by tradesmeninsights | Oct 23, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
I think everyone realizes by now that mobile is the fastest growing segment of the business. While the biggest impact is on the retail markets, B-to-B usage continues to grow. So should you have an app? The answer to that is, will your app give value and help your targeted user with practical things? If yes, then you’d better get rolling.
comScore data shows that 63% of mobile commerce happens via a smartphone. Don’t take these retail numbers for granted. From a B-to-B perspective, giants like Amazon are leading the way in this category. That means that a consumer can buy a book as easily as a hydraulic fitting using a smartphone.
So the questions you have to ask yourself are this: do I have a mobile website, and if I do, is it optimized for smartphones and tablets? If not, you need to get a responsive designed site sooner than later. But just because you’ve built an app doesn’t mean people will come.
I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen, 21 Ways to Promote Your Mobile App that gives you quick ideas on how to promote. Here are some highlights:
- Promote your app on your website
- Promote your app on your mobile site
- Get your app in iOS and Android app stores
- Use it in self promotion from emails to QR codes in print and digital ads
- Promote it on your business cards and email signature
Let’s not waste an opportunity.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Mobile Marketing to the Professional Tradesman – What are you Doing?
Things to Consider When Using Mobile to Reach the Professional Tradesman.
Is Your Website Mobile Ready for the Professional Tradesman?
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 22, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Hopefully we all are using landing pages to both identify and segment new business leads. But are we just dumping content or are we using creative ways to cross sell, up sell to convert leads into sales? ioninteractive.com has a white paper that gives creative ways to maximize the use of landing pages to distribute your content marketing gems.
They bring home the fact that there is a fair exchange for content. In other words, is the perceived value of what they are getting worth giving up some contact info to you?
They cover ways to maximize content on your blogs, white papers, webinars, slide decks and infographics. Some highlights include:
- Blogs – give them a reason to do something else once they are on your blog. Give them something of value for free if they sign up. Give them a reason to sign into your database for future info (get them in the nurturing cycle).
- White Papers – most are gated which might restrict the number of sign-ins. Test a non-gated version, but put some call to actions within the paper for comparison chart, industry study, etc. that they would have to register in order to download. See which one generates more. The ungated will certainly bring in more numbers, but most of us are looking for quality not quantity so you’ll have to evaluate what might work best for you. You might want to also concert doing some teaser-type ads/emails that would include a top 10 list with a link to the white paper.
- Webinars – after the fact, what are you doing with the recorded version? Are you promoting it with links to either the webcast itself or to the companion slides? Are you including social links for them to share? Test a gated vs. ungated model to see which one generates more interest.
- Slides – utilize SlideShare to post the slides with links to the actual webinar (gated). Again, include social links for sharing.
- Infographics – visual always gets attention. Make sure there are several links to social, QR code and subscribe button so they have options of both staying in touch as well as sharing.
Their white paper is easy to read and gives you great ideas on how to get more from existing content. You can download it here.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 17, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools
Today we have a guest blog post by Sandy Bucher, Media Engineer at Sonnhalter, sharing advice on how to reach the key people for your message.
If you are a manufacturer and want to reach a certain job title in a particular industry, in a particular market you want to focus on, targeted demographic inserts are another option to the standard print ad and are offered by most publications. Inserts can be one sheet, two-sided and are printed on heavier stock than the publication uses, but can also be a postcard or even a multi-page brochure. The inserts can be bound into, or glued into the publication, depending on the publication’s specifications.
Why inserts?
The purpose of using a targeted demographic insert is that a company can select just those readers they want the message to reach, and the publication will send it only to those selected, rather than sending it to the entire circulation. For an example, if you only want to reach the engineers or the plant operations people, you select just those titles. The cost for placing a targeted demographic insert is generally less than placing a full-run advertisement because you’re reaching fewer people. But you also have to consider the cost of printing the insert. If you’re using a one-page, two-sided insert, remember it’s like placing two ads (you get two pages, more real estate), so that may validate the expense of doing an insert.
Get noticed.
A targeted insert will get noticed. The paper stock is usually different than the paper stock the publication uses, so when flipping through the magazine, the magazine will naturally open to the insert, making the reader stop to see why the magazine keeps opening to that particular section of the magazine. A client of ours that uses the demographic inserts had someone call to voice his displeasure because the magazine kept opening to their insert and he was getting frustrated. But that’s what you want…you want to get noticed and the insert did exactly that for our client.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 16, 2013 | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends
We all have an end game hopefully on both generating and converting leads. What are the critical factors that you’re looking for?
I recently read in MarketingProfs highlights of a recent study by Business.com surveying 500 active pay-per-lead advertisers that identified what’s important to them. Some are obvious while others are nice to haves but almost impossible to get. Here are some highlights of what marketers want:
- Know the purchasing horizon time line
- Know the size of their business (# of employees)
Further, here are some things they find useful of leads that are generated from content marketing:
- Whitepaper leads
- Webinar leads
- Sponsored emails
- Case studies
- Product feature guides
Are you capitalizing on these types of content marketing? If not, maybe you should consider it.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 2, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We’ve talked many times about the importance of having a mobile strategy when wanting to reach the professional contractors. Their office is a jobsite and they need to be and stay connected. Mobile is changing the way we reach these important people.
A recent article by Bob Oord in marketingprofs outlines the explosion in this market and ways we can maximize our efforts there. An amazing stat is that their usage has doubled in just 1 year! The integration of mobile apps with CRM and business intelligence has changed user expectations.
TOP MOBILE TACTICS TO CONSIDER:
- Responsive website – so it can be read on any device
- Mobile-friendly campaigns – optimize landing pages.
- Mobile advertising – can be tailored by location, time and device so take advantage of them.
- Mobile email – make sure your HTML can be read properly on these devices.
- Mobile apps – apps let you secure a prominent presence on your customer’s device.
Please note that a recent report by Forrester, “Don’t Confuse Tablet And Mobile Marketing,” a B2B marketer needs to differentiate between smart phones and tablets. Smart phones have a much smaller screen for content experiences and is used “on the go,” while tablets are used more at home and in the office offering rich content opportunities.
If you liked this article, you might want to read:
Mobile Marketing to the Professional Tradesman: What are you Doing?
Why Mobile Marketing is Important for the Professional Tradesman.
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 20, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
I have this running conversation with clients about which is better, a traditional direct mail program or an e-blast. It’s a tough question to answer and I’m not too sure there is only one answer.
There are challenges for using both methods and we have seen it become more and more difficult to get emails delivered even if we use opt-in lists from trade publications and have them send it out under their name.
I think that when reaching out to our target market, the professional tradesman, you have just as good if not better of a chance of reaching them with the traditional snail mail.
We recently did a sampling program for a client who wanted to focus more on the electronic side of things and wanted to use more, if not most, in this media. They assumed that direct mail was a thing of the past and was too costly (neither of which are true). We convinced them to give both a try and the results were surprising.
The DM portion of the program outperformed on average 3 to 1 over the e-blasts. We used the same criteria for both lists and did both within 2 weeks of each other. We’re doing a second test using the same message and list parameters and it will be interesting to see if it still holds true.
We’ve all used both of these marketing tools. My question to you is have you found one better than the other in reaching contractors or the professional tradesman?
