by tradesmeninsights | May 30, 2019 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights, Traditional Marketing
In the traditional sales model, we identify our prospects and then use several tactics to get in front of them, qualify them and ultimately sell them. But, what about all the other potential users of your product or service that you don’t know about? Yes, some of them may find you through a referral or make their way to your website, but there are many more that may not ever know that you exist.
In most cases, especially for manufacturers who are selling more complicated products, there is a sales funnel you need to take prospects through before they are ready to buy. That’s great, but that only works if you’ve identified the potential sale.
Think of social media as your silent salesman. It’s out there bird dogging for you and taking a potential customer through some of the initial stages of the selling cycle.
Social media is a great way to connect with prospective buyers because they will find you based on what they are searching for (what kind of problem they are looking for a solution for) on the web. It allows you not only to connect, but to start a conversation. It allows them to get a better feeling for the company and how you go about helping people. In other words, you start building the “know, like and trust” model that comes with any sale, especially to new potentials.
Social media is a great way to educate prospective buyers because of all the tools you have available: Blogs, Forums, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. All are platforms for you to add value to the conversations by giving them great content, and it starts establishing you as an expert they can count on.
Social media is a great way to collaborate with potential buyers because of the tools like GoToMeeting, WebEx, Zoom and join.me or other technologies that allow you to connect almost immediately to help answer a question or show how to fix a problem. There are even listening platforms, like HooteSuite, Sprout Social and others that will help you monitor conversations around the areas you want to be in, and you can contribute at the appropriate time.
So, don’t just fall into business as usual. Think outside the box and give social media a try in your new business development efforts. You might be surprised as you may eventually identify a potential new customer that was never on your radar screen.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 24, 2019 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
by Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect, Sonnhalter
For those of you who might be looking for ways to generate more awareness and conversations, generating new content may not be your only option. It makes sense to use other social media outlets as a way to get your existing messages out.
To achieve higher reader engagement you need to know your audience, their habits and pain points. Different social media outlets reach people differently. So whether you’re looking to repurpose existing data or convert outdated info, consider delivering them in smaller bite size pieces using alternative avenues.
Looking for ideas on how to do this? This article in Social Media Examiner, “19 Tools to Create Social Media Content,” shows you ways to repackage existing material and use other social media outlets to get the message out. They outline several ways and give examples of tools to use.
Here are some highlights that I think manufacturers could use in reaching the professional tradesman:
Present your business via video. Tell your story, not the corporate one, but the one that talks about ways to come up with solutions to help contractors do their jobs better.
Use infographics. They are 30 times more likely to be read than pure text. People like visuals and are more likely to share them.
Convert long form content into slides. Use existing presentations and break them up into smaller groups. You can use them as PowerPoint presentations or there are programs that will easily allow you to incorporate animation.
Use podcasts to share your voice. Podcasts are one of the fastest growing mediums for social media and it comes as no surprise. Interview contractors and talk about the newest technologies. I’m sure you can come up with a multitude of topics to cover.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 2, 2019 | Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
By Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, PR Foreman
Since the social media scene developed years ago, it’s become cluttered. There are accounts on all social platforms that sit, gathering dust for years. Do any of those accounts belong to you or your company?
Thanks to Marie Kondo’s recent popularity, we’ve become obsessed with decluttering and organizing, so we thought it might be a good time of the year for a little spring cleaning of your social media.
By now, most companies have several social media accounts that have been running for quite some time and even a few accounts that have shut down (Google+) or become less relevant as a social media platform (Flikr). It doesn’t take much time to conduct a quick audit of your social media platforms and get back on track, if you know what to do. Here are a few pointers to get you started. (more…)
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 21, 2019 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
By Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect
Are you trying to increase your exposure, traffic and leads? Are you trying to provide insights to contractors and generate leads? If so, social media should be part of your overall marketing program.
Social media is a targeted way of getting your message out and letting prospective customers find you.
Social media benefits are:
- Reach – get your message distributed to a broader audience.
- Influence – both existing contractors as well as new prospects.
- Conversions – marketing insights lead to engagement that leads to sales.
Here are some tips to maximize your social media efforts to the contractor market.
Reach – Use several different social media platforms, i.e. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, to reach contractors. Make sure what you do share is relevant, as you don’t want to waste contractors time. They want quality content, not quantity. Repurpose existing content that they may not have been aware of.
Influence – You may not have to impress your existing customers, but you do for potential customers. Here’s where you have to become a thought leader. Don’t push your company or brand, but communicate a solution to a potential problem. Develop thought leaders within your company (no need for marketing to bear all the responsibility). Tap seasoned customer service reps, your engineering department and sales force. They are the ones on the front lines that deal with problems and arrive at solutions.
Conversion – This is a hard metric if you want to tie it directly to sales. In many cases where products are either specified or sold through distribution channels, it’s nearly impossible to track sales results. You can, though, create landing pages with offers for white papers or other items that would help the contractor in their day-to-day operations. Be patient, and as you engage these contractors on social media, work at taking them offline and start a traditional relationship with them.
by Sandy | Mar 15, 2019 | Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
There are around 505 million blogs in the world today and not all are created equal.
So, how do you identify and communicate with the right blogs and forums to get in front of professional tradesmen? The first question to ask yourself is: are your products or services applicable to your end users using social media? If the answer is “yes,” then your goal should be to do comprehensive research to identify the right communities, monitor them and jump in and get involved in the conversations. As you get involved in these conversations on social media, keep this in mind:
- Your brand can be affected positively or negatively. You don’t control the message.
- Your brand depends on the “loyalists” who are passionate about your brand.
- Key blogs or social media sites are authored by thought leaders from your industry.
- Social media demands transparency, so be honest in your engagement.
Here are a few sites that may be of interest to brands attempting to reach and interact with the professional tradesman:
(more…)
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 15, 2018 | Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
By Andrew Poulsen, PR Technician
While companies big and small have utilized social media to engage with customers for a decade, it wasn’t until maybe five or six years ago that we saw a paradigm shift in how brands used their voices online. Instead of using social media as just another way to talk to the consumer, many chain restaurants, sports teams, and other national brands now choose to talk with the customer by using Twitter, Instagram and Facebook the same way we do. They do this by sharing the latest meme, riffing on a recent news headline or crafting a snarky reply to an overly hostile internet troll. By choosing to be funny and relatable online, brands that were once considered drab and unexciting (i.e. Denny’s, Wendy’s, Moon Pie, etc.), are going viral with their daily posts and have amassed millions of followers, countless news headlines and the attention of that highly coveted 18-24 demographic.
But is social media really just a free publicity gold rush that turns any company that puts up a few cat photos and clever hashtags into an overnight viral sensation? Well, not exactly. For newer companies trying to break into social media, immediately measuring your success against huge, established brands isn’t going to do you any good. If you’re a manufacturer of linear actuators or ball bearings trying to capture the hearts and minds of millennials, do you really think you can compete with the Baconator or a Grand Slam breakfast special?
Like any other marketing tactic, the ingredients for a successful social media campaign involve patience, research and setting realistic goals for your company. In order to prevent you from becoming discouraged in your social media efforts, here are just a few things to consider.
Do Your Homework
When creating a social media strategy, instead of obsessing over your competitors’ numbers in terms of followers, focus on their content. What are the types of posts that bring in the most engagement from their audience? How can you adapt those styles of posts to what you do? How can you do a better job of making that kind of content? While racking up “likes” may seem like the end goal, engagement is where companies really start to see results. An audience of 100 people who constantly share, comment and interact with your posts will mean much more to your overall reach and bottom line than 1,000 people who just like your page and never engage with your content. And fortunately, there are a ton of great social media analytic tools that can help you find the people that are most likely to be interested in the content you put out there. With free tools such as Facebook Business, you can see which posts are getting the most interaction and adjust your strategy to create more of that type of content. (more…)
