Market-NOW! - A blog for B2B marketing today

By Mobilizing Your Business, You Can Market on the Go

One of the greatest achievements of the 21st century is the mobilization of business. Companies are decreasing their dependency on stationary workstations and are moving to mobile phones and tablets.  Marketing is no different, as there are several ways to market your company from the street, inside a coffee shop, the grocery store, etc. Anywhere you go, your business can follow.

There are many ways to take advantage of marketing on the go. Email blasts, social media updates and mass texts can happen from the palm of your hand. One important thing to remember is that you aren’t the only one working on a mobile device. There is a good chance that any prospects you reach out to are working on the go as well. Mobile to mobile messaging is now the the preferred form of communication, and could create a comfortable environment to converse with your audience.

if you prefer the traditional cold calling method, the mobile phone is perfect for that as well.. Several applications such as Active Strategy, and Sugar (which runs through the browser) are available to connect to prospects and clients, track activity and report results through your mobile device’s interface. With one touch of the screen in the phone number field, you will automatically find yourself on a prospecting call. Most mobile devices today carry massive amounts of storage space, so thousands of prospect data cards can be held on a phone. Today, the storage is getting even bigger as devices are now connecting to the cloud.

We are a generation of multi-taskers who are always on the move. Technology is adapting to our lifestyle, just as we adapt to keep up with its rapid changes. How are you keeping up? In what ways are you managing your marketing while on the go?

Happy Halloween from TSL

Wishing you a fun, safe, and scary Halloween!

Keeping Your Marketing Current

• Companies need do their homework. The internet is filled with lists of top companies in each industry. Most of these companies will have blogs on their website. I've discussed before about how companies use blogs to market themselves; industry leading corporate blogs will have great, innovative marketing strategies within their blogs. Make sure you follow them - Google has great tools that allow users to follow blogs and websites. You will be notified whenever an update is made to a followed blog, always keeping you current.
• Staying abreast of current events. Google allows you to collect RSS feeds to deliver breaking news to one location 24 hours a day. To keep your company current, stay up to the minute with the latest events. If a natural disaster hits, be the first company to set up a relief fund. If something major happens in the news, offer an opinion on it right away. The information age moves at warp speed. Thirty minutes ago might as well be last year. Never get left behind.
• Keep prospects and customers happy. One easy way to accomplish this is to keep the look and feel of your website, Facebook page, twitter account, and any other content based platform fresh. A website with the same look becomes stale and boring after a few months.  An outdated look can drive away traffic. Try to add new graphics ever couple of months. Add a new feature to your site. Create a poll and post it to Facebook and twitter. Depending on the topic, you might be able to get a handle on what your potential customers care about, which can in turn help you market to new customers.

In today's tough economy, marketing is more important than ever. In a crowded marketplace, companies need to stand out from their peers just to survive. Don't fall to the back of the pack. Stay current and become a leader, not a follower.

Five Effective Ways to Market a Startup Company

Starting a new company is an exciting venture. It can also be scary once you look at all the things you need to do in order to be successful. First and foremost, you need to make a name for yourself. If you are just starting out, how will anyone know you exist? In a world of competition, you need people to know that you are an option.

Here are five ways for startup companies to market themselves:  

• Be active in the community More than likely, you will initially be targeting a local audience. There are plenty of things you can do to make a positive impact in your community that won't cost a whole lot of money. Organizing a charity fundraiser is one example, and it's a great cause that can get your name out to the public. As an added bonus, you will be giving yourself plenty of good PR, which is vital as you begin business.
• Start a blog As you start, you need something of value to offer potential customers before you get settled as a fully operational business. A blog is a perfect way to offer advice, opinions, and advertise your company. For example, the web based financial service mint.com is very popular today, but it started off as a financial advice blog.
• Leads This obviously depends on the company, but any B2B service needs quality sales leads to survive. By going off of these leads, you establish business relationships, retain customers and provide an opportunity for positive word of mouth to spread.
• Be creative You may already have a blog, but if you really want to be remembered you may have to offer your customers a little more. A jingle can be created and uploaded to iTunes in minutes. A video can be added to YouTube in the same amount of time.  If you can offer something of high quality, potential customers will want to check you out.
• Socialize We know about the social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook, but there are several other services out there designed specifically for companies to get noticed.  Make sure you are creating business profiles all over the web. LinkedIn is a site created specifically for companies, their employees, and other business professionals to socialize. Google has several applications that can help as well. Make sure that your profile has just enough information to entice prospects without being too long.

Social Media - Growing, Growing...Gone!

Social media and social media marketing have experienced extreme upward momentum over the past few years.  The most popular social media outlets have increased exponentially in size; the number of users has exploded, and the actual usage of the websites themselves has gone through the virtual roof.  The most amazing part of it all is that it shows no signs of stopping.  Social media may be considered a phenomenon by some, but in reality it's become a staple in the lives of hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

We could go on for hours discussing the various social media outlets and tools, but for now we're going to focus on three of the most popular. I want to give a few stats for each to help illustrate just how powerful social media has become.

 

• According to the 'Timeline' available on their website, Facebook reached 1 million users in December of 2004.  As of July 2011, there are 750 million active users.
• As of February 2011, Facebook was seeing 250 million users daily according to a Mashable article.
• A report from eMarketer found that 42.3% of Americans are active on Facebook.
• The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that the most used Facebook products are Photos, Places, Groups, and Messages.

• As of March 2011, Twitter users are now sending 1 billion Tweets per week - this means it took all of 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day for Twitter to truly explode.
• Just one year ago, Twitter users were sending just 50 million Tweets per day - as of March 2011, users were sending 140 million Tweets daily (on average).
• On average, 460,000 new Twitter accounts are created daily according to the TMV article.
• A Mashable article states that 22.5% of registered Twitter users are responsible for 90% of Tweets.

• LinkedIn announced on March 22, 2011 that the Social Media tool reached 100 million professionals worldwide.
• The same announcement by Jeff Weiner stated that LinkedIn is growing by roughly 1 million new members every week - the equivalent of one member per second.
• The LinkedIn website states the following usage numbers:  USA - 44 million, Outside the USA - 56 million.  The fastest growing countries as per LinkedIn usage are Brazil (428%), Mexico (178%), India (76%), and France (72%).
• There are 17.8 million users in groups.

Five Key Topics for Your Company's Blog

I’ve written that blogging can be a great way to get your company noticed, and a powerful addition to your marketing plan. While creating a blog is a good business idea, many times businesses don’t know what to blog about. It’s important to have relevant topics that can attract readers and get them interested in your company.

Here are five blog topics that every business should use:

• Tease new developments (but don’t give them away!) - Everyone wants to know what the future holds. They want to know where your company is going, so let them know. The trick is to only give bits and pieces. Apple is the master at this. They like to leave hints about innovations and new products, but most of the information is a secret. When the time comes to pull the curtain everyone is hungry to learn about the new product. 
• Review literature related to your industry - No matter what industry you are in, chances are that someone has written about it. Reading what others are writing is good research for your own benefit. By reviewing the literature, it shows your readers that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry.
• Discuss Current Events - While this can be a nice diversion and show that you have an understanding of the outside world, a good writer can relate anything back to his or her business. A quick opinion on the latest news spun in the direction of your business can catch the reader’s attention, and before they know it they are reading an advertisement for your company.
• Ask for suggestions - Blogs are not a one way street. They can be interactive. Feedback received on a post can be just as important to a blog as its actual content. Ask your customers and readers for feedback on your products and services. This is a valuable resource for your business and it is welcoming to your blog readers.
• Report From the Scene - Trade shows and community events are great places for your company to set up shop for the day. Live blogging shows your readers that you are keeping your blog fresh and current, and it might even get some readers to come down to whatever event you are at. 

The Marketing Benefits of Minimizing Your Brand's Logo

You may have noticed something a little different the last time you were in Starbucks. If not, the next time you are there drinking a nine dollar latte take a look at the logo on the side of the cup. The iconic mermaid is still there, but the classic “Starbucks Coffee” is gone. Last fall, the popular chain decided to remove the text and just leave the image. This is an example of minimizing a brand, but it’s really maximizing its potential.

Starbucks used to have a plan. They cornered a specific market and hit it hard. In their case, they were making gourmet coffee drinks, and they were doing it better than anyone else. It worked for a while, but things started to change. Their customers wanted more, so Starbucks delivered. Today you can go up to a Starbucks barista and order tea, juice, pastries and breakfast sandwiches. There are regular customers that have never ordered a coffee. By removing the text in their logo, Starbucks has allotted itself unlimited potential by not being pigeonholed as a coffee shop.

There is a reason why businesses subscribe to the “less is more” theory with branding and marketing. If an athletic apparel company created a logo that showed a pair of shoes, consumers may only consider them to be a sneaker company. Nike’s famous “swoosh” is a perfect example of minimalistic branding. It’s a sleek and attractive design, but it doesn’t suggest any specific product that Nike makes. That provides them the flexibility to market and sell any products they want.

Branding can make or break a company. It is important to have an attractive image or logo that catches the eye and becomes recognizable. But by limiting specific language, companies can use the power of the unknown to their advantage. Smart companies are giving themselves the opportunity to expand by not limiting the potential of their brand.

Consider how these principles could possibly apply to your company. Would engaging in a more minimalistic version of your current brand bring you any benefits? 

Marketing in the Information Age

As we push forward through the information age, it feels as if there is no end to what our technology can do for us. The ceiling is gone, and the potential is limitless. It used to take days, weeks or even months for news to spread globally. Now it takes seconds. In the business world, smart companies are capitalizing on this phenomenon. Just as they embraced the World Wide Web fifteen years ago, they now understand its truly limitless possibilities.

The internet has been changing. After ten years of anticipating massive growth, businesses began to realize that the internet was actually getting smaller. The term “surfing the web” became outdated. Most online users had a specific plan when they turned on their computers. They developed a routine; one that didn’t usually didn’t involve "surfing" at all.  This meant that fewer visitors were going to any given company’s website unless there was a specific reason to do so.

This revelation became crucial in B2B marketing because business prospects typically have less internet time than the general public consumer. They are busy people who are on the go, and cannot afford to spend hours looking through a collection of websites to find their potential vendors.

This all has revealed that to get your name out there, you need to provide fast information and you need to provide it to people who are mobile.  It is also becoming known that there are a number of key places that businesses have to hit in order to be seen:

• Facebook: The ultimate example of a shrinking internet. Users can get news, entertainment, opinion and human interaction all in one place. I call it “the internet in one website.”  

• Twitter: A great place to give and receive quick information about your business or your customers. With only 140 characters allowed, messages are short and to the point. It’s a perfect way for a company to advertise new products and services.

• Google: This is the closest we have to surfing the net today. Google offers several tools and applications that improve your search ranking and make you more attractive to customers and other businesses. Google defines what people are looking for when they do search the web, providing valuable knowledge for any business.

• Mobile Messaging:  The most important innovation of the informational age.  It allows information to travel to other businesses or to customers at any time, even while on the go. Marketing can easily be performed and sales can be made at any time or in any place.

Marketing Insight: How Your Website is Viewed

Most of us are familiar with certain websites that we are drawn to for one reason or another.  Perhaps we find these websites visually appealing, while others are optimized for accessing information easily. There are a myriad of reasons why we feel differently about each website, and even though it seems everyone has their own tastes and preferences there is evidence to suggest that we are all programmed to digest websites in very similar ways.

A research paper was published recently that breaks down how we digest the content of a website. “No Clicks, No Problem: Using Cursor Movements to Understand and Improve Search,” by Jeff Huang, Information School University of Washington; and Ryen W. White and Susan Dumais of Microsoft Research, provides insight into how the human eye 'travels' around websites; aka the 'eyepath.'

The research paper shows that when a user is visiting a website, there is a very high correlation between where their mouse cursor is placed and where they choose to click.  Below is an image that gives us visual evidence of this research. The right image is where user's cursors were placed, and the left image is where the most 'clicks' were made.


Marketing Sherpa conducted an interview with Jeff Huang, and retrieved the following statement which helps us to sum up the research:

"In an eye-tracking study, we showed that cursor position is closely related to eye gaze.  We were able to use cursor movements to estimate search result relevance..."

Huang continues by saying that marketers may come to find this type of tracking useful since the cursor movements are very closely linked to the eyepath of the website visitor.  If marketers were able to take advantage of this technology, they would be able to track what parts of their website(s) were being looked at.  By the same token, they would also know what part of the pages were being ignored.  

This method of tracking users' interaction with websites may very well be a viable source of information and data as we move forward. Marketers would be able use the information to best optimize websites, and thus improve site visibility and increase lead conversion.

How is Marketing Different Than Advertising?

A great question! After noticing this question on an informative website, I realized that it is probably a much more common one than we may realize.  Many of us may not even realize the true difference even though we are somewhat familiar with both.

According to Wikipedia, Marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.  Marketing as a whole is focused on acquiring, analyzing, maintaining, and generating the interest of customers.

Advertising, according to Wiki, is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Advertising (for the intent of this blog) is used to convince consumers to invest their time and money in a certain product or service. It is a service that is paid for and made possible via various media outlets such as TV, radio, mail, and the Internet.

A fundamental difference between the two is that marketing is an overall process and/or plan, while advertising is only one piece of that plan. About.com provides a great explanation, suggesting that we visualize marketing as a pie, and advertising as one slice out of that pie.