I was asked to join Roundpeg‘s “More Than A Few Words” podcast. I was extremely excited to take part in the podcast as I am a big fan of Lorraine and her successful 10 years in business. Enough text, take a listen.
Tags: lorraine ball, mediaplug, roundpeg, will hardison
DISCLAIMER: I apologize in advance if this makes you want cake while at work today.
Marketing, like baking, takes a lot of work, preparation, testing and learning from mistakes. Most bakers do not produce award-winning cakes on their first try. It takes years of practice, learning, trial and error, and time. The same applies to marketing. Other than very rare occasions, companies do not hit home runs with their first marketing campaign. Lines don’t form down the street after one ad for a local mom and pop shop. It takes a lot of hard work, “hustling,” and dedication to get a product or company off the ground. Below are 5 ways marketing is like baking a cake….
Ingredients: While baking, you have to have the correct amount of ingredients. The same is true when launching a marketing campaign. There isn’t a silver bullet in marketing that will produce a line around the corner to your business. A balanced campaign between multiple advertising channels has proven to be a better approach. You can’t invest all of your advertising dollars into one TV commercial and expect business to explode. Look at most brands like Coke, Nestle, and even some of your mom and pops, they all have a wide range of advertising that range from print, online media, sponsorships, to TV ads.
Presentation: Who wants to eat a cake that looks caved in or burnt? Generally the first reaction to a cake is how it is presented. The same applies to your marketing. If your ad is cheesy, looks home made or cheap, your target market will feel the same about the product you are offering. It doesn’t take much to make your business look professional. A consistent look, professionally laid out ads and a well working website will place you leaps and bounds ahead of the competition who are penny pinching on their presentation. Guess who gets my business between the professional looking company and the home made looking company?
If you would like a cake as professional looking and tasting as the one above, I have the girl for you! E-mail me.
Flavors: Not everyone likes Vanilla, therefore cakes come in a wide variety of flavors. The same is true when it comes to marketing. Not everyone is moved to buy for the same reasons. Some buy because of design, some buy because of price, and some because of functionality of the product. Leverage your selling points in several different ads and see which one proves to bring in the best results.
Time: “If you’re looking, you’re not cooking” is a famous cooking line. If you’re opening the oven to look at the cake every 30 seconds you’re letting all the heat out and the cake doesn’t bake. You have to give the oven time to bake the cake. The same rule applies with marketing. If you advertise for a week, you may not get immediate results; it doesn’t mean it’s not working though. Marketing takes time, hard work, and dedication. Think of brands that have lasted throughout time, they are still advertising today to continue to build their brand, and I guarantee you that if they would have pulled all of their ads down after a few weeks of “not working,” they wouldn’t be where they are today.
Feedback: “How does it taste?” is generally the first question out of the mouth of a baker when you are trying his or her cake. The reason is they are looking for feedback and they want to in a sense measure the results of a certain type of cake. Generally, when you walk into a bakery, the baker can tell you which cake people like the most. Can you tell someone which ad or advertising channel works the best for your company? Measuring, monitoring, and testing your marketing is, in my opinion, just as important as the choice of marketing channel and layout of the ad itself.
Tags: advertising, cake baking, marketing, will hardison
First off, if you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, do that now. If you need help installing it, I will be happy to help you (will@mediaplug.biz) There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be measuring the amount of visits to your site/blog and drawing conclusions for improvement.
Inside of Google Analytics (and most other analytics programs) is a metric labeled “Bounce Rate”. No, this isn’t how many times someone watched the “Can I get a What What” video by Jay-Z on your website. It’s the amount of people who simply came to your website, in theory did absolutely nothing, and left. The bounce rate is shown as a percentage. A 65% bounce rate means that 65% of your visitors came, threw up, and then left.
A “good” bounce rate depends on several factors: traffic sources, type of website, calls to actions, and your own acceptable conclusions.
Traffic Sources: Bounce rate depends on traffic sources like direct traffic, referrals (other websites like twitter, facebook, linkedin, and partners who post your link), and SEO.
SEO should provide the lowest bounce rates given the point that visitors are searching for your product/service and finding your website. If your most popular keywords are proving to have the highest bounce rate, you have a bit of a problem. You can’t have people leaving left and right on your best keywords.
Here’s a screen shot of the bounce rate based on referrals from my blog (willhardison.com) to my company’s website (mediaplug.biz).
As you can see only 16% percent of people coming from my blog (keep in mind this blog collected dust for months before 10 days ago) to my company’s site bounced. I personally feel that 16% is pretty good bounce rate. They also spent an average of 2 minutes on my company’s site and viewed about 4 pages (pretty much every page of my site).
Type of Website: A blog should have a lower bounce rate than a landing page selling a product simply due to the fact that there’s more content on a blog to explore.
Calls To Actions: Take a look at the first sentence of my blog post. I tell you to go install Google Analytics if you haven’t done so already. If you click on the “Google Analytics” link you will be considered a bounce. So keep in mind what you are asking your visitors to do on your site.
Your Own Acceptable Conclusions: Percentages, ratios, and measurements are just numbers. You must draw your own conclusions based on the data. If I tell you that a terrible bounce rate according to industry standards is 41% and above, but you’re making thousands off of a site that has a 53% bounce rate, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Have you noticed that I haven’t mentioned any actual figures of what constitutes a good bounce rate? That’s because I believe it’s a personal decision and conclusion as to what a good bounce rate is for YOUR website. You’re not going to win over everyone, so don’t run yourself ragged trying to lower your rate from 35% to 31%.
Now, it’s Monday, so I say you kick the week off with a little Jay-Z.
Tags: bounce rate, google analytics, mediaplug, website, will hardison
Hopefully everyone has something they enjoy doing when they aren’t working. Some love to hit the gym, go on runs, read, collect stamps, coins, or sneakers, or play an instrument. I have been fortunately blessed with rhythm, which is unusual because my father can’t keep a beat to save his life (sorry dad). So instead of posting a “10 tips to do this” or “the latest social media trend” I thought I’d post a few demo tracks from band’s that I’ve been in over the years.
The first “real” band I was in was called Ike’s Blind. (I don’t count playing drums to popular CD’s in middle school pretending I was in the band. You know, popular songs like “Waterfalls” by TLC) Ike’s Blind is a strange name and sounds like we were a screamer band, but the name paid tribute to the lead singer’s uncle who was a very talented blind musician named Ike. We were your typical college cover band, covering Dave, OAR, Jack Johnson, Chilli Peppers, Counting Crows, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Guns N Roses, etc. etc. We did cut a few original tracks which included “Spinning” that became a requested song when we played.
Here’s our demo from Ike’s Blind:
Ike’s Blind (we did change the name to Field Trip towards the end) came to an end when I couldn’t find a job in NC and had to move back to Indiana.
Now, back in Indiana, I missed playing music with a group of guys on stage so I decided to form a band of my own. Believe it or not, I formed a band with 4 other guys all through Craigslist. I know, crazy. I probably tried out 30 people ranging from EMO decked out 18 year olds to Country loving 40 year olds. I quickly learned to ask for a picture before meeting people. 
It took about 6 months of searching but I finally found 4 guys who made the cut and we formed “SideProject”. Sideproject was similar to Ike’s Blind but with more classic rock thrown into the mix.
Here’s our demo from SideProject:
Dream On <– Favorite recording
Unfortunately, life got in the way of SideProject. I was starting Mediaplug, lead singer lived 1.5 hours away, one was in med school, we had a nurse, and another who traveled a lot for work.
Current Project: The Prenupts. I am currently working on putting a wedding band together called “The Prenupts”. My goal is to bring a fun motown type feeling band playing music from all decades. Think Temptations meet 38 Special. We are currently practicing and hope to be ready by the fall. Should be fun!
What is your outlet? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below. And/or feedback on the music above.
Tags: field trip, Music, sideproject, the prenupts, wedding band, will hardison
Many people think twitter is where you tell the world what you ate for breakfast or how many times you used the bathroom today. Although true, people do tweet this type of information, they also tweet posts like:
“I’m buying a bicycle today, any suggestions on where to go?”
“Moving to Indianapolis in July. I can’t wait”
“Our business needs a complete marketing overhaul. Who can help us?”
etc. etc. etc.
Now, you still may be wondering “What does this have to do with me and why do I care if someone is buying a bicycle, another is moving to Indianapolis, and a company needs a marketing overhaul?”
Well, if you owned a Bicycle shop, you would want to reach out to the person buying a bike, a real estate agent should reach out to the mover and welcome them to town and suggest they are willing to show them around town, and finally a marketing company should send a link to their portfolio in a reply to the company looking for a complete marketing overall.
Your next question might be “How do I find these people talking about my product/service?
Head on over to http://search.twitter.com
Quick tip: Just like Google, if you want to search a specific phrase you must put it inside quotations. For example, “Moving to Indianapolis”
By the way, I just found 2 legitimate leads for an Indianapolis Real Estate agent. You can make my commission check out to Will Hardison. Here’s a screen shot of the results from “moving to Indianapolis”
“But Will, what if I sell Bicycles in Raleigh, North Carolina? I don’t care if someone is looking for a bicycle in California. I need local results.” I’m glad you asked.
While on search.twitter.com’s home page you’ll see “advanced search”. This will bring up a new page with advanced searching options. Scroll down until you see “Places”. You can search a word or phrase near a specific location. I can search “bicycle” within 10 miles of Raleigh.
Remember, don’t ignore people who aren’t looking to buy your product right this instance. If they are talking about your industry in general, it’s still a great opportunity to engage with them. Add value to their conversation, build a relationship, and good things will happen.
Also, a final note, if you want a continuous stream of results based on your search, you can save searches into a stream using a tool like www.hootsuite.com That way you don’t have to constantly search for results, your stream will automatically update for you.
Tags: hootsuite, real estate agent, socail media, twitter, twitter search, will hardison
Monitoring your brand across the internet is one of the most important aspects of social media marketing. If your customers are trash talking you on some obscure message board hidden deep in the internet forest, you should probably know about it. How would you defend your brand or put out any fires? Here are 5 easy, and FREE ways to monitor your brand across the internet:
1. Social Mention http://www.Socialmention.com: A great free tool that allows you to search across every facet of the internet from blogs, microblogs, and even video.
Terms to understand on socialmention:
Strength: Is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media.
Sentiment: The ratio of discussions that are positive to those that are negative.
Passion: The likelihood that those talking about your brand will do so again.
Reach: The measure of the range of influence.
2. Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts: Another great tool offered by Google that allows you to set up an alert when your search phrase is mentioned in a Google result. Alerts also allow you to pick sources, how often to send results, and which results to send.
3. Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com: Many people don’t even realize that you can search Twitter. If you use a tool like Http://www.hootsuite.com you can save your search results right into a stream for constant updates.
4. Monitter http://www.monitter.com/: Very similar to Twitter’s search, in fact it’s pretty much identical, but it allows you to watch and monitor several searches at one time.
5. WorkStreamer http://www.workstreamer.com/: Add your company and it pulls information across the internet based on the company. You can divide the content out by platform as well. Very neat tool.
I hope these tools and tips are helpful! I’m sure there are plenty of other free or low cost tools out there, and if you know of any please share in the comments area of my blog.
Oh and by the way, these tools are also great to monitor your competitors as well, but you didn’t hear that from me!
Tags: google alets, monitoring, monitter, socialmention, will hardison social media, workstreamer
For those lucky enough to own a beach house, they understand the importance of renting it out while they are not able to use it. In reality, no one wants to rent a dirty, misleading, or rundown beach house. The same goes for your social media marketing. Your efforts need to be attractive, honest, and engaging. Here are 5 ways your social media marketing is like renting your beach house.
Appearance is everything. In the housing market, it’s called curb appeal. On the internet, you need to make sure you are using a professional picture and that it’s consistent across every social network for branding purposes. Many sites also allow for custom design and graphics. Take advantage of these options and brand your pages to your company.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a misleading advertisement for a vacation rental. You put all of your stock in the description, photos, and reviews of the rental. If the property boasts an Olympic size swimming pool but you find nothing more than a large bathtub in the back yard, you’re going to be disappointed and perhaps even mad. The same applies with your social media profiles. You have to be honest in your profiles and fill them out completely. There is nothing more aggravating than a profile that is incomplete and misleading.
Ever been completely disappointed when you arrive at your vacation destination? “This is where we have to spend our entire week? The pictures made it look so much more inviting!” If you tell people you are going to engage, share knowledge about a particular topic or industry, and be available when they need help…you better deliver. It’s a poor reflection on how serious your take your professional career if you fail to deliver on what you promise. It’s a good idea to not over promise if you’re afraid you can’t deliver.
Share, share, and share. What is the first thing you do when you arrive at a vocational rental? You look for a guidebook in the house that informs you of local events, restaurants, and entertainment. Your stay will be much better if you know where to go and where not to go during your visit. The same principal applies with your social media marketing. Share content, provide information, and be engaging. Your followers will value you and your profiles significantly more if they can rely on you to provide solid information on a consistent basis.
How do you think a majority of people rent their beach homes? So and so told so and so that they had the best vacation this spring and their beach house was the best they’ve ever stayed in. They loved it so much; they booked another week for next year. Word of mouth marketing is unbeatable. I haven’t blogged consistently in a while and just last Friday I posted a blog link on twitter and 15 people shared my link that drove almost 70 visits to my blog. If I consistently blog on a daily basis Monday through Friday that’s 1400 people a month reading my articles and visiting my blog to see what I have to say. If those 1400 people tell one person the following month, my visitors will double.
I hope this information has been helpful and fun to read. Also, if anyone has a beach house they need for someone to housesit for…I’m available.
Tags: beach house, marketing, Social Media, vacation rentals, will hardison
Warning: this is a longer post, but you wont want to miss the ending of how I could make $1.8 million through running facebook ads.
Facebook, with over 600 million users, is a great pool to advertise in. What’s great about Facebook is that they have developed a simple advertising dashboard that walks you through setting up your ads step by step. Facebook allows you to drill down and define your ad audience. If you are selling cars, you probably don’t want to advertise to 13 year olds. If you’re a wedding photographer, you want to show your ad to everyone in your area who has “engaged” as his or her relationship status. For less than a dollar a click, where else can you target and find people who need and/or are interested in your product or service?
I’ll show you a few visuals of how this works below using “The Prenupts”, a wedding band I play in, as an example.
First, log in to facebook and go to “ads” or you can type:
http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ into your browser address bar.
The first setting is Destination: You can pick a page, place, application, or external URL. Most people think you can only drive traffic to your facebook page, which isn’t true. You can drive traffic directly to your website from facebook ads. For this example I’m going to pick “The Prenupts”.
Type: Select Facebook Ads
Destination Tab: You can select which tab you’d like users to land on when they click on your ad. A good example for a wedding band would be to create a “music” tab and drive people to a music player showcasing our best songs.
Title: Cannot be changed unless you select “external URL”. The default title is the same as the title of your facebook page.
Body: The actual text that will show on your ad. So for example, The Prenupts would read “Fun and energetic wedding band playing top 40 from the past 4 decades. Dates available!”
Image: The tool will automatically pull in your profile image for your business page, but you can upload a new image as a replacement for your ad.
Now the fun part. The targeting. If anything, you can use this tool for market research in your area or to scope out future business locations.
For our example, we are a wedding band, and our end goal is for people to book us for their wedding. We’re located in Indianapolis, IN so our first setting is to select our location. It does us no good for someone in Florida getting married to see our ad. So we want to select “by city” and type in Indianapolis.
In Indianapolis, IN and within 25 miles, there are 797,240 who are on facebook. Impressive.
Age: Now we want to narrow down our age group. Our music and style really wouldn’t appeal to people 50 and older so we’ll narrow our demographics to those in Indianpolis between the ages of 18 and 49. Our audience dropped a bit, but we’re also more focused. We now have a pool of 683,140 people who meet our criteria.
Sex: For this example, we are going to keep “all” selected. If we were a dress shop and were running a general ad, we’d select “women”, but if we were a dress shop and our ad was targeted at husbands buying their wives a nice dress, we’d select men. Our numbers do not change after this step because “all” is the default setting.
Interests: This can get really fun and interesting. Interests will search people’s profiles for the exact interest you put in this box. So for example, our band plays a lot of 90’s music, 80’s music, and classic rock. We can add each decade of music and genre as an interest that we’d like for a user to have in their profile to show our ad to. You can add as many interests as you like.
Notes to remember about interests:
The user only has to have 1 matching interest, their profile does not have to list EVERY interest.
Facebook will help you with interests. Just like Google tries to auto fill your search, Facebook will do the same thing. Start typing in “90’s m” and “90’s music will pop up.
Facebook will also suggest related interests based on your latest addition.
I have added several bands, and genres of music as interests for this example and our audience is at 40,040 who live in or within 25 miles of Indianapolis and between the ages of 18 – 49. I’m sure the more bands I add, the larger our audience will be.
Connections: We have 1 fan (me) of our page. (I just made it for this example) So we’ll want to select “Only people who are not fans of The Prenupts.”. If we had 1,000 fans we may show our ads to “friends of fans of The Prenupts” for several reasons. People love to check out what their friends are endorsing, or perhaps their friend came to their wedding where we played, they want to book us but hey can’t remember our name, seeing our ad might put 2 and 2 together for them.
Relationship: We want to only show this ad to people who are engaged. We don’t want single people clicking on our ad if we’re a wedding band, maybe if we were a cover band playing the local bars, and we don’t want married folks checking us out, they’ve already had their big day.
Once we change our setting to “engaged” our number shrinks to 1,860 people. Some people might think “wow, only 1,800 people when you started with almost 800,000”, but I look at it like this:
That’s 1,800 local people who are engaged to be married who like the music we play.
For example sake, let’s say these 1,800 people were ALL engaged to each other, we’d have 900 couples.
There are 52 Saturday’s a year.
It would take us 17.3 years to play everyone’s wedding playing 1 wedding every single Saturday.
At our average rate per show, we’d make 1.8 million dollars. (900 weddings x $2,000)
I don’t know about you, but SIGN ME UP FOR THAT!
My challenge to you, go through the facebook ads dashboard and see what your potential reach is based on your criteria. If you want, post a reply on my blog with your settings and final number.
Oh, and if you’re getting married and need an awesome wedding band. Let me know
Tags: facebook, facebook ads, facebook marketing, Social Media, the prenupts, wedding band, will hardison
So let’s say you just attended an awesome conference like Social Crush where everyone was using a common hashtag like #socialcrush and you want to follow all of the people who used #socialcrush in their tweets. Remembering everyone’s twitter name and going back through twitter streams can become time consuming. Who has time to sort through hundreds of tweets and follow everyone? I sure don’t. That’s why, thanks to my friend @noahwesley, we have http://www.followblast.com a tool that allows you to connect to twitter, search a hashtag, and follow everyone who has used recently used that hashtag in a tweet. Follow Blast will also sort through people you are already following so it will only suggest those you need to follow.
Here’s a step by step on how it works: (click on the images to see them larger)
This tool is great for engaging with people who share a common interest, attended the same seminar/workshop/event as you, or talking about a topic you are interested in. I hope this tool helps you build your twitter following with people who can add value to your stream.
Tags: #socialcrush, follow blast, noah coffey, social crush, twitter, will hardison
I big thank you to Allison for making these cakes on our special day! They were amazing to look at and even better to eat!
Tags: ecu cake, grooms cake, purdue cake
