B-to-B Marketers: Analytics Key To Your Internet Success
With more marketers jumping on the social media bandwagon, they are so focused on the content that they sometime ignore the metrics to see if what they are writing is being read, and more importantly, acted upon. Analytics are a crucial component to successfully generating traffic to your blog, Web site and inbound new business leads. But for many manufacturers, best practices for using analytics isn’t understood at all.
Your Most Valuable Asset When Reaching the Professional Tradesman: Thought Leadership
As a B-to-B marketer, Thought Leadership is one of the most valuable assets of your brand. When reaching out to the professional tradesman, you have several audiences that you need to build relationships with – Distribution, Buying Groups, Associations and ultimately, the Contractor or End User. Messaging to each of these markets while sharing common traits can and will be different. The sooner you begin building relationships in the buying cycle, the better off you’re going to be. Thought leadership and brand building should be an ongoing process.
Why Webinars Are A Good Marketing Tool To Reach Tradesmen
Webinars are a good way to mix up the way you deliver your message to tradesmen. They allow you to set yourself apart as an expert, gives you visibility, credibility and immediate feedback on your topic. They take a lot of work, but if done right, will reap you benefits for a long time. You can also repurpose them as webcasts and put them on your web site so the contractors can view them at their leisure.
Will Email Be Replaced by Social Media?
We don’t think so. Email is still an important tool and one that’s used not only in regular communications, but also is a good new business tool. The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email. The two can work powerfully together. Here are 20 reasons why.
10 Ways to Engage Tradesmen
When we communicate with our target audiences, whether it’s through traditional methods or the use of social media, we want to inform and hopefully engage them. It’s through the engagement process that we start a dialog with them which hopefully will turn into something more (hopefullya sale). I’ve enclosed some tips on how we successfully engage tradesmen:
Twitter: How Useful is This Tool for B-to-B Marketers?
Some B-to-B marketers are having a hard time including Twitter in the marketing mix. You need to think of it as a relationship building tool. Twitter should never be used as a stand-alone tactic. It should be used in conjunction with other social media as well as traditional tools like e-mail.
Use Online Training to Educate Tradesmen – Part 2
Whether you are using the carrot or the stick to drive training participation, providing contractors resources for their folks to take advantage of can be a very real benefit to the tradesman in the field.
From a contractors perspective, having a manufacturer that’s committed to training is an obvious win. These guys are in the field and it’s a real challenge to corral folks into the office for formalized training. At the same time, the guys in the field need training to stay safe on the job, learn about new products, maintain their licensure or certification.
Use Online Training to Educate Tradesmen – Part 1
Training – both product and safety, are important to professional tradesmen. That’s why several years ago we formed a strategic alliance with BlueVolt to help educate and inform our client’s customers (the professional tradesman). BlueVolt creates online marketing and learning platforms that are focused on the professional tradesmen. They have delivered over 535,000 courses to 50,000-plus registered users. We have the privilege of having Lisa Bordeaux, director of sales and partner development, here to share with you a two-part series on the benefits of online training. Enjoy her insights!
Top 5 Tips for Prioritizing Time Spent on Social Media
We all have limits on our time, and those of us who have dived into social media have to find time in our schedules if we want these marketing tools to work. The key like anything is organization and setting priorities so you optimize your time spent. I recently read a post by Adam Singer (worth reading), 21 Must-Follow Tips for Optimizing Time Spent on Social Media, and it got me thinking of several ways to make the most out of your time.
Is Social Media More Reliable Than Traditional Media?
According to the Harvard Business Review, “the American public assessment of the accuracy of the news media has reached a new low. 63% of American adults say news stories are often inaccurate, compared to 53% in 2007 and 34% in 1985. 70% say that the news media tries to cover up mistakes, and 27% describe the press as “not professional.”