Tag: Blog

Part I of “How to use content marketing to your advantage”

One of the major challenges that new content marketers often face is striking the balance between thought leadership and selling. It’s important that any selling being used is earned by the knowledge that’s shared. Your audience can ferret out a hard sell faster than you think, so by saving the sell for the end, you earn the right to mention your offerings. However, it’s still imperative that the vast majority of your content marketing is not about the sell, but rather about topics we discussed in a previous post.

Tone also differs between a hard sell and thought leadership, and if you start an article with a tone that suggests a future hard sell, readers will be less likely to get through the whole article or blog post. By varying your tone and style, your content will remain refreshing and make your customers more excited to work with you — since you’re the experts.

Here are some suggestions for keeping your tone authoritative and informative.

Do:

• Keep things neutral: Rather than using a tone that aggressively pushes sales, focus on the problems the industry faces and how customers can identify solutions to those problems.
• Stay on topic: Just because you have value propositions does not mean that they belong in every piece of content.
• Express empathy: Acknowledge the problems that your customers face and the issues that are important and let them know you feel their pain.
• Interview people outside your company and position them as experts: Rather than just using your sales reps or VPs, choose neutral experts familiar with the topic as your main speakers.
• Use testimonial properly: When using testimonial language or superlatives, make sure that these are communicated via direct quotations, preferably from third parties
• Let your customers be the hero: Position your customer as the hero of the story as much as possible; guide them to overcoming obstacles rather than rescuing them with solutions.

Don’t:

• Ask for agreements: this sales tactic should be left to sales-oriented conversations rather than being the main method of communicating via content marketing.
• Assume everyone reading the article is your customer: While it might not happen overnight, you will have members of your audience who would not purchase your product right now; by creating brand authority, you become the natural first choice if they’re ever in the position to need your products or services. 
• Make grandiose claims, such as that your product is the best: allow the experts to speak to your success, if discussing innovations. Let the product speak for itself or stick to testimonials. Content marketing is not an infomercial.
• Make it all about your company and innovations: While this is incredibly tempting, no one wants to read a sales pitch unless they’re in a buying conversation with a sales rep.
• Make your company the hero all of the time: allow your readers and customers to make the choices as to their best paths forward instead of spoon-feeding them. The exception, of course, is with recommendations from third party experts.

Within the thought leadership framework, be sure to vary your styles for best results. A few styles we like to use include:

1. Expository/informative. This style can be dry if not done well. Be sure to share information that your customers and readers can readily use —now (see this post for details about being timely)
2. Narrative/interview based. Tell a story about a customer, a supplier or a brand you love.
3. Listicle. Create a list of the top ways that people accomplish something or tips for success, include that number in the headline and limit extraneous text outside of that list. For these to be successful, they need to be able to be skimmed for the lists within the listicle. This section of this blog post could be considered a mini-listicle.
4. How-to. Engaging tutorial on solving a problem your customers face, with or without using one of your products or services.
5. Case study. This one is obviously going to be more product- or service-oriented than some of the other styles we’re mentioning. Be sure to provide the problem, the solution and the ROI calculation.
6. Slightly argumentative. If you are using the other styles, it is ok to have the occasional argumentative piece, as long as other types are your primary styles of content. As we mentioned earlier, keep the testimonials and superlatives in quotes made by third parties.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series: pitfalls to avoid when creating content. Like this content? Sign up to get notified when we post something new here.

About the author

Jess Schmidt brings a creative writing degree and over a decade of professional writing experience to the team. As a career marketer with a background in the design world, she works with clients to make their brand stories stand out. Her specialties are thought leadership, compelling descriptive language, technical details and marketing strategy. She writes content for all of the publications under the Great American Media Services umbrella and manages advertiser-driven projects. She’s also the in-house SEO and SEM guru. Learn more about our team here: smartsolutions.media/contact-us.

While generating leads may seem like the most important part of the sales and marketing cycle, knowing that your follow-up game is strong is as important — or in some cases, more important — as getting those leads in the first place. If you’ve struggled to convert leads, the first place to look for improvements is in your lead follow-up.

“The most important step to follow-up is to understand the importance of actually following up on the leads you receive. These people have expressed interest in what you sell, and following up is the first step to understanding a potential customer’s needs,” said Greg Sebel, associate publisher for Fruit Growers News, Vegetable Growers News and Organic Grower magazines.

 1. Plan ahead

Before you complete any lead generation efforts, or before you attend an event or trade show where you receive many leads at once, it’s important to know how a few facts about your follow-up process:

• How much time it takes to convert a lead, on average
• How many reach-outs you normally need to make to convert a lead
• How many leads you can follow up on in a given period of time.

Besides these basics, you’ll want to plan how you will follow-up. This includes planning scheduled emails or call blocks as well as marketing efforts that your marketing team can do to help you keep the interest of those leads if you or your team know you will get more leads than you can handle.

 2. Hot (or not)?

While it may be tempting to categorize your leads as hot, medium, cool, you may be making assumptions without complete information. The worst thing that can happen when you classify your leads in this way is that you can forget to follow up with non-hot leads.

If you can confidently make the assessment that a lead is hot and you need to prioritize leads because you’re receiving more than you can give quality attention to, make sure you don’t ignore the medium or cool leads. Plan efforts that will keep non-hot leads interested while you work more aggressively towards completing the sales cycle on those you deemed ready to buy.

3. Be timely

When you’re following up after a trade show or event, it is important to do an initial reach-out with thanks to anyone you had a conversation with. Most lead collection systems allow you to add notes, so be sure to make a few after you scan someone’s badge so that your initial note to them can be personal. Once you return from the trade show, set your planned email program or call blocks up to try to set up a conversation within the first week or two after the show. Sometimes getting your foot in the door before any of your competitors do is the reason you’ll get a sale, so letting those leads sit on your desk a month or two might mean that they are no longer convertible.

“With trade show leads, it is imperative that you respond to the lead as soon as possible. To make the connection before the customer may lose interest or forget about your company and your products and services. Once you have connected to the company you can evaluate the level of interest and proceed with the next step. This can be setting up a second call or meeting, sending information by email or mail or setting up a follow up call in the near future when the company has the time to discuss their needs and goals and how your company, products and services can help them achieve to these goals,” said Nancy Brooks, integrated marketing consultant for Gift Shop Plus magazine.

If a prospect initiates a conversation via the web or phone, it’s imperative that you are able to reply within 1-2 business days at the very most with a personal acknowledgement. It’s ok to have a short boilerplate email that you use to reply, but be sure to add a few sentences that are relevant to them so you aren’t just guilty of giving a canned answer.

For processes where you don’t receive leads for a few weeks or months, just reach out as soon as you receive the leads to get the conversation going.

4.  Personalize it, be relevant and be brief

While mass emails seem like a great idea when you have large numbers of leads to follow up on, just keep in mind that they’ll perform best if they look like they’re crafted just for the recipient. Don’t send out a mass email unless you can add personalization.

What you should do instead: create emails that are partially unique, with some boilerplate, and add a couple sentences about your interaction or otherwise let them know you did a bit of research. Also, LinkedIn is a great resource. Do check their LinkedIn job description if you’re not sure what they do, rather than just assuming you understand their job by description alone. In initial reach-out, keep it brief so you can keep their attention.

5. Create a tracking system

Use CRM tools if you have them, but an excel or google sheets grid works well if your company has not invested in a CRM yet. The hardest part is keeping it updated when you’re busy, but those efforts will definitely pay off. You can also utilize automation tools that send out reminder emails to your clients if they don’t open or reply to your previous messages. 

6. Mix your media

Rather than just sticking to one type of email, try creating visually inviting emails — something your marketing team can take care of for you — and combine those with plain-text personal emails, phone calls, LinkedIn messages or contact via retargeting systems. If you have trouble keeping track of where you were in your conversation, utilize your tracking system to note statuses or the location of the last message you sent or received.

7. Be respectful

If someone opts out, be sure to note it and let other reps know so that they aren’t reaching out as well. The last thing you want is to annoy your prospects so that they do not want to work for you.

The bottom line

Leads won’t take care of themselves. Sure, you might have a few people you meet at trade shows reach out to book without any effort on your end. However, expect that you’ll need to do the work, and look forward to that follow-up. Leads are the lifeline of any sales rep, and following up is your bread & butter. “I think it is vital to follow up on leads because you’re ensuring a potential client who already showed an interest in your product

knows how and whom to contact for more information or to book an ad. A lead is someone taking an interest in your product, our job is to make it easy and ‘tempting’ to take the next step,” said Andrea Schafer, integrated marketing consultant for Spudman, Produce Processing, Organic Grower and Hemp Production News magazines.

 

About the author

Jess Schmidt brings a creative writing degree and over a decade of professional writing experience to the team. As a career marketer with a background in the design world, she works with clients to make their brand stories stand out. Her specialties are thought leadership, compelling descriptive language, technical details and marketing strategy. She writes content for all of the publications under the Great American Media Services umbrella and manages advertiser-driven projects. She’s also the in-house SEO and SEM guru. Learn more about our team here: smartsolutions.media/contact-us.

If one word could be used to summarize business during this pandemic, it’s “pivot.” It’s not the usual noun, meaning a pin that allows a turning motion. It’s not a noun describing a position in basketball or roller derby, either. It’s a verb, now. It’s an action that a person or business takes in order to change direction towards survivability and thrive-ability.

In 2020, the whole world pivoted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Retailers developed new systems for curbside pick-up and online ordering; schools switched to virtual learning, whether or not teachers knew how to teach that way; restaurants beefed up their delivery and pick-up options and sometimes retooled their entire menus; manufacturing figured out how to make physical distancing work better. Industries found a way to survive in a world that no longer included crowds of people visiting in-person.

For survival, these changes were necessary, even if they were difficult and scary, leading to uncertainty about whether or not they were worth the investment. For many companies, they were. These fundamental changes to how they do business are now defining businesses instead of helping them scrape by in uncertain times.

As you may be working through this evolution at your business, are you still able to reach all of your customers? Is there a piece to the puzzle that might be missing that could make a big difference in your bottom line?

As a media partner to our advertisers, we’re working hard to ensure that we know where our readers — your customers — are consuming the content they need for their businesses. 

This means we’ve pivoted, too. In the media industry, there used to be those who do print and those who do not. These days, it’s important to do both. To better support our advertisers and readers alike, we’ve added digital-only issues, expanded our interactive digital products like webinars and lead generation efforts and increased availability of market surveys and sponsored digital editorial pieces to build you up as a thought leader. We’ll still have the same print issues our readers rely on, but your marketing options have even more variety with these additions.

In our last blog post, we discussed the things that a marketing campaign needs to include. Part of that is ensuring that you are maximizing your budget in ways that allow you to capture your entire audience. For B2B businesses, this could mean that you need to advertise digitally outside of your own platforms and work with trade publications who are experts in your industry.

No matter what your marketing or lead goals are, we offer solutions to support you. Reach out to your integrated marketing consultant today to see how we can help you meet your customers where they are. If you’re not sure who your rep is, here’s where you can find out:

Coach & A.D.

Fruit Growers News

Gift Shop Plus Magazine

Greenhouse Product News

Hemp Production News

Lawn & Garden Retailer

National Nut Grower

Organic Grower

Produce Processing

SmartSolutions

Spudman

Stationery Trends

Training & Conditioning

Vegetable Growers News

Winning Hoops

 

About the author

Jess Schmidt brings a creative writing degree and over a decade of professional writing experience to the team. As a career marketer with a background in the design world, she works with clients to make their brand stories stand out. Her specialties are thought leadership, compelling descriptive language, technical details and marketing strategy. She writes content for all of the publications under the Great American Media Services umbrella and manages advertiser-driven projects. She’s also the in-house SEO and SEM guru. Learn more about our team here: smartsolutions.media/contact-us.

 

 

The most successful marketing teams spend much more time planning than those who lose track of the goal mid-year. By creating a marketing plan, you can set yourself up for greater success in reaching your marketing and sales goals. Here are some of the top reasons you need to create a marketing plan every single year.

Save money

Most marketing teams who place ads piecemeal think they’re saving money. But by not knowing exactly what your budget is for the year and not calculating where you are, the end of the fiscal year might be much more painful than anticipated.

The bottom line is that piecemeal marketing will cost you much more than planning your year in advance. Planning ahead will help you stay on budget and know when last-minute initiatives can be added. Often, you can receive discounts for buying repeat advertisements in a publication or with an agency. This allows you to get more impressions and ultimately leads for the same amount of money you’d spend throughout the year.

Consistent scheduling

Planning before the year starts will help create consistency in all aspects of scheduling. It helps to ensure your team has as close to an even workflow through the year, better using your personnel and time resources. Make sure you have plenty of time to create your year’s plan; many teams spend several months preparing for the year. 

By maintaining consistent brand scheduling, you are not just helping out your team, but you are also going to ensure that your audience sees regular messaging, rather than a few flurries of activity during particularly busy times. They’ll remember you even if you aren’t running a special or going to an event because they still see your brand in the less-busy times.

Consistent messaging

Beyond planning timing, the messaging you want to use should also have the same level of consistency. When creating your marketing plan, consider any hashtags or themes you will use. Knowing these ahead of time will help reduce the number of late nights and amount of weekend work your team might need to do before big releases.

By knowing the messaging style of your marketing campaign ahead of time, you can ensure that all team members are creating content and ads that match in tone and design. We all know how big brands have used this consistency — through their logos and jingles — to even get that branding stuck in children’s minds.

While you may not aim for the level of brand awareness of McDonald’s or Target, you can still be front of mind with your target audience by being consistent and planning ahead. Consistency is key.

Setting goals and getting your ROI

If you’re not sure how to set goals or calculate the return on investment (ROI) for your initiatives, learning how to do so is an important piece to proving that you should retain — or even grow — your marketing budget year over year.

Your first year tracking might start from a set of cost estimates based on what you’d like the department to be able to do. Tracking your efforts throughout the sales funnel will help you calculate how much revenue — and ultimately profit — you gained through each initiative. Some efforts may have people costs, materials, lodging, per diem or other inclusions that aren’t hard marketing costs, and some companies prefer to lump that into overhead and others include it in the marketing budget.

Tracking can include using UTMs (tracking links used to monitor campaign progress and behavior related to clicking on the link itself) or landing pages, having specific questions on contact forms about how people found you, tracing trade show contacts through to the end of the sales funnel or just reaching back out after the fact to ask where the conversation started.

Proving that an initiative was more profitable than expected is a great reason to ask for a bigger budget for the same initiative in subsequent years. Without knowing if you are getting that return, it’s hard to prove that the department deserves the money in the next budget.

Be proactive, not reactive

The worst case scenario is being in a place where your marketing efforts are reactive. Planning ahead has benefits, but reactive marketing has steep costs in time and cash. For example, knowing that you want to advertise in a print publication before an industry event means that your team can be prepared to create that ad without feeling rushed or having to drop everything. It all goes back to the planning process; reactive marketers always feel stressed and spread too thin. You’ll keep your team happier and healthier by being predictable. 

About the author

Jess Schmidt brings a creative writing degree and over a decade of professional writing experience to the team. As a career marketer with a background in the design world, she works with clients to make their brand stories stand out. Her specialties are thought leadership, compelling descriptive language, technical details and marketing strategy. She writes content for all of the publications under the Great American Media Services umbrella and manages advertiser-driven projects. She’s also the in-house SEO and SEM guru. Learn more about our team here: smartsolutions.media/contact-us.