Brand & Capture

The days of tracking performance merely by page hits, site visits and unique visitors is a distant memory. While these basic metrics are easy to track and report, they fail to show marketing’s contribution to the bottom line. Marketers are now under more pressure than ever to prove return on investment (ROI). And while marketers support the idea of data-driven decisions, significant gaps exist between desire and execution. The question often is not necessarily why, but how.

Social media as a marketing channel is beginning to show signs of maturity. The tools marketers can use to deploy and monitor campaigns are getting more robust, functional, integrated and powerful.  Strategies for social media marketing success are becoming more tried and true by the day. However, many misperceptions about social media marketing persist and continue to be evangelized by the species known as Expertum Social Medium.

Since the new Facebook timeline for pages rolled out, we’ve found an interesting trend on our own page and the pages of some of our clients. When a photo was placed “above the fold” by utilizing the “Pin to Top” option on your Facebook page - conversion rates on Sponsored Stories were significantly higher. With the upward trend in social photo content, it’s no surprise that the “like” rate is higher with featured visual content.

No, it's not a typo in the title. While most marketers are busy transforming themselves into digital natives, Chief Marketing Officers are dragging their feet. According to Marketing Daily, a recent IBM survey of 1700 CMOs around the world showed some surprising results. We might assume that those people responsible for steering the marketing ship would also be first adopters and change advocates. Quite the contrary.

OK for most of us it's the end of the 3rd quarter and for many it's the end of the fiscal year. Time to peruse the balance sheet and check out our corporate health or lack thereof. Did you know that your CFO also keeps a social media balance sheet? Alright, maybe not, but your CMO certainly should. Here's how to read one.

One of the most common questions we hear from clients and other inbound marketing agencies is "how much effort do we need to generate positive return on investment from inbound marketing?" Clients want to know how much to budget and when to expect to achieve their business goals. Agencies want to know how much to charge their clients and what resources are required to get the job done.

Happy Sunday, inbound marketing friend. How is your NFL preseason coming? In Cleveland, our foray into the west coast (offense) is off to a good start. Fingers crossed here. Red Right 88, The Drive, and The Fumble remind me that every ray of hope has some association with a dark cloud. No, it's not negativity - just reality -we love you, Cleveland.