This evening I stumbled across what I could only describe as a bombshell for the so called “professional marketing” world.
You see there are just far too many businesses trying too out do one another using overly creative marketing produced by these vary same companies and all they end up with is more confusion and empty pockets.
If these so called “marketing professional” were any good at what they did they would be able to use their own marketing skills to win new business right ? WRONG!
Well, I’m not going to say much here except that today I received a piece of outbound marketing from none other than…..GOOGLE. Yes one of the worlds biggest online inbound marketing forces and they are sending me an outbound marketing piece to promote Adsense.
Why are they doing this ? Well, not everybody is online, nor are they online all of the time and good outbound marketing still works well if done properly and it helps to create a true closed loop environment.
Right now the whole world seems to be running for the hills into the digital sales and marketing inbound yonder, which is no surprise given the “possibilities” that lay ahead. However many are running blind, taking with them what they have always done into the same digital space which will lead to further confusion if their “other” sales and marketing strategies were or are still ineffective.
A new medium does not translate into success if your message and market just don’t match. What and where your market is and where it goes to look for sources of information will be important to where and how you should start marketing your products or services.
Following up with customers and interested prospects is an area that probably most marketers are actually poor at, as everybody is trying to avoid annoying people on their database.
What I think it really comes down to though is not having enough value to offer your customers or prospects in exchange for making contact other than just trying to push them along towards a sale.
For some time now I’ve been extending my own social media activity, slowly. When you don’t have lots of staff and massive budgets and you are focused on helping your customer its a tough thing to do and get right. You know what it should look like but creating and engaging amongst everything else you are doing is a tall order indeed.
Just being in a position to “listen” or watch the conversations unfold can be very eye opening and you begin to get a feel for what people are saying, doing and why.
Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing is about “metrics” or building a return on investment “ROI” which helps you to describe the relationship between costs and the return achieved in either leads or profit generated.One of the reasons that stops businesses from measuring their marketing effectiveness is they believe its too early in the process to start when creating or developing their new marketing channel and its especially so with the internet or web marketing because the technology feels so new for many businesses.
I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed that whenever the subjects of Marketing and Sales come up it’s like watching the front row of a horror film at it’s most gruesome part of the show. Just the words on their own are enough to spin people into a frenzy of anger, even when the topic is essential to not just every businesses or organisation but to each and everyone one of us in our daily lives. Connecting and creating friendships, relationships and valuable partnerships is what makes the world go around and we all sell and market in some shape or form, whether we know it or not.
Ok it’s Friday so here’s a nice idea to end the week. If you’ve heard of the Mad Men series then you’ll love this idea (if not why not!). Jump along to MadMenYourself and get a stylised version of your marketing Mad Men self. What do you think eh ?
p.s. the music on the site is groovy man!
Well as part of a strategic marketing consultancy I thought I should answer this question.
Having a strategy is an important part of developing a businesses and working out where you are going. Your marketing strategy is the route you will take to create customers and generate sales and therefore profits for the business.
Your marketing strategy not only states your goals, objectives and describes your routes to market but it also pulls together all of the different channels and media that can be used and ensures a consistent approach that connects, engages and converts customers which can be measured, tracked and modified for improvement.
Does Twitter Business Marketing Work ? – Yes, Even For Me!
First of all take it from me, once a sceptic (few years back now), that the twitter machine can and does open up new avenues, contacts and enquiries REAL fast and of a very high quality and relevancy.
Why ? Well your twitter channel is a micro version of a blog and allows you to find, follow and communicate with people in a “micro” way. Its power is in the real time nature that these communications take place and how connections are made. It’s a bit like an instant messenger and a chat room and bookmarker rolled into one.
Your B2B Business Needs Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful way of establishing credibility by drip feeding valuable information to your prospects and customers at little to no cost.
Unfortunately most people abuse it by sending emails to people they don’t know with information they probably don’t want, in a way they definitely don’t want it, otherwise known as spam.
The best way to avoid the spam trap is to have people “opt-in”, meaning they volunteer to receive information from you and your business directly to their in box by request.
Inbound, pull, magnetic or bread trail are marketing terms that describe guiding customers to your doorstep.
I find the term “Inbound” a bit confusing because no marketing can ever be purely inbound, because it has to go outbound first, put into the ether or outside world, before it can ever be found or guide people inbound to you. This is what Direct Response Marketing was always about in the offline world long before the internet came along so its not really a new idea just a blend of results orientated marketing.
A picture can paint a thousand words especially when it’s a meaningful graphical representation of your performance, whether its a sales graph, profitability analysis or some other form of tracking.
Many businesses when asked what their website does would probably answer with some kind of “well it has our contact details on it” or “its an on-line catalogue” or something like that but they would be missing a big opportunity.
The web provides the kind of real time analysis that other forms of marketing and sales would find difficult to keep up with.
Growing a business using the internet comes down to 4 main factors. And strangely these 4 main factors apply equally to any business off-line or on-line.
Opportunity
Being able to spot a gap in the market where demand exists, supply is short and competition is weak which you can capitalise on from a search, pay per click, social or other marketing method.
Workflow
This is a big one. Developing methods that allow you to move faster and quicker with less effort is essential to gaining traction. What once took days to do can now be done in minutes with the right pieces of technology in place. And they don’t have to be complex and expensive either. Its like the framework or exo-skeleton of your cyber self or business.
The opportunities for getting your message to market are almost endless in today’s rapidly changing world.
Off-line methods such as radio, TV, billboards, magazines, newspapers, trade publications, events, sponsorship, public transport, strategic partnerships and give-away items are just some of the opportunities possible
On-line or digital methods have exploded the choice into websites, email, banners, pay-per-click, search or SEO, social, directories, articles, videos, blogging and more.
Today’s marketing approach is a blend or “mix” of commonly know practises called above-the-line (ATL) traditionally media such as TV, radio, poster, press and below-the-line (BTL) historically direct mail, point of purchase, leaflets and letters and when mixed together from through-the-line.
Get the new change white paper called the Triangle Of Change which exposes the shocking truths which every business needs to know in order to create growth on today's terms of business.
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