Posted by Gavin Head on Sun, May 20, 2012 @ 06:00 AM
Are you still marketing like a caveman? Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone is your target market- or sending flyers or other marketing messages to everyone.
At best, you'll waste money. And no small business can afford to waste money! But at worst, you will end up attracting the wrong customer.
No, you probably won't attract a T-Rex like our cavemen business owners. But you will likely attract customers who are just coming for the incentive (like the T-Rex looking for the bronto burgers!), the severe discount you advertised on Groupon, or people who "like" you on Facebook just so they can enter your contest or sweepstakes.
Your marketing should be targeted to the right people with the right offer. So should your communications mediums.
Choose a target audience, and segment your audience so that only those interested in widgets get offers and messages about widgets... and those interested in sprockets get messages about sprockets.
For more help choosing the right target audience, check out my blog article Tips for Small Businesses on How to Define and Choose a Target Market.
Are you still using only off-line marketing methods to reach your prospects and customers because you are still trying to figure out how to market effectively on-line? Do you have a website/blog/social media profile/s that you spent time and money developing but are not producing enough return on your investment- or any ROI at all?
Download our new step-by-step guide to learn the essentials of internet marketing success and start generating the ROI you need!
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Posted by Gavin Head on Sat, Jan 07, 2012 @ 08:30 AM
It's the beginning of a new year so this is obviously a good time for many businesses to think about trying some new business and marketing tactics to grow their businesses. Last week I wrote about the 10 New Year's resolutions that small businesses must make this year to survive and thrive, which I hope you will read and make part of your plan for 2012.
Admittedly, that article was about using new(ish) marketing methods that are primarily executed online. And let me be clear, I do believe that for small to mid-size businesses that have limited budgets and resources... that the biggest bang for their buck, the most measurable form of marketing, and the area that has the greatest potential for success, is... inbound marketing methods centered around on online platforms such as blogs, websites, and social media. That should be no surprise if you have read this blog or my website.
But I have never been a proponent of completely trashing the so called "traditional" methods of marketing (traditional advertising to be more precise). Unless, of course, you include yellow pages advertising as part of your marketing mix and the majority of your customers/clients/patients are under 65. If you are still doing this- trash it right now! It is WAY too ineffective and costly. The same could be said for most daily newspaper advertising.
So this week I want to direct your attention to the topic of an article recently written by my friend and marketing partner across the pond, Clare Tucker, Managing Director of The Vocational Marketing Academy. The article is Out with the old, in with new, not quite!
In the article, Clare rightly points out that many businesses make the mistake of "putting all of their marketing efforts into web-based methods and completely discarding the more traditional marketing tools." I'm not a fan of that approach. Clare goes on to cite some examples of how her clients have used "traditional marketing" successfully by combining them with new marketing methods. I am a BIG proponent of that approach!
So to answer the question in the title of this article- no, I don't think you should completely trash all of your old, "traditional" marketing methods. Not if they are right for your audience and business and done well. Some old marketing methods can still be effective- if they are done correctly. There is a time and place for those in many businesses.
For example, a good direct mail campaign can be a very useful way to generate interest in your products or services if they are targeted to the right people, have relevant and well-written copy, are done with the right frequency, and include a compelling offer or call to action. (And in case you're wondering, no, "call us" or "contact us" is NOT a compelling call to action. "Download our free whitepaper on the 7 biggest problems facing [your prospect's industry] and how to overcome them at www.yourcompanywebsite.com/xyzwhitepaperlandingpage" is a compelling call to action- assuming your whitepaper actually addresses a known need or issue.)
But did you notice how I just combined an "old-school" marketing method (direct mail) with a "new-school" marketing method (a compelling call to action linked to a specific landing page)? Combining new marketing with old marketing is the most effective way to use traditional marketing if you are going to continue to use it. Doing so leverages the best of both worlds and ensures you are reaching your target audience where they are/how they consume advertising information in a way that helps you generate leads and track & measure your campaign's results and effectiveness.
So don't indiscriminately trash all the old, traditional marketing methods. Figure out what methods are still working for your business and adapt them to make them even better. Learn how to integrate them with new methods to get the most bang for your marketing buck.
Be sure to check out Clare's article and let us know what you think. Have you combined old marketing with new marketing? What are you doing that is most effective? What old marketing methods are you trashing because they are no longer working and producing the ROI you need? Please leave your answers and comments below!
Image by openpad
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Posted by Gavin Head on Thu, Dec 29, 2011 @ 09:00 AM
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Image Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester via Flickr
Individuals often make New Year's Resolutions- and most are broken or just plain forgotten by Feb. 1st. Businesses need to make resolutions too. But these are resolutions that we should strive extra hard to keep if they fit in line with business objectives and goals (and really why make them in the first place if they don't?) because they are important to the health and growth of our livelihoods.
Here are the 10 New Year's Resolutions I think every small business must make (and keep) in order to survive and thrive in 2012:
1) Embrace Inbound Marketing. It's one of the most effective ways to reach interested prospects. Most traditional forms of advertising are not working effectively anymore- if at all. In order to capture attention using interruptitve advertising methods it takes a lot of creativity and/or repetition. And finding good creative services and buying lots of media is not cheap! If you can't get prospects' attention and get them engaged, you can't convert them to leads. And if you can't get leads, you can't get clients/customers/patients. And I don't need to tell you what that means to your business. So embrace inbound marketing and get them coming to you.
By the way, I'm lumping in social media marketing with inbound marketing because it is such a vital component of inbound marketing. So if you're not already using social media for your business, start doing that too.
2) Set sales and marketing goals. Without these you might as well be flying blind or shooting in the dark. If you don't know what you want to accomplish with your sales and marketing you'll never know if you have achieved your results.
3) Make a sales and marketing plan. You need to have a sales and marketing plan in order to achieve your sales and marketing goals. It doesn't necessarily have to be complex. It doesn't have to be long. It just needs to lay out your plan for the strategies and tactics you will use to get and keep clients, customers, patients, donors... whatever is applicable to your organization. And make sure your plan revolves around your goals and has a way of tracking and comparing actual results to your goals.
Not having a marketing plan is one of the biggest mistakes small businesses make. Without one they try what is trendy, what they see others doing, or what their friends/family tell them they should try. Not surprisingly they have mixed results- but most often they are poor results. A plan will help ensure you are doing what it takes on a consistent basis to reach your target audience with the right messages and offers and through the right methods. You know you need a plan. So stop procrastinating and make one.
4) Blog. Often. If you don't blog you hurt your ability to get links, create sharable content, get traffic to your website, and get new leads and customers. From my own personal experience I have seen my traffic and leads decrease noticeably when I took a break from blogging. And I have seen clients' who have done the same experience the same results.
So... blog once per week at minimum. Every day is better if you have the time/energy and resources and something valuable to say or share. Most small to mid-sized businesses should strive for 2 to 3 times per week to balance time and effort with results.
Need help blogging? Here's help and a special, HUGE discount for you.
5) Track marketing efforts and measure results. This goes hand in hand with setting goals. In order to know if you are reaching your goals you need a way to track and measure your efforts. To do this you will need to identify some key performance metrics to aim for such as the amount of traffic and links your website gets each month, the number of downloads your whitepaper gets, the number of sales qualified leads a particular campaign produces, how many qualified opportunities a social media campaign produces, etc.
Each company should identify what metrics are important for moving their prospects/leads to the next level. What is it that moves the "needle" from new prospect to lead to the next stage in your sales cycle until that person/company becomes a customer or client? Identify those and track them.
6) Get tools to help you market, track, and measure effectively and efficiently. Of course, you will need some tools to help you carry out your marketing campaigns and track and measure them properly. Here are a few basics you should have:
You will need a good blogging tool to help you blog most effectively. It should include the ability to schedule posts for future publication and the ability to add calls to action (buttons are better but links can work too)... and a way for readers to subscribe by email or RSS feed.
You will need a way to stay in touch with customers and prospects via great looking e-newsletters and email blasts. So you will need an email service provider. I use and recommend Constant Contact (affiliate link) because it is extremely easy to use, has a ton of cusomizable templates, delivers messages reliably, makes emails a snap to share via social media, and is inexpensive. For those looking for a free ESP, have less than 5,000 contacts and are willing to put in a little extra work, MailChimp is a good alternative.
Every company needs a good web analytics tool to measure website visitors and other data. Google Analytics will suffice for most businesses to do this. But you also need a tool to measure content downloads, keywords used by prospects to find your website, whether a lead came to your site from a search engine via organic results or pay per click, if they came from Facebook or LinkedIn, etc. I use and suggest Hubspot. Hubspot is a suite of tools to help you create webpages, landing pages, calls to action, and emails and track and measure all of this and more and can help you close the loop between your marketing efforts and closing a sale.
7) Use calls to action prominently on your website. Put them on your most highly trafficked pages such as your home page and blog. Use your analytics tool (you are using one aren't you?) to find out which pages are getting the most visitors on your site and what the most common size monitor your visitors are using. Then display your CTAs on those pages above the fold on the viewing area of the most common size monitor being used by your visitors.
8) Create great content, not just mediocre content. The Google Panda will chew up and spit out your website like a rotten bamboo shoot if you continue to publish junk or content scraped from other sites. And your readers will leave you and you can forget about anyone but your mother sharing your content through social media or email. Invest time and money into producing high quality content that both the search engines and your audience will love.
9) Use landing pages. Stop sending visitors/readers who click on links in emails or calls to action graphics/buttons to your home page or generic product/service pages. It's okay to send a prospect you know has shown interest in a specific product or service to that corresponding page on your website- if it is a well written page about that specific product or service only. But it is better to send them to a well optimized landing page. But please, please, please stop linking your pay per click or social media ads to your home page or product/service pages! ALWAYS use a landing page for paid traffic!
Sending prospects and paid traffic to landing pages makes it simple, quick, and easy for them to find what they are looking for and it focuses them on making a yes or no decision. Yes, I want this product/service/ebook/guide/etc. or no, I don't. And it helps you become more clear in your presentation of the offer.
But the other great thing about using landing pages is that they give you the ability to test which elements (images, copy, layout, forms, fonts and colors) of the offer are working and which are not- and how you can improve results. It also allows you to track to see if the offer appeals to your visitors and prospects or not. If you are getting lots of page views to your landing page you know it is. If you are not, well... then you know you have to change or tweak the offer. If you get lots of page views but no conversions, you know there is something on the landing page itself that is not clear or persuasive.
10) Test, test, and test again. Sure there are best practices and good "rules of thumb" to use. But every business and situation is unique. So ALWAYS test what you are doing- especially on your landing pages- and adjust to continue to improve your results.
Those are my 10 suggestions for the resolutions you should make for your business for the upcoming year. What would you add to the list? What resolutions will you be making for your business in 2012?
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Posted by Gavin Head on Tue, Dec 27, 2011 @ 07:00 AM
I'm planning my blog schedule for next year and I need your help. I want to get input from you about what you would like to read on this blog next year. So, I have some questions for you and would greatly appreciate your feedback:
What topics or ideas would you like to read about on this blog?
What issues would you like me to tackle or subjects would you like me to explain?
Would you like to see more articles about marketing or social media trends?
I plan to make my blog posts about the what, why and how (what is the subject/topic/issue/tool/idea/trend, why does it matter, and how can you use it). Do you like this approach? Which of these- what, why, and how- should I put more emphasis on?
What would help your business grow in 2012?
Please share your ideas in the comments section below.
Thank you so much for helping me make this blog an even better resource for YOU!
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Posted by Gavin Head on Sat, Dec 24, 2011 @ 11:00 AM
Just wanted to wish you all season's greetings- Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year!
I wish you every happiness and joy this Holiday Season. I hope the coming year brings health, happiness, peace and prosperity to you and your family!
Thank you for being a part of my community of blog readers. I look forward to continuing to provide you with information and resources to help you improve your business results throughout the new year and beyond.
All the best to you and your family,
Gavin
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Posted by Gavin Head on Thu, Dec 22, 2011 @ 05:40 PM
Image via @Mashable
As most of you may know, Twitter has recently announced big changes rolling out now to a few accounts- and coming soon to all Twitter accounts- (including offering new brand pages) that will affect the way you market your business and use their platform.
Hubspot has done a great job of highlighting these changes and what they mean to you as a marketer. Here is their take on it:
4 Business Benefits of Twitter's Redesign
1. Large, Customizable Header Images:
Brands can use these headers to display their logo and tagline more prominently than was previously possible in the standard Twitter format, where branded elements of a Twitter account's background design were often hidden by the timeline of tweets.
Marketing Takeaway: This means much better brand recognition for your business' Twitter account as well as a more prominent distinction between brand pages and personal pages.
2. Featured Tweet:
Businesses can also elect to feature a particular tweet above their timeline. This featured tweet also auto-expands to show an embedded photo or video from Flickr, YouTube, or another source.
Marketing Takeaway: This is a great way to highlight particular campaigns, promotions, or offers you're running that you'd like to attract more visibility to over a longer period of time. The shelf-life of a regular tweet is short, but with the use of these featured tweets, you can essentially expand the shelf-life of a promotion on Twitter. You can also support these tweets with engaging images and videos to better illustrate your offer and give your lead gen offers even more potency.
Read the full article on Hubspot's blog
Here is a nice summary of each of the 4 main Twitter changes by Marketo: New Twitter Redesign: Details from the Live Event in San Francisco
And here's a post from Mashable with a video demonstrating what Twitter's redesign will look like and Twitter's own video highlighting the changes: Twitter Launches Major Redesign
My Thoughts
I think the new "home" element is cool and I love the abiltiy to embed individual tweets on a website or blog. And as mentioned in the above article, when you embed a tweet the entire "universe of tweets" come with it to help put the tweet into context. I think this has some useful potential for marketers.
But I'm most excited about the introduction of brand pages. As of now these are only available to 21 of Twitter's advertising partners (big companies like Disney, Nike, Pepsico, and Best Buy). I just hope they will one day be available to little guys like me :)
What do you think of Twitter's new changes? What is your favorite new feature? Sound off with your thoughts in the comments section below!
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Posted by Gavin Head on Wed, Dec 14, 2011 @ 05:00 AM
Nearly one in four visitors (24%) to B2B websites referred by LinkedIn are enterprise visitors—those arriving at sites via corporate IP addresses—according to a report by LeadFormix.
Furthermore, according to the report, among such visitors, or leads, those referred by LinkedIn "groups" are the most likely to complete a form-fill, or convert [to leads].
I myself have had great success in converting visitors from LinkedIn to leads- many of these visitors having come from LI groups. Currently, 4.3 % of my leads are from LinkedIn and historicially LI has provided 2.6% of my leads. LI provides me with a higher visitor to lead and lead to client conversion rate than does any other method of generating leads online except for very specific long-tail keywords. So if you are not utilizing, or are underutilizing the LI groups feature, this is great place to focus your online lead generation efforts.
Below, other findings from the LeadFormix report titled "Why Should You Use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation?"
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Posted by Gavin Head on Mon, Nov 28, 2011 @ 04:35 PM
Today is Cyber Monday- the Monday following Black Friday that is supposed to be the busiest online shopping day for Christmas shoppers looking to score a great deal.
I don't know how this works for non-retail based businesses or businesses selling services- especially B2B type services- but I assume it doesn't really affect their business much as it effects retailers.
Cyber Monday is tied to a hard deadline- the present has to be ordered by a certain time or it won't be delivered by Christmas. And no one wants to face those repurcussions- sad faces, angry spouses, dissappointed kids, parents, or in-laws, or missed opportunities to really impress your boss or clients with your timely delivery of that gift they will stick in some drawer or box in the attic alongside the other forgotten Christmas presents.
But there are no hard deadlines for most non-retailers and service based businesses. Well, I guess some of you have a "use it or lose it " budget that has to get spent by December 31st or you can kiss that money good bye. And there is data collected from one marketing automation company that shows that even their B2B based customers got a spike in traffic and leads in November and December for the past 2 previous years. They atribute that to the aforementioned budget pressure.
But do this budget pressure bump up spending (or even shopping) for non-retail products or services on any one day of the year? Doubtful. Does that mean you can't take advantage of Cyber Monday if you are not a retailer? Not necessarily.
Why Non-Retailers Might Want to Consider a Cyber Monday Special
Ok, I'm just going to be frank with you up-front and tell you I don't know for sure if running a Cyber Monday special will work. It is just a suggestion but it is based on general consumer behavior so it stands a decent chance of success. Let me know if you decide to try a Cyber Monday special- or have already done this in the past- and how it works or has worked.
A special offer on Cyber Monday could work for you as a non-retailer for one of these reasons:
- Shopping buzz. More people are actively online shopping for other items and while they are doing so they are more likely to see your ad or tweet, Facebook update, blog post, etc. about your Cyber Monday offer and click over to your landing page or website. At best they buy. In the least you have created more exposure for your company, product, or cause.
- It taps into an elevated buying mindset. Once someone starts buying he or she gets in a certain purchasing mood and will tend to purchase more. I always have to fight this urge when I'm out shopping for multiple items on a list. I even felt it when I bought my house- and just recently again when I bought my new car. Buying things creates a certain high or euphoria. Add to that the excitement of Cyber Monday and the Christmas season and your prospect might be more willing to buy even non-retail products. So you as a non-retailer could tap into that euphoric sense that shoppers get and create your own buying incentive tied to Cyber Monday.
- People love deals and incentives. It doesn't really matter that your clients or customers are not buying Christmas presents, they still like to get a good deal! A special discount is a good way to introduce a new product or service so why not tie it in with Cyber Monday? You could always continue it at a slightly less attractive price afterwards. It could also be a great way to get a stalled deal going. Use your Cyber Monday special as an incentive to get prospects over the hump on a purchase they have been considering for awhile.
As I said, I don't know if it will work. But if you occasionally run special deals or discounts, try it and see. You don't have anything to lose and you might end up at least with a lead that is interested in purchasing later.
I love emperical evidence. That's why I'm running my own Cyber Monday deal. I would really like to see what other non-retailers have done for Cyber Monday- or Black Friday- and what their results were. If you have run special offers, discounts, or deals on these days, please let me know about it in the comments section. And check out my special Cyber Monday deal below. I'll let you know how it went in a blog post next week.
Enjoy your shopping!
P.S. Since this blog post went out so late I'm extending the deal until 11:59 PM Pacific Time tomorrow night (Nov. 29, 2011)
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Posted by Gavin Head on Mon, Nov 14, 2011 @ 11:49 AM
Wouldn't it be nice to get some marketing support completely free of charge for a change? No strings... no catches... just great advice?
We're doing that just for you!
In cooperation with The Vocational Marketing Academy, we're running a contest this week and giving away marketing services and a really cool, interactive, web-based marketing training module [video].
To enter, simply tell us why you need our help and you could win free marketing!
Our winner will receive:
- 1 free marketing training module of your choice, courtesy of our good friends at The VMA.
- 2 free web optimized blog articles up to 500 words each written for you by us at 1st Position Marketing.
- 2 hours of free marketing coaching by phone or email!
This prize package is worth over $500!
All you have to do is answer this question by Friday November 18th, 2011.
We will review all entries and the one that we feel is most deserving will be notified by Friday November 25th, 2011.
Enter here
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Posted by Gavin Head on Thu, Nov 10, 2011 @ 06:00 AM
Are you still confused about the differences between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing? Do you want to know what advantages Inbound Marketing has over Outbound Marketing? Do your customers and prospects hate your marketing? Do you and/or your boss hate your marketing?
Well, here is a great infographic I found that can help explain why inbound marketing is marketing everyone will love- and in a more visual and entertaining way than I can with mere text:
Image used by permision from Voltier Digital
The numbers that jump out at me are in regards to reaching prospective buyers:
86% of people skip TV ads
91% of people unsubscribe to emails that they previously said they wanted
200 million people have listed their phone number with the FTC's Do Not Call list
44% of Direct Mail gets thrown away unopened
The key takeaway is that people are harder to reach with traditional, interruptive, outbound marketing approaches. The only way to make these work is to do it repeatedly and with very high quality creative- which costs BIG $$$$$
On the positive side, here is the good news about inbound marketing methods:
67% of B2C companies and 41% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through Facebook
57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog (which 2/3 of marketers say is critical or important to their business). The same for LinkedIn
42% of businesses have acquired a customer through Twitter
Inbound marketing leads cost on avg. 62% less than leads from traditional outbound marketing
Here are the key takeaways from all of this:
- Consumer behavior has drastically changed. People are just not shopping and buying or even becoming aware of products and services the way they used to. See stats above on media consumption.
- Inbound Marketing methods are centered on providing content that people actually want to consume and are searching for.
- Inbound Marketing provides value to consumers that helps generate sales and customer loyalty.
- Everyone will love your new inbound marketing. Not only will your prospective customers and clients love your new marketing, YOU and your boss will too. Why? Because not only is it more effective-- it's less expensive!
- Your company will make more money!
With lower costs to acquire customers you get higher profit margins. Add in the increased effectiveness of using inbound marketing methods and you get better results (more leads and more sales).
The bottom line: More sales + higher profit margins = more total profits!
More profit is something every marketer, bean counter, CFO, CEO and business owner/partner/investor absolutely loves! And all will be happy. :-)
Need help producing great content that you can use as the driving force for your inbound marketing efforts?
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