by tradesmeninsights | May 19, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Email marketing is still a very good B-to-B business tactic. But like anything else, you’re always fighting for the attention of the professional tradesmen. Contractor’s inboxes are just as loaded as the rest of ours, so what do we need to do to get him to open ours?
Here are 5 tips to consider:
- Identify yourself – If they don’t know you, they probably won’t open it.
- Attention-getting subject line – Keep it short and benefit oriented.
- Provide relevant copy – What’s in it for me?
- Keep your copy focused and short – Get to the point; use bold headlines and give them a call to action.
- Build a good list – Use your existing customer lists but also ask your sales force for a list of its prospects and don’t be afraid to rent a reputable list.
Those are some of my tips. What’s working for you?
If you like this post, you might also like:
5 Tips to Improve Your B-to-B Direct Marketing Efforts.
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 7, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Social media may be the hottest topic around the water cooler at work, but when it comes down to generating sales, direct marketing still fills a need. We all need to remember that there are many tools in the marketing tool box and we shouldn’t dismiss or forget about what’s been successful in the past.
You may have been bombarded by DM in past years to the point of oversaturation and were kind of turned off by it. Then there are e-mail campaigns that also began to bombard us and we either tuned them out or our IT department put enough filters on that nothing or next to nothing comes in.
What do you want to bet that the same will hold true of social sometime down the road? That happens when everyone hops on the newest thing. Ironically, we have had for both ourselves and for clients great success of late with DM because very few people are doing it!
I recently read a post by Chris Cottle in BtoB magazine that highlighted 5 best practices to help guide your DM efforts and I wanted to share some highlights thant might help you:
- Invest in your list – The old adage “garbage in, garbage out.” Don’t be concerned so much about the size of the list, but the quality. Your best list is an internal one that’s a combination of leads from traditional marketing efforts, as well as input from your customer service, outside sales and warranty cards. Segment the list by markets, job function and if you can, where they are in the buying cycle.
- The offer matters – “What’s in in for me” should be the first thing a prospect should see. Make offers instantly relevant and show them the benefits.
- KISS – Keep it simple. You don’t have to have an “award winning” piece, but one that gets the prospect’s attention. Simplicity implies confidence.
- Frequency matters – Depending on your audience, you’ll have to test to see how often you can touch them without getting pushback. If you’re using e-mail as part of your program, you will find out very quickly where the opt-out rate start to increase.
- Prove your business case -You only have a few seconds to get their attention and then you need to quickly convince them of the value of your proposition. In most B-to-B cases, there are multiple buying infuences and you want to get this person on your side to be your advocate with other colleagues.
I hope these have spurred some ideas for your next direct marketing program.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 9, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Some people still don’t see the advantage of Twitter as a B-to-B tool. According to ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, it concludes there is influence on customer loyalty between e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.
- Daily Twitter users who follow a brand were twice as likely as daily Facebook users who “likes” a product to purchase it.
- A third of Twitter followers said they were more apt to recommend a brand that they follow.
This would make Twitter followers more attractive to marketers. That’s the good news. The better news is that these Twitter followers currently represent a small base (3% in the US), so as they grow, so do your opportunities.
Are you using Twitter, and are you finding success with it?
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 11, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We have found that webinars are a very useful method of communicating, not only with customers, but with prospects as well. They are not hard to do and there are several services out there (we use Go To Webinar) that can help you put them on. The key is being organized and keeping the subject matter focused.
Here are some tips that might help:
- Make sure the topic is relevant. Not to you, but to your audience. If your topic isn’t important and timely to your audience, it’s going to be difficult to engage them.
- Show that you have a solution. In other words, answer the question of what’s in it for me from the partipant’s view. This can be done with pre-webinar promotions and it could be as simple as the webinar title.
- Keep the topic focused and precise. Make sure your presentation is meaningful, and from a time element, it should be no longer than 30-40 minutes.
- Engage them during the webinar. Ask questions, take surveys, keep them involved.
- Give them a way to ask questions. If you have a big audience, it’s probably wise to limit questions to e-mail questions. If the group is smaller than 10, I have found that opening up the microphone for actual questions works better.
- Follow up after the session. Thank them for participating. Ask them to rate your performance. Ask them if they have any specific issues/questions they’d like to talk about and give them a way to contact you. People who come and invest an hour of their time on a subject that they are interested in is obviously a qualified prospect. Keep the conversation going.
If you like this post, you may want to read:
Webinars-Tips on How to Promote Using E-mail.
Why Webinars are a Good Marketing Tool to Reach Professional Tradesmen
Those are some of my tips. I’d like to hear what works for you.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 13, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Email marketing should be a major part of your traditional marketing communications plan. But do you have a plan on how you want to use it for maximum ROI? In the B-to-B world, even opt-in lists are only being opened on an average of 25%.
Today we’re all bombarded with emails and it’s estimated that the sheer volume will increase by up to 80% by 2013. So the challenge is how to stand out in this sea of emails and if you do get them to open it what’s next? Here are a few helpful suggestions you may want to consider:
- Keep your mesage simple – and to the point of (what’s in it for me). Folks aren’t going to read long emails.
- Give them a call to action – Use emails to “nudge” folks along. Link them to a website, video or coupon offer.
- How do your prospects like to be contacted – Is it traditional email or mobile marketing? Most contractors are on the jobsite most of the day and rely on their smart phones to stay in touch.
- Temper frequency of contacts – Yes they may love you, but they might not want to hear from you on a daily basis. Contact them when there’s something of value to share.
Those are a few hints that we use. Hope about you? What things do you do to make your email programs zing?
