by tradesmeninsights | Sep 14, 2011 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Contractors are busy people and they rely more and more on devices that they can use in the field. Between smartphones, tablets and even internet cards for your laptop, you had better have a mobile strategy either in place or on the drawing board or you will be missing opportunities to communicate and connect with your audience.
No one could sum it up any better than Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst for mobile, “The rapid expanding smartphone and mobile internet user populations raise the stakes for marketers and make mobile web more of an imperative than ever.”
Here are some facts you need to consider:
- Almost 100 million consumers will be on the mobile web this year
- Smartphones represent 38% of mobile users this year
- In 2010, 96% of all tablets were iPads (15 million)
According to Bill Siwicki, managing editor of Mobile Commerce, The up-and-coming web programming language HTML5 enables developers to create mobile web sites that are more like apps, and to create apps that require little modification to operate on a variety of mobile operating systems. However, an HTML5-based app can’t do everything an app written specifically for Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android can, he adds.
So the question is, what’s your plan? Don’t miss out on an opportunity to touch and engage your audience.
Here are some other posts that might be relevant:
Mobile Marketing to the Professional Tradesman: What Are You Waiting For?
56 Mobile Marketing Facts
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 13, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
One long-term strategy that folks sometimes overlook is that of leveraging content curation as a way of building followers and “expertise standing ” in your field. Content curation for those of you who may not know what I’m talking about is the art and science of finding and sharing quality content on a specific subject.
Most of our clients are manufacturers, and when they get into the social media scene, they are usually focused on original content so they can show the world how much they know and why their product is better than the other brands. While this content info may be good, most people who might follow you don’t always want to hear about you or get a sales pitch. What you may want to consider isbecoming a trusted and reliable source of info on a specific subject or market. The “go to” guy.
Manufacturers, for example who make several product lines, say for the plumbing market, could become the reliable source for industry info. Info that would be from the associations, wholesalers or contractors. I recently read a guest post from Neicole Crepeau on Convince and Convert site that outlines things to help you be successful at content curation. Highlights include:
- Identify your audience – for most of you that shouldn’t be hard to do. You can’t be a ” jack of all trades.”
- Focus on content sharing – share relevant content as 70% of people will only ever click on a topical category. 56% of all retweets contain links so it’s important that your followers are spreading the word (and links) to their contacts.
- Make sure content is impeccable – promote the gems so readers don’t have to sift through lots of content that may not be meaningful.
- Be consistent – you need to do this on a regular basis to build followers.
So if you’re looking for another way of becoming a credible source in your field, you may want to consider Content Curation.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 8, 2011 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Social media is measurable. Isn’t that the mantra everyone talks about? I think everyone would agree that social media is a little easier to get your hands around as to where the lead originated as opposed to traditional media. I sometimes think there’s too much info out there.
Social has several tools to help you measure and monitor your activities and hopefully help you take action. My question is collecting data is one thing, but what you do with it (or not) makes all the difference.
Are you looking at where your referral sources are? Are they from groups on LinkedIn that you belong to or from places like Stumbleupon? If they are coming through search, which engines are picking you up? What key words/phrases are being used?
emarketer.com recently had a post on How Social Media Marketers Can Make the Most out of Monitoring Tools that I thought was interesting. They cited a June 2011 study by RSW/US and Web Liquid of Senior Marketers. Not surprising, Google Alert was the most popular tool being used by them. It was good to see that marketers were indeed using these monitoring tools to take some sort of action. See the chart below.
Tracking is the first step, but it needs to be followed by actions. What are you doing with your social info?
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 7, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Hopefully everyone has jumped onto the social media bandwagon in some sort or fashion. But lot’s of B-to-B companies are struggling with how they approach this new media.
A recent article in AdAge by Noah Brier sums it up,“In a nutshell, they need to act less like brands and more like people.” You need to teach your brand to speak. Brands are not people, although their companies are made up of them. Most companies are driven by the traditional results orientated model of ultimately doing something that results in a sale.
A recent article in Social Media Explorer by Mark Ivey titled, Why Brands Can’t Connect, brings home issues that companies must address to insure the brand’s success in the social media arena. Here are some highlights:
- Don’t be concerned with the mechanics of doing 10 tweets a week or 3 posts a day to your Facebook account.
- Traditional marketing doesn’t work in the social setting.
- Stop thinking like marketers and start thinking like creative humans.
- Think about “What keeps your audience up at night”
- You need to understand that social means your ability to engage your reader, not preach to him on the features and benefits of doing business with you
- Brands typically have a narrow focus while people tend to look at the bigger picture
Noah Brier sums it up very well:
“So what’s a brand to do? For starters, brands can learn from the best publishers on the web, like Huffington Post or Gawker/Gizmodo. These outlets combine small amounts of stock content with large amounts of flow content. The former is used to attract new audience and the latter to keep them engaged. To achieve this, brands need to start thinking about their inputs, or who they pay attention to, as much as their outputs, how they look, act and talk. They have to think of their channels less as CRM and more as owned media.”
The big question is how are you doing?
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 6, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
I know one of the biggest challenges for manufacturers that we represent is getting to the young entrants in the trades. They know how to get to the old guys, they’ve been doing it for years and know that traditional things like trade ads and direct mail programs are effective tools to reach them.
But when you talk to these folks on how they plan on reaching the future generations of tradesmen, they are definitely puzzled as they know the traditional methods are probably not the best way to connect with them. They think of social media as one possible avenue to connect with these young people, but often neglect the mobile devices.
While that may not be surprising that young people are active in mobile devices, what might surprise you is that the baby boomers are also active in mobile, but just a different kind. Consider this: 91 million U.S. consumers use the internet through mobile devices at least once a month and that number continues to rise (Affinity reports that more than 24 million millennials plan on purchasing smart phones in the next 6 months).
So the question is:
- Do you have a mobile strategy in place to reach your young targeted audiences?
- Do you have a mobile friendly website?
- Are you planning smart phone apps?
- What’s your plan to start collecting e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers for future marketing programs?
Mobile will play an important part in communicating with the younger tradesmen. What’s your plan?
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 1, 2011 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Yeah I know you have your eyes on your major competitors. You have your salesmen and distributors feeding you information , but have you used the tools on the internet to see what the social network is saying about you and your competition?
Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part lll said, Never hate your enemies-it affects your judgement. Pretty good advice don’t you think?
You probably keep your eye on your big competitors, but what about similar manufacturers that sell similar products in several markets you’re in? How about your suppliers and distribution partners? It doesn’t take much to get something working from off shore. This is good info and should be integrated into your marketing plans.
Here are some tools that may be useful:
Social Media Monitoring Tools
– Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/
– Klout: http://www.klout.com/ (Growing service for monitoring general online influence by using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube…will be adding more social media at a later date).
– Facebook Insights (Found on the right hand bar of your Facebook Page.)
– WordPress stats http://www.wordpress.com (Provides blog views, post views, etc.)
– Hootsuite Built-in analytics (http://hootsuite.com//)
– Ow.ly click summary (Proposal report to monitor progress.)
– Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/ (Tracks trends and sends alerts. New social pack allows for monitoring and analysis side by side.)
– www.Compete.com (Tracks unique views on websites; good for checking blogs with their own domains.)
– http://www.quantcast.com/ (Much like Compete.)
– Bit.ly shortens links and tracks clicks
– http://www.semrush.com (Search your URLs and find detailed keywords, competitors and recommendations for advertising.)
– http://grader.com/ (Grades different social media activity.)
What are you using to monitor your competitors?
