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

In theory, it’s a place where manufacturers and their distribution counterparts come together via a format of speed dating where the manufacturer requests meetings with distributors (both existing customers and potentials). Like anything else, there are no shows for appointments. The booth program is a two-day affair and while the traffic was light on the first day, it was almost non-existent the second day.

If I was a distributor and could talk to as many suppliers as I could in a period of a few days, I would think they would want to take advantage of it. The manufacturers, as in most associations, foot the bills. They have to bring in product, booths and their associated expenses. What’s most disturbing is that the ratio of manufacturers to distributors is probably 10 to 1.

I don’t have the answer and I’m not trying to pick on ISA. STAFDA, NAED, NAHAD and many more face the same dilemma. There’s got to be a better way in a shorter period of time to make the most out of these meetings. Back in the day, these meetings were a place to showcase new products and programs, but with internet and all the other tools we have, I would hope at least your current customers would know about anything new.

I do recall that the fall meetings in Chicago for a day and a half at the airport were both efficient and successful. I believe it was due in part because the distributors were in the booth and you did your speed dating, but only the roles were reversed. NAED does this at their regional meetings, and as far as I can tell, the manufacturers like the format.

Any suggestions on how we can get these distributor/supplier get togethers to be better for all parties involved?

We all are facing the challenges of doing more things with sometimes fewer resources, so it stands to reason that what we do, do we want it to give us the best results. Where are you getting your leads and how are you qualifying them? I recently read an article by Dave Thomas on B2B Online Marketing that talks about the results of a recent nationwide survey from BtoB Magazine and Bizo that highlights marketers biggest challenges in 2012.

Among them were:

• Paid search came in as the second-ranked tool for marketing, followed by display advertising (35 percent);
• 60% of marketers claim their biggest challenge this year will be generating additional leads;
• 63% of marketers state that their marketing mix either falls short of sales demand or they are not entirely sure their mix is working;
• 56% note brand promotion as a major area of focus.

What I thought interesting was that their biggest challenge was that leads were falling short of sales demands. I guess does that mean that companies are forecasting growth and in order to attain it, they need more leads?

I guess the question I’d like to ask is are you experiencing these kinds of challenges, and if so, will you  share with the rest of us?

This report re-emphasizes the fact that email marketing is not only alive, but is still an important part of the overall marketing programs of most companies.

Top 5 process priorities for B-to-B marketers include:

1. Growing and retaining subscribers – 64%
2. Delivering highly relevant content – 72%
3. Achieving or increasing ROI – 39%
4. Increasing email engagement metrics – 41%
5. Integrating email with other marketing tactics – 30%

It makes sense that to grow and retain subscribers, you need to deliver good and meaningful content. Another important consideration is list size isn’t as important as the quality of the list. You should be interested in building lists of followers who are active and want to share information.

B-to-B marketers usually have longer sales cycles, so it’s important to engage and take your prospect through the various stages of the buying process. This is reflected in 70% of B-to-B companies identifying this as an area for improvement.

The top 5 barriers facing B-to-B email marketers include:

1. Inadequate staffing – 53%
2. Lack of an effective email marketing strategy – 37%
3. Difficulty merging email lists with other systems – 36%
4. Unclear or constantly changing objectives – 31%
5. Inability to manufacture relevant content on a consistent basis – 31%

So tell me about your priorities and what your biggest challenges are with email marketing.

What was so unique about the event is that there were manufacturers, distributors, electrical contractors, electricians, building inspectors and even representatives from the IBEW and NAED there. Topics included industry landscape, building partnerships, media revolution, marketing best practices, emerging technologies and innovation and culture.

The event was two hours and the groups were broken up into tables with each disciple represented to discuss specific topics. At the end, someone from each table gave a summary of the issues and possible recommendations on solutions. A white paper will be issued and when it is, I’ll post a link.

It was a great event, and my compliments to Madison Electric for hosting it. Too bad other industries aren’t doing something similar to get all the stakeholders together to talk about common goals and ways to make doing business easier.

Penton Media just released a B-to-B Marketing study called, Truth from the Trenches that surveyed 3,000-plus folks like us.

What they found is very interesting. The study drives home some alarming points on how many of us are less than satisfied with the performance of our website, social, search marketing and sales conversion efforts. Here are a few of the highlights I found interesting:

• 81% of B2B marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging.
• 77% said their websites are not effective at generating leads.
• 63% of them are either vaguely aware or not aware of what is being said about them online.
• 35% don’t think social media is critical for their business.

On the positive side:

• 60% have implemented a social media strategy or will in the next year.
• 90% are active on Facebook.
• 53% are active on Twitter.

So what do you think? Any of these hit home?

 77% of the world’s population (5.3 billion people) are mobile subscribers!

A recent post on Marketo, BtoB Marketing To Go: Why Mobile is Crucial to Your Lead Generation, highlights some interesting stats from a recent comScore study:

• 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices.
• Almost 40 million U.S. mobile users access social media sites daily.
• Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn increased their mobile audiences by more that 50% in 2011.

So what do you think the chances are that some of your target audience isn’t in the stats above? Mobile  users are interacting with brands and you should not miss out on the opportunity to engage them.

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

Is Mobile Marketing the Best Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman?

What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012?

Some of you may have already jumped into Google+. According to recent stats, as of January 2012, there are over 90 million users (Twitter has 100 million active users). To put this in perspective, they launched Google+ by invitation in June of 2011 and opened it up to the public in September of 2011. Google is positioning Google+ as their Facebook for B-to-B.

Google+ is a great content sharing platform, and building an audience on it may be one of the smartest things you do as a content marketer according to a recent post by Brian Clark on copyblogger, Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy. Here are two highlights on why:

• Google+ is a part of Google – they do a good job integrating with Google docs, Chrome, Google Reader, Gmail and YouTube.
• Search - Google is the king of search and now they announced the Search, plus your world which merges personalized search with social search.

Brian also discusses concerns about Google having a stranglehold on the market and what we might expect moving forward.

The key for those of us who write content is to understand the language of our audience and make sure we reflect that in our content. Search will do the rest.

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

Suggestions on How to Make Sense of Google+

Google+ and B-to-B: How to Get Started

This trend isn’t just in the B-to-C market. B-to-B publications are beginning to focus on different delivery options. Summit Media Group who owns Packaging World found in a recent survey that 46% of their subscribers owned a tablet and that 78% planned to own one by the end of the year. Of those that currently own tablets, 74% said they read work-related digital magazines on these devices. They have incorporated “responsive design” into their websites which allows for optimum readability automatically.

Ziff Davis, a tech media company, is moving ALL its print magazines to digital and mobile and is clearly a leader in this endeavor. Newer media companies like WTWH Media which just started a few years ago focuses heavily on the digital aspect. Cygnus Business Media, Penton Media and others are starting to follow suit.

So bottom line for those of us that are trying to reach professional tradesmen, we now have another opportunity and avenue to reach them. Benefits of digital are: 

• We can measure responses
• We can enhance our message by including links to videos, testimonials, etc.

If you haven’t included digital in your marketing plans, maybe it’s time you consider it.

According to a recent survey by the Association of Strategic Marketing (ASM), 2011 Trends in Mobile Marketing, 58% of respondents indicated that they were not using mobile marketing.

As a matter of fact, mobile seems to rank somewhere in the middle of overall marketing practices behind email (which ironically is number one) and SEO. The 42% that do use mobile in their marketing plans are optimizing their websites and emails and are beginning to use QR codes.

If you like this post you might like:

Is Mobile Marketing the Best Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman?

What Are You Doing to Reach the Young Professional Tradesman?

The Mobile Marketing Trends Study was created to allow marketing folks to see what similar organizations were doing. Some highlights of mobile marketing goals include:

• Sales/revenue – 33%
• Product service info – 25%
• Customer retention – 15%
• Lead nurturing – 11%
• Customer opt-in – 10%
• Alert reminders – 6%

For those of us in the B-to-B space, and especially for those of us trying to reach the professional tradesman, mobile should be a part of your marketing plan.

Not sure where to start? The easiest place to start is to optimize your website for mobile. Secondly, consider sending mobile-optimized emails.

The key is to make a plan and do something, monitor the response and do something else. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe mobile is going away, and there are many opportunities to reach our target audiences.