The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

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Can Too Much Data Analysis Hinder Your Marketing Strategy?

Data analysis is the living heartbeat of a smart digital marketing campaign. If you’re sending out a bunch of content without measuring its effects, you’re going to be missing out on A LOT of important insights. Analytics can help you understand your traffic performance, readership engagement, and lead generation. 

So, with that being said, what data should you actually be tracking in your digital marketing campaign?

It’s not uncommon for businesses to opt to view success through their amount of followers on social media, website clicks, and other metrics. However, those metrics only paint half the picture.

At the end of the day, the success of your marketing campaign isn’t whether you get more followers on social media or more traffic to your website. A smart digital marketing campaign drives leads that convert into clients. 

For us, the most important two metrics are your cost-per-lead and your cost-per-client (aka Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC). If you are seeing your cost-per-lead and your cost-per-client go down, your marketing is working. 

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t check your engagement rate based on time of day and type of post, nor to say tracking the change month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year isn’t worth your time. It absolutely is. We look for seasonal swings that can inform our strategy to drive more quality traffic to you and build better relationships with human beings.

But if those improvements in your engagement rate on social (or reducing your bounce rate on your website) don’t improve your cost-per-lead or your cost-per-client, something isn’t working properly. 

Why we say this: it’s easy to manipulate the data – you can post something controversial on social and see engagement skyrocket or stuff links into your highest trafficked pages to see your bounce rate go down. But if it doesn’t lead to more revenue, you’re still at the same point you were before the change. 

In short: you want to focus on the right data instead of spending time on the fluff. Analyzing the right data will tell you how successful your strategy is, and they’ll help you craft even better content for even better results. Learning how to analyze marketing data is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of running a successful marketing campaign.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by data analysis, give us a call  – we’ll take a look at your data at no cost and let you know what we think.

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The Death of the Social Media Influencer

Influencers and micro-influencers have been taking social media by storm for years. We’ve all seen the videos of an enthusiastic social media icon unboxing toys, reviewing products, or even giving their own take on current events – expertise be damned! Influencers have proven their ability to shower a business in awareness with their audience, but how valuable is it really? 

There’s been a shift in the way consumers use social media – namely on Instagram. Now more than ever, people want to dig behind the online facade to see the real people behind the captions, hashtags, and sponsored content. Influencers like Emma Chamberlain have pioneered what’s known as “casual Insta”, which is, well, exactly what it sounds like. Instead of the perfectly framed avocado toast and yoga pics, Instagram users are shifting over to posting more relatable and imperfect content.

After everything that’s happened over the past few years in the digital world, people are tired of being sold to on what they should want and where they should spend their money. For the most part, they are going to social media for entertainment and escape.

So will this spell the death of Influencer Marketing? Yes, in the way it has worked for the past few years.  

So, what comes next for Influencer Marketing?

With any luck, we’ll stop seeing videos that start with, “Hey Guys!…”

The truth is no one knows. Relatability is back in style, a new breed of influencer has evolved: the genuinfluencer. Genuinfluencers are sort of like influencers, but their motivations tend to revolve around education, as opposed to engagement.

“Genuinfluencers are less interested in promoting products, and more interested in spreading ideas and truth,” says Evy Lyons, VP of marketing at influencer-marketing platform Traackr. 

For brands that have been leaning heavily on Influencer Marketing, expect to see diminishing returns on what has worked in the past. Focus your marketing dollars on reaching your audience still, but center your campaign on showcasing the value your brand provides – how do you make their life better? Educate them. 

So, while the era of unboxing videos, ads, disingenuous content may be coming to an end, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for education-oriented social media celebs.

#notsponsored

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How to Get Your Business Less Reliant on Facebook

Let’s not mince words – Facebook built the world’s largest social media platform, a digital town square with billions of users. Then they built the most powerful ad platform on top of it. Then they broke it. 

Over the years, we’ve seen the dramatic rise of Facebook and what now may be its fall. Back in 2011, business owners thought it was a crazy idea to promote your business on Facebook. In 2015, organic reach started to plummet and ads became vital to maintain a presence on the platform – and it worked. 

Now, after Apple’s privacy updates (and Google’s that are coming soon to Android), Facebook as that a crossroads. Many businesses that were buying $20,000+ a month in ads have seen revenue plummet. So when it comes to sustaining your business’ lead flow, now may be the time to start seeking out alternatives to Facebook. Here’s our advice:

Build a Brand, Not a Presence

Building a presence on a social media platform creates more value for the platform than it does for your business – at least over the long run. 

Instead, focus on using a platform to connect with individuals – build a network of actual human beings instead of a following. 

When you connect with people and build a brand, your presence can move platform to platform relatively easily. 

Start Blogging

There are only two parts of your online presence that you fully control – your website and your email list. For long term success without platform risk, those are the two components that should get the majority of your resources. 

Blogging is an essential component of your website – it gives potential clients immediate access to your expertise and represents your brand, company, and style in exactly the way you want it to. And did we mention it is the crucial component to supporting and driving great SEO?

By having a robust blog strategy, you are able to cultivate a strong presence online where you (bonus!) provide great information to potential clients who are more ready to buy or hire you from the start. If you think you have an SEO strategy in place but aren’t blogging, you don’t have an SEO strategy. 

The best part about blogging? You write one post and it lives on forever, continually driving traffic to you for years whereas a Facebook post stops creating impressions (at best) a day or two after you write it. 

Consider Hiring Content Marketers

Content marketing often becomes a full-time job that few small businesses can handle on their own. It requires a high level of planning and creating new innovative ideas and ways to share content. If you feel like handling your own content marketing could put a strain on the other work you have to take care of, hiring a content marketing team may be a good idea.

At the end of the day, the decision to reduce your business’ reliance on Facebook is up to you. There are plenty of alternatives to Facebook available, and every social media site has a solid demographic core. Find the site for your best customers and stake a claim there – odds are it’s the one you already have.

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What is The MetaVerse and Why Zuckerberg Has Gone Off the Deep End

Ah, Zuckerberg. 

It’s hard to believe that nearly 20 years have passed since a college kid with a bankrolled pivot on “Hot or Not” became a household name. A name that has since created such a reverberation across pop culture. 

Let’s face it (pun intended), the man shifted social media onto its current course. And, he got a movie out of it. 

Zuck is back in the news (did he ever leave?) but this time for re-positioning and re-branding his Facebook empire to something entirely different. 

So, what the heck is this MetaVerse?

At this point, not much. Let us explain:

The Internet Brought to Life

The term, coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” refers to a virtual world that coexists and overlaps with the physical one, with people interacting as avatars. Zuckerberg has described it as an extensive “virtual environment” you can go inside of, instead of just looking at a screen. That world doesn’t exist today on anywhere near the scale Zuckerberg envisions, but a small version can be found in gaming, especially with virtual-reality (VR) headsets like Facebook’s – or, Meta’s — Occulus.

There are “multi-billion revenue opportunities,” Bank of America analysts wrote. “For example, 50-yard line seats for the Superbowl, taking a hitting class with [Major League baseball player] Buster Posey or shopping for sunglasses with virtual try-on may all be possible in the metaverse,” they said. 

Zuckerberg is going all in on what he sees as the next generation of the internet because he thinks it’s going to open up a large new digital economy that sometimes runs in parallel with the tangible world and other times far surpasses it. “Ads are going to continue being an important part of the strategy across the social media parts of what we do, and it will probably be a meaningful part of the metaverse, too,” Zuckerberg said in a recent company earnings call.

But will it though?

Our Thoughts

Ironically enough, one maxim we’ve always shared with our clients is to think about the internet as if it were the real world. Building a web presence is synonymous with real estate development. In that analogy, social media is akin to high-end retail space – high foot traffic, but also high rent and most importantly real estate you don’t own.

When you approach it that way, you don’t overinvest in your Facebook (or Instagram, or TikTok, etc) presence because the owner of the real estate can change the rent on you with a snap of their fingers (in this case, by limiting organic reach and requiring you to buy ads). 

It’s always best to invest in the real estate you own – your website and your email list, the two things that no one can take away from you.  

Zuckerberg did a great job building extremely valuable real estate and got a ton of users – but they also built their ad platform on data they got from people’s phones. So when Apple (and now Google) change the privacy settings, all of a sudden it looks like he built his empire on someone else’s real estate. 

The Metaverse is his shot to change that. Will Facebook –er, Meta – succeed? Only time will tell. Until then, we remain skeptical and wouldn’t recommend anyone to invest heavily in building a presence on a platform they don’t fully control. 

In short: keep an eye on it, but don’t go all-in. Zuckerberg is investing in visions of life-changing technologies, while he can’t even sort his main (and only successful) business out. Creating the metaverse will also be arduous and expensive, and the financial payoff is uncertain – so if it fails, it will likely be the biggest failure in the history of the internet.

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5 Fads in Marketing to Avoid This Year

Trends can be enticing. From rice pudding shops to shiplap – sometimes hopping on the latest bandwagon is worth the hype. Then…there’s things like the mom jeans craze that’s “so hot right now,” which we know we’ll regret when reviewing photos next year. 

For those of us who are old enough (Hi, Millenials!), we know a thing or two about a certain Von-Dutch-hat-with-Ugg-Boots situation that may now feel like a big (huge!) mistake. 

Our point is – trends are fun. Until they aren’t. And some not-so-great fads, especially in marketing, are not worth your time, energy or money. 

But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with some trend-wise advice on how to keep your business on the savvier side of marketing trends. 

5 Marketing Trends To Avoid: 

  • Getting on the Latest Social Craze: One of our hard rules is to give every new marketing tool, social platform, or other gimmick a real consideration as to the WHY behind your interest in getting on board the so-called train. If the rationale is, “everyone else is doing it,” then you pretty much have your answer (we’re looking at you, TikTok). Often times, your audience may not even be on the platform that has the latest craze.
  • Copying What Everyone Else is Doing: Continuing our point above, if everyone else is doing it, it’s probably too late to get on the bandwagon. Marketing is never about doing what everyone else is doing. So, innovate – and if you need help brainstorming, we’re here.
  • DIY Websites: While all the rage, building your own Wix or Square Space site does not always end well. Most of these DIY website platforms have strong limitations and you’ll end up having to redo your site within 1-2 years anyway. Getting a website professionally made will save you time and money down the line.
  • Over Promoting: Contests and promotions are fun and engaging – within reason. While giveaways and discount codes can be instantly-gratifying, doing so in excess can hurt your brand in the long run. Don’t make each month a different event – people get tired quickly and don’t see the overall value if you’re constantly discounting or giving away free items.
  • SEO Ninjas: The race to the top of Google is no longer dominated by keyword ninjas. Save yourself some money and energy by skipping the ninja route to the top of Google and ask yourself what your goals really are. If it’s more business – then create a strategy to drive higher traffic from valuable, qualified leads. Say goodbye to poor turnover and hello to better business. 

And if you still want to rock mom jeans, we won’t judge. 

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How to Leverage Storytelling to Drive Your Marketing Strategy

We’re sure you’ve heard it before, “storytelling drives business,” or things like “I’m a storyteller,” from your local hairstylist or toymaker. The truth? 

They are. You are. Everyone is. So long as they are telling stories. 

Your brand should be sharing tales. Why? Because ever since time immemorial stories have been what truly connects us together. They are, in essence, the tie that binds. 

When you share a story, people listen. They search for how it resonates with their own experiences. That’s why storytelling is a powerful marketing tool.

Having a compelling story humanizes your brand and fosters customer connection and engagement. Any content you put out into the world should provide value to your readers instead of feeling like a grimy sales ploy.

As you start to think about how to turn your brand into a content marketing storyteller for the ages, be sure to keep in mind these little tips:

Promote a Lifestyle, not Just a Product

You can promote your brand all day long, but until you show how your brand lives in the actual world, not just on a shelf or in a box, people will remain uninvested. When it comes to branding a lifestyle, you want to focus on finding out what kind of person your customer wants to be and then giving them the tools (your product) to do so.

Focus on the Human Element

Using facts and figures in your content marketing strategy can sometimes be helpful, but people are drawn to stories, vibes, and emotional connection. The more personal you can make your business seem, the better. Instead of reporting information, focus on personal accounts and narratives that can provide readers with more value.

Getting people to like and trust you turns window-shoppers into loyal customers to your brand. 

Get Help Telling Your Story

It is sometimes difficult for business owners to see their companies from an outsider’s perspective – marketing experts can help you understand the kind of stories your customers want to connect with and how to implement them into your marketing strategy.

At The Found Gen, we pride ourselves in the fact that our content marketing strategies are focused on your readers, your customers, your fans, and well – your soon-to-be-best friends. We create engaging content that not only tells your story – but weaves it into theirs. 

Sounds tough? For us, it’s fun. 

If you’re ready – we’re ready. Get in touch to learn more about how we can build a strong brand storytelling strategy for your business.