A company that has that millions of users and is valued over 1.85 billion dollars must be doing something right. Groupon works for businesses because it guarantees a minimum number of customers. If the minimum isn’t reached, then the deal is void. The nature of Groupon allows a large number of sales to be done in a short period of time. Because the offers expire so quickly, users are likely to pass it along to friends and family. It is essentially free word of mouth advertising across platforms like Facebook and Twitter and a great way to attract new customers. Beside the social media exposure, your offer is also featured on the Groupon’s daily email that is sent out to subscribers.

Businesses that use Groupon gain exposure and tons of sales in a short period of time and because Groupon is only successful if your promotion is successful, there is no risk involved. How can it go wrong?

One huge and sometimes detrimental mistake a business owner can make when using Groupon is to not be prepared for the outcome. Groupon mentions on their website, it is a “risk-free promotion.” Not quite. We Can Help You.

Although there is no risk if you do not sell enough offers, there is a risk you run by selling too many. It has happened many times where a business puts out a deal and thousands more purchase the deal than expected. As a Groupon user, you must honor the fine print and accept each Groupon a customer brings in, if an issue arises with a customer, it can leave a bad impression and you risk the chance of losing them.

Groupon does expose your company and bring more people into your doors. They boost your sales for the time being, but that doesn’t mean every customer will come back. Sometimes these customers just move from deal to deal and if you don’t continue offering deals, they aren’t likely to come back.

The last big mistake businesses make when signing up for Groupon, is not realizing how it will affect their profits. When a business signs up for Groupon, they must offer around 50% or more off of their merchandise or service. Of the money they have left, 50% of that goes directly to Groupon, leaving the business with 25% or less of the original value.

Groupon’s deals are made to benefit the customer. Though there are benefits with mass exposure and increasing sales, each business needs to decide if Groupon is the best promotional device for them.

What you can do with LinkedIn Group Analytics.

1. Look at your Group’s overall performance:
When you don’t have time to go in depth to find information, use this tool. Using the Summary tab gives you a quick overview of your Group’s statistics, showing you one or two stats from each of the measurements. When you don’t have time to go in depth to find information, use this tool

2. Group’s Demographics:
By using the information posted on the Group’s members’ LinkedIn profiles, it shows you everything from location, industry, senority and more. This tool helps you understand who is in your group.

3. Group Growth:
This tab breaks down the growth of your group. Group owners are able to see how many members added that day and over the lifespan of the Group.

4. See how your Group is engaging:
Use this tool to see what kind of activity is occurring in your Group. Look at what people are discussing, maybe you’ll need to start more conversations to get them going, or steer the conversation in a more productive direction. See the results here.

Don’t have a Group? Here are the top 5 reasons to create and  manage a Group on LinkedIn.

1. Gets your name out there:
Making and managing a Group is a great way to show associates and potential business partners your leadership. Taking on the venture of creating a Group and actively engaging your members is no small task and people will take note of the initiative.

2. Builds your network:
Having a Group is a great way to make more connections. You are an influencer and people want to show they have a connection with you. The bigger your network, the more opportunities there are for you.

3. It provides easy access to industry information:
Having a Group that is focused around a specific industry allows members to quickly view what people in their industry are talking about. It allows news, content and opinions to be easily shared amongst the Group.

4. It drives traffic to your website and LinkedIn profile:
Easily promote your website by posting about it in your Group. Make sure to include a link, and create a discussion about it. Or inform your Group’s members about any updates they should see on your site.

5. More opportunities:
As mentioned earlier, having a bigger network will give you more opportunities. LinkedIn gives you the chance to connect with people, learn about job openings, give and recieve referrals and stay up to date on your industry. Having these connections will be beneficial to you and your business when you need something from them in the future.

Take a look at our LinkedIn Glossary to clarify any terms.

When choosing your domain name, be sure to have one that is rich with keywords. Doing so can boost your search engine rankings. Google places a lot of weight on domain names that exactly match the keyword search query. Using keywords in your domain name ranks you higher, leading more people to your site. It also builds brand awareness and recognition. Having a strong domain name that matches keywords from their search query is appealing to users and easier for them to recall.

Keys to creating a strong domain name:

Make it memorable- Having a catchy domain name will allow customers to easily recall your site and it helps build brand awareness. The name does not necessarily have to be short, but names that are not riddled with hyphens and wordiness are less appealing. The name should have your keywords in it, you may need to sacrifice a short and simple name for a catchier longer one that includes the keyword.

Avoid hyphens- Users often forget to use the hyphen when typing in your domain name. This could potentially lead them directly to your competition. Sometimes this is the only way to get a domain name that is close to what you want when others are taken.

Domain names should be the same as the website- It is very important that these match or are very similar. When looking for your site, users will try to type in your brand name first. It is easier for them to recall a brand name rather than a site if the two are different.

Avoid extra wordiness in the domain name- Sometimes when the domain name you want is not available, an alternate but similar name is suggest. Typically the available names have words like, “the” and “my” in the title. For example, BrainStorm.co is taken but MyBrainStorm.co might be available. Like hyphens, the extra words are likely to be forgotten and could lead the user to your competitor.

Get multiple versions of your domain name- If you have the resources, try to obtain any sensible variation of your domain name. This insures that your competition wont end up with a name similar to yours. It also allows for users to access the site when they spell your company’s name wrong.

On Thursday, October 20th, Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) hosted speaker Leigh Thornberry as she presented “Loyalty 101: What do you REALLY want from your customers and how can you get there?”

The presentation showed a variety of promotional tactics used by the clients Thornberry has worked with in the past. She illustrated the different loyalty programs and why they worked for each of her clients. Some of the loyalty programs discussed were, high impact promotions, bundle packs, redeem points, the escalating offers and more.

Thornberry expressed the importance of tracking your customers to know them better.

Using the example of Huggies, by tracking a customer Huggies can see what stage the children are entering and can start sending the customer tips about potty training and show them what products they offer to help. Even though these customers will only be using the Huggies products for a a few years while their children are in diapers, Thornberry said, “Why not have their loyalty for a year?” Another memorable tip from Thornberry that night, engaged a customer two times, and they’re on a path to loyalty. That’s all it takes.

The six steps for a loyalty program as illustrated by Thornberry:

1. Strategy- Know your vision and budget
2. Security- Make sure you are protected legally, if someone wins you owe them that prize
3. Technology- Provide people easy access to your promotion
4. CRM Integration- Be sure to have a database
5. Rewards- Prizes, money, trips
6. Fulfillment- Follow through, make sure the winner received the prize

The example of a city hall newspaper ad is used to show how politicians and city planners are intentionally excluding citizens, making it nearly impossible to get involved in the community. Compare this idea of communication to the ones we see in commercial marketing strategies. Advertising’s livelihood relies on viewer engagement. Meslin uses the example of Nike advertising a pair of shoes in the same fashion as a city hall newspaper ad, it simply doesn’t work. Advertising provides a call to action, it tells the people who, what, where, when, why and how. By cities not doing this, it reinforces the idea that politics is a spectator sport, not to be toyed with by the viewers.

Unlike politics, advertising values the opinions of their consumers, they spend millions of dollars conducting research before starting a campaign. Look what happens when they don’t, remember Gap’s logo change? During the first few days with the new logo, hoards of people criticized the decision. These people were allowed to voice their opinion, and Gap listened. The logo was changed back to the original. So why don’t Politician’s listen? Thousands protested the Walker reform, but it stayed in tact. Even when we try to play in the game of politics, we are still cast to watch from the sidelines. Advertising allows us to be the referee, the players and the spectators.

Watch Meslin’s speech to see more on how we our engagement is discouraged and to find the antidote to apathy.

Thanks to social media you can get caught up on all the day’s events.

About 475 attendees and nearly 35 outstanding speakers packed Marquette University’s Weasler Auditorium Tuesday morning.

George G. Smith Jr. of PepsiCo Americas Beverages started off the day with a presentation on “Pepsi Hits the Social Media Spot: How Pepsi has Gone Beyond Tactics to Integrated Campaigns to Drive Engagement”. Mr. Smith stood in the center of the stage with his presentation above him and flanked by two screens featuring a constant stream of tweets.

Right from the get go, attendee’s fingers were cruising and furiously tweeting quotes and tips. It was almost comical how many tweets there were, people who weren’t in attendance tweeted that they didn’t need to be because they were getting all of the information via Twitter. If you missed a quote, all you had to do was read the streaming tweets and it was sure to pop up at least 30 more times.

After Mr. Smith’s speech, the seminar divided and attendees chose between two presentations the rest of the day. Presenters included: Jessica Berlin (American Eagle Outfitters), Christopher Barger (Voce Communicationsnnect, formerly with General Motors), Sara Meaney (Hanson Dodge Creative / Comet), Pamela Bennett (The North Face) and many more http://www.prsm-summit.com/#speakers.

Topics ranged everywhere from blog posts, ROI, events, sports, branding and job searching. One of the stand out speakers was Augie Ray of USAA who packed the room with his presentation on the Future of Social Media.

Mr. Ray went over the history of social media to predict the future. He questioned if anyone will be reading our Tweets 35 thousand years from now, and if they did they would have a pretty difficult time interpreting them. His presentation is absolutely one worth looking at on slideshare.

And the attendees weren’t the only ones who left impressed. Many of the presenters were astounded by the Social Media skills and passion by Milwaukeeans, and the students at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee.

Memorable Tweets:

chuckfrey Chuck Frey
“Pick an idea, be it and make sure what people are saying on social media about you aligns with it.” – @augieray #PRSMS

uwwinternships Laura Jacobs
RT @abinaumann: …still complaining about Facebook’s changes: Guess what, Friendster didn’t change. MySpace didn’t change. #prsms @augieray

LaurenLazzara LaurenLazzara
Social media will still have value, but there is going to bea bubble burst. @augieray #prsms

brad_bauer Brad Bauer
“its facebooks world, we just live in it.” 1.3Million human years each month spent on facebook #prsms #augieray

kmajdoch kimberlee majdoch
Brands that are inauthentic cannot be saved by advertising @augieray #prsms

LaurenLazzara LaurenLazzara
ROI is based on what you are trying to accomplish. What are you trying to do with your post, tweet, campaign? @SaraMeaney #prsms

nicolekoremenos Nicole Koremenos
Marketing will be less about a singular event, less about a moment, more about a movement–frank Cooper #prsms

prsmsummit PR+SocialMediaSummit
NEWS FLASH!!!….one of the registration tables is now a charging station in the Weasler. There should also be one in Ballroom E #PRSMS (in response to everyone’s phones dying from tweeting too frequently).

prsmsummit PR+SocialMediaSummit
Because you’ll want to read their presentations again and again, the #PRSMS speakers decks will be found at slideshare.net/PRSMSummit/

cupquakes Ceara Milligan
Inspiring presentation about a brand that advocates exploration, freedom, and fitness. Thank you, @thatpam @thenorthface! #prsms

Since there is already a surplus of information on the web, content curation can be a good thing. It easily helps us determine what information is trustworthy and what the trending topics are in the industry.

Instead of searching through hoards of tweets, blog posts and news feeds we can view someone who posts the most valuable information. The curators posting and re-posting this content search, group and organize the most significant content on a topic to present it again.

In most cases, people resort to curating because producing new content is time consuming and challenging, but they’re loosing out on the benefits of great creative content.

Businesses can greatly benefit from producing specific content about their company. By producing custom content, companies show viewers the website is up to date on current events and interested in passing along news about their company. Because every one is sharing each other’s content, it is more likely if you have original content that it will be passed along by a content curator. Sharing the new content from your site will drive people directly to your site when it it re-posted by a curator instead of another blog benefiting from their blog getting re-posted.

Producing new and valuable content will drive more traffic to your website and helps you build a brand identity instead of adopting another website’s identity.

Get Started by Contacting Us

Landing pages are designed to drive targeted traffic to specific messages featuring a call-to-action.

Most of the time the landing page is designed to capture customer information but like any other advertisement, the ultimate goal of a landing page is to convert the leads into sales.

Often times marketers test multiple landing pages to find out which design produces the best results. When used along side an inbound marketing strategy, Landing Pages are key to measuring campaign success. Keep your eye out for this growing trend.

Learn how a simple Landing Page can be used to increase leads and generate new customers for your company.

Contact Us

Here’s Our Top 9 – Favorite Quotes from the Not Google Plus Video.

1. “First, don’t join Google Plus, then once you’ve done that don’t invite your friends to join Google+”

2. “In fact Not Google+ has no learning curve at ALL”

3. “You’ll have fun not spending hours dividing your friends into Circles”

4. “Fun not worry about Puddles or Hangouts, or even learning what those words mean”

5. “Everyone alive already has years of experience using it, you’re an expert”

6. “Not Google+ provides the most privacy of any social media platform”

7. “Best of all you’re already a, Not Google+ Member”

8. “Play tether ball with a small portugese child”

9. “Like us, you understand that the biggest revolution in social networking would be for there to be no more revolutions in social networking”

He/She will enjoy working in a fun, fast paced, entrepreneurial environment and thrive being around creativity and excitement. The ideal candidate is digitally savvy, understands the search and social media.

This person must be outgoing, creative, and driven by learning about innovations in the constantly evolving digital space and how they can successfully drive a marketing campaign.

NOTE: This is a fall internship! Position begins as soon as possible.

Focus Overview:
Social Media Marketing – you will be responsible for creating content using our unique communications tools to build a successful presence on web/social media platforms; source and; edit posts on our social media outlets; manage the growth of our and-or clients social media presence and cultivate a following on those sites; interact with “influencers” and engage with members of the community across platforms to enhance our presence; analyze data on these sites to optimize growth and engagement.

Digital Marketing – gain experience with marketing and communications in the growing digital online and mobile space.

News research – learn the importance of keeping up to date with breaking news stories as it relates to the creation of WebGoals messages to be digitally broadcasted.

Responsibilities Include (but are not limited to):
• Communicate exciting social media news (internal and external)
• Distribute content to various content websites
• Monitor and engage on various social media platforms
• Assist in putting together our email newsletters
• Internet research to find and engage with social media communications
• Perform other marketing tasks as required

Things you will NOT be responsible for:
-Getting coffee, making copies, answering phones and other menial tasks

Qualifications
• He/She will enjoy working in a fun, fast paced, entrepreneurial environment and thrive being around creativity and excitement.
• Experience with social media, Facebook, Twitter, blog posts
• Self-starter, independent thinker…ability to “run” with a task

Additional Information
• As an intern, this is an unpaid position

HOW TO APPLY: Please email a resume, and or links to an online resume, portfolio, linkedin ect.. and provide a brief description of why you are interested in working with WebGoals. Send this Email to: WebGoalsHQ@gmail.com