Read an intersting presentation on the 'death of interruption marketing' and the rise of 'permission' marketing or 'inbound marketing' ...basically how customers can find you...all a lot of marketing speak from a company called Hubspot...
They also talk abou the power of giving your content away for free.
All makes good sense but they have a nice blog and promote it well on linkedin discussion groups...all a nice case study on practising what you preach!
http://www.hubspot.com/products/marketer/
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Facebook advertising dismal clickthroughs?
So it seems traditional 'interruption' marketing is just about dead...ie. Telemarekting, DM, even banner ads don't seem to have great clickthroughs and response rates...
Reports I read seem to indicate Facebook advertising is just as bad...according to the following link!
http://www.othersidegroup.com/adcomments/2008/10/getting-your-brand-online-using-facebook-for-your-business/
Marketers have missed the point a little bit with social marketing...it's a two way street so basically you need to create/publish content that is 'useful' to your customers and allows them to interact with you...ie. customer can post a question in a discussion group (of like users) and actually have someone answer...and best case that someone answering is a peer.
Maybe I'm harsh but just trying out Ads on social networking sites does seem a little crazy...but hey maybe it works for some people!
Reports I read seem to indicate Facebook advertising is just as bad...according to the following link!
http://www.othersidegroup.com/adcomments/2008/10/getting-your-brand-online-using-facebook-for-your-business/
Marketers have missed the point a little bit with social marketing...it's a two way street so basically you need to create/publish content that is 'useful' to your customers and allows them to interact with you...ie. customer can post a question in a discussion group (of like users) and actually have someone answer...and best case that someone answering is a peer.
Maybe I'm harsh but just trying out Ads on social networking sites does seem a little crazy...but hey maybe it works for some people!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Distributing Press Releases online
Apparently it's not that hard!
Recommends searching for “press release submission” in any search engine...which brings up...
www.prlog.org
And it seems to work quite well! Will keep you updated on the results of my first online press release promoting an event I'm organising.
Not sure if it will get picked up but.....have created a Google Alert to monitor and will sit back and see what happens!
Friday, October 24, 2008
The end of B2B Marketing?
Forrester research have worked out social media to a tee! Spark debate with contentious headlines about 'the end of B2B Marketing' to get people talking...and perhaps more interested in their services...keep em hanging with a 3 part series...then sting em for $200+ to join an online seminar on the topic..looks close to 'best practise' to me!
I'm impressed....considering that 'marketing groups' across linked in and other social media sites are filled with posts from marketing services organisations blatantly promoting their services (plus many complaints about that approach) ...Forrestor makes a nice change!
Of course Forrester sells information so their blog should be good! But it does provide inspiration for other companies B2B social marketing efforts.
Oh and if you're interested in what Forrestor have to say here's an inbound link to help drive up their traffic..lol
Monday, October 20, 2008
The 2nd Best List ever? Jigsaw
Linked in does have competitors like Jigsaw.com.
Jigsaw boasts 10m+ contacts and 1.5m+ companies but uses a point system to swap and buy contact details. It also has list building and cleaning capabilities and seems completely setup for marketing and sales.
If you want to cast your net even wider try Plaxo which offers similar services to the above...between all these serviecs and your salesteams you should be able to reach almost anyone!
Now you just have to come up with an offer so great they can't refuse!!!
Jigsaw boasts 10m+ contacts and 1.5m+ companies but uses a point system to swap and buy contact details. It also has list building and cleaning capabilities and seems completely setup for marketing and sales.
If you want to cast your net even wider try Plaxo which offers similar services to the above...between all these serviecs and your salesteams you should be able to reach almost anyone!
Now you just have to come up with an offer so great they can't refuse!!!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Linkedin - The best B2B Marketing tool ever?
The world of B2B Direct Marketing has definitely moved on..Lists, email marketing, telemarketing, segmentation...they all have varying degrees of success...but Linkedin combines the best elements of all these mediums.
The Business networking site seems to have hit a critical mass and for B2B Marketers it can be gold! It's a living breathing list perfect for a B2B sales/marketing organisation looking to prospect for new business.
Although site Advertising is only available to US firms there are still a number of zero cost avenues for using this 'super list' for those in and out of the US.
- Join groups and email your contacts within that group (eg. Advertise 'x' event, seek an introduction)
- Use the 'company' filter to research contacts
- Pay to send 'Inmail' if you can't drum up enough contacts to 'reach' your targets
- Integrate linkedin with Salesforce.com through the salesforce app exchange
- Use it to clean prospect lists or update existing contacts who might have changed jobs before you telemarket
I have used it with great success to attract IT professionals to events using our sales guys contact lists and a personal note from the sales guys.
If you are in B2B marketing what have you got to lose!
The Business networking site seems to have hit a critical mass and for B2B Marketers it can be gold! It's a living breathing list perfect for a B2B sales/marketing organisation looking to prospect for new business.
Although site Advertising is only available to US firms there are still a number of zero cost avenues for using this 'super list' for those in and out of the US.
- Join groups and email your contacts within that group (eg. Advertise 'x' event, seek an introduction)
- Use the 'company' filter to research contacts
- Pay to send 'Inmail' if you can't drum up enough contacts to 'reach' your targets
- Integrate linkedin with Salesforce.com through the salesforce app exchange
- Use it to clean prospect lists or update existing contacts who might have changed jobs before you telemarket
I have used it with great success to attract IT professionals to events using our sales guys contact lists and a personal note from the sales guys.
If you are in B2B marketing what have you got to lose!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Brand management - Online style
Managing your brand online is a hot topic...from how your competitors are bidding for your brand name as an adword to monitoring use of your brand in blogs.
Trying to control what bloggers say is now recognised as futile but it does give marketers a way to see what customers are saying.
In fact some clever Online agencies are even offering 'Online Brand monitoring tools'. See http://www.greenlightsearch.com/ppc/profiler/
While Google recently allowed competitors to bid for others brand names they also supply
a number of tools to allow you to monitor use of your brands online.
http://www.google.com/alerts is great for setting up an alerts for use of your brand and blog entries.
Blog tips
- Installing links back to your homepage increases page rank in organic search
- Social bookmarking - Try out installing the following to your page and you may increase hits through referrals from news aggregators like digg.com
http://www.freetellafriend.com/
http://www.addthis.com/
- Regularly updating your website with short bits of information will help keep you ranked highly on search engines
- Best to have your website address included in the title of your blog
- You can setup google alerts to monitor sentences from your blogs and see if those who are using your words are at least linking back to your blog!
- Even though Blogger is a great way to start you can move to expert for 'free' with http://wordpress.org/
- Social bookmarking - Try out installing the following to your page and you may increase hits through referrals from news aggregators like digg.com
http://www.freetellafriend.com/
http://www.addthis.com/
- Regularly updating your website with short bits of information will help keep you ranked highly on search engines
- Best to have your website address included in the title of your blog
- You can setup google alerts to monitor sentences from your blogs and see if those who are using your words are at least linking back to your blog!
- Even though Blogger is a great way to start you can move to expert for 'free' with http://wordpress.org/
Online Marketing Hints from everywhere
Online marketing hints from my reading, browsing, training etc.
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