Having a marketing program that includes interactive strategies is critical for today’s marketers. As such, your goal should be to try to convert your marketing monologue into a marketing dialogue whenever possible. One of the most cost-effective ways to make this happen is through a blog.
But before you go off and start a blog, you and your company need to commit to keeping it up to date and relevant. And, importantly, it must reflect your overall marketing and branding strategy.
Here are ten suggestions to help you take your blog from good to great:
- Be personal and conversational in tone.
- Consistently deliver original and relevant content.
- Ask questions and encourage feedback. The more you get your readers to participate, the more loyal and engaged they will be.
- Configure your design and layout for SEO.
- State the purpose of your blog in your header. Don’t force your readers to search to discover what your blog is about—because they won’t.
- Don’t sell anything. The first time you do is when you begin to lose the trust of your audience.
- Always lead with the most important “takeaway” of the post.
- Be sure to provide links when talking about other people, companies, posts or websites.
- Take the time to create the most compelling post titles. Great titles generate more traffic.
- Engage your audience with interesting polls.
These are just some recommendations that will help improve your company blog. And always remember why anyone reads a company blog in the first place: to find information that they deem relevant, informational and/or valuable.
We are huge believers in creating integrated marketing programs, simply because they work. A very important component of almost every one of these programs is email marketing. The reason is simple: email marketing is cost effective, is extremely targeted and delivers trackable results.
Before you embark on your next email marketing program, take a look at the list below to avoid making any of these common mistakes.
Mistake #1: Cramming in too much
Your readers want information that is direct and to the point. Keep your emails short, concise and relevant to their needs. Readers will only give you a few seconds of their valuable time, so you need to get your point across fast. Remember: less is more.
Mistake #2: Irrelevant content
Readers don’t care about you. They only care about what you can do to improve their lives or help them solve a problem. Provide them with information that is relevant, timely and valuable, and always avoid the temptation to talk about yourself. Instead, talk about how your product or services provide real solutions in their lives. You want your reader to say “that was worth my time” after they read your email message.
Mistake #3: Not proofing or testing
You would be surprised at how many emails we see that have misspelled words, poor grammar, bad punctuation and non-working links. Since email marketing is so easy and fast to send, many marketers fall into the trap of not thoroughly proofing or testing. Nothing says “you don’t deserve to have my business” like sending out email messages with mistakes.
Email marketing campaigns require as much planning, effort and expertise as any other marketing initiative. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they are easy to write and send. Make sure that you put in the extra effort to develop relevant content for your readers, and thoroughly test and proof everything. If you avoid these mistakes, your email marketing efforts should deliver greater results.
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Newsletters are a very effective marketing tactic. Whether you distribute them electronically, traditionally, or both, done right they can be extremely effective. Unfortunately, most companies don’t understand how to create powerful newsletter content that gets read versus content that ends up in the circular file.
Consider the following five recommendations:
1. Have a plan—Your newsletter needs to have a true vision and a target; otherwise it’s just a bunch of articles without continuity. To build reader loyalty, you must identify your key audience – and it can’t be “industry people.” It should be more specific, such as “CFOs who need to cut costs.”
2. Don’t sell too hard—Sure, your newsletter is a sales tool, but be careful not to sell too hard or you will lose readers. Try to be subtle by using customer case studies, testimonials, industry stats, government projections or other less obvious sales techniques.
3. Provide value—We live in a “what’s in it for me” world. Your newsletter is fighting for your audience’s most precious asset: their time. So be sure to make it worth their time by providing new information, resources, or other valuable information or insights. The more valuable your content is to them, the more they will look forward to reading your next issue.
4. Be consistent—If you promise a monthly newsletter, be sure you deliver one on time, every time.
5. Make it interactive—Give your readers the opportunity to ask questions, make comments or interact with other readers through your company’s blog. Your goal should be to turn your newsletter from a monologue into a conversation.
Newsletters are a lot of work to produce. Make sure all of the effort pays off by developing content that gets read, and you will have loyal readers for life.
Be sure to check out our new website at www.gumas.com and be sure to follow Gumas on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for additional marketing insight.
Until next month…
Social marketing is hard to ignore as it steadily gains popularity as an effective marketing tool. According to Forrester Research, 75% of Internet users participate in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Now that’s the kind of fast-track mainstream adoption you can watch from the sidelines or you can choose to get in on.
Of course, we are not suggesting you dive in headfirst but rather ease into it gradually. Remember, social marketing takes time to have a positive effect, so the seeds you plant today can take up to a full year before coming to fruition. The following are just some of the strategies we implement when activating social campaigns for our clients:
1. Find out where your target is the most active on the web—Think blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, forums, Twitter, etc. Then set up a branded identity on each.
2. Be conversational—And please don’t sell. You want to be the purveyor of useful information, someone people come to for advice.
3. Connect your social media—With simple RSS feeds you can make sure that all of your content syncs up. This makes it easier for your customers to find your content.
4. Do something viral—Remember the last interesting thing somebody sent you? It didn’t cost the originator a dime, yet it paid big dividends in terms of exposure.
5. Become an influencer—Participate in forums. Identify yourself as someone from your company and say something interesting. It may sound easy, but it requires a commitment.
6. Nominate a social media person—Make it someone’s responsibility to actively participate on and monitor the web.
When properly planned and executed, social media campaigns can be a very powerful and cost-effective part of your overall marketing strategy, especially during these times of budgetary cutbacks and uncertainty.
Speaking of the next generation, we recently offered a free White Paper on the subject entitled Web 3.0. Bring it on! In case you missed it and would like to check it out, just send an email with the subject line “White Paper” to editor@gumas.com, and we’ll send you a copy with our compliments.
Until next month…
As we start a new year, not only is it an ideal time to reflect back on our marketing successes (and failures), but it’s also the time to use that knowledge to help guide you through the uncertainty of 2009.
If you believe everything you read in the media, 2009 will be a challenging year for many. The following are a few strategic marketing ideas to consider to help you better position yourself through the uncertain times ahead:
Be willing to change
Simplicity, focus, and flexibility are valued now more than ever. Talk more to your existing customers and ask them what they want. Don’t assume anything, but deliver exactly what your customers and prospects want.
Protect market share
Your primary concern should be protecting your position in the market, because it’s much more expensive to rebuild your market share than it is to maintain it. If you don’t take steps to protect your share, you may find it impossible to return to the position you once held when business picks up again. If you can afford to be aggressive, you’ll find there may be no better time than now to take market share away from competitors who are in a weakened position.
Become interactive savvy
Engage search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), blogs, webinars, and other interactive initiatives into your marketing mix. These are just a few examples of the interactive strategies that can have a powerful effect on maintaining, and even increasing, your marketing ROI.
Avoid price discounts
Resist the temptation to consistently discount. We understand that sometimes you have to do what you have to do to generate sales. But before you discount, consider other options first that allow you to maintain price integrity, such as added value promotions. This strategy requires the buyer to buy in full and get “something extra.”
Stay flexible
It’s great to develop a yearly marketing plan. But in times like these, you need to be willing to adjust your plan and try new strategies on a very regular basis. Consider testing new creative messages, promotional strategies, and media outlets on a small scale to see if something works better.
Don’t let the current market conditions keep you from success. Despite the difficulty of a challenging market, the opportunities to get creative and find new marketing opportunities can be all around you.
Until next month…
Check out our new brand! In celebration of our upcoming 25th anniversary, we put ourselves through our own Cultural Branding process. Check out the results and the new Gumas brand for yourself at www.gumas.com
As consumers, we have always relied on referrals—or warnings—from family and friends for everything from the best hotels and restaurants to accounting firms and ad agencies. But as conventional media becomes more fragmented, more and more marketers are trying to capture the power of a good referral.
With the fragmentation of conventional media, marketers should be looking for ways to enhance their referrals on a larger scale. This strategy is called Word-of-Mouth marketing.
A recent study of over 26,000 people found that 78% trusted “recommendations from other consumers,” which, in turn, significantly increased the likelihood that the recommendation resulted in a purchase. These numbers are way too powerful for any marketer to ignore.
As interactive marketing gains more and more credibility, we are finding that there is an increasing interest among our clients concerning ways to incorporate referrals or Word-of-Mouth marketing into their marketing campaigns. So what is Word-of-Mouth marketing? Since the interactive portion of this is such an emerging field, not everyone agrees on the answer, but the following are some examples:
- Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.- Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along at an exponential rate, often online or by email.
- Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about your brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to those communities.
- Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
- Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
- Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals who, in turn, share their experiences with the product.
- Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others, including the press or industry analysts.
- Cause Marketing: Supporting local social causes to earn the respect and support of people who feel strongly about the cause.
- Conversational Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catchphrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.
- Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.
- Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends. Email and other interactive methodologies are ways to offer innovative referral programs.
Now that you know some different types of Word-of-Mouth marketing, what can you do to start implementing it at your company?
Until next month…
There are no formal rules when it comes to email marketing etiquette. The one trend that we are seeing more is that good email marketing etiquette can make a big difference in how your customers respond to you and how they perceive your brand.
Email marketing etiquette can be critical to building a healthy, legitimate and reciprocal relationship with your customers and prospects. So how do you implement some of these tactics into your email programs? The following are some of the basic rules that we have found to be effective when it comes to email marketing etiquette:
1. Ask for Permission—Permission is powerful. When a prospect or customer tells you that it is okay to send them something, then they will take your email more seriously than if you do not get their permission. So try to work into your general marketing programs a strategy that allows you to get permission (or an opt in) from your customers or prospects.
2. Confidentiality—Be sure that you clearly post your confidentiality policy. Most email subscribers are concerned about their email address getting into the wrong hands or being bombarded with unwanted emails. Let them know what they can expect from you and what you will be doing with their email address. The greatest results come when you are honest with them. We recommend that you post your confidentiality policy, or a link to it, near your opt-in request box.
3. Give Them a Way Out—Just as you should make it easy for them to opt in, make it easy for them to opt out. Having a clear and functional unsubscribe option puts your reader at ease, and lets them know that you are professional and value their time.
4. Provide a Confirmation—Each time someone opts in or out, be sure that you send them a prompt confirmation. This should be a simple, automated response, ideally within a few minutes of their request. We always suggest that your messages include a brief note, such as “Thanks for subscribing to Gumas’ Marketing Smart. We look forward to providing you with valuable marketing knowledge each month.”
5. Monitor Activity Closely—Be sure that you or your advertising agency manages your database closely and responds to all inquiries or complaints promptly. We too often see companies not utilizing email for its real benefit—the ability to speak one-to-one to your prospects and customers.
And, as with all proper etiquette, “please” don’t forget to say please and thank you!! “Thank you.”
Until next month…
Newsletters are a proven marketing tool. Done properly, they can be a very powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. Unfortunately, most newsletter efforts fall short and typically end up in their reader’s circular file. Why? Because they don’t follow the basics of effective newsletters.
We have developed some basic rules when we create newsletters for our clients. The following are what we believe to be the five most important rules of effective newsletter marketing:
1. Have a Plan and a Vision
Your newsletter needs to have a plan and a vision. Without either, it is destined to become a hodge-podge of articles that have no continuity or purpose. Make sure you identify your newsletter’s key audiences and what you want them to do or know. It’s very difficult to build reader loyalty without an understanding of what your readers want.
2. Go Light on the Ego
Your newsletter is a sales tool. But be careful that you don’t toot your horn to the point of arrogance. It’s good to celebrate your product’s/service’s excellence, but try doing it with case studies or client testimonials rather than in the first person. It’s simply more credible this way.
3. Provide Value to Your Reader
Your reader only cares about one thing: “what’s in it for me?” Your newsletter is fighting for your audience’s most precious asset—their time. So, be sure you make it worth their time to read. Give them new information or valuable insights so they will look forward to receiving your next issue.
4. Be Consistent
Hitting deadlines is difficult, but be sure you always meet those deadlines. If you promise a monthly or quarterly newsletter, then be sure that you deliver a monthly or quarterly newsletter on time, every time. What do you think it says about your company if you can’t keep your promise to deliver your newsletter on time?
5. Make It Interactive
Encourage your readers to talk back or ask questions. If you send an electronic newsletter, provide them an easy link to ask questions or provide feedback. If you opt for a traditional printed newsletter, provide an email address, a bounce-back card or a special URL that solicits feedback. And always try to make it a conversation rather than a monologue.
Newsletters are a lot of work. But all this work can translate into powerful brand building results and sales results. Make sure that you incorporate these five basic rules into your newsletter and you’ll have loyal readers for a long time to come.
Until next month…
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