by tradesmeninsights | Sep 11, 2012 | Marketing Tools
Do you read industry blogs and wonder if your company should get involved in blogging? Blogging can be a valuable marketing tool that gives your organization a way to prove its expertise.
In order to tap into the values that blogs offer, manufacturers need to ask themselves certain questions and make several decisions before their blog goes live. This webinar will help participants find out if a blog should be a part of their marketing plans and what all is involved in starting one.
Join us on September 25th at 2:00 p.m. EDT for the free one-hour webinar.
This webinar is available for viewing on our YouTube channel – click here.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 27, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
In today’s market, everyone seems to be focusing on social media as the thing to do. Both social and traditional tactics have a place in your marketing plan. Inbound and outbound marketing must work together to get the most bang for your buck today. Social media or email can’t be isolated tactics, but should be used together.
I recently read an article by Kipp Bodnar in Social Media B2B, 7 Awesome Email and B2B Social Media Integrations that I thought hit the nail right on the head. Here are some highlights:
- Use social media links in your emails – pretty simple but you’d be surprised how many folks miss this opportunity.
- Use social media to grow your email list – you have a better chance of getting a lead if you can convince them to sign up, for example, for your monthly newsletter.
- Test email efforts on social – before sending out a communication to your list, test it on social to see what kind of reaction you’ll get.
- Use social media for future email content – follow and listen to what the hot issues are on social and craft future messages around those issues.
- Source leads correctly – use tracking URLs to better understand where your interest is coming from.
Those are some highlights; what are you doing to integrate social into your traditional marketing efforts?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 22, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
If you’re into social media, you’re doing it with a purpose in mind. You have a story to tell and you want to tell it to a certain type of person. This holds true no matter what type of marketing you’re doing (traditional or social).
But when you’re developing your content, do you ever consider at what stage your reader is at in the buying cycle? By segmenting your content to include all stages of a buying process (awareness, consideration, evaluation and purchase), you’ll be sure to hit all your potentials at their stage in the buying process.
I recently read a post from AdamHolden-Bach from Mass Transmit called Using Content Marketing to Understand Your B2B Audience that I thought was spot on.
Here are some highlights on segmenting your markets:
- Awareness – These folks have just begun the process. Provide educational content (blogs, white papers, webinars) and make it easy for them to receive it (do make them register to get it).
- Consideration – Once they know about you they want to know how you stack up against the competition. Provide them product comparisons, case studies or other material that shows why your product is better.
- Evaluation – They want to understand the solutions you provide and how they would benefit their business.
- Purchase – Use social channels to broadcast new products, upgrades, special offers to help incentivize the customer.
As you’re creating content, identify which stage it falls into. Use tracking methods over time, for instance to gauge interest and tell you at what stage most of your audience is at in the sales cycle.
What are you doing to segment your marketing?
If you liked this post, you may also like:
2011 Trends: Content Marketing is Critical for Social Media Success
2011 Trends for B-to-B Bloggers
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 6, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Sometimes in this busy world, we need to take a “time out” just like we make our kids and grandkids do to slow down and think about what we’re doing. I recently read a post by Valeria Maltoni, entitled, 100 thoughts on Marketing. After reading them, I wanted to share them with you. Valeria is a widely respected name in this social media arena, and I suggest you read her blog for some challenging and insightful posts.
Stop what you’re doing and have a cold or hot beverage and read the list. I’m sure you’ll get a few “golden nuggets” out of this list as I did. Enjoy and thanks to Valeria for her thoughts.
Stuff, especially marketing stuff, is due for a tune up. Let’s take the meaning challenge for marketing. Enjoy!
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tips
I don’t know about you, but when one of the times my wife and I have a disagreement, it is usually when we’re going somewhere new in the car, and of course I think I know where I’m going. When getting lost, my thoughts are to keep driving and eventually we’ll run into where we wanted to go. Fortunately, GPS navigation and tools like MapQuest have made my life more easy.
The same hold true for social media. You can drive (A) around aimlessly or (B) you can put a plan together.
Please opt for B. Social media and SEO work well together, but you have to have a plan to maximize your return. Lee Odden wrote a post recently for the blog Mashable, Social media & SEO: 5 essential steps to success, that gives a good summary of what you had to do to capitalize on it.
Here are some highlights of his 5 steps to success as I see it affecting the professional tradesmen market:
- Define your audience. If you’re going after tradesmen, you had better know how they spend their time, understand their preferences and behavior profile. As you get more sophisticated, you can use social media monitoring software that identifies key words, conversations and influencers.
- Define your objective. Social media is not direct marketing. SEO in the social media is to influence discovery of social communities or content by way of research. Indirectly, social content can boost links to web site content improving traffic.
- Make a game plan. In a SEO and social media effort, you need to focus on content and interaction since it’s content that people look for and want to share.
- Define yout tactics. The tactical mix for social media marketing should be focused on where the tradesmen spend their time. What kind of communities are they a part of? Remember, the goal is to start a long-term relationship, not a one nighter.
- Measure goals. Between web analytics and social media tools, you will have more than enough ways to track and help you improve your results.
