This article was created by Hubspot and based on US statistics but it applies just as strongly here in Australia.

Yellow Pages used to represent the final stage of the buying process when people were ready to make a purchase decision. But today the buying process is no longer a linear path ending with the book. Instead, it follows the curves and tools of emerging online technologies.

Some Quick Facts:

Since 2007, many states quit printing residential listings or have pending requests: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Traditional land lines are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10% each year.
Consumers increasingly consider online services before Yellow Pages as they make purchase decisions.
“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” — Bill Gates.
Buying behavior is changing rapidly as people shift their research and shopping habits from traditional marketing channels to the Internet. Consumers can educate themselves more than ever about a product or a service before they make a purchase decision. They compare prices, check customer reviews, read case studies and receive instant responses to their queries. It is just a matter of time for this change in buying behavior to hit your industry.

Some Industries Have Already Tipped

The shift in consumer behavior has already reached some industries, such as the travel industry and catering. These businesses rarely buy Yellow Pages ads because calls don’t come in that way for them. In the travel business, a number of online tools have emerged to make the buying process more engaging and educational. All of a sudden, sites like Priceline.com and TripAdvisor offer tons of valuable content for travelers. Couples preparing for their wedding celebrations also gravitate to the Web for catering information and honeymoon destinations.

Some Industries Are Further from the Tipping Point

There are businesses in the Service industries that haven’t fully experienced this shift yet. Plumbers and contractors, for instance, still dominate the phonebook. If you are looking to renovate your bathroom, it can difficult to find enough information about it on the Web. There isn’t enough local content online to provide consumers with the same shopping experience as what the travel industry offers.

But it is a matter of time for this new buying behavior to slowly make its way to all industries. Then, the question you will need to answer is, “Where on that line am I?”

Huge Opportunity Lies with the “Untipped” Industries

A great marketing opportunity lies with the industries that haven’t tipped yet. If you are ahead of the curve and following closely the shift in consumer behavior, you can own this new space and become a trusted advisor online. You will gain a huge competitive advantage rather than trying to catch up with competitors who have been more aware of the changes in buying processes.

As Andrew Quinn, HubSpot’s Sales Training Manager with 16 years of experience in the Yellow Pages industry said, “The market is not going to go backwards and reverse itself.” That means you will need to step up.

When was the last time you used the yellow pages, except for a door stop?

My recent YouTube presentation for the Mandurah PWN was a lot of fun and the crowd was great and very enthusiastic. So I’m expecting to see some great YouTube videos coming out very soon I think!

I showed a couple of example of popular viral marketing YouTube videos that proved very popular so I thought I’d put some of my favourite ones up here to share with everyone. The takeaway from the presentation and these videos proves that it doesn’t matter if your company is B2B or B2C; anyone can create a marketing video for YouTube that will drive traffic to your website.

Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.

We’re not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it. Followed by over 200 video responses posted on YouTube to Tweets and Facebooks posts from fans, this is possibly the most successful social media campaign ever!

Blendtec – Will it Blend? – iPhone

Everybody knows that the iPhone can make phone calls, play movies & music, surf the web, and a lot more. But, Will It Blend? That is the question. A huge YouTube success story.

The T-Mobile Dance – Liverpool Station

Watch the moment Liverpool Street Station danced to create this special T-Mobile Advert. Life’s for sharing.

United Breaks Guitars – Dave Carrol

A classic example how a customers bad experience and using the power of social media to get revenge can damage a brand. The video went viral with over 9 million views and turned into a PR nightmare for United Airlines. When the video took off United was swamped with thousands of complaints from other angry customers. Pay back is a bitch! It also resulted in a huge boost for Dave’s career!!!

Piano Stairs – Volkswagon

“Take the stairs instead of the escalator and feel better” is something we hear but didn’t often see until this sly video from Volkswagen appeared on the Web. It’s part of an inspiring campaign, The Fun Theory, that encourages people to come up with fun ways to “do good.” The video itself did well indeed, imbuing Volkswagen with a fun new ethos and racking up millions of views in the process.

Inspired Bicycles – Danny MacAskill

Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen.

Extreme Sheep LED Art – Samsung

They took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts!

Wine Library TV – Gary Vaynerchuk

While not technically Youtube any more Gary Vaynerchuk took his family business from $4m in sales to $60m by just shooting videos of himself tasting wines and posting them online. He’s up to 915 videos!

This is a really great insightful post showing how businesses and brands are used and seen by people on Facebook. This article was written by Adam Ostrow the Editor-in-Chief of Mashable. Have a read and let me know what you think. How do you interact with your favourite brands or your customers? What’s worked for you.

While much of finding what works for your business on social media sites is a process of trial and error, recent stats from email marketing firm ExactTarget (which recently acquired social CRM platform CoTweet) shed some light on how the Facebook population uses the site and how it interacts with brands.

First, the good news: based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38 percent of online U.S. consumers “Like” (formerly “Fan”) a brand on the social networking site. And the average fan Likes nine different brands, giving you plenty of opportunity to find your way into potential customers’ news feeds.

The news that presents a challenge to businesses looking to benefit from Facebook, however, is that just because someone has liked you doesn’t mean they’re ready to see your promotional messages. Citing an earlier study, ExactTarget reports that 70 percent of consumers don’t think becoming a fan equates to opting in to marketing.

Fortunately, ExactTarget didn’t stop there, and did some research into what motivates users to Like companies on Facebook. The results offer some insight into what you can do as a business to keep the fans you accumulate engaged and not hitting the “hide” button in their news feeds. Here’s the breakdown of why users might “Like” your brand, illustrated by the percentage of respondents who said that they use Facebook for the listed activity:

40 percent to receive discounts and promotions
39 percent to show my support for the company to others
36 percent to get a “freebie”
34 percent to stay informed about the activities of the company
33 percent to get updates on future products
30 percent to get updates on upcoming sales
29 percent for fun or entertainment
25 percent to get access to exclusive content
22 percent someone recommended it to me
21 percent to learn more about the company
13 percent for education about company topics
13 percent to interact

On the surface, some of these findings seem to conflict with the idea of users being resistant to marketing messages. But the real takeaway is that users like brands for a wide variety of reasons, and the mix of content you post to your Facebook page should reflect that.

There’s a bit more to it than that, however, if you dive further into some of ExactTarget’s findings relating to demographics and usage patterns. For instance, 65 percent of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school – typically meaning early morning or evening. That means that if you’re making social media only a part of a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work day, you might be missing out on connecting with consumers during the times they’re likely to be online.

There are also differences in how men and women use the site, with women indicating that their primary focus on the site is on maintaining relationships (by a margin of 63 percent to 54 percent), implying that they have less time for engaging with businesses.

Hopefully, by combining some of these broader findings with your own analytics and anecdotal successes and failures, you can refine your strategy to grow both your fan base and your levels of engagement.

Want to know how to use video to harness the power of social media?

On Wednesday the 22nd September at Forte Mandurah Quays Resort I’ll be hosting a seminar for the Professional Women’s Network on “How to use YouTube to enhance SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and drive more traffic to your website.

The PWN has opened its doors up to the men again so invite your partners, bosses, husbands and friends to this “too good to miss” event.

Here’s what you can look forward to:
1. Introduction – Samples of successful YouTube campaigns and channels
2. Choosing your topics – what do your customers want to see?
3. Shooting your video – How to make a great 2 min video
4. Creating you own YouTube Channel – Where you will host your epic productions
4. Optimising for SEO – (This is where the power is!)
5. Building a base of viewers – Creative ways to “seed” your video
6. Embedding videos into your website and social media – Sharing the video and creating links.

$15 for Chamber Members, $20 for Non Members
Includes canapés – drinks can be ordered from the bar.

Bookings are essential.

Please book by emailing paulinebright@actioncoach.com
OR phone Pauline Bright on 0413 739196

Bouvard Cruises in Mandurah started their journey down the Social Media marketing road late last year by firstly creating a Facebook business page closely followed by a blog called “Mandurah’s Dolphin Blog”, a YouTube Channel and a Twitter account. The strategy was to use the blog to record sightings using photos and videos then use their Facebook and Twitter pages to share the information and drive traffic to their website.

The Rewards

10 months later and they are now seeing the rewards. Over the 10 month period the Dolphin Blog has become the highest referring website for sending visitors to the Bouvard Cruises website, followed by Experience Perth then their Facebook page. They have seen a 72% increase in visitors to their site since last year and it’s still climbing!

But it gets better!

Using Google Analytics to monitor traffic to their website we’ve seen in the last 3 months their Facebook page has overtaken the Dolphin Blog as their highest referring website, it actually referred 3 times as much traffic as their second referring website. In fact their Facebook page sent more visitors to their website in the last month than the combined total of their next 8 referring sites! As far as traffic sources go only Google is higher than their Facebook page!

So what does this tell us?

A social media strategy used effectively drives traffic to your website.
A Facebook page is a powerful marketing tool. Combine it with a blog for more power.
If you don’t have a Facebook page or a blog or a social media strategy… you are missing out.
If you have a Facebook page and a blog keep using it.
Make more postings, monitor them daily and interact with your customers who make posts and replies.
Make it part of your daily office marketing routine to check your Facebook page first thing every morning and again last thing in the afternoon. Make at least 1-2 post a week and make sure respond to yours fans posts and questions.
Most importantly stick at it!

This all this proves that a social media campaign involving a clear strategy is a very powerful marketing tool that drives customers to your website. Just ask Rod!

Just recently I’ve been talking with a few of my clients about the benefits of email marketing and using it in combination with their social media strategy. We were discussing how valuable their email databases were and that they are the most powerful marketing tool they have at their disposal and if used properly with social media can bring huge returns.

So I thought I would share this post I came across on Hubspot that discusses this very topic, it’s a good read.

The following is a guest post from Amy Garland, marketing manager at Blue Sky Factory.

Social media is on the minds of marketers everywhere. With its increasing popularity, marketers are thinking, “We need to be on Twitter! Let’s create a Facebook fan page! Crank out the viral videos!” Unfortunately, this often has no strategy behind it, and organizations are flying blind on the social web. While social media isn’t “killing” email like some people seem to think, it is causing email marketing to be ignored.

Email marketing is the digital glue that holds the social web together. It’s the currency of all accounts, the only common denominator of all social networking sites. You can’t sign up for an account on a social media site without an email address, and each one has an email component (e.g. you receive Facebook friend and LinkedIn connection requests through email). Unfortunately, many marketers are forgetting about email marketing as a key component to online marketing and new media.

So why should you, as a marketer, care about email? I’ll let the following numbers speak for themselves.

• Email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, and is expected to return $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. (Direct Marketing Association)

• 89% of retailers cited email is the most mentioned successful tactic overall. (Forrester Research and Shop.org’s Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report)

• 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline as a direct result of receiving an email from a retail company. (Epsilon – 2009 Report)

These are some convincing numbers, but what exactly is it about email marketing that provides such a high ROI and positive response from subscribers?

It’s permission-based. Well, it should be permission-based. (On a recent webinar, I heard Mike Volpe, vice president of marketing for HubSpot, say email marketing is like the phone; it can be used for good or evil. This statement is sad, but often true.) If you grow your list organically and subscribers have given you explicit consent to communicate with them via email, then you have an audience that is asking for information from you. (Sounds like a little something called inbound marketing, huh?) If your subscribers have asked to receive your emails, then they’re much more likely to open, click-through, and share your emails, ultimately resulting in a higher ROI.

It’s subscriber-driven. One of the best things about email marketing is that your subscribers tell you what they want from you, how often they want it, and in what form (e.g. newsletter, product promotions, or upcoming webinar notifications). This information can be collected at the opt-in, through subscriber preferences, or with a periodic survey sent to your email recipients. By being able to choose how they receive your information, subscribers are more likely to engage with your emails. Engagement in itself gives feedback with each send. By using your email platform’s reporting tools, you know how your campaign performs by looking at metrics including opens, click-throughs, conversions, and even unsubscribe rates.

It’s easy. Yes, folks, email marketing is easy. They key to email marketing is sending timely, targeted, valuable emails to subscribers who have asked for them. It’s not difficult to provide your audience with relevant emails based on their preferences, past purchases, activity, etc. Segmenting your database and taking a few extra steps to do this will drive more subscriber engagement and more purchases.

Now don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not saying you should solely focus on email and ignore social media. These two channels can and should be used together, not only with tools like Share with Your Network (SWYN), but also by repurposing the content, cross-promoting the channels, and cross-pollinating your audience. More on this in a future blog post, but for now, I’ll leave the email and social media topic with these statistics:

• 75% of daily social media users said email is the best way for companies to communicate with them, compared to 65% of all email users. (MarketingSherpa – 2010)

• 49% of Twitter users said they made an online purchase because of an email, compared to 33% of all email users. (MarketingSherpa – 2010)

Email and social media are like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, milk and cookies, the list goes on. They are simply better together.

Take a step back and think about your online marketing strategy and campaigns. Are you using email marketing to its full potential? If not, how can you better use this channel to engage your audience?

Amy Garland is the marketing manager at Blue Sky Factory, a Baltimore-based email service provider. Follow Amy on Twitter: @amygarland.

I was just discussing with a friend the benefits of blogging and how it makes your website dynamic and more enticing to customers and search engines. Our talk reminded me of this post by Hubspot that I came across recently.

Many companies have useful content on their websites, but having good content is no longer enough.

The problem with many companies is not that they are incapable of entering the content mindset. It’s that they stop having this mindset once they launch their site.

Websites are static, but blogs are dynamic. All these companies need to do is turn their static content into dynamic content.

3 Reasons Why Your Website Content Should be Dynamic

1. It Keeps Your Visitors Interested

You want people to have a reason to come back to your website. If your website content is static, visitors can just browse your site once and they’re done. But if you’re putting out new content all the time, they have reason to come back. And if your content is truly interesting, they’ll even subscribe to your updates via RSS or e-mail and refer it to others.

2. More Pages = More SEO Juice

Each blog post is a new page that search engines see, and therefore a new opportunity to get found online. Packing as much content as possible into a just few pages is not an effective search engine optimization strategy.

3. Incentive to Create More Content

After companies pack their websites with useful content, they often avoid adding new content to their sites. If you don’t have a blog, adding more content means redesigning the site and complicating the layout.

Shouldn’t you put yourself in a position that encourages you to provide more useful information to your site visitors?

Presenting the dynamic parts of your site in a blog will help you gain followers, improve your SEO, and encourage you to produce more useful content for your site visitors.

Your website should contain some information about your company, outside of your blog. However, this should be reserved for basic information that does not change often. The information that does change, such as news, offerings and events should be in a blog.

Many companies are already doing the right thing by offering useful content. They just need to make the change from presenting information in a static way to doing so dynamically through a blog.

This blog post is courtisy of Hubspot

Have you ever wondered if you should get a Facebook page for your business? Not sure how it works or how it can help your business? Here is a great video showing how Facebook makes it easier for businesses and brands to connect with their consumers.

While Social Media is all the talk right now and everyone is saying you must be on it, knowing what it can and cannot do is vitally important to your marketing strategy. You should always enter anything with your eys wide open so you wont be disappointed. Knowing what it can’t do will help you to unleash it’s full potential.

This article was posted on Mind Sprout Marketing Blog

Social Media Can’t…

Replace A Marketing Strategy
Social media is powerful, but it isn’t a stand-alone substitute for a marketing strategy. Effective marketing strategies can and should incorporate social media elements. However, simply launching a StumbleUpon account or Facebook Page isn’t going to cut it.

Deliver Instantaneous Success
Creating a Twitter account and expecting a few tweets to have followers flocking to you is unrealistic and highly improbable. Social media is a marathon, not a race and it takes time to cultivate a presence and following. Be patient with social media and you’ll be generously rewarded in return.

Guarantee Influence
Just because you believe that your business, product or service may be heads above the rest, doesn’t mean that others will. Social media is a jungle and it takes an expert guide to navigate the landscape. But even the most seasoned social media consultants can’t generate an interest if the masses don’t care.

Can’t Save A Sinking Ship
If a brand or business is going down, implementing a social media campaign isn’t going to make much of a dent in repairing the damage. Remember, transparency is critical with social media. Neglecting to be open an honest with your audience can permanently tarnish your reputation.

Be One Person’s Responsibility
When a business becomes involved with social media, each employee becomes that company’s social media ambassador. It’s up to everyone to promote the brand, not just the social media consultant. Social networking can greatly enhance social media efforts and it’s important to bolster initiatives by getting involved in positive and meaningful ways.

Social media isn’t a miracle worker, but it’s a definite must-have component for any good marketing strategy.

The original video was first released in August last year and has been viewed over 1.8 million times. It was arguably one of the best social media videos ever. It turns out things are changing so rapidly in the Social Media world that in only 9 months the statistics are outdated so creator Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has updated and refreshed the video….. and here it is!

This video is a fantastic resource to explain the benefits of Social Media and what the future holds for us in business. If the exponential growth in the last 9 months is any indication and the adoption of Social Media to come, expect version 3 to be coming out very soon!

Spread the word my friends, if your business doesn’t embrace Social Media what will happen to it?