Marketing Tips «

Are You Targeting Emails for Your Mobile Marketing?

May 22, 2012

Mobile is one of the fastest growing segments in the market. Does it make sense for you to use it to engage your customer base?

Here are a few tips to think about if you’re considering using emails to go after your targets.

Ask your customers if mobile is the best way to reach them.
Ask them what kind of info would be useful to receive on their phones.
Keep it simple – make sure things like your subject line are clear so they know who it’s from.
Keep it short – get to the point and make sure your most important part of the message is up front.
Keep images small if you’re going to use them.
Also do a text version with links.
Lots of white – remember where they are reading this.
Make sure landing pages are optimized for mobile.
If you’re going to ask for info, make it simple and don’t ask for a lot.

If you want more info on mobile, you might want to read:

Why a Mobile Strategy is so Important to Reach the Professional Tradesmen

What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012?

2012 Trends of Smartphones and Tablets

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: mobile marketing, tips on email mobile marketing, tips on mobile marketing, use emails in mobile marketing | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Have You Drawn a Line in the Sand Yet?

May 15, 2012

The reality is you can’t be all things to all people. Pick a side, draw a line in the sand. Your company will be better for it.

Content marketing over the last few years has become the big buzz word and is often associated with social media. While it can be used to foster social media relationships, content marketing goes way beyond that. As a matter of a fact, it defines who you are and what you stand for.

Years ago you had limited ways to communicate your value proposition, not so today. Today specialists not generalists (no matter what field) are the preferred choice when folks are looking for something and they have a multitude of ways to get information about your company. And people like to be associated with leaders.

Let me ask you a question. If you think this assumption is correct, what do you or your company stand for? Have you chosen a niche? Are you considered the leading expert in it? If not, you’d better do it soon or you may not be around in 10 years. So how are you going to define and get the word out about your specialty? Content marketing.

By creating good content and sharing it, you can establish yourself as the thought leader in your niche. You can attract and retain customers by creating and curating valuable and compelling content on a consistent basis.

Ten years ago before anyone heard of social media, companies still stood for something. I believe you’ve heard of IBM or Apple? You knew one was known for main frames and the other for PCs. Today when you think of either brand, what do you think of…computers or other things? IBM may still make main frames, but they got their butt kicked in PCs and are known more now for their consulting services. Apple was defined by the PC, but not today. When you think of Apple, you think phone, tablet and soon TV.

The point is, both of these companies reinvented themselves and used content marketing to help spread the word in different ways. IBM took advantage of both traditional and social media methods to communicate their position. Apple, on the other hand, didn’t rely on social media directly, but worked the social media system by getting great content out to bloggers and others on the social network to create the buzz for them.

What are you doing to spread the word? Are you using content marketing?

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Here’s a few other posts you might find interesting:

How Are You Managing Your Content Marketing?

Four B-to-B Marketing Efforts That Can Improve Your Results

1 Comment | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: content marketing | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

How Does Your Marketing Department Hand Off Sales Leads?

May 9, 2012

I’ve been around this crazy business for over 35 years, and one of the biggest issues still today is handing off leads from marketing to sales. You would think that with all the technology today it would be easy, right? Not the case!

Several years ago, marketing would generate leads for various sources and pass them onto sales for follow-up. Then one day someone from the C suite asked how much new business are we getting from our promotional efforts? Marketing said we developed X amount of leads and Sales would say they were all crap. Obviously the finger-pointing wasn’t going to solve the question of how much new business are we getting.

Thus started the process of lead management, qualification, nurturing and at some point turning it over to sales with a little more history behind the leads than there were several years ago. Russ Hill from Ultimate Leads calls it the “Transition Zone.” It is the place in time where marketing hands off the lead they so carefully nurtured to sales to close the loop. But in order to do it successfully, you must have a process that everyone is in tune with, and sales needs to make sure to keep info on that lead current in your lead database so we know when a new customer has arrived, from where and what they bought.

A good follow-up marketing system should have three attributes:
1. It should be systematic.
2. It should generate consistent, predictable results.
3. It should require minimal physical interaction to make it run.

What are you doing to ensure you’re getting the most out of your leads?

If you like this post, you might want to read:

Where Are Your New Business Prospects in the Selling Cycle?

How Many Calls Does it Take to Make a Sale?

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: how does marketing hand off sales leads, lead generation, lead management systems, sales leads handoff, ultimate leads | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

What Kind of B-to-B Marketing Is Working Best For You – Traditional, Digital or Social?

April 18, 2012

Now that most companies are back on the offensive and are actively spending more money on marketing, I thought I would ask you where are you getting the best results?

I know the big focus and conversations over the last few years have been on social. Have you jumped in yet, and if so, what kind of results are you getting? What about traditional things like print ads in trade journals and direct mail? Is anyone gaining traction with these?

So to answer my own question, we’re finding in our self promotion that both traditional as well as social media are playing important roles in new business development

A few years ago, we added social media to our marketing mix with this blog. It’s been a major commitment by us to do 2-3 posts a week, but our strategy is paying off. We not only have clients following us, but also potentials who are looking at going after the professional tradesmen.

The blog increases our visibility and also visits to our website. We’ve had a run on inquiries over the last 6 months from folks who have been following us and like what we’re saying. From the market overviews to Podcasts with industry leaders, they have recognized that we specialize in a niche market they are trying to reach and have come to us for help. What’s nice about these new business opportunities is that we’re not competing for the business.

All of our new business isn’t coming from social. We’ve had a print campaign going for the last three years in the leading trade journals where we put a false cover on the copies that go to potential advertisers in those markets. This too has brought us several new business opportunities.

So what’s working for you?

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: market overviews for professional tradesmen, new business development, professional tradesmen, sonnhalter, what king of marketing is working for you | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

What Are You Using to Help Identify Topics for Writing Your Blog?

April 10, 2012

Reading Will Fuel Your Writing for New Business

Google Reader will save time and allow you to consistently share and create appealing content that will be of primary interest to your target audience.

Social media is a great tool for new business, but it is the creation and curation of content that will provide success. Creating content is difficult. If you are going to write effectively, you must read and your reading will fuel your writing.

Constantly using search engines to find your resources is not only a huge waste of time, but you can easily get distracted. How often have you started a search for something in particular and 1-1/2 hours later, you can’t even recall what you were looking for?

The key to creating good content is to have a simple system that brings an organized approach to your online reading.

One of the most effective time management tools for an online reading program is an RSS Feed. There are a number of RSS Readers to choose from. My personal preference is Google Reader.

Once you have clearly identified your audience, Google Reader can help to organize your resources around their interests. You can be sure you are on the same page as your audience, reading what they are reading, discovering their trade publications, information and research from their associations, etc. You can also glean important information from sources that are not specifically relevant to your audience.

Here’s a sampling of what Google Reader will help you do:

Stay up to date with the very latest materials.
Comb quickly through online resources from hundreds of source sites in a single place.
Easily share your reading to your followers in Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.
Keep materials organized by creating folders and tags. Just like with email, folders help you easily find what you are looking for. It is far better than managing your email inbox.
Quickly spot trends.
Monitor your competitors or your client’s competitors. Know what they are writing and sharing.
Create a consistent system that allows you to stay updated by reading the latest information from target audience’s industry publications, associations, even their competitors.
Use it for Google Alerts. You will want to have a lot more alerts being created for specific type material than you would have coming into your email inbox.
When online resource sites don’t pan out, easily drop them from your feed.
Use the share settings to share your favorite blog posts and articles directly to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and other social media channels.

I have established the mornings as my daily reading time. Google Reader is set as the Home Page for my browser. It is the first thing I open each day. My readings are gathered from resources all over the internet and organized into a central location. It becomes my own personalized Continuing Education program.

If you read feeds on the iPhone or iPad, I recommend using Reeder, a nice app that can be used for that purpose. You will be able to view your feeds in “stacks” based on the folders that you have assigned to them.

Reader for iPhone: iTunes $2.99

Reader for iPad: iTunes $4.99

How are you researching for good content?

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing | Tagged: Google reader, ways to reasearch topics for blogs | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Are You Talking to Professional Tradesmen?

April 3, 2012

I’m sure you’ll answer yes, but are you talking with them or at them? We all assume that email or phone calls are the best way to communicate with your customers. I’m surprised when I ask our clients that question that it’s based on their assumptions on how their customers wanted to be contacted.

It’s interesting that we all want to build relationships and engage our customers, but if you think about it, you’re doing it on your terms not necessarily on theirs.

Here’s what I’d suggest. Have your customer service department contact your customer base and ask them how they want to be contacted (most of this can be done on regular inbound calls), for example, regarding new products or new training that’s available. You may be surprised at their answers.

For new products, they may want a one-on-one with their salesman, and for training, they may want to be contacted by email. They should touch most of your customers in a normal period of a month or so, and for those that are reached from inbound calls, start an outbound campaign to those that haven’t purchased for some time. It will give your customer service people a reason to reach out, and who knows, they might even sell something!

I’m assuming you’re working with some sort of CRM system that can be updated, and when new things come up that need to be shared, you have a better chance of getting that message out if you deliver it the preferred way the customer wants.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

1 Comment | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: building customer relations, CRM, customer surveys, cutomer relations, professonal tradesmen, reacing professional tradesmen | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

How Are You Managing Your Content Marketing?

March 21, 2012

The job of marketing today isn’t to create new customers but to create passionate subscribers to our brand. Your community will take charge and social networking will continue to facilitate the power shift towards the consumer. Our challenges are to make a person stop, read, think and behave differently.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?

Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.

So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:

Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
Measure success.

Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.

We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.

Leave a Comment » | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: content markeing institute, content marketing, joe pulizzi, managing content marketing, robert rose | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Four B-to-B Marketing Efforts That Can Improve Your Results

March 13, 2012

As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.

I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:

Content - You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
Outreach - Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
Response - Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.

CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?

1 Comment | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: b to b marketing efforts, content sharing, engagement marketing, harris corp, jim leach | Permalink
Posted by tradesmeninsights

Are You Targeting Emails for Your Mobile Marketing?

How Does Your Marketing Department Hand Off Sales Leads?

Are You Talking to Professional Tradesmen?

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