Today, online marketing means not only being where your customers are, but also knowing the right ‘amount.’ Being on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are all great, but for consumers, it can sometimes be overwhelming. Remember that the goal of online marketing and social media isn’t to bombard customers and fans with your products and promotions. Just how no one likes pop-up advertisements and rarely go back to sites that have them, customers and fans will lose interest and more importantly trust in your brand if you are overpowering them with your message.

Successful social media and online marketing campaign should always do two things: Listen and Learn.

Why You Need To Listen

In school, the importance of listening skills are repeated over and over. Whether it’s lecture or a business meeting, listening to what others have to say is extremely important. With that said, listening to what your customers or fans are saying is extremely important. Ignoring what your market is saying about you is essentially turning your back on those that made you who you are.

For companies, the success of marketing campaigns are based on dollars and cents. With the evolution of online marketing though, this may all change. Because of the open communication lines online, consumer sentiment has a huge part in the success of products, campaigns, and brands. A great example of this is the impact that users on Twitter had on the highly controversial movie, ‘Bruno.’ In an industry that thrives off word of mouth advertising, Twitter users who voiced their negative opinions about the movie in turn dissuaded others from watching it. During that weekend, negative reviews of Bruno were rampant on Twitter and Facebook. Although the opening weekend was a huge success, the subsequent days following it were nothing short of disappointing. Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. Not only were critics uneasy about the content of the movie, but in the months leading up the movie, Facebook and Twitter users voiced their feelings about leaked content of the movie.

Learn

Aside from listening to what your online community is saying, learning from them is also a key component to online marketing. Studying trends and how audiences react to content is extremely important. Through empirical evidence, organization should always be aware of how markets, fans, and customers are affected by trends and changes. A great example of this is when Facebook decided to change their site design early last year. Although there appeared to be huge animosity toward it, statistics showed that there was actually a drastic jump in site traffic and registration that remained constant after the new site design. Remember that you should never take what’s on the surface and to always dig deep. Online marketing is not just about having great content and pushing it out there for the online world. It involves constant change and the ability to re-invent your campaign at any moment and still remain relevant.

As more and more companies continue to leave store-front businesses in exchange for e-commerce sites, one important question that these businesses must ask themselves is if they really understand their customers. While it is easy to say you made a hundred sales in one month, the more important question is why your customers chose to buy your products and how you can replicate the same results.

With user information becoming increasingly valuable, being able to understand your customers behaviors, trends as well as likes and dislikes can be the key to whether or not you have a successful business.

The Importance of Data

As a business, each and every user that visits your website forms a relationship with you. Some may be long-lasting, while others may be one time ‘flings.’ Whether it’s long-lasting or not, understanding the reasons behind this is important. By capturing visitor data, businesses can learn how to better improve both their marketing and product development.

On the marketing side, by analyzing data to find correlations between purchases, you can determine how you should proceed as far as allocating funds for online advertisements, adwords, and how items are presented to visitors. Additionally, product development can benefit from knowing specifics such as what accessories are most often purchased with certain purchases as well as how often users come back to buy a particular type of item.

Lower Bounce Rate, Increase Relevance

Aside from being able to better tailor your website to your customers individual preferences, knowing how customers interact with your website will allow you to best optimize your site for when a customer lands on your site for the first time. For example, if you know that 90% of users scroll down and click on the About Us tab, by moving the About Us to the top of your website you are increasing the chance that they will stay on your site since they don’t have to search around for it. Too often are website content with leaving things the way they are out of their own convenience which means they are missing out on potential sales.

When a consumer first arrives at your website, you typically only have between 1-3 minutes to ’show’ them something relevant to what they are looking for. If you don’t, the chances of them coming back your website are drastically lower.

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While it may seem difficult, there are many tools out there that enable you to understand your customers and allow you to optimize your site in real-time. Being able to tell others how much money you made is great, but being able to tell them how and why is even better.

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

You’re starting a company that sells lederhosen online. They are top quality lederhosen and you offer them at a reasonable price. What is it that is going to set you apart from the other websites that sell lederhosen? What is special about your offering? What is unique? These are things you should consider from day one: Before you build your website. Before you so much as have a business card made or choose the name of your company.

Every detail, major and minor, plays a part in defining the answer to the question of what it is that sets you apart: your brand. When people think of you they will create a collective image in their minds made up of reactions they have had on both conscious and subconscious levels to everything from the name of your company to the colors and fonts you choose to use on your website.

If you don’t take your companies brand into consideration right away, it can be detrimental. It’s a lot easier to create an image where there is none than it is to change one once it has already been made. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You can’t unring a bell.”.

Here are five questions that will help you start to piece together your companies brand:

1. If you had to define your brand with three keywords, what would they be? Think of it in terms of #hashtags on Twitter or tags in a blog post.
   
2. What is the demographic you are focused on reaching? Who is your audience? Consider their age, their income, their pop culture references, their political and social views, etc.
3. Who is your biggest competitor? What can you learn from their branding strategy? What was effective for them? What was damaging?
4. If your brand was a pictorial centerfold, what would it look like? Thinking about this will force you to consider visual imagery which will help when you are creating your logo and website.
5. Where do you see your company in 5 years? 10 years? Your brands message should be able to stand the test of time, and the choices you make now will act as a foundation to build the future of your company upon.

Even if you have already launched your venture, it is never too late to reconsider your brand. Altering the public perception can be challenging, but it is never too late. Don’t just accept the brand you have, dictate the brand you want.

Before you know it, all the cool kids will be wearing your lederhosen.

Meet Craig Newmark. You may not recognize him if he walked past you, but you’ve probably heard of the website he started. Craigslist. With an estimated 48.7 million people visiting his site a month from the U.S. alone, Craigslist is in a league of its own.

While it continues to climb in traffic, one thing continues to stay consistent: the lack of change. Unlike sites like Apple, where the main page seems to change every other day, Craigslist has had the same bland user interface that everyone has now become accustomed to seeing. Aside from minor changes here and there, Craigslist has made little change to their website for the most part. With no future plans to change the site nor many of its policies, with online engagement and social media on the rise, the question now becomes: What Would Craigslist Do?

No Thanks

“No Thanks.” That is the answer that you would probably get if you asked Craigslist about making a change to the site. Starting at first as an email distribution list for friends in 1995, Craigslist has gone through hundreds and thousands of ’suggestions’ with few changes since then.

Although Craigslist generates revenue solely through paid job ads in select cities, it’s not that they can’t find other means, it’s that they won’t. To many, this is mind boggling, but to Craigslist, its just another day. By no means should anyone worry though, analysts suggest that Craigslist will bring in over $100 million this year from their paid job ads.

Why They Won’t Change

No one can pinpoint the exact reason why Craigslist doesn’t take advantage of the many opportunities they have, but many will agree is that if Craigslist did decide too, they would change the e-commerce landscape.

With just 30 employees, Craigslist gets more traffic than leading e-commerce sites eBay and Amazon.com, each of whom have more than 15,000 employees. Take that into account also the fact that their customer service has been called out for being unresponsive and unhelpful along with it being accused of facilitating prostitution, it is incredible how far they have come.

Door Is Closing

As of right now, Craigslist is in a league of their own. They dominate their market in helping individuals conduct face to face transactions and have yet to have had a serious contender. Still, the question becomes how long will they go without a challenge. When MySpace broke out on the scene, they were seemingly untouchable. Then came Facebook and later, Twitter. Although Craigslist has ruled their market for almost 10 years, everyday they don’t make a move, someone else is.

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Craig Newmark may never be as recognizable as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but perhaps if he changed his name to Craigslist he would be. Nevermind, Craigslist doesn’t change for anyone. Even for Craig himself.

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

According to the Deloitte Annual Holiday Survey, consumers will be turning to social media sites to help handle their holiday shopping this year. 17% of consumers, to be exact. It comes as no surprise that more than half of these users will be searching for discounts and deals. The rest are looking for gift ideas, and stalking the wishlists of their friends and family members.

Online shoppers predict they will spend an average of $281 online during Q4 2009, a 24 percent increase over last quarter. [via]

In years past, consumers were doing research for purchases online, but still following through with the purchases in retail stores. In the current economic climate these offline consumers are turning into online customers.

It’s about time for a little optimism, don’t you think?

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