Out of the Fog Marketing

NPR recently broadcast an interview with Rob Walker on the Diane Rehm Show, which provides a good overview the current state of marketing. While the focus was primarily B2C, there are certainly implications for all sectors: with the abundance of choice in every industry, buyers are turning to their emotions to help them make decisions. People are identifying with what they buy as a reflection of who they are. Consider the 2007 study reporting the majority of people who buy Prius hybrids do so because it sends a message that they are green, rather than to specifically produce fewer emissions or get better gas mileage.

Since businesspeople are human too, factors beyond numbers contribute to B2B buying. Think about the strong messages that are sent when companies make culture decisions—when a tech start-up dumps their in-house PCs to go all-Mac, when a firm switches to a 4-day workweek, or when an outdoorsy entrepreneur installs a climbing wall in the break room? There are innumerable businesses in any industry providing "quality services", connecting with your clients on another level entirely can make their buying decision easier.

Get a free high quality back link to your website by creating a personal and domain page at Aboutus.org.
The Wiki-based site pages get very quickly indexed by Google. If you have not created or edited a Wiki page before it can take a little time to learn the system, but there is a handy tutorial on the site.

Labels: about us, backlinks, build backlinks, link building for SEO

Research states executives and business owners spend up to 25 minutes a day, or 100 hours each year, just scheduling meetings on their calendars. Jiffle offers an online scheduling and calendar system that lets your prospects, clients or customers see your calendar and schedule a meeting. Right now the service is free, but after June 2008 it will require a subscription starting at $99 per year or $9.99 per month.

Labels: appointment setting, jiffle, online calendar, online meetings, scheduling

It isn't just a good idea for the environment, recycling is great for marketing your business as well. Recycling ideas that is. Often content such as articles, snippets or topical advice can be reconstructed or updated as an easy way to build more content and, if online, gain valuable back links.
Also if you spend a good deal of time on content such as blog posts, make sure you distribute subsets of the content on sites such as Twitter. You can also put snippets on your email signature.

Labels: backlinks, blog posts, blogging, guerilla marketing, marketing content, twitter

Bloggers and publication editors are now foregoing email pitches and asking for succinct pitches via Twitter and other social media tools. Check out Stowe Boyd's mandate that all pitches are over Twitter in format he calls the Twitpitch. It does make you really hone your message if you only have 140 characters.

Labels: media pitches, press pitches, public relations, social media, stowe boyd, twitpitch, twitter, web 2.0

If you haven’t seen it yet, this useful little mashup shows you what people are tweeting. The interface, which works similarly to Google Trends, lets you compare the popularity of different keywords as they show up in Twitter feeds over the course of weeks or months. Click on the “see what people are saying” link and you’ll get a feed of the most recent tweets containing that keyword or phrase.

twist.flaptor.com

Labels: google trends, keyword research, twitter