Marketing Blog

September 6, 2016 By Travis Baker

Generating Sales Leads Without Marketing Support

In industrial and manufacturing companies sales always needs more leads from marketing. And for whatever reason, if marketing is overwhelmed or focused on other things lead generation may not be top of their to do list.

However that doesn’t change that sales is measured by closing deals. And for that you need qualified leads.

Traditionally in the industrial or manufacturing sector, the way that sales gets qualified leads is dialing for dollars.

That’s not necessarily effective as a sales tactic. You are contacting people who might not have a need, and most of your calls are a huge waste of time.

But what else can you do if you don’t have any marketing support?

Thought Leadership

I think the best way for sales to generate leads is becoming known as a thought leader. The best way to do that in an industrial sales with no marketing support is to use the social tools.

Here are some quick steps to help industrial and manufacturing sales teams generate leads without marketing support.

Buyer Personae

First, I would build a quick ideal buyer personae. This will help you target the type of company that you want to pursue. Many times this is skipped over, but if you have limited time and resources it becomes even more important to build it out. If you look at customers you have done a good job for in the past, this can give you a good indication of where to start.

Once you have built your ideal buyer personae, it is time create your target list.

Target

You can find out information online fairly easily (if they are publicly held) from their Edgar listing. Private companies are a bit harder but you would be amazed what you can find with a little time on a search engine. For instance try searching Slideshare, people post a lot of information on that site that you can use for targeting.

I mean pretty much everyone that you want to target is on Linkedin, right? You can do targeting, outreach and secure meetings using Linkedin. It is easier if you use one of the Linkedin paid accounts, but you can do it on the cheap with a free account as well.

Publish

Now if you can’t build your thought leadership on your website because of technological limitations or lack of access, you can now publish articles directly on Linkedin. You can post these in industry groups to get better visibility. Also you can post on your company and personal page. Ask others on your team to share on Linkedin as well.

While your website is always the best hub for content creation, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Contacts

Another suggestion is to work your contacts:

Yeah, this is probably pretty obvious. But you would be surprised how often people forget that reaching out and letting your contacts know what you are doing is a great way to generate leads. However, the caveat is that you need to add value. If you have advice or can point them to a resource you can increase your response rate exponentially!

The last suggestion is you can get outsourced marketing help. Using an outside marketing resource can help you bring in qualified leads without the expense of hiring a (or another) full-time marketing employee. In addition, you can get the assistance of someone who might be more experienced to help you create a marketing strategy.

August 17, 2016 By Travis Baker

Developing a Winning Trade Show Marketing Strategy

Your first question may be why am I focusing on a Trade Show Marketing Strategy? I have to work on the actual trade show! Won’t the trade show marketing strategy take care of itself?

Unfortunately it will not.

People get so caught up in the the logistics and the design of the booth that they forget that this is just one huge marketing tactic. And we all know that all tactics need to be guided by a solid marketing strategy.

Especially one that takes such a huge outlay of time and money.

Look at it this way. Let’s say you have a modest budget for a show, say 10k. Let’s assume it is a 3 day show and you have 7 hours a day. Out of that you have 21 hours of actual show time on the floor.

Multiply that out and you have 1260 minutes on the floor. Now if you divide the $10,000/1260 m you get $7.93 a minute that this marketing is costing you.

That is pretty expensive. Not to mention the cost of the people you have working the show, travel meals, opportunity cost, etc.

Shouldn’t you maximize your ROI?

Much like any strategy, this is a physical manifestation of your goals and objectives for an individual trade show. It lets you know where you are going right and when you need to correct.

This gives your team an idea of where you are going. It should be shared and used as a training document for all of the staff attending and supporting the show.

It illustrates to upper management that there is a plan, and proves an ROI for events and for you. Best of all this is customizable for you and your team, and will work for huge shows to smaller niche ones.

Want to download our trade show marketing strategy guide? You can get it here.

August 15, 2016 By Travis Baker

How YouTube is Hurting Your Video Marketing Strategy

I was on a manufacturing site recently watching a marketing video. It was an OK video, much better than the ones I see on a daily basis. However, when the video ended, I was looking at this…
why you shouldn't use Youtube for your Marketing Videos-1.jpg
Hmmm…..I’m thinking that may not have been what they were trying to get across. Oddly enough, if this were my company, I would want you to watch another video about my business. Not a clip of Jerry Seinfeld.

That’s one of the reason’s why Youtube is not the best hosting vehicle for your video marketing strategy.

This is not to say that Youtube is not valuable. It is, but it is more of a search engine and social media channel then an ideal video hosting platform.

So, if you don’t use Youtube, what are your other choices? I for one like Wistia. (Disclosure we are a Wistia Agency Partner).

Let’s look at the differences and why you should use an alternate hosting platform.

SEO: When you post your video on Youtube, any links that people point to the video are going to point to YouYube. When people share your video, it will link back to YouTube. That hurts your SEO.

If you use Wistia, or something similar, to the search engines, it appears that you are hosting the video on your site. That means you get the links. And the love from Google.

Also, Wistia’s automated video SEO ensures that pages from your website rank in Google search.

Control: When you post your video on Youtube, the platform lets people do a lot with it. They can embed it on their site; they can download it directly and pawn it off as their own. Probably not what you want.

With Wistia you can limit embedding and people downloading your video. Also, at the end of the video, you can make sure that there is a call-to-action instead of cat videos.

Analytics: YouTube does give you some insight into your video performance, but Wistia gives you a lot more. Wistia provides real insight into how your audience is interacting with your video.

Conversions: With Wistia you can provide “gated content.” You can limit viewership to visitors who provide contact information or anything else you want to collect.

Video is an often ignored part of inbound marketing. With Wistia you can support your inbound goals a lot better than with Youtube.

If you want to learn more about Wistia vs. Youtube? Download our comparison pdf.

August 11, 2016 By Travis Baker

Why I Hate Stock Images. And What We Can do to Stop ’em

Hey what is better than stock images? You can get people in business suits doing, well anything: meeting, standing, working, standing randomly in fields. And they look good.

why stock images undermine your marketing — Get it? Stock Images?

Most websites use stock images on their websites and collateral. But why?

Well, usually it is cheaper and easier than having people in your office or factory do……whatever you are trying to convey.

However, I have begun to hate stock images.

It really came together for me when I was at a recent industry conference and I saw the same stock image, six times. SIX! And it was only a 2-day conference!

It was insane. I talked to someone who had been in this particular industry for a while and he said, “Oh yeah, everybody uses that image. It works so well for the industry.”

I was stunned. I had always been somewhat against stock images, but now I am really anti-stock.

Now don’t get me wrong. When I say stock images, I don’t mean the random ones with a chain for unity or a funnel for sales.The cost benefit of having a photo shoot with a funnel is limited at best. Plus it is pretty boring.

I mean the ones that have a bunch of people in suits delighted they have found the solution to a problem. “Yeahhhhh!!!” Fist pumping, wildly exalting!

Like we all are at the end of meetings.

If I have pictures of people on my website or collateral, I want it to be people that prospects will see when they interact with my business.

Let’s looks at some misconceptions and show how we can stop the tyranny of stock and still have image heavy websites.

Stock is Cheaper

This isn’t always true.

You should be able to get a photographer for less than $800 for a half day shoot and that should include some rudimentary editing as well.

Or if you have someone on your staff who is good with a camera, see if they might be open to giving it a shot.

That should give you hundreds of pictures you can use. Know what images you want going in and you should be able to capture multiple photos you can use.

Have You Seen Our Employees?

Your people don’t look like models? Uh yeah, no ones do, not unless you work at Abercrombie and Fitch.

But in all seriousness should your accounting team really look like they stepped off a runaway? How realistic is that?

And what does that say to potential clients? It’s a slippery slope. If your images aren’t accurate why should your clients believe anything else on your site?

Change is Hard.

I see this classic argument from the C-suite.

“Well we will have to change the website if anyone leaves!”

My counter argument is “So think having people who have never worked here is a better option?”

The solution is you need a good agreement when you do your photo shoot. Nothing fancy just something that says you reserve the right to keep the photos on your site if an employee leaves.

And if you have a website built on a easy to use CMS (You do right? If not, I know a guy) changing out the pictures should be a snap.

You want to know what I think the best reason is to use your employees on your website?

People like to see who they work with. Prospects want to evaluate who they might work with. Do these people look trustworthy, friendly, like people?

Authentic photography helps humanize your company. And here at 366, we are huge fans of acting like humans.
I hope this encourages you to change out your stock for real images. I know we are making an effort here to decrease our reliance. Need to organize a photo shoot at your company? Contact 366 Marketing and let’s see if we can help.

July 26, 2016 By Travis Baker

Keys to Make Your Video Marketing Shoot a Success

Video marketing is a strong component of your content strategy. Here at 366 we recently wrapped a video about our agency and how we help our customers. Like our overall brand it was fun, but it took a lot of work and prep and the runtime was only a minute and 45 seconds!

While we have shot videos in the past for our customers, this was the first one we did for our agency. The process of going through every part of the creation of the video content reminded me that it might be a good time to write a blog post about how to prepare and get the most out of a video shoot.

Goals: The first thing to know (like any other content creation) is what do you want this video to accomplish? How will we know if our video marketing project is a success?

With our video we really wanted to drive awareness of our offerings and hopefully generate one or two qualified leads for video production. We plan to measure awareness by views to the video landing page and leads, by well, leads.

Message: What is your message? How will make sure that your message is on brand and gets your point across? It is key to write your script with your message and goals top of mind.

In our video we try to balance fun with discussing our new offerings to current and potential clients. The key was to make it as entertaining as possible without just making it entertainment.

Solely entertaining videos have their place, but that wasn’t what we were aiming for when we create for video marketing.

Location: Where are you shooting? Where you shoot says a lot about your video. If you are getting testimonials, it adds additional credulity if you shoot at your customer’s place of business.

We wanted to shoot where we work because the place itself was really a character in the video.

Who: You need to know a lot of who’s before you shoot your video. For instance:

Who is writing the script?
Who is editing the script?
Who is shooting the video?
Who are your actors?
Who is editing your video?
Who is in charge of any effects?
Who will make final cut decisions?

For our video, I wrote the script and my co-founder Amy helped edit. Everyone on the shoot had suggestions that made it into the final version.

Our actors included myself, Amy, and some friends and relatives we roped in to help. We relied on our friend Zac, a video professional, to shoot and edit the video.

Release: Where are you releasing your video? On Facebook, on your site, on Youtube, on all or somewhere different?

For our video the plan is to release on Wistia to get the link juice. Then add Facebook for the native views and finally move to Youtube, the world’s second largest search engine.

This is a quick primer on shooting a video and I hope it helps you. If you need help with video production or any other marketing, you might consider subscribing to our newsletter. We talk about things like that and we only send it out once a week. (It will also let you know when our video drops.)

July 19, 2016 By Travis Baker

5 Reasons You Need to Focus on Content Creation

If I had a nickel for every time I heard, read or said, “Content is King”…well let’s say the pool in my backyard would not be stamped “Disney.” I mean content creation is important, right?

Marketers keep wandering around in circles reminding each other that content is king, but we haven’t really explained why we say that to our customers. We just accept it, nod to each other satisfied, go off and create. Create what? You guessed it more content.

First, let us back up a bit. What is content creation? Content is case studies, blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers, photographs; pretty much anything you create and put on your website falls under the heading of “content”.

So why should you as a business owner invest time and money to create content? Why is it King? Below are five reasons you need to be creating right now.

SEO: Creating great digestible content that is valuable to your customers is great for SEO. Your content strategy is your SEO strategy. Great content brings social shares, which the search engines like, which push you up the rankings, meaning that more people visit your site. Hopefully that yields more customers.

Knowledge Leader: this is the end game of many content creators. You can show potential customers and prospects that you know what you are talking about and that you can solve their problem. The content that you create can provide proof that you are a master at what you do.

Humanity: Good content helps you communicate with your audience in a more human way. As we know people work with people that they like, so content creation is a great way to show your likeable side. In addition, if you are in a “boring industry” you can demonstrate your humanity and bring a little personality to your company.

Differentiation: In addition, great content can help you differentiate your offerings from your competitors. With great content creation, you can demonstrate your unique selling proposition and show how you solve your customer’s problems better than your competition.

Value: Great content helps your customers, before they are your customers. It gives them value, before they buy your product or services. People are much more likely to buy from someone who provides them value before a sell then someone who insists on all values after they “sign on the line which is dotted”.

Want to learn more about how content creation can help your business? Sign up for our newsletter where we talk all about marketing goodness like content creation.

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