You can view more about the report at eMarketer

Facebook Pages Attract Online Shoppers to Retailer Sales and Promotions – Report from CompetePulse

Stay Proactive

One key to success in today’s business world is to adopt a proactive attitude.  Technology is advancing and evolving at such a rapid rate that it requires constant and proactive effort to remain on the cutting edge.  Constantly looking for ways to improve yourself or your business will help you stand out from your peers.  It is essential to keep your product fresh, up-to-date, fully equipped to successfully compete in its market.  Constantly weeding out the deficiencies in your business and improving its virtues can do wonders to refine and streamline your business.  Never become complacent with the success that may come your way, but always be looking for the next way you can improve your business and make it more efficient.  Your business’s success can be a fragile thing, especially in today’s economy. Acknowledging this and making sure you are always one step ahead of the market and your competition is vital for your company to be successful.

Complacency Kills

Another quality that has helped business leaders and can help us as well is to never grow comfortable with where you or your business currently may be.  You never know what the future can bring to you or your business.  Natural disasters, health problems, or the economy are all variables that could affect your success, and in many cases, there is no way for you to control them.  This is what makes it so essential for you to always be ready for the next experience, for what the next phase may be for you or your business.  You always need to be prepared for the obstacles that might be thrown your way.

Don’t Quit

Perseverance is an invaluable commodity in today’s business world.  Looking at some of the most successful companies competing today, it may seem upon first glance that their success is nothing more than good luck or just the right set of circumstances.  Some businesses, it seems, achieve monumental success virtually overnight.  What many of us probably don’t realize is the number of years many of the prominent business leaders have invested in their companies to rise to the status they now hold.  Dedication to your business and its product, especially through hard economic times, is what sees you through difficulties and enables your business to come out of them on top.

Seize the Challenge

Turn every challenge into an opportunity.  Focus on your business and its product obsessively.  Take good advice, but also listen to your instincts.  Understand that not every wise business decision is a monetary decision. These are only a few of the principles that have enabled today’s business leaders to rise to incredible heights and achieve success many of us only dream about.  But these qualities are not exclusive to them.  They are things that every one of us can incorporate into our businesses and our daily lives.  With an economy in which it is harder than ever to build a successful career, the basic qualities of a proactive attitude, a persevering work ethic, and an innovative mind are what will enable you to stand out from your competition and turn your dreams into a successful, profitable business.

To get the entire article with examples from today’s business leaders make sure to email me at dan@dannoyes.com.

• 69% of small business owners use social media
• More than 89% are using Facebook
• 77,5% plan on spending more time on social media
• 40.8% use social media to attract new customers

These results are not surprising especially given the impact that a social media presence can influence your organic search presence it only makes sense to see this grow even more.

Lady Gaga, who has already proven to be one of the most innovative and influential superstars of recent generations, has recently been at the forefront of yet another wave of change, this time in the area of social media.  With the release of her new album “Edge of Glory” and single of the same name, Lady Gaga launched a socail media campaign unlike any that has been used before, encouraging fans to post videos on YouTube of them singing and dancing to her song “Edge of Glory” and then editing the fan videos into one collective and compelling video promoting her new music. This strategy successfully forged a direct link between her and her fans, and resulted in Lady Gaga’s gaining 36 million fans on Facebook and 10 million followers on Twitter.

Lady Gaga through this effective and innovative utilization of social media has proven to be an unlikely example for businesses to follow.  Direct interaction with fans, or customers, has proven to be a compelling method of Internet marketing for businesses to employ, especially through tools such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

You can read the complete post at Google +1 Integration.

• Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call in order to contact (by 49.7% over the worst day) and qualify (by 24.9% over the worst day) leads.
• Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead (by 19.1% better than the worst day).
• 4 to 6pm is the best time to call to make contact with a lead (by 114% over the worst time block).
• 8-9am and 4-5pm are the best times to call to qualify a lead (by 164% better 1-2pm, the worst time of the day).
• 4-5pm is the best time to contact a lead to qualify over 11-12am by 109%).

 

The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the 1st hour. The odds of calling to qualify a lead decrease by over 6 times in the 1st hour. After 20 hours every additional dial your salespeople make actually hurts your ability to make contact to qualify a lead. The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times.

This is why a tool like Leadlander or Demandbase can be such valuable tools in your online business development process.  If you’re interested in learning more about these tools, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

 

The big question is what are the averages that we should be comparing our website traffic against. First, it is important not just to measure your overall website traffic, but to measure your length of stay, percentage of first time visits and first time bounce rates, number of pages viewed and length of site visit. All important criteria, but there is another variable we’d recommend adding to the mix. Don’t forget to measure the percentage of website visitors coming from any particular traffic source. For example, is most of your traffic driven from direct navigation or type in traffic (when someone types your URL into their browser) or are they being driven from some other referral sources.

We find that companies that focus on building long-term relationships and use their website as a way to communicate with customers will tend to have a significantly higher percentage of traffic through direct navigation. It just makes sense, the more your drive customer back to your website the higher percentage they will be going to your site directly versus through some other source. It is not uncommon to see at least fifty percent of website traffic being driven through direct navigation. We feel that if this traffic is also engaging with your website content as demonstrated through time on site and pages viewed it generally means customers view your site as a resource. Like with all website traffic is it important to consistently measure these trends and try to spot any shifts that may require action. For example, a decline in traffic from existing customers may mean that the website needs to have content added or refreshed.

After you analyze your core customer base traffic then start to plot an analyze all other sources of traffic. These would include

• Search engines
• Paid media whether this be paid search or display advertising
• Social media
• Email
• Referring site links

It has been our experience that most clients will have between 30-60 percent of their total website traffic coming from organic search engine traffic with the rest being spread across the other channels.  Obviously a site with an aggressive paid search strategy may have a completely different percentage.  The key take away is to benchmark your referral sources month to month and year to year to give you a clear sense of long-term trends and directions as well as an opportunity to revisit your online communications plan.