Online Marketing

Using the Norm of Reciprocity to Grow Your Business

By Dan Mckee on 2010 / Online Marketing, Social Media / Leave a comment

When a friend or a stranger does something kind in your favor it’s only natural to feel the need to reciprocate kindness in return. Think about it. If someone tells you “have a nice day,” you’ll say the same in return or at minimum flash a smile or nod your head (or you’ll do nothing in return because you’re a complete jerk.) If another person does something nice for you there will be a cognitive dissonance until you return the favor in some way. Have you ever met someone that was overly nice? Someone that gave you so much it felt almost uncomfortable to not give something back?

When you’re trying to market online be it through a website, email marketing, or a social media strategy, it’s smart to use what psychologists call the Norm of Reciprocity.

The Norm of Reciprocity is a powerful social norm that dictates that we treat others as they have treated us- from “The Science of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini – 2001.

It’s simple human behavior. If I give you a cup of coffee without expecting anything in return it’s more likely than not that you’ll take time out of your day to speak with me. If I take that same cup of coffee and splash it in your face it’s likely that you’ll get angry and we’ll never do business together.

If this is true then why are so many of us asking for attention or a sale without showing kindness or interest in the first place?

If I want a blogger to backlink to my blog or allow a guest post, I may try and send an email with a request. The blogger may accept, deny, or ignore me, however it’s without question that my odds of succeeding are higher if I show interest beforehand. If I’ve spent time commenting regularly, retweeting posts, and have an already established dialogue going, it will be much easier to ask for a favor in the future.

Take a look at your website. If you’re trying to increase the time that visitors stay on your site or the likelihood that they will return in the future, it’s worthwhile to actually give them a reason to stick around. It can be a free ebook, a regularly updated blog, or an informative video.

When in doubt just give.

Give Give Give and Give some more.

A smart social media strategy is about listening and building relationships, not just broadcasting. Person to person conversations help build brand advocates and lifelong fans and customers.

There’s a lot of shouting happening online. How do you compete for attention?

Use the norm of reciprocity.

The more personalized you become, the more personalized attention you’ll receive.

Step 1. Be genuine
Step 2. Give
Step 3. Give some more

Along with being the social media accounts manager for Sparkplug Digital, Jason is also an all around super friendly nice person. You can reach him at jason@jasonmkey.com

The Art of Not Settling

By Dan Mckee on 2010 / Online Marketing / Leave a comment

artofnotsettling Are you settling? You don’t have to answer. You don’t have to say anything. I know if you are. Your customers know if you are. Most importantly, you know if you are.

Are you settling for a mediocre blog with mediocre design and safe topics?

Are you settling for a subpar looking website?

Are you settling for less income then your business should be making?

It’s easy to be average. In fact, as long as you’re not lazy you can be average. If you’re lazy, you can even find easy to use tools and free resources to help you reach average. Average can be acceptable for the time being. If you’re working hard, but you know that your marketing isn’t where it should be just yet, then that’s fine. It’s going to get better. However, it should never be acceptable to be average and say I’m done. It is never alright to throw in the towel. “The website now looks good enough. Let’s not make any changes”. “We are receiving X amount of traffic, that should be enough for us to reach our quarterly goals”. It is unacceptable to settle. When you settle, you eventually lose.

What can we do to take that next step? What can we do to set the bar higher? Keep asking this. Set goals, accomplish them, and then keep going. Are you on the first page of Google? Great. Now get to the top of the first page. Are you on the very top? Great. Now let’s learn to turn the incoming traffic into more customers. There is always something more to achieve. Let’s see how far we can go.

Sparkplug Digital offers solutions to businesses who are serious about not settling. What are some of the challenges that your business is facing? Would love to hear about them. Email: info@sparkplugdigital.com

Photo by:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maldiviandude/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Best 9 Marketing Books of 2009

By Charles Sipe on 2010 / Online Marketing / Leave a comment

inbound marketing book Here are the best marketing books for 2009 listed in order of awesomeness:

1. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

Why and how to market your business online through inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing.

2.Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

Can free be an effective marketing strategy? Anderson explores the history of free and how companies are using free as a winning strategy.

3. World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories by David Meerman Scott

Makes a good argument for using social media and online marketing to market your business more effectively. Tons of excellent case studies to support the new methods of marketing.

4. The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning by Bob Gilbreath

Bob describes a new approach to marketing in which the marketing itself is valuable. Lots of great examples of companies doing meaningful marketing.

5. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Excellent book about how to use social media to build relationships with your customers and colleagues. Has been called the “How to Win Friends and Influence People” of social media.

6. Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik

The followup to the hit Web Analytics An Hour A Day. Kaushik is the thought leader on measuring online marketing and donates all of his proceeds from the books to charity.

7. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vee is one of the most successful personal brands on the web and is one of the best success stories for social media marketing. His book is more motivational than tactical but there are a lot of great ideas too.

8. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

Linchpin describes how to thrive in the new economy that has replaced the broken factory-work model. It is more of a success book, but there are great takeaways that can help you in your marketing or business career.

9. Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini

Lots of interesting studies and examples that describe ways to be more persuasive while providing insights into the way we think.

Other books of note:

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business

The Social Media Marketing Book

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods

Have any book recommendations to add to the list? Leave a comment!

Also see: Top 10 Marketing Books of 2008

This article has been republished from Cool Marketing Stuff

Online Marketing Lessons from Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

By Charles Sipe on 2010 / Online Marketing / Leave a comment

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk is a business book about how to be successful from Gary’s perspective. Gary Vaynerchuk has built one of the strongest personal brands on the internet with his successful Wine Library TV video show and a Twitter following of over 800,000 (@garyvee). If you haven’t heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak, prepare to be taken aback by his unmatched enthusiasm and passion. Primarily through social media he has been able to build the Wine Library brand from about a 5 million dollar business to a 50 million dollar business and is one of the truly amazing social media success stories.

Gary Vee’s 3 Secrets to Success

So what can marketers learn from reading Crush It? Well firstly, you will probably be motivated to work harder at achieving your goals in life. His “secrets” to success that he shares are to love your family, work super hard, and follow your passion. This seems to go against some of the thinking behind previous best seller The 4 Hour Work Week, because Gary suggests that you should find what your passion is and then work until “your eyes bleed”. While this may not work for everyone, he does make a good point that working super hard and following your passion complement each other because if you are doing what you love, it shouldn’t feel like work and you will be able to easily work 80 hours a week. However, this somewhat contradicts his first secret of loving your family first because it may be hard to spend time with them if you are spending 80 hours a week working. He also says that the number one business strategy is to care. He basically says that if you care, everything else will work out.

How to Build Community

Gary explains that building community is the most important part and takes a lot of work. Gary has built a tremendous community around Wine Library TV which has a Facebook fanpage with over 27,000 fans. He suggests that you should work really hard to have conversations with as many people as possible. He says that he answers every email and he seems to reply to most comments on Twitter (I know this to be true because he answered my email here). Could the CEO of a company like Ford or Microsoft do this? I’m not sure, but I think they should try. If you have a smaller business there is no reason that you shouldn’t be deeply engaged with people on Twitter or Facebook. Part of Gary’s success I think is also his character. He’s so energetic that I think people are drawn to him, although this type of energy is pretty hard to replicate. He also takes the approach of “What can I do for you?”. I think this is a great approach for building community because people will appreciate your willingness to give.

New Opportunities on the Web

When Gary Vee was on the This Week in Startups podcast with Jason Calicanis, he discussed the incredible opportunity that the web presents, saying that it’s not even the first inning of the game. In the book he describes the opportunities for people to cash in on their passion by creating a blog or podcast and building an audience around it. He suggests that in the future, advertisers will want to follow the audiences to these niche sites or podcasts that are focused on a specific vertical like gardening or poker. If you don’t like your current job, why not build a media business around something you love. A good piece of advice that I like is “It is never a bad time to start a business unless it is a mediocre business”.

I recommend reading Crush It! The audio version is even better because it is read by Gary V. and he adds additional side comments while reading it. (If you go to Audible.com/twit2 you can get 2 free audio books for free).

This article has been republished from Cool Marketing Stuff.

Which Small Businesses Should Use Online Marketing?

By Charles Sipe on 2010 / Online Marketing, PPC, SEO / Leave a comment

If your customers are likely to go on the web to search for information, then your business can benefit from online marketing that focuses on attracting new leads to your website and nurturing those leads into new customers. Americans are spending more time on the internet and less time on traditional forms of media. Also, Americans are tossing out their Yellow Pages because it is much easier to find what they are looking for on Google.

Because of Americans shift to using the internet, every business should have a website where potential or existing customers can find information about your business. The website can provide basic information like hours of operation, location, and phone number but it should also communicate why your offering is different from other providers and have a clear call to action. The website can also gather potential customer information which can be stored in a customer database of leads so that you can nurture those relationships until they become customers. You can also provide additional resources like a blog that provides useful and valuable information which can help build relationships with customers.

Just putting up a website does not mean people can find you. Search engine optimization and Pay-per-click are online marketing tools that can attract more visitors to your site by improving your rankings on search engines for a specific set of keywords that your customers would likely type in.

So in conclusion, if you want to attract new customers online, you should plan and execute an online marketing strategy. Let us know if we can help.

Have a question about online marketing? Email us at info@sparkplugdigital.com.

Building Your Audience By Providing Great Information

By Charles Sipe on 2010 / Online Marketing, SEO / Leave a comment

Jason Fried describes how educating consumers can be an effective way to market a product or service. By educating your customer you are providing value for your customer which often encourages them to keep coming back to your website or store. Fried advocates giving away as much information as you can about your craft or industry so that you can build an audience that keeps coming back to you, and are likely to seek you out when they have a need for your product or service. Fried was able to drive 800,000 visits to a page of his site at a much lower cost than buying advertising. This is a great argument for why every business should have a blog – to share valuable information and educate people which will help build a valuable audience of potential customers.

Inbound Marketing: Learn How to Effectively Use Online Marketing Tools

By Charles Sipe on 2009 / Online Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media / Leave a comment

The internet has fundamentally changed the relationship between companies and customers which means marketers need to take a different approach to marketing if they want to effectively grow revenues. One of these new approaches is to shift from outbound marketing (advertising, telesales, direct mail) to inbound marketing (search engine optimization, content generation, social media). A very good book that explains how to effectively execute an inbound marketing strategy is Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.

I thought the book provides a strong foundation for what marketers should know about using the tools of SEO, blogging, and social media to attract good leads to your website and then converting those leads into customers. Inbound Marketing provides tons of useful tips and examples. If you are already experienced in this area, some of the book may seem too basic but you still can learn a lot of practical tips to be more effective at getting found by potential customers. I would definitely recommend it to marketers who are new to this area and as a good book to give to a client who needs convincing about the benefits of the new tools of marketing.

My main takeaways:
A blog article is a durable asset – once you write the article it provides value forever.
This is the concept that once you create content on the web, like a useful article, it can attract traffic and links perpetually. This is the opposite of paid ads, whose benefits end when you stop paying. The authors also point out that the cost of buying ads for a certain keyword can spike suddenly if the competition drives the price up.

SEO is not about tricking the search engines, it’s about creating content that users would want to find.
If you create remarkable content, you will attract traffic and links naturally. The authors point out that trying to trick Google is not a good idea. The engineers are constantly closing loopholes and improving the algorithm. Some copywriters say you should spend half your time on the title and half on the article. Coming up with catchy titles will help your idea spread faster. You should also spend time figuring out what keywords your customers would type into Google, and use these keywords in the title of your article. A useful SEO tip is to choose a domain name with a keyword in it if you can like www.seattleflowershop.com. Having keywords in your domain name adds this keyword to every page of your site and will often be used in the anchor text when people link to you.

New links are like new roads for customers to find your company.
And every new blog post you write is a potential page that will show up in Google search results. Inbound Marketing discusses the mistake of having a static brochure-like website. You want to have a busy site (new articles, comments, social media integration) with lots of traffic and roads (links). You want your site to be like New York city, rather than a small quiet town.

Inbound marketing is like learning to play the guitar.
Of every 100 people who start to learn the guitar, just a handful actually make it to the point where they can play a basic song. Inbound marketing tools don’t produce benefits overnight. It takes hard work over a long period of time. It took me about 3 years and 286 posts to get to 1,000 monthly visitors. But once you get over the “dip”, the benefits are well worth it.

This article was republished from Cool Marketing Stuff.

The Art of Not Settling

Best 9 Marketing Books of 2009

Online Marketing Lessons from Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

Which Small Businesses Should Use Online Marketing?

Building Your Audience By Providing Great Information

Recent Blog Posts

Popular Posts

Recent Posts

Connect With Us