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15 Ideas to Grow with
Digital Marketing
Take your business to the next level with these online marketing tactics and tools.
15 Ideas to Grow with
Digital Marketing
Take your business to the next level with these online marketing tactics and tools.
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Welcome to Digital Marketing
Until recently, most small and medium-sized businesses could surviveand, in some
circumstances, thrivewithout investing much time or money into marketing. A typical
small business owner might place a few newspaper ads, attend some trade shows, or send
direct mail with coupons or discounts to incentivize new business. Tactics like email mar-
keting, social networking, search engine optimization, and large-scale public relations,
however, were left to the big boys with the big budgets.
Today, thanks to the Internet, social media, and marketing
software, the marketing game has changed for businesses
of all sizes. Smaller businesses need to go beyond a single-
channel marketing strategy.
With 1 billion Facebook users worldwide and social networks
like Twitter continually gaining traction, customers and
prospects of almost any business can be cost-eectively
accessed and engaged online. According to Nielsens
recent State of the Media Report,
1
social networks and
blogs reach nearly 80 percent of active U.S. Internet users
today, a population that exceeds 245 million people.
2

Your customers, prospects, and inuencers are more
accessible than ever.
If youre not doing anything to interact with and inuence
them, youre missing a huge opportunity to grow your business.
There is no need to abandon tried-and-true marketing
tactics like word-of-mouth, referral marketing, and cou-
poning. In fact, you now have modern channels like social
networks, inuencer engagement, online PR, and email
marketing to drive them and multiply their eectiveness.
Growing your business with online marketing doesnt have
to be dicult. As this guide will show, the right technology
and a little knowhow can transform you into a marketing
pro, without killing your budget or hurting your other day-
to-day business goals.
This guide will help you apply 15 modern marketing and PR
tactics to engage your key customers and the people who
inuence them. Each tactic will include the best practices,
tips, and knowhow you need to create positive buzz in your
marketplace and drive new business to your front door.
Build Online Inuence Through
Creative Social Marketing
The power of social media is undeniable. Just ask
Denver-based hamburger chain Smashburger and its
senior vice president of marketing, Jeremy Morgan. He told
USA Today that the company largely credits its incredible
growth over the last ve yearsfrom three restaurants
in 2007 to more than 150 locations todayto its social
media outreach.
3

Specically, Morgan says the companys social strategy has
helped it create valuable inuence over engaged commu-
nities who express an interest in its product. That inuence
has manifested itself into tangible value. With a Facebook
following of close to 90,000 fans, Smashburger can inex-
pensively deliver special oers and incentives that are more
likely to convert into direct sales at its restaurants.
Of course, inuence isnt simply a byproduct of being
on social media. To create it, you need to rst develop a
following thats large and engaged enough to receive and
respond to your messages. Even then, true inuence only
happens when you do things on social media that resonate
with and provide value to your target audience.
1 Nielsen, State of the Media: Social Media Report, 2011; http://bit.ly/nIBdRv
2 Internet World Stats, June 2012; http://bit.ly/WkAo
3 USA Today, Small Businesses Using Social Media to Grow; http://usat.ly/xvPJOi
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software

Growth Tactic: Hold a Twitter Chat to Drive
Engagement and Inuence
A Twitter chat is an interactive conversation
held at a specic time on the social net-
work by using a pre-determined hashtag
(you might know it as the # sign).
Twitter chats can cover just about
any topic and are a great way to
network with customers, increase
inuence, and share key knowl-
edge, including information about
new product features or big industry
news. Best of all, you dont need a
fancy venue and trendy drinks to spark
a lively discussion.
Dont have a Twitter account yet? Signing up for one is sim-
ple and, conveniently, its about all you need to host a chat.
That being said, youand your customerswill get the
most out of your Twitter chats if you keep these ve things
in mind:
1. Choose the right Twitter account:

If you have per-
sonal and business Twitter accounts, make sure you
choose the one that makes the most sense for the chat.
Generally speaking, a company account is the most
logical, but there are meritslike creating authenticity
and thought leadershipto hosting a chat from your
personal Twitter account.
2. Know your theme: Like a great party, your Twitter
chat should maintain a specic focus. And it doesnt
have to be all business, either. If youre a small online
wine retailer, you could host a chat about your follow-
ers favorite vineyards, or the best places to visit for
wannabe sommeliers.

3. Create a suitable hashtag:

No idea what a hashtag
is? You might know it as the pound mark (#), but its now
used by Twitter to identify specic keywords or topics.
Hashtags make it much easier to host Twitter conversa-
tions because they allow chat participants to follow the
conversation via Twitter search by simply typing # and
the keyword you gave them. As a best practice, keep
your chat hashtags short and catchy.
4. Invite followers to the party:

Regardless of how
compelling your chat topic is, no one will participate if
they dont know that its happening. Promote the chat
on your blog, Facebook page, website, and, of course,
Twitter account. And dont forget to include the chat
name, hashtag, time, and date in every post.
5. Pick a chat style and timeframe:

You can choose
one topic, pose a specic question, and ask people to
answer that question only for a specic period of time.
Or you can simply identify a broad topic and encourage
everyone to engage in a free-owing conversation.
Ultimately, the best style depends on your company,
the chats participants, and the topic youve chosen.
Its also important to set an ocial ending point for the
conversation so that participants can set aside time to
engage with you.
The bottom line is that Tweets drive buzz and engagement.
Additionally, hosting a chat can help you appear more
accessible and authentic, while also allowing you to build
valuable thought leadership.
Vocus @Vocus
How #PRWeb news
releases kicked of
the Harvard Rugland
#YouTube
Vocus @Vocus
Have you registered yet? Join us
Wednesday to learn how to read
customers minds w/ search data.
#TweetChat
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
ASK THE EXPERT: What should companies
do when a Twitter chat ends?
Companies can do a lot after a chat to
continue engaging with their audi-
ence, but one of the best tactics is to
move the conversation to a diferent
platform. For example, invite your
chat participants to join you on your
Facebook page, or pin images that
relate to the chat on their Pinterest
account. It doesnt really matter
where you go (it could be in your
store), the goal is simply to keep
customers talking if they have more
to say.
Vernica Maria Jarski, Senior Editor and
Writer, MarketingProfs
Attract More Customers
Through Facebook
Today, almost every company with a sliver of social savvy is
on Facebook. In fact, according to a recently released social
media study from Vocus and Duct Tape Marketing, Facebook
is now the most commonly used social network among SMBs,
with 73 percent reporting they currently use it.
4
That said, simply using Facebook as a branding or customer
engagement tool is very dierent from using it to extract
real bottom-line value. This social network can be a valuable
customer acquisition tool for small businesses.
Growth Tactic: Fuel Customer Acquisition with
a Facebook Contest
While a companys Facebook fans will often visit its page to
view pictures and read up on new product releases, studies
have shown that one of the primary reasons customers
click Like is to gain access to special oers, promotions,
and exclusive contests.
That shouldnt be shocking to small business owners, who
have used similar direct mail or in-store contests for years
to drive new customers through their doors. A Facebook
contest is very similar to those types of oine incentives,
contests, or sweepstakes; its just executed through a social
network.
Now, that doesnt mean you should head over to your
Facebook page and start an exclusive contest right now.
Facebook has specic contest terms and policies that com-
panies must adhere to, and breaking any of those rules
might result in your page being shut down. To run a contest
with the hope of growing your fan count and fueling new
customer acquisition, its important to keep a few dos and
donts in mind:

DONT use Facebooks platform directly to host
the contest. Using the social networks like, share,
or comment button as a voting mechanism is a direct
violation of Facebooks promotion rules.

DO use a third-party application to administer
contests, promotions, and sweepstakes. As long as
that third-party application is collecting votes, com-
ments, and entrant information, you can host a contest
on your Facebook page.

2
4 Vocus and Duct Tape Marketing, Dierent Paths to Social Media Inuence, 2012; http://bit.ly/SbJcPe
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software

ASK THE EXPERT: Whats the secret to run-

ning a successful Facebook sweepstakes?

To be efective, your Facebook
sweepstakes must be timely, relevant
to your target audience, and unique
to your business. If your sweepstakes
is lacking in any of these three areas,
you wont see the desired results.
Plain and simple.
Corey OLoughlin, Marketing Manager,
MarketingProfs

DONT contact contest winners through Face-
book.

Direct messaging, chatting, posting on
the winners wall, or posting contest winner informa-
tion on your wall are all violations of Facebooks pro-
motion rules.

DO include a complete Facebook contest release.
For a contest to be legal, it must acknowledge that your
companys promotion is not sponsored, endorsed,
administered by, or associated with Facebook.

DONT select a fan at random for a sweepstakes
prize. Again, that would qualify as using Facebook to
collect entrant information and would be a violation of
its rules.

DO follow-up with entrants after the contest is
over.

While Facebooks contest rules dont allow you
to do that through its platform, a third-party app can
help you collect valuable lead information. After the
contest is over, use that info to contact non-winners
and oer them incentives that might encourage them
to become new (or better) customers.
Remember, while a Facebook promotion, contest, or sweep-
stakes can be a highly eective lead generation and customer
acquisition tool, there are rules that limit how you can execute

3
them. As long as you do your homework and partner with a
quality third-party Facebook contest app, you should have
nothing to worry about.
Need help?
Whether you need a sweepstakes or a way to make
direct sales from your Facebook page, the Vocus
Marketing Suites set of 18 Facebook apps can help.
Easy and intuitive to use, the suites apps help you tell
your story, capture new leads, and spread the word
about your business. You provide the content; Vocus
does the rest. Its the only tool you need to harness the
marketing power of Facebook.
Learn More About Your Market
with Monitoring
While digital marketing requires you to
nd new and unique ways to converse
with your customers, its also important
to stop talking long enough to listen. No
conversation can be truly engaging if one
party is doing all the talking.
Gathering critical customer feedback
and intelligence is now easier than ever,
thanks to the range of online monitoring
tools available to you. The issue for many small
and medium-sized businesses, however, is how to best
collect that consumer feedback and data, and turn it into
something meaningful and useful.
Growth Tactic: Capture Customer Sentiment
with Social Media Monitoring
Monitoring customer sentiment and market trends isnt
new, but with social media, its now easier to do. Twitter and
Facebook allow you to legally and ethically eavesdrop on
whats being said about you online, and to gather a more
personal portrait of your primary audience without having
to execute costly market research.
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
bigger and better is the way to go. With more fans and
followers, you can build more inuence online (see tactic
#1) and access a deep reservoir of potential and current
customers to drive your growth.
Do not engage in the practice of buying fans and followers
simply to appear more inuential. While it might be tempt-
ing to buy 5,000 new Facebook fans from some unscrupu-
lous online company, your investment will be worthless if
those fans dont care about your business. Take the follow-
ing route instead.
Growth Tactic: Grow Your Twitter Following
Quickly and Organically
According to market research rm Chadwick Martin Bailey,
high quality Twitter followers are 50 percent more likely
to buy products from the brands they follow than their
non-follower counterparts.
5
Furthermore, 60 percent of a
companys followers are more likely than non-followers to
recommend the business to their own friends.
Translation: Acquiring more Twitter followerspro-
vided theyre real people and not fake accountsmeans
more referrals and more sales. So how can you turn your
companys Twitter prole into a must-follow account?
Here are ve simple steps:
1. Dene your audience:

Whether you tweet about
a specic industry or a personal interest like running
or cooking, your audience will dene the people you
follow and the types of messages you tweet.
2. Create a compelling prole:

When Twitter users
are deciding whether or not to follow you, theyll look
at your bio, prole picture, and background. Make
sure that all three are an accurate reection of you and
your business.
3. Start tweeting:

Potential followers will also quickly
examine your tweet history and the types of content
you share. Make sure to be personal and real, without
being self-promotional.
Social media monitoringusing software to observe, listen
to and analyze what social users are saying about youis
one of the most eective ways to do it. If youre just getting
started with social media and the thought of a full-blown
monitoring campaign scares you, give these four beginner
tips a try:
1. Develop a keyword list:

Think about the words,
phrases, and terms that your customers might use to
talk about your brand, business, products, or industry
as a whole.
2. Choose a social media monitoring tool:

You dont need to immediately invest in soft-
ware, but it is smart to use an online tool to
monitor social sentiment. Many service
providers oer a free trial or demo
of their product.
3. Establish monitoring objectives:

In other words, what do you want to
discover? Some goals might include
tracking public sentiment about your
brand, responding to customer feedback, or
following key industry trends.
4. Start listening and analyze the data:

Ideally, the
social media monitoring tool you choose will be able to
analyze and aggregate data for you and nd points of
commonality. In the end, that will help you understand
trends and themes without having to read every social
comment or mention.
By now, most companies understand the importance of
social media. But if your business is simply using social media
as a bullhorn for updates, news, and self-serving announce-
ments, and ignoring the listening aspect, youre missing a
huge opportunity.
Grow Your Fans and Followers to
Create Brand Loyalty
As many small businesses know, bigger isnt always better
but when it comes to social media followings, however,
4
5 Chadwick Martin Bailey, 2012; http://bit.ly/PF9biI
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Growth Tactic: Monitor Customers Buying
Signals with Social Media
If someone walked through your
business door, spent an hour
looking at a product, asked you
to tell them more about it, and
nally asked you how much
it cost, youd feel good about
your chances of closing a sale.
Those buying signals would allow
you to provide more information to
this potential customer and help them
along the sales process.

While those in-person buying signals can be tougher to
detect online, they exist. You just need to know how, when,
and where to look for them. Using software designed to
pick up on those signals is the easiest option, but here are
two buying signals you can watch for manually on your
social networks:

Engagement frequency:

If a particular fan or follower
repeatedly comments onor retweetsyour posts, or
they engage with every post about a specic product,
thats an indication of serious buying interest. If you
see this buying signal, dont go crazy trying to oversell
yourself on social media. Treat the customer online like
you would if he or she walked into your store. Continue
to provide more information and invite them to email
or call you directly if theyd like to chat.

Question or comment specicity:

Its one thing if a
fan or follower simply likes a funny photo or retweets an
interesting post that has nothing to do with your busi-
ness. Its another thing if a fan or follower comments
on a post about one of your products and asks specic
questions about colors, sizes, or features. Specicity is
a clear signal that youve got a buyers attention and
they want to learn more. Similar to the previous signal,
you dont want to go overboard selling yourself right
away. Instead, simply engage that fan or follower and
continue to monitor their interest.

5
4. Find relevant people to follow:

Perform a simple
Twitter search with keywords or hashtags that are rele-
vant to your business, and follow people that are talking
about those things.
5. Reply, retweet, and engage:

Ultimately, if you want
to build a loyal following, you must make sure youre
participating in a two-way conversation. That means
replying to or retweeting your followers tweets, or
thanking your followers for sharing your content.
As a general rule of thumb, make sure you tweet at least
once a week. Once a day is more ideal, but dont go over-
board. If youre tweeting every minute of every day, your
messages will be less impactful. Your end goal should be to
balance quantity and quality to acquire relevant followers
that may ultimately become loyal customers.
Need Help?
Building your social media presence can be time-con-
suming. The Vocus Marketing Suites Recommendation
Engine makes it easy for you. It identies infuencers to
engage with, content to share, and conversations to
joindelivering you a stream of easy, step-by-step
recommendations that result in social media success.
Find Your Most Likely Customers
Online
So far, weve looked at why building a big online following
can benet your business. However, for that following to be
truly valuable, your company must be able to convert that
loyalty and interest into revenue.
To do that, you need to actually be able to nd the fans,
followers, and blog readers who are your
most likely customers, and identify
the buying signals that indicate an
interest in purchasing your prod-
ucts or services.
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Remember, while having a big following is great, it wont do
your bottom line much good if that following isnt actually
comprised of paying customers. So, just as you would in
your store or in a business meeting with a potential client,
recognize potential social buying signals and ask yourself
one key question: What do your fans and followers really
want from you?
CASE STUDY: How Vocus Recommen-
dation Engine Helped Purple Trout
Widen its Social Net
When search engine optimization
rm Purple Trout signed up for
Vocus Marketing Suite in March
of 2012, the companys president
and founder, Steve Phillips,
wasnt sure how quickly he
should realistically expect the
software to produce results.
Within a month, he had his answer.
After a few days of using Vocus Recommendation
Enginethe softwares built-in social media consul-
tant that helps users nd and engage new customers
on social mediaPhillips found a user on Twitter
who was struggling with Googles recent update and
needed SEO help. Through Vocus, Phillips was able to
identify that buying signal, follow the user, answer
their question publicly, and start a private conversa-
tion via Twitter.
Less than a month later, that person and their com-
pany became a client of ours, Phillips says. It was
unbelievable. We didnt have to do a face-to-face
with them. I didnt go y to see them somewhere. We
connected through the Vocus Marketing Suite, and
from there it took o.
Now, going on Vocus is the rst thing Phillips does every
morning. I make coee and I go to the Marketing
Suite, explains Phillips. In 5 to 10 minutes, Im able to
look for opportunities to engage potential customers
and identify people that are interested in our industry,
and I start having conversations with them.
Attract Search Customers with
Market Expertise
In the not-so-distant past, if a potential customer had a
question about your products or wanted to learn more
about your services, they had to either walk through your
front door or call your customer service line to get answers
or advice. Today, that same customer can simply perform a
Google search, read a few Yelp reviews, or poll their social
networks to achieve the same results.
According to an August 2012 study by Forrester Research,
82 percent of U.S. consumers now research products
online before actually buying them. Yet, interestingly
enough, 54 percent of those buyers still prefer to purchase
products in-store after researching them on the Web.
6
For
small and medium-sized business owners who used to (or
in some cases, still do) rely on foot trac or phone calls
to interact with customers during their research process,
those are critically important statistics that point to the
importance of standing out in search results.
So, how should you take advantage of your customers
pre-purchase research?
Growth Tactic: Plan and Execute a
Company Blog
Business blogging used to be a painstaking activity best
executed by larger corporations with the time and people
to produce regular, relevant blog posts. However, thanks
to free blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger,
and Tumblr, businesses of all shapes and sizes can blog
with ease.
Blogging isnt just about composing a couple of rambling
posts each week and publishing them randomly. To suc-
ceed, you need to be focused, dedicated, and committed
to a specic blogging game plan. Here are ve tips to help
you do that:

Set clear goals: Its not enough to just have a blog.
You need to know what you want it to accomplish. Do
you want to boost website trac? Do you want to build
6
6 Forrester Research, August 2012; http://bit.ly/SIH0CC
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Multiple studies have shown that companies that blog
attract more organic Web visitors than those that dont,
while frequently updated blogs have the most SEO
success. In other words, if you want customers to nd your
business while theyre researching similar products online,
start blogging.
Attract New Customers in Social
Outposts
Most businesses are now active on the major social networks.
To stand out online, try getting creative and building a
presence on outpost sites.
The Web landscape is full of outposts that attract a wide range
of specic buyers. Some ock to photo-sharing websites like
Flickr and Instagram, while others congregate at niche blogs,
community websites, industry forums, and lesser-known
social networks. The challenge for business owners is identi-
fying which outposts their target customers visit most often,
and formulating a strategy for communicating with them
where they are.
Growth Tactic: Collect Fresh Leads with a Slide-
Share Guide
SlideShare, acquired by professional networking site
LinkedIn in 2012, is the worlds largest online community for
uploading and sharing PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and
webinars. As of February 2012, it had more than 60 million
users and continues to be one of the fastest growing social
networks on the Web.
Best of all, its incredibly easy to use. In about an hour, your
business can craft inexpensive visual contentlike a guide
to buying a new bike or tips on keeping your lawn green,
for instancethat engages current and potential customers
in a very unique way. To get started, just follow this
ve-step process:
1. Revise your slides:

If youre uploading an older
PowerPoint presentation, chances are that it centers
on high-level talking points that you would expound
on in a person-to-person meeting. You dont have that
your reputation as a thought leader? Regardless
of your goal, dont start writing until you
know what you want the blog to produce.

Identify your audience:

Knowing
who youre writing for will help you
develop a theme for your blog and
the posts you write. If your customers
identify with certain subjects or topics,
or if they seem highly interested in
the photos and videos you share on
your Facebook page, make sure you
consider those things as you create your
blogging strategy.

Choose your blogging platform:

Whether youre
considering blogging platforms like Wordpress,
Blogger, or Tumblr, or simply making the blog a separate
page on your website, make sure to evaluate the merits
of each option and choose the one that makes the most
sense for your business. Consider your blogging style,
the goals youve set for the blog, and the customers
that will be reading it.

Start slowly:

While its important to post to your blog
regularly, you should start with a reasonable posting
schedule and build your stamina from there. If you start
o by posting too often, youll quickly exhaust your
queue of blog ideas and you might experience blog-
ging burnout.

Research, listen, and participate:

Take a few hours
to read prominent blogs and forums in your industry.
Browse their post topics, read comments to gauge how
customers respond to each post, and, if its not a direct
competitor, join the conversation in a non-promotional
way to begin establishing credibility. Doing that will
teach you how to interact with customers on your blog
and provide fodder for future blog post ideas.
The business benets of blogging are numerous, but theres
one thats particularly relevant for this section: Search
engines love blogs, and they reward companies that
regularly maintain them.
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software

luxury on SlideShare, so make sure to amend, build on,

or delete any slides that seem vague or confusing.
2. Create a catchy title:

Think about the keywords that
might lead a potential customer to your presentation
and include them in your slideshow title and cover slide.
Also, make sure your title slide is eye-catching, and
that it gives users a compelling reason to click through.
3. Upload and tag presentations: After you sign up
for a SlideShare account, you can begin uploading
presentations in a variety of document formats. For
each upload, be sure to select an appropriate category
and assign the document multiple relevant keywords
to increase its chances of appearing in search results.
4. Include images:

Some of the most viewed and
shared presentations on SlideShare go beyond bullet
points and extensive copy. They are highly visual, using a
mix of photos, infographics, charts, and screenshots to
illustrate a point. If possible, liven up your presentations
with the same types of visual content.
5. Share your presentation:

Look for the various share
features alongside each of your uploaded documents
and share them with your Twitter followers, Facebook
fans, and personal network. Its also easy to embed
presentations on your
blog or another website,
upping the likelihood that
your customers will get a
chance to view it.
At the end of your presenta-
tion, dont hesitate to include
your contact information and
encourage users to reach out
to you directly if they have ques-
tions. At rst glance, SlideShare might
seem like a PowerPoint presentation archive, but its much
more than that. If used correctly, it can help you boost your
messaging, help you engage with a very targeted audience,
and increase your new leads.
ASK THE EXPERT: Why should SMBs use
SlideShare?
One study has shown that visuals are
processed 60,000-times faster by the
brain than plain text. For that reason
alone, Im a huge fan of SlideShare.
Its a visually-driven content channel
and, as that number shows,
visual content can be the gateway to
improved customer interaction and
content digestion. At MarketingProfs,
SlideShare has been a great source of
new leads for us.
Ann Handley, Chief Content Ofcer,
MarketingProfs
Make Headlines with a
News Release
Some modern marketers will tell you that traditional public
relations is no more. Old school PR rms that were simply
press release factories are falling by the wayside, while
some reporters and editors view corporate news releases
as overproduced content unworthy of coverage.
We assure you that PR is not deadits evolving. The new
digital buying cycle has changed the rules and made PR
more accessible. Today, any business can create an online
press release to attract customers. Millions of
consumers now read press re-
leases directly on websites like
Google News and Yahoo! News.
If a story is well written and stra-
tegically distributed, it can reach
your audience without a journal-
ist or news organization distribut-
ing it for you.
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Growth Tactic: Newsjack a Big Story to
Get Seen
First dened by marketing and PR expert David Meerman
Scott in a 2011 book by the same name,
7
newsjacking is
a process by which a business can inject its own ideas or
angles into breaking news. You do this by publishing an
online press release or blog post commenting on the story;
this content then shows up in Google searches alongside
news coverage.
As well as getting you seen by customers on search
engines, newsjacking can generate media coverage or
online buzz that attracts even more customers to nd your
business through your content.
Never heard of newsjacking, or maybe youre not sure how
to get started doing it? Its not as complicated as you might
think it is. Here are three steps for creating big-time PR buzz
through newsjacking:
1. Find the right news to jack:

Not every piece of big
breaking news is jackable. Its critical to make sure that
the topic is relevant to your business and customers
in some tangible way, and that you can comment on it
without sounding fake or spammy. So, how do you nd
those topics? Monitor keywords or phrases in Google
News, follow certain Twitter hashtags, and track popular
media outlets that cover your industry. If you see some-
thing that might apply to your business, go to step 2.
2. Act with a sense of urgency:

In order to get your
news release or blog post noticed when big news events
occur, youve got to be one of the rst businesses
to pull the trigger. That doesnt mean you should hastily
rush to create a poorly composed blog post. It does
mean that you cant aord to be hesitant. To success-
fully newsjack a story, speed is vital.
3. Include the right keywords:

If the news youre trying
to hijack involves a specic company, organization, or
keyword, make sure to creatively reference them in
your blog post or news release headline, and several
times in the rst few paragraphs. You want journalists
or customers who are looking for more information on
a specic piece of news to easily nd your content.
Newsjacking is a perfect example of modern PR. It incor-
porates some basic tenets of traditional public relations,
but is more eective because of the speed and agility of
digital media. If youre able to successfully attach your busi-
ness to a breaking news story, you can quickly create buzz,
climb search rankings, and connect with new customers.
CASE STUDY: Making News in Search
Rankings With a Seasoned PR Partner
In early 2006, leading national rental
management company Resort-
Quest recognized that it had a
signicant marketing problem.
In an industry where prospective
customers conducted much of
their research for potential resort
destinations by performing Google
searches, ResortQuest lacked the search results it
needed to be seen by those customers.
Thankfully, John Ellis, ResortQuests online marketing
manager, had a plan. The company began to use PRWeb,
the Vocus online news release service that helps busi-
nesses create, distribute, and track online news releases
to gain publicity and exposure on the Web.
After some early testing and experimentation with
the software, Ellis began creating and distributing
link-rich press releases using PRWebs system. Before
long, Ellis began seeing increased trac to Resort-
Quests home page, while several of the companys
other landing pages were bubbling to the top of
search results. Within six months, the company had
several pages consistently listing in the top 10 of
search engine results pages.
Today, ResortQuests prospective customers have no
trouble nding the companys Web pages in search
results. Today, we are in the top ve rankings with
hundreds of quality keywords, Ellis explains. And
its largely because of ResortQuests relationship
with PRWeb and the quality of the press releases
were able to create and distribute.
7 David Meerman Scott, 2011; http://bit.ly/wHjLrx
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Score Local Publicity by Working
with Inuencers
While direct-to-consumer tactics and more social engage-
ment helps you converse more personally with your cus-
tomers, the benet of good, old-fashioned local publicity
is still important.
After all, in our conversation-fueled world, what you say
about yourself on your website and social networks is not
always what counts. Sometimes, its what other key inuencers
saythe journalists, bloggers, or community members who
have the ear of your prospectsthat really matters.
Growth Tactic: Pitch a Local Reporter on Twitter
Inuencer marketing is the targeting of
people who inuence your customers
opinions in order to amplify your mes-
sage. Pre-Internet, this task was
mostly executed through tradi-
tional PR tactics. Today, however,
you can engage inuencers through
a range of channels including
social media.
One of the best channels for doing that is
Twitter. Its an ideal observation and conversa-
tion platform, and all you need is the account information
of your local media inuencers (news anchors, business re-
porters, food critics, etc.) to build relationships with them.
As you begin to build those relationships, the next step is to
pitch your most inuential local reporters on your companys
latest big news. To do that, keep these three tips in mind:

Demonstrate your knowledge of their audience:

If you know that a reporters following is particularly
responsive to a specic topic, draft a pitch thats
relevant to that topic. For example, if you run a nancial
services consultancy and the reporters tweet history
is heavy on saving for college, customize your Twitter
pitch to include a college savings message.

Make yourself accessible:

Journalists work on tight
deadlines. They cant wait weeks, days, or, in some
circumstances, hours for you to respond if theyre
interested in your story. When you send your pitch,
make sure you encourage them to contact you at their
convenience and be ready to respond when they do
whether thats minutes or months later.

Dont be a pest:

Most reporters dont mind if you
send them a follow-up tweet or two after youve
pitched them. But if they dont respond, assume that
theyre not interested in your idea for now. If you
continue to badger them about your news on Twitter,
youll risk spoiling the relationship.
Knowing how to pitch your story idea to journalists can
make the dierence between them pursuing it and using
you as a source in their stories, and them rejecting it or
ignoring you altogether. Ultimately, if you treat reporters
with professionalism and respect, theyll probably return
the favor to you. It might not yield publicity after your rst
pitch, but it will pay dividends at some point in the future.

Stay Top of Mind (Without
Annoying Your Customers)
Customer attention is eeting in the digital marketing
environment. Brand loyalty still exists, of course, but custom-
ers are constantly bombarded by marketing messages and
distractions. You need to refresh your customers loyalty
and awareness constantly.
Staying top of mind can be a ne line to walk. Contact
customers too frequently and you run the risk of annoying
them and driving them away. Dont contact them enough
and you risk losing their loyalty.
9
10
13
15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
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newsletters have high deliverability and open rates,

you need to build a positive record of sending solicited,
relevant emails that opt-in customers and prospects want
to read.

Establish a reasonable rhythm:

While you dont
want to bombard your email newsletter subscribers
with multiple emails per day, you should also avoid the
opposite extreme of sending just one or two a month.
If your email newsletters are too infrequent, your cus-
tomers may forget why they signed up for your news-
letter in the rst place and immediately delete your
message or mark it as spam.
Email remains an extremely eective and popular marketing
tactic. According to a Forrester Research study released in
2011, 88 percent of direct-to-consumer companies used or
planned to use email marketing last year, while 71 percent
of business-to-business companies did the same.
8
Those numbers wont decrease anytime soon, especially as
inexpensive email marketing software continues to make the
practice simple and cost-eective for smaller businesses.
ASK THE EXPERT: Why should
SMBs be using email marketing?
Its simple: Email has a proven return
on investment (ROI) that, according
to the Direct Marketers Association,
was $40.56 for every $1 spent in 2011.
Theres no more tangible way to
illustrate its value to SMBs with tight
marketing budgets than that. Email
marketing is really the original social
channel and people still use it
every day more than any other
social network. It ofers the kind of
reach and intimate engagement
that a lot of other mediums still
struggle to provide.
DJ Waldow, Founder and CEO, Waldow Social

8 Forrester Research, How US Marketers Use E-Mail, 2011; http://bit.ly/TY905N

Need help?
When you need to connect and stay connected with
customers and prospects, email delivers results. The
Vocus Marketing Suites helps you create exceptional
email campaigns with a huge range of professionally
designed templates, easy segmentation, social media
sharing, and real-time analytics to measure your results.
Growth Tactic: Create and Send a Regular Email
Newsletter
One of the most eective email marketing tactics for smaller
businessesboth in cost and reachis an email newsletter.
Similar to the print newsletters of yesteryear that businesses
used to send out, an email newsletter is simply a daily,
weekly, or monthly update sent to a list of subscribers. It
might contain company news, helpful tips, exclusive infor-
mation, customer testimonials, and event information.
If its managed eectively, an email newsletter can be a
great way to consistently engage your customers and pros-
pects, and regularly provide unique value to them without
wearing out your welcome. Here are three simple tips that
should set you up for email newsletter success:

Provide incentives for customers and prospects to
opt-in:

One of the easiest ways to drive your customers
away is to send email updates that they dont want to
receive. Make sure you only send your email newsletter
to customers and prospects who have voluntarily opted
in to receive it. How can you encourage customers to
opt in? Oer them a special gift for subscribing. It doesnt
have to be anything major. A little something like a
discount on merchandise or a subscribers-only coupon
can go a long way.

Guard your reputation:

Email providers like Gmail
and Yahoo rate you as an email sender based on the
reputation of your domain (your companys web-
site name) and your Internet protocol (IP) address.
If your email newsletters are sent too often and go
frequently unopened by recipients, you may be
blocked by Gmail or Yahoo. To ensure that your email
14
15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
simple: people scan their inboxes quickly. If your subject
line is long, it will exhaust your customers attention span
and prompt a quick press of the delete button.
2. Avoid words that trigger spam lters:

While some
words will obviously alert the spam police (use your
imagination), many seemingly innocuous words like
free, video, and sample seem to be the arch-enemy
of email spam lters. Its also a good idea to avoid any
punctuation or symbols.
3. Dont be afraid to mention your companys name:
This is especially true for smaller businesses; it reminds
customers of who you are and why youre emailing them.
Also, it helps create much-needed brand awareness.
4. Create a sense of urgency: Action-oriented words
are highly eective subject line fodder. Theyre far
more successful (and less spammy) than words like
free in inspiring subscribers to open the email. Use
words like today and now that convey urgency and
prompt immediate action.
5. Test dierent subject lines and analyze which
ones resonate:

Dont use the same subject lines all the
time, even if they are proving moderately successful.
Experiment with a few dierent subject lines and test
which ones yield the most click-throughs. Think about
which words or phrases prompt you to open emails and
try using those in your subject lines, as well.
Great subject lines arent rocket science, but they arent
accidental either. The best way to create subject lines that
truly resonate with your subscribers is to put yourself in their
place and think about the things that matter most to them. If
you can address those issues, in a compelling way and in 30-
40 characters, youll stand a far better chance of having your
email read.
Improve Your Eectiveness by
Measuring Results
For many small and medium-sized businesses, executing a
multi-channel marketing strategy can be so taxing that when it
Be Inuential in an Inbox
Still not convinced by the case for email marketing? Here are
a few more email marketing statistics from a recent
Direct Marketing Association study:
9

Compared to other forms of
online marketing, email marketings
return on investment$40.56 for
every dollar spentis nearly double
its nearest competitor ($22.24 for
Internet display advertising).

Commercial email drove an
estimated $63.1 billion in sales in 2011,
compared to $57.8 billion in 2010.

Email marketing is projected to directly
inuence $67.8 billion in sales in 2012, while the Direct
Marketing Association predicts that number will be $82.2
billion in 2016.
In other words, email canand willinuence your cus-
tomers buying decisions if your messages are compelling,
timely, value-driven, and relevant. Of course, if no one
opens them, youre wasting your time.
Growth Tactic: Grab Attention with Better
Email Subject Lines
The subject line is the only part of your email that you can
guarantee a customer will see. It is the gateway to the oers,
news, tips, coupons and incentives in your email. It will often
determine whether your email is read or discarded.
Even experienced email marketers agonize over subject
lines, where one right (or wrong) word can be the dier-
ence between an open or the trash bin. Here are ve simple
subject line rules to ensure that you get the click-through:
1. Keep subject lines short and sweet:

Depending
on who you ask, a subject line should be no less than
20 characters and no more than 60. As a general rule
of thumb, somewhere between 38 and 47 characters
is a nice median. The argument for short and sweet is
11
12
9 Direct Marketing Association, The Power of Direct, 2011: http://bit.ly/qXjgok
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
comes time to measure a campaigns results, the analysis is of-
ten executed ad-hoc or ignored entirely in favor of gut feeling.

Thats a big mistake. While instinct and common sense can
occasionally be eective, the only way to truly know whether
your marketing activities are hitting their mark is to use
objective measurements that validate your assumptions.
Growth Tactic: Use Simple Analytics to
Perform an A/B Split Test
Retail and direct-to-consumer companies
have used A/B testing for decades to ana-
lyze dierent direct mail campaigns or
oers. At its core, A/B testing compares
a control sample to other samples to
measure the one that performs best
with a target audience.
One type of A/B testingalso known
as split testingincludes sending out the
same email oers with dierent subject lines and mea-
suring the open and click-through rates of each. A/B
testing does come with one warning, however: For the
inexperienced, it can get complicated pretty quickly.
So, if youre just getting started with A/B testing, dont go
overboard. Stick to these three tips to perform a straight-
forwardbut highly informativeA/B test:
1. Dene your theory and your success metrics
before you start:

If youre testing three possible call-
to-action buttons on your website, it can be easy to
assume which one will work more eectively before the
test begins (see: Gut feeling). To avoid that, develop
hypotheses that address those assumptions and estab-
lish success metrics that will ultimately validate them.
Success metrics could include specic actions (clicks,
downloads, or purchases) or numbers (time spent on
the website or bounce rate), but they should always
align with your companys goals.
2. Acquire enough data to establish signicance: In
order to make a truly objective assessment of a particular
90%
65% A
B
13
marketing activity, you need to acquire enough data
to fairly represent your target audience. For instance,
if youre trying to analyze the messaging on dierent
website landing pages and those pages end up getting
very little trac, its going to be very dicult to glean
anything signicant from the data you collect.
3. Remember that theres no such thing as an unsuc-
cessful test:

Even if your test is inconclusive, its still
valuable. Ultimately, that test showed that the element
you were testing is not as important or impactful as you
suspected. That will allow you to refocus your attention
or energy on something else.
Metrics and analytics are part of our everyday lives, tracking
everything from our heart rates to our bank balances.
Keeping tabs on those numbers allows us to better plan for
the present and the future, and your business should view
its marketing metrics and results the same way. If you dont,
then you wont be able to detect problems when they arise
and youll decrease the eectiveness of your marketing eorts.
Need help?
To understand which elements of your marketing cam-
paigns are making people click, share and buy, you
need analytics. The Vocus Marketing Suite tracks and
measures how prospects react to your marketing giving
you a quick overview of which tactics are working best,
making it easy to improve your results every time.
Attract Customers with
Content Marketing
Though its just now becoming a best practice, the basic
concept of content marketingcreating and distributing
relevant content to engage your audiencehas been around
for years.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content
marketings roots trail at least as far back as 1895, when John
16
15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Deere published its rst branded magazine for an audience
of outdoor enthusiasts and farmers. That spawned an era of
custom corporate publishing in the 20
th
century, which car-
ried over to the new millennium when Microsoft launched
the rst major corporate blog, Channel 9, in 2004.
10
Today, any company can be a content marketing champion,
and you dont need a small army of writers and editors to do
it. You simply need to examine the types of contentthat
could be a video, a tweet, or a blog postthat help your
customers with the information they need.
Growth Tactic: Content Curationan Easy
Entry to Content Marketing
For smaller businesses that dont have
the time to compete with larger compa-
nies producing libraries of fresh, custom
content in-house, content curation is
the answer.
To understand this tactic, imagine being
the owner of a high-end art gallery. Rather
than forcing your customers to chase down the worlds
best new art, you sift through the art landscape for them,
curating the best pieces and centralizing them in one place.
Bringing it back to marketing, you can do something similar
with your blog, collecting and sharing third-party content
that your customers are interested in. As well as driving
trac to your blog, curation is a cost-eective way to build
thought leadership and brand awareness.
Before you go o simply hijacking other experts con-
tent, however, be sure to understand these four steps to
perfect curation:
1. Identify: Be sure the content you curate is relevant to
your audience and helpful in some way. Research shows
that people are more apt to click on an article that they
agree with than one they disagree with, so consider
curating content that will conrm your customers opin-
ions or feelings about a specic topic. Also, only curate
content from high-quality sources that you and your
customers can trust.
2. Summarize:

Dont be a plagiarist. By taking a few
minutes to quickly summarize the content youre
curating and add your take on it, youll boost your
credibility as a trusted source and increase your posi-
tion as a thought leader. You dont need to reinvent the
wheel and write a 10-paragraph post, but you should
do more than simply copy and paste someone elses
content. Give credit where credit is due.
3. Organize:

As you build a rich library of relevant con-
tent, youll need to organize it in a way thats easy to
nd and digest. You might categorize curated content
by topics or specic customer questions, and make it
simple to search for or click on. Dont lose track of your
archived contentsome of it will be useful for years
to come. Give that content a home on your blog or a
specic section of your website, and it will pay search
engine dividends long after you originally curated it.
4. Share:

This is the easiest step. To be truly eective,
you should commit to sharing your curated content
regularlyeither through an email newsletter, your
social networks, or your blog. If you fail to do that, your
chances of becoming a reliable source of information
for your customers will go down, causing them to look
elsewhere for that content.
With so many companies publishing and sharing content,
many users feel swamped with information. Content cura-
tion presents an opportunity for you to provide respite for
your prospects and customers, giving them one trusted
source for all of the information they need.
10 Content Marketing Institute, 2012; http://bit.ly/ArF0JO
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Help Customers Find Your Content
Content is the lifeblood of modern online marketing. It
boosts brand interaction, brand awareness, thought lead-
ership, and your chances of inuencing customers. Of
course, thats assuming that your customers nd it.
Optimizing your content for search engines and social media
is the easiest way to guarantee this will be the case. To do
it, the rst step is to consider how and why your customers
search for content, and which terms or keywords are most
relevant to them.
The basic idea is to monitor specic keywords that are
relevant to your business and use them in your content
headlines, social media posts, and website copy. By doing
that, youll greatly improve your contents reach and its
chances of getting found and shared.
Growth Tactic: Optimize a YouTube Video for
Search and Social
According to YouTube, more than
72 hours of video are uploaded to
its network every minute and over 4
billion hours of video are watched each
month (yes, you read that right).
11
Its
a crowded environment that can be
hard to stand out in.
Sure, you occasionally see a random cat ghts dog or girl
runs into tree video go viral. But for every one of those,
there are thousands of videos that go completely unno-
ticed. If youre not optimizing your video for search and
social, the likelihood is your video will go unnoticed, too.
Here are ve steps of basic optimization to make sure that
doesnt happen:
1. Write a strong script:

One of the worst things you
can do is simply turn on your camera, press record, and
tape ve minutes of improvised, incoherent rambling.
Any optimization eort begins with crafting a concise,
informative script that will produce a video your cus-
tomers will want to watch and share.
2. Add a caption track:

Currently, search engines
cannot decipher the audio in your
video. They can, however, read
uploaded transcripts that cover
the videos main talking points
and include your important key-
words. Be sure to do that before
you publish your video.
3. Give the video a search and social friendly title:
Truly optimized headlines are concise, compelling,
and keyword-rich. Identify the keywords that are most
relevant to your audience and the video itself and
use thosealong with your company namein the
video title.
4. Write a compelling description for your video:
Your video description is your sales pitch. It will
convince your audience to watch it, while also making
the video more visible in search results. As with any
piece of content, be sure to avoid keyword stung
the practice of jamming every imaginable keyword into
a paragraph and calling it search optimized. Keyword
stung fails to accurately describe the video and also
sends a red ag to spam-policing search algorithms.
5. Apply relevant tags:

This is where you can insert
keywords that might attract your target customers.
Choose the most relevant keywords for your video and
make sure you place quotes around multiple words
that you want treated as a single phrase.
Whether your video has the production value of a Holly-
wood blockbuster or a home movie, if you dont optimize
it, it wont have the reach and impact that you desire.
The same goes for any content format, so be sure to take
the tips above and customize them for all of the content
you produce.
14
11 YouTube, 2012; http://bit.ly/gzYBVx
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15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
Turn Your Customers Into Customer
Evangelists
For all of the amazing new online meth-
ods that marketers can use to reach,
engage, and inuence customers,
nothing seems to drive sales
like a customer professing
their love for your business
to their friends, families,
and networks.
Its known as customer
evangelism, a term that Ben
McConnell and Jackie Huba
popularized with their 2002 book,
Creating Customer Evangelists: How
Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales
Force, and its marketing gold. While you cant buy or pay
for customer evangelists, you can create more of them by
providing great customer service, engaging in authentic
conversations, and selling fantastic products and services.
The more customers you convert to customer evangelists,
the more outspoken lobbyists your company will have. You
cant overestimate the organic impact those folks can have
on your bottom line. The question is how to best leverage
your evangelists loyalty once you have itwithout over-
stepping your bounds?
The Solution: Crowdsource a Marketing
Campaign
Twenty years ago, businesses were in charge of the
messages their customers received. They either interacted
with them directly or used one-way marketing to deliver
the message they wanted their customers to hear.
Today, your customers are piloting the plane. They choose
when to interact with you and when to absorb your
messages. There is, however, a way to collaborate with your
customers in a way that harnesses their insight, power,
and inuence to execute authentic, cost-eective
marketing campaigns.
Its known as crowdsourcing, and its the practice of asking
your customer evangelists to generate new ideas, spread
your message, or directly participate in a specic market-
ing initiative. Crowdsourcing takes advantage of your most
loyal customers evangelism and converts it into a living
extension of your business.
Here are four simple steps to develop a high-powered
crowdsourced marketing campaign:
1. Select the appropriate platform to engage your
crowd:

There are numerous crowdsourcing tools that
can help you acquire the feedback and word-of-mouth
power you need. To start, you might survey opinions
on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or write a blog
post asking readers to submit ideas for a new company
slogan or logo, for example.
2. Prompt participation:

If youre using social media
to engage your customers, try drawing participants
into the campaign by oering incentives. Maybe you
let them get in on the ground oor by sampling
a new product and asking for feedback. Or
maybe you create a reward system
for every like on Facebook or
retweet on Twitter. Your goal
should simply be to craft a call-
to-action that encourages par-
ticipants to spread the word and
get involved.
3. Discern the gems from the junk:

Not every cus-
tomer evangelist is going to be the type of customer
you want trumpeting your brand on their social net-
works. You may even have competitors who pose as
customers in an attempt to derail you. Beware of short-
sighted or non-representative input, and keep an eye
out for customers who mightin an eort to support
youtotally misrepresent your business and its values.
4. Stake your claim:

If youre leveraging crowdsourcing
to acquire new logo ideas or website designs,
make sure to protect your rights against royalty
claims by drafting a legal disclosure that says all
submissions will automatically become your companys
intellectual property.
15
19
15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing
Marketing Software
If used eectively, your customers can be the most eec-
tive form of marketing your business can invest in. Addi-
tionally, by displaying trust in your most loyal customers
to help your business make key marketing decisions, you
can foster a deeper relationship with them and increase the
likelihood that theyll refer and recommend your business
going forward.
Next Steps
for Marketers
Marketing has changed.
In todays digital buying cycle, customers engage with busi-
nesses rst. Their decisions are shaped by recommenda-
tions on Facebook and Twitter, the information they nd
on Google, and the news and reviews they read onlineall
before a business engages with them.
Reaching them with the right message, in the right place
at the right time can be time consuming and expensive.
However, there are tools that help you do digital market-
ing. Better.
The Vocus Marketing Suite was developed to help small and
medium-sized businesses grow with technology by com-
bining search marketing, social media and publicity in one
integrated solution. Reach more customers, engage with
inuencers and grow your business fast with Vocus.
Connet with us:
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