by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 25, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Webinars are a good way to mix up the way you deliver your message to tradesmen. They allow you to set yourself apart as an expert, gives you visibility, credibility and immediate feedback on your topic. They take a lot of work, but if done right will reap you benefits for a long time. You can also repurpose them as webcasts and put them on your web site so the contractors can view them at their leisure. Here are some tips on how to make sure your Webinar is successful:
- Pick a timely subject – You want to not only be topical but timely with what you pick as a topic. Remember, one of your objectives is to be a thought leader.
- Make sure you address “what’s in it for them.” How will your new tool or process help them do their job better.
- Promote it both pre- and post-event – Make the most out of it by using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any groups you belong to, to generate interest and sign ups. Promote it to your customer and potential lists, as well as through any trade organization or association. After the event, convert it to a Webcast and put it on your web site.
- Keep it to no more than an hour. My rule of thumb is keep your presentation to ideally 30 minutes, but no more than 40, and leave the rest of the time for questions. Also, when appropriate, add some humor. Tell a joke or show a cartoon to help illustrate your point.
- Don’t try to put 10 lbs. into a 5 lb. bag – If you have that much info, break it up into 2 Webinars. Remember, people can only retain so much info, so make your point and then deliver on it.
- Keep audience engaged by taking little surveys throughout the presentation. This not only gives them a reason to stay engaged, it gives you a moment to get ready for the next point.
- Practice, Practice, Practice – This might be the most important point of all. Remember, you’re trying to come off as the “expert” and you don’t want to stumble through the presentation. Prepare and give it to some co-workers or friends and listen to their critiques. You need to be upbeat and engaging in order to keep the audience from clicking off.
Webinars are not hard to do, but they do take time. Don’t be intimidated. You can do a simple Power Point presentation. Remember, content is the important factor here, not some slick graphics or flash presentation.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 24, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
20 Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email
Email marketing is still an important tool to your new business program.
The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email. The two can work powerfully together. Two excellent articles, Chris Crums, writer for WebPro News, “10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email” and VerticalResponse CEO, Janine Popick, “10 More Reasons Why Social Media Wont Replace Email.” Chris always has great marketing insights. Janine also provides some insightful resources and practices what she preaches for both email marketing and social media. I recommend them both.
Here are their 20 reasons why social media won’t replace email:
- People still send hand-written letters.
- Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address.
- Email notifies you of updates from all social networks.
- We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really will catch on on a large scale.
- Email is universal, and social networks are not.
- There are plenty who have no interest in joining social networks.
- Email is still improving.
- Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email.
- More social media use means more email use.
- As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well.
- Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that’s what they are, companies.
- Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes.
- You can’t easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing (through social media).
- You can’t tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets.
- That said, you can’t tell who didn’t click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message.
- You cannot personalize your Facebook updates.
- You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook.
- You can’t track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook.
- You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter.
- You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 18, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
When we communicate with our target audiences, whether it’s through traditional methods or the use of social media, we want to inform and hopefully engage them. It’s through the engagement process that we start a dialog with them which hopefully will turn into something more (hopefully a sale). I’ve enclosed some tips on how we successfully engage tradesmen:
- Make sure you identify WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) for the contractor.
- Make sure the message is easy to skim (bullet points, bold or italicized type, photo captions).
- Make sure your message is clear and expressed (understood) quickly.
- Offer a demo – either online or in person.
- Contractor testimonials – Peer reviews are more believable and hold more influence on other contractors.
- Offer several ways for them to easily contact you and get more info.
- Offer incentives or other reasons for them to respond immediately.
- Make it easy for them to respond – email, website form or special phone number.
- Back up any claim with the proper proof (or reference where they can get it).
- Make sure offers appeal to the different stages in their buying cycle.
These are my top 10 ways. I’m sure you have some proven ways and I’d love to hear about them.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 17, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Some B-to-B marketers are having a hard time including Twitter in the marketing mix. You need to think of it as a relationship-building tool. Twitter should never be used as a stand-alone tactic. It should be used in conjunction with other social media as well as traditional tools like e-mail. Jon VanZile wrote an interesting post, Is B-to-B Ready For Twitter? that you might find interesting.
One of the concerns of B-to-B marketers is that “none of my customers or potentials are on Twitter.” While that may be true now, they will be soon. And how do you know unless you ask them? This week Twitter passed the 5 billion tweet mark. Somebody is using it! According to a study released this summer by Nielsen Co., Twitter growth has been phenomenal especially toward adults. According to Nielsen, Twitter reaches 11% of all Internet users. 80% of people who Tweet are over 25.
While you’re waiting for your customers to get in the game, Twitter still offers you some great free analytic tools you should be using to keep track of competitors as well as find conversations related to a post or article. Here are 5 good ones to start:
- Twitterstats Hour-by-hour and for any 24-hour period, track up to three keywords (think competitors) w/g/t click volume. Useful if, for example, there’s news being dropped during the same time period and/or an event/tradeshow and you want to compare message volume/activity around keywords or companies.
- Tweeps.info Nifty free tool that lets you track on individual Twitter accounts (think YOUR competitors). Inside look at #tweets per day, current and prominent keywords, to what degree the account is using hashtags, following snapshot. Also has a keyword search which is useful if you’re looking to build your follow list around a particular topic.
- BackTweets A real-time, conversational-tracking tool which allows for keyword and/or URL searches to find conversations related to a post or article; connects: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Twitter and Friendfeed. Useful for community buzz centralized listening, brand monitoring. An “alert” function.
- Twitteranalyzer Google Analytics for Twitter users. More than 50 statistical measures displayed with graphics and maps. Among the views: Reach, Subject Matter, Follower Growth, Follower Density Map, Follower Activity, Sharing Capability. Primarily a tool for Twitter users to analyze themselves or their friends.
- TwitterFriends A “reach/extended-reach” tracking tool that helps you discover information about the network behind your follower/their follower lists. Identifies meaningful users you should be talking to, or who are feeding you useful links. Capability to account search/compare (think comparing your company to your competitors, or thought leader accounts, etc.)
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 11, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Training Tradesmen – do you use a carrot or a stick?
This is the second part of a two-part series (Part 1) by Lisa Bordeaux from BlueVolt, an online marketing and learning platform that focuses on the professional tradesman.
Whether you are using the carrot or the stick to drive training participation, providing contractors resources for their folks to take advantage of can be a very real benefit to the tradesman in the field.
From a contractor’s perspective, having a manufacturer that’s committed to training is an obvious win. These guys are in the field and it’s a real challenge to corral folks into the office for formalized training. At the same time, the guys in the field need training to stay safe on the job, learn about new products, maintain their licensure or certification.
One of the reasons we started in the business was because we recognized there was a need for people in the field to have better access to information. When you sit at a desk, it’s different then when you work in the field. So early on – we thought it would be best to provide bite size information to folks that they could take on the fly.
Training with the Carrot –
The idea of incentivized training is not new. Tying a carrot to something that you want to deliver to the market is a very effective way to build an audience of learners who are open to the information. In fact, when we launch courses that have incentives, we see a 10X greater usage pattern then courses that don’t have incentives. If the information is not all product based and serves some more general purpose, manufacturers may actually charge for their courses and then offset the charge with a reward of equal or greater value.
Training with the Stick –
Individuals in the trade in many cases are training as a requirement of their job. This may be something like forklift safety which is regularly required or code related if the state requires code updates for license renewal. In this case, we see different usage trends – the majority of the training gets taken just at the point of need. So for instance, when we started our code change course in 2002, in Oregon there were 26,000 licensed electrical workers that were required to take 8 CEUs of code update. The deadline was October 1, and as of July 15, 17,000 of the license holders had yet to complete their code training. http://go.bluevolt.com/CoBrandTemplate/CourseCatalog.aspx?CategoryID=884
This becomes a real problem and the companies offering the code training in-person are flooded with calls they can’t satisfy. Online training really makes sense. The timeline creates a sense of urgency which can be a great driver of participation.
by tradespeopleinsights | Nov 10, 2009 | Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Training – both product training and safety training – are important to professional tradesmen. That’s why several years ago we formed a strategic alliance with BlueVolt to help educate and inform our client’s customers (the professional tradesman). BlueVolt creates online marketing and learning platforms that are focused on the professional tradesmen. They have delivered over 535,000 courses to 50,000-plus registered users. We have the privilege of having Lisa Bordeaux, director of sales and partner development, here to share with you a two-part series on the benefits of online training. Enjoy her insights!
The most successful companies are the ones that not only offer training to individuals but they support them with online tools and resources, a community. In many cases, suppliers may or may not tie this to their website, they may work with associations or we may collaborate to syndicate their content. If done right, training can make it easier to engage with customers and develop a relationship that supports and fosters sales for years to come.
Training can be a great way to go to market. It’s a softer sell than advertising and it provides value to the customer while building brand affinity. BlueVolt works with a number of manufacturers, some have a strong history of training. In fact, one of them is so committed to training, they have one person in the marketing department, 7 people in the training department. Training is done both online and in-person and their training staff is teamed with sales people by territories. This fosters a tight relationship between sales opportunities and education.
Over the years I have come to think that in many cases, training is a Trojan horse for Marketing. I have seen this done to great effect in a number of cases. Here are three examples of efforts we have supported:
- Using education to generate sales. We have a number of examples in this case. Many manufacturers have fairly complex products either to operate or install. Providing training on a specific product can ensure that people prefer it over other products. We find offering training can provide a market of excited advocates and experts, doing it online provides an easy way to communicate and follow up with folks. The individual may pay for this training and the supplier most typically gives either a product or incentive to the individual to offset the cost of the training. http://www.bluevolt.com/case-studies/wright-tools
- Just in time training on new products. This is a big one for taking training online and we do it daily. When done right we significantly shorten the return on development for a new product. By delivering information to people online about new products either live, archived or even a simple PDF cut sheet that individuals many manufacturers leverage provide training just in time. This training is most often incentivized. That is, the individual receives some sort of reward for proving their knowledge. http://www.bluevolt.com/case-studies/uei
Building a market through education – this is an expensive proposition, but can be very effective. We undertook this with a large switch manufacturer who built a course to train home integrators so they could network devices in residential. They didn’t make any products in the space, but believed they would sell more switches and routers, if there were more integrated homes needing bandwidth. Through a series of partnerships, we built a community of training centers and hosted and tracked all the training online. This is typically a scenario where the individual would pay to participate in the training. As a manufacturer, you really need a long view and high level of commitment to improve the industry.
Next, you’ll learn which has more impact, a carrot or a stick?
