
Through the use of podcasts, blog posts, screen shots, powerpoint presentations, and links to over 100 documents, David and Brent set all politics aside and pull apart Obama’s social media strategy, extracting the lessons, tools and insights your business needs to survive and thrive in “Web 2.0”.
 

• How to keep your customers engaged with you all the way to the “sale”…instead of losing them after the first call

• How to turn your best customers into enthusiastic sales people…who work for free!

• How to use social media tools to become the “authority” in your marketplace

• How to access a mountain of website traffic…without knowing a single thing about SEO or Pay Per Click

• Web 2.0 Etiquette.  Old advertising rules no longer apply…are you making these fatal mistakes in your marketing?

• How to get real-time customer satisfaction data without ever conducting a survey or expensive focus group.

• How companies like JetBlue use Twitter and other tools to “spy” on their prospects…and get the jump on their competition

• How social media can slash, or even eliminate, your marketing budget

• How to use 2-way communication to bond with your customers…even if you never meet them face to face.

• How to use social media to create a “Feeding Frenzy” for your next product launch

• How to set up your own “television station” …for free

• How to get your customers to create content for your website.

• How over-controlling your marketing message can kill you.

• How to use social media to form your own research and development team…who work for free

• Your ad in a video game? How to think creatively and reach your customers where they “hang out”.

• Transparency and authenticity…does your company passes the test? 

 
Walking the Walk 

Perhaps the best thing about “Barack 2.0” is that it is, in itself, a classic example of how to use social media to get your message in front of the right people, at the right time, in the right format…under budget.

Brent and David took an idea that was buzzing in their marketplace, (Obama’s use of social media), used the exact same social media tools that Obama was using to invite their community into a conversation. That conversation – free market research if you will – helped them develop a product they knew the market would love…this book. 

That’s what marketing through social media is all about. It helped make Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States, and if you read this book – and put the lessons to use – you can achieve your business goals as well.
 
 

Disclaimer and Special Thanks. This Case Study conducted by Marketing Sherpa

SUMMARY: Your prospects are using search and social media to evaluate potential vendors.  Are you doing enough in those channels to demonstrate your expertise?

See how the marketing team at an accounting and consulting firm shook up their staid marketing tactics and adopted a new, online thought-leadership strategy.

Besides revamping their website for SEO and lead generation, the enlisted their firm’s partners as subject matter experts to create new blogs and participate in social networking groups.

 
CHALLENGE

Elizabeth Hailer, VP Client Development and Marketing, Caturano and Company, says that for most of her 25-year career, clients did not choose an accounting or consulting firm by going on a website. But prospects’ habits are changing. More and more, they are using search, social media, blogs, and corporate websites and find and assess professional services firms.

The problem was, Hailer and her team were still relying on traditional marketing tactics, such as print advertising and direct mail. Those tactics were very expensive, hard to measure, and becoming less effective.
 

"Traditional marketing has changed, period," says Hailer. "Anyone who doesn’t understand that or believe it shouldn’t be in marketing."

 
The team needed to shake up their marketing strategy. They realized that online outreach and a revamped website were needed to generate new leads — and gain additional business from existing clients.
 
 
CAMPAIGN

Hailer and her team focused on their website as a new hub for outbound and inbound marketing based on thought-leadership content.

Then, they looked to SEO and social media as channels to reach prospects and customers, engage them in conversations, and bring them back to the firm’s site. 
  

Here are five steps they took to raise their profile and start generating web leads:

Step #1. Redesign website to capture leads

The team needed a complete website overhaul before making a push into online marketing channels. Their existing website read like a brochure, Hailer says, and offered little customized content to appeal to specific prospects. Worse, it had no online lead capture mechanism.

- The team implemented a new Web2.0 content management system.  Then, they developed content that demonstrated their expertise in specific accounting and consulting services and provided value to customers and prospects.

New content included:

     o An article assessing the impact of a new state tax incentive program for 
        life sciences companies

     o An article outlining tips on lowering estate tax for its wealth management 
        practice

- They also added more ways to contact the firm’s partners, adding the appropriate partner’s name, phone number and a request for information link on pages dedicated to specific services or industry focus areas.

- They added lead generation capabilities by creating online tools that required prospects to register and provide information about their needs.

For example, they added a Rapid Assessment tool for their management and IT consulting divisions, which offered prospects a high-level analysis of their current operations and suggested areas for potential improvement.

 
Step #2. Use SEO to attract more visitors

Prior to the redesign, the company’s website rarely landed on the first page of search engine results for their top keywords. So as the team developed new content and revamped their site architecture, they optimized those pages for roughly 25 key terms, including:

     o Boston tax firms
     o Boston CPA firms
     o Management consulting Boston
     o IT outsourcing Boston

They made sure those keywords were represented in the website’s content, page titles, metatags, and other elements.

They also increased the number of links pointing back to the firm’s website. The firm’s professional alliances provided dozens of linking opportunities:

- The team created a new "Sponsorships and Affiliations" page that linked to the websites of major partners and organizations the firm sponsored, including:

     o The Association for Corporate Growth, Boston
     o The Family Business Association
     o The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce
     o The Smaller Business Association of New England
     o The Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants
     o The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

- They asked each sponsored organization or partner to also put a link to the firm’s site on their own Web pages.

 
Step #3. Create thought-leadership blogs

The team bolstered the firm’s online presence by adding several new blogs on topics related to their key service areas. Their goal was to supplement the broad-based information about firm’s capabilities with in-depth, highly targeted content that presented firm personnel as thought-leaders in specific areas. 
 
 

"Auditing, accounting, and tax are so general and broad it’s hard to blog about them" says Hailer, "So we assigned content leaders around discreet service areas."

 
For example:

- Jeff Korzenic, Chief Investment Officer, created the "Inefficient Frontiers" blog to discuss topics related to "less-than-efficient markets" and dealing with risk in the investment world.

- Jack Notarangelo, Director, Information Management, created an application engineering blog to discuss software development techniques related to project management, estimation, resourcing, and communication.

- Mauro Cardarelli, Director, Portals and Collaboration, created a blog focused on using Microsoft technologies for collaboration and Business Intelligence.

Each blogger was free to cover their niche content area in ways they deemed appropriate. Typical posts included:

     o Industry trend and news analysis
     o Links to contributed articles & other press mentions on external sites
     o Opinion pieces on topics of interest to the audience
     o Advice and how-to on specific tasks
     o Links to relevant company white papers and webinars

 
Step #4. Participate in social networks

Next, the team looked for social networks where CFOs congregated. They wanted to join those online conversations and develop new channels to promote articles, webinars, white papers or other relevant content.

The firm’s existing clients were an invaluable resource for finding the right social networks to join. They asked clients where they spent time online, and looked for their clients’ profiles on social networking sites.

- LinkedIn, the business networking site, proved to be one of the most popular sites with the team’s clients and prospects. They looked for relevant discussion groups to join, including:

     o The Chief Financial Officer Network
     o CxO Community

They also created their own groups, such as:

     o New England CFOs

- The team encouraged partners with expertise in specific practice areas to join relevant groups. The goal was to establish individuals as thought-leaders in the industry, while also demonstrating the firm’s expertise with certain industries or service areas.

For example:

     o Jim Cashin, Partner, Consulting Practice, joined groups such as
        Worldwide Management Consultants

     o Bill Krakunas, VP Technology, joined groups such as Boston’s Future Leaders
        (Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce)

- Following best-practices in social media engagement, participants in LinkedIn Groups did not simply post information about the firm’s events and resources. Instead, they participated in online discussions as community members and provided relevant answers and opinions that weren’t self-promotional.

However, they looked for opportunities to share notices about upcoming events or company content that were relevant to ongoing discussions.

 
Step #5. Monitor social media conversations and Web traffic

The team began using monitoring tools to help them broadly track conversations happening in social media channels and on other websites.

- They set up a monitoring service that sent real-time alerts related to specific phrases or conversations of interest, such as:

     o Key services the firm offers
     o Competitors’ names
     o Problems or questions about professional services providers

- Once a team member received an alert, they examined the context to see if there was a way to join the conversation, or steer the original commenter toward a content offer.

For example, if the team received a Twitter conversation about how to choose an IT consulting company, they might send a link to their IT management Rapid Assessment.

The team also used their web analytics tool to assess whether their social media efforts and SEO were driving prospects back to the company website to engage with content.

- They monitored standard metrics, including:
     
     o Unique visitors
     o Page views per visit
     o Referring sites
     o Keyword performance
 

RESULTS

The new strategy has raised the firm’s profile and is capturing the attention of prospects using the Web to seek out professional services firms. Their once-static website that generated no leads is now generating 10-15 leads a month and already resulted in some closed sales — especially for their consulting division. 
 

"We have more than covered our investment," says Hailer. "More important to me, we keep cranking up that investment so everyone wins."
 

 
     o Web visitors have increased 68% since adopting the new strategy.

     o SEO efforts have landed the company on the first page of search results for its
        25 targeted keywords

     o The niche blogging strategy is paying dividends. Jeff Korzenic’s "Inefficient Frontiers" 
         blog along drives roughly 4%- 5% of monthly traffic to the firm’s website.

Now, the team is planning to refine their strategy in 2010. They plan to adopt a more rigorous measurement methodology to analyze which points of entry to the site (LinkedIn, blogs, SEO, etc.) are driving the most visits and leads. They also plan to develop additional landing page strategies to customize the experience that visitors have depending on their referring channel.
 
 

"We want to know very specifically whether a content offer on LinkedIn generates as much response as another channel," says Hailer. "We know the overall strategy is working — leads are coming in at a good enough rate to justify the campaign — but we need more granular detail. We need to know more.”  

 
Disclaimer and Special Thanks. This Case Study conducted by Marketing Sherpa 

A total of 21.4 billion videos were viewed during the month.

The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes, while the average online video viewer watched about 500 minutes of video, or 8.3 hours, according to the research company.

In July, Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42% of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property.

Viacom Digital ranked a distant second with 812 million — at 3.8 percent — followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed — at 3%.

More than 158 million viewers watched an average of 135 videos EACH… during the month of July.
 

Google Sites surpassed its all-time high with 121 million unique viewers during the month — 74.1 videos per viewer — followed by Microsoft Sites with 65 million viewers — 9.8 videos per viewer. Fox Interactive Media did the same with 52 million viewers — 10.8 videos per viewer.

 
The average Hulu viewer watched 12 videos, totaling 1 hour and 13 minutes of videos per viewer.

In July, ScanScout Network ranked as the Number 1 video ad network with a potential reach of 80.1 million viewers, or 50.6% of the total viewing audience.

Tremor Media ranked second with a potential reach of 71.1 million viewers — 44.9 percent penetration — followed by YuMe Video Network with 68.1 million viewers, at 43%.

Tremor Video Network ranked as the largest ad network in terms of actual delivered reach with 20% viewer penetration followed by Brightroll Video Network, at 17.4% and BBE, at 14.4%.

This article contributed by: by Gavin O’Malley, of MediaPost News – Online Media Daily.

Disclaimer and Special Thanks. This Case Study conducted by Marketing Sherpa

SUMMARY: Autoresponders are among the most powerful tools an email marketer has to build relationships with new subscribers and turn them into customers. Here’s a case study to show just how effective those messages can be.  

Read how a real estate team used an email autoresponder series to make money in one of the worst markets in the country. Includes tons of creative samples and strategies to:

• Provide real value in autoresponder messages
• Segment lists
• Deliver targeted, relevant offers

CHALLENGE

Husband and wife real estate team Kurtis and Cindy Squyres had been successfully flipping houses in Southern California until the real estate market collapsed a few years ago. The decline was so sudden and severe they found themselves holding nine properties that needed repairs, but had no money left to invest.

Scrambling for a new business model, Kurtis Squyres hit on the idea of selling fixer-uppers to other investors trolling for deals among the wreckage. They would seek out distressed properties, such as bank-owned foreclosures, get the house under contract at a low price, then re-sell the contract to another investor in exchange for a finder’s fee.

“We needed to get buyers, and the more buyers we could get, the easier it would be to flip those properties,” Squyres says.

To do that, the team needed a go-to list of potential investors who trusted their expertise and wanted to see the latest deals they had uncovered. Simply listing properties online wasn’t enough to build those kinds of relationships, so they turned to email marketing.

CAMPAIGN

The Squyres developed a multi-media online presence that included blogs and online video to attract potential buyers and sign them up for an email alert program. Then, they created an autoresponder series to establish their expertise, build trust, and segment subscribers for appropriate offers.

Here are five key strategies they employed:

Strategy #1. Drive traffic to homepage for email signup

The team first had to build an email list. To do that, they created a multi-media Web presence that would drive traffic to an email signup form.

Major initiatives included:

– A new homepage, www.FarBelowMarket.com

The team built a website to highlight their personal story and list properties under contract that were ready for other investors to rehab and flip.

The homepage featured an email signup form highlighted in a blue box, which asked for a minimum of information:

• Name
• Email address
• Status as a homebuyer or real estate investor

- A new blog, “Wholesaling Deeply Discounted Real Estate”

The blog focused on trends and opportunities in the troubled real estate market — namely, the ability to purchase foreclosed properties.

Typical posts included:

• Data on foreclosure trends
• Educational posts about buying foreclosed real estate
• Inspirational posts for beleaguered real estate investors
• Announcements about property deals and educational seminars  

- Video tours of properties

The team created low-cost videos of their featured properties, allowing potential buyers to see the neighborhood and get a sense of the potential return once the property had been rehabbed.

They hosted these videos on their own website, and on third-party real estate sites such as Zillow.com, where investors would search for deals.

- Craigslist advertisements

The team also posted their properties on Craigslist to attract requests for more information from buyers.

- Public relations

Through a connection with a real estate blogger, the team landed a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times about “bargain hunters” in the troubled southern California real estate market.

That article led to television segments on Inside Edition and Fox News, as well as additional press coverage.

Each time the team got a media mention they included a link to the article or embedded a video on their homepage.

Strategy #2. Use autoresponder series to establish relationships with buyers

The team didn’t want to immediately blast email subscribers with sales offers. “First, you have to build credibility and a relationship, so they feel like they know us.”

Instead, they created a 21-message autoresponder series for new opt-ins. The program sent a new message on staggered schedule with the goal of introducing subscribers to the team and their business model, and to provide educational resources for real estate investors.

 
• New subscribers received a message once a day for the first few days
• After that, new messages were sent every two-to-eight days 

They used text-only emails and wrote long-form copy, designing each message to fit two overriding goals for the program:

– Goal #1. Tell a story

The first autoresponder was a welcome letter that gave subscribers a brief history of the Squyres’ real estate careers and explained their current business model, which they called real estate wholesaling.

The letter also told investors what to expect from the email series in the coming days, including:

• Regular updates on properties for sale
• A future email asking subscribers to specify the areas and types of property they are interested in 

A follow-up email wove the story of the Squyres personal rise and fall into the recent history of the southern California real estate market, as a way to illustrate the opportunity now presented by bank-owned foreclosures.

Another explained the origins of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and described how investors could profit from it.

– Goal #2. Provide value for subscribers

The team also included valuable resources in the autoresponder series, such as a downloadable Excel spreadsheet to help investors calculate their real estate investment returns.
 

“We’re giving people valuable tools in our email to show that we’re not just hype, we’re not just trying to sell,” says Squyres.

 
Another message invited subscribers to join a foreclosure-focused real estate forum on their website, where they could interact with other investors.

Strategy #3. Qualify email subscribers

The team also created messages for the autoresponder series to qualify subscribers based on their investment capacity and regional preferences.

- One message in the series asked subscribers to answer seven questions about themselves to help the team offer appropriate offers. Questions included:

• Location preference
• Whether they have cash to invest (some bank-owned properties only accept cash deals)
• How big a rehab project they were willing to take on
• Whether they’re interested in creating a wholesale real estate business of their own 

- Another message asked subscribers to describe their investor profile:

• Career seeker, looking to make real-estate investment their full-time job
• Part-time investor, looking for extra income from real estate
• Retired or passive investors, looking for turnkey deals for immediate returns 

Depending on how they answered the question, subscribers received one of three relevant auto-responders:

• A message pointing career-seekers to the team’s real estate wholesaling video training course and blog
 
• A message for part-time investors acknowledging their status as part-timers, but also pointing them to additional resources, such as the online training course
 
• A message for passive investors describing ways they can invest in one of the team’s sister companies

- The survey also allowed subscribers to opt-out of the full email marketing program, and only receive property deals.

Strategy #4. Segment list for relevant offers

Based on response to qualifying emails, the team created sub-lists within their house file. Subscriber profiles included:

• Cash buyers
• Preferred geographic area
• Investors interested in educational programs, such as workshops
• Property offer emails only
• Venture capital investors (passive investors, and those interested in financing future business ventures)
 

Those lists could then be used for targeted campaigns, such as:

• Cash-only deals
• Properties within a geographic region
• Workshop offers and online training programs 
 

“If I know I have subscribers interested in Palm Springs, I can add a few extra emails to that list,” says Squyres. “You can get a little more pushy with people who are interested in a specific area without ticking off other buyers.”

 
Strategy #5. Market properties, workshops, and other offers to entire list

In addition to segmented mailings, the team also sent regular messages to its entire house list, including:

• New property offers
• Workshop announcements and other educational content
• Real-estate market updates
• Third-party offers from trusted investors who have properties that might interest their subscribers
 

“People bring us deals, we blast it out to our list, and we split the proceeds,” says Squyres. “We get a lot of people bringing us deals.”

RESULTS

The email strategy worked better than Squyres had hoped.

“We made great money through the worst downfall ever,” says Squyres. “Being able to move our properties saved us. We went from being a family of six having our lights shut off, to moving a deal, getting a $7,000 check to help us survive and continue moving deals.”

 
• The strategy helped the team turn a profit in 2007.

• 90% of their properties are sold to members of their email list, despite those properties still being listed on Craigslist and other real estate sites.

• Properties generally sell within a week, depending on the quality of the home and how quickly the team can follow-up with interested buyers and schedule site visits. A recent property sold in one day.

• Segmenting the list by investor profile allowed the team to market its paid educational workshop series, and its online video training course.

Squyres admits he has not had time to calculate and measure standard email metrics, such as open rates and clickthrough rates. But he believes he has developed trust among a solid list of potential customers.
 

“They know we’re for real when they see the deals keep coming out,” says Squyres. “We have guys that have watched us for over a year pop up and buy, so we know there are a lot of people in there, watching and waiting raise their hand."  

Disclaimer and Special Thanks. This Case Study conducted by Marketing Sherpa