by tradesmeninsights | May 24, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
One of the biggest challenges marketers face, especially in the B-to-B market, is trying to sell something to their bosses who don’t really understand. Social media falls into that category more times than not. It’s hard for management to allocate resources to something they don’t have their arms around.
So you need a plan, and I recently read Social Marketing to the Business Customer by Eric Schwartzman and Paul Gillin that outlines some tips on helping you get both a budget and resources to get the job done. Here are some highlights:
- Identify your target buyers keywords – Identify and track words that would identify a potential sale. For example, if you were in the material handling business and the key words “new lift trucks” came up, there might be an opportunity for you to start a conversation.
- Evaluate your customers, suppliers and most importantly, your competitors – If you can show your bosses that other folks in your market are utilizing social media, it will help in making your case. We usually offer to do, for clients or potentials, a quick audit of their competitors, key words and phrases in their space to see what kind of activity there is.
- Position social media as an extension of your current marketing efforts – Social is just another tool in the marketing tool box so make sure you integrate it into current efforts.
- Support the existing culture – If your management gets social media it will be easier to sell and monitor activities. If they are less familiar they will want more control as well as metrics. Fortunately, it’s the most measurable media out there.
Bottom line is, do your homework to show that social is being used by your customers and competitors. Show them who’s on Twitter or is blogging. Pull up a mobile app or show them a relevant group on LinkedIn or a forum they should be participating in with your customers. The more tangible example, the better.
by tradesmeninsights | May 19, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Email marketing is still a very good B-to-B business tactic. But like anything else, you’re always fighting for the attention of the professional tradesmen. Contractor’s inboxes are just as loaded as the rest of ours, so what do we need to do to get him to open ours?
Here are 5 tips to consider:
- Identify yourself – If they don’t know you, they probably won’t open it.
- Attention-getting subject line – Keep it short and benefit oriented.
- Provide relevant copy – What’s in it for me?
- Keep your copy focused and short – Get to the point; use bold headlines and give them a call to action.
- Build a good list – Use your existing customer lists but also ask your sales force for a list of its prospects and don’t be afraid to rent a reputable list.
Those are some of my tips. What’s working for you?
If you like this post, you might also like:
5 Tips to Improve Your B-to-B Direct Marketing Efforts.
by tradesmeninsights | May 17, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
The professional tradesmen don’t go anywhere without their cell phones, and there’s a good chance that those phones are smartphones (50% of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2011). They depend on them everyday on the jobsite. So are you missing an opportunity?
I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen, 6 Must-Do Mobile Marketing Tactics that outlined some things for you to consider if you’re contemplating getting into mobile apps. Here are some highlights as they would apply to the professional tradesmen:
- Understand your goals – You need to determine your strategy and how it fits into your existing marketing plan.
- Know your market – Beyond identifying your audience, you need to figure out what kinds of things would be most useful for a contractor of a jobsite.
- Mobile websites – Make sure your existing website is formatted for mobile. Make sure the content you do have there is applicable to the contractor’s “on the go” needs. Make fields larger, make sure you have your logo and encourage action.
- Mobile search – Beyond your normal optimization, combine with mobile CTR. Don’t forget to to include local content like where the closest distributor of your products are.
- Mobile e-mails – Since e-mails are the most used application, why not develop an e-mail plan specifically for mobile? If your sales guys are demoing a new product at a local Depot, let them know about it and offer them a discount coupon for stopping by.
These are just some ideas on how to capitalize on mobile. If you’ve got an existing mobile program going on, I’d like to hear what you’re doing.
If you like this post you might like:
Mobile Marketing for B-to-B: Change in the Air(waves)
56 Mobile Marketing Facts
by tradesmeninsights | May 5, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Social media has its protocol just like anything else to participate, interact and engage. I recently read a good post by Heidi Cohen, Social Media’s 10 Commandments that I thought said it pretty well. Here are some highlights:
- Be real – Be yourself. You want to make your audience feel comfortable.
- Know your audience – If you know who they are, you can better understand and know what focus to on.
- It’s not about you – Talk to the bigger picture of what’s in it for the community you’re addressing.
- Participate – If you don’t, how can you expect to engage people and build relationships?
- Share your knowledge – Support the greater good of the community.
by tradesmeninsights | May 4, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Blogs are a good center piece for your marketing strategy, but they are time-consuming, and if not taken seriously, will fail long before they have time to succeed.
I’ve created a list of things you need to do to ensure your blog’s success:
- Establish a niche – You have to be able to blog about something specific. This helps identify your target audience and a strategy to reach them.
- Identify possible topic categories – Based on your target audience, you should come up with several different topic categories to write on.
- Establish frequency – You can’t build a following when doing few posts a month. People who have the same passion on the subject want to be touched on a more regular basis. I find that 3 posts a week work for me and my audience.
- Keep ahead of the curve – If you’re going to do several posts a week, you don’t want to wake up on those days and HAVE to write a post. What if you get writer’s block or God forbid a customer takes up your time. I try to have a least a few weeks of posts in the can and ready to go so the pressure isn’t on.
- Identify guest bloggers – Once you’ve identified your market and your niche, you’ll be able to find other bloggers who share your passion on the subject and can offer a different perspective on a subject.
- Build links – These are important in SEO. Link to relevant sites.
- Promote your blog – That’s why it needs to be an integral part of your overall marketing program where you can leverage and promote across all mediums.
- Respond to comments on your blog – One of the main reasons for the blog is to get conversations going. What a great way to start a relationship.
- Comment on other blogs – If your comments are sincere and on point, other bloggers will check you out and start a conversation with you that might end up with you reciprocating in doing guest posts.
These are my tips. I’m sure you have others you’d like to share and I’d love to hear from you.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Increase your Visibility by Commenting on Blogs.
B-to-B Blogs Can Help Increase Marketing Efforts to the Professional Tradesmen.
2011 Trends for B-to-B Blogging.
by tradesmeninsights | May 3, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Blogs can play an important part in your overall marketing plan. By integrating them with other marketing tools like e-newsletters, other social sites and your existing website, as well as offline activities, you can enhance your efforts and results.
I have found that we are getting more activity as far as page views on our blog than our website.What’s more important is that I have regular readers who view my posts via RSS feeds and everyday, new readers find the site through key word searches.
We have also gained insights into our readers, and by their responses, we know what they want to hear more about. We even use surveys and polls to help us get answers directly from the readers as to what is important to them. We can look at monthly results to see which topics are having more traction than others.
Our long-term plan is to gain the readers’ trust and become their go-to resource when it comes to marketing to the professional tradesmen. By being informative, creative and reliable in what we say, and the examples we give, we build trust with our readers.
Ultimately, we want to gain new business opportunities, and a blog helps you do that. We recently won a few pieces of new business from companies that were following us on our blog. Many are virtual clients who feel comfortable doing business with us even though they never met us in person because they like what we said on our blog.
These are a few things you should expect from a company blog. We use it as a marketing centerpiece that we position our other activities around.
I’d like to hear some of your success stories around your blog successes.
If you like this post, you might like:
B-to-B Blogs Can Help Increase Marketing Efforts to the Professional Tradesmen.
2011-Trends in B-to-B Blogging.
