Small Businesses Will Soon Be Able to Advertise on Twitter

In the near future small businesses in the United States will have the ability to leverage their Twitter campaigns further. Commencing during March, Twitter will introduce a new advertising service which empowers businesses by using the new Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products.

Twitter has now partnered with American Express that allows firms to advertise on Twitter.
From late March, American Express Card members and retailers will be invited to test out this latest promotional activity.

Twitter has also announced that they will launch this initiative more broadly to additional areas outside of the US during the second half of 2012.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards

Daniele

GASP Customer Service Simply Not Good Enough In the Current Day

People, who have followed my writings in articles and on this blog, will know full well the importance I have always placed on the absolute necessity for maintaining unflinching levels of customer service and civility to you customers and prospects alike.

In light of this, it will come as no surprise that I am appalled to hear about the recent events taking place concerning Chadstone store of GASP clothing, as seen on the Sunday evening news on February 12, 2012.

In September 2011, an incident occurred between a customer and a staff member, where the staff member incredibly told the customer that the clothes were too exclusive for her. In a time of economic uncertainty and ongoing hard times in the retail sector, such comments barely seem believable.

Specifically the attending salesperson is reported to have said:
"Look at what you're wearing. Let me find you something to wear so that you can dress good for once in your life!"

In an amazing follow up to this incident, management have responded to a complaint made by the customer that can only be described as incomprehensible.

One would assume that put in this position; management would be focused on putting the incident to bed, but not so.

In fact the GASP spokesperson had this to say in response:

"Keara (O'Neil) and the three bridesmaids came into the store and were making a mockery of the dresses," he told Sunrise.

"The women's behaviour had the potential to bully other customers who wanted to a buy a dress and the incident had been Ms O'Neil's fault because she had not visited the store with a "positive approach".

"Some people come into the store who don't want to turn heads, who don't want to stand out from the crowd and that's not what we sell," he said.

He went on to add:

"Our shops are packed, everyone knows us now and I can't thank her enough for what she did for us," he said of Ms O'Neil


I will leave it to each of you to think about whom you believe and how credible this response is.

Suffice to say in a world of social media and unprecedented networking, I believe the market will have the final word and the GASP management will come to understand the value of humility and modesty as these events work their way through the various social platforms.

I suspect Decjuba and other up market rivals will be rubbing their hands together with glee.
I mean it's not every day your rivals display such unrivalled contempt for customers.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

New Social Media Guidelines for the Pharmaceutical Industry

After a long, two-year period,the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced new social-media marketing guidelines for pharmaceutical firms that market their products to doctors, and depending on the country, patients.

The FDA posted its 'Guidance for Industry' in response to ongoing requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices" in the Federal Register.

The 15-page FDA guidance addresses only off-label information, laying out instructions for pharma companies on how to respond to consumers seeking information for a prescription drug other than what it is indicated for.

That is, in a very rudimentary example, if a consumer asked a question on Facebook or called a pharma company's 800 number asking whether it was safe for men over the age of 50 to use Botox, a representative for Botox-maker Allergan could certainly answer the question. However, if the consumer asked whether the use of Botox also helped grow hair on balding men, the representative should refer the consumer to the Allergan website on use and safety information.

Big Pharma, which spent $1 billion in on-line promotion last year and will grow to h $1.52 billion in spending by 2014, has been set by the lack back guidance and ambiguity on social-media use.

going to be like Nike or Apple and say whatever we want in social media. The rules haven't changed for us -- it's the same rules this industry has for traditional media."

I guess it will still take a little longer to see what else the FDA comes up with in the future but for now it seems that pharma firms still need to be vigilant and continue to market their brands cautiously.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

LinkedIn Shown To Be Better For Lead Generation

The last few years has increasingly demonstrated the value of social media marketing sites for generating qualified leads for businesses. However the comparative benefit of the various mega platforms was until recently not clearly expressed.

However a recently released study conducted with over 5,000 businesses by leading Social Media firm HubSpot, has demonstrated that traffic from LinkedIn was found to generate the best visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher (277%) than either Facebook (.77%) or Twitter (0.69%).

As well when you looked at all the traffic that came through on all platforms, LinkedIn's conversion rate was again better than social media in total, with LinkedIn having a 2.74% vs. 0.98%.

Perhaps we should have been able to predict that LinkedIn would have been the most efficient, lead generating engine in the social media realm.

After all LinkedIn is about business and professional networking. Unlike the others, it has never pretended to be anything else. The reason you join LinkedIn is to raise awareness amongst your target market about you, your firm, your brands, Etc. And from the perspective of the person seeking you out whether it be another business or consumer, their focus is also going to be shall we say 'transactional'.

Suffice to say, what ever other social media platforms you're on, LinkedIn is now a must.
And what about for you. What has been the most effective social media or other lead generator?

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.