So what’s on the horizon for digital media in 2012 and what does it mean to marketers?

Three marketing experts shared their forecasts last week at a program sponsored by the American Advertising Federation – Cleveland, Ohio. Adele Pellicane, Senior Director, Agency Services, Traffiq Inc., New York, Larry Weissman, Managing Director, Top Line Revenue, Inc., Atlanta, and Scott Chapin, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy, Marcus Thomas LLC, Cleveland, were panelists. Michael DeAloia, Partner at Emerging Chefs Cleveland, moderated for AAF-Cleveland.

Here’s what these digital media pros see in their crystal balls and some insights for using digital media in your smart marketing strategy.

What Digital Media is – and Why it Matters

Chapin defines digital media as “anything that’s driving traffic to digital content: Paid media, social media, or other media that drives traffic to a digital source.” 

Marketers need to embrace digital media, says Weissman, because “it’s quickly becoming mainstream” and it’s reshaping the traditional sales funnel. “The sales funnel is now dramatically different and much more complex because of digital media,” he notes.

The Next Big Trend: Mobile + Social + Local

Last year’s big trend was mobile marketing, says Chapin. Advertisers spent over $1 billion in mobile marketing ads in 2011.

“What’s coming is the convergence of social, mobile, and local – that’s the hot trend right now,” he states. “Facebook and Google are both going in this direction. Every marketer’s goal is to figure out how to communicate their brand to customers when they’re on the go.”

Pellicane agrees. “The convergence of mobile, social, and local is the next big trend in digital media. It’s about the where and when. This will continue to grow, especially in the retail space,” she predicts. “It’s crucial for branding and driving sales.”

Weissman says local social media marketing platforms like foursquare are important to retail marketers, but “the local marketing space is extremely crowded and there’s a consolidation coming. Amazon and eBay are getting ready to launch these types of products. Foursquare will need to stay innovative to thrive in this environment.”

7 More Digital Media Trends to Watch

1. Real-time engagement: Chapin sees marketers continuing to move people from traditional to digital media in real time via such tactics as QR codes. “Everybody’s trying to figure out ways to make this transition easy for people,” he says. Another example is the plan by Shazam, developers of the innovative iPhone and Android sound recognition apps, to link audio via tags from this year’s Super Bowl ads to advertisers’ websites, as recently reported in Adweek.
2. QR codes: Though advertisers are rapidly adopting QR codes in marketing campaigns, panelists agreed that widespread use of QR codes by consumers won’t take hold until smart phones have built-in QR reader apps. “Using QR codes will grow exponentially when apps are pre-installed on smart phones,” Pellicane predicts.
3. The power of video: “Mobile marketing plus video is a huge trend in general, but especially for tweens,” notes Weissman. “It’s how they consume media – and it’s not on the TV in the living room.”
4. The growth of Google+: “Social is a huge part of Google’s strategy,” says Chapin. “It’s being integrated into nearly every Google product. Google+ will slowly gain in relevance and eventually we’ll be discussing it in the same vein as Facebook and Twitter.”
5. Easier ways to influence others: “‘Share this’ buttons are creating digital versions of kitchen-table conversations between a few people and many people,” Weissman notes.
6. Co-watching: Viewing a mobile device or tablet computer while watching television is a growing trend. “Marketers are trying to figure out how to integrate this and drive cross-device connectivity,” Chapin observes.
7. Measurability: Weissman says new tools are on the horizon to measure audience access via the web, which may create a way to buy digital media based on gross rating points. “Marketers want the ability to measure and analyze a consumer’s path from traditional to digital, to track the user’s experience from end to end, such as from an app to a website,” Chapin explains.

Tips for Planning a Digital Media Strategy

How should you use digital media in a smart marketing strategy? Chapin recommends that marketers ask these questions to determine a digital media marketing plan:

• Is your audience mobile? In most cases, the answer is an easy yes. Half of phone users now have smart phones, so penetration of smart phones in your market is probably a given.
• What content do you have?  You need something to pay off a mobile marketing campaign, like a mobile website or app. “If you don’t have this, spend your money here first,” Chapin advises. “Mobile users have even shorter attention spans than web users, one second instead of five. You must answer the user’s question instantly.”
• When and where is your audience? A mobile user can be literally anywhere in the world. Figure out the mobile usage patterns of your audience and connect to them then and there. “For example, during the week, Google Maps users are on desktop computers. On the weekend, they’re on phones,” Chapin notes.
• Can you do geo-targeting to a specific local market and near a retail outlet?

Pellicane advises marketing agencies and consultants to focus digital media marketing strategies on goals and metrics. “Don’t get hung up on the ‘shiny new object’ syndrome just to show your clients you can do it,” she explains. “Ask yourself, ‘what’s the goal of the marketing campaign and what metrics will be used to measure success?’ Do you want to build community? Drive sales? That will drive the decisions about devices and tactics in digital media.”

But they also share quality content produced by others. Gathering, sorting, and republishing content from other authors that you believe your followers will value is called curation.

By being a great content curator, you help customers, prospects, and colleagues find the “good stuff” online and know what to read. This not only makes you an informative and influential social media contributor, but it also helps attract new followers.

Here’s how to find, filter, and share the best content with your social media followers in a smart marketing strategy.

10 Steps for Sourcing and Selecting the Best Content

There is a wealth of potential content online to share with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter followers. Follow these steps to curate information that will bring real value to the people you’re connected with:

1. Use Google Alerts and similar tools to see who’s publishing what on the web about the main topics and keywords related to your business.
2. Sign up for RSS feeds from websites in your field, such as trade associations, conference sponsors, competitors, and industry media.
3. Subscribe to the top blogs in your industry to hear what the most influential voices are saying.
4. Follow key industry leaders and commentators on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
5. Sign up for e-mail news briefs from news media specific to your industry to know the latest news and research.
6. Follow reporters at major business news media like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg who write articles related to your business.
7. Apply your knowledge of your industry to separate the wheat from the chaff. Focus on information that offers meaningful insights, a new perspective, or new findings on a key topic.
8. Look for patterns that could indicate potential trends. Follow top researchers and share findings that could indicate a shift in your industry or your market.
9. Filter out content that’s obviously self-promotional or “research” that’s self-serving or otherwise suspect.
10. Add your point of view so people know why you’ve selected this content to share. Include comments like “A great demonstration of…,” “Helpful tips about…,” “Important news…,” “A can’t-miss conference,” etc.

How Content Curation Fits in a Smart Marketing Strategy

Content curation is an especially effective approach in a business-to-business marketing strategy, where companies strive to showcase their knowledge. Being a content curator is an ideal way to demonstrate your expertise and position yourself and your company as thought leaders in your industry.

The Next Great American Consumer by Brian Braiker provides a fascinating look at this development. Braiker says branding at birth is “a trend—fueled in part by the growth of digital devices—toward aggressively targeting a demographic that didn’t exist, in marketers’ eyes, until recently: infants to 3-year-olds. By getting their logos and iconic characters in front of babies—even those with still-blurry eyesight—they hope to establish brand-name preference before she or he has uttered a word.”

Is this a smart marketing strategy? Or is this the scariest thing you’ve seen all week? The answer to both questions is yes. Here’s why.

The Brilliance of Early Marketing

Establishing brand awareness and brand preference is the goal of every smart marketer, and as a marketing consultant, I have to acknowledge the brilliance of this strategy. The article cites plenty of research to prove the impact of early marketing on infants and toddlers, including studies which show that an American child can recognize an average of 100 brand logos by age 3. If you’re marketing products to kids and parents, you certainly want your logo on that list.

The real power of this marketing strategy may be its influence on parents. I bought Disney-themed baby toys for my kids and if Kate Spade had made designer baby bags when my daughter was born, I’d have been first in line to buy one.

I probably also would have let my young children play with my iPhone or iPad if I’d had one back then, as many parents do today. That’s why so many marketers like Fisher-Price and Nick Jr. are creating branded apps and online games for the very youngest technology users and why Dora the Explorer has a Facebook page (supposedly for parents) with over 770,000 followers.

But How Young is Too Young?

Of course, licensed characters on clothing, toys, and other products for babies and toddlers are nothing new.

But I wonder if marketers are beginning to take this too far. The level of marketing to infants and toddlers is clearly on the rise, as Braiker’s article illustrates, and the idea of marketing to someone too young and vulnerable to perceive the difference between reality and fantasy makes me queasy. In my experience as a marketing advisor, when it feels like you may be crossing the line of what’s appropriate, you probably are – and the negative fallout usually outweighs the marketing benefit when you do.

Is This Really a Branding Strategy?

From a marketing strategy standpoint, I also wonder whether this approach really can be called “branding.”

Branding is making a promise to a customer about the value you deliver and the experience the customer will have when they choose to do business with you. Is that what these marketers are achieving by targeting consumers far too young to understand product value and differentiate between products? Or are they just cementing an image of an icon in a young child’s mind without attaching any meaning to it?

If that’s the case, I think it’s an open question whether this will pay off as a branding strategy in the long run. Brand recognition doesn’t automatically translate into sales; sales are driven by value.  Even if a young child can recognize and name a brand logo or character, that’s not the same as achieving true brand loyalty among children and parents because of the quality of your products. And marketers who go too far by targeting infants could find themselves facing a backlash from society and parents.

What do you think? Where should marketers draw the line when it comes to targeting images and messages to babies and toddlers? When does a smart marketing strategy become a societal concern?

These aren’t just idle comments. Misconceptions about social media can hurt your brand and hamper your ability to compete in your marketplace by limiting your company’s participation in the social media dialogue.  And if the people who hold those misconceptions also control the marketing budget, alarm bells should be ringing in the marketing department.

Here’s how to get your company onboard with social media marketing and help everyone understand why social media is a powerful element of a smart marketing strategy.

• Educate. Create training sessions to help others at your company understand how social media works and why your company should be part of the social media conversation. You may need to begin with the basics for those who are unfamiliar with social media. Profile social media use in your industry, especially by your competitors. Share examples of effective social media marketing campaigns by organizations like yours.
• Ask for ideas. Encourage everyone, from the CEO on down, to suggest ideas for social media content and customer engagement and to follow your company on social media. Create an easy way for people to share ideas with the marketing team. If you have a company blog, ask for help with content.
• Partner with other departments. Reach out to customer service, tech support, product development, and other units for help in preparing prompt, accurate responses to product-based comments and questions on your social media pages.
• Keep score. Create and distribute a regular social media “scorecard” to report the results of your social media marketing and track competitors’ social media efforts. Keep it simple, straightforward, fact-based, and user-friendly.
• Equip your sales team. Everyone who has direct contact with customers and prospects should have easy-to-use tools, such as branded premiums or sales collateral, to share your company’s social media addresses.
• Keep social media visible. Ongoing high visibility for your company’s social media efforts will help others recognize how much emphasis you are placing on social media in your marketing plan. Put your social media links and information on all your marketing materials and company communications.
• Plan for negative comments. Develop a plan for rapid response to any negative comments that are posted on your social media pages. Share the plan widely to reassure those who worry that social media will expose your company to criticism.
• Establish a company policy on social media. Employees should know your company’s views on appropriate social media behavior and understand who can and cannot speak for your company in social media, especially in response to a complaint.

Help Your Company Succeed with Social Media

As a marketing consultant, I believe that social media marketing should be among your top marketing priorities, whether you sell to businesses or consumers.

Get your company excited about social media so you can become a visible, active, and engaging participant in the social media conversation in your industry and connect more effectively with your customers and prospects.

And guess what? I’ve discovered a simple secret about social media: To achieve success, you need to think like a direct marketer.

Why Social Media Marketing is Like Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is about targeting specific individuals with information and offers relevant to their needs and making a call to action to generate response.

Marketers are using social media to connect with specific individuals who have a high level of interest in their products and services. The goal is to get those individuals to respond in the form of likes, follows, shares, posts, links, check-ins, entries, coupon redemptions, and sales. That sounds a lot like direct marketing to me.

5 Direct Marketing Principles that Apply to Social Media Marketing

Here are five proven principles of effective direct marketing strategy that I think apply to the effective use of social media:

1. Targeting: Sure, half the civilized world is on Facebook and millions are on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels. But smart marketers don’t care about reaching billions or even millions of people. Like direct marketing, social media marketing is intended to deliver a targeted message to individuals who are most likely to be interested in a company’s value proposition. Social media makes it easy to find these individuals and to create content and promotions that help them find you.
2. Teasing: Direct marketers use the carrier envelope, catalog cover, or email subject line to tease the audience and get them to pay attention. Social media marketers do the same with Facebook copy and tweets. My most retweeted tweets happen when I tease my followers with a question or an interesting statement that makes them want to click on a link to know more. That’s exactly like writing direct mail teaser copy.
3. Engaging: The most effective direct marketing campaigns use compelling content and a personal, you-oriented copy approach to keep readers engaged in the sales message to the point of asking for the order. Social media’s great value is the ability to have similar one-to-one engagement and conversations with individual followers.
4. Inciting action: Like direct marketing, the best social media marketing campaigns have a call to action that gets followers to respond to a specific request. Look at posts by the most popular brand marketers on Facebook and you’ll see offers, discounts, bonuses, invitations, questions, contests, polls, and quizzes, all designed, like a direct mail offer, to get a response.
5. Testing and measuring: The beauty of direct marketing is the ability to test approaches and measure results. Social media is exactly the same in this regard, with even more measurability and more instant reaction. You’ll know within minutes if your followers or fans are interested in your post.

Target, Engage, and Ask to Achieve Social Media Marketing Success

Direct marketers achieve success by targeting their marketing, focusing on the needs and interests of the prospect, using great content to engage the prospect in the message, and making a compelling offer to generate a response. Applying these same proven principles to social media marketing is a smart marketing strategy.

Do you agree? What other principles of direct marketing do you think are relevant to social media marketing?

One is Chris Brown, owner of Marketing Resources & Results, a full-service marketing consulting firm in Northeast Ohio that helps companies attract new customers.

Chris has published the blog Branding & Marketing since 2006. She’s written more than 900 articles on marketing strategy, marketing tactics, branding, social media, and market research. Last week, she reached a major blogging milestone: 10,000 subscribers.

In this interview with Smart Marketing Strategy, Chris shares how she has used blogging to build her marketing agency and offers some lessons from her success.

SMS. You were one of the first marketers to launch a blog. Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging to connect with other marketing professionals and learn more about the changing tools in marketing. Blogging – the act of building online publications that are easy to update – is a tremendous marketing tool. Because of my activity at blogging conferences, I’ve connected with thousands of marketing professionals I never would have met without the Internet and the ability to self-publish.

SMS: How has your blog changed over the years?

After trying out several different software platforms, I switched to the WordPress self-hosted platform and in 2009 adopted the Thesis theme. As I got more proficient, the technology of the blog has evolved. I also added video to my blog.

SMS: How do you keep your blog fresh?

I use Google Alerts for keyword phrases to learn about new tools and techniques. I read about 80 blogs in my RSS feeds, maybe 10-15 a day, to stay current. Usually after about 20 to 30 minutes of reading, I have a topic I want to discuss, a common thread between recent bloggers, something in the news, a new website, a new tool, or a change in something we’ve all been using for years. I have a loose editorial calendar so I rotate topics. I promised myself never to start a post, “Sorry it’s been so long since I published, but…” because I see too many bloggers do that. I attend conferences, workshops, and webinars.

SMS: How did you grow such a large subscriber base? Were there pivotal moments when your readership spiked? Or has the growth been gradual?

It’s definitely been gradual with a few big snowballs. The first time I checked the stats, I felt I was so far behind no one would ever notice my blog. Then I started connecting with other bloggers. Leaving comments is a great way to connect. I also like to help new people get started and meet local bloggers in person. I found a few key connecting individuals who helped me and I’ve tried to connect others. Twitter has certainly helped because it’s easy to promote a link to a blog post and even easier for other people to pass it along.

But the most important thing is writing good content. No one subscribes unless they want to come back and read more content.

SMS: How often do you blog?

I prefer 3-4 times a week because it keeps my mind always thinking of the next post.

SMS: What types of posts get the most response?

The most comments usually come from something personal. I try to keep the blog more professional than personal, but sometimes it creeps in. Controversial posts get longer comments. Response depends on the left hand column’s featured posts. People click on what’s on the top left the most.

SMS: What is your audience most interested in reading? 

They like to learn new marketing tools that aren’t too complicated but they can easily apply in their own business. “How tos” and checklists are very popular. They don’t like a lot of negative critiques, nor do they like glowing “Pollyanna”-type reviews of products. Real-life stuff and my honest opinions are usually the most often read posts. 

SMS: How do you promote your blog?

I tweet new posts and have installed a plugin to tweet an encore post daily. I use networked blogs in Facebook to automatically update Facebook with each new post. My website has a link to the blog’s RSS, but I prefer the blog to bring people to the website, not the other way around. When I do speaking and workshops, I suggest that participants visit my blog for PowerPoints, videos, and other information. My e-news spotlights several blog posts, so I use the blog as the hub of my marketing.

SMS: How has blogging helped your business?

After Google, it’s the biggest source of referral traffic to my website. It’s helped me stay current with changes in the marketplace and build credibility about my marketing expertise. The blog is much stronger than any brochure or advertisement. My ability to blog and build community has given me the confidence (and excitement) to embrace new technology.

SMS: What advice do you have for other bloggers?

Figure out what you want to be known for and jump in. Write in first person. Connect with other bloggers and leave comments. Talk to other bloggers. If you want to grow your business, blog about your industry, writing things that would be of interest to potential customers or potential referral sources.

To engage readers, ask questions and have a conversation. To develop great content, research your content, use links to show your sources, be generous with links, and write about what you know. Format your blog so it’s fun to read, with a photo, a strong headline, bullet points, and subheads, and end with a question to make readers think. Final point: Proofread!

Congratulations, Chris, on your success — keep on blogging!

But having permission to market to someone isn’t a license to bombard them with marketing messages. In fact, not knowing when to shut up is a classic marketing mistake.

Here’s how over-marketing can kill a customer or prospect relationship and 7 ways to avoid this costly error in your smart marketing strategy.

We’re Not Friends Any More

If marketing is about building relationships with customers, over-marketing is the best way to kill the relationship and send the customer or prospect heading for the door.

The Social Break-Up, a fascinating study by ExactTarget, provides clear evidence of what happens to customer relationships when the marketer comes on too strong:

• 91% of consumers have unsubscribed from permission-based marketing emails;
• 81% of consumers have either “unliked” or removed a company’s posts from their Facebook news feed.

The biggest reason people break up with companies? Too much marketing. The study showed that:

• 54% of consumers unsubscribe when emails come too frequently;
• 63% of customers have “unliked” a company on Facebook due to excessive postings.

The Cookies are Great, But Enough

I often send gifts to colleagues and clients of my marketing consulting business in Cleveland, including Cheryl’s Cookies. Cheryl’s is an Ohio firm and their cookies are great, so I’ve been a repeat, though not a frequent, customer.

But last week, I blocked their emails. I was fed up with receiving promotional emails multiple times a week, even though I only order a few times a year. The messaging was out of proportion with the relationship.

7 Ways to Avoid Over-Marketing in Your Smart Marketing Strategy

How do you know when you’re marketing too much? It can be a fine line, but here are some principles to guide your marketing planning:

1. Ask your customers. The best way to understand how customers and prospects feel about the frequency of your promotions is to ask them. If most tell you the frequency is “about right,” you’re on target.
2. Measure your opt-outs. Count the number of people who are cutting off their dialogue with you by unsubscribing to emails, unfollowing you on Twitter, and unliking you on Facebook. If the numbers are escalating, over-marketing could be why.
3. Understand your customer relationships. A customer who orders rarely or sporadically has a different relationship with your business than one who orders all the time. Regular customers might welcome frequent promotional emails with special deals, but sporadic customers are more likely to be turned off by too much marketing.
4. Follow your own firm and see how it feels. Opt-in to your own promotions to put yourself in the customer’s or prospect’s shoes and find out what it’s like to be on the receiving end of your promotional messages. If even you get tired of hearing from your company, you’ll know it’s time to turn down the volume.
5. Deliver more value and less promotion. People may opt-in in hopes of getting deals from you, but a lasting relationship between a brand and a customer goes beyond special promotions. When you deliver content, insights, access, and other exclusive advantages that only those who have opted-in can receive, you create real reasons for the relationship to flourish.
6. Coordinate your efforts. If you have multiple units in your company sending emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts to customers and prospects, lack of internal coordination can create permission-based chaos. Set some boundaries and coordinate your efforts to avoid over-promoting.
7. Compare your permission-based marketing to your competitors’. Review the marketplace to gauge the pace of permission-based marketing in your industry. If you’re marketing much more frequently than your competitors, you could be the smartest marketer in the bunch or the one people hesitate to start a relationship with because you talk too much.

The Bottom Line: Treat Permission to Market as a Gift

People opt in because they want to hear from you. But if you disrespect the relationship by coming on too strong, customers and prospects will flee. Treating your customers and prospects well is common courtesy; treating their permission to market to them as a gift is a smart marketing strategy.

But what’s most fascinating about this new research is the window it opens on the habits of the 46 million Americans who check social sites several times a day.

Who are these habitual social media users? And what can marketers learn from their extraordinary level of engagement with social networks?

Here’s what this important study shows and three takeaways about social media for your smart marketing strategy.

Facebook Dominates, Twitter Gains Ground

According to the research, which was presented at BlogWorld on May 25 by Edison’s Tom Webster, more than half of Americans ages 12+ have a profile on a social networking site and 51% of Americans are on Facebook.

Facebook is by far the dominant way people connect with brands and companies on social media. It also is the leading social network for influencing buying decisions.

Though Facebook’s supremacy is clear, awareness of Twitter is extremely high and the level of engagement with Twitter is growing rapidly. In 2010, 47% of Twitter users posted status updates daily; in 2011, 70% did.

The Mobile Phone as “First Screen”

The study showed that nearly all social network users – 91% – have mobile phones. Even more important, for frequent social networkers, a smart phone is their “first screen.” Sixty-four percent of those surveyed would keep their smart phone over their TV. Edison says that “for those with the social habit, the mobile phone is a true convergence device.”

On Social Media, All the Time

But what I found most interesting as a marketing strategist were insights into the millions of social media users who check social networking sites multiple times a day. According to this research, habitual social media users:

• Skew younger and more female, though about a third are aged 35 or older;
• Own smart phones and use their phones to update their status;
• Contribute more content through social media;
• Are more likely to connect to brands and companies on social networks;
• Are more likely to be activated by mobile promotions;
• Are three times more likely to use Twitter.

Here’s another important fact: The number of habitual users is climbing fast. Just two years ago, 18 million people reported using social media sites several times a day. Today, the number is over 46 million.

3 Takeaways for Smart Marketers

As a marketing consultant who helps clients develop marketing strategies, I see three key takeaways from this study:

1. Social media is where engagement is happening. The depth and frequency of engagement is what’s driving social media’s importance for marketers. Habitual users not only check social media sites more often, but they are more connected to brands, more responsive to promotions, and contributing more content.
2. Smart phones are the gateway to the most engaged social media users. If you’re targeting a demographic with high social media use, you need to be using mobile marketing. Your website and social media pages should be designed to deliver a great experience – and offer meaningful ways to interact with your brand – on a mobile device.
3. Social media belongs in every smart marketer’s strategy. The widespread use of social media and the growing number of habitual social media users proves without a doubt that every marketer needs to be using social media in their marketing plan.

Click here to see the full presentation  from BlogWorld.

Are you getting the results you want from your website?

Whether you’re a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketer, a great website is essential for a smart marketing strategy.

Here are 10 ideas to boost the marketing value of your site through higher traffic, better search engine rankings, and more effective engagement with your customers and prospects.

1. Add video. Nothing brings a website to life like video and it’s a great way to increase your search engine results, too. Adding video to your website is easier than ever. Create a YouTube channel for your company, post your videos there, and link to YouTube from your site. Use a professional videography team to produce higher-end videos and a simple, handheld video camera to record your own real-life videos.
2. Rewrite your copy. Take a hard look at the copy on your site. Is the content focused on what your visitors really want to know? And have you written your copy around the keywords in your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy? Google Analytics can tell you which keywords people are using to find your site. Google AdWords keyword tools can tell you the most popular search terms people are using in your industry and suggest keywords to use.
3. Add a blog. Blogging brings many powerful advantages to a website. A blog constantly adds fresh content, which keeps your site interesting and improves your SEO results. It gives your company personality by sharing your unique voice and point of view. And it enables visitors to engage with you by adding their comments to your blog or sharing your posts with others on social media.
4. Consolidate your high-value content. Your site should be the focal point of your web marketing. Post all your content – your blog, news, white papers, case studies, and e-newsletters – on your site and share links to that content via your other marketing channels, especially social media.
5. Tell real-life stories. How do you help people solve problems? Use storytelling, ideally featuring actual customers or clients, to help prospects understand the value you provide and what sets your company apart.
6. Showcase your staff. The people who work at your company and deliver your products and services are your biggest asset. Let visitors get to know some of these folks by profiling them on your site. Don’t be afraid to share a bit of personal information, like their favorite hobby or pet. Being real adds warmth and authenticity.
7. Add pictures. There’s a wealth of great stock photography available to add visual interest to your site. Check out istockphoto.com, veer.com, gettyimages.com, fotolia.com, and fotosearch.com. If you have the resources, invest in original photography to illustrate your products and services in use.
8. Use the best design conventions. More than a decade after websites were created, there are established conventions for easier navigation and quick access to web content. Don’t fight what works. Put your logo in the upper left, your customer log-in in the upper right, drop-down menus across the top, and side navigation down the left.
9. Feature your social media links. Put prominent links to your social media channels on every page of your site, especially the home page, if you’re communicating with customers, prospects, and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites.
10. Make an offer. Give away something of value to demonstrate your expertise and get prospects to give you permission to communicate with them in future marketing campaigns.

Why Your Website is Still So Important

Nearly everyone who is considering doing business with your company will visit your website at some point in the sales process. That’s why keeping your website fresh, interesting, and engaging is so important to a smart marketing strategy.

Give your marketing staff or marketing agency the resources they need to develop and sustain a site that tells your story effectively on the web and delivers a rewarding experience to your visitors.

But let’s be honest: Blogging can be a big commitment. A smart marketer has to ask, is it worth the time and effort? Can someone prove that it really works? And what can you do to increase your odds of success, especially if you’re in business-to-business (B2B) marketing?

Here’s how traffic to my website skyrocketed in one year thanks to the addition of a blog, and four lessons from this blogging case study for your smart marketing strategy.

A Year of Blogging Produces Eye-Popping Stats

I launched my Smart Marketing Strategy blog in January 2010. My goals were to share the best practices of marketing strategy, showcase my expertise as a marketing consultant, and generate new business for my Cleveland, Ohio marketing agency.

I’ve been blogging weekly now for more than a year. To see how the blog has impacted my website traffic, I compared my site’s Google Analytics stats from March 2010 to March 2011.

I knew site traffic was way up and I’d also seen a jump in web-generated new business inquiries. But even I was stunned by the one-month, year-over-year numbers:

• Total number of website visits: Up 562%
• Unique visitors: Up 583%
• Page views: Up 195%

I set up my blog to repost automatically on LinkedIn and Facebook and I tweeted every post on Twitter. That strategy has paid off. LinkedIn referrals to my site are up 825% and Twitter referrals shot through the roof: a 2,933% increase. Google referrals also are up 500%.

In addition, I’ve gotten global exposure from my blog. In March 2010, my website had visitors from 21 countries. A year later, visitors came from 82 countries.

What Site Visitors are Reading

Google Analytics shows that visitors are reading my blog to learn about what’s working in marketing strategy and creative. The most popular posts were:

• Boring! The 11 Most Overused Creative Themes in Marketing
• 40 Questions for a Smarter Marketing Strategy
• New Benchmarks for Direct Mail Response Rates: How Do Yours Compare?
• What Makes Bad Advertising So Bad? It’s Not Believable
• 10 Steps to Building a Great Brand

But visitors aren’t just reading blog posts. They’re also checking out our capabilities and contacting us for new assignments, which is the ultimate payoff.

And search engine rankings are just as important. We’ve gained page-one prominence on Google for multiple keywords related to our business, thanks to Google’s indexing of blog content.

4 Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Publishing a blog is bringing thousands of visitors to my website every month. Here are four valuable marketing lessons I’ve learned from this experience:

1. Content marketing – especially blogging – is one of the most powerful marketing tactics you can deploy. Generating a constant flow of high-quality content linked to your website can dramatically impact site traffic and your search engine rankings. The results are measurable and real.
2. Promotion is crucial for success. I promote every blog post via social media, email, and my website, and I’ve been fortunate to have marketing colleagues around the world share the blog with their clients and friends.
3. Once you start, don’t stop. Starting a blog is much easier than sustaining one. You need to keep at it to build readership and momentum. Plan to devote a few hours each week to producing high-quality content your readers will value. Writing a few posts before you begin can help during the introductory phase.
4. If you don’t have the internal resources to publish a blog, get external help. I have a writing background and many years of experience in creating marketing strategies and campaigns, so creating content was not my challenge. But I needed help setting up the blog and optimizing it for search engines. Look for content marketing and web consultants that can speak to you in terms you understand – and ask lots of questions to keep them on their toes.

The bottom line: Blogging is worth the effort. Publishing a quality blog takes time, effort, and thought, but the payoff for marketers can be huge, whether you’re selling to business decision-makers or consumers.

Here are more lessons from my first year of blogging.