Marketing Blog

May 10, 2016 By Travis Baker

Acting Like a Person in Marketing Improves Engagement

Newsflash, right?

Have you ever thought about how ridiculous the phrase B2B is? Businesses don’t make purchase decisions. People in those businesses do. And guess what? It is people selling to those people.

But for some reason we want to stand behind that corporate identity. So how can you break free of that and actually engage with your customers?

Remember people buy from people they like. And the first part of that equation is being a person.

Personality: The worst content is produced as a cold, faceless business. Why would anyone want to do business with them? Even huge financial institutions have come around to it to a certain extent.

I want to know that there is a human on the other end of the computer, or pen, so let some personality out. I know this may be heresy to some people, but gulp, act like you are a person!

It is way more engaging. Your personality should be consistent for each content creator and it should line up with your brand identity, but there are wide parameters within that to act like you have a pulse.

Admit Mistakes: Everyone has wanted to pull back an email after hitting the send button. But you know what humans make mistakes and it’s ok. You get way more credit from your audience by admitting mistakes then by hiding, hoping it goes away. Trust me someone is going to spot it.

It feels genuine to your customers while building trust. I know it can be hard to apologize, but you have a much better chance of building equity with your customers and prospects by just admitting mistakes.

People Focused: As you communicate, in whatever your chosen medium, make sure that you have an idea of what type of person you are talking to.

I find it very useful to construct a full audience personae for whom I want to talk to. Everything down to giving them a name, a family and how they consume media, where they went to school what street they live on. It is important that the more completely you can imagine who you are speaking to, the more effective your delivery becomes.
If you want some help with finding voice and developing content etc. Give us a shout.

May 2, 2016 By Travis Baker

Not Following Your Marketing Strategy is Burning Money

Let’s set that stack of cash on fire, is not a particularly sound business idea. Even if you are a VC. However, you and a lot of other businesses maybe doing exactly that.

What do you mean, you say? I hardly ever burn money, except you know when lighting those fine cohibas, of course.

I think companies burn money everyday. Usually because someone gets an idea to pursue some new marketing tactic, whether joining a new social network, making a video or going to a trade show. They do this without considering how it ties into their strategy. Or they don’t even have an overall marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong tactics are fun and rewarding, but think how much more powerful they could be if they all functioned within a coherent strategy?

How to put down the matches.

The first step is to explore your marketing strategy. Does it support your overall business goal and mission? If you don’t have a marketing strategy, hmm maybe now is a time to formulate one.

Your need buy-in from sales and from management, and of course marketing, on the goals and how the strategy gets you to them.

The second step is to do a tactic audit. What tactics are we pursuing and do they support the overall strategy. It is good to take a long hard look at all of them and cut with a sharp knife. Kill the ones that don’t adhere closely to what you want to accomplish.

Figure out where your customers are, where should you be going, I know Gary Vaynerchuk loves Snapchat, but if you targeting seasoned CEO’s are they on that platform?

The only reason you should be pursuing any tactic is to connect with your customers and give value. If they don’t see it and don’t respond to it, did you even create it? Deep, I know.

The next step is to do a content audit: What do we have, what format is it in and most importantly how can we re-purpose to use in the tactics that we are pursuing?

One of my favorite words in marketing is recycled. Let’s make that video a blog, now let’s use an image and use it for Instagram, can we change it to an infographic as well. Awesome!

What type of content do your customers respond to, have you checked? If not, why not?

Let’s all make a pledge to stop burning money and stick to the strategy.

If you need help with your marketing strategy let us know, maybe we can help.

February 15, 2016 By Travis Baker

#1 Content Mistake Made in Manufacturing and Industrial Marketing

Think about how you create your manufacturing or industrial marketing content. How does it start?

Does this sound familiar?

1 “Hey we have a new product. We need to create a piece of literature about it.”

2 “Sales are lagging in sector “Y.” Let’s write an e-book about it to push sales.”

Now, these seem like reasonable requests, right?

Sure they do, but there is one problem. Yes, we want to promote and sell our new products. Yes, we might need to prop up sales in a faltering division.

However, the entire premise of the question is flawed. These requests are focused inward. They focus on your company and what you want.

Do you think your customers care about what you want? Quick two-word answer.

Hint: It rhymes with Bell Sew.

What your customers care about is how your solution or service can help them.

So look to them to see what they want. Then have your sales and marketing efforts reflect that.

“Look to who is using your solution and why they choose it over the competition.”

Let’s go back to our initial request and see how we can formulate our questions to make them more about your customers.

1. “Hey we have a new product that solves this problem for our customer. We need to create a piece of literature about it.”

2. “Sales are lagging in sector Y. That’s a shame because marketing doesn’t know that we solve this problem for our customers. Let’s write an e-book about it so our clients know about it.

The first step is to look at your products and see what problems they solve for your customers. mistake in manufacturing and industrial marketing.png

Identify the problem.

Try to find a few problems your product or service might solve. Hopefully, you will find a few. Now work with your team to find the strongest one. The team should consist of at the minimum a representative from sales, marketing, and engineering.

Want to make this easier?

If you have customers that you have a good relationship with, consider calling them and talking to them about why they chose your solution.

Want to make it way easier? You might already have some of that information stored in your CRM.

Got your solution to the problem? Great.

Identify your target:

What customers have this problem? Is this issue something to which the CEO of a company can relate? Or the CFO? Or is it something that is more closely aligned to the operations manager?

This is a big question because this will gear how you create your content and your message. Continue to look outward throughout this entire process to make your content as compelling as possible.

Unique Selling Propositions:

Ok, you what problem your customers face and you know who your customer is.

Why does this solution to your client’s problem work better than your competitions? Is it faster, easier, is it a complete solution? You need to be able to differentiate and identify why your solution is clearly superior.

Benefits: Now focus on the supporting benefit to your customer. Why your solution is better than the other. Why it solves the problem that they have.

Format: What format is best for your content? Is it an e-book, video, or infographic? What format will have the most value to your customers? What stage are they in the decision making process?

Want more information about inbound or content marketing? Learn how to strate your own inbound campaign with our checklist.

February 26, 2014 By Travis Baker

Win More Business by Discovering Your USP

Do you buy brand name sand? How about sugar? Most people, me included, decide to buy these commodities based on one thing.

Price.

That’s really the only thing that matters, because aren’t all sugars pretty much the same?

However, competing on price is often not the best strategy. There is always someone willing to do it cheaper and then you are left scrambling to find some actual benefit..

Wouldn’t it be best to find the benefit first and sell on that? I think so too, that’s why I advise clients to find their USP or Unique Selling Position.

The USP is what makes you different than your competitors and the reason why someone buys from you vs. them.

Do you have the fastest shipping, the quickest customer service, the best selection? Do you cater to a niche market or do you have the fastest turn time?

These are all examples of USP’s. If you want to find yours you need to follow the steps below.

Ask

Do you know why people pick you vs. your competitors?

No?

Great, then you have a golden opportunity to talk to your customers. Ask your current customers why they buy from you. You can do this through an online survey (I like survey monkey), ask them directly or ask them to fill out a paper survey in your store.

You probably want to give them some incentive for doing this like taking them out to lunch, discounts cards or a giveaway.

Hint: I find it is usually more effective to give everyone something small then to have one big prize that enters them into a drawing.

While it may be daunting to ask people why they choose you vs. a competitor, their answers will strengthen your strategy.

Also look closely at your business and ask yourself, what would you like as a customer? What do you like being able to offer your customers? What makes you proud to say we do “x” better than anybody else?

Analysis

Ok, so you have all of your feedback from your customers and your own ideas. Most likely everyone did not give you the same answer. That would be way to easy.

However, you should be able to put answers into buckets. Say customer service is a bucket, service times is a bucket, selection is a bucket. These are just broad categories that meet your target markets needs.

Group like answers in the buckets and then try to find the two or three strongest reasons people chose your business. For instance, if a lot of people like you for your selection and your hours, move forward with those as a preliminary USP.

The next step in Analysis is to look at your competitors in your space. What is their message? Visit their stores, talk to their customers, examine their websites and literature.

Try to find out how they are trying to compete against your business.

Tailor

The next step is to take all that you have learned about why people like your business, what you like about your business and what your competitors are not doing. Now, take all of that information and distill it down to a USP.

Somewhere in that idea you have what makes your company win business.

What is it? Do you own the flower store with the best selection? Are you the CPA that specializes in city audits? Are you the esthetician with the most convenient hours?

Something makes your company the best.

It may take some time and some trial and error, but working on your USP will prove to be very beneficial in the long run.

Keep in mind that your USP is different from an advertisement or a tagline. It is something internally that is going to guide you to create all the external messages that you have.

It will help form your mission statement, your external messages, your taglines, your brand.

Discover your Unique Selling Position and use it to dominate your market and win more business.

If you are interested in talking more about marketing strategy, web design or really anything to do with marketing, please contact the author at travis@366Marketing.com or visit us at 366Marketing.com.

Note: This post was originally posted on the York County Chamber Blog

February 20, 2014 By Travis Baker

Don’t have a Marketing Strategy? You Are Throwing Your Money Away

The bad news first. Even if you have a great website, and have the best advertising and a kick butt PR writer, you will fail with your marketing if you don’t have a strategy.

“Wait,” you ask.

If I have these awesome components, why do I need a strategy? They are all on separate channels (print, web, online, offline, etc…) what does it matter if I don’t have a strategy?

Here is why.

Branding

It has to do with brand consistency. You need to have the same message across all of your channels because your audience pays attention to not just one of your channels. Remember, your brand is not just your logo; every way that you touch your prospects or stakeholders is part of your brand.

At a trade show your prospect may read an article about your company in a magazine, see an ad, visit your website and then stop by your booth. If all of those messages aren’t consistent, your prospect will experience a disconnect and not be as willing to interact with you or move further down the sale funnel.

Integration

Integration is very important in marketing. The entire message must be integrated and not have any dissonance within your message or between your company and your message.

For instance, if you tell everybody that you are the leader in green technology for material handling and you make pallets out of Giant Pandas, people might perceive a bit of dissonance between your stated mission and your actions.

More than the Sum

If you have a consistent message across all of your mediums, the sum is greater than the parts. They say that if you want someone to remember your company you have to have them see your message 27 times. How many times do people have to be “touched” by your company before they remember you?

All of this to say that what gives you a consistent message is a strategy. If you have a strategy already in place then you know where you want to go. As strategy implies a goal and dictates all of your marketing efforts. It allows you to know where you are going and helps keep your marketing consistent.

Want to talk more about marketing strategy and get some actionable advice tailored to your company? Contact us and we will give you an hour of consulting for free! I even pay for the coffee.

January 24, 2014 By Travis Baker

Measuring the Return on a Trade Show

This post originally appeared on our MHM website

You spend a lot on trade shows. A lot. I mean you spend at least 5k to 10k on just the opportunity to use their concrete. So for that you need a return.

But there are always nagging thoughts.

Is there a better place to spend your money? Does your website need work (if so, I know a guy)? Does your sales staff need more training? Can you get more return from face to face meetings that don’t happen surrounded by your competitors?

If you are on the fence about a show here are a few ways you can look at returns that you may be missing.

Return on Investment. OK if you can actually sell product on the floor that is a great way to figure out ROI. However if you don’t, you have to figure out another way to value leads you garner from the show.

Here a simple equation you can use. Take your average sales, divide them by the number of qualified leads and divide that by the raw leads. Then you can find out how much each lead is worth.

Return on Relationship. How much does it cost your sales people to meet with a decision maker at a business. If they can meet with 5 of your regular customers and and build that relationship and move 25 other down the sales funnel, why would you not?

Return on Objectives. There are other objectives to trade shows then meeting with leads. There is meeting with journalists. There is the above mentioned advance current leads down the sales funnel. What are other objectives that you might have? More branding? Getting more awareness of your product? Obtaining more signups for your newsletter.

So it all sounds great. Now how do you get more people at your booth to pursue these goals? I suggest pre-show marketing.

Want to learn more about it? Contact material handling marketing for a free hour long consultation about your trade show marketing.

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