by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 19, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
When doing an event, from a press conference to an open house or a new product launch, are you using social media to capitalize on it? Social is an inexpensive and cost-effective way to enhance the buzz around what you’re doing. I’m not suggesting that social replace traditional methods, instead use social to enhance them.
I recently read an article on Social Media Explorer.com by Rich Brooks on 12 Ways to Market Your Event with Social Media. Rich makes some good points and here are some highlights:
- Before the event – Market your event through Twitter. Even consider your own hashtag in all your tweets. If the event is large enough give it its own Twitter account. Use Facebook Events to attract fans. Use LinkedIn groups you belong to to promote the event. If you have a blog, use it to promote it. Forums, talk up your event and its benefits. Tell them about the agenda, speakers, etc.
- During the event – Use those hashtags to make your event more findable and searchable. If it’s a local or regional event, use Foursquare and Gowalla to promote it by announcing the event, link to a registration form, give updates. If you belong to Forums, talk up the event and its benefits. Live blogging from the event, let people know what they are missing. Share video and photos – a picture is worth a thousand words.
- After the event – Blog about highlights and possibly interviews with attendees. Post similar comments on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and ask for feedback.
These are some great tips. What are you doing to capitalize on social?
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by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 17, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
For those of you who follow me on a regular basis, you know that I don’t preach that social media will be the “holy grail” of marketing. It’s just one more marketing tool in your tool box.
For those of you who are using social, hopefully you are combining it with traditional things like email marketing to drive people to your social sites. I recently read an article in eMarketer.com, and in an April survey by eROI, an interactive and email marketing agency found that two-thirds were doing just that. A similar study done in June of this year by StrongMail, a provider of mail and social media solutions, put the number at 71% worldwide.
That’s good news. The vast majority is focusing on the basics, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They were also using the share button 63% to encourage people to share. In the ROI study, over 90% were utilizing Facebook as their favorite.
So what are you doing to harness the power of combining social media with traditional email marketing?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 12, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Many manufacturers are so focused on the features and benefits of their new product that they sometimes forget about educating and motivating their distributors to insure a successful launch.
Distribution is a key link in the launch and if your distribution isn’t on board or even understands what or where this product fits into your overall strategy, it’s going to be hard for them to sell. Let’s face it, especially in today’s economy, a distributor needs to understand why he should invest in inventory of this new widget.
Here are some tips to help make sure your distribution is on board:
- Give them plenty of notice – They need to know 45-60 days in advance so they can get the new SKUs into the system, onto the promotion calendar and most importantly, get you that initial stocking order.
- Incentivize the initial stocking order – Give them an additional discount on that first order or give them extended dating or waive your minimum order requirements. The key here is to make sure they have your product on the shelf so when the contractor comes in and asks for it, they have it.
- Train/educate distributor sales force – It’s an important step in the process that’s often overlooked. Many manufacturers assume they understand the big picture, and most of the time, it’s not the case. With time and travel expenses being what they are, traditional things like lunch-and-learns may not be the best way to introduce the new product. You might want to use an online training tool like BlueVolt that can both train, verify and motivate the sales team.
- SPIF sales – For at least the first 3 months, put some sort of incentive on the product to get the sales folks excited. Put yourself in their shoes. Most distributors carry anywhere from 15,000-25,000 different items. Which ones do you think they will be talking about? And oh by the way, don’t overlook those inside and CSRs. They have 5-7 times the number of contacts with customers everyday and can talk up new products and create add-on sales (do you want fries with that?)
- Make key end user calls – This seems like a no-brainer, and while you the manufacturer might be making those calls, you don’t always include the distributor in them. Chances are that key potential for you is already a key customer for the distributor. He can make sure you get in front of the right people and brings a relationship to the table.
These are some simple ways to insure your new product launch is successful.
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by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 11, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I’m sure management has been asking the 64 million dollar question: How is social media helping our business? As marketers, we need to define those base line objectives to get answers to these kinds of questions.
More importantly, is Facebook getting us more action or is it YouTube? If we know where our successes are, then we can spend more time cultivating them.
I recently read a great article from Nichole Kelly in Social Media Examiner, 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and its Impact on Your Brand. I’d like to share some highlights:
You need to build a strategy to measure your goals. We need to agree on terms like brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audiences.
Three key areas to evaluate are exposure, influence and engagement. Nichole points out in her article there are many tools (some free, some you have to pay for) that can help you sort out the numbers.
- Exposure – track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals (eliminate duplicates)
- Engagement – how many people took some kind of action based on your message (most important)
- Influence – what was the outcome of the engagement (was it positive, negative or neutral)?
Those are my thoughts. What tools are you using to measure social?
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 10, 2010 | Uncategorized
For those of you who follow me, you know that I’m a big advocate of LinkedIn for the B-to-B market. You also know that I believe it’s one of the most under-utilized social media sites.
I recently read a post by Jason Falls, How to Make LinkedIn Answers Part of Your Routine, that showed me yet another way to generate both thought leadership and leads. Under the “More” button at the top of your home page is where you’ll find the Answers tab. There are several industry categories you can choose to follow. Since I use Google Reader, I subscribed to the appropriate categories and had them sent to my reader via an RSS feed. I also created a folder called LinkedIn Answers.
Then every morning as I check my reader, I quickly run through the Answers folder to see if there are any questions that I could contribute to. If so, I respond accordingly. I’ve only been doing this for a few weeks now, but it’s surprising the number of discussions I’ve been involved in that I would have missed if I hadn’t been using the Answer page.
I’m always learning new ways to take advantage of this powerful tool. Would you like to share ways you’re using LinkedIn?
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by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 5, 2010 | Traditional Marketing
Habitat for Humanity does great work in local communities to help improve both individual’s lives as well as the community in general.
Sonnhalter Habitat for Humanity Tool Drive
Since
Sonnhalter’s major focus is on manufacturers who make things for contractors, we thought it would be a good idea to help support our local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, so we’re having a tool drive in the month of August to try to raise money, and more importantly, to gather tools (both new and used) to help in their building efforts, as well as to support them through their retail stores. If you’d like to join us in our efforts, please contact Anastasia Duller from Sonnhalter at 440.234.1812 x130 or
[email protected], or visit
www.Sonnhalter.com/ToolDrive for more information.
Or if you’re interested in finding a local chapter so you too can help out in your area, click
here.
Thanks in advance for your support!
