Tyler Garns, former Director of Marketing at Infusionsoft, is in the process of posting a series of videos to introduce his new consulting practice. His entry today was a smart discussion on a proper way to measure and monetize social media.
I’ve taught for years that social media should not be the center of your strategy (remember MySpace.com) but rather, a method of driving potential customers to your website or blog and to your offers since that is the one thing you have complete and permanent control over. Tyler’s presentation is great validation of that concept and takes the idea further in an important way; he delivers a strategy for understanding the value of social media to your business and measuring the ROI. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it more clearly explained.
The presentation also contains information on how to measure ROI on all your lead sources. It appears that he is using real numbers from past Infusionsoft marketing budgets which offers great insight. Since Infusionsoft is a successful and fast growing company, his examples helped me realize some other important points:
1.) SEO works and is the most economical method of developing leads out there. Do-It-Yourself SEO (DIY SEO) can be the most profitable investment of time for any small business owner. I’ve been focusing on teaching small businesses DIY SEO for years. In his examples, he discusses how DIY SEO leads cost NOTHING (well they do take time). Very cool to see and this makes SEO the most obvious guerrilla marketing technique for small businesses and self-funded start-ups.
2.) There are still so many other ways to grow your lead base. It’s easy to ignore all the other options and doing so prevents real growth. You have to do more than just SEO.
The thing about Tyler is he is a serious alumni of Infusionsoft so the things he talks about all lead to Infusionsoft. And although I am a big fan, you need to know ahead of time that Infusionsoft will require a $2000 initial training investment before you can even begin with the software. Their monthly rates begin at $199 which I think is reasonable.
I’m not suggesting that the $2K investment is a bad idea. In fact I have personal experience that suggests it may really help but this is an investment that each entrepreneur must make for him or her self.
I’m not sure how long Tyler is going to leave these videos up but I would encourage anyone interested in marketing automation to watch them. No matter what software solution you use there are valuable lessons in his discussion. There is an earlier video on his site at TylerGarns.com and I understand that he is continuing this series for some time into the future.
Here’s the video:
Your Unlimited Marketing Budget from Tyler Garns on Vimeo.
He discussed the basis of this in this Slideshare presentation (but there really is a lot more in his presentation. It’s worth a look).
Enjoy:
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