by tradesmeninsights | Nov 17, 2015 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
Now that it’s time for budgeting for next year, the question is, where are you going to allocate your dollars? There’s always more opportunities than there is money to fund them.
Social media – have you tried some efforts in it this past year? What were the results? What were management’s expectations?
Mobile marketing – Has this been on your radar screen? Do you have plans to be mobile friendly in 2016?
I recently read a post from Jeffrey Cohen at Social Media B2B that highlights the latest CMO results on B-to-B Statistics on what and where money is being spent. You can get complete details here. What’s amazing is that only 23% of marketing projects run by B-to-B product companies use marketing analytics.
Here are some highlights on budgets:
- Marketing makes up 10% of overall company budget
- Product companies currently spend 8% of their marketing budgets on social media
- In the next 5 years, they will spend 18% of their marketing budget on social media
Here are some highlights on social media impact:
- 54% of B-to-B product companies have proven impact of social media on their business
- 40% of B-to-B product companies have a good sense of the impact of social media on their business
- 6% of B-to-B product companies have not been able to show impact on their business
Here are some highlights on mobile and internet:
- B-to-B product companies currently spend 5% of their marketing budget on mobile
- In the next 3 years, B-to-B product companies will spend 14% on mobile
- B-to-B product companies complete 7.5% of their sales over the internet
Hopefully these numbers will help you in your upcoming budgeting processes.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 15, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We all like to know what our competitors are doing, and more importantly, what customers are saying about them. Until the advent of social media, it was hard to track conversations from customers. There are several platforms, tools and tactics that you can implement to help you keep ahead of the competition.
Adam Holden-Bache in a recent article in Social Media B2B outlines 6 Ways to Beat Your Competition Using Social Media. Here are some highlights:
- Do your research – Set up tools and key words/phrases to monitor both the competition as well as the industry.
- Identify opportunities – If you see a topic or trend gaining traction, promote your capabilities.
- Produce more educational content – Decision makers are doing more research online. The more relevant content you can provide, the better the chances of you being considered.
- Showcase your service and support – B2B companies that excel in providing prompt customer service should promote it as it will influence a purchasing decision.
- Ask for feedback, then use it – Customers can be a good resource for honest feedback.
- Engage your customers – If your customers like you, they will tell their friends and business associates. They are what we call brand advocates and they turn out to be one of your best resources.
Free Monitoring Tools to Track Your Competition (or Yourself)
www.Topsy.com is a real-time social search that lets you see what people are saying about a topic across social platforms which provides qualitative feedback.
www.socialmention.com is another real-time search that analyzes strength, sentiment, passion and reach, as well as provides averages, keywords, top users and other metrics that all show impact and reach of social activity.
www.google.com/trends analyzes search and news reference volumes for topics and produces the top regions and cities allowing you to see how popular a topic or brand is as well as where it is popular.
www.howsociable.com measures social visibility of brands allowing you to see how active brands are on 20 different platforms.
These are some ideas on how to monitor the competition. What are you doing using social media?
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 23, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Some folks are still confused as to what to do to get the most out of your Facebook page. There are a few keys…one is content (targeted at your audience) and the other is a strong call-to-action. Incorporating these will help engage people and drive traffic back to your site.
I recently read a great article in Social Media B2B, by Jeffrey Cohen, 75 of the Best B2B Facebook Marketing Tips that’s a good a summary of things you need to do to be best in class. He gives you tips and sources. Here are my favorite points:
- Get people to LIKE your page
- Share lots of photos and ask your fans to also share
- Write posts that encourage sharing across the network
- Have a unique voice
- Diversify your content
- Post industry articles and blog posts fresh from your newsreader
- Make your like button easy to spot
- Encourage others to share your calls to action
If you like this post you may like:
Tips on Using Facebook as a Good Marketing Tool
Social Media for B-to-B Marketers
2011 Social Media Trends in the Industrial Sector
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 7, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Twitter is one of the most useful social media tools we use to drive traffic. For it to be effective, you first need to determine key words and phrases that fit into your space.
Twitter has tools as well as third parties that can help. I recently read an article by Adam Holden-Bache in Social Media B2B where he outlines some tips on fine-tuning your audience searches. Here are some highlights:
- Determine key words and phrases – Go to Google AdWords Keyword Tool and enter some key words. For example, air conditioning heating gets an average 550,000 monthly hits and 450,000 are local searches
- Search Twitter by key words – Twitter Advance Search, take what you find on Google and plug into Twitter
- Optimize tweets for inbound opportunities – Use Google Reader and select Twitter Search Feed. When you click on “show details,” it tells you when most activities are taking place so you know when to Tweet
- Use Buzzom.com to search Twitter Bios – Search key words that would describe the people that buy your products, such as remodeling contractors
- Use Twellow.com to search business categories – This is a directory of Twitter accounts and you can search broad categories to identify people who are in the energy market, aerospace or green
These are some great tips. Do you have any to share?
If you like this article, you may like:
How to Engage the Professional Tradesmen on Twitter
Awareness of Twitter has Exploded: Great Way to Reach the Professional Tradesmen
