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The staff at SiteLab have always been all about sharing ideas, learning new tricks from each other and collaboration. The key ingredient to our success is our communication.

Around a year ago, we began to meet officially in an open forum setting, to share our projects and the things we’ve learned from them. This evolved into weekly meetings, and the forming of a team. Then we formed our basic core drive, the heart of this extended marketing team: act as a trusted extension of our clients’ online marketing departments, producing results that directly and positively impact on our clients’ business objectives.

On our website, we state what we’ve gleaned from the expression ‘you are what you eat’: We are what we market. You won’t find a more dedicated bunch than the SiteLabbers — we truly adopt our clients’ industries and products as our passions.

You’ll see us wearing banana hats, sharing new citrus varieties in the kitchen, proclaiming our love for avocados to anyone who will listen, or riding the bikes of our client, Electra, in the parking lot. You’ll find us making the recipes from our foodservice clients (it’s hard to stare at delicious food all day long and not be inspired … and hungry). We can say without doubt that we truly are what we market.

So without further ado, we’d like you to meet the minds behind this ever-evolving, collaborative effort and their roles on this team.

Mike Zemans – Chief Experience Officer

Next stop: Christmas Tree Trimming Championship

Consults on SEM and user experience. Most often, the last word on any project that goes out the door. Google (or “G” as he calls it) is his best friend. Always wins the annual pumpkin carving contest.

Matt Parisi – Online Marketing Account Manager

In a rare moment of not being physically harmed

Account Manager for Sunkist, Oasis of Hope. A source of abundant SEM knowledge; a PPC expert who manages all SiteLab PPC campaigns. Matt gets things done and works well with absolutely anyone. 5 year veteran. Consistently injured due to extracurricular sports, where he brings the same drive to succeed.

Katy McClelland – Client Services Director

If you ever need help escaping from motorcyclists in 1930

Commonly answers to the name “Boss Lady”. Sanity for all account managers, and perhaps all SiteLabbers. Also the voice of reason and the voice for all SiteLab clients, always performing the balancing act between what’s best for clients, their customers and the agency. She’s an encyclopedia of client history. Owns chickens, rides in a motorcycle side car like a superhero side kick.

Jenn Barber – Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media

Liebt auch spätzle

Passionate about social media. Background in business (supply chain management), started in digital marketing as producer, then account manager; dabbled in web design, programming and copywriting. Nuts about social media and started the “department” 4 years ago. Pins on Pinterest like she’s on fire, is a Flint Coney Island Hot Dog enthusiast.

Sarah Johnson – Marketing Project Manager & Developer

Also has a wicked swagger

Sarah’s title doesn’t do her justice. Something of a ‘Jane of all Trades’ at SiteLab, switching from development, writing and design, sometimes all in the same day. She’s a savvy writer who writes the social media, website, press content and more for Sunkist, Eddie Osterland, Master Sommelier and Oasis of Hope. Is crazy for citrus, and ridiculously good looking.

Kari Embree – Marketing Coordinator – Social Media

What happens when you give people a sunny window office and too much water

Jenn Barber’s new right-hand woman. If you want to get social, talk to Kari. She’s all about social media platforms, tools, and tips and tricks AND she’ll recommend a great place to eat and drink when’s she done geeking out with you. Quick witted as a fox, excellent dresser.

Erin Adler – Marketing Account Manager

Is also a bucket enthusiast

Erin has her finger on the pulse of email and mobile marketing. She manages Hass Avocados, Central Garden & Pet, and all sign-up forms and emails that leave our servers. She’s an anti-spam wizard who insists on (and gets) perfection. She’s a music lover and also a lapadar…lapedaris…she is an artist who cuts stone, gems and minerals into neat designs. She’s not just a member of the San Diego Lapidary Society, she’s the club president.

Each person you’ve met here today performs a very important function in the team. We’re growing and evolving every day, but this groups forms a very strong foundation and launch pad to a future filled with exciting, cutting-edge projects. Find out what they can do for YOU and your projects — contact us today.

An Inside Peek at Our Weekly Team Meeting

Posted in Online Marketing, Produce Marketing, SiteLab News & Events, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Remember the 1950’s when it was cool to eat potatoes? You know…when every household in America served meat and potatoes with every single meal? Potandon Produce is on a mission to bring this long-forgotten trend back to life with its new line of potatoes that are super-convenient for modern families with busy lives to prepare.

Here’s the best news of all, they plan to use Social Media Marketing to get the job done. Gotta give props to Barbara Keckler, Marketing Supervisor for brilliantly integrating what was happening offline at the show online with Facebook and Twitter. She successfully raised awareness of their newest products, increased fan acquisition on Potandon’s social networks and even tapped into specially designated hashtags (#), which encouraged PMA attendees to visit Potandon’s booth.

Here’s how she did it. Barbara started with a super-fun 1950’s style diner concept that was cool enough to appeal to Generations Xer’s and New Millineals, but nostalgic enough to appeal to older generations like Baby Boomers. The trade show booth was decked-out like burger joint straight out of the 1950’s, complete with their mascot, a Jolly Green Giant, the back seat of a 57 Chevy that doubled as a sofa, a juke box playing 1950’s music, and formica-topped tables. The girls working the booth wore poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and (my favorite part) BRIGHT RED LIPSTICK! They guys wore back t-shirts, white letterman sweaters and slicked back their hair.

While attendees checked out new products, they could also could also have a seat on the 57 Chevy-sofa and have their photo taken with child acting star, Donny Most who played Ralph Mouth on Happy Days. A few hours later, attendees could retrieve their photo by grabbing it on Potandon’s Facebook Fan Page or email one of the sales reps to request a copy. Brilliant way to increase fan acquisition!

Throughout the show, Potandon tweeted the times when Donny Most was at the booth and available for photo ops using the specially designated (#) Hash Tags for the event. Suddenly, everyone at the show who was following the Hash Tags were alerted that of the opportunity to have their photo taken with Donny.

And there you have it—Day 2 Ends with very sore feet and lots of great marketing ideas.

Posted in Industry News, Online Marketing, Produce Marketing | Comments Off

“Not everyone who needs your service, but everyone who aligns with your values”. That’s what Craig Stern, Co-Founder of SOLO Eyewear, says about who to target when developing your company’s cause marketing campaign.

That’s just one of the insights my co-presenter at iMarketer’s “Social Media For Good & Profit with Solo Eyewear & Sunkist” shared last night on how he built his business, using Kickstarter for crowd source funding and social media to create buzz and sales. If you haven’t heard of SOLO Eyewear, it’s a truly inspiring brand co-founded by Craig and fellow San Diego State University MBA students Jenny Amaraneni and Dana Holliday. They sell eco-friendly, hybrid bamboo sunglasses where each pair purchased help funds a pair of reading glasses and a cataract surgery for someone in need.

Craig and I presented case studies on two very different brands – a San Diego eyewear company that used the funds they raised to bring their product to marketing, leaving them with a zero dollar budget for marketing vs. a billion-dollar-a-year company that is the largest marketing cooperative in the world’s fruit & vegetable industry – however, the same themes arose over and over again.

1. Authenticity
2. Passion

First, to be successful in social media, but especially for a cause marketing campaign, authenticity is paramount. There is not a marketing budget in the world that can touch the power of pure authenticity. It was clear from Craig’s presentation that SOLO “gets” this.

Authenticity is acting in a manner that truly demonstrates your gifts, abilities and talents/skills; not counterfeit or copied; conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief. In both case studies, the featured brands showed their trustworthiness, the cornerstone of cause marketing.

In the case of SOLO, the idea for the company came from 1 statistic – 80% of the world’s blindness is preventable. To demonstrate the belief that their product can actually help shift this powerful statistic, they stood on street corners throughout downtown San Diego (along with friends who volunteered to  help and the SOLO Panda) to educate people.

Sunkist Growers’ Take a Stand campaign, encouraging kids ages 7-12 to raise money for charity “one glass of old fashioned lemonade at a time”, demonstrated authenticity by developing supporting materials to make it easy for kids to actually donate. Instead of just selling lemonade stands in retail stores, Sunkist included QR codes on each box with a link embedded to take them back to the site to see lemonade recipes, lemonade stand decorations and signage, and best of all, information for young entrepreneurs on picking a charity and running a successful business.

One attendee asked how a small business owner, someone who doesn’t have the time or the money to hire a big agency can produce a successful cause marketing campaign. My answer was “passion”.

To have a successful cause marketing campaign, you have to get people excited about the cause before you start asking for money. For SOLO, they did this through the video in downtown San Diego. The blindfolds, the signs, and of course, the SOLO Panda sparked passers-by’s curiosity. It made them want to be a part of the cause.

For Sunkist Growers, they tapped into consumers’ nostalgia for simpler times when lemonade stands could be found in every neighborhood in America on a hot summer day. Most importantly, they gave consumers the tools to raise money and the guidance for choosing a charity, but then they put the choice of which charity to donate to in the hands of the consumers. “We the people” got to pick based on our own passions.

The most important thing I took away from last night’s iMarketers meeting was from Craig’s presentation on who to focus most of your marketing budget on. He grouped people into 4 categories:

A – Those who know, have purchased, and love your brand

B – Those who know, have purchased, but rank it on par with any other brand

C – Those who know your brand, but haven’t purchased

D – Those who are unaware of your brand, products, and services

Most of your budget should go to Group A, with the least amount  to Group D. The reason is the benefit you, the brand, receive from Group A is exponentially higher than Group B (and B higher than C, etc.). Group A L-O-V-E-S your brand so they’re not only most likely to be loyal, but they’re your evangelists to get the word out to Group B, C, and D.

I was truly inspired by the meeting, the topic, and the case studies. To inspire you to create your own cause marketing campaign, I’m sharing an exercise from Craig’s 3-words Thank You Video:

Complete this sentence: Without your business, there would be less ___________, ___________, and ___________ in the world.

For the full case study for Sunkist Growers’ Take a Stand Fundraising Campaign along with tips for developing your own cause marketing campaign, download the presentation, Social Media for Good & Profit: A Cause Marketing Case Study on Slideshare.

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The slightly slower pace of Day 3 of the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit conference provided me an opportunity to visit one-on-one with a few of the best Marketing Directors in the produce industry. Since SiteLab has hit a number of Pinterest home runs in recent months, I felt compelled to ask Marketing Directors if their current social media plans include Pinterest. If not, I asked if they planned to include Pinterest in their 2013 online marketing plan. Would you believe that EVERY SINGLE PERSON I asked told me they planned to launch a Pinterest campaign in 2013? It’s true!

Here’s why, what works and what’s next for the produce industry and Pinterest.

Why is Pinterest a great tool for produce brands?
First of all, Pinterest is ridiculously simple to use, is the “Holy Mecca” for busy moms and serious foodies who buy large amounts of food for their families or events. Plus, it’s one of the best social networks for driving website traffic giving marketers an increased opportunity to convert more visitors into leads and sales.

What Works?
Before I spill the beans and tell you what works on Pinterest, let me start by telling you what doesn’t work – expecting early monetization.

This platform, like other social platforms, has a long-term benefit for your brand, and does ultimately drive consumption over time. Invest in building the audience now, and monetize later.

A simple strategy for getting started is to start with a dozen or so boards. This helps brands get past “Pinners Block.” Start by creating 5 boards about things your users love, 5 boards about things they have a hard time finding, and 2 boards about your brand.

Moving forward, make sure you follow these guidelines for success.

• With the fans you have on other platforms, drive them to your boards with content (i.e. specific pins) not a request to generally “join you on Pinterest.”
• Make sure a content marketing plan drives the creation of pin boards and subsequent pinning.
• Remember, recipes drive consumption. Pinning a Banana Bread recipe on National Banana Bread Day, or the very best Guacamole recipe on Game day is sure to be campaign winners.
• Have content live on your boards that people want to see.
• Mix owned content with other content that interests your audience.
• Leverage an one-to-one exchange of pins.
• Optimize your Pins for Search Engine Optimization, including the image file title.
• No need to be an “over pinner”; even the largest brands only pin a couple times a day. If you inundate your followers with an too much content too fast they’ll get annoyed with you filling up their feed.
• And finally—Get your board cover photos right!!

What’s Next?
Once your 2013 Pinterest campaign has taken flight, be sure to watch the data. Which pins are performing the best in terms of engagement and driving website traffic? Do you have highly influential followers? How are your competitors doing? Don’t forget to include targeted outreach to people based on their current usage status of Pinterest. These folks are the greatest online influencers of your brand.

If in doubt, call in the Experts.
Remember, establishing a Pinterest account takes only a few minutes. Building a following that can eventually be monetized takes much longer! Crafting a strategy that leverages all the good things Pinterest has to offer, and provides opportunity for monetization, just might be best realized by engaging the help of an online marketing agency like SiteLab Interactive.

When you’re ready to dive in and start pinning, call me first. I’d be happy to point you in the right direction. Lori Barber 214-906-6633 or lori@sitelab.com.

Posted in Online Marketing, SiteLab News & Events, Social Media | Comments Off

Day 2 of my PMA journey started with a run. As if 800,000 square feet of booth-to-booth  walking isn’t enough exercise, PMA Foundation hosted a 5K run before the Exhibition Floor opened to attendees on Saturday morning.

The 3.1 mile rolling course started and finished at the Anaheim Convention Center. Early risers stood outside the main entrance of the convention center to cheer runners on as they passed. The event raised over $115,000 and supported PMA Foundation’s mission to attract, develop and retain talent for the produce industry.

After a quick rest and a shower, I walked from one end of the exhibition floor to the other; sampling new products and taking in the impressive trade show booths. I
was also able to partake in a ton of on-the-fly collaboration with the best marketing minds in produce.

Here is the first of an ongoing series of top marketing strategies being used by the produce industry to reach consumers, distributors and retailers.

A Mommy Blogger outreach is a cost effective way to launch new products.

Odwalla is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company. When the time came for Jennifer Brevick, Senior Director of Shopper Marketing to introduce Lemon Ginger, Coco-Walla and Orange Cranberry Original bars to consumers, she organized a mom blogger outreach to facilitate the product launch.  Here’s what made it work; mommy bloggers are a great conduit to Odwalla’s target market, have huge social networks and yield powerful influence with moms and kiddos alike. The upfront marketing costs and resources required to administer the campaign were both minimal. Plus, the campaign concept was über simple.

First, find the most powerful mom bloggers in the country, then host an event and give them an opportunity to sample the product.  Voila! Let the tweets, status updates, product reviews, blog post, photos and keyword-rich content begin! (Okay, it’s not THAT easy… it does require carefully planned strategy and coordination as does any successful social media outreach program).

Product sales almost always increase after a mom blogger campaign. Plus, there’s an added bonus – blog posts, tweets, status updates generated by the campaign provides the type of relevant content that Search Engines LOVE! The additional links back to the site almost always provide an organic lift in search engine optimization.

So what’s the downside? There is a very real risk in turning a group of bloggers loose on your brand new product. Not all reviews are good, and some bloggers are overly critical and biased. In Odwalla’s case, the outcome was favorable, but that’s not always the case.

Like Odwalla’s experience with Blogger outreach, SiteLab (and our clients) has had very positive experiences with the blogger outreach programs we have organized. The most important takeaways we can share from our experience with blogger outreach is to not only measure a blogger’s influence. Don’t forget the power of customer loyalty; include bloggers who are already talking about your brand. And most importantly, treat them like humans. Don’t send out a mass email to hundreds of bloggers. Choose a dozen or so bloggers you think you can (or have) made a real connection with.

And there you have it—Day 2 Ends with very sore feet and lots of great marketing ideas.

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Fresh Summit Talks “Marketing to New Millennials” and “Integrating Social Media with Search Engine Optimization”

While the exposition hall was coming to life with elaborate trade show booths and creative displays designed to sell fresh fruits and veggies, I had an opportunity to attend most of the Online Marketing and Social Media workshops also being held at the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit Convention & Expo last month.

The first session I attended was titled “Closing the Gap: Engaging Multiple Generations in Today’s Dynamic Marketplace”. This session presented by Seth Mattison from BridgeWorks, LLC provided a high-level overview of how to craft your marketing effort and sales pitches to appeal to Gen Xers and New Millennials.

In order to connect with these generations of young buyers; search engine optimization and social media marketing are both critical components. Since both generations have grown up online and spend a significant amount of time connected to the Internet your brand needs to be there; needs to be highly personalized, and needs to be easily found.

Think about this, most Gen Xers and New Millennials have never picked up a newspaper, rarely tune into prime time TV and prefer to download music onto an iPad, iPhone or similar mobile device instead of tuning into broadcast media like radio. Don’t waste your marketing dollars on these mediums.

Gen Xers and New Millennials are heavily influenced by information they receive on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. And, in order to tap into these highly lucrative generations of buyers, convenient packaging, Search Engine Optimized websites and Content Marketing that is personalized and delivered through the most popular social networks is now the trend for Produce Marketers.

The last workshop of the day titled “Beyond Branding: Leveraging Social Media to Drive Sales,” presented by Carisa Miklusak of tMedia Strategies built upon the concepts mentioned above and championed what we SiteLabbers have known all along. “Before you monetize a Social Media Marketing play, you must first understand how social works with search, traditional marketing and your website” Speaking with today’s young consumer is all about engagement, personalization and humanization of your brand not, promotion.

Today’s young consumer would much rather “talk to” a person instead of being “talked at” by a brand. Finding the right social media voice is key to creating a loyal following of brand evangelists and driving sales.

These two tweaks to your overall marketing effort can make all the difference in reaching the next generation of produce buyers. Remember! First make sure your web content is optimized for search engines. This greatly improves the visibility of all online content. Second, use Social Media Marketing connect with the younger generation and personalize your brand.

Wondering how to use interactive technologies to reach Gen Xers or New Millennials? Help is just a facebook message, tweet, pin, LinkedIn connection or even an email or phone call away! SiteLab would love show you how Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, Website Development and Social Media can improve your next marketing initiative. Contact Lori Barber lori@sitelab.com 214-906-6633 to start the conversation. Or follow SiteLab on any one of our social networks below.

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With 87% of travelers using the internet for their travel planning and 52% changing their original travel plans based on the influence of social media*, companies in the travel industry can’t afford to ignore the power of social media.

This presentation by Jenn Barber (@jbarber5000) at the 2012 aRes Travel Partner Summit September 20, delves into:

• How travelers use Pinterest to research destinations before, during and after their trips
• Recommendations for Travel Marketing on Pinterest
• Tips and Tricks for increasing engagement and visibility on Pinterest with examples.

Photo Gallery from the Event:

*Source: MediaBistro.com
Photo Credits: Lori Barber

Tags: ares travel summit, jenn barber, Pinterest, pinterest and the travel industry, pinterest case studies, pinterest for travel, pinterest marketing, pinterest recommendations, pinterest tips for business, sitelab, SiteLab Interactive, slideshow
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Marketing in the online environment for a product that can only be purchased offline is always a challenge. This webinar will guide you through how to meet the challenge by engaging your customers in the online and digital environments they frequent.

View the slides:

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing Today, Social Media | Comments Off

Last week a SiteLab client posed this question:

QUESTION: I was thinking … with the new Facebook rules, you can only get your message out to a portion of your audience.  Imagine, if we could reach more.  What are they ways to reach 100% of your fans?

Answer: You can actually now pay to reach more of your fans.  When you make a post on Facebook, you should see a “Promote” drop down.  If you click that drop down, you’ll be given options on how much you want to spend to amplify the reach of your post.  You could maybe test out different budget levels and then see how much traffic you receive as a result to see whether or not it’s worth it.

See our earlier post: Facebook Promoted Posts for Pages – How It Works

But there are two big issues with spending money on promoted posts:

1. You won’t be growing your fan base, you would just be exposing your content to more of your current fan base.  Ideally, you should have an advertising mix that both amplifies your reach, and tries to get more fans.
2. You’ll never get to 100 percent, even by paying for it.

Facebook recently revealed that on average 16 percent of your fans will see a post in their newsfeeds.  That number goes up and down based on the quality of your posts.  Similar to SEO and Google, if you produce high quality posts that get a lot of engagement, Facebook will display your story to more of your fans. The more engagement your posts get from fans, the better chance it will be seen. We’ve seen Facebook Post Reach for SiteLab’s own Facebook Page as high as 64 percent.

Plus don’t forget that not all of your fans are logging onto Facebook every day, in fact only 50 percent of what Facebook calls “active users” log on to Facebook in any given day. So it would stand to reason that getting your posts to reach 50 percent of your audience could be considered 100 percent success.

We don’t know that Facebook will ever allow you to reach ALL of your fans for free, but you can reach more and more by trying to get as much engagement as possible (like, clicks, comments, shares) and as little negative engagement as possible (hiding the post, unfollowing).

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

We are fans of WordPress here at Sitelab. Plugins couldn’t be more plentiful and the social integration is beautiful. Facebook recently unleashed their new plugin, which encompasses all of their features in a nice package, delivered with a bow on top. You may already have Facebook integrated with your blog, but this is one sweet control center for them all. If you are just starting out, or haven’t had Facebook integrated yet – you’ve hit the jackpot.

First, you have your installation, which is easy … ish. But when every other plugin is, as the word promises, plug-in-and-play, a little elbow grease won’t kill you. Once installed on WordPress, a Facebook app is created for it. When it says it’s fully integrated with Facebook, it’s fully integrated with Facebook. The reward in the end, is that everything else is spelled out for you. Some very nice developer took the time to make it all very user friendly, to even the most un-tech savvy users. (Thank a developer today. They like donuts. Maple donuts, specifically.)
Behold, the grand-high wizard powers you now have over your blog, when it comes to Facebooking:

• Publish an article right from WordPress to your Facebook feed. I was ready to ignore this completely, until I noticed that you have about as much control over this as you would if you were on Facebook.com, publishing your article. It won’t just grab your title tags and spit out unattractive posts, as we’ve come to expect from automation. You can edit your descriptions, titles and links. You can mention names and pages, complete with auto-suggestions. When you do that – those names and pages also appear on your blog post. You can turn this off, but this is promoting of your post at it’s finest. Not only will it publish to your feed, but the feeds of those you mention. As an added bonus, it adds the people you mentioned on your blog post. If you have multiple fan pages, you can select which page to publish to.

WARNING: Many claims have been made that content published through 3rd party API tools suffer fewer likes and fewer clicks. A recent post by HubSpot documents their own informal study.  If  you are using the Facebook plugin to post directly to your Facebook page, be prepared to conduct a similar study to confirm that publishing content through this particular API doesn’t affect the engagement of your posts. 

• Like buttons – anywhere you want them. If you already have Facebook integrated with your blog, you probably already have your like buttons set. Previously, you would have had to build this in Facebook. Now you can choose how it looks and where it will appear.
• Subscribe to the author button. For additional visibility.
• Send button. Share your articles with friends, by email.
• The Facebook commenting system. The WordPress commenting system is great. But these days, non-anonymous commenting is the in-thing. When using the new Facebook comments on your blog, the reader is publishing from their own Facebook feed, usually being their real names and faces, and their comments post to their feed with links to your post. While there may never be a cure for trolling, this is a step in the right direction for anti-spam, and again, greater visibility.
• Facebook Insights. For viewing right in your blog admin.

Also offered with this package is a “social reader”, which you may have heard of, in mutters of annoyance. Have you ever clicked on a link from Facebook, and before you get sent to that link – it asks you to “subscribe” to it? After which, every time you click on a link from that particular site, it alerts your Facebook readers to what you are reading. This can be good and bad. Good for promotion of your site, bad because Facebook users can get a little cranky when something is published to their feed without their notice, even if they did subscribe to you at one point. One day, they might be happy to share that they clicked on that news story from Yahoo about the dog that saved the little boy trapped in the well. The next day, not so happy that everyone knows they read about the latest findings in home body hair removal. Something to keep in mind, when engaging the social reader.

The funny point about this whole plugin, is there just might not be a need to go to facebook.com, when it comes to your blog postings and engagement. Controlling everything from your own corner of the internet universe simplifies things quite a bit. We’ve installed it, and paid our developers handsomely in donuts (maple, specifically). Will you?

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