How to Engage the Entire Company to Promote

I'm always looking for ways to motivate my co-workers to be involved with the promotion of our company.  Let's face it, if you can't engage your colleagues, how do you expect to excite your clients and prospects. 

One tactic I use, is emailing a "Marketing Update" once a month to the entire company.  This keeps everyone in the loop and therefore makes them automatically feel more involved.  I like to emphasize the contribution of others and how campaigns may directly affect them. 

I think it's important to introduce campaigns, briefly describe the purpose/goals of the campaign and praise individuals when they make contributions.  A marketing department is the hub of communication, so keep it open to the people who benefit the most from the success of that department, the employees.

Another tactic I use is injecting fun and excitement into every campaign.  I like to do this with funny graphics, opportunities to win prizes, and goal achieving statistics. 

Recently I've been working on a survey campaign in which as a company, we need to obtain at least 75 completes.  I decided to use a thermometer graphic like those used by non-profits to update the team each week on how we're doing.  The graphic serves as an effective way to quickly monitor progress, celebrate wins, and establish the success of a campaign to upper management.

Click here if you would like to generate a thermometer graphic for one of your own campaigns.

Creativity, innovation, and great referral sources work all around you.  I encourage you to take advantage of your available resources.  Something as simple as a "suggestions" box can work just as well for a marketer as it does for an entire company.

Are your employees hurting your website?

When I took over my employer's website and reviewed the Goggle Analytics, I came across an alarming number.  The website had a bounce rate of 86%.  Simply put, a "bounce rate" is determined by how long someone is on your site and if they click through the pages.  If your site has multiple "hits" but people are quickly leaving, search engines will translate this as your site having keywords that don't match your content. 

Spam sites are notorious for this and by having an extremely high bounce rate, your website could be considered one in the same.  Ranking with spam sites causes your website to loss credibility which pushes it further down in search results. 

So what is a good bounce rate?  I believe Avinash Kaushik, a Google Analytics specialist answered this question well: "My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying."

Our particular problem started internally, by the employees, unaware of the harm they were causing.  Like many employers, our company website was the homepage on every computer.  That's not an issue if your employees use the site on a regular basis.  However if they automatically re-direct to a new website each time they launch the internet, the bounce rate will continue to increase.

Luckily this was a simple fix.  By asking all employees to change their homepage our bounce rate improved to 41% within one month! 

With so many things to think about when running a company website, something small that could cause trouble can easily be overlooked.  So check your bounce rate today and see if a simple internal change could help improve your SEO.

What is Foursquare anyways?

If you're a fan of the History channel like me, you've probably noticed their promotions to "check in" on Foursquare, a newer social media site that works with Smart Phones.  Users are able to explore discounts and promotions posted by local stores, earn points by posting their location "check-in," and unlock badges.

Although the site is relatively new there are millions of users worldwide.  It is also free to claim your location and to post your promotions, making it an inexpensive way to have more exposure on the web.

Woods Coffee has taken advantage of this site by promoting a "loyalty special."  By "checking-in" at any of the Woods locations three times, users can unlock an upgrade to their coffee order.

Users can also post reviews and tips.  Having more positive feedback available on the web is always a plus as more and more people turn to internet reviews before making their purchases.

I claimed the page for my employer and within two days of making my first post, we had 94 followers!  That's triple the amount of Facebook followers we received in the first month of launching the our fan page.

If you haven't explored Foursquare, I would recommend you do so.  Feel free to message me if you have any questions.