by tradesmeninsights | Mar 6, 2012 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
We all are getting into social media in some fashion. Some more active than others, but how are we doing and what do we think of this new media?
Penton Media just released a B-to-B Marketing study called, Truth from the Trenches that surveyed 3,000-plus folks like us.
What they found is very interesting. The study drives home some alarming points on how many of us are less than satisfied with the performance of our website, social, search marketing and sales conversion efforts. Here are a few of the highlights I found interesting:
- 81% of B2B marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging.
- 77% said their websites are not effective at generating leads.
- 63% of them are either vaguely aware or not aware of what is being said about them online.
- 35% don’t think social media is critical for their business.
On the positive side:
- 60% have implemented a social media strategy or will in the next year.
- 90% are active on Facebook.
- 53% are active on Twitter.
So what do you think? Any of these hit home?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 29, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Doing a blog is a major commitment and lots of us haven’t pulled the trigger for just that reason. But I’m sure you’ve got good content to share, but how do you do it?
Jeffrey Cohen had an interesting post on socialmediab2b.com, 6 Ways to Create and Share B2B Social Media Content Without a Blog that I found to be interesting. You can house great content on your website and use links in social networks to bring them your info. Highlights from Jeff’s post include:
- Email – When you’re at a trade show or industry conference, take notes of highlights and send them to your customer/client contact list.
- YouTube – Shoot a quick video (use your phone) with a product manager highlighting one key feature of a product. Post on your YouTube channel and share a link on social sites.
- LinkedIn – Post status updates. These will be visible to all those who follow you.
- Google+ – Great place to have conversations and ask leading questions, not to mention the benefits of search results.
So you see, there are other ways to get your presence and expertise out in the marketplace. What are you doing to enhance your expertise?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 28, 2012 | Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We all know how busy contractors and the trades are. Most of their time is spent on the job site. They rely on their smartphones, and more and more are using tablets in the field. Mobile is not going away. Consider this stat:
77% of the world’s population (5.3 billion people) are mobile subscribers!
A recent post on Marketo, BtoB Marketing To Go: Why Mobile is Crucial to Your Lead Generation, highlights some interesting stats from a recent comScore study:
- 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices.
- Almost 40 million U.S. mobile users access social media sites daily.
- Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn increased their mobile audiences by more that 50% in 2011.
So what do you think the chances are that some of your target audience isn’t in the stats above? Mobile users are interacting with brands and you should not miss out on the opportunity to engage them.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Is Mobile Marketing the Best Way to Reach the Professional Tradesman?
What’s Your Mobile Media Strategy for 2012?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 23, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Some of you may have already jumped into Google+. According to recent stats, as of January 2012, there are over 90 million users (Twitter has 100 million active users). To put this in perspective, they launched Google+ by invitation in June of 2011 and opened it up to the public in September of 2011. Google is positioning Google+ as their Facebook for B-to-B.
Google+ is a great content sharing platform, and building an audience on it may be one of the smartest things you do as a content marketer according to a recent post by Brian Clark on copyblogger, Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy. Here are two highlights on why:
- Google+ is a part of Google – they do a good job integrating with Google docs, Chrome, Google Reader, Gmail and YouTube.
- Search – Google is the king of search and now they announced the Search, plus your world which merges personalized search with social search.
Brian also discusses concerns about Google having a stranglehold on the market and what we might expect moving forward.
The key for those of us who write content is to understand the language of our audience and make sure we reflect that in our content. Search will do the rest.
If you like this post, you might want to read:
Suggestions on How to Make Sense of Google+
Google+ and B-to-B: How to Get Started
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 22, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I know we all know “CONTENT IS KING” and we focus on putting out good stuff. But we should be just as focused on building the list to whom we’ll be sending all this valuable info.
It’s a fact that if you have an engaged database of subscribers, you have a captive audience not only for them to read, but to share. I recently read a post on problogger.net by James Penn entitled, 10 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers For Your Blog that I thought brought home some key points.
Among them are:
- Use multiple opt-in forms – have 3-4 in your newsletter template. The more you have, the better the chances of them signing up.
- Offer a freebie for signing up – give them a report, industry trends or white paper for signing up.
- Use your most popular posts – they will continue to bring in traffic.
- Create special reports on industry issues – use already existing content to create.
- Ask readers to join your email list – what better way to get people on board
These are some great tips. What are you doing to increase your email lists?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 16, 2012 | Social Marketing
I always like stories of the little guys who take on the 800# gorilla and win the battle. One of the benefits of social media is you don’t have to be an 800# gorilla to succeed. In my opinion, it’s the one who is consistent on providing good content and responding in a timely matter that really counts.
All too often larger companies need to go through a “process” that is very time-consuming for both posting content and answering questions.
Madison Electrical Products is a small, privately held manufacturer that services the electrical contractor marketplace and is one example of doing social media correctly. The family business was purchased a few years ago by an individual that thought there was some opportunity to grow and build value in the company. When he bought the business, Madison was considered a third-tier player that competed on price. Bringing in industry experts, they identified opportunities that they thought a company of their size could take advantage of.
According to Rob Fisher, Director of Marketing for Madison, what he found out was he couldn’t outspend his competitors, but he could outmarket them by using social.
“We started off slow, initially created basic Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. The first few months, we did a lot of monitoring and listening to discover what electrical contractors and distributors were discussing. Once we began participating, we kept the focus on addressing industry issues and trends.
We keep the self-promotion to a minimum. For us, we’re much more interested in using social media to learn from and talk with our industry peers. We also want to be a resource to help others in the industry, which is why we began blogging.”
Realizing that a “commodity product” approach would limit potential growth, Madison launched the Sparks Innovation Center, the industry’s first crowdsourced approach to product development. Contractors and electricians can submit product ideas for consideration through the Sparks page on Madison’s website. To date, Madison has received more than 120 submissions, with six products already launched and several more in the pipeline.
What a unique concept: Listen to what your customer wants and give it to him/her. Thanks to Madison’s commitment to online engagement and listening, coupled with their increased involvement in industry associations, they have become known as thought leaders and are currently making new products that aren’t commodities. Now, when Madison attends regional distributor meetings, they don’t have any problem filling up their dance card.
This is just one example of what a smaller company can do if they are committed to an ongoing program using social media. (By the way, these guys aren’t clients of ours.)
