Marketing and Sales Guru

When working together, marketing and sales can do wonders for a company of any size. For small companies, PR should also be added to the mix, as it helps to create trust and credibility in the eyes of your buyers. Marketing, on the other hand, can also help to do that, but it can do more in terms of advertising. Marketing should be used at all points of the customer experience. Whether the buyer is contemplating buying your product, or is at the check-out, marketing materials should be present.

This consistent presence of marketing materials can be less invasive than advertising, like TV ads. It can also help to remind the customer of your existence when the purchasing time comes. You want to be on their minds and the first one they think of when they need your product or service. Ways to help encourage this include customer quotes, your mission statement, your goals, accomplishments, and your expertise. If you know something about the industry that buyers should know in order to make the best, most well informed decision, share it with them! When it comes time to buy, they will remember that you’ve helped them in the decision making process, and perhaps be more inclined to buy from you.

Another way to remind buyers of your offerings is to use promotional tactics. Depending on your goal, there are a variety of tools you can use, including promotional events, like sponsoring a fundraiser, sponsoring a concert or festival that your target market frequents, etc. You can also use promotional items like reusable totes (if you’re target market is concerned with being environmentally friendly), water bottles, pens, etc. These items are like free advertising for you when they are used, and free items for your customers that they will hopefully use as well. Buyers are big, big fans of free things, but only if they’ll use them. What value does free information or items have if the customer finds them useless?

You can also do things like host a contest, raffle, or other sort of prize drawing. Not only will this help to generate interest in your product, you can also generate leads with the information gathered. Email addresses are vital pieces of information to gather. Though the customer may not want your email, and may simply delete it, it’s hard to ignore something your eyes see if the email is opened. You’ll be reminding them of the raffle, which should increase interest in the email more, and you’ll be reminding them of your company.

The best way to make use of these tactics is to be aware of customer feedback and to offer something more than just a pen. Offer a connection, and way to communicate with you. Use social media to give updates on the contests, to get in touch with people who’ve talked to/about you, and be there. There is nothing more annoying to a customer who’s complaint goes unnoticed because a company is unaware of the things being said about them. This sort of monitoring can help your company to avoid a crisis, and possibly diffuse a potentially bad situation. Negative WOM (word of mouth) can be rather detrimental.

Remember that marketing tactics are not meant to trick customers, but rather generate interest and offer them something of value that will make them glad they made the decision to talk to you, get to know more about your company, and see what you have to offer. This sort of satisfaction in their decision will make them even more likely to stay with you and make the move toward a sale.

There is really only one way to ensure your marketing tactics are effective and successful. It’s a rather simply way, yet many people seem to forget this vital component, and continue to do the opposite. They avoid the responsibility and ownership of their creations, and they create things that only damage their brand. I’m talking about copywriting. Your content used in content marketing tactics is what makes or breaks the success of your efforts.

You can have awesome aesthetics, keyword optimization, and all the best product specs, but those alone can’t save you from terrible copy. Customers gauge your intelligence and ability to handle their business through the only way they can: what you write. Online, you are your words, the ones you write and speak (if you do videos). If your content is crappy, unedited, and just submitted without much thought, you can guarantee you’ll ward some potential customers off.

Here are some tips to creating excellent copy:

1. Proofread. This is a simple task companies appear to refuse to do. Reading copy that is sloppy, hard to decipher, and missing words is frustrating, and I often question the competence of the person and company writing that copy. This is not a hard thing to do, so do it! If you need help with your proofreading, hire someone to help you out!
2. Research. Figure out what people want to read about, and write about it for them. More importantly, figure out what your target market likes to read about, and create content targeted at them. This sort of research is pivotal to your success.
3. Offer something of value. In line with #2, you want to offer them something they’re interested in reading. You can also offer them something useful, like tips for solving a problem they’re currently facing.
4. Position yourself as an authority. When you write things well, cover topics that people are searching for and reading about, and offer something that they can actually use, you can greatly increase the chances that someone will come to you when it comes time to buy what you have to offer. If you can give them pointers on how to find or pick out the product you offer, or give them advice on how to use what you offer, they can see you as a more trustworthy and helpful source of information. This trust can then lead to them buying your product.
5. Tell them where to go next. Do you want them to download your eBook, sign up for your newsletter, leave a comment? Ask them to! They’ll be much more likely to do so if you make it clear to them what their next steps are.

Remember that customers are looking for help, looking for interaction, and hoping to be more a part of your company. Make them feel important (because they are), and treat them with respect. There are many more places for customers to get the same product these days, so be sure to appreciate them. Start off with writing something that they can read and process, and then go from there.

Social media is a great tool for any company. It not only helps to reiterate to your customers that you are more than just a company, but it can also help to create lasting relationships and dialogue with your buyers. Smaller companies seem to be hoping on the social media bandwagon faster than larger companies, which can be seen through numbers like this:
Percentage of Companies by Size using Social Media:

• Small businesses – 44%
• Medium businesses – 36%
• Large businesses – 23% (source)

These numbers are perhaps a result of the monetary savings only, but there is much more that social media can do for a company. They include:

1. WOM (word of mouth). Social media can be used as a PR or marketing tactic. When others talk about your company online and can link to you there, you can generate some positive PR and WOM.
2. Crisis management. In line with being able to monitor WOM, you can also respond. You have access to the people who are saying things about you (for the most part) and you can reply to them, even, at times, remedying the situation with solutions and answers they were looking for.
3. Brand Management. Being online makes you more aware of what’s being said about you. You are familiar and comfortable with the applications available to you, and you’re more likely to pay attention to what’s floating around cyberspace (also referred to as WOM).
4. Customer Engagement. Not only can you help to encourage positive WOM, you can interact with the people who are talking about it. Reward them for being your customer! Make them feel important and involved! These are crucial aspects to successful social media use, and you can greatly increase the good will customers can feel for you.

If you do use social media, be sure to measure the results and to keep an eye on things that are going on in different areas online that you may not be involved with. More importantly, however, is to first establish is social media is the right set of tools for you to use. Are your customers online? Can you see the benefits that social media can have for your company? Is everyone else in the company on board? Have you consulted with PR or marketing professionals about this step?

While there are a lot of companies online and partaking in social media, there may be reasons that others are not doing the same thing. If social media use (your tactic) doesn’t fall in line with what you’re trying to accomplish (your objectives), there’s is really little to no reason for you or your company to be using the tool. You will be wasting your time and resources on something that is not working toward a goal you’ve set as a company. Are you using social media because everyone else is? Are your customers even online? Answer these questions before you hop on that bandwagon; there may be a reason some of your competitors haven’t made the leap online either.

Are you using social media?

A large part of marketing success is usually measured in the success rate of media coverage or earned advertising. How does a company get that sort of coverage, though? Well, usually through pitching. Pitching is simply the title given to marketers and PR professionals sending out a “pitch”, which should be a targeted, informative, and relevant piece of literature that allows the media person being pitched to agree that the story is worth covering and featuring in their publication, blog, etc.

Here are a few tips to pitching:

1. Avoid spamming people. You hate spam, right? Well, so does everyone else. If you think your news is the greatest piece of information that everyone needs to know, it most likely is not. (There are some exceptions, like a cure to cancer, or the abolition of nuclear weapons, but that’s usually dealt with by a PR firm or marketing professional who already has media connections. I digress.) Your news is only important to people who care about it. How do you know who cares about your news, you ask? It’s not that hard to figure out.
2. Do your homework. This is the “finding out who your target market is” step. If you don’t know what your target market is, there are a few steps you should be taking before you ever think of pitching the media. Step 1: Go back to your marketing plan. Don’t have one? Create one.
3. Find their sources of information. Once you’ve determined who your target market is, you can then figure out where they go for news, information, entertainment. What sites, blogs, publications, etc., do they frequent? Not sure? Look at the publications you have in mind to see who they define their target market as. You can probably go so far as to ask them what their target market is, or who they feel is their main consumer. If you’re still at a loss, look at forums, message boards, other bloggers; evaluate what they talk about and see where they go for more of their information.
4. Write a targeted pitch. Just finding the right publication to pitch is not enough. You have to find the right person who writes on your industry and would be interested in your story. Identify them in your pitch, and make it clear that you know what they’re enjoy writing (or simply write) on, and describe why your story would be a good fit. This ensures that what you send is indeed not spam.

Overall, remember to take into consideration their deadlines and time frames. There is no better way to be inconsiderate (and often moved to the trash) than ignoring what their publication calendar looks like (there are editorial calendars for bigger publications that are available to the public; for more information on editorial calendars, check out Public Relations Tools | What is an Editorial Calendar?.) This shows a great lack of respect and indicates that you very much find yourself more important than the person you’re contacting. Try to avoid doing this.

What are some tips you have for pitching? What have your successes been?

Marketing has made the move online. With so many people and customers online for everything from shopping to reading news, you had better have made the move as well. If not, you need to catch up!

Whether you plan to do a small campaign online or a large scale campaign that will last the life of the company, you need to create compelling, interesting, and relevant content for your website, blog, or social networking tools. There are many ways to write content for a website, press release, blog, etc, but here are a few tips to creating content that drives traffic:

1. Write well. This is biggest component of being successful in content marketing and online marketing. If you have nothing good to say and say it poorly, your outlook is a bit bleak. Know how to write to your target market (so, of course, you must first know who that is), and write in a manner that increase interest and also engages. This also means you need to proofread and get feedback.
2. Utilize SEO (search engine optimization) in your copy. This will greatly increase the number of search related traffic, meaning people are finding you based on what they are already looking for online. (I can’t think of a more targeted method to reach people other than advertising.)
3. Use different styles. Use lists (like this one), bold, or italicized text. These can help to draw attention to specific areas on a page, and can also help to make your information more easily consumed.
4. Make calls to action. Tell, or direct, your buyers to the places you want them to go. Where do you want to go on your website next? Do you want them to download your eBook? Make this clear and direct! People also like options, so give them many things to do on your site (but too many; there is a fine line), and offer them the ability to get in touch with you when they have a question, concern, or simply want to engage in conversation with you.

The most important thing to do with your online marketing: be there. Be available, be present, and use social media, websites, blogs, etc., as a method of communicating with your buyers, not simply to. Advertising and marketing methods of the past were very much a way to communicate to buyers, but the changing industry makes it easier, and in turn more important, to have two-way communications with your audiences.

While some companies may think online marketing is not for them, or that PR and marketing are things that only large companies need to worry about, I hope to change your mind. Marketing and PR are vital pieces to your overall puzzle and can make or break your success. Consumers and buyers want to be a part of your company, not simply someone your company sells to, so make them feel involved; they’ll reward you, and you company, for it.

How has marketing changed in your industry? Do you think you need to keep up with the ever-increasing shift to online methods?

As a marketer, your roles will vary, and the tools you can utilize to carry out those roles will also vary. A large part of your marketing responsibilities include analyzing the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These four components make up the SWOT analysis, a tool that can be used in any area of business and can greatly benefit the marketing, PR, and product development departments.

Conducting a SWOT analysis will greatly increase your chances of creating relevant, effective, and successful tactics and strategies that play off of your strengths and down-play your weaknesses. This will also help you to realize and identify where your opportunities lie to increase your overall success as a business. Identifying threats your company faces is also a vital component/ piece of information; playing defense is just as important as playing offense.

Strengths and Weaknesses are in regards to internal components, whereas Opportunities and Threats are in regards to external forces and components.

To use the SWOT analysis, answer questions (or questions like these) for each of the following areas:

Strengths:

1. What are our competitive advantages?
2. What do we do well?
3. What do others say our strengths are?
4. Where are we successful in our business?

These are all to be answered from an internal point of view. These just need to be honest and realistic.

Weaknesses:

1. Where can we improve?
2. What are some areas that we should avoid?
3. What do we do poorly now?

Again, these should be from an internal point of view. Be sure to be honest here as well; not being honest is only going to hurt in the long run as this exercise is meant to help you address areas where you can improve and where you are already succeeding.  Both things are important to know so that you can work on your weaknesses and let your strengths really shine.

Opportunities:

1. What are some openings, opportunities, etc., that your company is currently facing?
2. What are some changes in the market that are working to our advantage?
3. What niche(s) is being ignored? Can we market to them?
4. What are we aware of in terms of the industry/consumer trends? How can we utilize that information?

Threats:

What is our competition doing?

How is the industry changing in ways that will harm or damage our business?

What are some of the obstacles we are facing?

What are some changes in the market not working to our advantage?

The goal of the opportunities and threats section is to really take a look at where you or your company can go next, and where you should be on the defensive. What do you need to avoid? How can you brace yourself for impact? What changes can you make to ensure that the threats are diffused and the opportunities are taken advantage of?

The SWOT analysis is meant to be a reflective tool, and a way for you to make tangible the places you want to go and how you can get there. You can use this tool for a company or for your own career, as it is more than applicable for either area.Additionally, you can create a SWOT analysis from the perspective of your competitors; this may help to create some interesting insights.

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This analysis will greatly help you to focus on what you’re great at (your strengths), minimize and diffuse the areas where you aren’t so great (weaknesses), and to take advantage of the best possible opportunities presented to you.

There are many different job titles and job opportunities in the marketing world (though finding one can be a bit of a challenge). One area of marketing jobs is the Freelance Marketing Positions. Often times, these sorts of positions are done as an independent contractor, meaning you would work outside of the company on a contract basis. You would be in charge of your own taxes, health care, etc., and would simply charge the client/company for your work. This freelance work, or work for a company as an independent party.

Here are a the most common titles for freelance marketing professionals:

1. Marketing Consultant. This role deals with overall marketing activities. The marketing consultant will do just that: consult on marketing activities to assist the company in making the best choices in their marketing efforts. The consultant may also take on other roles, like the ones below.
2. Market Researcher. As the title suggests, this role is focused on market research. This is a specialized job and can be done independently or as part of a team of freelance marketers.
3. Market Analyst. Also as the title suggests, this professional will be assisting in the analysis of market research to create promotions that are targeted, relevant, and effective.
4. Market Promotions. This position usually deals with the assistance in a promotion or marketing campaign being done internally for a company. The freelance marketer will assist with marketing materials, advertising needs, and will most likely work closely with the marketing, advertising, and PR teams to ensure the success of the marketing promotion.

Often times, companies use the services of freelance marketing professionals to help alleviate cost constraints, or simply because they do not have an in-house marketing professional. The freelance marketer will be their source of expertise and direction; most companies are not marketing experts and will utilize freelance marketers to assist them in their marketing planning.

The freelance marketer will handle each case individually and will treat each company as a client. They will begin by addressing and assessing the company’s needs and will then create a plan customized for them and their target audiences. This is where market research and analysis come into play, and is the reason for their importance. Research will be the first place to start for the freelance marketer because every industry is different, as is every company. The freelance marketer will need to look at the specific needs for each company, and the research will help them to create an effective and targeted marketing plan.

From there, depending on the contract the freelance marketer creates with the company, there may be room and need for them to stick around to help conduct measurements of results so as to create a better plan the next time around, and to see what went right last time. This is a crucial part of any marketing effort, and regardless of it the marketing professional is an internal employee or a consultant, the company will need to measure, analyze, and take into account their successes and places for improvement.

The Internet has made it easier than ever to create a lasting relationship with customers, and fast. The important thing here, however, is that you do so correctly. There are many ways to create and initiate the relationship process, including email marketing. Email marketing is essentially the use of email to market to your target audience, potential buyers, and current customers to increase sales, encourage engagement, etc.

Here are a few tips to increasing your effectiveness through email marketing:

1. Make it easy to sign up. Encourage people to sign up for your mailing lists by offering them something in return or by really selling the important characteristics of your email lists like free offers, tips, etc. These benefits should be listed. Additionally, tell people to sign up for your mailing list. This “telling” is a call to action, something that should be present in press releases, blog posts, etc. These calls-to-action are recommendations for what the visitor/reader/customer should do next, like signing up for your mailing list.
2. Make your content relevant. No one wants to receive an email that is pointless, useless, and irrelevant. Make your emails about your products, or better yet, about your industry. If you make the email less about you and more about the customer and the decisions they are making that involve your company (like which company to go through to re-roof their house), they are more likely to look to you when it is finally time to make that decision.
3. Offer something of value. Following from point #2, make sure that what you are sending is valuable to them. People love things for free, but if you send them something that is of no value to them, the results may be less than satisfactory for you.
4. Avoid sending the wrong emails. Some customers can get angry or upset if they get an email that is not targeted to them. For example, you send an email asking someone to sign up for your program, but they are already a participant in your program. This can cause some waves in the otherwise happy life of your customer.
5. Send emails at the right time. Just like the above, avoid sending emails that are not right for the time. For example, someone may not be interested in your holiday services in the middle of April. Be sure to be aware of your target market’s habits, lifestyles, etc., so that you not only send the right email but at the right time.

Email marketing can be very effective, but no one likes spam. If you intend on spamming your entire mailing list, it may be best that you avoid starting at all, because you won’t get far. The point of email marketing is to further position yourself as an authority figure in your industry and to further gain the trust of your buyers and potential buyers. More importantly, however, is that you encourage them to respond and that you, yourself, reply to their inquiries, comments, and feedback.

Have you used email marketing? What were your successes? Downfalls?

A large part of the business development activity list can be included in the marketing category, and rightfully so. Especially today, with information readily available, more and more people online, and easy access to PR and marketing tactics and tools, marketing may be more talked about than sales.

Don’t get me wrong though; sales is also an important aspect of business development. Marketing is simply the necessity to get the ball rolling and to increase brand awareness before sales tactics are even implemented. This sort of before-hand marketing can greatly increase the chances of a potential buyer knowing who you are.

An important part of any business venture or growth, marketing is the means to increased reach and increase visibility. Here are some tips to doing some of your own marketing, though using a firm to assist you in your business development activities:

1. Don’t draw a line between marketing and PR. If you have two different departments, ensure that they talk to one another, talk often, and communicate what’s happening within each one. Marketing and PR need to work together more than ever before. This is due to the changes the business and consumer worlds have seen because of the Internet and the increased opportunities there are to communicate and interact with consumers or businesses.
2. Don’t assume that if something is deemed PR it cannot be used for marketing in business development. Since marketing and PR are more and more alike today, there is no need to say one activity is strictly PR or strictly marketing. Just like the two departments need to work together, so do the tactics and strategies you see best fit for your current campaign or goal.
3. Don’t isolate the marketing and sales departments either. Make sure they talk to one another as well. This is even more crucial than the vitality of the PR and marketing departments talking to one another, and this is due to the fact that, when there is no communication, one team will most likely counteract the other with undermining tactics.

Marketing is an effective tool for any business activity, and it can be a great way to allocate PR activities into your every day routine if PR is still a hard sell to executives. Things like social media and press releases may be seen as PR tools, but they’ve become part of the marketing department’s toolbox as well. This change really requires that everyone talks to one another so that things get done well and are successful.

There are many types of marketing, especially when conducting it online. Internet marketing also involves various methods, one being Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate Marketing is the support and collaboration between two entities where one directs traffics, customers, buyers, etc., to the other’s website, company, etc. This direction on the part of the affiliate results in payment or commissions of sorts.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’) and the customer. (source)

While affiliate marketing can take place offline, it is much easier to track online with the use of cookies and tools like Google Analytics. This ease and ability to track where traffic is coming from (for example, your affiliate), makes Internet Affiliate Marketing much more desirable.

The brand or company that hires the affiliate is doing so to increase their own traffic without needing to do the marketing themselves. Here is some more information from Wikipedia that helps to sum up the activities of the affiliate a brand or company may hire:

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. (source)

Affiliate marketing may not be right for everyone, and with the use of social media and PR online, affiliate marketing may be seen as a less desirable method of advertising, and more like advertising in the end, which consumers do not typically enjoy.

What do you think? Do you use affiliate marketing? Is it still a worthwhile investment?