by tradesmeninsights | Feb 27, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
When developing new content whether it’s for your blog or website, one of your goals should be to capitalize as much as possible on maximizing your SEO. We all want to grab our fair share and by making a conscious effort to incorporate our key words in everything we do, we’ll have a better chance.
An article by Mike Murray in Content Marketing Institute caught my attention. Mike gives us some good pointers and lots of support sites (mostly free) that we can use to help increase SEO. He’s even created a short checklist for us to reference.
Here are some highlights:
- Have I overlooked any key words
- Do key words match your business or targets?
- New page development – make sure to incorporate your most strategic key words.
- Review your site’s analytics to see how people are currently getting there. Are you using some of those key words in your content?
- Are you including a call to action? Does the reader easily know what you want them to do?
- Look at an internal link strategy that cross links between pages.
- Plan your content with a calendar to ensure your key words/phrases are being written about on a regular basis.
Let’s all try to work smarter as we enter a new year.
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 26, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
In the B-to-B world, most sales are not immediate. The longer selling cycles for most industrial/contractor purchases involve more than one person and selling cycles can go from months to years.
So B-to-B marketers need to be patient. I believe Marketing should be the ones who nurture the leads through, and when ready, transition to sales to close the deal.
I think marketing, if the right processes are in place, is in a better position to move them through the process. Effective nurturing is a series of content-relevant info for each stage of the buying process.
Russ Hill from Ultimate Leads calls it the “Transition Zone.” It is the place in time where marketing hands off the lead they so carefully nurtured to sales to close the loop. But in order to do it successfully, you must have a process that everyone is in tune with, and sales needs to make sure to keep info on that lead current in your lead database so we know when a new customer has arrived, from where and what they bought.
B-to-B companies shouldn’t be worried about quantity but quality of leads. According to Albertson Performance Group, quality lead nurturing can lead to 70% more sales. According to them, nurturing will:
- decrease selling cycles
- increase profit margins
- lessen the competition
- decrease price pressure
- get more referrals
Nurturing is the right way to show ROI on marketing efforts.
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 5, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Many manufacturers have capital goods that have long selling cycles. Most I think would welcome ways to pull buyers forward in the sales process via lead nurturing.
I recently finished eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee that I would recommend you read. Her insights and strategies have been used by many major companies.
It’s an easy read and what I liked about it was it not only showed you what/how you need to do to engage the potential customer, but it also shows you a different way of looking at your company from the inside.
Even though prospects are more informed now than ever, so are their problems. They are looking for solutions not sales pitches. She shows you how to attract more prospects into your pipeline and then nurture them through the sales process (once you’ve figured it out). Instead of pushing what you have to sell, you need to be pushing the value you bring to the table. What you bring to the party must be relevant.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 29, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
So you finally got in the social media game and you’re trying to make your mark. With all the clutter and noise out there, you need to differentiate yourself (branding) and engage your potential customers. Let’s work smart and not hard.
Here are 3 tips to help you break through the clutter:
- Be proactive – don’t just write posts. Locate where your potential customers hang out. Listen to what they’re saying about your company and products. What pain points are they talking about and how can you help them address those issues?
- Train your employees – Social is a new marketing tool and we can’t assume that they know what your focus is for social or what their responsibilities are. They all need to be on the same page and there should be guidelines set up so everyone knows what their roles should be, the processes that are in place, and if a crisis occurs, the steps necessary to address them.
- Develop a social media engagement schedule – if you have identified an audience like the professional tradesmen you need to know when they are active on social so you have a better opportunity to engage them. When you do, make sure someone who is knowledgeable on your product or service is available to answer their inquiries. Don’t let a low-level person who isn’t up to speed on your products be your spokesperson.
The bottom line for all of this is to drive more sales, and social media is just one more way of identifying and engaging new prospects.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 16, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
You may have some of the best content in the world, but if no one reads it, what’s the point? I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen, 13 Ways to Maximize Content Marketing Effectiveness that got me to thinking about getting back to the basics and making the effort of writing posts to pay off.
Here are some thoughts:
- Come up with a strong headline – we have less than 3 seconds to capture attention. Make your headline make the reader stop.
- Use images – a picture or graphic is worth its weight in gold. We are a visual society and the right image will help keep the reader on the page.
- Get to the point – now that you’ve captured their attention, dive into the meat of what you want to say at the beginning.
- You don’t have to have all the answers – link to relevant content. It reinforces the point that others share your point of view.
- Get them to react – we need to add a call-to-action or ask for comments to get the readers involved. If they share the same opinion on the subject, I’m sure they would have something to contribute to the conversation.
Those are my thoughts. I’d like to hear what you’re doing to get more readership.
If you like this post, you might like:
What Are You Doing to Ensure Your Content Marketing is Selling For You?
Is Content Marketing the New Branding?
How Are You Managing Your Content Marketing?
