by tradesmeninsights | Jun 25, 2014 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools
Since marketing is being held more accountable, it’s important to make sure the tactics you’re using are getting you the best bang for your buck.
Here are some tips:
Define your value proposition – Why are you here? What makes you different? If people don’t know why you exist, how will they know if you can help them?
Before doing something new, determine what’s working – You don’t have to keep reinventing things. Look at what’s working and do more of that instead of trying something new.
Understanding the sales process – and supporting the sales team with useful content that will help them keep a potential prospect engaged.
What are you doing to make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for the buck?
If you like this and want to read more, you might like:
What’s Your Marketing Strategy for 2014? See What Others are Saying.
How Sales and Marketing Can Get the Best out of Their Content Marketing
6 Ways to Make Your Marketing to Tradesman More Effective
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 24, 2014 | Marketing Tips
Your company has a strategy. Your sales force has a strategy. Your marketing department has a strategy. Why doesn’t your content have one?
We all are busy creating content for various purposes, but do we ever ask the question of why are we creating it, and once it’s created, what are we going to do with it? I recently read an article by Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute where he reminded us that content without a strategy is just stuff.
To be not only efficient, but also effective, we can’t take a ready, fire, aim approach. Joe pointed out that a well-thought-out strategy not only gets us more traction in the market, but we also might be able to do more with less by utilizing content in several different places. By understanding your customers and what they want, you can put a strategy together that will not only create content, but have it tied with other similar content that your user will need as they go down the decision process.
If we want users to share our content, it has to have value to them and address the issues straight on. Don’t publish content for the sake of content. Have a plan in place before you start to write. By having a strategy and good user content, you’ll have a winning combination for users to keep coming back to you for more useful info.
Time is money-use it wisely!
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 19, 2014 | Uncategorized
By Sandy Bucher, Media Engineer
If you’re interested in learning about a particular topic related to your profession, many publications, groups and associations offer webinars, or webcasts, for free or for a minimal charge, or they are included in association membership fees. Some may also be eligible for CEU credits.
Webinars are usually one hour or less in length and can be accessed with a computer or mobile device. Most webinars are presented live on a particular date. If you are unable to attend the webinar on the date it is scheduled, most webinars are housed for a period of time after the event and are available on demand, where you can watch it at your leisure. All webinars require the attendee to register with name and contact information, and a few questions related to the topic of the webinar may be asked as well.
The topics vary greatly, and depending on your interest, there are numerous sources for webinars and webcasts. You can easily do an internet search for a topic, or if there is a particular publication that you read every month, check out their website for any webinars that you would be interested in attending. You may even be able to get on a list to be notified of upcoming webinars. Or, if you belong to an association, watch for announcements of future webinars in any newsletters.
Following are some links to webinars that may be of interest to you for the plumbing, HVAC, electrical, industrial MRO and construction markets:
PLUMBING
Plumbing & Mechanical
HVAC
Contracting Business
ELECTRICAL
EC&M
INDUSTRIAL MRO
Plant Engineering
Plant Services
CONSTRUCTION
Associated Builders & Contractors
So if you have some downtime and want to increase your knowledge in the area of your profession, try attending a webinar presentation.
And if you are interested in presenting your own webinar, here are some posts you may be interested in:
Why Webinars Are a Good Marketing Tool To Reach Tradesmen
Tips for Putting on a Successful B-to-B Webinar
Webinars: Tips on How to Promote Using Email
10 Tips to Ensure a Successful Webinar Targeted at the Professional Tradesmen
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 18, 2014 | Marketing Tips
Following is a guest post from Maggie Cook, Ecommerce Analyst at Lorman Education Services.
Businesses are constantly working to stay ahead of the latest trends, techniques, law changes, regulations and developments. In a world where technology is continuously evolving, there are more and more options for business professionals to stay up-to-date in this ever-changing environment. But as a business professional, do you take advantage of these opportunities? Do you find value in continuing education? Regardless of industry, seeking out some sort of further learning can prove crucial to not only your own professional development, but to your overall organization’s success.
For the majority of industries, continuing education becomes a necessity to staying up-to-date and informed on the latest techniques, trends and technologies affecting their respective fields. Additional training can also offer up the benefits of increased productivity, reducing your liabilities for errors or omissions with updated knowledge of laws and regulations, increasing morale and job satisfaction, as well as reducing employee turnover.
A number of professions simply require continuing education in order to maintain licenses or certifications. Some of these professions include engineers, architects, attorneys, paralegals, controllers, accountants, contractors, presidents, vice presidents and beyond. For some of these professions, especially those within the legal, medical and construction industries, continuing education and development is a necessity.
What Questions Should I Ask When Selecting a Company for Training?
Once you’ve realized the benefits of continuing education for your particular profession, industry and organization, what should you be looking for in a training program? Some points you may want to consider include: what continuing education credits or certifications are offered, are there programs in multiple learning formats, do they include reference materials or manuals with their programs, who are the speakers and what level of expertise do they hold.
How Can I Convince My Company Training is Necessary?
Getting buy-in from your superiors and others in your organization may be another step in the continuing education process for you and/or your organization. Review what value your training will serve the company, how will it benefit you in your specific position, how can this additional training protect the company from liability and lawsuits and finally, would a group training or company training be possible.
Lorman Education Services endorses the pursuit of lifelong learning, and seeks to serve a wide array of business professionals and industries by providing a variety of continuing education programs for credit and overall professional development.
Helpful Links:
- Why Continued Education and Training is Crucial for You and Your Organization’s Success
- Upcoming Live Webinars in Construction & Development
- OnDemand Webinars in Construction & Development (Available 24/7)
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 17, 2014 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I don’t know about you, but referrals are a great source of leads and customers for us.
It takes you down the sale funnel much more quickly if someone says something nice about you and recommends they talk with you.
Now we may all do this in person by networking and asking for referrals from people who now like and trust us. But have you taken that to the next level with your online contacts?
Referral marketing engages people online through daily interactions on the web. By recruiting customers to help drive new business using online is more relevant because you share the same interests and values as your existing customers.
Extole has an ePaper out, Fact vs Fiction: 5 Referral Marketing Myths. They give examples of what companies are doing and focus on:
- Referral marketing as a high impact strategy for driving new customer acquisition.
- Referral marketing reaches audiences SEO and SEM don’t.
- New customers acquired by referral marketing have high retention rates and stronger loyalty.
- Referral marketing is cost effective.
The paper is an easy read and you can download it here.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 12, 2014 | Events/Trade Shows, Marketing Trends
By Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect
I recently attended the Business Marketing Association (BMA) global conference which was held in Chicago May 28-30, 2014. The largest B2B marketing conference in the world, BMA14 was attended by a record 950 B2B marketers from 450 firms, 33 states and 12 nations.
The 2014 BMA conference also deployed two digital platforms—Livecube and ISEBOX—to enable speakers to take polls and attendees to ask questions, follow tweets, share photos and access conference content. If you are in charge of planning live events/conferences, I would suggest checking out these two resources.
The 3-day conference was jam packed with content – featuring 79 speakers and presenters leading 41 sessions—three pre-conference programs, nine panels, 12 keynotes and 17 firestarters. These sessions covered a wide array of topics and trends of critical interest and importance to B2B marketers today. Someone at the conference referenced the amount of information presented was like drinking from a fire hydrant!
Here are a few themes I saw throughout the entire conference:
Big Data
It’s becoming more and more difficult for marketers in today’s environment and I thought one illustration that did a great job of representing our challenge was the Marketing Technology Landscape graphic by ChiefMartec.com. We are surrounded by data, but starved for insights; that is, data does not automatically equal insight. Today’s marketers need to solve both analytical and creative issues as we continue to trend toward extreme personalization…segments of one.
Mobile
Since mobile devices are the predominant way people globally access the web and information, mobile is a critical factor when planning future marketing efforts. Here are a few stats from the conference that help reinforce the importance of mobile:
- Mobile data usage doubled in 2013
- In the US, 1 of every 5 minutes spent on mobile are on either Facebook or Instagram
- More Facebook users globally now engage the site via their mobile device compared to their desktop
- 78% access Twitter via a mobile device
Social Media
Social media continues to be a key component of the B2B marketing mix, with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube still being the main ones utilized by B2B marketers. There was a great session by Tim Washer from CISCO on “How to bring humor to B2B storytelling.” Just because you work in B2B marketing does not mean you need to be devoid of humor…check out some of these examples shared by Tim:
You can view/download videos and documents from the entire conference here: http://bma.isebox.net/.
Since marketing is being held more accountable, it’s important to make sure the tactics you’re using are getting you the best bang for your buck.
