by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Tradesmen have specific issues relating to their business and are looking for ways to improve and stay on top of their game.
As a blogger who is targeting this market, one my objectives is for them to return often to my blog as a source of information they can use. Here are a couple of ways you can keep your blog audience coming back for more:
- Focus your content. That means every post you make must answer the (WIIFM) What’s In It For Me question. Tradesmen want answers to questions on how to do something better, quicker, solve a problem or give tips on making their working life easier. Engage them with questions and encourage feedback.
- Become an expert. If you stay focused on your market and messaging, you will fast become a trusted reliable source for that type of industry. People will bookmark you or put you on RSS so they can easily get your next nugget of info.
Your key objective is to get a loyal folowing of your target audience. To do that, they need to feel like they know, like and trust you. What’s nice about social media is that your prospective audience is searching out for you as much as you for them. The key is connecting and continuing a dialog. This will ultimately result in sales.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
I don’t know about you, but when one of the times my wife and I have a disagreement, it is usually when we’re going somewhere new in the car, and of course I think I know where I’m going. When getting lost, my thoughts are to keep driving and eventually we’ll run into where we wanted to go. Fortunately, GPS navigation and tools like MapQuest have made my life more easy.
The same hold true for social media. You can drive (A) around aimlessly or (B) you can put a plan together.
Please opt for B. Social media and SEO work well together, but you have to have a plan to maximize your return. Lee Odden wrote a post recently for the blog Mashable, Social media & SEO: 5 essential steps to success, that gives a good summary of what you had to do to capitalize on it.
Here are some highlights of his 5 steps to success as I see it affecting the professional tradesmen market:
- Define your audience. If you’re going after tradesmen, you had better know how they spend their time, understand their preferences and behavior profile. As you get more sophisticated, you can use social media monitoring software that identifies key words, conversations and influencers.
- Define your objective. Social media is not direct marketing. SEO in the social media is to influence discovery of social communities or content by way of research. Indirectly, social content can boost links to web site content improving traffic.
- Make a game plan. In a SEO and social media effort, you need to focus on content and interaction since it’s content that people look for and want to share.
- Define yout tactics. The tactical mix for social media marketing should be focused on where the tradesmen spend their time. What kind of communities are they a part of? Remember, the goal is to start a long-term relationship, not a one nighter.
- Measure goals. Between web analytics and social media tools, you will have more than enough ways to track and help you improve your results.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Just like in the real estate market where the mantra is location, location, location, the same holds true for social media. CONTENT IS KING. Not content for content sake, but relevant content for your target market. I try to focus most of my posts and re-posts on subjects that have some sort of relevance to reaching my target audience, the professional tradesmen.
Chris Brogan in a recent post, Make media work for you – elements of a good online content, reminded me that there are some basic principles to follow. Here are 3 good ones:
- Make content relevant. Write to answer the question for the reader of “what’s in it for me?”
- Make it brief. Blogs are not white papers. Make your point, give them other links that may be of interest and move on.
- Make it portable. One of the purposes of a blog is to share it, so make it easy, i.e RSS or e-mail.
Content is important, but don’t have the attitude, “If I build it they will come.” Create something of value and then go find the people you’re trying to reach.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Trends
An overwhelming majority (88%) of marketers say they are using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less, according to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009.
Mediabuyerplanner just released a post that outlines details of new research that should make B-to-B marketers sit up and take notice. Highlights include:
- The #1 benefit of social media marketing is gaining more attention for their business.
- Improving traffic and growing marketing lists is second.
- More than 50% said a major benefit was a rise in search engine rankings.
- 88% of marketers are employing some form of social media.
- 90% of business owners are most likely to use social media.
- 72% say they just started using social media
What does all of this mean for the B-to-B marketer? It means if you aren’t already on the bus, you’d better get on soon!
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tools
In the world of social media, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of everything and still do your day job. As a blogger, writing is probably the least time-consuming activity on a daily basis. I spend more time reading, researching what’s happening in the industries we serve, and monitoring the social network to see what they’re saying about us. These are all very much of the “blogging process.”
Darren Rowse recently posted Set up alerts to monitor what’s happening in your niche, and offered some tips we could all use to help us manage our time better. These tools help you keep on top of your competition, your company and industries you serve.
Here are 5 reasons why alert tools are so important to keep you ahead of the game:
- Generate ideas for content. We all are looking for ways to keep those blogs coming. By using alerts, you can monitor the industry and events as well as other bloggers you respect that might spur an idea or opinion for a post.
- Breaking news. Alerts let you stay on top of when your competitor launches a new product for the professional tradesman. Or how about a major industry shake up? Wouldn’t you like to be one of the first to know breaking news?
- Becoming an expert. Hopefully one of your objectives is to be known in your market as an expert. Alerts help you stay up on the latest info and you then become a “go to” source for industry info. I can’t think of a better way to build your profile.
- Networking. Alerts allow you see what others are saying and you can make connections and build relationships with other bloggers that share the same common interest.
- Watching your back. Alerts let you find out quickly what they are saying about you, your products, your competition. Blogs help you monitor both the good and bad comments sooner than later.
by tradespeopleinsights | Apr 16, 2009 | Marketing Tools
Social media is not going away and a good number of B-to-B marketers haven’t figured this out yet.
Engagement marketing is developing a two-way conversation with a customer or prospect.
Engagement happens when people look forward to hearing from you and find your communications meaningful and helpful.
Engagement marketing creates a common purpose between a manufacturer and its customers. It’s not a “Push” or “Pull” strategy, rather a collaborative one.
Someone is currently engaging your customer. Is it you or your competition?
Econsultancy found that fewer than 50% of companies actually have a defined customer engagement strategy.
I read an interesting white paper recently from Silverpop titled, B-to-B engagement , that outlines 10 tactics that benefit you from the engagement process. Here are the highlights:
- Web2.0. Allows customers to easily communicate with other users as well as the company.
- Spread the load over multiple channels. You need more than a strong pay-for-click strategy. You need prospects to stay for awhile and one of the best ways is to offer them an e-newsletter.
- Monitor the marketplace. You’d better because your customers are. Read blogs relevant to your industry. Find out what the industry is buzzing about and then comment on it. Use your blog research to capture posts about you and your competitors.
- Work the Web. You need to set yourself apart which means in most cases reworking your site to be customer centric instead of marketing centric. An engaged site talks to individuals.
- Leverage your sales team. I don’t know of a successful marketing program that didn’t include the sales force. They are in the trenches every day and know what’s on customers minds. Ask them as they will be the least expensive and most reliable source of market information.
- Incorporate customer conversations. Issues they bring up will resonate with prospects. Customer testimonials are a good way to start conversations with prospects.
- Uniform messaging. This is marketing 101. When you do an e-mail or banner ad program and send the potential to a micro site, make sure the messaging stays constant.
- Build a community. Customers and potentials alike need somewhere where they can discuss issues that are common to both. Foster this by offering them a place to do it, like a forum on your web site. If they’re talking, wouldn’t you think it best to have access to what they’re saying?
- Encourage input. Continually seek info from both customers and prospects. Send surveys, polls, make calls, talk to them at trade shows or conventions and ask for their feedback.
- Drive relationships through data. A richly nuanced database of both customers’ and prospects’ interactions are fuel that drives engagement marketing.
Conclusion: The more engaged a company is with its marketplace, the better the chances of generating sales. The new demand – generations and management technologies provide unique opportunities to touch customers and prospects.
