Sometimes I think the most simple thing that we can do as businesspeople and marketers is “put ourselves in the shoes” of our prospects and customers. Are we making it easy to buy? Or are we setting up unintentional barriers, however slight, that may interfere with—or obliterate—the purchasing process?
Continue reading “Are You Making Your Customers Work Too Hard? They May Just Give Up.”
Many of you have probably been at goal-setting seminars or workshops where the leader will pose a question like: “Would you like to make more money?,” and, of course, everybody nods or raises their hand. Then the leader will approach a workshop participant and Continue reading ““More” is Not a Good Marketing Goal. Why Specificity Matters.”
A recent LinkedIn question resonated with me—”Why don’t people like to talk about pricing UPFRONT?” Why indeed?
Have you ever been frustrated when trying to make a purchase decision because you can’t get pricing information from coy salespeople or cryptic web sites? In my opinion, Continue reading “Should You Be Upfront About Your Pricing?”
Our company is named Strategic Communications to emphasize our belief that to be effective, communication must be strategic. Too often, marketing initiatives are focused more on tactics (let’s get on TikTok! let’s put up a billboard!), rather than strategy. That’s probably one of the biggest mistakes that marketers can make. Why? Because unless you just “get lucky,” and you might, simply picking tactics may result in doing the wrong things, wasting time, effort, and money.
Marketers often speak of the “customer journey.” It’s a concept that describes the various decisions customer make and the interactions they have with a company from the point where they’ve identified a need until the point when they make a purchase—and beyond. A customer journey map is important because it helps marketers visually depict the customer journey and identify areas that may represent barriers or risks of loss. It provides a documented, explicit vision of how customers will interact with your company and is a good tool for sharing with employees to help them understand the journey and the role that they play in engaging and retaining customers. Continue reading “Creating Customer Journey Maps”
One of the challenges for — and criticisms of — the marketing function is that it’s often difficult to calculate an ROI on a company’s marketing efforts. For example, how does a soft drink or beer company determine whether or not their multi-million-dollar Super Bowl ad was worth the investment? How can they tell whether a customer made a purchase based on that ad as opposed to a purchase they were going to make anyway? Not an easy task.
And yet both employers and clients want (and deserve) to know if their marketing investments are paying off for them. Fortunately the measurement game these days is often much more straightforward than in the past. Continue reading “The Promise and Perils of Performance Marketing”
(This was a very popular series for us a few years ago so we thought we’d take a look back and revisit.)
There is no shortage of content marketing experts these days, and there’s no shortage of ideas on the best ways for companies to leverage their content to achieve desired results. The problem is that these ideas are often without context–not grounded in real-world examples that can help would-be content marketers get their arms around what content strategy is all about.
Here, through a fictional example of a company that’s interested in gaining clients and driving business through content marketing, we apply the advice of content marketing experts to demonstrate how it can be used in concrete ways. Continue reading “Content Marketing Strategy Revisited: Taking a Journey With Jazz Jones”
There’s an old saying that has been used to describe exceptional salespeople: “They’re so good that they could sell ice cubes to Eskimos.” The point being that Eskimos, living in a cold climate, really don’t need ice cubes, and are likely an audience that is going to be tough to crack. But, great salespeople could crack them.
Our perspective: Why? Continue reading “Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should!”
It’s hard to succeed at anything if you’re not focused. Whether you’re golfing, driving, taking an exam or giving a presentation, losing focus on your objective can be disastrous. The same is true of your social media activity. Granted social media marketing is a longer-term activity than golfing or giving a presentation, but the importance of focus is no less important. In particular, we’ve selected three key elements marketers should keep their focus on when engaging in social media. Continue reading “Best Practices for Social Media Marketing”
Jazz is almost ready to implement her content marketing strategy. Just one more important step before she’s ready to go. Continue reading “6 Steps and 6 Days to an Effective Content Strategy: Day 6”
