by tradesmeninsights | Feb 23, 2016 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
I keep harping on building your own internal customer database. One of the reasons is that if you’re selling online, that list could be gold for you. 90% of the marketers surveyed by Accenture and the Blackstone Group said email marketing was what they used to promote their commerce activities.
Another interesting stat is that of these marketing executives, 23% said that email marketing drove at least 25% of overall revenues. Some say that email marketing accounts for more sales than all other digital advertising.
If you want accountability, consider this:
Heidi Cohen gives us several reasons why email trumps social media:
- Email provides directly measurable ROI – You know immediately how many opened and read your message.
- Email is content format agnostic – It’s user-friendly and you can use text, images, videos, audio, PDFs.
- Email can deliver both long and short content – Content can vary from a link to several pages in length.
- Emails – you can control delivery – Whether it’s now or delayed.
- Emails can be read on anything – Smart phones, tablets, laptops, no apps required.
- Emails build customer relationships – Once someone allows you to communicate with them, it represents a certain level of trust.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Email Marketing-Still a Top Performer.
Email Marketing-Is this the Best Way to Reach Professional Tradesman?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 16, 2016 | Events/Trade Shows, Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
I’ll be one of the guest speakers at the Whizard Summit in Boulder, Colorado in April. Mark Mitchell, CEO of Whizard Strategy, has put together a jam-packed, 2-day conference for manufacturers of building materials on ways to address issues with architects, builders and contractors.
Here is a taste of what you’ll learn step-by-step in this two-day event packed with insights and strategies you can use immediately to generate sales:
- Find out what builders REALLY want along with 3 simple ways to make sure you give it to them.
- The #1 reason architects keep ignoring you – and a simple shift you can make to get specified.
- The biggest challenge facing most contractors and a proven strategy that will make them WANT to do business with you.
- The secret to selling Commercial Building Facilities Managers and Design Build Contractors – an often-missed step that stops the sales process dead in its tracks.
- A growth blueprint you can share with lumber and specialty dealers that will make you a welcome visitor any time.
- How to take the intimidation out of “Big Box” selling and finally get your products and services the respect they deserve.
Guest speakers include building materials experts in market research, SEO, online content and video, marketing automation, builder and contractor sales.
To register, visit http://seethewhizard.com/summit/. You’ll receive an additional $200 discount if you use the code “Sonnhalterclient” before March 1st.
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 2, 2016 | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
As manufacturers we all know how important keeping in contact with our customers is. Email is one of the easiest and most effective way to do that and unfortunately for those of you who sell through a distribution process it’s hard to get the ultimate end user’s name no less try to start a relationship with them.
That’s why it’s important to begin building your own database of both current and potential contractors. If you’re fortunate enough to make products that require a warranty card that certainly is a place to start. Other outbound marketing activities should include incentives for contractors to give up their contact info so you can start a dialog with them.
Give them something of value that would help them in their everyday activities, such as:
- mobile app
- some sort of calculator to help them estimate projects
- white paper
- a series of how-to videos
- industry research on new and upcoming trends
- checklists on detailed processes
- case study
- tool kit (cheat sheets, checklists, videos, e-books)
Do you know that the average office worker checks their email 30 times an hour? Can you imagine what the stats are for contractors out in the field?
The point is that emails are very acceptable ways of communicating with each other. The key is to have relevant and timely info for your prospect.
Heidi Cohen gives us several reasons why email trumps social media:
- Email provides directly measurable ROI – You know immediately how many opened and read your message.
- Email is content format agnostic – It’s user-friendly and you can use text, images, videos, audio, PDFs.
- Email can deliver both long and short content – Content can vary from a link to several pages in length.
- You can control delivery of emails – Whether it’s now or delayed.
- Emails can be read on anything – Smart phones, tablets, laptops, no apps required.
- Emails build customer relationships – Once someone allows you to communicate with them, it represents a certain level of trust.
With all the marketing trends and new things over the last several years, email still seems to be the “workhorse” for most people’s marketing efforts. Recent research from Gigaom reports that over 75% of smart phone users check their emails on their phones. What I find remarkable, if you look at the chart below, 5 years ago paid search, SEO and digital ads would have been at the top of the list. Oh, how the more things change, the more they remain the same.
So what are you doing to grow your own email list?
Here are some other posts you might find useful:
Benchmark Report on Email Marketing Sheds Light on Top Priorities for B-to-B Marketers
5 Tips on Improving Your Email Marketing to Professional Tradesmen
Email Marketing: How Are You Using it to Reach the Professional Tradesmen
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 19, 2016 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Uncategorized
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
According to a recent post in eMarketer.com, mobile is continuing to grow in the workplace. In 2014, the average non voice time U.S. adults spent on mobile devices surpassed that of desktops and laptops for the first time.
And by 2017, eMarketer.com estimates that mobile usage will increase to more than an hour a day more than desktops or laptops. This should come as no surprise to us. The next time you’re in a meeting, look around the room and see how many mobile devices are there and how many times those individuals check their devices during the course of the meeting.
So what does this mean for manufacturers who are trying to reach the professional tradesman? It means if you don’t currently have a mobile strategy, you better develop one soon! Here some areas you need to focus on:
LinkedIn, a leading BtoB social media tool, reports that 55% of all its traffic is coming from mobile in the last part of 2015. Google reported that in the U.S., more than 50% of all searches were made on mobile devices .
Similar estimates for mobile use: Facebook (58%) and Twitter (90%) are forecasted by the end of 2016.
Mobile is here to stay and we need to recognize that these are new challenges for our workforces.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 12, 2016 | Marketing Trends
By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Architect
We’ve closed the books on 2015 and 2016 is already off to a great start. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to evaluate what worked well and what didn’t work for you in 2015 to calibrate your 2016 efforts.
The most popular Tradesmen Insights posts of 2015 give us an idea of what content proved valuable enough to you to keep coming back and to share. Our top posts from last year represent many trends and challenges that aren’t going away.
Here were our top 10 posts published in 2015:
- Are you a strategic or tactical thinker?
- For Your Lead Nurturing Programs – Where do you Find Good Content?
- Why Forecasting and Budgeting are Vital to Success
- What is a creative brief?
- Did Your Website Survive Mobilegeddon?
- B2B Social Media Marketing: 5 Reasons Companies Skip Social Media And Why They’re Wrong
- What Will our B-to-B Marketing Responsibilities Look Like in 2 Years?
- What’s the Future of Small Independent Industrial Distributors?
- New Content Marketing Research for Manufacturing
- Listen…Please
Planning, strategy, content marketing, listening and adapting with the ever-changing algorithms that rule the web remain important issues into this year.
Since we started Tradesmen Insights many years ago, it’s undergone some changes, but the goal is still the same: to provide valuable B2T marketing communications information, advice and guidance.
What do you expect to be the top issues you’ll face in this year?
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 6, 2016 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends
Desktop opens are still more than mobile, but the trend is closing the gap according to a recent post in emarketer.com.
Mobile click-through rates for U.S. marketing emails sent by Yesmail clients in the later part of 2015 were up close to 14%.
So what does this mean for manufacturers that are trying to reach contractors and tradesman? It means that whatever you’re trying to communicate to them, it needs to be mobile friendly. Contractors check more than emails on job sites, and the more mobile friendly you are, the better results there will be.
Besides the content they want to deliver, they need to consider apps and mobile tactics. Here are a few.
Possible Apps to Consider:
- Product information
- Engineering or other calculators
- Installation and troubleshooting instruction videos
- Productivity tools
- Competitive cross-reference charts
- Ability to check current inventory levels
- Distributor locator with direct links
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Are you using mobile to share your content with tradesman and contractors.
2016 Budget: How much are you going to spend on social media and mobile marketing?
