6 Ways to Maximize Your Agency Relationship

May 23, 2013

Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter, is posting today on how to maximize your relationship with your agency.

One of the most important questions that marketing communication clients should ask themselves is, “Are we making the most out of our relationship and interactions with our agency?” Merely talking about how to maximize synergies and rapport between client and agency versus actually implementing such strategies is an entirely different story.

Here are a few way to get the most out of you client-agency relationships:

Be on the same page.

Fostering shared meaning and mutual understanding is a vital aspect of successful client-agency relationships. It is important to be on the same page. Setting clear expectations with one another enables clients and agencies to better communicate and forecast unexpected issues or changes. Establishing processes and responsibilities early on with an agency will decrease stress from time-crunching deadlines. Also, be sure to clearly define success with one another and develop a measurable method for evaluation. Understanding how agencies function and subsequently knowing how to utilize them can reduce the likelihood of miscommunication.

Be clear.

Efficiency is all about clear communication. To reduce confusion, frustrations and delay, have one main contact for the agency. Likewise, an agency should make sure its client knows with whom to communicate. There is nothing more frustrating than having too many cooks in the kitchen. Facilitating consistent, effective communication will aid in strengthening the bond between the client and agency. Companies are more likely to meet project goals by providing their agency with a concise point-of-view.

Be accessible.

Make sure to invest time in the agency. Frequently engage in face-to-face communication by arranging regular meetings to review and discuss active projects – take a necessary break from the computer and telephone. Being available will create a well-oiled working relationship with an agency and produce quicker results.

Be direct.

Another strategy to ensure a healthy and open client-agency relationship is to address issues promptly and judiciously. Otherwise, molehills can develop into unnecessary mountains. Do not let problems fester, but swiftly find the root of the issue and respond with calm, measured and consistent action. Both client and agency should offer and receive feedback. For example, an agency may ask clients to participate in a customer satisfaction survey.

Be a partner.

Agencies want clients to treat them like a partner rather than a vendor. Involve the agency early on in the process. Offer access and resources to the agency, including resources outside of marketing such as sales or engineering – the more an agency knows about its client’s business the more it can help. Take the time to introduce the agency to fellow employees, so that they feel like a part of the team.   

Be open-minded.

Strive to remain flexible and receptive to new ideas. Be willing to take risks, occasionally calculated ones. Even areas outside of marketing, such as product development, can sometimes benefit from fielding agency advice.

Above all, trust an agency’s judgment, expertise and point-of-view – people would not let their lawyers perform surgery on them, so likewise allow the agency to do what they have been hired to do. And remember, agencies are in the business of communication, so there is no such thing as over communicating with them.

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How Manufacturers are Managing Content Marketing: 7 B2B Insights

May 16, 2013

Today we have a guest blog post from Lisa Murton Beets director of CMI Books, from the Content Marketing Institute.

How Manufacturers are Managing Content Marketing: 7 B2B Insights

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently published research on B2B and B2C Content Marketing in our 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends reports. While the findings give us insight into how B2B and B2C marketers are managing content marketing, we were still curious about the state of content marketing in specific key industries, and how content efforts in vertical markets were differing from those of their peers in other industries.

We decided to first look at marketers who work for B2B manufacturing organizations in North America. This group has adopted content marketing at a slightly higher rate (94 percent) than their North American B2B peers across all industries (91 percent).

Let’s take a look at some of the similarities and differences:

Manufacturing marketers have similar goals for content marketing

Marketers in the manufacturing industry have the same top three objectives for content marketing as their peers across all B2B industries: brand awareness, lead generation, and customer acquisition. However, manufacturing marketers place less emphasis on thought leadership (47 percent versus 64 percent) and website traffic (47 percent versus 60 percent) as organizational goals, which indicates a disconnect, as they also cite website traffic as the primary way they measure content effectiveness. This fundamental disconnect between goals and measurement was present with B2B manufacturers when CMI surveyed them two years ago, but it has shown some improvement.

Manufacturing marketers use video and print magazines more often

Manufacturing marketers cite video as their top content marketing tactic (it was ranked seventh by this group two years ago). Their overall use of tactics is fairly similar to that of the overall population of marketers; however, they place far less emphasis on blogs (54 percent versus 77 percent), which makes sense considering that this industry does not put strong emphasis on web traffic and thought leadership as objectives for content marketing, two areas where blogs can have significant impact.

Manufacturing marketers use print magazines at nearly twice the rate of their peers (60 percent versus 31 percent). However, only 11 percent of self-reported “best-in-class” B2B manufacturing marketers rank print magazines as “effective” or “very effective,” indicating that traditional media companies still have a stronghold on B2B manufacturers, who have traditionally used paid advertising in trade magazines to reach their audiences.

Manufacturing marketers prefer Facebook and YouTube

While their B2B content marketing peers use an average of five social media platforms, manufacturing industry B2B marketers report an average use of three.

Yet, manufacturing industry marketers use YouTube more frequently than the general population of marketers do. This makes sense, considering they rank video as their top content marketing tactic. Their use of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter has risen over the last two years, yet they are somewhat behind in their adoption of Google+, Pinterest, SlideShare, and other “newer” social media options, so it will be interesting to see if they grow in these areas over the next year.

Manufacturing marketers outsource content more often

Compared with the overall content marketing population, manufacturing marketers outsource content more often:  57 percent versus 43 percent. This could be because they rely more heavily on printed material, which often requires outside assistance. Given their increased usage of video, compared to other marketers, it is likely that they are outsourcing video creation as well.

Manufacturing marketers spend less

When compared with their peers across all B2B industries, marketers in manufacturing dedicate significantly less of their total marketing budgets to content marketing (22 percent versus 33 percent). However, 53 percent of manufacturing marketers say they are going to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months (31 percent say they will keep spending at the same level).

Manufacturing marketers struggle with effectiveness

Like their peers, marketers for the manufacturing industry report that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. One challenge they cite more often than their B2B peers is the inability to measure content effectiveness (55 percent versus 33 percent). And they’re not only challenged with measuring content effectiveness, many are not even sure if their overall efforts are effective. We know this because only 21 percent of B2B manufacturers rank their organization as “effective” or “very effective.” On the other hand, 36 percent of B2B marketers across all industries rank themselves as “effective” or “very effective.”

On the flip side, 32 percent of manufacturing marketers rank their organizations as “not very” or “not at all” effective, compared with 17 percent of their B2B peers. This shows a need for content marketing education and improvement in the manufacturing vertical.

A brief look at the manufacturing demographic

While it is noteworthy to understand how marketers in the manufacturing industry are managing content marketing tools and tactics, it’s also important to understand how demographics may play a role in these research findings. Here are a few notes about the demographics of this research:

  • Out of a total 1,416 B2B North America respondents, 88 respondents identified themselves as working in the B2B manufacturing industry.
  • About 40 percent of the B2B manufacturing respondents work for companies with 1,000 or more employees (16 percent of that figure is for companies employing more than 10,000, so these results could also reflect what larger companies are doing).

Do you work in manufacturing? Are these trends consistent with what you are seeing?

For more insight on the state of content marketing in the manufacturing industry, register to attend the Manufacturing Summit at Content Marketing World in September 2013. And if you are looking for more content marketing research? Check out our third annual B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends and first annual B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends studies.

Cover image via Bigstock

The post originally appeared on ContentMarketingInstitute.com and is reposted with permission. You can view the original post here.

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Free Webinar for Manufacturers: Should a Blog Be a Part of Your Marketing Plan?

September 11, 2012

Do you read industry blogs and wonder if your company should get involved in blogging?  Blogging can be a valuable marketing tool that gives your organization a way to prove its expertise.

In order to tap into the values that blogs offer, manufacturers need to ask themselves certain questions and make several decisions before their blog goes live. This webinar will help participants find out if a blog should be a part of their marketing plans and what all is involved in starting one.

Join us on September 25th at 2:00 p.m. EDT for the free one-hour webinar. You can register here.

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How Are You Integrating Email and Social Media?

October 27, 2011

In today’s market, everyone seems to be focusing on social media as the thing to do. Both social and traditional tactics have a place in your marketing plan. Inbound and outbound marketing must work together to get the most bang for your buck today. Social media or email can’t be isolated tactics, but should be used together.

I recently read an article by Kipp Bodnar in Social Media B2B, 7 Awesome Email and B2B Social Media Integrations that I thought hit the nail right on the head. Here are some highlights:

  • Use social media links in your emails - pretty simple but you’d be surprised how many folks miss this opportunity.
  • Use social media to grow your email list - you have a better chance of getting a lead if you can convince them to sign up, for example, for your monthly newsletter.
  • Test email efforts on social - before sending out a communication to your list, test it on social to see what kind of reaction you’ll get.
  • Use social media for future email content - follow and listen to what the hot issues are on social and craft future messages around those issues.
  • Source leads correctly - use tracking URLs to better understand where your interest is coming from.

Those are some highlights; what are you doing to integrate social into your traditional marketing efforts?

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Are You Using Content Marketing to Understand Your B2B Audience?

March 22, 2011

If you’re into social media, you’re doing it with a purpose in mind. You have a story to tell and you want to tell it to a certain type of person. This holds true no matter what type of marketing you’re doing (traditional or social).

But when you’re developing your content, do you ever consider at what stage your reader is at in the buying cycle? By segmenting your content to include all stages of a buying process (awareness, consideration, evaluation and purchase), you’ll be sure to hit all your potentials at their stage in the buying process.

I recently read a post from AdamHolden-Bach from Mass Transmit called Using Content Marketing to Understand Your B2B Audience that I thought was spot on.

Here are some highlights on segmenting your markets:

  • Awareness - These folks have just begun the process. Provide educational content (blogs, white papers, webinars) and make it easy for them to receive it (do make them register to get it).
  • Consideration - Once they know about you they want to know how you stack up against the competition. Provide them product comparisons, case studies or other material that shows why your product is better.
  • Evaluation - They want to understand the solutions you provide and how they would benefit their business.
  • Purchase - Use social channels to broadcast new products, upgrades, special offers to help incentivize the customer.

As you’re creating content, identify which stage it falls into. Use tracking methods over time, for instance to gauge interest and tell you at what stage most of your audience is at in the sales cycle.

What are you doing to segment your marketing?

If you liked this post, you may also like:

2011 Trends: Content Marketing is Critical for Social Media Success

2011 Trends for B-to-B Bloggers

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Time Out – 100 Thoughts on Marketing

August 6, 2009

timeoutSometimes in this busy world, we need to take a “time out” just like we make our kids and grandkids do to slow down and think about what we’re doing. I recently read a post by Valeria Maltoni, entitled, 100 thoughts on Marketing. After reading them, I wanted to share them with you. Valeria is a widely respected name in this social media arena, and I suggest you read her blog for some challenging and insightful posts.

Stop what you’re doing and have a cold or hot beverage and read the list. I’m sure you’ll get a few “golden nuggets” out of this list as I did. Enjoy and thanks to Valeria for her thoughts.

Stuff, especially marketing stuff, is due for a tune up. Let’s take the meaning challenge for marketing. Enjoy!

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Reach Tradesmen Using a Social Media Map

April 17, 2009

I don’t know about you, but when one of the times my wife and I have a disagreement, it is usually when we’re going somewhere new in the car, and of course I think I know where I’m going. When getting lost, my thoughts are to keep driving and eventually we’ll run into where we wanted to go. Fortunately, GPS navigation and tools like MapQuest have made my life more easy.

The same hold true for social media. You can drive (A) around  aimlessly or (B) you can put a plan together.

Please opt for B. Social media and SEO work well together, but you have to have a plan to maximize your return. Lee Odden wrote a post recently for the blog Mashable, Social media & SEO: 5 essential steps to success, that gives a good summary of what you had to do to capitalize on it.

Here are some highlights of his 5 steps to success as I see it affecting the professional tradesmen market:

social media seo roadmap

  1. Define your audience. If you’re going after tradesmen, you had better know how they spend their time, understand their preferences and behavior profile. As you get more sophisticated, you can use social media monitoring software that identifies key words, conversations and influencers.
  2. Define your objective. Social media is not direct marketing. SEO in the social media is to influence discovery of social communities or content by way of research. Indirectly, social content can boost links to web site content improving traffic.
  3. Make a game plan. In a  SEO and social media effort, you need to focus on content and interaction since it’s content that people look for and want to share.
  4. Define yout tactics. The tactical mix for social media marketing should be focused on where the tradesmen spend their time. What kind of communities are they a part of? Remember, the goal is to start a long-term relationship, not a one nighter.
  5. Measure goals. Between web analytics and social media tools, you will have more than enough ways to track  and help you improve your results.

keyword focus image

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Industrial and B-to-B Marketers Can’t Ignore Social Media Anymore

March 28, 2009

socialmedia12We need to realize that social media is not a fad.  The faster B-to-B manufacturers realize that social media isn’t  just for “consumers,” the better off they will be.

Social media allows manufacturers to engage customers in more creative ways, build relationships and stay ahead of their competitors.

According to the “The ROI on Social Media Marketing” report from the Aberdeen Group, that Visible Technologies sponsored, 63% of the companies in their survey planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year. eMarketer estimated that social network advertising alone will rise over 17% this year to $2.35 billion, up from $2 billion in 2008.

“Things are finally starting to change. Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter.

Marketers have developed the tools and methodologies to drive
marketing ROI by listening to and learning from customers and
prospects. As so, the dollars are following this rising tide,” says Blake Cahill, Visible Technologies.

Five Compelling Facts from the Research, Providing Actionable Benefits for Readers:

  • 58% of  companies have dedicated resources devoted to social media marketing.
  • 61% of companies have online community platforms (e.g., discussion forums, ratings and reviews, etc.).
  • 68% of  companies increased their investments in social media marketing, while 34% are keeping their investment level the same as last year.
  • 84% of companies aim to track and measure the ROI of their social media marketing activities.

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If You Are Marketing To Tradesmen, Go Mobile

December 18, 2008

trademen-insights-mobileTRADESMEN INSIGHTS GOES MOBILE!

Mobile web is huge. There are over 2.8 billion handsets in circulation. Far more mobile devices than PCs. It’s a global phenomenon.

Beyond the numbers, there is vast potential of the mobile web by the way people use these devices:

They’re always on.
They’re always at hand.
They’re always personal, rarely shared.

No other marketing medium can say any of these things.

With the help of a great new service called MoFuse, founded by David Berube, Tradesmen Insights is now available in a mobile version.

MoFuse, or Mobile Fusion, is a web application that allows you to easily and instantly create a mobile version of your company’s blog or web site.

If your blog or web site has an RSS feed, they will use that as the main source of content for your new mobile site. This will allow you to create your mobile site using MoFuse and forget about updating it. All you have to do is keep posting to your blog!

You can also create static content pages. This gives you the ability to have pages like About the Blog, Contact, etc.

Users can customize almost every aspect of their mobile site. They can also upload their own custom logo or header image!

MoFuse will create a static link to your mobile site for you to share, it’ll look something like this: http://myblog.mofuse.mobi. You can put a link to your mobile site on your blog for your mobile visitors to click to be redirected to your mobile version. You can also use your own domain name.

Mobile Tradesmen Insights

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