by tradesmeninsights | Jul 31, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
If you’re not utilizing this tool to reach the contractor and professional tradesman, you’re missing a great opportunity.
Some recent studies show that videos are on the rise in the B-to-B world. B-to-B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budget and Trends North America found that video had the largest increase of any market content in 2012.
Software Advice’s recent 2012 B-to-B demand generation survey found that video was the second most type of content used across channels.
I recently read a 3-part article in Content Marketing Institute by Mark Walker that outlined how to use video to drive awareness, leads and sales. He gives great tips on how to develop and execute a video strategy.
Here are some highlights:
- Define your purpose. What do you want to accomplish – educate, entertain, sell?
- Define your message. You’re better off doing targeted messages which will be shorter and on point. It’s better to do several short targeted videos than one catch-all one.
- Don’t overlook existing video. You might be surprised at what already exists on your products, training, etc.
- Leverage event’s show interviews, live demos, contractor interviews.
- Keep it short. 3-5 minutes is the ideal length to hold someone’s attention.
- Promote videos. Other than SEO, promote on your blog, website and social platforms, along with the appropriate tagging so folks can find you.
- Ask your Audience to share and make it easy for them to do.
Mark does an excellent job educating those who may not be familiar with all the ins and outs of videos.
If you like this post, you might like:
B-to-B Marketers: Are you Taking Advantage of Online Videos?
Busy Executives Prefer Videos Online
Make Videos Part of your Direct Marketing Plans to the Professional Tradesman
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 24, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Have you ever met a contractor that hasn’t tried to talk your leg off? Most are talkers and mean no harm; they just want to connect. So what better audience to connect with if you make something that can help them do their job better?
Stories are ways to make life a little more interesting and who (let’s be honest) doesn’t like a good story? So you, as a manufacturer, are you telling your customers stories or are you just trying to sell them something? You know there’s more than one way to make a sale. Storytelling should be entertaining and engaging, not boring and one-sided.
But you have to know who you are before you can communicate it to someone else. Storytelling can be used to talk about your founders and why they got in business, to the challenges that you face today. You can talk about your people and company culture and what makes you different to do business with.
I read an article by Debbie Williams on the Content Marketing Institute’s site. She focuses her storytelling around 6 questions:
- What’s your reason for being? What’s your purpose? What’s important to you?
- What’s your history? How does what you do come into existence?
- Who are your main characters? Not everyone can have a Steve Jobs, but someone had the foresight and passion to start your company. Who was he/she (them)?
- What’s your corporate mission? Why are you in business? What kinds of problems are you trying to solve?
- How have you failed? This a hard one for some folks, but a reality for all of us. None of us are perfect, so show some of that humanity. Chances are, people will connect because they’ve been there, done that.
- Where are your gaps? You can’t be introducing new products every month of every year. No one really expects that. Use a timeline to highlight major milestones in your history.
One key point that Debbie makes is that brand stories can be told in many different forms. We need to make sure that whoever the content creators are that they are vigilant about continuity and consistency.
So are you taking advantage of telling your story to those contractors out there? If not, you may be missing a huge opportunity to bolster your brand.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 23, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Mobile is probably one of the fastest segments right now from a consumer’s point of view, and it’s only a matter of time before it impacts manufacturers and their distributor partners on how they will be conversing with their customers.
According to Econsultancy and Adobe Trend Report, mobile optimization is the number one opportunity in 2013 for marketers. That’s both the good news and bad news as we all are struggling on how to develop a mobile content strategy.
Contractors are always on the go and need and want to stay connected. The problem is what we connect them with. An article in Content Marketing Institute by Tobin Dalrymple highlights five ways you can grow your brand using mobile. Here are some highlights:
- Make your content readable on mobile – Studies suggest that 98% of small- and medium-size business websites are not mobile ready. You may want to consider a responsive website (one that senses where the inquiry is coming from and delivers it in the appropriate format).
- Make your site feel like a mobile site – use unique ways for people to interact by using things such as swiping or other touch points to make it more interactive.
- Create custom mobile assets – don’t put your whole site up. Focus on things that will help those contractors do their job better and more efficiently. Troubleshooting tips, parts availability or access to parts drawing.
- You don’t need a special app to have an effective mobile strategy – twice as many mobile news readers prefer a browser over an app.
Mobile is not going away; all of our challenges are to try to maximize the opportunities so our customers have a positive brand experience. The last thing we want to do is frustrate a customer because we didn’t do our homework.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 17, 2013 | Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Sometimes we’re so close to the woods that we can’t see the trees. As marketers, we’re all so busy trying to execute our plans, from using the latest digital options and lead nurturing programs, to doing some traditional direct mailers and participating in a key trade show that we often overlook the obvious – Referrals!
When was the last time you bought something major that you didn’t ask a friend or business associate what their thoughts were on that particular product or the proposed solution you were thinking about.
The professional tradesman is not different. He will ask another peer or a distributor friend about ways to solve the problem. That’s why word of mouth (WOM) plays such an important part. Here are some interesting stats:
- 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends (Nielsen).
- 80% of all B-to-C and B-to-B purchases involve some WOM recommendations during the purchasing cycle according to Forrester.
I recently downloaded a Referral Marketing Guide from Extole that outlines six steps to take to make sure your WOM program gets results. They not only give you the steps, but practical examples of how to incorporate into your current programs. They also give you case studies.
Here are the six steps they recommend you to follow:
- Create a compelling offer
- Promote a referral program
- Make it easy for advocates to refer
- Personalize the friend experience
- Keep referral programs top of mind
- Monitor and optimize the program
According to the study, WOM recommendations result in a 3-5 times higher conversion than other channels. It makes sense doesn’t it; you value the opinions of others. So as marketers, we need to harness the loyal brand advocates that we have and have them help folks through the selling cycle.
If you haven’t used a WOM campaign to reach those contractors, maybe it’s time you rethink your strategy. After all, we’re all in it to ultimately sell something, and WOM has proven that it will help the customer through the sales cycle by letting others help you sell.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 16, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
We all face the challenge not only writing good content but getting it consumed. Most of us old-time B-to-B marketers get right to the point, just like Joe Friday, a detective in Dragnet, the TV series (way back before most of you were born).
Joe didn’t have time and was always getting to the point. One of his lines was “Just the facts, ma’am.” I wonder how he’d do in today’s environment of social media? I’m sure he wasn’t the life of the party.
So it’s a given that we’re good at giving them the facts, but is that enough? Great content needs to be useful and interesting.
So we got the useful part down, but some of us have a hard time inserting the interesting in it. A recent article by Andy Cresodina in the Content Marketing Institute, Great Content Meets 2 Criteria: Does Yours? outlines some hints that would help us in both areas.
Here are some highlights on keeping your readers happy:
- Give them a unique perspective.
- Use strong options or emotions .
- Use a little humor (we all need to lighten up a little).
- Tell them a story instead of spewing out the facts. Show them you’re human.
Here are some highlights on how to meet your readers expectations:
- Make content relevant. What’s in it for the reader?
- Make sure your facts are correct.
- Quote other reliable sources/stats to support your point of view.
These are some good tips for all of us to follow. Thanks CMI.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 9, 2013 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Since Google touches us all, it’s good to get some trends from “Big Brother” especially when it relates to the B-to-B markets. emarketer.com recently had an interview with Mike Miller, director of business and industrial markets at Google, and some new market research they just completed.
Here are some highlights that we, as B-to-B marketers, should consider:
- Search – Still big and this should be no surprise. Internet usage among the B-to-B sector jumped from 71% to 88% over the last year. Even more enlightening is when asked about how they used search to research business purposes; there was a 23% increase over last year from 67% to 90%.
- Videos – More companies in the B-to-B space are creating videos. They range from how-to videos to thought leadership topics. Here’s an interesting stat – the C suite indexes very high on using videos to find info.
- Digital marketing to reinforce the sales force – By the time a B-to-B purchaser actually engages with a company or sales rep, they’re 57% of the way through the decision process.
So with all our marketing challenges, hopefully these will give you some insight on what you might want to focus your efforts on.
