by tradesmeninsights | Apr 25, 2012 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
This month marks three years since I started blogging on Tradesmeninsights.com. With over 500 posts in the system and over 500 followers who are signed up for my monthly newsletter, I thought I’d reflect a bit on what’s come out of all my efforts over the past three years.
If you’re doing a blog or thinking about starting one, make sure you identify the objectives and expectations at the onset.
Our objective when starting the blog was to talk to those interested in reaching the professional tradesmen and ways you could do that. We also wanted to help educate our target audience (manufacturers) on ways they could integrate social media tools into their marketing mix since most of them were very traditional on how they approach things and didn’t like change.
I can remember back in the mid 90s when websites were the big thing and how even back then manufacturers were the last group to come to the party. For those of you who have been around long enough, you will remember those days. Can you image a business today without a website?
To become a thought leader in marketing to the professional tradesmen was our primary goal. We knew that if folks like you (by the way, if you’re a regular, thanks for sticking around) got benefit out of my babblings, we would eventually connect and might even do some business.
We have established dialogs with several folks and have been fortunate to start doing business with several of them. It’s gratifying to be at a trade association meeting or shows and be introduced to people who know who we are because of the blog. And oh, by the way, we are getting business from our blog which was one of our other objectives.
If you do a blog, make sure you have clear objectives and an audience that wants to learn more.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 18, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Now that most companies are back on the offensive and are actively spending more money on marketing, I thought I would ask you where are you getting the best results?
I know the big focus and conversations over the last few years have been on social. Have you jumped in yet, and if so, what kind of results are you getting? What about traditional things like print ads in trade journals and direct mail? Is anyone gaining traction with these?
So to answer my own question, we’re finding in our self promotion that both traditional as well as social media are playing important roles in new business development
A few years ago, we added social media to our marketing mix with this blog. It’s been a major commitment by us to do 2-3 posts a week, but our strategy is paying off. We not only have clients following us, but also potentials who are looking at going after the professional tradesmen.
The blog increases our visibility and also visits to our website. We’ve had a run on inquiries over the last 6 months from folks who have been following us and like what we’re saying. From the market overviews to Podcasts with industry leaders, they have recognized that we specialize in a niche market they are trying to reach and have come to us for help. What’s nice about these new business opportunities is that we’re not competing for the business.
All of our new business isn’t coming from social. We’ve had a print campaign going for the last three years in the leading trade journals where we put a false cover on the copies that go to potential advertisers in those markets. This too has brought us several new business opportunities.
So what’s working for you?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 21, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
The job of marketing today isn’t to create new customers but to create passionate subscribers to our brand. Your community will take charge and social networking will continue to facilitate the power shift towards the consumer. Our challenges are to make a person stop, read, think and behave differently.
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.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?
Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.
So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:
- Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
- Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
- What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
- Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
- Measure success.
Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.
We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 20, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
LinkedIn has always been one of my best sources of activity to my blog. It also allows me to network with others who have the same interest in groups that I join, and I can always count on input from those who are linked with me if I need something or a question answered.
That’s why it wasn’t a big surprise to me when a recent study by HubSpot said that LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate of 2.74%, almost 3 times higher than both Twitter and Facebook.
I guess that shows me that the people who are on LinkedIn are there for business purposes and are looking to network. So here are some tips on how to leverage LinkedIn:
- Invest the time – develop and nurture your community. Don’t post something for the sake of posting. If you don’t have good content, wait until you do.
- Focus content on what’s working – if blog posts are getting the most traffic, concentrate on doing more of them. If webinars or podcasts create more activity, focus on them.
- Don’t forget lead generation content – call-to-action items need to be included in the mix so you’re continually inviting people to engage.
- Keep learning – don’t take any success for granted. Keep working to improve your content.
Those are some of my thoughts. What are you doing to take advantage of LinkedIn?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 13, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.
I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:
- Content – You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
- Outreach – Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
- Response – Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
- Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.
CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?
