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 tactics vary among businesses and industries, but there is one that can help any industry, and that is article marketing. Whether you sell aluminum siding or marketing services, you can benefit from sharing your knowledge with your prospective buyers. What better way to share with them that you are a trustworthy source of information and service than to give away your expertise and knowledge?

The point of this sort of marketing, which can fall into the category of Content Marketing, is to allow the customers to come to you in a n organic manner. They search for ideas on how to choose the right aluminum siding company, and you write an article on how to do so, including ways to verify their credibility, negotiate prices, etc. This sort of information relates directly to your service and company. Seeing that you wanted to share with them useful information that is pertinent to their current decision making needs, customers may be more prone to choose you in the long run.

A quick definition of content marketing, which can also be referred to as educational marketing:

Content Marketing. This is the use of things like article marketing (which is the process of spreading your content through different article sites like Ezine Articles) and social media (where you can also share your content). This is the marketing of your product or service somewhat inadvertently by offering things of value (through your content) and in turn gaining trust and goodwill by being a source of information and advice.

And a quick definition of educational marketing:

Educational Marketing. This is simply the latter part of content marketing where you share your knowledge for free. This is an effective way to share what you know to let others make the decision of whether or not to use your product or service. For example, you are a PR firm who specializes in social media. Create and update a blog on social media, sharing what you know about the market and the industry. This will show others, prospective customers perhaps, that you know what you’re talking about. You will help them to make their decision, and they may in turn remember you when the time comes to finalize their move. (source)

So, why use article marketing? To get the greatest amount of traffic and to generate the greatest amount of reach, you need to share your content and your copy. This increased reach can also help to solidify your expertise in an area, positioning yourself as an authority source.

Ways to get started:

1. Write useful, valuable copy that people are searching for. Moreover, ensure that your copy is SEO (search engine optimized) and that you use keywords to bring more traffic.
2. Create accounts on some of the leading article marketing sites. They include eZine, GoArticles, ArticlesBoard, and many, many more. The great thing about eZine, at least from personal experience, is that they review each article before it is posted to their site. Additionally, you are given a trial period of sorts where you are allowed to upload a few articles initially, and if your content is approved and deemed “useful”, you are then able to upload more as an expert author. Ensure that your author signature links back to you site and that your copy really encourages people to visit your site, download your eBook, or to get in touch. (These are called “calls to action”, and they are pivotal in the success of your Internet Marketing.)
3. Upload content.

From there, it is simply a manner of maintaining your content and doing so consistently. Additionally as important is responding to the inquires, feedback, or comments that you receive so that people really do get the most value from your time and efforts. Some people don’t find article marketing to be worth your time, but the more exposure you can create the better, and so long as your content is valuable and of a high quality, there is no reason why you cannot succeed. My guess is that those that find article marketing to be a waste of time are those individuals who used it once and never continued, hoping for results to be instantaneous.

Storytelling may sound like a bad thing, which can often be attributed to the negative connotation that storytelling has in regards to marketing. Consumers don’t want to be told a story; that sounds like they’re being lied to or being played for a fool. Storytelling is very much the opposite, however, and the existence of stories is really the only reason products succeed or fail. Your story may have a small fib, one that simply helps to elaborate the story being told, but there is a difference between telling a story (one that customers already believe) and lying.

Think about a product you feel loyalty for and even share with your social circle. What makes it so great? Is it the quality? The price? The materials used? Or is it the story that all of those attributes tell?

Allow me to elaborate here: product attributes don’t sell. Consumers don’t care if it was made in the US or China, if it was made with renewable energy, if it meets industry standards, or if it’s the cheapest product available. These things alone mean nothing. What makes those attributes matter is how they tie into the customer’s worldview. A worldview is the lens or filter that a customer sees the world through. If they are prone to believe companies are “out to get them”, they will look at every situation with that view, and often times expect it to be the case.

If you’ve taken any psychology classes, you may have heard this sort of expectancy to be part of the Confirmation Bias. When we believe something to be true, even if it isn’t, it becomes true because we expect it to be. We look for things that help to “prove” it is true, and in turn we make it true. For example, you may tell yourself, “I always get stuck at red lights when I’m late for work.” The reality of the situation is that you probably do not hit every red light every time, but being late and expecting to hit every red light, you look out for the times that you get a red light and ignore the times that you get through an intersection without hitting one.

The same sort of expectations can be seen in customers buying products. If we expect service to be great and the prices to be fair from a company, however that worldview was created, the service will be great and the prices will be fair, because we expect them to be. If, on the other hand, we expect service to be horrendous, we will automatically look for any error or confrontation to help to confirm our expected experience.

So, what does this matter to marketers looking to resonate, connect, and create a relationship with customers? Quite a bit, in fact, because worldviews can be used to our advantage as marketers.

How are consumers’ worldviews built? Often times, they are built through past experiences, the WOM (word of mouth) they hear from their peers/friends/family/acquaintances, and the advertising/marketing/PR they are exposed to. While you have little control over the first two components, you can control (to some extent) what sort of advertising/marketing/PR they see. You can help to either shape their worldview, which is somewhat impossible to change if already in place, or you can talk to and appease their worldviews.

A prevalent worldview may be the desire to be better to the planet and to buy things that are, for example, created with renewable energy. While that factor may not matter to most customers who are not on the lookout for things like that, your audience is people that care about products created with renewable energy. What that means for you and your marketing team is that you must create a story that speaks to that worldview. Tell them a story that shows how great they are being to Earth by buying products that help to sustain its habitats. Tell them the story of the person they are trying to be, that by buying things are sustainable, they can become that person.

More importantly, look for changing worldviews. You cannot change a worldview, mostly due to the fact that people don’t like to be told that they are wrong, but you can take advantage of the times where worldviews are already changing on their own. Situations like entering college (or even high school, for that matter), having children, or getting married can all alter things like a worldview. Tell a story that will speak to these changes and that will help buyers to see that yes, I can buy this product and feel good about the person I am being.

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Why do stories matter? They matter because regardless of the story being true or not, if buyers believe them, they are true. Going back to the company or brand that you feel loyal to, think about the story you tell yourself, the story the company has helped you to tell yourself. Do you drive that car because it is practical, affordable, or that it simply gets you from point A to point B? Well, some people may buy a car for those reasons, but most people buy a car because of the story they tell themselves when they drive it, and the story they feel others tell themselves when they see the driver in it.

I was driving one day and finally realized the reason I had purchased a car well out of my desired price range: I liked this one, not only because I was sold on it by the car salesman, but also because I finally felt it matched my personality, in contrast to the 1989 Corolla I had been driving throughout my college years. I bought my new car because it fit in with my worldview, and regardless of the bad press and the safety issues that Toyota had been experiencing, I had liked my old car, knew Toyota to be a reliable company, and thought that the new car I have now says so much more about me (in a positive way) than my old car ever did. Despite the bad press and negative things floating around about Toyota, I still bought a Toyota. That’s powerful storytelling at its best.

Toyota helped me to tell myself a story, one that involved their cars being reliable, long lasting (as my old car was still running at 270,000 miles), and that, after graduation and entering the “real world” that is college loan payments and finding a “real” job, it was indeed a way for me to move forward (as their slogan tell us they’re doing everyday). What stories do you tell yourself on a daily basis?

For more on the Power of Storytelling, click here.

Social media can be a useful tool for most companies, simply because a large majority of consumers are online and using social media already. What better way to connect with people than to go where they already are? More important than your customers being online is the opportunity that social media presents that is two way communication. You can go online to communicate one-on-one with your customers when they have a question, concern, or feedback. You can share things with them that are useful and valuable.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can use and abuse social media as an outlet for your advertising. It works a little differently than that. In order to be successful online and in social media, you must be personable and personified. Social media isn’t meant to be used to spam your customers or to share your latest product, but rather it is meant to be used as an outlet for your educational marketing.

Educational marketing can be a great way to instill trust and to position yourself as a leader. More importantly, it shares with your audiences your expertise and gives them something of value that they can actually use. Social media, then, should be a place where you can share your educational marketing, but in a manner that avoids over advertising yourself and avoids advertising your products. There’s a fine line between too much self promotion and just enough, so be careful and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t.

The most important thing to getting social media right is that you know why you are using it. What is your main goal, your objective? This should then help you to identify if social media is the right path for you. If your objectives are to raise more awareness in your community offline, than social media may not be the best tool to use. Instead, events, press conferences, media pitches, etc., things that will affect the physical neighborhood around you, those should be your best bet to meeting your objectives.

Really evaluate how social media will benefit you and your customers; their benefit is the reason you’re in business, after all. Ensure that using social media makes sense, and that it fits into your overall business and marketing plans. If your objectives don’t line up with the use of social media, you will rarely get results that are positive or worthwhile, and your using social media will have been for not. Don’t waste your time if it doesn’t make sense to use it. You can actually damage your brand by using social media if your customers don’t want to see you there.

Lastly, know that social media is not something you can set-up once and then sit back and relax. Like any business venture, it is something that you need to monitor, manage, and adjust as things change. More importantly, it is something that you and your company should be doing everyday. Update your accounts, post to your blog, and respond to your customers regularly. If that means every other day, do so every other day. Consistency is key. Customers get bored and will move on to something new when your information is no longer interesting or if your rate of updating is lacking.

So, the moral of the story: make sure social media is appropriate for your and for your customers and that you can maintain its use.

Marketing has come a long way in the past decade, and much of that change can be attributed to the Internet and the ever increasing interaction that occurs on the Web. That interaction is one from buyers, potential customers, and businesses alike, and all three parties are trying to understand where they stand and what direction they are going. More important, though is the redefinition of the relationships between companies and buyers. With two-way communication taking place everyday, it’s hard to tell where marketing ends, PR starts, customer relations begins, and what really differentiates the various business categories.

An important question to ask, then, is if categorizing the business activities really matters. From a managerial perspective, it might, as part of the manager’s responsibilities is delegating tasks to various departments, but from the consumer’s standpoint, the relationship is all that matters. Despite that important fact, there is a long-standing debate over who owns what in a business; does marketing own social media? Does PR own customer relations?

An answer to that can simply be that every department is responsible for interacting with buyers and following up with them as they try to interact with you. In the past, marketing offered two options: advertising (which was often costly, inefficient, and tedious), or praying that media pick up your story and put it to print (also ineffective and somewhat hit and miss).

Now, companies can bypass media outlets and rely more heavily on the success that PR can have today with things like social media, press release distribution sites, a company’s own website, and direct communication between the company and current and potential buyers.

What comes with this new ability for companies to interact with buyers is a new sense of responsibility that needs to be adopted. Customers are getting used to the idea of companies bombarding the social media scene and are, in turn, hoping and waiting for companies to be responsive and responsible for their social media use. What does that mean? Simply that if you want to use social media, do so with the intent of reaching and communicating with your buyers. This doesn’t mean that you can send out information without replying to information being sent to you.

To have success with marketing today, you must personify your company and really work hard at fostering relationships with your buyers online who are looking for that relationship. Though companies no longer need to rely on marketing firms to do things for them, they do still need to do the things that these companies were doing, and then some. Things haven’t changed that much that customers don’t want to be talked to. The change is seen more in the way in which customers like to be communicated to. The old one-way communication tactics of the past that interrupted customer’s lives and screamed for their attention are no longer affective. With things like TiVo and DVR, customers can skip your ads and read about you online.

Stop wasting your money on advertising and invest in PR and Marketing. It will make a world of difference.

Relationships make or break the success of your company, and when it comes to the success of your business development initiatives, your success can really only be met through the understanding and knowledge you have of your customers’ needs. How well do you know your customers? If you’re unsure of this answer, it may be helpful to create Buyer Personas. To create these, follow the guidelines laid out here: Creating a Customer Profile/Buyer Persona for Your Marketing Objectives.

Creating these profiles will help you to better communicate with your buyers. Moreover, both you and the customer will benefit through your providing them with a service/product they need and want.

In talking with a few business development specialists who conduct business development for companies (and their own companies) daily, there was a resounding answer to my questioning of the most important thing to know in biz dev: your customers. They are the lifeblood of your company, and without them, your company would fail to exist. At the same time, your products or services may be something that they cannot find anywhere else, which could make you essential to their well-being, too. But, since that is rarely the case for most customers who can find the products and services they need in many places, you need to create something that they cannot find somewhere else: a deeper understanding, a connection, a relationship.

This can be done through relationship cultivation, where you get to know their needs and wants well. It can also be done through customer and public relations where you are able to continue the dialogue and maintain that connection with them through things like social media, customer assistance/service, and through your website.

Having a satisfied customer who’s needs are met should be your ultimate goal, and that can happen through hard work and determination. In order to do that, you must know who you customers are. That’s the first place to start.

Public relations is often seen as an alternative to advertising; I hope to change that, because it is not. While advertising and PR are often lumped together (and, again, one is often used as an alternative to the other), they are two different and separate activities that are both needed to propel a company forward. (For a start-up or for a new company looking to build their brand, advertising won’t do much good, however. Read more about why that is here: 4 Reasons Public Relations (Not Advertising) Builds a Brand.) They do, however, work well when used together as components of the company’s overall outreach program.

Though the economy is beginning to turn around, budgets for public relations still seem to be somewhat of a hard thing to come by. To get more of a budget allotted to you as the PR professional(s) in your company, you have to sell its benefits. How do you expect executives to want to give you a budget if the reasons for utilizing and partaking in PR activities are never defined? On top of selling the benefits of PR, try to tie the PR activities into other business activities, such as marketing and business development. They are, after all, becoming more and more similar with the tools and tactics available to companies online.

Public relations can be seen as a necessary evil, but it’s a rather useful activity for businesses to partake in; not only are you now able to connect with your buyers one-on-one (which was never done (or able to be done) in the past), but you can help to shape your public image. In this way, PR is crossing the lines that separated it from marketing. You can send out a press release, respond to customers, and be active on social media; these are all things that can help to shape how the public sees you. In the past, companies had to hope the media would portray them in a positive light. Now, when that’s not done, a company can respond in the attempts to remedy an issue/potential crisis or write a letter to an editor to ask for a correction.

What does this all mean for you and your company? Well, that depends. How connected do you want to be with your audience? How much do you value customer/buyer feedback? Do you want to stay up-to-date with what your buyers are looking for? PR can assist in all of this (and more). What you need to do first is to establish your needs, goals, and objectives and those of your buyers. Then, and only then, can you move forward by conducting proactive, effective, and well-planned public relations activities.

Public relations isn’t all that difficult, and more often than not it does not require the assistance of a “professional”. Doing PR correctly requires an understanding of your audience and your company, both being things that you can learn and know. From there, it requires an understanding of how to implement tactics that you’ve defined from your strategies. (For more on tactics and strategies, read ). It may make sense to hire a consultant to get you started but don’t be afraid to try things out.