by tradesmeninsights | Apr 3, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
I’m sure you’ll answer yes, but are you talking with them or at them? We all assume that email or phone calls are the best way to communicate with your customers. I’m surprised when I ask our clients that question that it’s based on their assumptions on how their customers wanted to be contacted.
It’s interesting that we all want to build relationships and engage our customers, but if you think about it, you’re doing it on your terms not necessarily on theirs.
Here’s what I’d suggest. Have your customer service department contact your customer base and ask them how they want to be contacted (most of this can be done on regular inbound calls), for example, regarding new products or new training that’s available. You may be surprised at their answers.
For new products, they may want a one-on-one with their salesman, and for training, they may want to be contacted by email. They should touch most of your customers in a normal period of a month or so, and for those that are reached from inbound calls, start an outbound campaign to those that haven’t purchased for some time. It will give your customer service people a reason to reach out, and who knows, they might even sell something!
I’m assuming you’re working with some sort of CRM system that can be updated, and when new things come up that need to be shared, you have a better chance of getting that message out if you deliver it the preferred way the customer wants.
Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 21, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
The job of marketing today isn’t to create new customers but to create passionate subscribers to our brand. Your community will take charge and social networking will continue to facilitate the power shift towards the consumer. Our challenges are to make a person stop, read, think and behave differently.
Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?
Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.
So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:
- Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
- Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
- What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
- Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
- Measure success.
Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.
We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 13, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.
I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:
- Content – You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
- Outreach – Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
- Response – Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
- Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.
CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?
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 21, 2012 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
According to a recent article in BtoB Magazine, Making the Most of Mobile is beginning to change. Here’s an interesting stat – in December of 2011, eMarketer released a study that showed mobile had surpassed print readership. Mobile increased by 30% in 2011 to 65 minutes a day compared to print at 44 minutes. Magazines are finding that their content consumption on smartphones and tablets are beginning to boom.
This trend isn’t just in the B-to-C market. B-to-B publications are beginning to focus on different delivery options. Summit Media Group who owns Packaging World found in a recent survey that 46% of their subscribers owned a tablet and that 78% planned to own one by the end of the year. Of those that currently own tablets, 74% said they read work-related digital magazines on these devices. They have incorporated “responsive design” into their websites which allows for optimum readability automatically.
Ziff Davis, a tech media company, is moving ALL its print magazines to digital and mobile and is clearly a leader in this endeavor. Newer media companies like WTWH Media which just started a few years ago focuses heavily on the digital aspect. Cygnus Business Media, Penton Media and others are starting to follow suit.
So bottom line for those of us that are trying to reach professional tradesmen, we now have another opportunity and avenue to reach them. Benefits of digital are:
- We can measure responses
- We can enhance our message by including links to videos, testimonials, etc.
If you haven’t included digital in your marketing plans, maybe it’s time you consider it.
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 8, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
No matter what kind of promotion you’re doing, when going after the professional tradesmen, the bottom line is you want them to ask for more info and ultimately a sale. You can’t do that in an ad(print or digital) by itself. You need those that are interested in whatever it is you’re selling to go somewhere to get more info.
A landing page is ideal for a next step in the lead process. A good landing page will target a particular audience using a unique page that allows visitors to download the appropriate content (you wouldn’t have the same offer for say a tradesman and for a design engineer). They also help you track and monitor activity by offers so you know what works and what doesn’t.
I recently downloaded an e-book, Optimizing Landing Pages by Sarah Goliger from Hubspot that outlines the basics on what needs to be included, how to get them shared, using them as a lead nurturing tool and thanking them for responding.
Here are some highlights:
- By directing them to a specific page with an offer and the appropriate form to fill out, it makes it more likely that they will complete the form and convert to a lead.
- If your visitors decide to download your offer, why not invite them to share your content?
- Lead nurturing is a very important part of the process. 50% of those who respond aren’t ready to buy just yet.
- 78% of sales that start with a web inquiry get won by the first company that responds.
- By sending a follow-up thank you to those that downloaded material, you have the opportunity to offer them additional info and downloads, as well as asking them to share this with others via social media.
So if you’re not using landing pages, you may want to give them a try. I think you’ll see that you’ll not only get more leads, but better quality ones.
If you like this post you might like:
Product Landing Pages: Tips on How to Improve their Performance
The Best Way to Reach Professional Tradesmen: Drip or Closed Loop Marketing?
I’m sure you’ll answer yes, but are you talking with them or at them? We all assume that email or phone calls are the best way to communicate with your customers. I’m surprised when I ask our clients that question that it’s based on their assumptions on how their customers wanted to be contacted.