Posts Tagged ‘linkedin’

Opportunities Tech Firms Are Missing in Their Marketing

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Most tech firms put a lot of emphasis on their technology, and not enough or zero on the service that goes with it. Many treat service as an after-thought, as an unimportant bit of data. By doing this they’re missing out on a chance to differentiate themselves and including sales-talk that’s meaningful to the end-user.

More than a list of features.

When shopping around for managed services or custom software, it’s easy to compare features lists, but what about the support service they’ll receive once they buy? We all know when mission-critical technology goes wrong, it’s the end of the world. If you’ve developed a great system for customer support, include that in your web copy, have something that stands out from the list of technical specs.

You love the geek talk, what does your client care about?

While the IT department loves technical specs, they won’t mean much to a non-techie decision maker. They want to know what it will do for them, how it will improve their experience and how it will save them money. For example, many companies spend/waste a lot of money on software and equipment that just doesn’t get adopted because it’s not properly integrated into their situation. If your post installation service will help ease the transition into the clients’ business systems, it will resonate big-time if expressed in the marketing message.

The new marketing…

They say customer service is the new marketing. FreshBooks has made it their very culture to bend over backwards to help clients in any way they can, making them loyal and fabulous cheerleaders.

How do you add the service part to the marketing message?

You’re probably already doing it. You have processes or services in place that you take for granted, thinking it’s just there to make your job easier. Meanwhile, your clients probably really appreciate it.

  • Write out your process for delivery services and follow-up in detail – pretend you’re explaining it to a five year old.
  • Ask existing clients what they like best about your company’s delivery, then more specific questions on the service and follow-up.
  • Re-write all that in marketing-friendly, non-techie language and add it to your website.

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Posted in B2B Marketing, Brand Management, for tech firms, Full Service Marketing | 2 Comments »

Common Marketing Challenges of B2B Marketers – Part I

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

B2B covers a broad range of products and services, so to pick some common marketing challenges is no easy task. The challenges can vary hugely depending on whether you are selling a product or a service, but one common characteristic for all types of B2B organizations is that they don’t invest enough in marketing.

Not big budgets, budgets set for impact

Some may argue that B2B companies often have a limited number of organizations that they can sell (or market) to, so they don’t require big budgets. Versus companies that are selling to the masses, it is true B2B marketers don’t require big budgets. However, the argument here is not for creating big budgets, but for allocating budgets that are big enough to allow your organization to “out shout” the competition. To stay in the prospects mind so that, when the time comes to purchase, your firm is high on the list of potential vendors. Ideally, to be looked at as being different and better than the competition, so in any pitch or bid situation, you come from a position of strength.

In categories that have only a handful of customers that may buy from them, the marketing plan and recommended spend is going to look a lot different than for companies that have hundreds or even thousands of prospects.

What is the right amount for a marketing budget?

So how does one decide what the appropriate spending levels are? A common approach is to look at the competition and figure out what they do and how much they spend, and to make sure you invest similar amounts and do more impactful things.Another approach is to put together a detailed marketing plan. If you do not have the right resources internally, outsourcing a plan can be a great way to bring rigor to the process, and to look at the possibilities from a fresh perspective. A good marketing consultant should be able to take your experience and industry knowledge, combine that with information about your market, your prospects and techniques that have worked in similar industries, and provide you with a disciplined plan that will deliver against your objectives. B2B marketers often lack the discipline to do a plan and execute it faithfully, let alone measure the results. No wonder spending levels are low!

The wrong way to go about setting the budget is to either base it on what was spent the year before, (unless that budget was set based on the methods described above) or what you think you can afford. Unlike rent or other expenses that are necessary evils, marketing should be looked at as a “spend to get” approach. If you are strategic, your marketing spending should pay back, sometimes many times the original spend.

Be aware

Incidentally, the organizations with the fewest prospects can often have marketing budgets that are much bigger than you would think. Marketing budgets that allow for sales to take decision makers on high-end trips, play regular golf games or go out to events on a regular basis.  Don’t get caught thinking the playing field is level without getting a full perspective on the decision making process from the customer’s viewpoint.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, B2B Marketing | 3 Comments »

Social Media – How to Separate Personal From Business.

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Last week I participated in a panel discussion on social media for SugarCRM. One of the questions that came up was ‘how do you keep business and personal separate?’ The three panelists gave various answers, the main theme being whether used for business or personal, as a salesperson or an employee,  remember that it’s there forever so be careful, professional and aware.

However, a more advanced way to help keep them separate is to go in with a plan and share it with all company participants. Give them the tools and training they need to be successful in this new arena.

Don’t Just Dive-in – Social Media is a Marketing Tool

I’m often heard to say that using a social media platform is just like any other marketing tool. Before jumping in you should figure out who your target is, where to find them (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?) and what they’re looking for from a company like you. You would use this information to strategize on the best way to communicate with them and use your marketing tools effectively.

Are you using social media to raise awareness, educate about your service or industry or stay in touch with existing customers? What are they doing there? What’s their pain?

Social Media and Your Brand

Also like any other marketing tool, you’d need to hold it up to your brand and consider it in relation to everything else you use, like your website, brochures, etc. Chances are you’ve developed a look, a voice, a style, and specific marketing objectives. Though social media is often more of a personal approach, corporate brand should apply here too.

Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Your plans for social media should include:

  1. Where you should focus efforts (Twitter?)
  2. What you should do there (ie: discussions on LinkedIn)
  3. What you should talk about, your angle
  4. How it fits in with other efforts
  5. What are the objectives and guidelines for our participants (ie: no personal political comments)

With this basic plan in place it will be much easier to keep business separate from personal.

Educate Your Team

Just as you provide brochures and help prepare presentations, give your people the guidance they need to represent your company using social media. Remember that if you’re asking your professionals to be active like blogging, they may not be aware of brand guidelines at all and need briefing. It doesn’t hurt to do a little awareness education with other employees as well so they know what you’re doing and a little guidance as to what you’d prefer they did or didn’t do with their personal accounts. You can’t control their personal accounts but it doesn’t hurt to say ‘because our message is ____, we’d prefer if you didn’t mention ____.’

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

Why B2Bs Should Care About Optimization (SEO)

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Should I care about Search Engine Optimization for my B2B company? The answer is yes.

In recent years many clients have come to us with search engine optimization (SEO) as an item in RFP for websites. Once they see what it takes to really make a go of it, to compete for first page, they’re turned off. They think it is not important or relevant to their business after-all, or at least not enough to pay so much. ‘We’re B2b, we provide a professional service, not sell products. People find us through word-of-mouth, not Google.’ I used to feel that way myself, but now I’m a convert.

Social media has created reasons to care about SEO from both ends of the spectrum.

First, because we all know how much user generated content, blogs, review sites are out there, more and more people are using search to find information or do research. When you search you are most likely to land on a blog or such like. If you generate content, people will find it.

Second and from the other end, social media has made it easy for companies to create opportunities for their brilliant content to be found in search, by writing blogs, participating in other blogs or discussions, having key people involved and hopefully active on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter – which all leads back to your company site.

Two sides to Social Media

There’s the literal driving people to your site, but those link-backs to your site also tell Google you’re important and socially active.

There are a number of things Google evaluates to rank your site; like in-bound links, conversion forms, alt text for images, blogs, meta descriptions, etc. They change the algorithms all the time but recently made a higher than usual significant change placing importance on social relevancy. Do you have an active Twitter account associated with your domain? Etcetera.
So what this means is, it’s not hard to build a website with good search-ability right from the start, like conversion forms, alt text for images, meta descriptions, etc. but then why not use social media to generate the content to be found? Google is a hungry beast, give it something to gorge on.

By the way, I learned a lot of this stuff from brilliant Smojoe, who we hire to help Rapport clients learn to make that content more findable and use social media for search with really different and interesting campaigns.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Business Growth and Change, Uncategorized, Web Development | No Comments »

How to Ask for Feedback

Monday, June 14th, 2010

At lunch today, my favourite writer told me a story about a client of ours whom she worked with while I was on vacation. She’s writing his brochure. After initial direction was approved, then a couple of back-and-forths between them, he took the draft to his advisory board for feedback. He got so many and such varied responses his head was spinning and couldn’t sleep that night.

We encourage clients to run their creative by an advisory board or, even better, ideal clients at exactly the stage our client did. However, if you simply say “what do you think,” the question is too open-ended. Here are some tips on how to get the most useful input.

This applies to anything from logos, to web design to any kind of content.

Give Them Some Background

Tell them who the audience is, how it will be used and what you were trying to achieve. For example, it’s going to a specific audience like financial controllers in large corporations (very different than the head of HR at a smaller company). It will be handed out at a tradeshow and you’re hoping to get meetings out of it. Also, tell them what specific result you are after, if applicable, like getting them to call directly versus sign-up through your website.

It helps to give a bit of background on your discussions with the creative team involved as well, like what led to the format or approach taken This may eliminate a lot of questions that can have you second-guessing yourself. Like ‘why didn’t you just do a tri-fold brochure’? You could pre-empt it by saying ‘we discussed doing a tri-fold brochure but realized it would be inserted into large folders and we also wanted to email it so…’

Consider sharing some of the market research that was done to help put it in context, like ‘client interviews indicated what’s most important to them is ______’

Create a List of Specific Questions

What about the piece is important to you – that a certain message get across? That people take a specific action at the end? That it builds a feeling of trust and stability or makes people feel warm and fuzzy? Use this as a guideline to come up with specific questions. Like, ‘did it make you feel warm and fuzzy?’ Same goes for concerns you have – ‘or did it seem too corporate’.

Also think about what you are sure of and don’t intend to change when framing questions. If you definitely like the design but are not sure about the colour, ask them specifically ‘what do you think of the colour?’ Tell them what message you are trying to convey and ask them if they get that from the design or copy. If not what did they get from it?

Broad Questions Are Okay

‘If you had one impression from this piece what was it?’

However, you may want to have follow-up questions ready. If you want it to convey that your services are delivered quickly because of the technology you’ve developed, and they got that, you could ask something like ‘but does it make our service sound cheap because it’s so fast?’

Make the Most of Your Community

Asking for feedback from people who represent your ideal clients or peers you trust for business advice is a great idea. Just prepare for it and know you may get some conflicting input. Don’t be reluctant to ask – most people feel privileged that you value their opinion.

Social media provides additional ways to get objective, anonymous and/or professional feedback. You can ask for feedback via the major channels like Twitter and LinkedIn, but there are also great places, both free, like Get Satisfaction or User Voice and professional/paid like EntreBahn (full version coming soon)

PS. It’s a great way to get a little social media exposure too.

Then What?

The best thing to do is gather the feedback and go over it with your creative team, who should be completely open to that. We’d discuss each bit, hold it against the creative brief and objectives, decide what’s important and what’s not, and make some executive decisions.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Big World Marketing, Never Stop Learning | 1 Comment »

They used to say it takes seven points of contact to make a sale…

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

These days that number is much higher due to the massive amounts of sales messages we see in email and on the web. Even in the B2B space – there are lots of newsletters and Google ads, LinkedIn messages, blog posts, etc. Even if that number is now 50, the key is still the same: the more and more kinds of points of contact the better.

What are points of contact?

Any time or way in which someone comes into contact with your company. Including: business card, networking, call from your office, newsletter, website, they see you speak, an ad, blog posts, articles you write, Twitter messages, etc.

The reason I say the more kinds the merrier is because, for example: if they met you once and only continue to receive your company newsletter, it gets monotonous and they start ignoring it. Meanwhile, if they also see an ad, an update pops-up on LinkedIn, then notice you’re speaking as an expert, or spot your brochure on a colleagues desk, then get the newsletter again; suddenly you are top of mind for whatever you do. Plus, you provide more opportunities for them to sell you to decision makers and more ways to refer you (ex: send your newsletter to a peer). You provide more opportunities for them to see your brilliance and understand all of what you do.

I want to do something bold!

This is what a very action-oriented and adventurous client said to me. Doing a specific campaign, something one-time and flashy is great for bringing people into your funnel – the most fun projects for Rapport actually. However, if you succeed in bringing people in, then what? You need to have other points of contact ready to go to keep them engaged and coming back, or leading them to your pre-sale action step. For this particular client once she brings them in en masse, she needs to build trust with them to move to the next step in the buying cycle, so we have to make sure mechanisms for doing that are there to support the initial big effort.

Sounds like a lot of money and effort.

This is also why variety is good. The best thing to make it easier is include items that happen more automatically and can impact a large number of people at once, like a newsletter. The second thing is to decide what marketing things you’re going to do and then plan and budget for them over a quarter, if not a year. An action plan really makes things much less daunting.

Remember, if you don’t plan for and support one effort with other points of contact, you’re probably wasting time and money on the first one anyway.

Bring all that marketing together.

Be strategic and smart. Spend your time and money wisely by planning, making sure you’re talking to ideal clients in the right way, but also by ensuring all your points of contact are leading prospects on a consistent and compelling path towards your pre-sale action step. Rapport has developed a great tool for helping you do this: the Rapport Marketing Map.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Big World Marketing, Never Stop Learning | 1 Comment »

Where Do I Start When Creating a Brand Message?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This was the question a student of Entrepreneurship at Ryerson just posed to me (yes, they teach it now). He’s involved in a fairly new venture and have been doing a number of marketing efforts, but finding they’re not as effective as they should be and recognizing a lack of consistency in look and language from one item to the next. But, they haven’t really identified and built their brand character yet.

‘So where do I start’ he asks. I said besides hiring us to develop a concise brand positioning + character, then creating logos, taglines and a few initial pieces around which we can write guidelines….

Start by looking at what’s working now and what isn’t.

You can start by looking literally at metrics – ex: this email got much more response than the other version. However, I also recommend asking members or the target audience to review different pieces and share which item’s design and language resonates most with them and why. The why is important so you can start to identify specific characteristics. Maybe the graphics are really impactful, the headlines are compelling, etc.

Then, ask them to tell you the opposite – which they were least attracted to and why. Perhaps the colours remind them of something negative and the copy is too long-winded and technical.

Use this as a checklist.

Review all your pieces with a checklist of these basic characteristics and note opportunities to make changes more towards the well-received characteristics and recognize use of the disliked ones. It may be simple changes to copy, or adding small elements like ‘we always have a watermark of the logo icon in the background.’ These things are the start of proper guidelines what you can write up and encourage or insist your own team follows. Good branding gets to the root of the values and culture of the company, so encourage all your people to become the company’s brand stewards.

How do you maintain brand character once you’ve defined it?

Of course, this was the next question. I showed him how we use our Rapport Marketing Map as a tool to help us do that for ourselves and our clients.

You plot out all your marketing tools around a central goal (your pre-sale action step), then imagine someone who’s not familiar with your company enters at any point, say they’ve been forwarded your newsletter. This probably has at least one link to your website. If they go from the newsletter to the website, what is the experience like, is it consistent? Is it the same kind of language? The same logo, colours and other brand elements? Where might they go from there? Maybe there’s brochures or sell sheets to download. Do they carry the brand character, the look and language?

When you look at your existing tools this way you will spot big and small things to change that can really strengthen that path, but also have a guideline or reminder when you add in something new.

Allow for brand evolution.

Companies are constantly evolving, and therefore so must your brand. Just keep it under control. Look at it regularly, you may need to make small changes, or one day a giant paradigm shift. However, use the Rapport Marketing Map to ensure you aren’t making changes on a whim, or because it fits the need of the day better.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Big World Marketing | 2 Comments »

Website Strategy Integrating Social Media Part II

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

My last post was answering a question: should website strategy be driven by social media?

I wrote no, it should be considered as part of an overall marketing plan. However, if you’ve done your research as Excoted Twitter fans, are your clients?Terri suggested in her post Social Media: How Much of it is Hype? and found that your target audience is huge into it, then yes, it should be one of the stronger factors in web strategy. With the Rapport Marketing Map, we talk about the journey people take moving from one marketing tool to the next (ie: when they look at your business card then go to your website, do they see the same colours and logo?) and how to keep them moving along that path, towards your pre-sale action step. If you think about going from, say Twitter to your website, there may be opportunities top make that transition more meaningful.

What happens when people go from your Twitter page to your website?Showing diverging paths, through your marketing

Imagine that the first place someone finds you is LinkedIn and read your profile. They liked your style and click-through to your website. What’s the experience like? What opportunities are there to create a continuation and encourage they travel further through your marketing map? For example, some people create special landing or squeeze pages, depending on where they come from that ties the two together. I saw one that said ‘welcome fellow Tweeters… here’s how I want to use Twitter… etc.’ One Twitter user sends a very friendly ‘thanks for the follow message’ to new followers that invites them to take a fun, interesting, no strings attached quiz, getting people to her website.
Interactivity with Polls is good for websites
Depending on how your target audience uses social media may change the approach to content writing for your website, or the bells and whistles you add. Those big into it appreciate brevity, a more casual and human approach to writing. They also expect lots of interaction, like blogs and polls, etc.

Don’t forget that the website’s main function will always be a place prospects come to learn more about your company and it’s services, so I wouldn’t rush to turn it into it’s own social media platform. I’ve been to sites that look like the home page of LinkedIn or Facebook. Though fun that they let people post things on their home page (like a notice board), it was major overload and it took me way too long to find out what they did and who their customers were. Visitors should always be able to find out basic information about you there, which will also make the site good for visitors who don’t use social media or didn’t find you that way.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Never Stop Learning, Web Development | 2 Comments »

Website Strategy Integrating Social Media

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Someone asked us how a company should go about developing their website strategy – from participating in social media or does the updated/new website lead to the social media participation? How do we integrate the two successfully?

Get Back To Basic Marketing

My answer is first: offline marketing questions are still important when developing a website strategy:

• What do we want to accomplish with this site?
• What is our position in the marketplace?
• Who are my ideal clients?
• What do they want from a website, what is impRetro Robot for Back to Basic Marketingortant to them?
• What can I build in to make it useful and engaging?
• Where else are they spending time (coffee shops or on Facebook)?

How are your ideal clients using social media? We have a client who was gung-ho to start a Facebook fan page but when we researched this by literally asking her clients (specific demographic), we discovered they are not using Facebook.

Web 3.0 Website Strategy

Website strategy shouldn’t develop solely from social media participation, but the core of it has had a very positive influence on “Web 3.0″ sites in the way it fosters building communities based on common interests, generously sharing information and creating two-way dialogue with customFuturistic Web 3.0 Roboters.

Gone are the days of closely guarding your secrets and being all about ME. Now are the days of being open and giving away information to create communities of enthusiastic supporters. No more broadcasting, but creating discussions and having two way conversations with the public.

All companies can integrate this idea through creating interesting and meaningful elements in their website – whether built right in like a blog or polls, or making use of Twitter and Facebook.

In fact, Google recently changed the way they rank websites to be heavily swayed by social relevancy. They want to see a blog, a conversion form, a Twitter account related to the company, etc.

Ideas to Integrate Social Media Into Your Site

Add useful and interactive devices to your website. Include activities people can participate in, use blogs, forums, polls. Use dynamic content to keep it fresh, pulling in information that’s useful to ideal visitors. Become the site to go to for info in your industry. Add multi-media like recorded teleseminars, webinars and videos.Marketing and Web Integration
Use outside platforms and communities. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel within your own site when tools like MailChimp and dynamic Google maps works fantastically. Actively participate in existing communities like LinkedIn and the like, where the eyeballs already are, instead of trying to build your own version. Include links to follow you on these on your website. Use YouTube and FlickR to host your videos and photos. Add ‘social share’ buttons where appropriate to make it easy for people to share your brilliance.

Make it Part of a Larger Marketing Plan

Developing your website strategy and then managing your participation in social media should be part of your overall marketing plan and budget. Many think of social media as free or low cost, but it’s often time-consuming. Think of how often you blog, how much time you spend on LinkedIn, etc. If you incorporate elements right into your website, you should commit to keeping it up-to-date or there’s no point. Create a plan around it, like regular blog posts, checking all the dynamic links are still working properly, etc.

It’s Part of Your Brand

Remember, above all that websites and social media participation should be a carefully considered part of your brand.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Web Development | 3 Comments »