Why ITVibe?
In 15 years of marketing if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that progress happens cyclically.
Build it once and expect it to perform forever?
Of course not…
Our approach streamlines the process of ongoing improvement so that we can test small and scale large, providing you have sufficient resources and budget.
If you don’t, we can provide the resources from our network of partners.
And we can find a way to make your budget work for all of us.
ITVibe Agency has a 6-phase cycle: Strategic Preparation, Market Insight, Design & Development, Conversion Optimization, Traffic Management, Performance Tracking.
From the homepage you will find 3 possible starting points — to launch, scale or maximize your marketing.
And once the first campaign is complete, we’ll continue the cycle of optimization by choosing a new starting point.
Welcome to ITVibe.
Time Management for the New Professional
I’ve not posted here for a long while because of my new professional development website over at www.cyclicmedia.com has taken precedence.
Over there you’ll find insider short-cuts to professional development with a focus on productivity, management, and marketing.
For the best time management system available by far.. and I know because I developed it after reviewing every book, course, and training program I could find, check out the InstaTime Time Management System.
Subscription Revenue Calculator
Great tool to play with the numbers when considering your revenue potential for subscription based services.
Subscription revenue calculator.
If you have no experience of a particular market, conversion rates, how to build a product series or even a high converting sales letter or video, then playing with numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
But for those with experience, this is a very hand tool to project pricing and conversion rates that will create a sustainable income level.
Enjoy.
Revenue Performance Management
Phil Fernandez excellent book ‘Revenue Disruption’ details the how and why of Revenue Performance Management through innovations in Marketing Automation.
One gratifying passage reads:
“…It’s not about having the best tagline or most exciting creative materials. Marketers have to think like a publisher who is tasked with creating consisent, relevant content for every stage of the revenue cycle. When it’s done right, this approach produces daramatically better results than traditional marketing techniques that rely on interrupting the customer”
If you want to consolidate marketing processes with a view to full revenue cycle insight (how to build the sales and marketing funnel with confidence at every step and produce reporting metrics that senior management will drool over) then get this book.
How can I tolerate working for ‘the corporation’?
First:
Understand that business means ‘value exchange’, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s what a humanistic society is based on.
Second:
Yes of course today’s world is in a shambles: political power, unnecessary poverty and neurotic consumer psychology.
Quality or Quantity of Content… why not both?! says Gary Vaynerchuck
For social media and web marketing, having both ‘quality AND quantity’ of content is key… just like working smart AND working hard for exponential results.
Don’t leave greatness on the table by shying away from publishing your thoughts regularly.
touché
Still not confident about ‘social media marketing’? Do this…
I still speak with Directors, marketers, so-called consultants, and new startup entrepreneurs who are confused by hyped strategy and a ton of options when it comes to social media marketing…
To really understand social media, new marketers and seasoned directors find it helpful to first grasp the following dynamic of the web’s evolution:
Web 1.0 was all about ‘presence’
Company’s had brochure sites, with basic contact forms and a contact phone number.
Customer engagement was essentially limited to just those channels.
Oh the simple days…
There was email of course, and some of you will remember bulletin boards, AOL, the original Usenet, etc.
But companies were not using those mediums to co-create, collaborate or even so much as communicate with their audience.
Those that did, became the now forgotten legends of the go-go 90s. Including yours truly.
But as more company’s went online, and the technology burgeoned, the new frontier turned into a jungle of rich media applications, discussion forums, fly-by-night startups that lit up the cyberspace sky only to frizzle out of sight…
The essence though is exactly the same.
In a word:
Conversation.
And that’s what Web 2.0 is about: ‘conversation’
You see, social media is any medium in which anything social happens. Simple.
Keep your approach to social media simple and you’ll increase insight and accelerate progress.
The questions to ask are always the same for any form of marketing:
- Where does your target audience hang out?
- What do they talk about? (what are their complaints, their challenges, their wishes as relevant to your product category)
- How do they typically find resolution? (competitor products, etc)
From there, you’re developing customer insight / buyer profiles… segmented per different social stream (Facebook buyers are different to Google Adwords buyers).
With that profiling you develop a proposition, an offer, a solution, a product.
See, it’s straight forward in principle.
The trick is having the commitment (budget, resource, mind-set) to be… authentic… genuine… patient… and open…
… for social conversation that builds engagement, brand preference and custom.
And that’s what brands find difficult…
Or at least have done, until more recently, with more liberal customer service empowerment allowing agents to respond to the customers personalities in-kind.
Remember, social is about conversation… ‘media’ just means whatever the medium of conversation.
In today’s world this includes tags, likes, shares, video, private messages, email, chats, hangouts, g+’s, g+ circles, rss feeds, commenting tools, forums, Q&A tools, bookmarking, pinning, and on it goes and will continue to go.
Stay focused on these traditional marketing questions:
- Where does your target audience hang out?
- What do they talk about? (what are their complaints, their challenges, their wishes as relevant to your product category)
- How do they typically find resolution? (competitor products, etc)
And find ways to actually impact on your target audience.
Demonstrate customer impact through whatever measures of ROI, clicks, CSAT, NPS, engagement, visits, etc.
And then scale to cover more social channels and more segments.
Don’t be concerned about what’s coming next (in the near future we’ll probably be sending eachother holographic messages), just embrace authentic conversation with your audience now, and social media will quickly make complete sense.
How to start?
Just go find a conversation happening within your market right now, and post a comment to it.
If you don’t know how to find your audience on social media sites, pick the obvious social sites (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc) and go find relevant conversation.
Want an example?
Ok.. go to twitter.com and use the search box to search a few relevant words in your market. And see what’s being talked about today.
How about… yoga mats?
See the tweet by BeBalancedYoga… how much better might their blatant advertising go by interacting with any of the other tweeters talking about yoga mats? Much better I’m sure, it just takes a bit more consideration.
Once you’ve found a few different hangouts for your market and checked out the conversations that are happening, you’ll soon want to explore tools to help with social listening so you can capture more of the market.
And that’s where social media really gets interesting.
Topic for another time.
First, get used to actually responding, directly, personally, to any of the conversation happening in your market.
Paid Traffic Sources – a long list
Asked recently about paid traffic management and best cost-to-conversion sources I had to confess I’m not up to scratch.
It’s as far back as 2007 that I managed a major media buy for a client and I’m keen to find out the latest platforms, behavioural targeting features, tracking systems, and so on.
My guess is that it’s not much different now to back then… just like Adwords isn’t different in principle (I’m still very familiar with Adwords). Anyways, we shall soon see, because:
I’m going to run a few tests with my own cold hard cash and I’ll report back what currently seems to be worth focusing on.
And with personal contacts working at the likes of Google and various agencies, it shouldn’t be hard to pull together cutting-edge insight in the fast changing market.
I have lots to say on the subject already but let’s wait until I’ve done some taguchi multi-variate split-test experimentation (I love that stuff).
In the mean time, here’s a loooong list of paid traffic sources that I’ll be investigating.
Anything to share feel free to write me directly or add comments below.
What is the role of content marketing in creating a great customer experience?
David Edelman, Principal at McKinsey, describes the content pipeline and how it needs to both feed and inform interactions across all touchpoints with the customer.
High-budget low-volume content production needs to be displaced by low-budget high-volume content creation, based on the many touchpoints of audience interaction.
The best brand experience throughout the buying process means having opportunities to create content that can be shared as social media.
Brilliant insight on the evolution of social marketing.
Video Sales Letter Copy Sample for Sports Training Equipment
This VSL is to launch an innovative training equipment for Quarterback training. The product is in design and development so I can not reveal the complete script.
Here is the entire lead section of the VSL file that is sure to get any QB absolutely hooked on watching the rest of the sales video.
I’m not myself a football fan. So how could I possibly write compelling and relevant copy for the target audience?
Because, as many hall-of-fame copywriters have said, top performing copy is produced via 80% market research and only 20% of actual writing.
I went to the subject experts, the inventor of the equipment, I watched some games and I got into the mind-set of a Quarterback sitting in his locker room before a big game feeling the stress and disappointment about the training he’s received until that point. A gut wrenching anxiety that the market can relate to strongly.
So whatever your market, providing you have something of significant value or desire to promote, I can turn your insight, gather more of my own via research, and conjure copy that nails the deep emotions of your market, compelling them to take action and engage with your brand.
Here is the entire lead section of the VSL.