Top 5 B2B Marketing Trends of 2019
2019 has proven so far to be another great year for marketing. Take a look at top trends you could capitalize on that are dominating the field.
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Using Marketing to Manage Business Growing Pains
Marketing is an investment in the long-term success of your business — but like any investment, how and when we engage in it heavily impacts ROI. One of the reasons continuous year-round marketing is worth the money, especially during busy or difficult times, is because it helps us transition more smoothly through business growing pains. With a consistent marketing strategy, companies can better manage lead flow, employee turnover, and expansion when it matters most.
Manage Lead Flow With Marketing Strategy
Continuous marketing, even during busy times, prevents “feast or famine” business cycles and the stress that comes with it. When lead flow is more predictable, it’s easier to make additional investments in new facilities, equipment, and talent with less risk and worry. For businesses contending with the challenges associated with new growth, this particular benefit is key to making that growth sustainable and retaining loyal customers through difficult transitions.
A well thought-out marketing strategy also gives businesses the opportunity to plan ahead instead of trying to market from a place of panic, which is typically when you have the least amount of time and resources to allocate to marketing. Better planning results in better execution — making it possible to increase the return on your marketing investment simply by making it a part of regular business operations.
Another way that continuous marketing eases business growing pains is by streamlining the sales process and increasing the confidence of sales staff. Updated, well-targeted marketing materials can save your sales team time, and helps them take advantage of unique opportunities in the moment. It also enhances their communication with individuals who are more visual than auditory in the way they learn new information. By better accommodating the way potential prospects want to communicate with your sales staff, we can shorten sales cycles and improve the morale of your sales team.
Manage Recruitment With Marketing Strategy
Marketing for recruitment is very different from marketing for lead generation, and both are necessary to adequately manage business growing pains. This means that even if your business already has a handle on your lead generation marketing, it’s not time to get complacent. You will also need to put together a solid strategy for recruitment in order to manage the increase in workflow that will likely result from successful lead generation marketing.
Hammering out a marketing strategy for recruitment before crunch time hits is key to funneling qualified team members to your business as needed, without suffering through periods of being under or overstaffed. Just like lead generation marketing, giving yourself time to develop a recruitment strategy improves the ROI of your investment in talent acquisition, streamlines overhead, and avoids sinking resources into failed campaigns.
Continuous recruitment marketing during busy times also helps increase your capacity to take on new customers — but finding the right talent is often easier said than done. When competition in the labor market is high, businesses need to work that much harder to reach the talent they desperately need. The smarter and more calculated you are in creating and executing a recruitment marketing strategy, the more sustainably you can grow even when economic barriers and labor market conditions create roadblocks.
Business growing pains are a natural part of building a successful company, but that doesn’t mean we have to completely surrender to them. To learn more about using marketing to manage growth, connect with a 360 Direct team member via our Contact page.
How To Make Your Next Marketing Campaign Succeed
Launching a marketing campaign doesn’t have to be a nail-biter. Set yourself up for success by covering fundamental campaign bases using a little preliminary market research, tactical coordination, and strategy.
Employ Multiple Tactics To Achieve Your Goal
Every campaign needs to start with a focused goal. Not all of your marketing campaigns will necessarily have the goal of immediately resulting in new sales. Many are designed to help prospects a little further down the sales funnel, making them easier to convert. Motivate your prospects to move down that funnel by providing value to them at each touchpoint using a clear call to action. For instance, if your goal is growing your email newsletter, offer coupons or free downloads when they provide their email address. Or, if you’re trying to get their emails in store, offer them a free Custom Water bottle and the coupon, as well as your brand logo, can be on the water bottle’s label. Nearly all customers love freebies so using them is a great way to attract attention.
Whatever your goal is, you aren’t likely to reach it without taking a multi-tactical approach to a marketing campaign. It can take up to seven touchpoints for a lead to convert, meaning a one-off radio ad or single sponsored social media post will not generate overwhelming results on their own. Instead, stay in front of your audience with a series of corresponding tactics for better total ROI.
Know The Audience Of Your Marketing Campaign
The success of a marketing campaign can be dictated by how well you know your target audience. Narrow down your demographic and craft language, imagery, and offers that speak to their needs and values. The preliminary research is worth the effort, because dollars spent on anything ineffective is still wasted resources, even if the marketing tactic is low cost. To ensure your marketing efforts aren’t going to waste you’ll want to deeply understand your audience insights and play to the requirements and behavior of your existing customers.
In that same vein, choosing ad platforms and mediums that your audience frequents or will respond positively to is essential to the success of a marketing campaign. The tactics you choose depend entirely on how your target market wants to be approached, which may require mixing both traditional and digital marketing tactics in the same campaign.
Follow Through On Your Marketing Campaign Tactics
It isn’t enough to simply execute your tactics and expect your leads to convert. Following through with your marketing tactics requires coordinating each one in a timely way, tracking them, and touching base with new leads at the end of the campaign.
Following through also means staying the course. Don’t change tactics mid campaign, even if results are slow to trickle in. Remember that it takes several marketing touchpoints for a lead to convert, so don’t get discouraged by low response rates early on. Wrapping up before your marketing campaign has run its course only deprives you of useful data.
Whenever possible, measure the efficacy of your tactics by checking analytics, recording the number of inquiries received, or emails collected. This valuable insight can be used for a retargeting campaign, or an entirely new campaign down the line. The more data we have, the greater our chances for success.
For more information on how to craft a successful marketing campaign, connect with an expert here.
What Makes Content Shareable?
How can we be sure that the blogs, newsletters, videos, and case studies we produce will get any traffic? In marketing, ROI is everything, and time and talent spent on ineffective content creation is money down the drain. The good news is, valuable, shareable content doesn’t have to go viral, it just has to connect with the target audience, and be both immediately and continuously useful to them.
Shareable Content Is Evergreen Or Topical
What is “evergreen” content? It’s digital marketing in the form of blogs, case studies, white papers, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, videos, or Q&As that is perpetually relevant long past its publication date. Evergreen content is indefinitely reusable and recyclable, increasing its total ROI over time. Evergreen content can also be indefinitely linked to or referenced in new content, providing additional context and educational information for the audience.
Beyond its recyclability, shareable evergreen content with smart SEO strategy deployed throughout will continue to build your digital footprint with Google over time as more visitors accumulate.
Topical content, though not evergreen, is also powerful when deployed in a timely way. Marketers can take advantage of current events or new technology featured by mainstream media to increase their own visibility for a finite amount of time. As long as your contribution to the conversation is relevant to your business and your target market, providing your business’ take on a hot topic can pull in a wider audience for a finite amount of time.
Shareable Content Is Practical
In a study by the NYT Insight Group, 94% of of content consumers assessed the usefulness of the content before sharing it. Shareable content is such because it provides the target audience with immediate value, prompting the audience to spread it around to others who might also find it helpful. So what makes content useful or practical? Shareable content provides action items, tips, or tools that require little additional research and exploration. Product demos, video tutorials, reports, or step-by-step guides are great examples of this.
Additionally, shareable content needs to be industry-relevant in order for it to draw in an audience with the potential to convert. Instead of producing content you think will go viral amongst general internet users, create content that your specific target audience is most likely to appreciate.
Shareable Content is Easily Digested
If a given article or web page doesn’t immediately provide internet users with information relevant to their search query, they are likely to exit that content without having read or viewed the majority of it, which doesn’t bode well for your marketing ROI or conversion rate.
To create well-organized content, use bullet points, lists, explanatory headings, and bold or otherwise visually isolate important takeaways. Concise, organized content helps your audience to quickly glean more of the information you want them to know about your product, company, or industry.
For larger pieces of content like in-depth blogs, articles, white papers, or case studies, highlight and organize the most valuable nuggets of information with descriptive headings, chapters, or content pages. For the right target audience conducting technical research into a product or service, they will expect to spend more time with your content and appreciate content organization that makes their research less tedious.
Bottom line: the more time a digital content consumer invests in your content, the likelier they are to find it useful, leading to a higher number of shares and exposure for your business.
Creating shareable content doesn’t have to be rocket science, but it should always have a strategy behind it. For more information on maximizing the efficacy and ROI of your digital content, connect with one of our content marketing experts.
SEO: What It Is & How To Build It
We’ll start with the bad news first: there is no silver bullet tactic for getting found on Google. No one can become searchable overnight with a single widget, tool, or paid service. The good news? Leveraging Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the organic process by which a business can increase the number of unique visitors to their website using keywords, can absolutely help the right people find your business over time. Many companies specialize in SEO, for example, someone like Victorious covers SEO for a variety of business types. There are also companies who specialise in SEO for more niche businesses. For example, MarijuanaSEO are the cannabis seo specialists and they focus on marketing for cannabusinesses.
What is SEO Strategy And Why Do We Need Keywords?
SEO strategy is how marketers make Google your friend. For example, when a web user searches for “Milwaukee pet grooming,” all web pages with a keyword strategy for that search term will pop up in their results. Google’s bots use keywords to find and index your digital content, raising the SEO, or search rankings, of the highest quality, keyword-relevant content. What keywords a marketer chooses depends entirely on the business and their target market.
Unfortunately, legitimate SEO building does not provide instant gratification. With a multi-faceted SEO strategy, it can take several weeks to months to see a substantial impact on your web traffic. This is because Google’s bots (known as crawlers) need time to find new web content and index it. SEO building should be a process that marketers engage in continuously, adding new relevant content over time using keywords the target market is most likely to search for. This is why, if this is something that you are unsure about, then it might be a good idea for you to check out something like this seo audit guide.
Tactics For Building Your Website’s SEO Using Keywords
Choose Keywords Wisely. Simply going with the most popular search terms for your industry may or may not be the best strategy for you. Your chosen keywords should depend on the kinds of content your target wants and the words they use to describe it, whether that’s layman’s terms or technical seo vocabulary.
Write Useful Content. Fill your web pages with informative, helpful content, and intersperse your keyword naturally throughout. Google’s algorithms are designed to punish websites that try to game the system, or awkwardly stuff keywords into irrelevant surrounding content.
Strategically Insert Keywords. We can place keywords in more places than just the plain text featured on a web page. When used in web page headings and URLs, those strategically placed keywords help flag Google’s crawlers in finding the keyword-relevant content featured on the page itself.
Label Your Images. Marketers can make images function like SEO building tools by labeling them using alt tags. Search engines won’t otherwise register images as relevant content if we don’t tell them what they depict using alt tags.
Submit A Sitemap. We can tell the search engine which pages you want it to crawl by submitting a sitemap. This ensures that Google is able to find your newly written content more effectively, and properly index everything else on your site.
Keep in mind that SEO building is a marathon, not a sprint. Results won’t happen overnight, but measurable improvement is possible with the right keywords and the right strategy in place. For more info on SEO and how to build yours, contact us.
What’s Your Marketing Strategy in 2018?
By now, you already have your fiscal budget in place and have cemented all your major business goals for 2018. You likely have a good idea of how many new employees you’ll need to add to your workforce this year. Major business goals or new equipment investments for the year have been discussed and agreed upon. You have sales and revenue goals. Business leaders spend a lot of time and energy in creating their strategy and goals for the year. Whatever your goals are, if you run a contractor business, you might find a use for consultancy services (visit SGI here) in helping you to achieve those goals, success and further your business’s development.
But what is your marketing strategy for 2018?
Let’s Back Up. First, What IS a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy outlines the approach you want to take to achieve marketing goals and reach your target market. Your strategy can focus on customer retention and cross selling, reaching new audiences, or a myriad of other things. Your marketing strategy works hand in hand with your business goals. After all, marketing encourages business growth – your strategy and business goals determine in what ways you want to focus that growth. You should always keep your goals at the forefront of your mind so that it can help you to drive forwards in your journey. Before deciding on your final marketing strategy, you may want to have a look at these 16 lessons from Russell Brunson (a successful entrepreneur) to get some inspiration about how you can create an efficient and lasting business as he has. Having something to work towards could help you to reach your goal faster.
Once you have a concrete understanding of the type of strategy that makes the most sense for your business goals, that informs all your marketing activities, so they are all working in harmony towards the same objectives.
It can be tempting to say your business doesn’t need a marketing strategy if you’ve never had one before. After all, you are doing fine – growing even – and your business uses traditional sales staff to meet business goals. And a skilled sales team can certainly grow a business. But if you are growing now, imagine what your business potential could be if you gave your sales team better tools! Marketi
Your business goals are a destination, and your marketing strategy is the vehicle for getting there. Sure, without one, you can try to move in the general direction you want to go, but you may not be taking the most efficient route. Twenty years ago, if you were driving to an unfamiliar destination, you needed a roadmap or atlas. Now, nearly everyone uses a GPS or navigation app because they are more effective and efficient predictors of traffic, construction, and other obstacles in the way of getting where you need to go. Roadmaps and atlases still work, but if you want to get to that new destination on time, most people would opt for the option that gives them the greatest advantage.
From Creating a Strategy to Activation
Look at your current situation and goals and assess where your greatest potential lies. Do you often hear from new customers, “I never knew about you guys!” Or do your current customers say, “Oh, I didn’t know you could do that too!” Those are all starting points when deciding where to focus your strategy.
You likely already have an idea of where your company needs to grow, but you may not have the time necessary to create a marketing strategy and implement it. If that’s the case, outsourcing your marketing can be a way to bridge the gap. On the other hand, you may have a clear direction mind, but you lack the manpower to activate your strategy and carry out tactics, 360 Direct has a program for that. We call it our “Hands and Feet” program, where we put your marketing ideas into action.
Other times, a business leader is so entrenched in the company that an outside perspective is useful or even necessary to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your brand’s image. 360 Direct offers a Business Marketing Diagnostic for cases like that — with no obligation to purchase any other services.
No matter where your starting point is on the road to maximizing your brand power, consulting an expert strategist can help point you in the right direction. Make the most of your 2018 by giving your team a clear path to succeed in meeting their goals with a marketing strategy.
Lead Generation Starts in Marketing, Not Sales
What percent of leads do your salespeople close? That number varies from company to company, but a lot of it depends on the quality of leads your sales people have. Traditionally, companies have bought list, mingled at networking events, and, of course, pounded the pavement to get prospects further into the purchasing funnel. But if you are still doing that, you may not be using their time the most effectively.
The way people consume information has changed drastically, even in just the past few years. As a result, there’s been a dramatic shift towards inbound marketing to complement your sales strategy. After all, who’s more likely to convert — the company who searched for a product you provide, found your website, read your blog, then called you, or the company whose contact information you purchased and then called out of the blue a few times a year?
And what would you rather your salespeople spend their time doing? Having cold conversations with companies who may not know about you or need your product, or following up with prospects that have already expressed interest? Give your sales team a competitive advantage by allowing your marketing department to first warm up their lead bank.
Save Money By Marketing for Lead Generation
Companies that generate leads through their marketing department spend less per lead than those that leverage their sales team as their sole relationship building mechanism. The cost of social media advertising, creating and sustaining a website, producing email newsletters and digital content is less expensive than the cost of time going door to door, making cold calls, networking membership fees, or attending events because it takes a lot more time and energy to educate leads to the point that they are interested in doing business with you without unobtrusive inbound marketing doing all of that work for you. Couple it with some other strategies, such as personalized promotional pricing and other potential deals, and you can have a lot of work done for you very quickly.
Traditional sales strategies force a company to waste its resources on attempting to build connections that more often than not, just don’t convent into sales. In contrast, an effective inbound marketing strategy automates the relationship building process and allows an already warm-ish lead to learn about your business on their own terms, making them much more receptive to your marketing efforts altogether. As a result, starting with a group of targeted, higher quality leads and allowing them a choice in how they engage with your content helps companies to spend less upfront per lead and allocate less time towards building relationships with leads who won’t end up converting. If you are struggling with generating leads then it might be worth checking out these 50 ways to generate leads. That way you will never run out of ideas!
Boost Sales Team Morale and Customer Relationships
Shifting the burden of lead generation from a sales team to a program like the 360 Direct marketing team doesn’t mean your star sales staff will sit idle. In reality, they will spend more productive hours nurturing warm leads with a faster sales process and higher conversion rate from beginning to end. More efficient sales conversion allows your employees to leverage their unique communications skills for success, rather experiencing discouragement and burn-out that is common with the traditional sales beat.
In addition to better conversion rates and more efficient sales processes, companies that begin their lead generation strategies with their marketing departments also benefit from a better brand image. Unfortunately, traditional sales strategies that require sales persons to engage awkwardly with cold leads often leave the impression of a “manipulative” or “slimy” interaction. No one wants to feel coerced into buying a product or service they don’t want, and saving your elevator speeches for the folks successfully funneled into your lead bank via targeted marketing instead allows your potential customers to view your sales team as helpful and educational on products or services they already have an interest in. The resultant positive customer relationships can increase brand loyalty and the likelihood of repeat purchases.
The total benefits of employing marketing and sales strategies in tandem are many, and as inbound marketers, we are passionate about creating action plans that work smarter, not harder for our customers. For more information on using marketing to retool your overall conversion strategy, connect with one of our experts via our Contact page.
Why Marketing Design Matters
It’s easy to neglect updating the marketing design in your materials. Many times, companies use the same design for their marketing materials and just plug in updated specs and product information.
Over time, it’s easy to fall into complacency and lose that critical eye towards pieces that have been working for you. After all, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Many companies are satisfied as long as the information is correct. Unfortunately, that’s not enough! There are a lot of companies competing for your prospective customers’ attention, and with our shrinking attention spans, individuals are becoming accustomed to making snap judgments. Your product information could be saying you are leading your industry, but your marketing materials may be telling a different story.
Print Materials
Most B2B companies understand the continued need for print materials in their marketing mix, but even those marketing staples have evolved to incorporate updated marketing design. People now spend less time than ever digesting what’s in front of them – about seven seconds! Gone are the days when individuals sit and read large chunks of text they are handed or receive in the mail. It’s all about bullet points, sub headers, and an appealing design. So, bare this in mind whenever you need any Promotional Signs or any other marketing materials printed for your business
If you are taking your updated information and plugging it into the same brochure, sell sheet, or postcard template your company has been using for years, your materials likely aren’t as effective as they could be. People have complained about the amount of advertising they are exposed to since 1759, and the advertising clutter continues to grow annually. There are two ways to increase your odds of prospective clients paying attention.
- Get to the point. Companies have to assume their materials are only given a cursory glance before a reader decides to put it aside or to delve in and read more. Give your readers the information they are looking for as quickly as possible in a straightforward manner. It doesn’t matter if you’re using 858graphics banners, leaflets or flyers, you need the key information to be bold and eye-catching so that readers know what they’re reading about before they have read any of the fine print. Provide easy options for them to get more in-depth information, should the want it. Your layout should be easy to follow; colours and font should be crisp and clear.
- Get creative. How many postcards and flyers do decision makers receive in year? A month? A day? Make sure yours are standing out and not getting lost in the shuffle. This doesn’t mean gimmicky. Some well-placed images, a less common size, or a memorable and fitting cutout or insert could be all it takes.
Once establishing a creative and unique design for your materials, use a printing perth service to ensure your marketing pieces are produced to the best standard and quality. Even with a robust print material campaign, most prospective clients will check you out online before calling to make an appointment or purchase. Which leads us to…
Websites
Even if you don’t know anything about the technical aspects of websites, you know an outdated website when you use one. It’s hard to navigate, it’s difficult to use on phones, and overall takes a long time to find specific information when you have a question. Companies that continue to have a website that is not “mobile friendly” are immediately creating an unnecessary barrier for prospective clients, since 42% of B2B decision makers use their mobile device for research.
In addition to the mobile friendly aspect, load times and content layout dramatically impact how long a prospective customer stays on your site. In fact, if your load time is more than three seconds, many people could leave your site before ever seeing the content. (Remember that 7 second attention span?) Of course, outdated information is sure to be noticed. As prospective customers gain information on their options, they are sure to check you out online. Make sure they like what they see! Current marketing design practices for websites include ensuring your site is responsive and contains relevant images and videos to further engage prospective clients.
Many companies find themselves stuck with a webmaster who built their site but doesn’t do great updates or are unwilling to keep up with best practices. This can make it necessary to bring in someone like Apica Systems to do load testing to see just what needs updating to keep things functional. The task of building a new site can seem daunting and even impossible. That said, it is well worth it to invest in a responsive website that will be easy to update and make changes to in the future. The internet will continue to evolve; if you are already behind, it will only get worse until you make that investment.
Regardless of what industry you are in, the design of your marketing materials matters. Your marketing design is as important as the machinery or materials you use for your products. You wouldn’t go years without considering an update or evaluating best practices, and the same should be said for your marketing efforts.
If you are concerned your marketing materials don’t align with today’s best practices, contact us for a free discovery appointment, where we will evaluate your current materials looking for opportunities – with no commitment from you.
How Businesses Can Find Content
Savvy businesses understand the need for current, relevant content for their followers. Whether it’s blog posts, email blasts, or social media posts, businesses need content to present to their followers and keep them engaged and interested in the brand. Developing a content strategy, on the other hand, is often easier said than done. The first hurdle is determining what is newsworthy to your followers, and how to find the news within your organization.
You can’t write about everything, every time.
If each email you send looks like a rundown on all the products or services you offer, there’s some room to grow. Anyone can look at your website to get that information! If the information in your emails remains the same, what is the incentive to continue opening the emails and clicking on the content? The same can be said for social media channels. If the information being presented is more like catalog listings, there is little reason to continue to actively follow your organization. That’s not what you want!
These followers have already made the emotional connection and investment to like your page, sign up for your email, or click on your blog. They are asking for deeper engagement. Don’t give them a catalog listing, give them something to dig into! Narrow your focus and provide rich content on a specific product or news item.
How do you find your focus?
Your company likely has several offerings or areas of focus. How do you choose what to focus on? You want to choose what is most relevant to your company and the industry. A newsworthy item could be a new product or service you are introducing. Time sensitive information, like a new award or an upcoming trade show you are attending, is also an example of something you want to ensure your followers hear about.
Of course, you may not have breaking news on a weekly or monthly basis. That doesn’t mean you have nothing to talk about, though! This is a chance to highlight your company’s offerings with content that differentiates you from your competition. Don’t regurgitate information readily available on your website, brochure, or catalog. Add value to your content.
If you have great relationships with your clients, write a case-study that showcases an instance where you really solved a major business pain for them. This kind of piece can require some legwork and elbow grease, but can really move perspective clients. Work with your client and get their permission before embarking on this path. Ensure that you will not share any proprietary information, trade secrets, or other competitive knowledge. Instead, focus on what problem you solve for them. Is their process faster now? Their turnaround time shorter? Are you saving them money, making their products safer?
Are your products doing good in the community? Create a human interest piece by focusing on how your products benefit the community. If your products or services don’t lend themselves to any feel-good stories, what about the rest of your company? If you have any community programs or service projects, let the public know what you are doing!
Lastly, highlight an existing product or service. The key here is to offer more information than what people would be able to read in your brochure or catalog. Companies can use this opportunity to address any common misconceptions, FAQs, or to focus on largely unknown or underutilized features.
When selecting the product or service to highlight, there are a few things to keep in mind.
DO
- Select an area of your company that you excel in.
- Choose a line that you want to expand in, and have the capacity to do so.
- Focus on a product or service with a good ROI for your company.
DON’T
- Pick a product or service you are discontinuing or trying to get out of. (Unless you are highlighting a sale!)
- Write about a product or service that you don’t have the capacity to expand in.
- Highlight something with a poor ROI for your company. If your content drives new business, you want it to be business you want.
Strategize when to release your content.
Once you have content, decide when to release it. Some content is evergreen, but if your product has a cyclical lifestyle, it’s important to think about the timing of your release.
Releasing your content during a high volume time, when your product or service is used the most, will hit followers at a time when they are actively thinking about your product more and experiencing a business pain. You’ll be more likely to grab their attention, but less likely to make an immediate sale, since they will already have providers in place for that cycle. On the other hand, if you have a feel for when your target audience is reassessing their processes and considering new providers, that’s a great time to have deeper engagement with them via a well-thought piece of content.
Quality content is not a continuous sales pitch, regurgitating information from your website, brochure, and catalogs, and you don’t necessarily need to offer sales to get your target audience’s attention. Your content strategy should use what your organization is already doing to generate relevant, engaging content that will keep your followers interested in your company. 360 Direct is a Milwaukee and Chicago Marketing Company. We can help you execute these strategies!