Many of our readers are marketing professionals. As a professional, you’re likely at the forefront of marketing.
Sure, you and I understand how effective marketing looks quite different in 2011 than it did in 2001 – a topic we cover at length on this blog. But what do you do if your boss just doesn’t get it?
First, some basic facts
Your business lives and dies by the number of qualified leads (or potential customers) you can find.
Is your business already generating enough leads? If you’re anything like most of the business owners and executives I speak with, the answer is no.
What would it do for your business growth if your website was providing you with a consistently increasing flow of qualified leads? Or with lead intelligence that can help you decide where to best spend your sales efforts?
We study all kinds of social marketing campaigns — from companies, non-profits, artists and more. While we’ve seen campaigns big and small, cast wide and extremely focused, there are some universal tips that apply to any strategy you’re planning for your new customer outreach.
Often, it all boils down to getting the little things right.
Here are three examples of common sense outreach tips that your brand would be wise to adopt.
Last night I attended an event with 40 or so other marketers put on by the American Marketing Association of Baltimore.
Matt Doud, founder of Baltimore-based ad agency Planit Advertising, led a discussion about lessons learned in the ad agency world over the past decade.
Three key points stuck with me:
These eternal truths also help to explain why inbound marketing is so powerful. Inbound marketing, when done correctly, tells your audience the stories that matter to them at the time and place of their choosing, about the products and services they need, want, or choose to support.
But is inbound marketing just as formidable for nonprofits? Absolutely. And here’s why:
Last week, the world was on fire with amazing news. Earthquakes in Virginia!!! Steve Jobs retires!!! Hurricane Irene is coming!!! HURRICANE IRENE IS HERE!!!
And while the general public obsessed over those stories (or tried to ignore them so they could get some actual work done), a vast swath of social marketers were salivating. Why? Because they’ve been trained to look for angles on breaking news and pop culture stories that can help drag attention toward their own brands and products.
The good news is, you can do it too.
But should you?
Let’s find out.
Ah Friday. The weekend has arrived.
What better time to pour yourself a cool lemonade and catch up on some of this week’s most interesting inbound marketing articles?
Did you know this blog post you’re reading right now (and thanks, by the way) will help boost our search traffic simply by existing? It’s true. But you know what’ll help us even more? If you click on that little green “retweet” button you see on your right.
Go on. Click it. We’ll wait.
But wait — since when does Twitter impact search rankings?
Each week on Twitter, social media strategist Mack Collier hosts a chat about blogging called #blogchat. (Note: if you go to Twitter.com and type “#blogchat” into the search box, you’ll see a whole bunch of tweets with the tag ‘#blogchat’. This tag is called a “hash tag” and if you add that to your own tweets, you’re now part of the topical chat.)
In a recent chat, one of the questions posed was whether it’s best to write short or long blog posts. Opinions varied. Some felt that as a general rule, the shorter the better. Others felt strongly that the quality of the post was vastly more important.
To me, a blog post is an essay. Sometimes an essay needs to be long in order to make its full point. Other times it would be more impactful if it’s short. But I don’t think there should be any sort of rule about post length. The right length is specific to the content, and context, of the post.
The entire discussion reminds me of that great scene in Amadeus:
On the brilliant “Open Forum” marketing website by American Express, Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs (also a great resource for marketers) and author of the new bestseller “Content Rules,” posed the question, “What’s your response to ‘I can get it cheaper on the Internet?’” She wrote about her homebuilder friend who refused to give in to pressure to reduce his prices to match those found online and cited the extra value he brings. He concluded his response with a bit of snark:
“Ask anyone about our reputation, follow-up and expertise. At this point, because you don’t seem to trust me, I think you should now become your own ‘appliance guy.’ Did you ever hear the term ‘value-add’? Good luck.”
Ann acknowledged that her friend was never going to get business from this person, but asserted that he still lost a big opportunity.
“Today’s customers are smart. They are informed. They are sophisticated in how they are researching major decisions. They very clearly know their options. They know appliance pricing as well as Armen does. So if you are a company squeezed by internet retailers on price, how can you respond?”
Here are 4 ways Armen might have responded more effectively:
This is a post about motivation.
When we started this blog, my intention was to post new content every week, ideally more than once. For several months, I’ve lived up to that expectation. I was excited about writing. I was passionate. I was motivated.
And then there’s the last two weeks — during which, as you may have noticed, I have not blogged.
We all go through periods where we just don’t feel like doing the things we’ve committed to, no matter how important we know they are in our brains. There are a ton of reasons. It could be anxiety about an upcoming situation. It could be that something happened that makes you feel down. It could simply be you’re not getting enough sleep. Or maybe you legitimately just have been too busy with other work and don’t have the energy left to write. In my case, my grandmother, with whom I was very close, passed away on November 1. I just haven’t felt much like writing since then.
I’m having no problem getting work done for our clients, but those tasks are things I’ve committed to do for others. There are clear and present consequences to dropping the ball there.
This is a post about getting your important work done when you’re the only one who can “make” you do it.
Each of us have different prompts that trigger our motivation. For some of us, it’s collaboration, opportunity and positive reinforcement. For others, it’s guilt, obligation or fear of failure.
Whichever side of the carrot-and-stick equation you find yourself on, here are ten tips to help you refocus.
