Market-NOW! - A blog for B2B marketing today

Social Media vs. Email - The Scoop on Ben & Jerry's

As we find ourselves in the heat of the summer, daydreaming about lazy days in the sun and long trips to the beach, we should take a minute to stop and 'tweet' the ice cream. Ben & Jerry's ice cream to be specific.

In a recent blog post, Ben & Jerry's announced that their customers will no longer be receiving email marketing from the brand, and that instead they invite their fellow ice cream lovers to join them on Facebook and Twitter for updates. Ben & Jerry's is the first major corporation to discontinue email marketing in favor social media, so we can learn a lot by monitoring how successful their decision is in the near future.

Ben & Jerry's customers' preferred being updated via social media so they made the groundbreaking decision to halt subscribed email altogether. This is an extreme example of how important it is to read your customers and figure out the best way to deliver information to them. It shows that Ben & Jerry's is committed to maintaining a positive, growing relationship with its current and future customers.

It seems likely that Ben & Jerry's will find success in moving away from email as their main marketing tactic because they already have an extremely strong social media presence, but most companies will want to consider that email marketing remains a powerful tool and, in most cases, should not be abandoned. It is vital that you analyze your current marketing strategies and look for tactics that are successful for your brand while eliminating programs and campaigns that do not drive interest or awareness. More than likely you do not want or need to discontinue your email marketing, but rather hone in on what is working for your company and focus on making those strategies even more powerful.

You must be receptive and give your customers more of what they want, and also make it easy for them to get it. Once that happens, they will surely be back for more. Be inspired by ice cream...people will always keep going back for more because they know they can choose the flavor that suits them best.

Source: HubSpot. Click Here to read more.

Marketing Sherpa B2B summit - save $700!

This October, Marketing Sherpa will be hosting their annual B2B Summit and TSL Marketing is proud to announce our sponsorship of this event. At this event, learn how to:

• Architect a successful social media strategy
• Use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to drive leads
• Accurately score, nurture and measure leads
• Align marketing and sales strategies
• Optimize PPC, SEO, email and landing pages
• Develop strategies to grow your list
• Generate B2B content your audiences will value
• Manage multichannel campaigns
• Market effectively to Fortune 500 companies
• Accelerate leads through the funnel

What makes this event unique:

You'll listen, learn and interact with B2B marketing experts over two days through an intriguing blend of instructional formats, custom tailored to provide value to marketers of all skill levels. Whether you're looking for intensive how-to training, interactive audience-led panel discussions or real-life case studies to add to your arsenal, B2B Marketing Summit '10 has it all. To receive a $700 discount,

 

More about the event:

The dual coast event dates and locations are:

• Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, CA - October 4-5
• Westin Waltham, Boston, MA - October 25-26

Click Here to download the event agenda

Join us! We would love to see your there and share some of the top insights for B2B marketing in 2010.

Social Media Marketing - Defined!

So you don’t know the difference between Digg & Delicious? You aren’t the only one! With all of the hype around social media, you might be feeling overwhelmed.  You know you need to ‘do’ social media, that isn’t the question, but it’s hard to get your mind around what it all means if you don’t understand the terms being used. Having a basic understanding of common terminology is your foundation to getting the most out of social media marketing.

We recently read the ‘Social Media Marketing Directory: 101 Terms to Know’ compiled by HubSpot, and thought that we would share some of the most common (and more obsolete) terms to help you feel more comfortable with social media marketing.

·       Delicious - Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that lets users save website addresses publicly and privately online so that they can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet and shared with friends.

·       Digg- Digg is a social news website that allows members to submit and vote for articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the homepage of the site and subsequently are seen by the largest portion of the site’s membership as well as other visitors.

·       Google Documents - Referred to as 'Google Docs' is a group of web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.

·       LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional marketing. As of June 2010, LinkedIn had more than 70 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide

·       News Reader - A news reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient consumption of information.

·       Social Media Monitoring - Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.

·       StumbleUpon- Free web-browser extension which acts as an intelligent browsing tool for discovering and sharing web sites.

·       Twitter- Twitter is a platform that allows users to share 140-character-long messages publicly. User can “follow” each other as a way of subscribing to each others' messages. Additionally, users can use the @username command to direct a message towards another Twitter user.

·       Yelp- Yelp is a social network and local search website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. Over 31 million people access Yelp's website each month, putting it in the top 150 U.S. Internet websites.

This report is brought to you by HubSpot.
To read the full social media directory Click Here.

 

 

Social Media: The Revolution

Is Social Media a Fad? This is what many people are asking across the world. As businesses become more inundated with the need to adopt and adapt social networking, there is still that question on whether or not social media will fizzle out. We recently ran across a video on youtube that I would like to share with you. Not only does the video speak of the revolution known as social media, but it also backs up this theory with a number of statistics; thus proving social media to be not only on the rise, but also too large to fizzle out. For example, social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web. While this is a funny number to mention, it also proves that search engine has become more about networking than personal use. Here are some additional highlights I pulled out:

• By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber the baby boomers: 96% of them have joined a social network
• Facebook added 100 million users in the last 9 months (the majority of facebook users are over 35)
• If facebook were a country, it would be world's 4th largest
• 80% of companies are using linkedin as their as their primary tool to find employees
• 80% of twitter usage is on a mobile device (imagine what that means for bad customer service)

As this article will note. Social media is not a fad, "it's a shift in the fundamental way we communicate." Check it out for yourself:

TSL is Sponsoring the Upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Forum

This coming week TSL Marketing will be sponsoring the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. We are excited for the event, and if you are planning on being there stop by booth 17 to say hello. 

These are a few event highlights...

• Get a comprehensive B2B marketing education
  
• Sharpen your B2B skills overnight
• Use social media to grab more attention
  
• Learn from your peers in the interactive discussions

If you want to view full agenda for the Forum, click here.
 
We definitely are looking forward to hosting the Wii station at the Forum, it should be a fun way to see everyone between sessions, seminars, and speakers. If you are planning on attending, stop by and enter the raffle for a chance to win the Wii at the end of the day on Wednesday.

If you are unable to attend the forum, check back in the coming weeks and we will be sure to share some of the new information, marketing trends, and sales advice we will learn about while we are there.

Event details can be found by logging on to the MarketingProfs website, or by clicking here.

 

Are your social networks ramped up for 2010?

Did you know that their are only 18 business days left until 2010 begins!! With 2009 almost behind us and what many are calling the "post recession" year right around the corner it is important to take a look at your plan and make sure you are prepared to make an impact. 

Ramp up for 2010 using social media 

The upcoming year will mark a new decade for selling better, faster, and more efficiently. There will be more opportunities for growth and everyone is going to want to take a chunk of the post recession spending. Most people are working on finalizing their marketing plans for next year and determining what will drive results fast. The answer is simple: Social Networking. 

We spent a lot of posts in 2009 talking about social marketing. If you are new to the world of social media, here are some past posts that may be of interest to you:

1. Social Networking in less than 1 hour per week
2. Top 10 Social Media guidelines for company participation
   
3. Jump on the social media bandwagon
   
4. Twitter Best Practices

If you aren't new to social media but just haven't had the time to network effectively, now is the time to ramp up. 2010 marks a new decade and with it a new time to go to market and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. 

Top Marketing Trends for 2010

As 2009 is nearing its end and the holiday's are upon us, determining the best way to go to market for 2010 is on everyone's mind. TSL is in the process of collecting research from various sources to put together this coming years 2010 trend report. We are interested in hearing from you on what you think will be the best way to go to market this January. Here are the top 5 questions we have come across:

1. Will Social Media continue to grow at a fast pace?
2. Seminars vs. Webinars - what is your preference?
3. Are tradeshow sponsorships worth it?
4. Direct Mail - why send snail mail?
   
5. Should you use an avatar?

Feel free to answer these questions or ask your own. We would also like to hear your insight as to what you think will be a top trend in 2010. Be sure to leave your name and email address so that we may share our final trend report with you as soon as it is released.

To check out our Top 5 Marketing Trends for 2009, click here

Thanks for sharing!

Top 10 social media guidelines for company participation

Recently I ran across an article that I wanted to share with you that directly relates to using social media in your company. With the majority of your company probably connected in some way or another to your social universe, here are some helpful guidelines (presented by Shift Communications) that you can use to assure that any employees tweeting, blogging, or using online communication tools are doing so professionally:

Download social media guidelines by clicking here 

"Whether you log into twitter, yelp, wikipedia, MySpace, or Facebook pages, or comment on online media stories - these guidelines are for you."  

With the world of social media taking over the online marketing community, it is incredibly important to make sure your team is staying as business professional as possible. After-all, rumors spread like wild fire and you sure don't want bad publicity! Keep your social networking positive by rolling out these guidelines.

What social network do you prefer?

Last week we talked about Social Media and the importance of deploying a social media plan into your marketing strategy. What's more, the question of online "clutter" was also brought up. Therefore, this week, we will turn to you. In order to break through the clutter, TSL is taking a poll to understand better about what social media sites work best for our customer base. 

We look forward to generating the results and helping you determine which social media site is best for you?