Marketing and Sales Guru

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.

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?

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?

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?

As a marketer, there are often times where strategies and tactics will need to be implemented that may not make much sense. For some of these tactics, only select few companies have the ability and capability to carry them out. One such tactic is that of cannibalizing.

The term is a bit harsh, but it really does relay its meaning: the consumption of one’s own self. In this case, it is the consumption of a company’s own market. This is a strategy most companies and brands cannot implement, and as such is a luxury for more established brands looking to capture more of a market. The main thing about cannibalizing, however, is that you are simply recapturing your already owned market.

This is a way to take away from your own market, but also reach more of another market that was previously unable to receive or unwilling to obtain your products or services. Take for example the newspaper industry. Their sales are falling, and their readers are moving online (with the rest of the world). What did they do to respond? They moved their papers online. You can often times read free articles or subscribe to read them on their websites. This was a recapturing of their own market, just in a different venue. It’s a way to convince people to stay, but also to convince others in the target market that may have been reluctant or just slow to joining in.

Customers online, as well as your competitors, means that there are times where you may have to change your offerings and risk losing part of your market to gain parts of others. This change is inevitable, however, as more and more information is being consumed and shared online. More importantly is the use of the Internet as a news source. In a post on Public Relations Blogger titled “How Media Consumption Has Changed Since 2000″ | Pew Findings, I go over some of the main changes the Internet has caused to occur in terms of media consumption.

We’ve already learned that more and more people are online, and their use, as suggested above through the Pew study means that you must be online as well as offline if you hope to reach your target audience.

Another way to cannibalize your own market and brand is to create an entirely different brand that competes with yourself. You may take away some of your own market through this other brand, but you can also capture parts of other markets that you were previously unable to access. To do this, though, you must have the resources to do so.

There are many things that a company can replicate, from production methods, recipes, price, even websites. The one differentiator: the story customers tell themselves about you product/service/brand.

As many studies and professors have taught us, buying is tied to our emotions. The way to connect with buyers, then, is to do so on an emotional level. This can be accomplished through stories, which help to evoke emotions. These emotions speak to our needs as humans, and as defined by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs. There are many factors that can affect buying and buying patterns, but really resonating with a customer’s worldviews and needs can make a world of difference.

In regards to storytelling, needs are often defined in different terms than simply a basic need. It can involve the things that Maslow explains in his hierarchy of needs like the need for love/belonging, or the need for safety. Because these needs really direct our buying habits, it’s important, as a marketer, to recognize those needs and to speak to them.

For products that consumers don’t really need, like an iPod, Apple had to speak to the many needs associated with owning an iPod. There are needs to belong, to feel a sense of status, to feel like things are more convenient, or to feel a sense of accomplishment by being able to purchase something like an iPod. Moreover, Apple had to speak to the buyer’s needs for enjoyment that one can get from the iPod. They did an excellent job at portraying that through their ads that portray a silhouetted figure dancing to a popular song. For their sense of belonging, they ran (and continue to run) advertisements featuring the Mac and PC who have a consistent love/hate relationship.

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What does your product say to the consumer? Are you really only sharing the features/product specs? These are important things, no doubt, but they don’t sell the product. Apple doesn’t even really need to tell a story anymore; it’s being told for them through people using their products every day, and most buyers already tell themselves the story Apple was trying to tell in the beginning: owning an Apple is cooler, different, and outside the norm. It’s also expensive to own one, so that can be part of the story they chose to tell as well.

Define your story and the story that your consumers are looking to be told. Pay attention to trends online; what are people talking about? What does your target market want in a product? If what you can offer in both physical attributes and need fulfillment through the story they will tell themselves, you may need to find a new target market. Figure out your story before you choose your target market, though, as that will help you to better shape your story. The reason this is such an important part of marketing is because these stories become true once the buyer begins to tell themselves it is. A company may have terrible service, but if the story everyone tells themselves involves excellent service, the service will be excellent in the mind of the buyer.

Do we really tell ourselves stories about things like computers, shoes, make-up, etc., that make us want them? Do these stories even really matter? I think the answer to those questions are ““, but I’m interested to hear what you think.

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.

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.

Customer service is an important part of any company. To retain customers and to encourage them to become loyal customers, service is the key. You can have the best product out there, but that will really only get you so far. Part of your sales pitch and marketing strategy should be to offer the best customer service available. What that means is really helping to create the best experience for your customers.

That experience starts from the first time they see an advertisement or press coverage on your company, and ends when they no longer own your product or are a potential customer anymore. You may be thinking, “Wow, that’s a pretty large commitment.” Don’t be fooled, however, because the commitment that your customers give  you is also a large one; they only have so much voice in what they buy, and when they buy from you, and continue to buy from you, they are essentially voting with their dollars. They are making a statement to others that they believe in and stand behind your company.

To ensure that those good feelings carry on throughout their experience with you, keep your promises that you make in the beginning. It can be a difficult balancing act, selling your product through advertising and maintaining/meeting expectations that you set there, but do your best. Customers quickly become unsatisfied when their needs or expectations are not met, so be sure to help them with setting those expectations.

A last point to pay attention to here is that customers who are satisfied are walking, talking, brand ambassadors who will advertise and market your brand for you. They will create positive WOM (word of mouth), and encourage others to come to you. WOM is far more powerful than advertising, and since customers rely on the opinions of their peers and colleagues, hearing someone in their circle boast about a product will make them more likely to look into it as well.

Taking care of your ambassadors is a vital component to your success. WOM and PR are far more successful and effective than advertising could ever be, so take advantage of the opportunities you have to really create the best experience for your customers.