In the digital age, so much of your marketing success depends on your online presence. Just as you wouldn’t run a shoddy, run-down brick and mortar store, you simply can’t have a tacky-looking website. By the same token, you need to give potential customers a reason to come to your site. Gas stations operate on razor-thin margins on gasoline to get customers into their convenience stores — the real moneymakers. Similarly, many business websites use a content-rich, regularly-updated blog with appeal to their target audience to drive traffic to their site. And just because you aren’t a digital marketing expert, doesn’t mean you can’t put together a great blog your audience will be drawn to. Continue reading “Building Better Blogs Through Quality, Targeted Content”
Category: Customer Communication
Rookie Mistakes that can Kill Small Businesses
It’s not easy starting a small business. One of the reasons entrepreneurs are so admired by the rest of society is because of the risk involved in striking out on one’s own. Many leave the stability and certainty of a salary, health insurance and a retirement plan to bet the farm on a venture they are confident in and passionate about.
Unfortunately, many of these intrepid business people fall prey to some very avoidable pitfalls. Continue reading “Rookie Mistakes that can Kill Small Businesses”
Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?
The question of whether front-line, everyday employees should be speaking on behalf of a company and its brand has been in the minds of business owners and executives for years. On the one hand, harnessing the full weight of a company’s workforce can put a lot of bodies into the marketing effort. At the same time, companies often fear the potential negative, counter-productive impact of “rogue” or un-coached employees. Think of the employee complaining about her job on her Facebook page, or the insider who gives friends and neighbors the “real story” about his company at a backyard BBQ. Continue reading “Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?”
How Small Businesses Can Get More Out of Their LinkedIn Accounts
For a small business without a big marketing budget, it can be tough to find economical marketing outlets. Paid advertisements on television and radio can get expensive fast, as can hiring a quality web designer and paying for regular content. Fortunately, there are a number of low-cost/no-cost tools that small businesses can leverage to achieve marketing success. Continue reading “How Small Businesses Can Get More Out of Their LinkedIn Accounts”
The Role of Contributed Content in Your Marketing Mix
by Linda Pophal
As more and more businesses engage in content marketing, studies show that implied endorsements from third-party experts hold more weight with buyers than what companies say about themselves. That makes logical sense. Think about how you are influenced to buy new products, try a new restaurant, etc. Will you be most influenced by their advertisements, social media posts and other self-promotions, or by what others say about them? The latter is likely to be true. Continue reading “The Role of Contributed Content in Your Marketing Mix”
To Engage Your Audience, Provide Real Value
Savvy business owners and marketing professionals are always looking for ways to deepen their connection with existing customers and attract new clientele. In the age of content, newsletters and e-letters are great ways to connect with an audience and good tools for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to use for customer engagement.
The key—as with any kind of online communication—is to Continue reading “To Engage Your Audience, Provide Real Value”
Facebook as Your “Website”? Here’s Why That Might Be a Bad Idea
Not so long ago, having a website for a small business seemed like something that was only feasible for the high-margin business or the tech-savvy entrepreneur. Today, a professional-looking website is within reach of virtually any business. Still, in the Facebook age, many businesses are tempted to use a page on the social networking site as their primary online presence.
Facebook is certainly a low-cost option to very quickly get your business’ web presence up and running; however, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind before using Facebook as your only online vehicle. Continue reading “Facebook as Your “Website”? Here’s Why That Might Be a Bad Idea”
An “Inside Out” Approach to Engaging Your Audience
We work with companies and individuals in the business-to-business (B2B) space on content marketing planning and implementation, including the use of social media. The greatest challenge—and opportunity—for companies of any kind is generating content that is going to be valued by their audience. That often means thinking, as we like to say, “from the outside in.”
Continue reading “An “Inside Out” Approach to Engaging Your Audience”
How to Get Customers to Spread the Good Word
by Linda Pophal
I wrote a post recently about the value of positive public relations compared to other ways of generating awareness and preference for organizations. I made the point that what others say about us (e.g. positive word-of-mouth) is always more impactful than what we say about ourselves. One reader followed up with a question: “So how do we get our satisfied customers/alumni to talk about us more?”
This was my response: Continue reading “How to Get Customers to Spread the Good Word”
Are You Attempting to Influence “Controllers”? What You Need to Know
By Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA
A few weeks ago, we looked at an article in Harvard Business Review written by Gary A. Williams and Robert B. Miller titled “Change the Way You Persuade.” In the article, Williams and Miller discuss what they found after spending two years studying over 1,600 executives. The authors discovered that the executives could be categorized into five different decision-making types: thinkers, charismatics, controllers, followers and skeptics. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at thinkers , charismatics, skeptics and followers. This week we’re going to look at the final group: controllers. Continue reading “Are You Attempting to Influence “Controllers”? What You Need to Know”