How to Measure Effectiveness of Your Marketing Campaigns (Guest Post by Gagandeep Singh) December 7, 2009

Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is imperative to determine how successful it is. But still, most business owners don’t track their marketing campaign results and keep on spending their money, without knowing whether the campaign is effective or not. Measuring the accurate performance of any marketing campaign is very difficult but with the following tips you can easily collect enough information from your marketing campaigns to take informed decisions.

Select Metrics: First of all, you need to specify which metrics you will use to measure the success of your campaign. These are determined by the objective of your marketing campaign. For example, if the objective of your marketing campaign is to increase blog readership, then number of subscribers should be used as metric. But if the objective of your marketing campaign is used to promote your Brand, then you could use surveys as a measurement to know about the improvement in popularity of your Brand after the campaign.

Predict Results: It is impossible to predict the results of a marketing campaign unless it is completed, but you can speculate what results which you think can be achieved at the end. Many business owners just say, “we want to increase blog readership, let’s place ads.” This is a very unscientific approach which could create difficulty in measuring effectiveness at the end. Be specific with your predictions. For example, say “we will increase blog readership by 30%.”

Divide and Measure: Each marketing campaign targets various locations and uses different sources like online ads or local newspapers to promote. Divide your Marketing Campaign on the basis of locations and then divide them further in to various means of Marketing and measure the results. This technique can provide you with lot of hidden information.

Here’s an example: you are promoting a product in Place X and Y, both online and offline. After seeing the results, you conclude that online modes of marketing work better in Place X, and in Place Y, offline ads convert very well. So in the future you won’t be wasting money on Offline Promotion in Place X or on Online Promotion in Place Y.

Calculate ROI: ROI also defined as Return of Investment. It is measured by Value of Customer divided by Customer Acquisition cost Multiplied by 100. For example, if your marketing campaign costs you $5,000 and you acquire 10 customers where each customer generates $1000 in profit for you. Then Your ROI would be 10,000/5,000 * 100 = 200%. Higher the ROI, the more effective your marketing campaign is.

Eliminate Unmeasurable Actions: Each marketing campaign contains some parts which can’t be measured directly. For example, if you place an ad on a billboard, you can’t count how many people saw that billboard. To help track this, issue a discount coupon code for your customers and track the success of such ads with the help of these codes. The success of any such ad would depend on the number of times a coupon connected to that ad would be used.

Test, Tweak and Retest: Keep on analyzing results of your campaigns and then make required changes. Sometime a tiny change in headline can make drastic improvement s in your ROI. So keep on testing your campaign unless you achieve desired results.

Gagandeep Singh is an Internet Marketing Executive for Fortepromo, which helps Small Businesses promote their brand with high-quality promotional items.

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Let’s Make a Scene! October 5, 2009

Every year, our local Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance hosts a conference that takes place over one weekend in October. There are discussions, workshops, and keynotes. Plus quite a bit of socializing and some alcohol consumption.

This year, in light of the drastic cuts to the arts, the theme of Making a Scene is THEATRE MATTERS! They keynote speaker is George Thorn, co-director of Arts Action Research out of Portland.

Here’s what his partner, Nello McDaniel, has to say about the work that they do there:

“ARTS Action Research believes that the challenges confronting today’s arts organizations demand that arts professionals and their community partners respond more forcefully and proactively than ever before. These responses must be complex not reflex, strategic not prescriptive, systemic not situational, studied and deliberate not imitative and tentative, and most of all they must be from the inside out, not engineered from a distance. The future demands that our organizational responses be as creative, bold, entrepreneurial, clear, courageous and adaptable as the art we produce, exhibit and present. ARTS Action Research is committed to an arts community that is artist-centered — led and directed by arts professionals.”

Pretty cool.

Also in the “pretty cool” category, Simon and I will be again on a panel discussing social media. On Saturday afternoon, October 31 (yes, Hallowe’en, and you are encouraged to come in costume. You’re actors, for pete’s sake!), at 1:30, we will be on a panel moderated by Sean Allen called The Power of Social Media.

Here’s the blurb:

The Power of Social Media:
We all know that Social Media is a good thing… right? But what can it really do for your organization besides take up time from your work day? Join us in this open forum as we share inspiring examples and inspire each other with stories of the power of social media for theatre organizations. Moderator: Sean Allan (Chair– GVPTA Advocacy Committee)

We will specifically be talking about The World Theatre Day blog and other success stories.

You should come. For more information, or to register: http://www.gvpta.ca

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A tale of two cities September 18, 2009

I did a lot of traveling in July and August, and I had two very opposite experiences that really affected me, and so I wanted to write about them.

In July, I had to go to Victoria to attend the opening of Itsazoo’s The Canterbury Tales. I’ve been to Victoria quite a few times before, but never to Mt. Douglas Park where the show was. Because it was an outdoor show, it started at 7 to take advantage of the light, so we didn’t have dinner before the show, thinking we’d grab a late one, after. By the time we chatted with the cast, then drove back to our downtown hotel, it was going on 9:30. We wandered around downtown Victoria looking for a place to eat, but everything was closed. The only options were fast food chains. Finally, after a lot of searching, we  happily found a pub, The Bard and Banker,where we had great burgers, Strongbows, all while enjoying live music.

Flash forward one week. We’re now in Hora, the main town of the island of Naxos in Greece. It’s our first night there, and

Grilled Octopus in Naxos

we go and find a taverna by the water around 7 and order grilled octopus and tuna. The place is basically empty, except for maybe two or three other customers. Later, after the sun set, that same taverna was full to capacity, and the streets were crowded with locals and holiday-makers going out for dinner.

Victoria, named after the British queen known for being extremely conservative, is often referred to as having a population of “the newly wed and nearly dead.” There is, indeed, a high percentage of retired ex-pat Brits, there, so my feeling is, there is no market for restaurants to be open past 8 pm. It’s part of the culture there.

In Greece, however, where the hottest part of the day is late afternoon, everyone goes indoors to rest, and gets up later, when the sun is setting, and the weather cools down, to go out for dinner. Again, it’s part of the culture.

It got me to thinking about looking at our market. Do you really know your market as well as you think you do? If I were opening a restaurant in Victoria, I would probably assume off the top that I could close early in the evening. However, by staying open later, I might find that I tap into a hidden market. I encourage you to talk to your clients, to survey them if possible, and find out what it is that they really want, if you can serve their needs better. I’m not saying that you should accommodate every single thing, because you also need a rest and a life, but you never know what new information you might learn by listening to what they have to say.

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The loves and limits of Facebook, Pt 2 June 10, 2009

Monday’s post was about setting up a group for your business on Facebook. Today, we’ll talk about the pros and cons of creating a Fan Page.

Why a Fan Page?

In the grand scheme of things, a Fan Page is probably much better for business than a Group. First off, you can really distance your personal self from your business on Facebook. Any emails or invites that you send out from your group will be specifically from you, and have your photo attached. Any emails or invites sent from the Fan page will come from the name of your Fan page, and the icon will be whatever image you choose for your Fan page. The second great advantage that a Fan page has over a group is that you are not limited by the number of fans you can have, whereas a group will limit you to 5,000 (like personal friends). Fan pages are indexed by Google (groups are not) and they also have metrics build in, so you can view your page view stats. All pretty useful stuff if you have a business (and if you are Facebook, helpful to sell PPC ads).

Creating a Fan page:

Start by clicking on the “Applications” menu in the lower left-hand corner. Now click on the option marked “Ads and Pages.” In the upper menu of that page, click on the link for “pages,” and then look for an oval that says “+ create page.”

Click here for a step-by-step tutorial.

Once your page is up and running, you can add things to it, similar to adding widgets to your blog, to customize it, and allow for a better experience while your clients are on your page. For example, you can add a discussion board, your Flickr stream, etc.

Once your page is up and running, you need to get people interested in “becoming a fan.” You can invite your own personal friends in a similar way as with setting up a group (except it’s called “Suggest to friends”), and you can, the same as groups, create events to which you can invite the members of the Fan page. However, it is more difficult to do bulk invites with Fan pages than it is with Groups. You should use the URL of your page on your website, blog, and outgoing email signature, as well, to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to connect with you.

Business applications:

As limited as I know Facebook can be, I still see it being very useful as a business application. If you don’t have a blog (and even if you do!), it is a great place for people in your community to connect. They can post comments on the wall, connect with other people who like your business, and it gives you the opportunity to be in touch with them, and let them know about upcoming events. This is all quite painless and doesn’t take up much time, if you have already done the prep work and created the infrastructure. As long as you are giving them good stuff, and reasons to come back and check, they will. And, knowing that 200 Million people (and potential clients) are currently on Facebook makes its potential nearly unlimited.

Ugly vs. Vanity URLS

Facebook just announced yesterday that, as of June 12, you will be able to have a vanity URL. Let me give you an example: here is my own personal profile URL on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=604312470&ref=name. Ugly, right? I could never say to someone at a networking event, “look me up on Facebook, I’m http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=604312470&ref=name.” There are ways (mostly using a redirect) to make your URL more customized and pretty on Facebook, but up to now, it’s been only in the realm of those who are fairly technically inclined (which I am not). As of June 12, however, I, along with everyone else, will be able to have a Facebook URL that will be similar to their Twitter URL: www.facebook.com/rebeccacoleman.

Thanks for listening, Facebook. Or being intimidated by Twitter, whatever works!

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Lessons learned from Wine country… May 25, 2009

Posts have been a bit sporadic this past week. Part of the reason for that is because I took a few days off last week (and

The Naramata Bench

by took a few days off, I mean, I took my laptop and blackberry with me, and still ended up doing a couple of hours of work each day–come on summer!), and my sweetie and I headed up to Penticton for some exploring and wine tasting.

If you visit the “Naramata Bench”, just a 10-minute drive from Penticton, there is a long and spectacular road with some two-dozen or so wineries. It is literally one winery after another, and some of BC’s best-know wines come from this region.

Kettle Valley Winery

We first wanted to visit the Joie Winery, but they didn’t have a wine shop, or tastings. We then ended up at  Kettle Valley. For $4 each, we got to taste an ounce of four different kinds of wines–two red, and two white. We didn’t love the wines enough to buy one, but we did participate in a Gewurztraminer slushy, which was extremely civilized on a hot day.

Detail of the Therapy sign

Next up: Therapy Vineyards. Located just up the hill from Kettle Valley, the experience couldn’t have been more different. Kettle Valley’s tasting room was a converted garage. It was a nice a garage, but it was still a garage. Therapy had a specially-built wine-tasting room and store. Tastefully decorated with a long tasting bar, here we got to sample a flight of 7 wines for $3. Therapy uses lots of clever names for its wine–Freudian Sip, Super Ego, and thier most popular, Pink Freud. The gal who poured our wines was able to tell us all about them in a very conversational way, without sounding like she was reading it off of a script. And she was a genuine wine enthusiast herself, telling us about her collection. The experience was very, very positive, and we left with bottle in tow.

At Therapy Vineyards

So, why am I writing a blog post about wine tasting on a blog that deals with business in the arts? Because these three wineries were stunning examples of enterprises that we can all learn from.

Joie is quite a successful, critically-acclaimed winery. My feeling is, they think that they don’t need to be so open to their clientele. They feel that business is good, they have a beautiful website and successful sales. For them, that’s enough. At Kettle Valley, I felt like they were maybe just going through the motions. You know: “you should really have a tasting room. It can help to boost sales.” But it felt quite cold and mechanical, without heart. Therapy was doing it right. They were open, conversational, and really let us see behind the scenes. And the result was, we bought in (literally). I will recommend this wine to my friends, I would highly recommend you visit the winery if you are ever in the area, and, in a sea of labels at the liquor store, that one will stand out for me because of its clever marketing.

I know you hear me talk ad nauseum about how all arts businesses should be involved with social media. The reason why is because it helps your clientele to get to know “the real you.” And when they do, they will buy in. And beyond that, become your ambassador. My experience at Therapy was so positive, I now consider myself an ambassador for them. All they are out is some employees’ salaries and 7 ounces of wine. And how much business will they get in return? That’s the hard part to prove, but I can guarantee you it will be more than the business that Joie or Kettle Valley will get from me.

Oh–and one more thing I learned–I apparantly get quite chatty after tasting 7 different wines.

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Mid-week Tim-… er, Tid-Bits April 29, 2009

I have a couple of things to share with you today, mid-week. No real theme, just some things that have come across my desk that I thought were worthy of sharing. So, hopefully you get something out of them…

1. Where Did I Spend it All?? A free financial forum for Women: If you are living in Vancouver, are female, and feel like you are affected by the recession, or you have money issues, you should check this out!

Full Figure Theatre is pleased to present Where Did I Spend It All?, an open and frank discussion on how women feel about wealth, assets, personal worth, and our relationship with money. Produced with the generous assistance of the Vancouver Public Library, the forum, which is free, will take place May 6, at 7 pm in the Alma Van Dusen and Peter Kay rooms at the Central Branch of the VPL
Hosted by Heath, the panel will also include: Lori Bamber (Freelance Writer), Melanie Buffel (Money Skills Facilitator), Karin Mizgala (Financial Educator), and Tracy Theemes (Financial Advisor).

More info: www.fullfiguretheatre.net

2. Mad Mimi Email Marketing: Any regular reader of my blog will hear me go on and on about two things: RENT and email marketing campaigns. I am single-handedly responsible for getting a bunch of Van Theatre companies to sign up for Constant Contact–I truly should be on a reward plan. While Constant Contact is certainly the industry leader, and it’s not-for-profit discount makes it attractive to theatre companies, it can be a tad, well, shall we say, busy? I prefer clean, simple graphics, so I often recommend IContact as an alternative. However, there’s now a new alternative to simple and clean: Mad Mimi. Check them out for yourself–prices are very reasonable, starting at $8/month.

3. Finally, I recently signed up for a PR Newsfeed, which I get daily, and it is rocking my world. This was an article that was highlighted in it  a couple of days ago. Published on  a blog called Conversation Agent, it’s called When is it a good idea to include Bloggers in your Media Outreach?, and here’s a sample:

I get my fair share of press releases every day – at the tune of 4-5 per day, in fact. The best word I can use to describe them by and large is unimpressive. “I think you’re fabulous” may seem like a good idea for a subject line, but if you cannot tell me why, as in what about my work makes you say that, you’re out.

That means you not only miss the mark on what I like to write about, you show lack of interest. It is clear I’m on a hit list, but there is no effort towards understanding why. The why is the reason your press release or pitch is going nowhere. Get that, and you will begin to have some success with bloggers’ outreach.

The best pitch is no pitch at all. The best pitch is in fact a conversation. One in which the writer can find a unique story to tell. One based on an ongoing relationship with someone who writes about a specific subject matter. If journalists and editors need to think about their readers, so do bloggers.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the strangest craving for TimBits…

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Demistifying Social Media: new date added! April 24, 2009

You can argue with me on this one, but I think, maybe, the two sweetest words in the English language are: sold out.

Simon Ogden and I got asked to do a workshop on using social media as a tool for marketing your art practice by our local Alliance For Arts and Culture, and it was embarrassing how fast we said, “hell, yeah!” The workshop was set for May 5, and I’m happy to report, that workshop is sold out. Us being the accommodating people we are, we promptly added a second date: May 12. So, if May 5 didn’t work for you, or you missed out on the first one, here’s your chance to check it out.

Read Simon’s post about his “Simonarer” here.

Read about the workshop and sign up for it here.

Wanted: Theatre Reviewers March 25, 2009

It’s a sad state of affairs, here in Vancouver. Theatre reviewers are becoming extremely rare. In the past few months, the Globe and Mail let go their Vancouver theatre reviewer, and cut their Vancouver theatre section entirely. Jerry Wasserman was let go from the Province, and now Peter Birnie, reviewer for our other major daily, The Vancouver Sun, has broken his leg, and is out of commission.

So that leaves Colin Thomas at The Georgia Straight, Jo Ledingham at The Vancouver Courier, the team at the Westender, and… well, that’s it. In an effort to cover as much as possible, the papers that are left are doubling up reviews. But, because they still have the same amount of space, it means reviews will be shorter, and shared.

I recently discovered a company out of New York called The NY Neofuturists. They have a kick-ass website, and a great blog (they are currently the darling of Theatre folks on Twitter for their Tweet Plays series).  They also have a page on Yelp.

As newspaper ink shrinks, and the internet blossoms, user-generated content becomes more and more plentiful, and, hopefully, important. So, here’s what I think: while I think traditional theatre reviewers are still really important, and thier opinion is useful, I also think it is useful to listen to our audience–the people who come to see our plays. So, the next time you produce a play, create a means for the audience to give you feedback. That might be encouraging them to post on your blog, your Facebook page, or getting yourself set up on Yelp. Let them know their opinion matters. And who knows, you might even learn something!

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State of the Union: Social Networking March 23, 2009

Okay, so I’m no Guy Kawasaki. I’m not even close to Seth Godin.  But some interesting things have happened over the last few weeks, and I wanted to share them with you.

First off, Twitter just celebrated its third birthday. Originally used as a device for co-workers in the same office to talk to each other, Twitter began in March, 2006, at a company in San Francisco called Odeo. At last count, Twitter users worldwide are thought to be somewhere in the range of 6 Million.

Second, if you are a Facebook user (Facebook is the number 1 social media application in the world, right now), you’ll notice that they have rolled out a new interface. This is partly because Facebook tried to buy Twitter in November last year, and was unsuccessful. So, they have changed their interface to be more Twitter-like.

Third, I have given a couple of talks on social networking over the last couple of weeks, and I have been asked the question “what about My Space?” My response is always the same: if you are a musician, you should have a My Space page if you are a musician, otherwise….

What does all this tell us? Well, first of all, Facebook would not have tried to buy out Twitter, unless they saw them as some kind of threat. Their current redesign is further proof that they are worried about Twitter’s rapid growth. My Space is a good example of this. In June 0f 2006, My Space was the most popular social networking site on the internet, but it was eclipsed by Facebook in April 2008. My Space is now primarily used by musicians, which I think it is perfect for. Facebook, meanwhile, is sweating over Twitter’s growing popularity.

I have talked to a lot of people about Twitter over the last few weeks. Most people say the same thing–they feel like they should be on Twitter, because it’s so popular, and they hear about it all the time, but I also hear that people are unsure what to do when they join. Often they feel overwhelmed by the amount of noise going on, and are unsure about Twitter’s value to them.

Whenever I get a new follower, I like to check out their Twitter page, and if they seem like someone I have something in common with, I’ll follow them back. I’ve been super busy these last two weeks, so yesterday, I batched the nearly-100 new followers I’d gotten over the last couple of weeks. When I look at someone’s profile to see if I want to follow, I’m looking for a few specific things: a picture, a fully-filled out profile, a website. I will also glance at their last few tweets, and see if any of them present value: links, blog posts, information.

It was a bit of a wake-up call: not that many passed the test. It started me wondering: if someone stumbled over my Twitter page, and judged it on my values, would they follow me? Maybe. Maybe not.

Twitter is young, and there has been a lot of talk about how to take it to the future. Monetization, for example. For me, it’s my goal to use my social networking ability and my skills as a marketer to help people to begin to create a social media marketing plan for themselves or thier business, because this is an area that I see is sadly lacking.

So stay tuned… plans are in the works. And you’ll be the first to know.

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How Businesses are Using New Media for Publicity March 11, 2009

The mainstream media is shrinking. We’ve established that, and whether it’s temporary or permanent, only time will tell. In the mean time, we still need to get people through the door. Here are three examples of what some companies are doing to take advantage of new media.

The British Columbia Institute of Technology (where I took my small business course in 2007), in a bit to bring in new students, hosted a 67-hour live-blogathon. They Twittered, blogged and uploaded video from  Wednesday night through Saturday afternoon. BCIT was also gave away $5000 in tuition to five people. You can see information on Three Blog Nights here, and the blog here.

Meanwhile, in Portland, a company called Portland Centre Stage invited a bunch of people to come to the opening of thier latest show, Apollo, and Twitter it. The experiment was at least partially successful–thier show was top five in Twitter traffic that night. Read more about this experiment here.

And in January, The Vancouver Opera invited three bloggers to come and live blog and Twitter a performance of their

Image courtesy of Miss 604's Flickr stream

latest Opera, Carmen. The show was a sell-out. They repeated the process this last Saturday night with Rigoleto. You can read the Vancouver Opera blog here.

What I think is most interesting about these three examples is that they were a success (at least to some degree) on two different levels. The actual event of blogging and Twittering created a buzz around the event in the moment. But, later on, all three of these stories were picked up by bloggers and the mainstream media. Read Gillian Shaw’s story about Three Blog Nights  in the Vancouver Sun. And read about Rebecca Bolwitt’s experience of live blogging the Opera in the Vancouver Courier.

What’s happening is that businesses, arts-related or otherwise, are turning to new media for publicity, because they see that the traditional media is failing.  And, while that is working, they are also reaping bonus rewards: stories in the tradional media about their innovations in social media marketing.

Ironic, huh?

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