|
|
Home >
Library >
Out of the Fog Marketing Blog
Tips, thoughts and topics on marketing for small to medium-sized businesses in Michigan and
throughout the world. Contributions by Chris Slocumb, Casey Frushour, as well as other members of the Clarity Quest team.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Here's the last part in our "Marketing Tips for Tech" series. Hope you enjoyed it - feel free to ask your own tips or ask us questions. 12) Consistent and pervasive branding. Your company’s logo and URL should be on all documents to make sure that your clients and prospective clients know who you are and with what company you are affiliated. Consider is putting a signature at the end of all emails including replies and forwards. Be careful not to embed too many graphics into the signature as it alerts some spam filters. And don’t forget to trademark and copyright appropriate materials. If you want to be really coordinated, have your marketing firm create a simple style guide which outlines how and when to use your corporate marks.
13) Use web analytics. To maximize your profits figure out who is hitting your website. This can be useful in many ways. You should also definitely track the keywords people are searching for in order to find your product or service.
To find companies hitting your site you can use two free services --Google Analytics or StatCounter. While these services are free you do have to manually search which people looked at your website unless you create custom scripts. Nevertheless, it is a top choice for a free customer base service. Another service is LeadLander, Visitortrack by NetFactor or LoopFuse. They are more expensive choices, costing $1,900 to $4,800 per year; however they provide you with customizable automated detailed lead reports, ties into Jigsaw and LinkedIn databases, and customized email alerts.
14) Test customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis. It never hurts to know exactly how your clients feel, and get important feedback about the positives and negatives of your job. This can be as simple as a phone call to your clients, or an anonymous survey on your website. A phone call or email is more personal, and your client will know that you value their opinion and business. An anonymous survey on the other hand allows you to truly know how you conducted your service or how your product worked for your clients. This allows for the communication of productive criticism, helping you improve your products or services. To get the best results you should consider conducting both types of customer satisfaction tests.
Labels: analyzing leads, ann arbor michigan, branding, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction tests, google analytics, leads, marketing tips, surveys, tech compnaies, technology marketing
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
This week and next, I'll offer the last two parts of the "Marketing Tips for Tech Companies" series.
8) Use pay-per-click. Sure this sounds obvious but it's amazing how many companies do not use PPC. They either are afraid to try or had a bad experience because the campaigns were not setup properly. The Internet is an efficient and inexpensive way to reach your audience. Tradeshows and print ads can be expensive and are aimed at mostly passive buyers - people that are simply browsing with no intention of using your services. If someone searches “marketing firms in Southeast Michigan” then they are more than likely actively searching for just that. This makes it more likely that they will click through to your website. For example, a full-page advertisement in a trade magazine can cost between four to ten thousand dollars, compared to a trial pay-per-click (PPC) campaign that might cost $500-$1,000. Try using exact keyword matching instead of broad match for even bigger bang for your buck. Once you have mastered exact keyword match campaigns, Google Adwords’ embedded match is an exciting alternative for ad targeting. For a great training video on embedded match techniques, see http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural3/vid1_adwords_triangulation_method. 9) Ask for Referrals. If you know your customer is satisfied, which hopefully they always are, then you should ask if any of their friends, colleagues or partner companies need your services. Referrals are very simple because all it takes is one simple question to your client. Although this sounds easy, many companies do not do this, and lose potential business. There are several firms out there that automate referral reminders and gifting. Check out Automatic Referrals for detailed advice on how to get more referrals and even phone numbers from your current clients.
10) Cross promote your product or service. Cross promotion involves using two or more companies or organizations combine forces to advertise a product or service (think an OEM and reseller). Each company or organization helps promote the others' product or service. By teaming up with synergistic companies you will save time and money. It will allow you to gather more information than you could on your own, for example lead lists. Also, other companies have different techniques, thus learning from them can be of great advantage to your company. In addition, the cost of advertising and renting booth space at a trade show can be very expensive; by teaming up with another company you can save money.
11) Integrated Marketing. Diversification is a key to more than just stock portfolio success. To reach your target audience you must use many different marketing techniques at once. You should be using different forms of marketing in parallel such as internet marketing, public relations and advertising. Used in combination marketing efforts are so much more powerful than ad hoc campaigns.
Labels: cross promotion, customer satisfaction, customer service, integrated marketing, marketing, marketing tips, pay-per-click, referral marketing, tech companies, technology marketing
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
 A down economy and slow summer season make it one of the best times to re-evaluate your company’s marketing strategy. I'll be presenting a list of proven tips which have worked for our tech clientele. Here are the first three: 1) Create a Marketing Rulebook. When starting your company or launching a new product line, make sure you are consistent in everything you do. From the president of the company to the receptionist, all should have the same idea of what your company is, and how you present it to the outside world. Your marketing rulebook should have both internal and external positioning. It should have defined target audience(s). Although you would think that the more groups of people you target the better, it will be might be a smarter choice to narrow your focus. Pin point the best fit for your company –this may not be the group with the highest short-term revenue potential, but the one with the best long-term prospects. Another important aspect that fits into your marketing rulebook is to be consistent in your form and style. This might seem like the simplest of all the rules, but it is one of the most important. Your target audience should your logo, blog, and URL on just about every piece of outbound marketing including emails. Brand elements should be in press releases, articles, blog syndication websites increasing familiarity with your company. 2 Research your marketplace before spending. It’s amazing how many companies spend marketing dollars unnecessarily. This is why it is important to research your marketplace before you spend money on a service or campaign. There are many internet tools that help you determine the wants and needs of your target audience. For example, SurveyMonkey.com and Zoomerang.com are both online survey tools, which can help you get a feel for what your target audience needs. These services can range from a limit of 10 questions for a free account or an unlimited amount of questions for only twenty dollars. However, the more intricate your survey becomes the more expensive it will be. Nevertheless, this can be a worthwhile investment, because the more you spend on the survey the less you will unknowingly spend on useless campaigns. It is also important to check out your competitors online. This can be as simple as entering what a prospective client would type to find your service in a search engine. When generating a list of competitors, you should see what they have done to become successful and see how you can learn from this. Finally, you should determine your ideal prospect profile. You can use a more pricey service such as Hoovers, which generates a complete list of all the companies you might want to target. However, there are also other free options, such as ReferenceUSA. You can usually access this account through your local library. Jigsaw and LinkedIn are great data sources if you know the names of the companies you want to target but need an employee's name and contact information, . 3) Establish a marketing budget. Once you have researched your market, establish a 12-month marketing budget. I advise companies to create a gold, silver and bronze budget in terms of the dollar amount and then you will be ready if you have to slash or increase budgets throughout the year. For more on the ways to establish the correct amount for your marketing budget, see http://www.clarityqst.com/pdf/marketing_budget.pdf.
Stay tuned for the next post in which we'll cover branding and customer testimonials....
Labels: high-tech marketing, hoovers, infousa, jigsaw, marketing technology, referenceusa, technology marketing, tips linkedin
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Here's my prediction...big ad agencies and PR firms are history.
Seth Godin is dead-on about specialization in his new book, Meatball Sundae. Firms that start as exciting, different, and specialized and stay that way prosper. Our firm is a perfect example - we handle only technology companies.
However, as companies focus and specialize, they cannot service clients within one agency. Successful marketing and advertising firms are building a web of contractors and partnerships on which to rely. Most already do have a "virtual network".
How many "partners" does your company have? Are they all inside your normal channels? Why?
Oh, and sorry Hillary for plagiarizing your title. Labels: better marketing presentations, channel marketing, marketing specialization, meatball sundae, parternships, partners, seth godin, technology marketing
Archives
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
|
HOME
BLOG
SITEMAP
