A landing page is ideal for a next step in the lead process. A good landing page will target a particular audience using a unique page that allows visitors to download the appropriate content (you wouldn’t have the same offer for say a tradesman and for a design engineer). They also help you track and monitor activity by offers so you know what works and what doesn’t.

I recently downloaded an e-book, Optimizing Landing Pages by Sarah Goliger from Hubspot that outlines the basics on what needs to be included, how to get them shared, using them as a lead nurturing tool and thanking them for responding.

Here are some highlights:

• By directing them to a specific page with an offer and the appropriate form to fill out, it makes it more likely that they will complete the form and convert to a lead.
• If your visitors decide to download your offer, why not invite them to share your content?
• Lead nurturing is a very important part of the process. 50% of those who respond aren’t ready to buy just yet.
• 78% of sales that start with a web inquiry get won by the first company that responds.
• By sending a follow-up thank you to those that downloaded material, you have the opportunity to offer them additional info and downloads, as well as asking them to share this with others via social media.

So if you’re not using landing pages, you may want to give them a try. I think you’ll see that you’ll not only get more leads, but better quality ones.

If you like this post you might like:

Product Landing Pages: Tips on How to Improve their Performance

The Best Way to Reach Professional Tradesmen: Drip or Closed Loop Marketing?

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.

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.

Using a CRM service like Emma, Exact Target or Constant Contact it will give you access to templates to use for formatting, and more importantly, it will give you tracking data on who opened the email and where they spent time. The metrics will also tell you where and on what subjects people are attracted to. They also give you room for special messaging and links to appropriate sites.

Here are 4 reasons why you should consider a newsletter:

1. Helps you stay in front of customers and potentials.
2. Helps you establish thought  leadership in your area of expertise.
3. Helps identify potentials who sign up for and keep coming back to your newsletter. Maybe someone should call on them?
4. Build a mailing list. Use it as one touch point to get your brand in front of your audience.

Frequency will depend on a few things. If you do a blog, I’d suggest you do it monthly and highlight the top 5 posts of the month. Most templates give you room for a customized message, like look for a new product launch coming next month or promotion of a webinar. 

If you don’t do a blog, assembly of info for the newsletter may be a little more time-consuming and I would suggest doing it at least quarterly. You could assign responsibilities to various people within your company. Customer service, sales and marketing. The key is to give the reader relevent and timely info.

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.

1. How Do You Thank Someone For a Retweet?
2. Social Media: Who Uses It and Why?
3. B-to-B Marketing Trends 2012 Study
4. Social Networking is on the Increase Among Older Adults
5. Google+ and B-to-B Users: How to Get Started
6. Market Overviews
7. 5 Reasons Why Social Media Doesn’t Work
8. Content is King: 10 Tips on Effective Writing
9. 5 Ways to Improve Constuction Productivity
10. QR Codes: Are Manufacturers Missing an Opportunity?

A recent survey by Equipment World Magazine  on thosre contractor that had smart phones:

• 85% view e-mails
• 81% use it to text
• 71% connect to the internet
• 52% use apps.
• 24% visit social sites
• 20% watch videos
• 4% don’t use it for any of the above

Those are some impressive numbers and should tell us all that we’re missing the boat if we’re not including mobile marketing into your overall program.

But before you jump in right now, why don’t you ask the guy in charge of your web analytics to see how many people are coming to your site currently via a mobile browser.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t consider a strategy, but a QR Code isn’t a mobile marketing program.

I get a kick out of QR codes that go to the regular website that’s virtually unreadable. DON’T SEND PEOPLE TO A NON-MOBILE SITE.

If QR codes are going to be part of your strategy, then WOW them where you take them. That’s been one of the biggest complaints (disappointments) from most users that scan the code. If you put them on product packaging, make sure, for example, a how-to-use video is short and clear. Make them glad they went to the extra effort. Also tell them what to expect to get if you scan the code, i.e. a coupon, how-to video, chart to find the right size tool.

Beyond using a QR code, apps that help the tradesmen do their jobs are really a good way to connect with them. Calculated Industries has mobile apps for phones that allow a contractor to download specific calculators onto their phone. RIDGID has a digital level download for your phone. Something useful that a contractor can use.

Are you starting to think about a mobile strategy, or maybe you already have one in place? I’d love to hear about your success stories.

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

What are You Doing to Reach the Young Professional Tradesmen?

Tablets and Smartphones are Changing the Way Manufacturers Will be Reaching the Tradesmen.

What are You Doing to Insure a Successful QR Code Campaign?

Are you Considering Mobile Media as a Strategy to Reach the Professional Tradesman?

So it begs the question – is your website optimized for mobile users? I recently read an article by Jamie Turner in Social Media Examiner, 9 Tips for Optimizing Your Website for the Mobile Users that I thought was very helpful. Here are some highlights:

• KISS - keep it SIMPLE.
• Plan your site layout - keep pages to a minimum and the layout simple.
• Match branding elements - make sure mobile site looks like your regular site (look and feel).
• Avoid Flash and Java - Apple products don’t Flash and many phones don’t support Java.
• Reduce the amount of text entry - use dropdowns, checklists or prepopulated fields when possible.
• Use mobile redirects - make sure your site has the correct software so it can identify a mobile user and send them to that version of the site.

Have you made sure your website is mobile friendly?

I caught up with Lisa Bordeaux from BlueVolt recently to talk about the importance of using online training. Everyone is looking for ROI. 

BlueVolt provides online training centers for manufacturers, distributors, buying groups and trade associations. They have delivered more than 1 million courses to date. They have been a strategic partner of ours for over 5 years and have helped several of our clients in this area.

Lisa explains the differences of why Manufacturers and Distributors use it and why their reasons are different. She also talks about the different ways to learn – Observations, Conferences, Classroom and Self-Study.

Here are a few highlights:

Training – It’s not on fire (easy to push out) – but in our customers’ experience – it’s one of the most significant things you can do for the bottom line. We have customers telling us certified people are outpacing their industry averages by 16-24% YOY. Not sure what other efforts have that impact.

Training – get it as close to the guy as possible – usually folks have 10 minutes in the afternoon to learn something – our buying group customers – say their member employees spent the ten minutes surfing a supplier site for product information – but by bringing it all in one place and putting the incentives on it, like we do – they spend the 10 minutes becoming better sellers – and that’s time well spent.

Enjoy. Listen here.

The biggest issue I hear from both contractors and manufacturers is lack of work isn’t the issue, but lack of qualified people to do it is. Right Skills Now  may not be the end all but it’s a model that can work for both on a regional basis. I know one of Mike Rowe’s passion is training the professional tradesman and this is a step in the right direction.

According to a Skills Gap study by the Manufacturing Institute, more than 80 percent of U.S. manufacturers can’t find qualified people for the nearly 600,000 skilled production jobs that are currently unfilled.

For American manufacturing to be successful, employers need machinists that have the right skills, and they need those skills now. That is the impetus for a new, fast-track education initiative called Right Skills Now.

The program is an accelerated, 16-week training course for operators of precision machining equipment. It provides classroom and hands-on shop experience to prepare students for immediate employment. It also allows individuals to earn college credit and national industry certifications.

One of the founders of Right Skills Now is Darlene Miller, CEO and owner of Permac Industries in Burnsville, Minn. She helped launch the training program for CNC machinists in her home state.

As a small business owner representing the manufacturing sector, Ms. Miller was asked to serve for two years on the President’s Council for Jobs and Competitiveness. The Jobs Council is comprised of citizens chosen to provide non-partisan advice to the President to help foster economic growth, competitiveness, innovation and job creation.

Photo caption: Darlene Miller discusses the capabilities of the University of Pittsburgh/VA Human Engineering Research Laboratory with Director Rory A. Cooper, Ph.D., during a recent PCJC listening and action session.

PMPA provides staff assistance to Ms. Miller for her Jobs Council duties. Miles Free, PMPA’s Director of Industry Research and Technology, helped assure that the initial draft curriculum for Right Skills Now focused on delivering relevant skills needed in today’s advanced precision machining shops.

According to Ms. Miller, the first time she met with President Obama, she was asked to talk about the economy as it related to manufacturing and small business. “One of the things I said to the President was, ‘Not every student needs to go to college,’” she says.

“He had recently made a speech saying that every student should go to college. But he later agreed that while not all students must go to college, they do need some educational training beyond high school.

“I told him that in the precision machining industry, we have an urgent need for skilled people,” Ms. Miller continues. “We can’t afford to take just anyone off the street, provide some training and then put that person in a machining job.”

Despite the nation’s high unemployment rate, attracting workers with machining skills has been difficult for small manufacturers. “Because of the recession, we’re all strapped financially,” Ms. Miller explains. “We need people who have math skills. Our equipment is very high-tech, so we can’t afford to hire someone who hasn’t had technical training.

“It is critical that new hires have the necessary math and safety skills to understand and operate the machines,” she adds. “There is so much more involved now than there was 10 years ago.”

Serving on the Jobs Council with Ms. Miller are some of the country’s top corporate leaders from GE, American Express and DuPont. After the council meeting with the President, the members were divided into sub-committees. Ms. Miller was asked to co-chair the High-tech Education Sub-committee with Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini.

The group held meetings and brought in two of Minnesota’s technical schools—Dunwoody College of Technology and South Central College. The sub-committee was also able to elicit help from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS); and American College Testing (ACT), the company that developed the testing for applicants. The program has also received funding from the Joyce Foundation.

“To make this work, there had to be a partnership between the business community, the technical schools and organizations like NAM, NIMS and ACT,” Ms. Miller emphasizes.

To be eligible for the program, applicants have to take ACT workforce development tests, which are geared towards the machining industry.
The three WorkKeys tests used are Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information.  Each of these tests is scored from 1-7 points.  People who score at least 3 points on each of the 3 tests earn a Bronze-level National Career Readiness Certificate.  Scores of at least 4 earn the silver-level, 5 for gold, and people who achieve at least 6 points on each of the three tests earn a platinum-level NCRC. As Ms. Miller said, additional training is available for those who don’t score as high as they’d like to match the job skill requirements of the employers who use NCRC scores. If an individual doesn’t qualify for the program the first time, there are remedial classes available.

“Problem-solving is huge part of the curriculum,” Ms. Miller says. “There is a mix of both classroom learning and shop time. After 16 weeks, the student will intern at a manufacturing company for eight weeks.

“That person can stay with the company and continue his or her education in a specific field,” she adds. Some go into programming, Swiss machining or advanced CNC skills. Others may end up as operations managers, quality managers or even entrepreneurs.

“We intend to replicate Right Skills Now nationally,” Ms. Miller sums up. “It’s not just for CNC machinists. It can be used for nearly any job skill. The program is so well-defined and accredited, it can be tweaked very easily to train anyone from welders to healthcare technicians.”