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.

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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.

Customers expect that your collateral material will provide them with info they can use – not info on a particular product. Highlights of the survey include:

• Users are consuming more content, but from a greater number of resources.
• Social sharing buttons influence all type of content – 77% said if they had an easy way to share, they do.
• Collateral goes Mobile – 37% consume content on tablets or smartphones.
• Collateral goes interactive like embedded videos – 92% of users say it positively affected overall influence.

About the survey. This is the fourth year Eccolo Media has done it. They surveyed C-level executives and the survey represents 501 usable respondents.

One of the key take aways from this is that those of us who are developing content  should be considering a library of suitable content  for their marketing efforts.

Renewable Energy Consumption in the Nation’s Energy Supply, 2008

This overview covers the following portions of the Alternative Energy market:

•BioMass/BioFuels/BioProducts

•Geothermal

•Hydropower

•Solar

•Wind

For those of you who might want to look at this market, the 54-page report highlights the industry, trends and issues. We also touch on associations, training, codes, trade shows and publications that cover this market. You can sign up to receive a copy here.

Joe is a leading author, speaker and strategist for content marketing. Joe is the founder of the Content Marketing Institute and the CEO of SocialTract. He’s also co-authored Get Content Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing: The Real World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand.

I’ve heard Joe present before, and you are in for a real treat. Please join us on February 2nd at 1 PM EST for this free, informative presentation. You can sign up here. Joe will also be taking questions at the end.

I think it’s because they don’t know where to start. You should probably start by developing a strategy that is included in your overall marketing plans. If you use social media to help build better relationships with your customers, I think you’ll find that it can help with more than just brand building.

I read a post recently in emarketer.com on why B-to-B was still unsure about social media strategies. Some highlights include:

• 66% of marketing executives view social media as extremely or very important, but only 7% were leveraging it heavily.
• 9% of B-to-B marketers weren’t using social at all.

Nearly 50% said that new tools and technology would make their social efforts more effective.

So if you’re a B-to-B marketer, what’s holding you back? Is it a resource issue?

Ignoring them won’t make the problem go away, and if the non-responsiveness continues, you may get a tweet with #FAIL attached to it and you’ll be part of an elite group (where you don’t want to be in) who have failed their customers. This is more of a problem for B-to-C companies than B-to-B, but none the less, you still shouldn’t ignore people. Fear and lack of resources are cited as the two most  reasons why companies don’t respond. You probably should rethink your priorities.

According to a recent survey done by eMarketer.com, only 34% used social media to respond.

Another study by Maritz and Evolve24 showed that only 29% of the tweet gripes were responded to. As Jay Baer says, these channels are the social telephone. You’re missing the boat  for several reasons. One is that 83% of those who complain online want to be answered there. Secondly, those who complain on Twitter are already disproportionately upset and ignoring them will only add gas to the fire.

People complain on Twitter because they have already went through traditional means with no resolution. I can attest to this as I’m still fighting with Travelers Insurance on a hail claim on my roof. After getting nowhere with the local adjusters, I was venting on Twitter about it and lo and behold, I got a Tweet back asking me to call an advocacy number. While it didn’t solve my problem (they sent my complaint back to the local adjuster and now I’m one of his favorite people), at least I thought they tried to defuse the situation.

Research has shown that social media users want to be responded to even if a company wants to take the conversation offline. At least they acknowledged you.

So what are you doing to handle complaints on social media?

Highlights include:

• Content marketing remains a top priority for marketers in 2012.
• Article posting and social media (excluding blogs) are the most popular tactics.
• Blogs, white papers and videos are seeing an increased adoption.
• Content marketing spending is increasing as well as outsourcing.

You can download the report here.

According to a recent report in eMarketer.com, companies are looking to invest more in social in 2012. According to a study completed this summer by Booz&Co and Buddy Media, social media will become a higher percentage of their total digital spend in the next three years.

Although social media made up less than 5% of their spend currently, they expect that number to double that the next 3 years. Where are they anticipating spending the increase? People, outside resources and creating content. What’s even more exciting is that they plan on integrating it into the marketing plans overall.

All this is good news. Evidently someone must be seeing some value in integrating social media.

The question is, what are your plans for 2012? Do they include social media as a line item in your marketing budget?

With smartphones, tablets and other connected devices, consumers have become digital omnivores according to a new study out by comScore. Their new white paper, Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption. Findings include:

• Consumption away from desktops and laptops is really growing.
• Smartphones are the catalyst to mobile media consumption.
• Tablet traffic is becoming  notable and rising quickly.

Download a copy of the white paper.

I recently caught up with Lindsay Konzak, editor of

She shared with us “Four Trends in Distribution” from the MDM’s 2011 Distributor Landscape Report and what it has meant for the supplier-distributor relationship.

Click here and enjoy.