Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Marketing 101 – A look into the not so obvious
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Marketing is much more than just advertising; it is the sum total of all your communications with the marketplace. This includes your vendors, lender, investors as well as your customers and the community at large. It is what I call a “reluctant reality” that your marketing will be a bigger factor in your success than the quality of your offering.
By “reluctant reality”, I mean that most business owners would rather it not be so… but it is. We’ve all been brainwashed to believe in the old saw, “build a better mouse-trap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Trust me; it just isn’t so.
Savvy entrepreneurs know (even if they don’t like it) that a B product with A marketing will always beat the pants off an A product with B marketing. Obviously, the best combination is to couple an A product with A marketing – and that’s exactly what you should strive towards.
The first step in creating an A marketing plan is to differentiate yourself. This is the most important thing you can do. And, of course, you already know all the ways you are… but you’ve got to be different in the eyes of your customer. This is much more difficult thing to achieve. It is basic human nature to group things together as “alike” or “not alike”, with emphasis leaning strongly towards “alike”.
Getting Marketing & Development Teams Working Together – SES Toronto
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It’s a common story: an online marketing professional returns from a conference full of exciting new ideas and tactics, only to fail at selling those ideas internally. In many cases, marketing and IT/development professionals don’t always understand each other, and as a result potentially high value projects stall out and never see the light of day.
How can you get your marketing and IT teams working together? The following panel of speakers moderated by Tracy Falke, Social Media Specialist at Freestyle Interactive tackle the subject matter:
- Jonathan Allen, Director, SearchEngineWatch
- Puneet Bhasin, Independent IT Consultant,
- Casey Rovinelli, Director, Digital Marketing, National Hockey League Players’ Association
Casey Rovinelli, Director, Digital Marketing, National Hockey League Players’ Association
Casey Rovinelli started things off by discussing that the world is technology driven, and that we need IT to get things done.
What are the common types of things IT says to marketing?
- It’s un-realistic – we can’t do that.
- Too many changes – it’s not possible with current resources.
- Where are we going? (And why are we doing this?)
- They don’t understand – marketers don’t understand our technology.
5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy
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So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.
First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?
1. Describe your target audience on Twitter. If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.
The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.
2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.
5 Ways to Electrify Your Social Network
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A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check. Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check!
But where’s the buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement? And the most pressing question of all: What is all this social web participation doing for our company and our customers?
Showing up to the game doesn’t mean there will be an audience. This is as true with the social web as it is offline. The problem that marketers have with attracting interested customers and growing their social networks often stems from approaching social participation tactically and without a plan. Testing and experimentation is great, but if what you’re doing is something that has a cost and is to be accounted for, then you’d better have a plan and objectives. How can you score without a goal?
Here are 5 tips to help business marketers energize and electrify social network development: