How to Create a Successful Marketing Event for Your Business

If you truly want to draw attention to your business and potentially attract a whole new variety of customers, there are few better ways to accomplish this than with a great marketing event. Regardless of the type of industry that you’re in, a marketing event is a great way to get a hold of some people who wouldn’t normally have your business on their radar. To accomplish this, however, you need to keep a few key things in mind.

Go Beyond the Sale

Sales executive giving brochures at an exhibition

One of the most important things to remember about a successful marketing event is that you need to give people an experience that is truly worth leaving their homes for. Getting a person to open up your direct mail material is one thing – after all, you’ve sent it directly to them and they don’t even have to get in the car in order to open it. Getting them to come to your physical location, possibly for the first time, is something else entirely.

Consider a marketing event that a bookstore might have. Instead of just holding a blowout sale (as a customer can typically find similar prices online if they look hard enough), a bookstore might hold a signing with a famous author. Suddenly, you’ve given those people a reason to actually come into the store, especially if the author isn’t one who makes local appearances very often.

Once all of these people are in your store, then you can hit them with sales and other promotions in an attempt to increase revenue. Simply offering discounted prices should never be the most enticing thing about the event that you’re throwing, as most people won’t find it a good enough reason to attend in the first place.

Set a Goal

Another one of the biggest things to remember when creating a successful marketing event is what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in the first place. Are you looking for a way to increase existing customer satisfaction and give back by way of a memorable experience? Or are you looking for a way to reach an entirely new market? The goal that you set at the outset will dictate every choice that you make thereafter.

Give Yourself a Way to Capture Contact Information

As with all marketing techniques, one of the major goals of a marketing event is to capture leads. After all, even if you’re just looking for a fun and exciting way to give back to your existing customer base, the chances are high that one or two of them might bring some friends along with them.

To truly take advantage of a marketing event, make sure that you’re giving yourself a built-in opportunity to capture contact information in the most efficient way possible. Even if it’s something as simple as giving people a chance to win fun door prizes if they fill out a contact information survey, you’ll need something to use when the event is over to keep in touch with all of the new people that you’ve attracted.

These are just a few of the tips that you can use to create a memorable and successful marketing event for your business that people won’t want to miss. If you continue to hold these events on a regular basis, you will have a great chance of reaching people who you may not have otherwise been able to get to without them.

The Quest for Quality Content in the Marketing World: Why the Need Isn’t Going Away and is Only Getting Bigger

If you have any type of Internet presence for your business at all, the chances are high you’re always searching for relevant, high-quality content to put out into the world on a regular basis. Quality content accomplishes a number of different goals. It allows you to maintain an active presence on the Web, to engage with your target audience, and to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. It also happens to be incredibly important for reasons that go above and beyond those — and will only get more and more integral to your strategy as time goes on.

The Google of it All

One of the major reasons why high-quality content is so important to your website, your blog, or your social media presence has to do with Google. Google is essentially the “be all, end all” way of getting recognized by your target audience in the digital age. If your blog appears near the top of the search results for relevant keywords, you can expect a huge boost in visitors (and ultimately revenue) as a result. Because of all this, quality content is important for one simple reason: Google thinks it is.

How High Quality Content Ultimately Benefits You

Even going above and beyond website traffic, the quest for quality content is one that ultimately benefits your business in a wide range of different ways. For starters, it forces you to stop thinking of your website visitors as users and to start thinking of them as real people. This is a great approach to have, as it puts you in a better position to connect with them in a meaningful way and to form a meaningful, loyal bond in return.

Secondly, striving to generate high-quality content online can be a great mentality to take with you into the offline world, too. If you use the same practices when generating offline content that you do for your online content — an emphasis on readable, relevant, and interesting materials — you can form the same meaningful connection with those you’re targeting via direct mail and other materials as you do with Internet users.

Ultimately, however, the quest for high-quality content means one thing: everybody wins. You aren’t “faking your way” into the position of a thought leader in your industry. You aren’t “tricking” your customers into thinking you know more than you really do.

You ARE a thought leader in the industry and you ARE a voice to be listened to. Google and similar companies that emphasize high-quality content are essentially performing the biggest magic trick of all — they’re slowly forcing businesses in all industries to become better at what they do on a daily basis. When you look at it from that perspective, it’s a position that’s certainly hard to argue with.

What a Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Looks Like Today

For small business owners, guerrilla marketing tactics have long been one of the best ways to get noticed in a crowded marketplace without breaking the proverbial piggy bank. The term “guerrilla,” in this instance, refers to a small team of professionals who are using unconventional or irregular tactics in their marketing campaigns, especially when compared to what larger organizations are doing.

At its core, guerrilla marketing is a way for businesses to promote themselves in a way that’s both unique and cost effective. These campaigns aren’t focused on shouting a marketing message from the highest rooftop. Instead, they’re designed to boldly attract the attention of customers in a way that’s hard to ignore.

The Definition of “Unconventional” is Constantly Changing

While guerrilla marketing, in general, has been around almost as long as traditional marketing, the form these campaigns take changes every so often. In the early days of the Internet, when most of the homes in the United States still had painfully slow dial-up connections, even just putting a video online would have been practically unheard of. Businesses that were able to get in on the viral video craze from the ground floor, however, experienced a tremendous amount of success. Of course, putting out a video on YouTube and hoping your audience discovers it is hardly grounds for a guerrilla campaign today. To truly stay in line with the spirit of the unconventional nature of these promotions, you now have to think bigger and more unique.

The Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns of Today

Modern guerrilla marketing campaigns are every bit as unconventional as their predecessors, but they generally take bigger and bolder risks when it comes to being noticed. Perhaps one of the most successful guerrilla campaigns of the last several years came during the promotion for the filmCloverfield. Directed by J.J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard, the film featured a mysterious monster of unknown origin ravaging New York City in the style of Godzilla movies from decades past.

What made this guerrilla campaign so notable, though, was its seeming lack of promotion at all. The film was ushered into theaters with an incredibly simple teaser trailer that didn’t even feature the title of the film. It only contained the release date – 11/18/08. Beside the fact that it starred a cast of unknown actors and featured a monster doing something in a city that had yet to be identified, almost nothing was known about the film prior to its release in theaters. Beyond the title, it initially wasn’t even clear if Abrams himself was even the director or if he was just attached in some way as a producer.

In many ways, the complete lack of marketing for Cloverfieldactually BECAME the campaign. People were so desperate for answers that the only solution became, “you have to see the movie to find out.” Suddenly, a cheaply produced fake documentary with almost no marketing dollars spent became one of the most talked about (and successful) movies of its age, at least as far as total revenue is concerned.

The spirit of guerrilla marketing will always be one of the biggest weapons small businesses have in their quest to get noticed and spread brand awareness. By remembering that “unconventional” is key, and that you don’t have to spend a war chest filled with cash in order to attract the attention of both new and existing customers, you’ll find that guerrilla campaigns can provide exceptional value for your marketing dollars – regardless of the type of business you happen to run.

How Social Media Can Help With Market Research

Anyone who has ever worked in marketing understands the value of market research. Solid research can teach you about your intended audience and what your customers are looking for, which will allow you to grow your company and position it for success.

Imagine if nearly everything you needed to know about your customer base existed in a single space, and all you needed to do was find a way to listen to the conversation. Well, it is — and you can. That space is social media.

Social media (and the Internet in general) has come to dominate nearly half the globe. Customers use the Internet to communicate and connect with each other and the brands they want to do business with. These customers are telling you what you need to know about the needs of your intended audience. Here are a few ways you can put social media to work for you.

Pay attention to how your customers speak

You likely already know you should be monitoring social sites for mentions of your brand in case customers register complaints or talk about experiences they had with you. There’s more you can get out of these basic brand mentions, though.

Pay attention to how people speak about your company and the services you provide. Listen to what your customers are mentioning as the most important aspects in their buying experience. What matters the most when developing customer loyalty? What draws people to your products and services? What causes them to go to your competitors? This insight will help you improve the customer experience and better meet their needs.

Get quick results for surveys

Rather than spending weeks or months gathering data from surveys and study groups, you can use social media to learn about your customers significantly quicker. Pose questions to your followers, and encourage customers to share experiences with your brand to get a feel for what matters most to them.

In many ways, the information you glean from social media might be even more valuable than what you learn from focus groups. Nearly 3/4 of all people with Internet access use social media in some form. Using social media for your research, therefore, has the potential to help you gain a much more complete picture of industry trends and customer preferences.

Using social media for your surveys can also be a fantastic way to control costs related to social research. There are a variety of free tools available across a number of social platforms, but even the ones that have a cost tend to be more cost-efficient than spending the time and money to conduct surveys and poll focus groups.

Get real-time results

Traditional surveys often take several weeks or months to process and analyze. When you use social media to gather this important information, you get your answers in real time. This can help you implement positive changes for your customers and take advantage of the information you learned, while remaining confident that trends have not yet shifted.

Social media is a valuable tool for market research. It can help you learn more about your customers so you can better meet their needs and grow your business.

How to Handle Customer Complaints Effectively

Few aspects of running a business can be more frustrating — or more expected — than customer complaints. It’s impossible for even the most successful companies to please every customer every time. Knowing how to handle customer complaints effectively and professionally can improve brand reputation and turn a disgruntled customer around.

Listen and acknowledge the customer

It sounds basic, but a surprising number of businesses care more about defending their actions than listening to the customer. Remember that the vast majority of people who have a problem with your company won’t bother complaining to you. They’ll just complain to everyone else. Every customer who takes the time to complain directly to you should be thanked for the opportunity to make the situation right. This means listening carefully to everything the customer has to say about the experience and offering an apology for their discontent.

If you encounter a complaint online, reach out and publicly acknowledge the complaint online as well. Let the person know how disappointed you are that they were unhappy and ask for the opportunity to discuss the incident with them privately.

Discover the source of their frustration

If a customer complains that they can’t find something in your store, you might assume they’re asking you to reorganize your shelves. However, they might really be upset that no staff members noticed their frustration and stepped in to help before they started complaining.

Find out what the company can do to help

Sometimes all the customer really wants is an apology or information about how you’ll work to improve so you don’t make the same mistake again. In these situations, it’s easy to exceed customer expectations by offering coupons or a similar incentive in addition to meeting their request.

If the customer’s not sure how they’d like to be compensated or if they have demands you can’t reasonably meet, you should have a policy in place to help alleviate the customer’s concerns. Make a point of explaining what your company’s doing to improve in the area of the complaint, and thank them for their feedback.

Handle the publicity of social media

If a complaint originates on social media, take the solution back to social media once the situation’s resolved. Everything in social media is public, so once a customer posts a complaint, it can be seen by countless potential customers. Bringing the solution back to social media will help those who saw the original complaint see how well you did addressing it.

If someone complains to you through a blog post, ask them to either update the post so new readers know the situation was resolved or remove it altogether. If the complaint was made on Facebook or a similar platform, return to the original post and make an update yourself, such as, “I’m so glad we were able to work together to resolve this problem. We look forward to doing more business with you in the future.”

Customer complaints are an aspect of business no one enjoys but everyone has to know how to manage. Keeping the above guidelines in mind should help you successfully navigate this terrain, strengthen your company’s brand, and improve your reputation.

What Gardening Can Teach You About Marketing

Spring is in the air (or at least on the calendar), and people everywhere are starting to think about their gardens for the year. While gardening might not seem to have much to do with business, in reality, it has several lessons it can teach us about running a successful marketing campaign. Here are four to keep in mind as you prepare your yard this year.

Start with a plan

Any experienced gardener knows a garden must be carefully planned. From lighting and shade considerations to eventual plant heights, watering needs, and general arrangement, failure to consider the characteristics of each individual plant can easily result in a struggling garden that doesn’t please the eye.

Marketing is the same. Randomly throwing together a variety of different strategies and hoping something sticks is never a good approach. You need to plan how each piece will fit together and serve your ultimate goal: getting your message in front of the people who are most likely to buy from your company.

Provide regular maintenance

Once you plan and plant your garden, you’ll find yourself returning regularly to care for it. Weeding prevents undesirable plants from taking over. Watering ensures the garden prospers and grows. Without regular care, your plants could die, and the entire garden might turn into a small, wild field.

Your marketing also requires regular attention. Track how well each strategy performs and how much you’re spending per customer. Identify areas to improve and refine your marketing. On social media, use each platform to interact with your followers. They aren’t going to magically buy just because you set up a page.

Have patience when tracking results

Gardeners know the fruits of their labor might not be visible for several weeks or even a couple months. They put in the work and planning so their yard can look amazing in the future.

You must also be willing to wait to see the results of yourmarketing efforts. Just because you sent out a direct mail flyer or set up a few social media sites doesn’t mean customers will just start rolling in. You need to have patience to see results and understand that marketing is all part of the plan to grow your business.

Make a plan to handle abundance

Anyone who’s ever planted a garden knows that sometimes you get too much in return. Maybe your bushes have started to grow so much they’re overtaking the other plants. If you planted vegetables, you might suddenly have too much produce on your hands. You need a plan to deal with this excess.

It’s also possible in business to get overwhelmed by a very successful marketing campaign. A sudden influx of customers can leave your company scrambling to keep up with demand. Make sure you have a plan for dealing with fluctuating customer numbers. Consider part-time help and training staff to adequately handle larger numbers so no customer gets neglected.

As you plan your garden this spring, consider the many lessons you can learn about marketing as you go. If you’re ready to start working on a new marketing campaign, contact us. We’d be happy to help you get started.

4 Ways To Boost Your Email Success Rates

Email can be a powerful tool for reaching potential customers. After all, about 91 percent of customers have an email address they check at least one time per day. It’s a consistently reliable way for getting in touch with people who might be interested in what your company has to offer.

Unfortunately, often one of your biggest hurdles is simply convincing people to open your email in the first place. You have to battle against being perceived as spam and being overlooked to attract the attention of your intended audience. Here are some tried-and-true techniques you can use to boost your email open rates and find success with your next email campaign.

Personalization

Do you like to open emails that come from impersonal companies or unknown senders? Neither do your customers. Make sure the emails you send are personalized for your recipient. A personalized email will include a specific person at the company as the sender, such as Janet Smith from XYZMarketing, instead of just XYZ Marketing.

You’ll also want to personalize the information within the email. Carefully store the information you have about your leads, then use that data to personalize your message and make it relevant to the recipient.

Segmentation

As you gather email addresses through your website and other interactions with potential customers, you’ll find there may be large differences between your leads. One person might be researching for their office but have very little decision-making power, while another might be CEO of his company. Segment your email list based on criteria such as location, job title, budget, or other important factors. Then tailor your messages to each of these groups you’re trying to reach.

Quality headlines

When convincing people to open your email, few areas matter more than your headline. Headlines that are excessively general, use too much punctuation, or otherwise look like spam are going to be ignored. Write headlines that capture the essence of your message and make your email look appealing. Pique your readers’ curiosity and offer them a small taste of the value they’ll receive when they open the email.

Value

Above all else, you want to make sure your email provides real value. Your message should offer your customers a clear return when they open it. Just like the rest of the content you create for your company website and marketing materials, your emails should provide useful information people can use, forward, and share with others.

When your emails clearly show their own value, you build your relationship with readers. People come to trust the emails they receive from your company even more. As a result, you’ll get better open and click-through rates. On the other hand, if your emails repeatedly show little value, customers will begin to disregard them, and your messages will be relegated to the ‘junk’ folder or trash.

Email can be a fantastic tool for communicating with potential customers and building relationships. The key is to use this method correctly. If you’re interested in boosting your ROI from your email lists, make sure you’ve implemented the aboveideas. If you’re interested in beginning a new marketingcampaign and have questions, contact us to get started.

Are You Using Keywords Correctly

When it comes to search engine optimization, few topics are as popular as the use of keywords. To hear some people describe it, keywords are the secret to success; if you just use specific keywords in your text enough, people will flock to your website. But think about the last time you read something that was clearly “keyword stuffed.” It probably sounded awkward, unnatural, and a bit forced, didn’t it? You probably didn’t take the information or the website too seriously. Fortunately, it is possible to use keywords effectively to entice visitors, give them confidence they’ve found a good source of information, and still sound completely natural.

Selecting the keywords

When choosing keywords, think about the words customers are commonly searching for online. Monitor the number of searches that are done for different keywords, and then choose a few you’d like to target. These should be keywords directly related to your business, so you can use them naturally throughout your website and blog.

When selecting keywords, make the subtle distinction between keywords you and other professionals in your industry are likely to use and those your customers are likely to use. Your keywords won’t do you any good if your site ends up just attracting competitors. They’re not looking to buy from you! You want to use language and keywords that reflect your customers’ priorities and their language. This will ensure you bring the right people to your site. This is also helpful for selecting vocabulary words to use on all your marketing materials, including your outbound direct mail and newspaper advertisements.

Using the keywords appropriately

Make sure you use the keywords a few times in content. This will let your visitor know they’ve found a page with the information they were looking for. If done naturally, using the keywords in the opening paragraph can be a good practice for this reason.

Don’t use your keywords excessively, though. Generally, aim to keep the keywords in mind when you write, and use them whenever the opportunity naturally arises rather than assigning yourself the task of fitting them in as often as possible. Using this system will help you improve the flow of your writing and make it sound much more compelling and natural, rather than a trap designed to bring visitors to your website.

The reason blogging and keeping your website up-to-date are so fantastic for marketing is that both of these practices allow you to naturally incorporate keywords into your content. Keywords should be thought of as subjects that you want to write about. They’re terms your potential customers are searching for because they’re interested in learning more. Be the source of information for them, so they will turn to you as a source of authority.

Keywords can be very helpful in developing websites to attract and retain visitors. Capitalizing on their value, however, requires understanding what customers and search engines are and aren’t looking for. Keeping these guidelines in mind should help you use your keywords to your advantage. If you’re ready to take your marketing campaign to the next level, let us know. We’d be happy to help get you started!

Nurturing Leads from Every Angle

When it comes to successfully nurturing leads from your marketing efforts, you already know you need to stay on top of email with potential clients. Email is a great way to stay in touch with customers, reach out to them periodically to see if they’re ready to buy, and even just remind them about your company. While email is undoubtedly a useful tool in the world of marketing, it isn’t the only way to successfully turn a lead into a sale. Here are a few other tools you should keep handy as you work to nurture new leads.

Understand who your customers are and where they are in their purchase journey. Then use that information appropriately.

A buyer’s journey includes all the research and decision-making steps they take as they prepare to buy a product. Some customers are just starting out. They’re looking for general information about their options and what factors they should be considering. Other buyers have narrowed down their search to just a few options and are looking to be convinced why one is superior to another. Still others are just about to make a purchase but just want to verify the product information. Understanding the buyer persona and where people are in the buying process will allow you to create targeted ads, messages, and content for customers at every step of the journey, increasing the odds they’ll make a purchase.

Make sure your website makes it easy for customers to move through the buying process.

Your website should be designed to encourage people to move through the sales funnel, exciting them about your products and making them eager to complete the transaction. Personalization is a fantastic way to accomplish this. Have your website greet people by name, especially if they’ve visited before.

Use retargeting ads

Retargeting ads can be extremely helpful for bringing customers back to your website, especially if they’ve left items in your site’s shopping cart. Customers have a tendency to visit pages while they’re doing research, but then leave the page because they’re not ready to make a purchase yet. Retargeting ads can help bring customers back to the page and remind them about your products and why they’re superior. Even better, have your page remember the customer the next time they return. Remember what items they looked at or what they seemed interested in. Customers will appreciate the extra effort and the added ease in finding what they’re looking for.

Make the most of social media

Keep an eye on social media for mentions of your company. This will alert you to customers considering your company or investigating your industry. You can then swoop in and make contact as they’re beginning their search. Social media is also a great tool for remaining in contact with potential buyers and past buyers. Like people’s status updates, retweet interesting things they have to say, and generally show interest in them. It will make them see you and your company more favorably, while also helping you remain in the forefront of their mind as they prepare to make a buying decision.

Nurturing leads is critical to persuading customers who are considering a purchase. While follow-up emails certainly play a role in bringing customers to the checkout button, they’re not the only factor. Use some of the ideas above, and begin improving conversion rates quickly.

Don’t Overlook SMS: Why Your Marketing Strategies Should Incorporate Text Messaging

Mobile text messaging, also known as SMS (for short message service), may just represent the next frontier in mobilemarketing. Why? More than 4 billion people worldwide — and 75 percent of Americans — regularly send and receive text messages. With the recent announcement that social media giant Facebook is acquiring WhatsApp — an SMS platform that allows users to send free text messages on smart phones of all kinds — texting’s popularity isn’t likely to decrease anytime soon.

Here’s why you should take advantage of this growing marketand add SMS to your marketing strategies.

The Power of the Personal

In Internet years, text messaging is a virtual grandfather; after all, the technology has been around for more than 20 years. In fact, it’s been around so long that a (mind-blowing) two-thirds of the Earth’s population has access to it. Perhaps due to the well-established nature of SMS, many companies have bypassed it as a marketing strategy, probably in their rush to drive customers to the mobile-optimized versions of their websites.

However, as any marketing guru will tell you, customers respond best when a campaign engages them personally. That’s where text message marketing comes in. Stats from Techipedia reveal that:

 

• 98 percent of all sent text messages are opened
• 83 percent of text messages are opened within three minutes
• SMS marketing campaigns boast response rates of up to 45 percent, as compared to email campaigns, which average a 6 percent response rate

Given these high response rates, using SMS seems like a no-brainer. Just send out a few well-worded messages to leads, and watch the sales grow — right? Of course, there’s a catch.

In order to be successful, text message marketing requires thoughtful implementation.

Effective Implementation of Text Message Marketing

Consider how annoying you (probably) find telemarketing calls, spammy-sounding emails, and all of that other marketing stuff you’re constantly bombarded with but didn’t sign up for. Same goes for SMS; no one
wants to receive random or irrelevant text messages all the time. Add in the fact that some mobile users have to pay for each text message they receive, and the importance of only sending texts to those who’ve opted in becomes crystal clear. It’s all about relevance.

Speaking of relevance, one of the most effective uses of text message marketing is keeping in contact with your existing customers. They’ve already tried your product or service and decided they like you. SMS offers a cost-effective way to keep in touch. Whether you’re announcing a special event, sending a coupon code, or implementing a loyalty program, the judicious use of text messages keeps your company in your customers’ consciousness.

SMS can also enhance your customers’ experience. Text messages containing reminders, schedules, notices of last-minute availability, and even customer satisfaction surveys provide value to your customers while saving them time and hassles.

Appropriate Uses of SMS Marketing

Here are a few ways to incorporate text messaging into yourmarketing plan in a way that customers will appreciate.

Promotions and Sales: Send promo codes, coupons, and special event notices. Consider geo-fencing to send offers to opted-in customers when they come near your place of business.

Receipts: Sending receipts makes it easy for customers to keep track of spending.

Surveys: Customers can fill out surveys about their experience, providing you with valuable feedback.

Loyalty Programs: Make it easy for customers to join your loyalty program via text, and get information you need to develop detailed customer profiles that help your marketingstrategies.

No matter what you’re using SMS for, the key lies in creating an opt-in program and focusing on content that provides value to customers. Text messaging shouldn’t be used to generate leads; instead, it should provide relevant information to interested customers.