How to Repurpose Content for Contractors

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

For those of you who might be looking for ways to generate more awareness and conversations, generating new content may not be your only option. It makes sense to use other social media outlets as a way to get your existing messages out.

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To achieve higher reader engagement you need to know your audience, their habits and pain points. Different social media outlets reach people differently. So whether you’re looking to repurpose existing data or convert outdated info, consider delivering them in smaller bite size pieces using alternative avenues.

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Are Your Sales and Marketing Teams Working Together to Reach the Professional Tradesman?

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

It may be time to reflect on ways we can do better moving forward to better identify ways to reach contractors and professional tradesmen. I have found one of the biggest issues and one of the easiest ones to correct is communications between sales and marketing. As you can see in the chart below, most companies see room for improvement.

Sales and marketing must work together to define the ideal client and determine how and what to get in front of them. They need to share information and have a plan in place to hand off a lead from marketing to sales.

Social media and the internet in general have changed the way people buy. Today, research is done online long before the potential customer identifies themselves to a prospective vendor. So what can you do to ensure that when the buyer is ready, you’re on the list to talk to?

This is an issue that continues to frustrate marketers and sales across the board. Both disciplines have insights to offer and neither should be working in a vacuum. Marketing’s role is to provide qualified leads to the sales team so they can more effectively close more sales.

I read an interesting article by John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing that addresses this very problem.

He states: “My take is that for organizations to take full advantage of the dramatic shift in the way people and organizations buy today they must intentionally blend inbound marketing, outbound marketing and inbound selling in a way that mirrors today’s customer journey.”

He offers some suggestions on how they can work together. Here are some highlights of shared responsibilities:

  • Planning – When marketing is creating a plan, involve sales. They have insights that marketing doesn’t. Their insights are invaluable in helping define the customer journey.
  • Editorial – Even if sales people aren’t great writers, they certainly can identify pain points along the way and possible solutions for marketing to write about.
  • Social – Make sales aware of social opportunities, whether it’s LinkedIn or participating in an industry forum that social is a good networking tool.
  • Engagement – Have sales and marketing make calls together or write a proposal.
  • Measurement – Forget quantity and focus on quality of lead and how you can take them down the sales funnel. Focus on creating a profitable customer.

If you liked this post, you might like:
Are You Getting Your Sales Force Involved in Social Media?

How Does Social Media Impact a B-to-B Purchase?

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YouTube: An Excellent Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman

youtubeAre you looking for ways to get in front of tradesmen? If you’re a manufacturer and don’t have anything on YouTube, you’re missing a great opportunity. What better way to show a customer or prospect how to use your product, highlight features and benefits or even have a customer testimonial.

Next to Google (who by the way owns YouTube), YouTube is the highest searched. The numbers are staggering:

  • YouTube has 1 Billion unique visitors each month and sees four billion video views every day.
  • 1 hour of video is uploaded every second – that’s 60 hours a minute!
  • Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years) watching video.
  • integrated into Google Results.

When considering content, here are some suggestions. Tell the story first and don’t worry about the length. Shorter is always better and you should focus on the first 15 seconds. If you get their attention, you have a better chance of them viewing the entire video. They need to determine up front that the video will help them. When telling a story, your goals are:

  • Engage the customer
  • Educate the customer
  • Make points of differentiation
  • Entertain customers
  • Be different

Rich Brooks in Social Media Explorer explored ways to maximize your YouTube presence. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Create compelling content – Address the needs of your customers.
  • Make it findable – both in and out of YouTube. Your Title, Description and Tags are important.
  • Brand your channel – Create a custom background that goes along with your branding . Use “Player View” as your layout and select autoplay feature.
  • Post a bulletin and alert your friends and subscribers – Create a link and put it on your home pages.
  • Leverage other social media platforms – Blog about it, Tweet it, post it on Facebook and submit it to StumbleUpon.

What are you doing to leverage your YouTube videos?

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