by tradesmeninsights | Oct 13, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Alternative energy is a growth market and we decided to do an overview of what’s available for those thinking of getting into this market.
The market overview gives a quick snapshot of the industry, the industry players and industry trends. Driven by the agency’s existing knowledge and additional research, content was compiled into a basic overview of the growing alternative energy market.
This market overview highlights a vast amount of information on the alternative energy industry, from industry trends and issues to information on various types of renewable energy. The overview also features information on training firms and certification organizations, codes and standards, and offers online resources, websites, trade shows and trade publications in each individual market.
To sign up to receive a copy of the Alternative Energy market overview, or any of our other market overviews, click here.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 12, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
I had the chance to catch up with Mike Weil, the editorial director of Contracting Business magazine. I wanted to get his views on the recent Comfortech and HVACR Week show that just ended since I was unable to attend.
Mike gave an overview of attendance, the mood of contractors and what the show buzz was. The contractors were upbeat and were anxious to learn more about new products and hybrid systems and were looking for new business opportunities. Enjoy the conversation. Listen here.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 5, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Email is still a valuable and productive marketing tool if used correctly. There are several factors that need to be addressed.
Here’s a checklist of things that might be helpful:
- Identify yourself – Let people know who it’s coming from.
- Attention-getting subject line – Keep it short and benefit oriented.
- Provide relevant copy – Answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”
- Keep your copy focused and short – Get to the point, use bold headlines, highlight important points and give them a call to action.
- Make sure it reflects your brand – look and feel, colors.
- Do a text version as well as an HTML version. Many privacy settings won’t allow images.
- Make sure it’s mobile friendly – Many, if not most emails are opened on smart phones. Make sure they are formatted accordingly so you make an impact.
- Opt-in list – This is the preferred list. If you can get them, make sure you personalize the message.
- Add appropriate links – While keeping the copy short and to the point, you can always give them a link if they want more information, whether it’s to your blog, website or other URL.
- Schedule your emails – Don’t inundate your audience. The only repsonse you’ll get is an opt-out.
- Timing – best days are Tuesday through Thurdsay, either mid-morning or early afternoon.
Those are my thoughts. Anyone care to add to the list?
If you liked this post, you might like:
Opt-in Lists: Key to Email Success
5 Tips on Improving Email Marketing to the Professional Tradesmen
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 27, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
QR codes in the world of marketing are relatively new and as such a novelty. The problem is, if you don’t use them correctly, they can do more harm than good, and if you turn off your target audiences by a simple thing like not using a QR code correctly, what might it do to the rest of your relationship with them?
For those who might be interested, we have a Trends in Mobile Media white paper that can be downloaded that will give you a pretty good overview of what’s currently available.
I recently read an interesting post in Social Media Examiner by Jeff Korhan titled, 5 Steps to a Successful QR Code Marketing campaign. Here are some highlights:
- Plan a strategy – You need to understand your target audience, have clear objectives and offer useful and valuable incentives.
- Create quality codes and test them – You only get one chance to make a first impression. There are many QR codes out there, the most popular being QR codes and Microsoft (MS) Tags. Do your homework when choosing one and then make sure to test it several times before making it live for the rest of the world to see.
- Link your codes to mobile friendly or mobile optimized sites – One of the biggest mistakes is linking to a traditional size page that you want to be read on a mobile device. Make sure where you link is optimized for mobile.
- Track performance with management tools – QR codes and MS tags have reporting sytems built in. They currently don’t go very deep, but I think it’s just a matter of time until they do. There are several other developers showing up, but it’s too early in the game to rate or recommend any.
- Deliver value and a favorable experience – That’s what the user who clicks on the code will remember. Did you WOW them with a video, did you give them a discount on the product?
I’d love to hear how you’re using QR codes and how successful you’ve been.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 21, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
SEO is as important as the messages you’re trying to deliver. Today, we have a guest post from John Miller, President of Salient Software who’s been developing websites and SEO programs for the B-to-B space since the mid 90s. SEO rules change all the time (thanks to Google) and you need to continually keep up on the latest ways to stay ahead of the curve. John outlines some typical areas you need address. Enjoy.
People have been increasingly turning to the Internet to find what they need ever since Al Gore fostered the creation of the “information superhighway” in the earlier 90s.
While newspapers, magazines and yellow pages are disappearing, the number of websites has been increasing. In the early 90s, there were just a handful of websites, however, that number has now grown to 266,848,493 sites at last count (Dec 2010).
People are now carrying handheld computers disguised as phones, they carry tablet PCs, have the Internet piped into their TVs and DVD players and have desktop computers sitting at home.
People find content using Search Engines, using one or more of the 2000 search engines that currently exist. Google and Bing are the top players in the market today, followed by a number of general and specialty search engines that cater to narrow topics and vertical markets.
What does this mean to a website owner?
Start by spending less advertising dollars on traditional media, and then look to the Internet. Most businesses have websites which is a big leap from even 5 years ago, however, if someone is searching for the products and services you offer, will they find you?
Google and other search engines are very good at returning your website if someone knows the name of your business. They have made a special effort to assure you top billing when searching for businesses by name. If that’s all you need, then you don’t need to pay much attention to search, it is already working for you.
However, if you want people to find YOUR website when searching for your products and services, then chances are that search isn’t helping you at all.
In fact, it’s deliberately working against you. Google has built an empire ($175B market cap) by charging companies for top billing on search results.
It’s also true that any given a search for a generic product or service is likely to return in excess of 10 million web pages.
Given this back-drop, how can you get noticed?
Well, you can pay Google $.50-1.00 or more (depending on the popularity of key words and phrases) per click and have an ongoing tab that will cost you thousands each month. If you take that road, you will get your top billing in Google, but what about Bing, Yahoo, Altavista and the like? You will need to pay them too!
Or, you can choose Search Engine Optimization which modifies your site so your products and services have a much more likely chance of showing up in Page 1 – 3 of the search results.
What is Search Engine Optimization and How Does it Help?
No doubt you have noticed that some company websites frequently show up at the top in the “free” (called organic) search results much more often than other websites. This is no accident, someone spent a good deal of time and effort to make their company’s site rank higher with the search engines. This process is called “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO).
SEO is the way to bring the traffic and new customers to your website. If your site is not optimized for Search Engines, then those customers will go to someone else’s website. It’s a simple as that.
Here are the areas typically addressed for SEO:
- Keywords and key phrases – based on your products and services and based on what people are actually searching for, create a list of keywords and phrases that will lead people to your site. This list becomes your “Trophy” keywords and is then used for evaluation and updating everything else related to your site.
- Site structure and content – a single website page can only rank well for 1 or 2 Trophy words, hence, check the structure of the site to see if it complies or alter the structure to comply.
- Domain name – if the domain name echoes the product or service you are selling, it will raise your rank in Google and other search engines. You can have multiple domain names for a single website.
- Other Websites Linking to Yours? – the more links to your site, the better. Check to see who is linking to you, perhaps you can work out a deal with other website owners.
- Wiki and Blogs – have you noticed that Wiki entries often appear at the top of the free listings? Find Wiki entries that relate to your products and services and edit them – make sure you mention your own special “twist” and/or trade name. That will bring people to your site.
- Social media – make sure you are taking full advantage of Social Media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and the like. The more your website is mentioned “elsewhere,” the higher your Google rank.
- Sitemap? – does your site have a sitemap? There are two kinds, an internal sitemap for search engines and one for “people.” Make sure you have both.
- Search Engine Submission – once changes have been made to your site, use a reliable submission service to submit your site to as many of the 2000 search engines as possible.
SEO is an expense, but costs less than the Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., ads in the long run. A website is like a “garden,” you look at it frequently and “tend” it to remove weeds or replant crops. With SEO, you run reports to see how your site is ranking with respect to your Trophy words. Then, make adjustments to the site to enhance your ranking.
When was the last time you looked at your SEO?
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
