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.

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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:

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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.

In a recent post, he points out that no matter what tools you’re using to monitor your activity, you may be missing the boat when it comes to key words that you are using to track activity. Jay points out that in social conversations, very rarely does your company name or trade names come up in conversation.

Rather, it’s more likely that people will be talking about a plumbing problem of their toilet leaking and are looking at ways to fix it. So if the key words that you are tracking are your company name and the trade name of the product that fixes the internal working of a toilet, you’d be out of luck.

Maybe you should be taking the list of key words you use in your SEO and incorporate them into your listening program. You should also include your competitors, suppliers, distribution outlets. Anything that revolves around your category.

Let me know how you make out.

According to eMarketer, tablet users in the USA will reach almost 90 million by 2015. By 2015, there will be almost 150 million smartphone users.

So what can you do to dip your toe into the mobile market? I’d suggest you add a mobile component to an existing program and track the results.

Add a video via a QR code in an ad or on packaging that takes them to a helpful video. Do a mobile friendly landing page where they can easily find their closest dealer or store to buy.

Try something. Monitor the results and then try something else. This is the only way to get in since the choices are so overwhelming.

Here are a few other good reasons to incorporate mobile:

Integrating mobile marketing into your overall plans helps support every phase of the purchase cycle, based on data from eMarketer via Millward Brown-Dynamic Logic.

From a marketing perspective, it’s important to understand how and where consumers use their mobile phones. As smartphone penetration continues to increase, mobile phones are no longer just for talking. In fact, according to comScore, only one out of four owners use a phone solely for voice communications.

Mobile is here to stay so you should jump in sooner than later.

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A recent article by Ashley Zeckman, 20 Social Media Marketing Do’s and Don’ts  sparked some thoughts on my end of what we need to do and avoid in the world of social media.

Here are my thoughts and I would love to hear what you would add to the lists:

DO’S

1. Interaction - Take the time to comment and interact. If you’re always trying to sell, sell, sell, it becomes hard to have a two-way conversation.
2. Re-purpose content - If you have different audiences, slant the message to each one. Also use content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your blog.
3. Take advantage of SEO - Make sure what you do is searchable so it can be optimized.
4. Have one voice – Someone has to be responsible both in delivering the message, but also in responding to comments.
5. Test and measure - Make sure you have the tools in place to see what’s working best for you and your audience.

DON’TS

1. Don’t ignore people - Especially negative comments. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing,  but do so in a polite way.
2. Don’t use automated responses - It defeats the purpose of trying to start a meaningful dialog. When was the last time you tried to have a conversation with a robot?
3. Don’t overcommit - Yes, you’ll find numerous accounts or groups that you should be in. If you can’t commit to utilizing a platform on a regular basis, what’s the point? More is not better.
4. It’s not about you - Instead of telling them how great you are, ask them how you might help them solve a problem.
5. What are you doing with all these relationships - You’ve spent lots of time and effort to engage prospects. What’s the plan to take it to the next level?

Let’s hear your ideas.

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.

I recently read a post by Ekaterina Walter  in Social Media Examiner called 15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events that I thought was really good. Even though some of her points were more for a retail/consumer approach, here are four of her tips that I thought would be applicable to this audience.

• Create pre-event buzz - Start early with registration. Encourage attendees to share details. If you’re having speakers, make sure to include their Bios and Twitter handles.
• Keep attendees informed – Use QR codes to access presentations if it’s being done outside. Collect your speaker’s blogs all in one place and create a dashboard of their latest posts.
• Help them share information - Use Twitter back channels so you can get questions and feedback. Share images and presentations. Open your event to virtual attendees.
• Post event - Publish your Twitter wall and give all access to your talks with links to videos.

I’m sure there are other ways to use social media for events, and I’d like to hear ways you’ve used it.

So here are some of my favorite ones:

• Interview an expert or industry leader in your field and then post it on your blog.
• Guest posts, there are certainly others in your space. Talk to them and see if they would be willing to do a post. Who knows, they may ask you to reciprocate.
• Find interesting posts others have done and write a post about it and link to their site.
• Go to YouTube and find relevant videos and make comments on with a link back to your blog.
• Build a Wiki page for your blog using a non-promoting post.
• Write list posts like this one. People seem to like them.
• Publish your posts on Wikipedia.
• Make sure you post on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) a brief description and link to your site.

I have found that Twitter and the groups that I belong to on LinkedIn generate more traffic to my blog than any other source.

 A suggestion would be to take a few of these, implement them and see how they work for you.

So whether you’re a manufacturer, distributor or a contractor, what are you doing to play it forward to make sure we have skilled people ready for the work force? Might I suggest you get involved especially on a local level.

• Talk to high school students and show them that there are options to a 4-year college degree.
• Let them know that technicians in the electrical, HVAC or plumbing fields use sophisticated equipment in doing their jobs.
• Let them know they can’t export those kinds of jobs and the rest of us depend on them on a daily basis.
• And oh, by the way, they can make a damn fine living.

For those who want to work in a manufacturing facility, they may be running machining cells worth millions of dollars. In order to compete for those kinds of jobs, you need to be trained and must come to the table with skills like math.

So what are options if we want to be good corporate citizens? There are local trade schools, technical and community colleges that either have or could initiate programs to train future workers. One such program is Skills America which is a regional program that can be taken and adapted to your needs.

More importantly, you can support the schools by giving away scholarships to students in need. Financial help via government loans are drying up. For those who want to improve themselves and contribute to society, what better way of supporting them. Now I’m not talking thousands of dollars in scholarships. What if you could give a few $500-a-year ones? It would help with books and tuition. More importantly, it will send a message to the community about who you are.

Most of you belong to national trades associations and some might have local programs you could participate in. If you can’t find a local source, there are always places like Mike Rowe’s foundation that supports the trades.

The key is now that the economy is starting to turn around, let’s do something that will improve the workforce and eventually come back to help each and every one of us. The key is DO SOMETHING.