2011 Industrial-Construction Marketing Spend Survey
It’s that time of year again for our annual spend survey (8 questions). We’ll be happy to share the results with you and compare them to what you said in 2010. You can take the survey here.
Social Media: So What’s Holding You Back?
I know it’s hard to believe, but not everyone has bought into the social media scene. Some are just disbelievers (we can’t worry about them), while others are intimidated by it. Well, if you’re one of those people who are apprehensive, or you know someone who is, please pass this post on to them.
I don’t normally do book reviews, but I came across an easy read that will take the stress out of getting started. The name of the book is, “the zen of social media marketing” by Shama Hyder Kabani of the Zen Marketing agency.
She gives you an overview and basic steps to get set up on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. She helps you understand where social media fits into the bigger picture and how to use these together to maximize your efforts. What’s neat about this is there is an online version of the book that has continous updates which are really helpful. So in essence, the book never goes out of date.
If you’re in marketing, whether it be for a small local company or a large international one, this book will make you look like a hero (only in social media). You can get it on Amazon. I read it in one night and it would make a great gift for someone.
Trade Shows: Are They Worth It?
Most of our clients have trade show schedules and are reluctant to give them up. The costs for most shows are in the tens of thousands per show which doesn’t include your sales people time.
According to the trade show bureau, it takes 3.6 touches to make an average B2B sales from a trade show lead rather than 6.7 touches from other leads.
So are trade show leads better than other leads you pass on to your sales team? I’d like to get your input.
White Paper: Trends in Mobile Media
It seems like these days that everything is moving as fast as a digital download. Information is at your fingertips with smartphones getting more and more popular and with access to everything you could possibly want to know in the palm of your hand.
We see this in the news media as well – stories no longer take weeks or days to break, but are posted within a few minutes so you can know what is happening half way across the world in seconds. It is with this trend of fast information, and the technology of mobile media that fuels it, that marketers are forced to keep up.
More and more people are getting their information from their smartphones and carry them with them at all times, so marketers need to reach their targets where they are absorbing information.
This white paper reviews the current state of affairs and touches on QR codes and Microsoft Tags and highlights best practices.
A free copy for download is available. Click here to sign up.
Identify Website Users: Capture More Sales Opportunities
One of our strategic partners, Ultimate Leads, has come up with an intriguing service to help you identify who’s coming to your site by company. Russ Hill, the company president, explains how it works and has given our readers a free trial.
More than 95% of visitors to B2B websites leave sites without requesting additional information according to recent research. Visitors may click links to “Find a Distributor” or download a document without you knowing who they are. And if they arrived at your site via a “pay-per-click” banner ad, wouldn’t you like to know who they are?
Now you can! LEADADVANTAGE is a program that helps you identify companies that visit your website, their interest (pages viewed), and key contacts at that company and more. Great stuff for the B2B marketer interested in generating new leads and targeting new prospects. Visitors finding their way to B2B websites usually get there because they were seeking out information on particular products or services. (Do business people have the time to visit websites about things like lift trucks, hydraulic fittings, or industrial electronics for fun?)
Who’s Looking at YOU?
Simple reverse IP address look-up technology has been around for a while. Website traffic counts, page views, cost-per-click and return visitor numbers are standard fare in Google Analytics, WebTrends and other sites. These counts are little more than the old method of counting raw “Bingo” card inquiries and trade show booth visitors by previous advertising generations. B2B marketers need more. LEADADVANTAGE pulls detailed company and contact information from sources like LinkedIn and Jigsaw. For B2B marketers, it’s not enough to just know how many are visiting your website, but who!
Identifying and capturing website visitors is an excellent way to develop “soft leads” of prospects and new sales opportunities. It’s also a good way to learn which of your existing customers are visiting your website in search of information. Remember, these are companies that sought you out. Don’t let these opportunities elude capture.
To learn more about how to gain the LEAD ADVANTAGE, call 800-323-0550 for a no obligation 10-Day Free Trial.
QR Codes: Are Manufacturers Missing an Opportunity? Part 2
Yesterday, Aylie Fifer from Sonnhalter gave us an overview of what QR codes were and how they can be used. Today she’ll talk about the differences between Microsoft tags and Traditional QR codes.
If you want to see how it works, print out this page, download the app and scan the tag with your phone to see where it takes you. Or, if you already are familiar with this, scan the tag off the computer screen.
In our last post, we explained what QR codes are. Today, we want to tell you about the proprietary Microsoft Tags and what advantages they have over the traditional QR codes.
Microsoft Tags:
A Microsoft Tag IS a QR code – QR code means “Quick response code” and is a 2-dimensional, scan-able code. By definition, a Tag is a QR code.
The MT is a “High Capacity Color Barcode.” What this really means is more information can be packed into the code and can be used in color or black and white. This is what allows users to create an image over the code if wanted.
QR Codes vs. Microsoft Tags:
QR Readers:
You need to download a QR Code reader app to your phone in order to enable this to work and not a lot of people know about it, know how to do it, or want to spend the money on the app. Here are some recommended ones. Please note that not all QR readers will read all QR codes. For instance, Microsoft Tags have a special reader called “Tag Reader” that does not work on generic QR codes or vice-versa.
A lot of the phones that are currently being manufactured are being built with a reader built in. We are going to see this surge over the next 6 months – 1 year, I would guess, but it really is quite simple to download an app. We also will see the acceptable platforms expand. As I mentioned, this is already a huge phenomenon in Japan and is a more developed market for use of QR codes meaning people are more accustomed to seeing and using QR codes over there versus the U.S which is a less mature market at this point in comparison.
Metrics:
The other major difference with most QR codes and Microsoft Tags is the metrics. With most QR codes, you can track traffic by using Google Analytics to track the codes with unique URLs for each Tag. However, Microsoft Tag Manager actually will track the scans of each code. This way, we have one more level of information. With just Google Analytics, we only see how many people went through to the URL. With the added layer of information, we can see if someone scanned and stopped mid-process or had another issue.
Microsoft Tags actually have a lot of reporting available in the free version too. Here is a list of the reports available with the MS Tag Manager:
- Heat Map
- Represents where Tags were scanned on an interactive map
- Daily Scans
- Charts the number of scans per day for a single Tag
- Scan Totals
- Charts the total number of scans for each Tag in a category (over the lifetime of a tag)
- Scan Totals by Category
- Charts the total number of scans for each of your categories
- Daily Scans (Multiple Tags)
- Charts the number of scans per day for multiple selected tags in a category
- Daily Scans (Category Totals)
- Charts the total scans per day for all tags in a category
- Daily Scans (Compare Categories)
- Compares the total number of daily scans for different categories
In addition to all the reporting, it also provides the option to set a date limit for the Tags. And, of course, you can change the URL on the fly, an attribute which we find especially helpful.
Even though the Microsoft Tag has only been out for a year, I think it is going to rise to the top not only because of its innate high-capacity to hold information (it was developed to be more robust), but also the added tracking and reporting features and the fact that you can also brand each Tag by overlaying a picture or a logo over the Tag and it will still be readable. I think that once the market gets used to using QR codes in general, this feature will become more appealing to users and publishers/marketers, so I think it is a better long-term option. And because it can hold more information, the Microsoft Tags can be printed much smaller than most QR codes. There are micro QR codes, but a micro QR code only lets you hold 35 characters of data – which really doesn’t allow you to do a whole lot.
The other nice thing is that it has a high tolerance for reading damaged tags. For a lot of the QR codes, if the code is damaged in any way, the phone camera cannot translate the code. When developing the Tags, Microsoft took into consideration the low-quality of most cell phone cameras (blurred shot, lack of autofocus) and adjusted the tolerance for a bad photo or camera so you don’t need an exact scan or a perfect picture like most QR Code scans require.
As far as the readers go – that is my other concern. Not all QR readers work on all QR codes. Most QR generation sites provide you with a listing of acceptable phone platforms. Some of the major ones, in defense of the QR readers, do support the more popular phones like iPhone and Android, and Blackberry. Microsoft Tag Reader supports all the major phone platforms and is rapidly adding new platforms. It is a free download for the Tag Reader versus some of the better QR code readers you have to pay for (usually $1.99 or less, but still…).
While there have been a lot of companies using QR codes, I would argue that there are the same amount using Microsoft Tags. Fox for instance, used them to promote Avatar. Publications like Food & Wine, Details, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Golf Digest, Ladies Home Journal, Lucky Magazine, Self, Seventeen, Traditional Home, and TV Guide have used tags. As well as some big companies and brands such as Campbell’s, Dominos, Dr Pepper, Ford, General Mills, Goodyear, Kraft, Mazda, Mountain Dew, Procter & Gamble, Porsche, Sprint, Toyota and Whole Foods.
At the end of the day, each have their own merits, but at this point in time, to me the better long-term choice seems to be Microsoft Tag because of its innate capabilities. No QR code (as of this moment, I know there are some sites in the works) can offer as much as the Tag can.
If you missed Part 1, click here to view.