by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 6, 2015 | Marketing Tips
By Robin Heike, Production Foreman at Sonnhalter
Promotional items can serve a variety of purposes such as adding the “rattle factor” to a direct mail marketing campaign or being a keepsake to commemorate an award.
From sourcing small items such as logoed sunglasses, to larger items like commemorative beer steins, here are a few tips to keep in mind next time you need to order a promotional item:
- Get quotes from 3-4 sources. Not only does this help you find the best price, but it gives you extra options if the first supplier or product falls through.
- Get a sample, even if you have to pay for it, prior to ordering. This will ensure you found the right source for the right item. No one wants to trash an order of 100, 1,000 or 10,000 promo items that arrive and are not what you expected.
- Get custom packaging if you’re shipping out a promotional mailing with breakables. No one wants to receive a broken item.
- Build in time for damaged or lost shipments. If possible, order extras. This is very important if you’re ordering from an overseas location.
- Probably the most important tip: Give yourself as much extra time as possible to account for any delays.
by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 5, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
Your Blog is a repository of helpful content that can effectively attract a large number of prospective customers.
Here are 5 simple steps and suggestions to improve your company’s blog as a major tool for fueling new business leads:
1. Creating
Each new blog post is a new opportunity for you to be found online by your best prospects. Some quick suggestions:
- Write to a specific target audience and provide answers to their advertising/marketing challenges.
- Write consistently: This is important to creating regular readership. Write at least 3 to 5 posts per week.
- Post should average 350 to 450 words and be pleasantly scannable to the eye. Break up long paragraphs, use bullet/numbered lists when possible. Highlight key words and thoughts.
- Write in the inverted pyramid style, lead with your conclusion. People read differently online than they do for print. They tend to scan much more.
- Identify and consistently use key words in your post title. You want to be able to dominate these words in Google search.
- Let your reading fuel your writing.
- Write 1 original post to every 4 to 5 resource posts. You’ll never be considered a thought leader without original content, but you won’t generate much traffic if all of your content is just your original thought. A balance of both needs to be provided through your blog.
- Write with an “evergreen” style that will have a long shelf-life and provide a great return on your time investment.
- Provide the “Readers Digest” version for your writers. Do the work on behalf of your readers and pull out the nuggets in simple language that is concise and easy to read.
2. Optimizing
- Carefully think through your blog’s heading. A “heading” is a stand-alone phrase that describes your blog’s content that appears below it. I usually advise clients to create a blog descriptor statement for the header that lets a reader and search engines know the purpose and intent of the content. Mine is “Marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets.”
- Be sure you own your domain. A person that still has “wordpress or blogspot” in their domain won’t be able to change blogging platforms without losing traffic.
- Be sure your site is indexed with Google. If your pages are not indexed, then Google is not crawling them.
- Build quality inbound links. There are lots of online business directories where you can just submit your URL, agency’s name and a description of your services. There are also many social media sites where you can simply build links to your site. Writing guest articles and posts and optimizing our press releases can build links. The best way however, is to produce valued content and create a blog that is a repository of helpful information for your target audience.
3. Promoting
- Make sure your content can be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, as well as social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon with Share buttons.
- Jumpstart traffic by repurposing your blog’s content through an email newsletter that is sent every other week. This is an easy thing to do. Since you already have the content and can create an email template that is reused, it will take literally minutes to prepare the newsletter and send.
- Build a sizable Twitter following that is targeted using TweetAdder and repurpose your blog content to your Twitter account using a program such as Social Oomph.
- Write guest posts; invite others to guest post for your blog.
- Comment on other blog posts and online articles, sites such as STAFDA or HVAC Professionals on LinkedIn, etc. Select those sites that are frequented by your target audience.
- Write content for searchability.
- Publish new blog content to your other social media accounts such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Conduct your own primary research using your blog; generate links and traffic through press releases using your groups on LinkedIn.
- Be proactive in facilitating speaking opportunities by creating a Speakers Page for your blog; list the topics and titles that you can speak to. You can also provide links to your past speaking engagements through YouTube; post photos through your Flickr Photostream.
- Pull blog content together, expand SEO opportunities, creating Slideshare Presentations, Whitepapers, etc.
4. Converting
All of this activity isn’t worth the time investment if it doesn’t turn visitors into leads.
- Place your RSS Subscription Feed button above the fold, near the top of your blog’s homepage. Visitors who subscribe will automatically receive updates every time you publish a new post either through an RSS Reader or through their email inbox. I would suggest setting up an RSS feed through Feedburner.
- Also place a subscription for your email newsletter within your blog’s sidebar to create Opt-Ins from site visitors.
5. Measuring
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Fortunately, you can measure a lot online and continually hone your program.
- Review your blog site’s analytics daily to see what posts are generating the most traffic, what search terms are being used, where traffic is coming from, who is linking to you, links readers clicked on, page views, etc.
- Utilize your email newsletter analytics to improve open and click-through rates. Test the day of the week your email newsletter is sent, time-of-day and subject line copy.
- Create a first-step call-to-action for your readers to know how to initially engage you. This could be something similar to my Industry White Papers. Make it something simple and of value that doesn’t take a lot of consideration but does separate to qualified prospects from those that just want to glean what they can get from you for free.
- Use this suite of tools to analyze your marketing efforts:
by tradespeopleinsights | Jul 29, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
LinkedIn by far is the best tool for B-to-B users in my opinion. It’s easy to use and the networking options are almost limitless. I’ll assume most of you are on it, but when was the last time you refreshed it?
The 2015 Social Media industry report from Social Media Examiner said 88% of B-to-B companies use LinkedIn and 41% cite it was their most important platform.
Jeffrey Cohen from SocialmediaBtoB.com wrote an interesting article recently on ways you can refresh LinkedIn.
Here are some highlights:
- Review your company page – What, you don’t have one? Better get going on creating one. Keep it up to date with current news. Consider changing the images frequently during the year.
- Review results of posts – Track links that drive visitors to your blog or website so you can better understand what’s driving engagement.
- Add relevant showcase pages – Create topical pages of areas of interest to your customers. It’s a great way to segment your audiences and post content relevant to them.
- Employee lunch and learn – While we can’t force folks to promote the company, we can certainly encourage them to do so by buying them lunch to explain why and show them what they could do would be helpful. By providing them a standard 2 or 3 sentence description of the company, it will help search results for the company as well.
- Create a Slideshare deck for employee profiles – create a short deck describing your company. Your employees can add it to their profiles.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
LinkedIn Still Top Performer for B-to-B
How to use LinkedIn to Promote your Innovative Company
What are you Doing to Grow your LinkedIn Connections?
by tradespeopleinsights | Jul 28, 2015 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
Landing pages are microsites where prospects go when they click-through a link.
Hopefully, as part of your strategy to move prospects along the selling cycle, you are using landing pages in order to deliver on what you promised. It’s also a great way to track responses and gather contact info. It could also be a way of losing a potential customer.
Here are some tips that might help results:
- Keep it simple – Deliver on what you promised to get them there in the first place.
- It’s not about you – How can you help them with a problem that got them there in the first place.
- This is not an ad – They’re not looking for a sales pitch, but answers to specific questions.
- Powerful content – Keep it relevant. Don’t focus on key words. Instead, make what you say useful and valuable.
Landing pages focus the visitor on the next step in the process.
All too often, folks want to talk about 5 different things and give them additional links. It won’t work. Just ask yourself – why did they click on a call-to-action that got them here? Then deliver what you promised.
If you want to learn more, you might want to read:
Are you Using Landing Pages?
Product Landing Pages: Tips on How to Improve Performance
by Sonnhalter | Jul 22, 2015 | Insiders Guides
San Diego Insider’s Guide
Welcome to San Diego— also known as America’s Finest City! Here you’ll find the finest weather…the finest beaches…and the finest whatever else you’re looking for. We asked some of our San Diego friends for their recommendations on where to sample some of the local cuisine—and not just the Mexican dishes you’d expect in a border town. Here, there’s everything from steakhouses to seafood places to the best Asian food this side of the Pacific.
We put together a list of those secret locales that only the locals know about. After all, at Sonnhalter, we not only like to get our hands dirty…we like to get them sticky and salty too! When you’re not convening at the Convention Center, make sure you get out and about to see the city’s many sights—from the old mission to the historic Gaslamp Quarter. See why they call San Diego America’s Finest City!
by Sonnhalter | Jul 22, 2015 | Insiders Guides
San Antonio Insiders Guide
The city of San Antoni—Remember the Alamo! But don’t forget about everything else there is to see and do in San Antonio. The old mission/fortress in the center of town is the most visited site in Texas, but it’s not the only destination here. From the towering Tower of the Americas to the city’s famed River Walk, you’ll find plenty of entertainment options in tony San Antone.
For the upcoming trade show, we’ve put together the Sonnhalter Insider’s Guide to San Antonio. It’s our way of helping you cut through the clutter to find the city’s best restaurants, shows and sights. We asked some of our friends in the Lone Star state for their recommendations on the best places to sample some of the city’s cuisine—and not just its delicioso Tex-Mex. We wanted those secret locales that only the locals know about. Because at Sonnhalter, we not only like to get our hands dirty…we also like to get them greasy. So, when you’re not convening at the convention center during the show, make sure you get out and get a real taste of San Antonio.
