Bob Musilek Google Partner Specialist

Tulsa World and and BH Digital Services are now Google Premier SMB Partners

The Tulsa World and BH Digital Services, the digital marketing services division of BH Media Group, are now among Google’s top agency partners providing service and technical skills to help businesses grow.

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About BH Digital Marketing Services 

 BH Digital Marketing Services is a Google Premier Partner and bing ads accredited. Berkshire Hathaway Media Group is the parent company to BH Digital Marketing Services we are located in North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas

SMB’s are not finding ROI in “Social Media” Now What?

Social media management services have taken a nose dive. Why has SMB'S demand for these services dropped off a cliff? The social media hype bubble has burst, and most SMB’s have not realized their return on investment in social media alone. They’re not willing to pay companies hundreds of dollars a month to market their company exclusively on Facebook or Twitter; instead they are diverting those dollars to pay per click options, SEO, optimizing their websites for conversion and mobile, or targeted local media advertising like online display, IYP sites and even the original search engine “The Phonebook”.
Many SMB’s market primarily to a middle aged customer base (35 up to 75 years of age) this demographic alone makes social media marketing a difficult fit.
Social media marketers will disagree, “You’re doing it wrong”. All businesses need social media marketing, which if done correctly for a long enough time, will pay for itself.” But, to them, the SMB’s of America respond, “I’ve forked out thousands of marketing dollars; There's no ROI in sight”
Like so many new Internet marketing concepts, social media has been overhyped to the point where local small businesses, contractors and even larger companies thought it would make their cash registers ring. These types of business owners went out and looked for companies to manage their social media for them, a flurry of social media marketing companies were born; many traditional newspapers began offering digital agency services to fill the void of declining revenues. These news agencies not knowing a thing about local search or generating leads for SMB’s fueled the fire by creating their own Hype “Social Marketing the next big thing”
Now  that the smoke has cleared, here’s what these new agencies have learned: In a perfect Social Media world, your clients will loyally send their promotions and industry news each week, you write the copy, post photos, track the engagement, and their phone rings off the hook.
In reality, where we all live, this is not the case, the business owners are too busy, and (wearing many different hats) they don’t have time to send the material necessary to get the social media campaign off the ground.  As for the client’s cash register? It’s not ringing… No ROI
The type of business most likely to realize a social media return on investment are B2C businesses whose customers are younger than 35 and that focus on entertainment, retail, personal services, or tourism. B2B or home services, or businesses catering to middle age & older people, do not fare nearly as well.
Burst bubbles aside, here are the top three reasons for nearly all SMB’s to invest a small amount of time on social media:
1.  It’s free or near nothing, if you don’t count your time as money.
2.  It is an important way to reach customers younger than 35 years old, and an essential way to reach those under 30. Have an event to promote? Combine sponsored posts with a contest or other creative marketing, and you’ll get tangible performance results.
3.  Social media is important for SEO, but as far as knowing how social works in search results, this is where the professionals can help.
What SMB’s should know about social Internet marketing?
 SMB’s need to allocate a portion of their marketing budgets to social media management: Start building a foundation on channels like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube & G+.
1.   You don’t own your social media presence: Facebook and Twitter do. You can invest large amounts of time and money in obtaining likes and developing custom tabs and functionality, and then Facebook can pull the rug out from underneath you by converting to another format (like Timeline) overnight.
2. Half of all Americans are not on Facebook, and some experts think Facebook penetration in the U.S. market has maxed out. This means half of all potential customers (or higher, if your target customer is older than 35) have a slim chance of ever seeing your message.
3.  People do not use Facebook, and especially Twitter, with a purchasing intent. When they want to buy a product or service, they use search (Google, Yahoo, Bing IYP’s & Yes, Phonebooks). This is why it makes more sense to invest in integrated marketing programs, which offer products like professional websites, optimized for conversions and mobile access, and drive traffic to it through using SEO, pay per click, and targeted display advertising strategies.

At the end of the day business owners want results, once the preverbal internet “HYPECLOUD” has cleared, business owners want and need to invest in products and marketing programs that have tractable data – Transparency.  SMB’s have now realized the smart choice is a well rounded marketing program that can target their customer base & demographics. As for the new media agencies, the bottom line is quality customer service, with ROI being the new social priority.