by tradesmeninsights | Apr 9, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We all work hard developing content and sometimes forget to spend as much time promoting it. Repackaging and republishing in different ways to drive traffic to your website – these are the driving forces on the internet. Our content is relevant around the world and we need to re-share.
I was reminded recently by an article from ASM, The Association of Strategic Marketing, that there are easy ways to share content. Among them:
- Syndication – RSS feeds are the most common way to re-share content. That little button that you put on your site or blog makes it so easy for people to share your content with their group of contacts.
- Summarized reports – Group previously published articles to create a report that can be shared by PDF or other downloadable formats.
- Social Media – Share on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+
- E-mail – Don’t forget about the old standby. Your contacts, both customers and prospects, will welcome good content.
- Multi-media – Repurpose into a podcast or video. This media has its own benefits in that we all like to listen and look as opposed to read all the time. Not to mention that YouTube is the second most search engine behind Google.
What are you doing to make sure your content is shared?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 20, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
There are several sites out there that help the homeowner find qualified tradesmen. We have a guest post today from LocalTraders and although their focus is on the local trades, some of their ideas are not bad ones for manufacturers to consider as well. Enjoy.
Having an insight into how your competitors work is the key to gaining an advantage in the trade industry, after all with the economy struggling, every advantage counts. Using your competitor may seem like a devious way to boost business but trust me you have to beat your competition in order to reap the rewards. Beating your competition however doesn’t necessarily mean being ruthless, instead making friends and gaining common ground could be your key to success…
Embrace the Competition
Firstly identify your competitors and get to know more about them. Focus on understanding your competitor’s strategy and their target customer; during the analysis, look for similarities and differences between your strategy and theirs. Not only will understanding, embracing and almost making friends (or at least becoming acquainted) with your main competitors mean you can take advantage of parts of their strategy that you may have overlooked but it will also give you an insight and a base to build upwards, developing their principles to take the lead.
The Joint Venture
For many it takes a strong stomach to team up with competitors and purposely share your customer base but partnering up with competitors can mean a mutually beneficial end. A joint venture may mean worrying less about sales but it will serve your customer base with ultimate value and give them the firm impression that they are getting the best possible service meaning a higher chance of future business as well as a very happy customer. An example of a joint venture that is particularly prevalent in the trade industry is the sharing of related services. Your competitor may just offer a slightly different service or the missing link for finishing a job for a client so use each other to profit in the long run and gain customer support.
Learn from Their Mistakes
This is another way to make the right decisions for your company based on your competitor’s experiences so follow them closely and learn from them. One of the main ways you can learn from your competitor is by watching out for price changes and looking out for your ‘window of opportunity’. Many customers will want a more cost-effective deal, especially in these difficult economic times, so be on hand to profit from competitor price increases with the right communication and marketing materials, you may just gain a few more customers!
This article was written by LocalTraders, the market leaders in home improvement solutions. Their easy-to-use enquiry system connects customers looking for high quality services with the local trade professionals who can provide them.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 19, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Uncategorized
If you’re a manufacturer that either doesn’t use or think social media should be a part of your overall marketing plan, this webinar is for you.
We will discuss why social media is not only relevant but crucial to your overall marketing initiatives. I will be joined by Greg Habermann, COO of SageRock, a digital marketing agency and a strategic partner of ours. We will show you real examples of what manufacturers are doing right and give you tips on how you can too. We’ll focus on YouTube, Slideshare, LinkedIn and Blogs.
When: Tuesday, April 9th at 2PM EST
This webinar is available for viewing on our YouTube channel – click here.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 6, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
You can’t turn around today and not hear the words “content marketing.” You would have thought that someone had discovered the holy grail! Content marketing isn’t anything new, it’s just called something else. There can be arguments for both I suppose, but I feel the primary role of content marketing is to position yourself to have an advantage and sell something!
Why do people do business with you? It probably has something to do with your having something they find useful and need. It also probably has something to do with them finding you helpful, informative and an all-around good guy. They can count on you for troubleshooting or advice on best practices. Now I haven’t mentioned the term content marketing, but don’t you think that’s what you’ve been doing all along? Now they call it something different.
Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.”
Content Marketing should be helping you in some way to move a prospect down a sales funnel. I’m not saying they need to be hard selling but you need to able to satisfy a need of a prospect in order for them to take the next step. Always answer the question – WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? If a prospect can’t easily answer that question, there will be no next steps.
Chris Brogan, in a guest post on Copyblogger, Why content marketing is not branding, highlights why the end game in any content marketing efforts have to be helping someone make a decision of some kind. He goes on to say that marketing and sales are not evil and that content marketing, if done correctly, will give the advantage in the long run.
What do you think content marketing is and how are you using it?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 5, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Manufacturers are trying different ways to get and stay in front of the professional tradesman, and your website is probably one of the first places they will look for info. Is it mobile friendly?
I recently read a post by one of my mentors, Michael Gass, on ways to test your site that I thought I’d share with you. Good info.
In preparation for new business opportunities, it is important that your company’s website be mobile ready.
The number of smartphones in use worldwide has now broken the 1 billion mark, according to Strategy Analytics. Only 15% of companies have a mobile optimized site even though Google estimates that there will be more Web traffic via mobile, than through PCs this year. According to a survey conducted for Compuware, 40% of users have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
You’ll want prospects to have an easy experience learning about your agency or accessing your agency’s blog content via their mobile device.
Here’s a collection of best practices, white papers and case studies for your review and to help get you started:
There’s nothing like first hand experience so check out your company’s website on your mobile device. Sig Ueland, contributing editor for Practical Ecommerce, pulled together a list of 19 tools for testing your site’s mobile readiness. You can use any of these following 12 for free:
- Gomez
- MobiReady
- W3C mobileOK Checker
- GoMoMeter
- iPhone Tester
- iPad Peek
- Screenfly
- Mobile Phone Emulator
- The Responsinator
- Matt Kersley’s Responsive Design Testing
- Opera Mini Simulator
- iPhoney
You can make your agency’s website mobile ready until you can create the mobilized version of the site.
If you have a WordPress site, you can use plugins like MobilePress and Mippin which will automatically enable mobile users on your website to access a mobile version of it. Until the mobile version of Fuel Lines has been developed, I’m using another WordPress plugin called WPtouch to mobilize this site. There are also a number of online services such as Mobilize Today that will have your website ready for mobile in a matter of minutes.
Click on the following link for Sig’s complete list and description of each: 19 Tools to Test your Site for Mobile Devices
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 27, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
When developing new content whether it’s for your blog or website, one of your goals should be to capitalize as much as possible on maximizing your SEO. We all want to grab our fair share and by making a conscious effort to incorporate our key words in everything we do, we’ll have a better chance.
An article by Mike Murray in Content Marketing Institute caught my attention. Mike gives us some good pointers and lots of support sites (mostly free) that we can use to help increase SEO. He’s even created a short checklist for us to reference.
Here are some highlights:
- Have I overlooked any key words
- Do key words match your business or targets?
- New page development – make sure to incorporate your most strategic key words.
- Review your site’s analytics to see how people are currently getting there. Are you using some of those key words in your content?
- Are you including a call to action? Does the reader easily know what you want them to do?
- Look at an internal link strategy that cross links between pages.
- Plan your content with a calendar to ensure your key words/phrases are being written about on a regular basis.
Let’s all try to work smarter as we enter a new year.
