by tradespeopleinsights | Mar 6, 2012 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
We all are getting into social media in some fashion. Some more active than others, but how are we doing and what do we think of this new media?
Penton Media just released a B-to-B Marketing study called, Truth from the Trenches that surveyed 3,000-plus folks like us.
What they found is very interesting. The study drives home some alarming points on how many of us are less than satisfied with the performance of our website, social, search marketing and sales conversion efforts. Here are a few of the highlights I found interesting:
- 81% of B2B marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging.
- 77% said their websites are not effective at generating leads.
- 63% of them are either vaguely aware or not aware of what is being said about them online.
- 35% don’t think social media is critical for their business.
On the positive side:
- 60% have implemented a social media strategy or will in the next year.
- 90% are active on Facebook.
- 53% are active on Twitter.
So what do you think? Any of these hit home?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 29, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Doing a blog is a major commitment and lots of us haven’t pulled the trigger for just that reason. But I’m sure you’ve got good content to share, but how do you do it?
Jeffrey Cohen had an interesting post on socialmediab2b.com, 6 Ways to Create and Share B2B Social Media Content Without a Blog that I found to be interesting. You can house great content on your website and use links in social networks to bring them your info. Highlights from Jeff’s post include:
- Email – When you’re at a trade show or industry conference, take notes of highlights and send them to your customer/client contact list.
- YouTube – Shoot a quick video (use your phone) with a product manager highlighting one key feature of a product. Post on your YouTube channel and share a link on social sites.
- LinkedIn – Post status updates. These will be visible to all those who follow you.
- Google+ – Great place to have conversations and ask leading questions, not to mention the benefits of search results.
So you see, there are other ways to get your presence and expertise out in the marketplace. What are you doing to enhance your expertise?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 28, 2012 | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We all know how busy contractors and the trades are. Most of their time is spent on the job site. They rely on their smartphones, and more and more are using tablets in the field. Mobile is not going away. Consider this stat:
77% of the world’s population (5.3 billion people) are mobile subscribers!
A recent post on Marketo, BtoB Marketing To Go: Why Mobile is Crucial to Your Lead Generation, highlights some interesting stats from a recent comScore study:
- 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices.
- Almost 40 million U.S. mobile users access social media sites daily.
- Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn increased their mobile audiences by more that 50% in 2011.
So what do you think the chances are that some of your target audience isn’t in the stats above? Mobile users are interacting with brands and you should not miss out on the opportunity to engage them.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Is Mobile Marketing the Best Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman?
What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 23, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Some of you may have already jumped into Google+. According to recent stats, as of January 2012, there are over 90 million users (Twitter has 100 million active users). To put this in perspective, they launched Google+ by invitation in June of 2011 and opened it up to the public in September of 2011. Google is positioning Google+ as their Facebook for B-to-B.
Google+ is a great content sharing platform, and building an audience on it may be one of the smartest things you do as a content marketer according to a recent post by Brian Clark on copyblogger, Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy. Here are two highlights on why:
- Google+ is a part of Google – they do a good job integrating with Google docs, Chrome, Google Reader, Gmail and YouTube.
- Search – Google is the king of search and now they announced the Search, plus your world which merges personalized search with social search.
Brian also discusses concerns about Google having a stranglehold on the market and what we might expect moving forward.
The key for those of us who write content is to understand the language of our audience and make sure we reflect that in our content. Search will do the rest.
If you like this post, you might want to read:
Suggestions on How to Make Sense of Google+
Google+ and B-to-B: How to Get Started
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 22, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I know we all know “CONTENT IS KING” and we focus on putting out good stuff. But we should be just as focused on building the list to whom we’ll be sending all this valuable info.
It’s a fact that if you have an engaged database of subscribers, you have a captive audience not only for them to read, but to share. I recently read a post on problogger.net by James Penn entitled, 10 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers For Your Blog that I thought brought home some key points.
Among them are:
- Use multiple opt-in forms – have 3-4 in your newsletter template. The more you have, the better the chances of them signing up.
- Offer a freebie for signing up – give them a report, industry trends or white paper for signing up.
- Use your most popular posts – they will continue to bring in traffic.
- Create special reports on industry issues – use already existing content to create.
- Ask readers to join your email list – what better way to get people on board
These are some great tips. What are you doing to increase your email lists?
by tradespeopleinsights | Feb 21, 2012 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
According to a recent article in BtoB Magazine, Making the Most of Mobile is beginning to change. Here’s an interesting stat – in December of 2011, eMarketer released a study that showed mobile had surpassed print readership. Mobile increased by 30% in 2011 to 65 minutes a day compared to print at 44 minutes. Magazines are finding that their content consumption on smartphones and tablets are beginning to boom.
This trend isn’t just in the B-to-C market. B-to-B publications are beginning to focus on different delivery options. Summit Media Group who owns Packaging World found in a recent survey that 46% of their subscribers owned a tablet and that 78% planned to own one by the end of the year. Of those that currently own tablets, 74% said they read work-related digital magazines on these devices. They have incorporated “responsive design” into their websites which allows for optimum readability automatically.
Ziff Davis, a tech media company, is moving ALL its print magazines to digital and mobile and is clearly a leader in this endeavor. Newer media companies like WTWH Media which just started a few years ago focuses heavily on the digital aspect. Cygnus Business Media, Penton Media and others are starting to follow suit.
So bottom line for those of us that are trying to reach professional tradesmen, we now have another opportunity and avenue to reach them. Benefits of digital are:
- We can measure responses
- We can enhance our message by including links to videos, testimonials, etc.
If you haven’t included digital in your marketing plans, maybe it’s time you consider it.
