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 | Sep 26, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends
Today we have a guest blog post from Rosemarie Ascherl, PR Foreman at Sonnhalter, discussing content marketing. Content marketing should be part of all B2B [and B2T] business’s overall marketing strategy.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend a fabulous week of learning and motivation when I attended the 2013 Content Marketing World Summit at the Cleveland Convention Center.
Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.
While the term content marketing has become popular in recent years, content marketing is a marketing technique that marketers have been using all along. Top B2B content marketing strategies are social media, articles on a business’s website, eNewsletters, case studies, videos and articles on other websites.
While there were many important takeaways from the conference, a couple stood out:
Content marketing needs a strategy
Before you dive into producing your content, you need to have a content marketing strategy. You need to establish your goals and mission, define your audience and establish your process. Content needs to be planned around a clearly outlined purpose. You need to establish the why behind your content strategy before you can begin to put together the how and the where.
Content marketing must be relevant
To establish authority and gain trust with your audience, your content must be valuable and relevant to them. This relevant industry information should provide insight or entertain them. Content must fulfill a need, be interesting and unique.
How can you create something meaningful for both your brand and your audience? Understand your customers, and try to find ways to solve their problems. Give them content that addresses their needs. Remember that it’s not about you—it’s about them. Ultimately, providing this type of content allows a company to steadily build rapport with its demographic and develop a loyal following.
If you find this post interesting, you may be interested in the following:
Manufacturers: What are you trying to accomplish with your content marketing?
Why do you use content marketing – Do you think it’s for branding or for selling?
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 18, 2013 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
Here is another reason Suppliers should think about the value of joining a buying group. The trends are that they are starting their own meetings which means lots of quality time with distributors. Here are the details:
Lockport, NY – NetPlus Alliance, a buying group for industrial and contractor supplies distributors, has opened registration for its first annual group meeting. The event is scheduled for March 16-18, 2014 and will take place at the M Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. The group’s first stand-alone gathering will engage NetPlus distributors and suppliers through one-on-one business meetings, networking and educational breakout sessions.
M.K. Morse, ORS Nasco, Proto Industrial Tools and Walter Meier will host the breakout sessions that will deliver product knowledge and sales opportunities to NetPlus distributors in a classroom style setting. Dan Judge, NetPlus Alliance Chairman and CFO spoke on the value of these sessions. “The breakouts were an idea that came out of our advisory meetings last fall. These sessions will give our distributors something to take back to the office: product knowledge and new sales opportunities.”
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 10, 2013 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
Sonnhalter is deeply involved with the professional tradesmen. We recently updated our overview of the Plumbing market. The purpose of the document is to give the reader a quick snapshot of the industry and its players for the balance of 2013 and what to look for in 2014.
Included are association and buying group contacts, training firms, best practices, codes and standards, online resources, trade shows/meetings and media publications. A free copy for download is available. Click here to sign up.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 4, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
The professional trades are no different from normal consumers when it comes to using mobile. There have been a few articles in eMarketing.com about both time spent on mobile devices and what’s being used to open and read emails. Both are significant when it comes to reaching contractors with your messages.
Email remains one of the most critical marketing channels—if not the most exciting. And as more consumers access on mobile, there is a growing imperative to make sure emails are smartphone- and tablet-optimized. However, that doesn’t mean marketers can forget about the desktop just yet according to a recent article in emarketer.com. That coupled with the fact that the US now spends more time on mobile devices than desktop should send up a red flag for those of us who haven’t addressed the mobile market.
The shift includes watching video, checking social media and reading emails. So what does this mean to the B-to-B market? It means if we want to effectively communicate with our audiences, we need to be doing it in a format that is easily read.
Matt Sonnhalter, in another post on mobile, indicated that by 2015, mobile will be the first screen that people will use. That’s not that far away!
A recent survey by Equipment World Magazine on those contractors that had smartphones:
- 85% view emails
- 81% use it to text
- 71% connect to the internet
- 52% use apps
- 24% visit social sites
- 20% watch videos
- 4% don’t use it for any of the above
Bottom line is, if you don’t have your website optimized for mobile, you’re going to miss lots of opportunities.
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 14, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
B-to-B marketers are always trying to identify more/better qualified leads. Does it surprise anyone that social media ranked very low in this category? The traditional methods of telemarketing, event marketing, webinars, trade shows, email marketing and yes, even direct mail pull better results according to a Survey in MarketingProfs from InsideSales.com
They surveyed 423 B-to-B Sales and Marketing professionals that cited that generating and improving leads was their biggest challenge.
I think sometimes we’re all so focused on the new tools available to us to generate leads that we forget about some of the old standbys.
I have found that we usually have more success using traditional marketing tools when it comes to actually generating good qualified leads.
What are you finding out that works best for you in a B-to-B environment?
