by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
I’m convinced that a blog is a very effective marketing tool for B-to-B marketers. It provides a genuine opportunity to build your company’s brand. But don’t think that if you just create a B-to-B blog you are assured of traffic.
Three things you will need to have a successful B-to-B blog:
- Focus on a niche/market. You can’t be all things to all people as no one would read it. Pick a specialty (or several) and give the audience relevant and meaningful content. Talk to them about ways you can help them solve problems. Keep the marketing copy out of it.
- Make a commitment. If you’re not going to work at this, then don’t bother starting one. The costs of doing a blog comes in the form of time. I’d say you would have to put in anywhere from an hour to two a day to do your blog justice. You need to have at least 3-4 posts a week and they have to be meaningful. That includes researching, writing and responding. You don’t have to be the writer of all posts, but you must be the quarterback.
- Use the social tools available. Use things like Google Reader to help you organize what you’re reading. Twitter and other social media platforms will also build awareness, allow you to repurpose content and generate additional traffic. Integrate social and traditional strategies to make more of an impact.
To have a successful B-to-B blog, you need to pick a niche or target audience and write to them. An example of this is my blog. We’re a B-to-B marketing firm (bet you there aren’t a lot of them around). Why would someone want to read my blog when they can pick up a current issue of BtoB Marketing magazine?
The folks that our agency is best suited to help are the manufacturers who want to sell something to those professional tradesmen. That’s why our blog is specifically targeted to them as a resource for how best to reach this particular target audience.
We may have a narrow niche, but that hasn’t narrowed our opportunities. The Tradesmen Insights blog has enhanced our new business opportunities, allowed us to build awareness, interest and appeal to a specific target audience. We don’t appeal to everyone, but those with who we do, it is a strong appeal.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
In the B-to-B marketing world, most companies have specialties or niche markets that they serve.
In our case, most of our clients target the professional tradesman which makes our task a bit easier than others. To reach, for an example, Electrical Contractors or Electricians, there are very specific key words that would drive them to your site like IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), side-cutters or power bender.
Key words and SEO have long been associated with web sites. But blogs are actually more SEO friendly and much easier to update from information from your analytics.
Twitter isn’t there yet, it’s only a matter of time and search will be one of its most important elements.
Consistently using key words that your target audience would use to find your company will generate significant online traffic.
Companies make the mistake of assuming that once the initial search for those key words and phrases are done, they won’t have to go through that again. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Key words and SEO have to be a part of a continual process of monitoring and updating.
Tools like Google search allows you to type in key words and phrases to see what kind of activity levels there are. Especially in this economy where everything is being measured, SEO/organic search engine marketing has proven itself to be a good ROI.
Here are 4 tips to consider when developing your key words:
- Understand your audience. Since you’re in the business of making stuff, i.e. for Electrical Contractors, you should know their slang and buzz words. You should also know what’s going on in the industry. Don’t focus on marketing terms, focus on what the contractor would be typing into Google to solve his problem.
- Keep it simple. Because you’re talking to a specific audience (electrical contractors), you don’t need 1000 key words. The rule of thumb for key words is to have one key phrase per page. Having 6 or 8 only confuses the search engines so they’re not able to determine the focus of the page.
- Evaluate your competition. There are few companies that don’t have some sort of competitors. Look at their site and blogs if they have them. See what key words/phrases they’re using.
- Treat key word searches as an ongoing process. At least once a quarter, take a good hard look at the metrics and make tweaks where necessary.
What tips can you share to help improve your SEO performance?
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Tradesmen have specific issues relating to their business and are looking for ways to improve and stay on top of their game.
As a blogger who is targeting this market, one my objectives is for them to return often to my blog as a source of information they can use. Here are a couple of ways you can keep your blog audience coming back for more:
- Focus your content. That means every post you make must answer the (WIIFM) What’s In It For Me question. Tradesmen want answers to questions on how to do something better, quicker, solve a problem or give tips on making their working life easier. Engage them with questions and encourage feedback.
- Become an expert. If you stay focused on your market and messaging, you will fast become a trusted reliable source for that type of industry. People will bookmark you or put you on RSS so they can easily get your next nugget of info.
Your key objective is to get a loyal folowing of your target audience. To do that, they need to feel like they know, like and trust you. What’s nice about social media is that your prospective audience is searching out for you as much as you for them. The key is connecting and continuing a dialog. This will ultimately result in sales.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Measure goals. Between web analytics and social media tools, you will have more than enough ways to track and help you improve your results.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Just like in the real estate market where the mantra is location, location, location, the same holds true for social media. CONTENT IS KING. Not content for content sake, but relevant content for your target market. I try to focus most of my posts and re-posts on subjects that have some sort of relevance to reaching my target audience, the professional tradesmen.
Chris Brogan in a recent post, Make media work for you – elements of a good online content, reminded me that there are some basic principles to follow. Here are 3 good ones:
- Make content relevant. Write to answer the question for the reader of “what’s in it for me?”
- Make it brief. Blogs are not white papers. Make your point, give them other links that may be of interest and move on.
- Make it portable. One of the purposes of a blog is to share it, so make it easy, i.e RSS or e-mail.
Content is important, but don’t have the attitude, “If I build it they will come.” Create something of value and then go find the people you’re trying to reach.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 16, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Once someone goes to your web site, what reason do they have to go back?
I think most of you will agree that once a tradesman has been to your site and got the product info or downloaded some basic info, they normally don’t come back because you haven’t given them a reason to.
Want to scare upper senior management? Go to them with this idea: Make your blog the center piece of your online marketing.
You might initially think that this is a bold concept and many people haven’t considered the possibility of giving up their web site (or their job). I’d imagine for most bigger companies, that would be a hard sell upstairs.
Social media quarterbacked by your blog will bring you more readership and that translates into more opportunities. Think about it. Most everything you have on the web would work on a blog.
Here’s an idea on how to test it without scaring the powers to be. If you have a microsite targeted to a specific trade, niche, product or service, you can check the metrics of how many and how often users go that site, and when they are there, where they go. So you have benchmark data already set up. Now start a blog to that same group of tradesmen, add the same content from your current web site and check the numbers in 3 months.
I’d be willing to bet a good steak dinner that when you look at the metrics for the blog, it will far outperform the web site. Two main reasons for this are that you’re drawing more people because of the content and you’re interacting with them.
Something important to remember is that content is written differently for blogs than the web. Successful blogs write from the benefit angle instead of the capabilities angle which engages the users quicker.
Conclusion: Don’t just make your blog a journal you keep on a daily basis, make it one of the most powerful tools in you marketing tool box.
