by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 21, 2015 | Marketing Tips
By Andrew Poulsen, Public Relations Technician at Sonnhalter
In 2015, it’s anything but a surprise that social media has completely revolutionized how companies, agencies and organizations connect with their audiences. Many companies utilize these services to build transparency, inform customers of new products and to keep their audiences in the loop on any day-to-day updates and promotions. While we’ve all seen organizations curate pages on Facebook and Twitter, here’s a look at some newer ways companies are maximizing visibility and profitability through social media.
- Livestreaming-Thanks to recent apps like Periscope and Meerkat, livestreaming has become a totally user-friendly experience, and many brands from Red Bull to GE have used these apps to advance their social media presence. Livestreaming apps can drive engagement through a variety of platforms. For example, Periscope, which is driven through Twitter, can be a great tool for streaming live Q and As, behind-the-scenes interviews or new product releases.
- Influencer Marketing-A brand ambassador serves as a great go-between for the brand and the consumer. And with the innovation of social media, brand ambassador programs are easier than the more formal programs of the past. Many companies utilize Instagram as a way for social influences to talk about their products. Having these influencers promote your products through their Instagram profiles give the product a much more down-to-earth and less-intrusive style of branding and engagement. The audience also sees the products being delivered often in a much more practical sense than an advertisement.
- Have an Active Presence-It’s one thing to occasionally update your Facebook or Twitter profiles with product updates and events. It’s another thing to have a constant and active voice for your brand. Ask your audience questions. Be accountable when your audience has issues. Make the audience experience feel personal.
- Social Media-Exclusive Promotions-Announce deals, sales and contests through your social media profiles. Not only will this capture the attention of your existing followers, but it’s an easy way to grow your audience through sharing, retweeting, etc.
- Be Mindful of Your Content-While you want your fans to follow all your platforms, you should make sure it’s worth their time to do so. Try to make sure they are getting a unique experience on each platform. While your Facebook could be used for more formal, long-winded announcements, make your Twitter more quippy and digestible. Maybe use Instagram for event photos and behind-the-scenes content.
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 20, 2015 | Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
By Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter
Photo courtesy of Viega LLC.
One issue that concerns all of us who are selling to the professional tradesman is that there is and will be a shortage of qualified tradesman in the future as the 50-plus segment of the market is on the verge of retirement.
We represent lots of manufacturers who realize this and want to do something to spur interest in and obviously get their brands in the hands of future users.
Sonnhalter, a marketing communications firm to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, released a database which includes virtually every Vocational education and technical program in the United States. The database, which includes more than 2,000 programs, contains useful and easy-to-read information about each program, including addresses, phone numbers, websites and more.
The database serves as a tool for companies in the trade markets who wish to implement more grassroots campaigns to recruit the next generation of professional tradesmen. With details about each individual program within a technical center, marketing toward students within a specific skill set is easy and convenient. The database is available for download and is designed to be sortable and searchable for a variety of fields, including program type, degree type and other important information.
You can sign up to download a copy here.
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 14, 2015 | Marketing Tips
Today, we have a guest blog from Machinery Zone on some of the common pitfalls found in a company’s content strategy.
Every construction company with an online presence feels the pressure to create consistent, high-quality content. When done properly, it represents a great way to generate site traffic, build brand awareness and demonstrate your expertise to the world. Every blog post, article and other piece of content you generate is an opportunity to plant seeds that could eventually blossom into a steady stream of viable leads. Are you doing it right? Here are the seven mistakes to avoid in your content strategy.
1) Skipping the editorial strategy set-up phase
Too often, communication projects are missing a guideline. To create an efficient content strategy in sync with your goals, it is essential to set up a solid editorial strategy.
To whom are you going to address your content? What is its purpose?
What are you looking to accomplish?
What is your editorial line and tone?
At what frequency will you publish articles?
These questions will enable you to establish a work methodology and an editorial calendar. Measure your results along the way and adjust your actions according to your analysis, but remember to stay true to your core strategy.
2) Pushing forward commercially focused content
Sales pitches and presentations do not create emotional brand attachment. If you want to see a rise in customer loyalty, offer generous and (almost) disinterested advice and tips to your readers. Share and spread your knowledge. When you educate your customers, they see you as an expert. They trust you and, consequently, they are more likely to buy from you.
In order to produce successful marketing content, it is important to ask yourself:
Is my content truly original, does it offer any added value?
What content will be valuable to my audience and to my clients?
Instead of focusing on selling a product or a service, offer useful, educational content to your audience. Be simple, clear and concise. Forget about technical jargon. Adopt appropriate language and learn to popularize technical concepts. Be interesting and entertaining.
3) Overlooking your target audience
You are a specialist in the construction industry. You host a blog that is appreciated and recognized by professionals in your business sector. But are these professionals really those you want to sell your products or services to?
Knowing your target audience is key to successful marketing content. It is essential to analyze your Google Analytics statistics and clearly identify your clients, those who you are really interested in.
Who are they?
What are their needs and desires? What problems do they encounter?
What vocabulary do they use?
The more you will help your audience and offer solutions to the challenges they encounter, the more they will enjoy, comment and share your content on social media and become your ambassadors.
4) Publishing low-quality content
Long sentences, lack of keywords, poorly explained jargon, major spelling errors, copy and pasted text from the company brochure. These are the main characteristics of poor-quality content.
No matter how exciting the topic is, a poorly written article will not capture the reader’s attention. It can be difficult to read onscreen, create misunderstandings and exasperate industry experts. Worse, it can discredit your expertise.
5) Omitting content promotion
You’ve focused on writing an excellent article and posted it on your blog. But if you do nothing to promote it, no one will know just how great it is!
An effective content strategy does not only address content creation. It also involves distributing, promoting and optimizing content.
Carefully select your communication channels. Rather than dispersing yourself on every existing social network, focus on those on which your audience is present and active.
For example, if your target clientele consists of industry professionals, optimize your presence on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you are selling products where visuals play a major role in conversion rates (house building, gate installation), concentrate your efforts on social networks dedicated to images such as Pinterest and Instagram.
6) Neglecting existing content
You are planning to redesign your website? Before you delete everything, identify which content deserves to be saved, updated and optimized.
Quality content is always of interest to the reader and can be recycled. Obsolete articles may simply need to be updated with recent key figures. Also, when writing a new article, consider making a link to other content-related articles.
7) Failing to optimize content for search engines
The content you provide to your website visitors is the key to success, not only from a conversion point of view, but from a ranking point of view.
Your main goal should always be to satisfy your audience. However, properly optimizing your content by following a few simple SEO rules, ones that will not compromise the quality of your article, is essential to improve your ranking on Google.
For instance, search engines are more likely to offer better ranking to longer blog posts over 250 words. Work your target keywords in the SEO title, the URL, on-page headline and throughout the content without overkilling it. Add ALT text to your photo and invite your users to share their experiences. A post with an actively engaged comments section is a clear signal that the page has value.
Article by http://www.machineryzone.com/
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 13, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Tradespeople Insights
By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent at Sonnhalter
Ask yourself and a few other people in your organization to name your top-selling product. If anyone answers with a product number, you’re doing it wrong. Don’t think like your catalog or even your current customers. Think like the customer you don’t have yet.
A potential customer doesn’t know you or your company and certainly hasn’t memorized your product numbers. They may not even know that they need your product yet.
All they know is that they have a problem, and they’re desperately looking for a solution.
Help them find it – and you.
Start by not thinking about what you make, but why you made it. What purpose does it serve? What niche it fills? Or, what issues it helps resolve?
Use the answers to those questions as the basis for white papers, success stories and as key words in press releases, websites and YouTube videos.
Put all that out there, and when a customer with an issue starts searching for an answer, your crumb trail of keywords will lead them to you. Make it so that where your marketing efforts don’t bring your product to a customer. Have their search bring them to you.
The best part about turning the tables like this is that it can be a refreshing change of perspective for your entire organization. It makes everyone get out of their silo and put themselves in a customer’s shoes. That can affect not only marketing and SEO, but also product development, customer service and morale.
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 7, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Tradespeople Insights
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
First of all, do you have a lead nurturing program? If the answer is no, you may want to consider one and here’s why.
In a recent article in eMarketer.com, there were some interesting findings in a study done by Demand Gen Report (DGR) in July of 2015
- Over 50% of U.S. B-to-B marketers said nurturing programs outperformed their counterparts from 10-30%.
- These leads outperformed others in moving through the sales funnel, and respondents reported a 10-30% increase in sales opportunities.
The key in lead nurturing is being able to define specific markets and subsequent messaging. You need to be relevant. Email was the most widely used tactic with over 94% using it.
Another interesting stat is that 42% of consumers will delete an email if it isn’t mobile friendly, so keep that in mind.
So do some of these stats resonate with what you’re doing?
If you like this post you may want to read:
Lead Nurturing: What Industrial Marketers Need to Know.
For Your Lead Nurturing Program-Where do you Find Good Content?
What’s the Difference Between Lead Nurturing and Follow-up Calls?
by tradespeopleinsights | Oct 6, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Tradespeople Insights
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
We live in a society that expects immediate gratification. This spills over into our business lives, and companies expect an immediate ROI on almost everything today — Content Marketing is no exception.
Some companies are putting more eggs in the content marketing basket and are expecting big results in a short period of time. The problem is, to build a loyal audience, it takes time. They need to get to know, like and trust you and that doesn’t happen overnight.
If you want immediate results, use traditional outbound tactics like direct mail to generate short-term activity.
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute found in interviewing a number of entrepreneurs for his book, Content Inc., that it took at least 15 months to grow a loyal audience.
This is no surprise for those of us who have been doing this for some time. For those that are trying to get a content program going they need to do some ground work to let management what to expect and when to expect it.
Joe offers some suggestions on getting in the game while you try to build a case for the BIG push.
- Do a pilot program – choose a market category and put metrics like increases search engine ranking or number of leads that will demonstrate to the bean counters that it’s working.
- Fear Factor – analyze your competition and make the case that your company is losing web visibility.
- Find a sugar daddy – identify solutions to key pain points for your sales leaders and you may find that they not only will become your advocate, but may find funds short term to fund your efforts.
The bottom line is that it takes time, so be patient!
In 2015, it’s anything but a surprise that social media has completely revolutionized how companies, agencies and organizations connect with their audiences. Many companies utilize these services to build transparency, inform customers of new products and to keep their audiences in the loop on any day-to-day updates and promotions. While we’ve all seen organizations curate pages on Facebook and Twitter, here’s a look at some newer ways companies are maximizing visibility and profitability through social media.
