More than a year after Kohl’s Corp. dropped the idea of moving its headquarters to Milwaukee’s Park East strip, a long-awaited marketing campaign for that moonscape-like area is about to be launched.
Meanwhile, a June groundbreaking is set for a Park East apartment development after years of delays, while a nearby Milwaukee School of Engineering parking structure under construction is headed for an August completion.
Finally, a new bill passed by the Legislature will limit the County Board’s role in selling land, including Park East parcels. The bill’s supporters say that will help encourage more development on the strip, which runs along downtown’s northern edge.
The marketing campaign, created by the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin, will include signs, brochures and a website to draw attention to the vacant Park East tracts, said James T. Barry III, president of Cassidy Turley Barry commercial real estate brokerage. Barry has been involved in that effort.
That campaign also will make clear to prospective developers where they can go for basic information about the parcels, Barry said. That in cludes characteristics of the properties, such as soil conditions and location of underground utilities.
Some of the information on property conditions was uncovered through soil borings on parcels west of the Milwaukee River during the city-county effort to woo Kohl’s, he said. That ended when Kohl’s decided in February 2012 to keep its headquarters in Menomonee Falls.
The marketing campaign will create badly needed buzz around the Park East, Barry said.
“There’s a whole universe of prospects,” Barry said.
The campaign has the support of city Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux and newly appointed county Economic Development Director Teig Whaley-Smith. Costs will be split between the city and the county.
But “someone needs to sign on the dotted line and say, ‘CARW go forward and do it,’” Barry said.
Whaley-Smith, appointed by County Executive Chris Abele in April, said prospective investors need more information about the Park East.
Whaley-Smith said developers have told him it’s unclear which parcels are available; what the process is to buy a parcel, and how to comply with the Park East Redevelopment Compact. The compact requires developments on parcels bought from the county to follow wage standards, minority hiring goals and other rules.
“What matters is clarity,” Whaley-Smith said.
University’s plans
The campaign is timely because of the MSOE project that’s nearing completion, and the upcoming development of Park East Square apartments, Barry said.
The university’s $28 million project, north of E. Knapp St. and west of N. Broadway, will provide 780 parking spaces, with a college soccer field on top. The university is leasing some of those parking spaces to businesses, with that portion of the development paying property taxes.
Also, an investment group led by Wangard Partners Inc. plans to break ground in June on the $22 million first phase of Park East Square, with 86 apartments and 14,600 square feet of street-level commercial space. Park East Square, which also will have 246 parking spaces as well as future apartments, will be built on the block bordered by N. Milwaukee, N. Jefferson and E. Lyon streets and E. Ogden Ave.
That project, which ran into years of delays in obtaining financing under its original developer, on Thursday received city Redevelopment Authority approval to include a drive-through window for part of its retail space. The first phase will be completed by early summer 2014, said Tony DeRosa, a Wangard vice president.
The new state legislation that cuts the power and budget of the County Board also plays into the timing for the marketing campaign, Barry said.
It includes a provision that clarifies the board’s role on land sales. That language says that while the county executive’s actions on land sales must be consistent with board policy, the board may only approve or reject a sale contract negotiated by the executive.
“You shouldn’t have to negotiate with 19 county executives, instead of just one,” said Richard Meeusen, a legislation supporter, Badger Meter Inc. chairman and an investor in the Aloft hotel, which was built on a privately owned parcel in the Park East area.
Possible arena site
During this past week’s debate on the bill, which awaits Gov. Scott Walker’s signature, Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) suggested Abele and local business interests wanted the board restrictions to make it easier to develop a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks on the Park East strip. Developer Gary Grunau has said the arena should be built on the site between N. 4th and N. 6th streets, north of W. Juneau Ave.
“My support of this bill has been about one thing all along, making Milwaukee County more efficient and effective,” Abele said, in a statement.
That possible arena site was mentioned during a recent discussion about the Park East before the County Board’s Committee on Economic and Community Development.
Whaley-Smith discussed the status of specific county-owned parcels with committee members at their Monday meeting.
They include a small tract north of Knapp St. and west of Water St., which would be combined with a vacated portion of Edison St. and a privately owned parking lot along the Milwaukee River for a development anchored by a Marcus Theatres Corp. cinema.
Tentative plans for that project, led by developer and commercial real estate broker Bruce Westling, were first disclosed five years ago. But the parcels remain undeveloped.
Marcus Theatres still wants to open a cinema at the Park East site, said President Bruce Olson. But the mixed-use development’s other parts, including a parking structure, need to come together before those plans can proceed, Olson said in a statement.
The delays have occurred because of difficulties landing tenants for the project’s proposed office tower, Westling said in an interview. He’s making changes to the proposal, which include replacing the tower with a smaller office building, and perhaps adding apartments. Westling plans to present a revised plan at the development committee’s June 10 meeting.
During Whaley-Smith’s presentation, some committee members said they were frustrated with a lack of progress in the Park East, with Supervisor John Weishan saying county officials have been unfairly blamed for the slow pace of development. Weishan expressed pessimism about the strip’s short-term prospects.
“I look forward to development in the future, but I don’t think the economy is going to be growing as fast as people would expect,” he said. “And unfortunately we’re going to see a lot more gravel than we are buildings in the Park East.”
Marcoux, however, said the most recent developments bode well for the strip.
“I think we can honestly say it’s a new day in the Park East,” he said.
Developments
Along with two projects on Park East strip parcels bought from Milwaukee County, there have been developments next to the Park East strip, including the Moderne high-rise apartments, Aloft Hotel and The North End apartments. Those projects are within the Park East tax incremental financing district, and their property taxes are helping pay off the city’s debt from replacing the former freeway with a new bridge and surface streets, and taking other steps to bring development to the area.
Article source: http://www.jsonline.com/business/park-east-development-kicks-into-high-gear-with-a-new-marketing-campaign-709v4j3-208008131.html
Diego Larrea-Puemape is a project manager at Mutual Mobile, a provider of mobile solutions for clients such as Audi, Cisco, Google, Jaguar Land Rover, Philips and Xerox.
LinkedIn: Diego Larrea-Puemape
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/video/2013/10795/mobile-minute-video-should-marketers-care-about-google-glass
Note: This article is based on an excerpt from Ditch. Dare. Do! 3D Personal Branding for Executive Success!
On a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your current level of fulfillment with your career?
Are you satisfied with what you’re doing? Do you have a plan for where you want to take your career? Are you building your own brand as you market your company’s brand? What’s the last major action you took to move your career forward?
Does answering those questions a challenge you or make you uncomfortable? When was the last time you took some time to sit back and ponder such questions?
Many career-minded marketing professionals we coach tell us they are too busy working in their career to work on it. They have more emails to answer, meetings to attend, and reports to write than they have time. And they feel their career is on autopilot.
Sound familiar?
If so, it’s time to switch from autopilot to manual mode and deliberately manage your career. We’re not suggesting you add to your already overflowing “do list.” We’re recommending that you rethink what you do and how you do it so you can build your brand—working on your career and in it and the same time.
In our new book, we posit that these three words need to become a part of your vocabulary—and your behavior—if you seek career success and personal fulfillment:
Ditch, Dare, Do.
Debunk long-held assumptions about career success, and challenge yourself with a “ditch” (eliminating a mindset that’s no longer productive), a “dare” (pushing yourself to up your game), and a “do” (taking action on those things that will advance your career).
And when you take on those challenges, you’ll grow professionally while delivering greater value to your marketing team and your company.
Here are a few of our favorite 3Ds for marketers:
1. Ditch the mindset that your manager holds the key to your success. She doesn’t. Neither do the CMO and the CEO. You’re in charge of your career. You decide which projects to pursue and how to put your stamp on them. You choose the areas in which you want to grow and evolve. You decide the next role you want to have and the path that will get you there.
Back in the Mad Men era, your company took control of your career for you. Not today. You must play the role of personal career coach every day so you can stay on track and reach your goals.
2. Dare to buck corporate convention and integrate your personal passions into how you do your work. That means having the courage to run meetings in your way—integrating your style into them.
We know a social media expert who’s passionate about the creative side of marketing and starts each meeting showing a TV commercial to get the team’s creative juices flowing. We know a health-conscious market researcher who holds her meetings outside and has stretching and deep breathing breaks every half hour. And we know another marketer who has all team meetings via video instead of the standard teleconferences to make her team feel more cohesive and family-like (her number one value is family).
3. Do keep a job journal. You do a lot of great work every day, but do you remember all that you accomplished at the end of the year, when it’s time for that performance and bonus discussion? The way to ace that performance review is to come prepared; and to be prepared, you need an accurate account of all the great things you did throughout the year to promote and build the company brand. Keeping a job journal (updating it at least once a week) will remind you of the value you deliver and make it easy to remind your manager as well!
Act on your career TODAY—the day you read this article.
Just reading this article is a “do”—one step toward a stronger personal brand. Now, take another: Perhaps you will update your LinkedIn profile, or sign up for a webinar on how to use Twitter for marketing, or rethink the way you present reports to your manager.
You’ll know the right action for you. Just carve out the time and make sure you accomplish it.
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10732/manage-your-marketing-career-in-3d
The past 10 years have brought a transformation in our marketing profession like no previous decade.
Don Draper’s office is now occupied by a marketing rock star who is much more left-brained, process-focused, and technology-centric.
Marketers have had to adapt or perish in this transition from brand to demand and art to science. They have learned a new language—the Demand Waterfall, SQLs, lead scoring. Not to mention new technologies—Salesforce, Eloqua, Twitter, Kapost.
But what is really required for marketers to survive and thrive in this tectonic shift? Insight!
Most marketing organizations are drowning in data and starving for information. In IBM’s 2011 CMO Study, only 41% of CMOs said they are prepared to access the unprecedented growth in the volume of data. As a result, their decision-making remains heavily influenced by gut decisions, team meetings, and HIPPOs (highest paid person’s opinions).
Pinpoint accuracy into pipeline coverage, campaign performance, and marketing ROI is significantly lacking.
The Missing Imperative: Marketing Analytics
Most CMOs recognize the gap. In IBM’s study, customer analytics is ranked as the second-highest planned technology investment for the next 3-5 years. CMOs know that increasing their investment in analytics is a key to…
- Driving the competitiveness of their business in the marketplace
- Ensuring the ongoing relevance of their department within the organization
The customer is king (and queen) has never been more true than it is today. Studies reveal that B2B buyers today don’t wish to engage with a vendor’s sales reps until they are two-thirds of the way through their evaluation process. Extracting insight on the digital body language of a prospect is paramount to driving won deals.
In an age when the majority of CEOs are sceptical about their return on marketing investment, proving marketing-driven ROI and pipeline contribution is a need to have for today’s CMO.
Best-in-Class Marketing Analytics: Four Foundational Elements
So what does a best-in-class marketing organization look like vis-à-vis analytics? What are the key areas it needs to get right?
As with many failed technology implementations of the past, a lot of marketing organizations today think that they are on the path to greater insight because they now have analytics technology.
The reality is that it takes a significant investment in four foundational areas to ensure analytics success:
- A superior analytics strategy that is well connected to the business strategy
- Investment in the people that drive and use analytics
- The alignment of processes and standards across Marketing and Sales
- The use of world-class technology
Foundation 1: Strategy
The CIO and the CMO must jointly own the responsibility for connecting the analytics strategy to the business and marketing strategies.
Best-practice organizations treat analytics as one of the top business and technology priorities in the organization. Marketing identifies and measures key performance indicators (KPIs) that map to the objectives of the business and their operational unit.
Marketers have a set of KPIs that are relevant to their area and ladder up to the departmental and organizational KPIs to ensure a consistent focus on the operational processes that matter most.
Foundation 2: People
One of the biggest causes of an analytics implementation that fails to meet expectations is the lack of support and investment in putting the correct roles and training in place. Analytics investments must consider what additional investments in people need to be made (e.g., new roles, such as business analysts).
A successful marketing analytics implementation features the following “people processes”:
- Marketing executives must sponsor and use the analytics environment to manage the business—pipeline analysis, ROI analysis, gap identification.
- Marketing operations is the glue that makes the analytics deployment work. Three roles are key: (1) analytics strategists, who steward the marketing analytics strategies and technologies; (2) report authors, who create “gold-standard” and ad-hoc reports; and (3) business analysts with significant statistical analysis backgrounds, who mine deep data patterns, and current and future performance gaps.
- Marketing users should be empowered to engage in the analytics environment in a self-service manner. They use “gold-standard” reports to understand their area of the business, using the information to make data-driven decisions that optimize performance
Foundation 3: Standards and Processes
The alignment by Sales and Marketing around a common “lead language” is a required foundation for one version of the truth. Many organizations today are adopting SiriusDecisions waterfall framework: Inquiries, Marketing Qualified Leads, Teleprospecting Qualified Leads, Sales Accepted Leads, Sales Qualified Leads.
CRM adoption throughout Sales is also required table stakes for accurate and complete analytics. The use of marketing campaign tactic codes is respected (MQLs are not closed and re-opened as sales-sourced). The CRM tool is used for forecasting, with sales executives using the forecasting data in cadence calls.
Foundation 4: Technology
Information management solutions are used to capture transactional information (CRM solutions), to unite data from multiple data sources (data warehouses), and to ensure common naming conventions (Master Data Management) to ensure “a single version of the truth”. Without this layer, it’s not possible to have a strong and trusted analytics layer.
The business analytics layer should…
- Enable users to interact with various analytics capabilities that best suit their needs: dashboards, scorecards, reports, multidimensional analysis
- Take advantage of predictive analytics capabilities to model future performance, and hence required actions
- Deliver analytics to users anytime, anywhere through mobile device support
- Take advantage of event-driven analytics that push notifications to users and/or systems when certain operations hit predefined thresholds (e.g., re-order notifications when inventory levels drop)
From Data to Information to Insight
The days of marketing remaining focused on “building brand” are clearly behind us. CEOs are now requiring greater accountability with respect to the language that matters to them: pipeline and revenue contribution.
Marketing organizations that make the required investments in strategy, standards and processes, people, and technology are able to reap tremendous rewards. Their payoff is marketing programs and customer engagement actions that are highly relevant and optimized to produce maximum return on investment.
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10729/four-foundational-elements-of-marketing-analytics-success
Marketing your small business online isn’t all that tricky. Though there are plenty of things to learn if you’re to get the best results from your efforts, I wouldn’t advise anyone to sit around learning all there is to know about online marketing before jumping in.
First of all, I don’t know any small business owners who have the time to do that. Second, it isn’t necessary. Instead, jump in! Start now… You’ll learn plenty along the way.
An important note: your online marketing efforts will reflect either positively or negatively on your business. Any business owner can start marketing online now, but do take care to put out content and messages that have quality and authenticity.
So, let’s get down to it. Here are seven online marketing activities you can start today.
1. Blog
Blogging is a powerful content marketing activity for any size business. It can help position you as an expert in your industry, bring more traffic to your website, grow a loyal fan base, and generate buzz and interest in what you have to offer.
It does take a time commitment, but the return on investment is generally high.
If you already have a website built with the mega-popular WordPress software, setting up your blog will be very simple and essentially free. If you’re not using a website service that allows you to add a blog to your website, you can host your blog independently of your business website and link to it. However, I highly recommend the all-in-one solution, since it helps enforce your overall brand unity.
Once you have your blog up and running, you can begin publishing helpful articles to attract your target market. You blog shouldn’t be an advertising outlet, it should focus on delivering content that is helpful and engaging. You might feel like you’re giving away some of your best ideas, but doing so will only increase your credibility and community.
2. Join Twitter
If you’re not on Twitter already, now’s the time to get started. It’s simple to set up a profile for your business, choose some interesting people to follow, and begin sending your helpful, engaging tweets out to the world.
Here are some things to remember when using Twitter for business:
- Don’t “advertise” with Twitter. You can talk about your business and your products/services, but don’t overdo it. Most of your tweets should involve sharing helpful information or interacting with your followers.
- Stay updated. Don’t set up your account, tweet a few times, and then let it sit there. Update a couple times a day if you can. It doesn’t have to be time-intensive; simply share an interesting article you read, reply to someone’s question, or retweet something useful.
- Be personable. Use Twitter as a communication tool, not a broadcast tool. Sharing helpful articles and announcements is good, but don’t stick to that format all the time. Ask questions, answer questions, start a conversation. Interaction is key.
- Create a concise and compelling Twitter bio. Let people know, quickly, what you do and what you have to offer. Such a bio will help you attract quality followers.
3. Answer questions on LinkedIn
This is a simple activity you can do every morning, or twice a week, or whenever you choose, and it helps get your name and knowledge in front of peers and potential prospects. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, you can create one for free. Then find—and join—LinkedIn groups related to your area of expertise.
You can search for questions that fellow group members have asked, and provide helpful answers; you can also ask questions if you want to get a specific conversation going. (Another way of doing that, aside from groups, is to use LinkedIn Polls.)
Remember to answer questions with genuinely helpful responses, not just an advertisement for your services. Give useful tips and suggestions, and even refer the questioner to your contact information to get in touch, if they wish.
Being helpful and demonstrating your knowledge will build credibility for your business, and it could earn you actual business leads and connections.
4. Be a guest author
Similar to sharing content on your own blog, you can write helpful articles for other blogs that your customers and prospects read.
Most blogs are actively seeking guest authors, and in return for your contribution you general receive an author bio with links to your website/blog and social media profiles.
Guest-blogging is a great way to gain exposure in your industry, reach a new audience, and boost the SEO power of your website (because of the incoming links).
As with each of the previous marketing activities I’ve talked about, it’s important to keep your guest posts helpful and informative, not salesy. Most blogs won’t publish articles that are promotional in nature, and you wouldn’t gain the same long-term benefits even if they did.
Growing your online presence is about establishing your knowledge in a certain niche and growing a community of consumers who appreciate your advice and your brand.
5. Comment on blogs
Become a regular part of the conversation on other blogs in your industry. You’ll make valuable connections and get your insight and thoughts in front of a new audience with minimal effort.
When commenting on blogs, always make sure you’re adding something useful or thoughtful to the conversation. Don’t pretend you read the article and copy someone else’s comments. Find content you are genuinely interested in, and then add your opinion, thoughts, or compliments.
6. Start an email newsletter
Email marketing is still a powerful way to grow a business online, even in the midst of our Twitter-saturated world.
You can set up an account at one of many email marketing services and begin capturing emails on your website in a snap. I recommend checking out MailChimp and AWeber; both offer flexibility and affordable prices.
7. Be an expert source
A great way to demonstrate your expertise is to show up as an expert in someone else’s article, blog, podcast, or video. This strategy can also grant you exposure to a completely new audience that you might not have otherwise been able to reach.
Bloggers, journalists, and media types are always looking for experts to interview. You can add you name and contact details to various directories, offer your expertise directly to someone of interest, or (my personal recommendation) sign up for a free account at HARO and reply to queries that interest you on a daily basis. You might not get quoted in every article you volunteer for, but you can score some great publicity for a few minutes of your time each day.
* * *
The seven online marketing ideas outlined here should give you a great place to start. I don’t suggest trying to launch all of these activities at the same time. Instead, choose a few that best fit your business and personality, and then add on from there.
Your turn: What do you do on the Web to spread the word about your business? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10728/seven-online-marketing-activities-you-can-start-today
Which social network is the best for B2B marketing? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube each offer B2B marketers value. Let’s review these top sites from a B2B social marketing perspective so we can crown an undisputed champion.
The Keys to Social B2B Victory
When it comes to using social media as a marketing tool for B2B organizations, which have an end goal of qualified lead generation, the underlying key to success is to drive thought-leadership and credibility around a desired market position that will yield target engagement. To do so, a B2B organization must first have a solid social media plan that defines the market position and a review of the online competition.
The online brand that will be delivered in social must align with a B2B organization’s brand promise, mission, and value proposition. Choosing the appropriate channel(s) depends on a number of factors including:
- Audience breakdown of network.
- Target audience types.
- Content types by audience.
- Purpose of social network.
- Tone of network.
- Engagement levels of network.
Google+
Google+ is becoming the next big social network for business. As of March 2013, Google+ had 350 million active users. That is more than on LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.
When your content is placed on Google+ it has the chance to rank higher because the content is fed into the personal search results of your Google+ circles. And content that is feature-rich, like online video (YouTube – a Google product) and images supported with text gains ultimately more exposure.
Feeding content to Google+ from a YouTube channel or Pinterest board is a good idea. Google+, as a Google product, means it will undoubtedly be integrated into other developing applications supporting content marketing and organic search. Social signals are the gold piece for any B2B marketer.
With Google+, you can have a business page as well. This means that a person can follow and engage with your business on a personal level, creating opportunities for relationship building. Relationship development is what B2B sales is all about.
The Google+ Hangout real-time video application is another major bonus to Google+ as a B2B social network. All you need is a webcam and an audience and you can run video conferencing within the tool. This keeps business professionals talking on Google+. Further that those Hangouts can be published directly to YouTube.
On the negative side, Google+ is a platform for content delivery more than a way to “business network.” Conversations on Google+ can get out of hand and can be a turn off in the same way that too many emails can do to a B2B prospect.
Finally, Google+ for business users and business pages are still an area lacking in terms of overall B2B adoption. For Google+ to win here, Google will need to invest in marketing that feature.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn makes it easy to build relationships with your target prospects. LinkedIn was born and bred to create and develop business relationships, and has grown to have 225 million active users in more than 200 countries.
The obvious opportunities in using LinkedIn as a marketing tool include personal branding for executives, sales development for business development professionals and marketing opportunities via LinkedIn targeted, real-time lead gen advertising.
The key to winning on LinkedIn, as it were, is to use LinkedIn on a daily basis to provide valuable support to your connections and Groups.
Marketing on LinkedIn is sophisticated. A marketer can run a targeted ad by location, industry, title, company and other specific demographics. Further, those ads can capture leads on the fly (a great feature).
On a company level, LinkedIn provides businesses with opportunities to engage with company followers on a one on one level. LinkedIn is the ultimate social networking tool for business professionals. Real networking happens in Groups and in the context of comments and status engagement.
LinkedIn also provides multiple paid opportunities to use the tool as more of a CRM with features like Lead Builder and Profile Organizer.
The most compelling feature of LinkedIn, in general, for anyone in B2B sales is the ability to learn everything, on a professional level, about a target prospect. Further, find appropriate ways for warm introductions.
On the negative side, LinkedIn as a website, has multiple user experience and functional issues. In the haste to make LinkedIn feature-rich, at any time, issues may arise from unnecessary messages, pop-ups and disabled links.
LinkedIn networking and marketing doesn’t necessary work on its own. This is why it is crucial to take your LinkedIn developed relationships offline, whether on the phone or in person to close the deal.
Twitter
Twitter is, for busy business professionals, marketers and CEOs, the easiest way to get the message out, so to speak. A microblogging tool that forces copy-like conversations, Twitter enables quick information to link backs to important web pages of conversion (i.e., your website and your blog.
Twitter is a great place for B2B marketers to find and engage with, via Twitter private lists, for example, targeted media.
B2B marketing on the Internet is all about three key components: Online reputation, Thought-leadership and a Strong Online Brand. Twitter can be very useful in addressing these areas.
The mobile app for Twitter and ability to tweet 24/7, as many social media marketers do, is easy to do.
Twitter is where the news breaks. Twitter is where real-time conversations are happening. Twitter is the best social media tool for covering events and running events live.
Event marketing of conferences, workshops and seminars are crucial to the success of any B2B organization these days. Twitter’s search algorithm and use of hashtags makes it easy for reporters to find interview subjects and speakers.
On the negative side, because of Google’s ownership of Google+ however, any article shared on Twitter will become visible in organic Google results after the same on Google+. Also, Twitter yes makes it easy for you to reach out to reporters and business professionals you do not know, but this does not mean you will get a reply.
Twitter followers are nowhere near as substantial as a LinkedIn connect whom you have, if you’re doing LinkedIn marketing correctly, developed a relationship.
YouTube
Online video, done correctly, meaning with the brand in mind and well thought out for target engagement needs to be a crucial component of any online marketer’s social media marketing program.
YouTube, as a Google product and video-serving platform, in itself is an opportunity for B2B social networking. Most videos when made compelling and shared appropriately can certainly serve to drive qualified inbound leads.
YouTube links of videos can be embedded and shared on websites, such as SlideShare, another necessary B2B online marketing tool. In doing so, these videos can then become visible to target connections on important B2B social networking sites like Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
As a standalone B2B social network, YouTube isn’t truly where the lead capture happens or where relationships are developed.
Facebook
Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla, is certainly the number one B2C social media network. As a B2B social media tool, Facebook does serve to deliver client services, online promotions and event announcements primarily.
Another important B2B feature provided by Facebook is the ability to gain opt-ins for e-mail marketing on a business page.
B2B marketers who turn to Facebook as a social media tool need to heavily engage in target and organizational groups and pages.
Creating direct B2B sales relationships from Facebook is certainly done, but not at the level of a LinkedIn or even Twitter.
And the Top B2B Social Network Is…
Hands down, LinkedIn is the best social network for B2B marketing. LinkedIn is the only real B2B social network that was developed purely to develop direct B2B sales relationships for B2B marketers.
The other social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube – all should be in the toolbox of any serious B2B marketer. But if you’re on limited time and resources and looking to greatly increase your bottom line, you should invest wholly in LinkedIn.
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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2266916/Which-Social-Network-is-Best-for-B2B-Marketing
There’s no need for fluff and buzzword BS when there’s rock-hard data to draw upon. Look around the business world, and you’ll see marketers who are enhancing their products with data-informed decisions. When you consider the vastness of data sets like Google searches, commercial transactions, social networks, GPS and the connected fitness trend, it’s not hard to believe that as a society, we log about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.
Research from 360i found that consumers spend almost $300,000 a minute shopping online; brands garner 350,000 Likes per minute on Facebook; and Twitter users send more than 600,000 tweets per hour. The magnitude and specificity of this information has given rise to the term Big Data. But unlike a lot of the buzzwords in our 30 Days of Buzzwords series, this term is here to stay, and we’re happy about it.
Below, we’ve rounded up eight CMOs and CEOs who are doing data right, and growing their companies thanks to data-driven insights.
1. eBay CMO Richelle Parham
Richelle Parham is responsible for conecting eBay customers with the thinkgs they love through integrated marketing campaigns. One of her biggest initiatives to date is eBay’s new data-driven homepage, “the Feed.” Consumers can “follow” categories of items — from Ray Ban Wayfarers to vintage typewriters to costume jewelry — and stay on top of the newest listings, whether they’re collectors or simply in search of something specific. Its “follow what you like” feature is reminiscent of Twitter, while the gridlike presentation distinctly Pinterest. In her role as CMO, Parham keeps an eye on analytics and searches for ways in which her marketing team can optimize its efforts. “I like when I have the opportunity to understand what inspires their path to purchase and what matters to them,” Parham has said.
2. Amazon VP Marketing Neil Lindsay
Neil Lindsay is Vice President, Marketing at Amazon, a company known for using data to create customer relationships and optimize customer service, whether it’s suggesting items or resolving issues. In recent years, Amazon began selling its data on customers to third-party companies as a marketing solution — unlike other companies, Amazon doesn’t offer browsing history; it knows what people want to purchase. Despite empowering other companies to market themselves better, Amazon has traditionally invested in its own product rather than in paid marketing opportunities such as TV ads — the company would rather grow by word of mouth, Lindsay explained at ad:tech in 2012.
3. GE CMO Beth Comstock
Beth Comstock is chief marketing officer at GE. The “big startup” has a whole hub of data visualizations to reveal information such as how much energy certain appliances use, and how much it will cost you. These visualizations bring attention to GE’s products while helping people make better choices. In a CES talk last year, Comstock explained that it’s her job as a marketer to find value in and make sense of the vast data sets available. “I get breathlessly excited about data,” she said.
4. Netflix CMO Kelly Bennett
Kelly Bennett is chief marketing officer at Netflix, and was previously at Warner Bros. He’s led the digital marketing initiatives for many major recent box office hits and strategizes the promotion of Netflix’s original content, including House of Cards. Netflix has gotten much praise for its algorithm that drives recommendations and continues to turn customer actions into a better experience, most recently with real-time processing. And it appears to be working — Netflix data usage comprises one-third of North America’s Internet data consumption.
5. Walmart CMO Stephen Quinn
The summer of 2011 marked a turning point for big-box retailer Walmart — it brought on a CTO as part of a massive effort to reinvent the company’s business model and birth a more flexible, entrepreneurial identity, namely in the area of ecommerce. To succeed in this endeavor, Walmart launched the social, mobile and retail-focused @WalmartLabs in Silicon Valley, and it’s acquired a handful of tech startups, including Kosmix and Vudu. @WalmartLabs developed the search engine, Polaris, which uses semantic search algorithms to understand what someone is searching for and thus, boost sales. On top of that, the lab’s Social Genome Product culls through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, blog postings, YouTube videos and more to detect purchase intent and drive ecommerce.
6. Rent the Runway CEO Jenn Hyman
Data has always been an invaluable asset to Rent the Runway, as its analytics team uses it to make decisions on everything from marketing to operations and inventory buys. Early on, RTR’s data illustrated that 25% of its customers were adding an accessory to their designer dress orders, so RTR jumped on the trend. “Rent the Runway actually launched an entire upsell program on the site because of this strong data,” says Hyman. Strong data has proven to be essential in monitoring customer trends, and capitalizing on new opportunities for revenue growth. Our Runway, the startup’s search engine of UGC photos, was launched in part because women who had viewed photos of dresses on real women were 200% more likely to rent than those who have viewed a dress on a model.
7. Financial Times Marketing Director Caroline Halliwell
The Financial Times has a data team of more than 30 people, spread across three groups: Data Analytics Campaigns, Data Product Development and Data Technology. Together, they are using data — namely audience data — to push the FT‘s circulation levels to new heights, and to make the paper’s advertising products more competitive.
The FT‘s data-gathering process begins with its paywall, which it set up in 2007. The FT.com asks users to register to read up to eight articles per month for free. Registrants — there are more than 5 million of them — are required to declare their email address, zip code, industry, job responsibility and position level. The FT uses that information to deliver more targeted advertising — advertisers could, for example, target a campaign to executives in the telecoms industry, or HR department heads in Brazil. The FT also maps patterns in readers’ behavior to help convert them to full-time subscribers.
8. Birchbox VP of Marketing Deena Bahri
A beauty subscription service obviously has to tailor to various complexions, hair types and looks, but Birchbox’s utilization of data goes far beyond these physical traits. “From the beginning, data has been an essential part of Birchbox’s growth and strategy … we use it to make important company decisions, and use it to guide us towards creating the best possible new products for our customers,” explains Deena Bahri, VP of Marketing of Birchbox. Birchbox utilizes big data when they launch a new service or offering, and for Birchbox Man they used both behavioral and survey data. By surveying subscribers, Birchbox discovered that there was a high demand for male-focused products; and after careful analysis of a Limited Edition Birchbox Man release in November 2011, the company decided to launch a dedicated subscription delivery service for men in April 2012. Ever since this success, Birchbox has continued to use survey and behavioral data to improve its offerings, deliver exactly what its consumers want and stay relevant.
For more information about BrandSpeak, click here.
Image via iStockphoto, Nikada
Article source: http://mashable.com/2013/05/06/cmo-data/
Enlarge image i
Cold Spring, Minn., Police Chief Phil Jones (left) and Rocori School District Superintendent Scott Staska hold bulletproof whiteboards in April while announcing the school system’s $25,000 investment in the shields.
Courtesy of Hardwire
![Cold Spring, Minn., Police Chief Phil Jones (left) and Rocori School District Superintendent Scott Staska hold bulletproof whiteboards in April while announcing the school system's $25,000 investment in the shields.]( "Cold Spring, Minn., Police Chief Phil Jones (left) and Rocori School District Superintendent Scott Staska hold bulletproof whiteboards in April while announcing the school system's $25,000 investment in the shields.")
Cold Spring, Minn., Police Chief Phil Jones (left) and Rocori School District Superintendent Scott Staska hold bulletproof whiteboards in April while announcing the school system’s $25,000 investment in the shields.
Courtesy of Hardwire
A recent news item out of Minnesota caught our eye: “Bulletproof Whiteboards Unveiled at Rocori Schools.”
Bulletproof what? Where?
That would be whiteboards, at the small central Minnesota Rocori School District, which will spend upward of $25,000 for the protective devices produced by a company better known for its military armor products.
“The timing was right,” Rocori school board Chairwoman Nadine Schnettler tells us. “The company is making these in response to the Newtown shooting, and has been making similar products for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The $300, 18-by-20-inch whiteboards, produced by Maryland-based Hardwire LLC, “will be an additional layer of protection” for students and teachers, she says.
It’s not just the conversation about guns and school safety that’s changed since Adam Lanza gunned down 20 students and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. It’s also the plethora of products, including training programs that in some instances advocate fighting back, that are being marketed to school districts that are typically cash-strapped but desperate to prove they’re doing something to provide better security.
Bulletproof whiteboards and clipboards. Bulletproof wall panels. Bulletproof backpack inserts. Bullet “resistant” window film. Specialized locks. Training that turns the emergency lockdown, “shelter in place” response on its head.
While proponents of the school safety items and training say their products provide more than just a psychological fix, critics say they need a lot more persuading.
“After every high-profile school shooting, we have an explosion of gadgets, gurus and charlatans,” says school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, who is openly disdainful of the bulletproof items, but more so of training programs that advocate confrontation. “Corporations see dollar signs,” he says, “and believe that schools have huge budgets to buy new products and services.”
But school budgets are far tighter now than in recent memory, he says, with precious little to spend for whiteboards or training.
“Federal and state school safety grants have been hacked at, if not eliminated,” Trump says. “The pool of dollars that many vendors envision doesn’t really exist.”
His unvarnished take: “The vendors may be opportunistic, but the people on the purchasing end aren’t thinking it through, either.”
A post-Newtown measure that will be considered by the U.S. Senate would authorize $40 million in grants that must be matched by local school systems for improving security with measures including lights, locks and surveillance equipment, as well as for security training for teachers and administrators.
The U.S. Education Department is also developing an emergency guide for schools, and the Department of Homeland Security is writing a similar one on securing school buildings. The Education Department’s Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools grant program has been a victim of budget cuts, unfunded since 2011.
The Minnesota Sale
When Hardwire LLC, traditionally a manufacturer of armor and shields for the military and law enforcement, wanted some attention for its new bulletproof school products, it’s not surprising it zeroed in on Rocori.
A decade ago at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn., 15-year-old John Jason McLaughlin used a .22-caliber handgun to kill two fellow students.
And Hardwire already had a working relationship with a local company, Cold Spring Granite, which provides material that the armor company uses in its products for bridge and building infrastructure protection.
The town’s police chief made the whiteboard pitch to the school board, says Schnettler. And members were pressed to act quickly, she says, to take advantage of a special offer: The granite company would donate 75 whiteboards to the district’s public and parochial schools if the board agreed to match the purchase.
“It wasn’t a unanimous vote,” Schnettler says, “primarily because Hardwire had a bit of a sense of urgency. They wanted Rocori to be the first district [in the state] to have these, and if we didn’t take the offer, they were going to move on.”
Enlarge image i
This type of bulletproof whiteboard, produced by the Maryland company Hardwire, has been purchased by a Minnesota school district.
Hardwire, LLC
![This type of bulletproof whiteboard, produced by the Maryland company Hardwire, has been purchased by a Minnesota school district.]( "This type of bulletproof whiteboard, produced by the Maryland company Hardwire, has been purchased by a Minnesota school district.")
This type of bulletproof whiteboard, produced by the Maryland company Hardwire, has been purchased by a Minnesota school district.
Hardwire, LLC
Schnettler, who voted in favor of using $25,000 from a capital improvement fund to purchase the whiteboards, says that in hindsight she would still do the same.
“I don’t believe it’s a waste of money,” she says. “The chief showed us how to use it offensively — to block penetration of bullets through door windows, or to knock the gun out of the intruder’s hands.
“It buys time for your local law enforcement to get there,” she says.
Emily Heinauer, senior director of advanced programs for Hardwire, agrees that the whiteboards should be viewed as tools to buy time before help arrives.
“During the Virginia Tech shootings and at Sandy Hook, people were throwing themselves in front of their students to protect them,” she says. “The whiteboard is meant to be defensive,” used by teachers potentially in the line of fire.
Hardwire has created a nonprofit “adopt-a-school” organization through which tax-deductable donations may be made for the purchase of the bulletproof products. Heinauer says that the parents of the students killed at Rocori High School a decade ago also donated money to purchase additional whiteboards.
Schools Superintendent Scott Staska, featured on Hardwire’s website holding a whiteboard, did not return calls for comment.
Skeptical School Experts
Cathy Paine speaks with authority about school security, and with good reason.
She was the school psychologist at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., when in 1998 student Kip Kinkel shot to death two students and wounded 25 others.
Paine, still a school psychologist in Springfield, is chairwoman of the National Association of School Psychologists’ emergency assistance team.
She says that though she understands the fear that is driving the school security market, she views bulletproof whiteboards and the like as “a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
“It’s such a rare event that an armed intruder will come in — there’s a 1 in 2.5 million chance it will happen,” she says. “We want to have comprehensive safety programs, we want to be prepared, but we should be looking at what are the likely crises.”
Her tack is to encourage school districts to balance the physical safety of their campuses with what she called the “psychological safety of the campus.” A bigger risk to safety in schools is kids being bullied and harassed, she says.
After the shooting at her school, there was a push by some for metal detectors, which the school ended up not installing. But the district did receive a federal grant through a program called the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, which was used for crisis planning, looking at physical safety and the school environment.
The school system installed perimeter fencing, she says, redesigned some school entrances, and closed up others. The high school already had security cameras, which documented the shooter, gun hidden, as he approached the school.
That money, however, has dried up, Paine says, as has much of the other federal money once available for school safety measures, including school resource officers.
Lockdown, Flight Or Fight?
Paine and Trump, the school security expert, say they are particularly concerned with training programs that encourage, in certain circumstances, confronting armed intruders.
One of the programs receiving the most attention is known as ALiCE, for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. It’s not a new concept, Trump says, and is similar to other training — except for elements that encourage students to “distract” and “confuse” an armed suspect by throwing things at him or her, and then potentially launching a physical attack.
“You put lipstick on a pig, but you still have a pig,” Trump says of the training, which he and some school experts argue has been discredited before in K-12 situations, and could place children in more danger both physically and psychologically.
Says Paine: “The main thing that’s disturbing about it is trying to have our children understand and execute this kind of a plan. I don’t think that’s a situation we want them in. … We’re better off teaching our kids to evacuate quickly and safely, or to shelter in place.”
ALiCE and programs like it have supporters — many of whom use the example of the passengers who fought back against hijackers on Sept. 11.
One of its advocates is Ridgemont, Ohio, schools Superintendent Emmy Davis, featured on the website of Response Options, which came up with the training program. She says it provides a “proactive approach, rather than hiding or waiting” when there’s a gunman in a school building.
But It’s Something
Rob Slattery, a retired police officer who is director of operations at Impact Armor Technologies in Ohio, says the school protection products they make (including bulletproof whiteboards and backpack inserts) are just tools.
“I wish there wasn’t a need for this product,” he says. “And by no means are we saying this is a solution to the problem. This is an option. To have something between you and an assailant? Anything is a positive.”
He says he sees it as akin to the auto industry coming up with air bags.
His company has done a lot of business with lawyers, providing bulletproof clipboards and briefcases, but school products are now about 65 percent of its market.
Trump, who argues that the best practices in place at Sandy Hook got a lot of children out of the building safely, says he advises schools not to waste money on whiteboards or ALiCE, but rather to invest money on resource officers, counselors, radios and cameras.
“Focus on fundamentals and get back to the basics,” he says. “There is a security product for every possible need that your budget will buy. The question is, is that the best use of limited resources?”
But in Cold Spring, Minn., Schnettler, the school board president, says that the district was responding to parents who were concerned after Newtown.
“We installed a buzzer system and locks in the elementary schools that we didn’t have before,” she says. “And we looked at our other security measures and other things that had to be tightened up.”
And they purchased the whiteboards, which will be hung on the walls, the superintendent says, if or until they are needed.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/2013/05/04/180916246/bulletproof-whiteboards-and-the-marketing-of-school-safety
By Clare Jim
TAIPEI |
Thu May 2, 2013 6:12am EDT
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp will struggle to improve its margins this year as it increases marketing spend for its latest model in a bid to catch up to rivals Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc.
HTC on Thursday forecast strong sales of its flagship HTC One smartphone to lift second-quarter revenues by almost two-thirds to T$70 billion ($2.37 billion).
Operating margins were also expected to widen to between 1 and 3 percent from the previous quarter’s 0.1 percent, as HTC spends more on a campaign to improve its brand image. HTC’s third-quarter 2012 operating margins were 7 percent.
“We’re improving the HTC marketing execution. It’s the first time since HTC developed its brand that we are really integrating brand, product and marketing all together,” HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou told an investor conference call.
He did not give specific figures but the company said in March its digital media marketing budget for the first half of this year would increase 250 percent year-on-year, while the budget for traditional media will double.
Investors, however, were cautious about the HTC One’s longer-term prospects as both Apple and Samsung have much deeper pockets and are more established brands.
“Samsung basically cornered the whole supply chain. To me, HTC is more of a product story: good product, higher stock price,” said Hong Kong-based portfolio manager Michiel Van Voorst, who manages $1.2 billion in Asian equities for Robeco.
“I think investors will be a bit more reluctant now to price the stock at earnings that have not yet materialized,” added Van Voorst, who substantially cut his holdings in HTC late last year after the company repeatedly missed profit forecasts.
The HTC One, currently available in five countries including China, runs a version of Google Inc’s Android software that allows users to customize their homescreen.
Research firm Daiwa Capital, in a recent report, said HTC One was one of the top-five best selling smartphones offered by U.S. carriers and that it was out of stock at some operators and retailers in Britain, Germany and Taiwan.
KGI Securities analyst Richard Ko believes this popularity may be short-lived.
“While we think HTC’s shipments will rebound strongly in Q2, we also think Samsung and other second tier players will continue to exert pressure on HTC,” he said. “We remain cautious because of HTC’s execution capability and long-term structural weaknesses.”
Delays in the full launch of the HTC One due to a shortage of a camera component led HTC to report a record-low net profit in the previous quarter.
Future sales volumes were also thrown into doubt after rival Nokia Oyj won a court injunction last week that would prevent HTC from using microphone components made by STMicroelectronics NV in HTC One phones.
HTC has said it does not expect the decision to have any immediate impact on sales, and that it will find other suppliers once its inventory of STMicroelectronics microphones runs out.
HTC was the world’s 10th-biggest smartphone maker by shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IT research firm Gartner, jostling in a crowded field behind Samsung and Apple.
Shares in HTC have slipped 1.8 percent this year, underperforming the broader market’s 5.6 percent rise. On Thursday, HTC shares closed down 2 percent compared to a 0.43 percent rise in the main share index.
(Corrects timing of when fund manger cut holding in paragraph 8)
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Gordon; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
Article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/us-htc-outlook-idUSBRE94109M20130502
By Clare Jim
TAIPEI |
Thu May 2, 2013 6:12am EDT
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp will struggle to improve its margins this year as it increases marketing spend for its latest model in a bid to catch up to rivals Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc.
HTC on Thursday forecast strong sales of its flagship HTC One smartphone to lift second-quarter revenues by almost two-thirds to T$70 billion ($2.37 billion).
Operating margins were also expected to widen to between 1 and 3 percent from the previous quarter’s 0.1 percent, as HTC spends more on a campaign to improve its brand image. HTC’s third-quarter 2012 operating margins were 7 percent.
“We’re improving the HTC marketing execution. It’s the first time since HTC developed its brand that we are really integrating brand, product and marketing all together,” HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou told an investor conference call.
He did not give specific figures but the company said in March its digital media marketing budget for the first half of this year would increase 250 percent year-on-year, while the budget for traditional media will double.
Investors, however, were cautious about the HTC One’s longer-term prospects as both Apple and Samsung have much deeper pockets and are more established brands.
“Samsung basically cornered the whole supply chain. To me, HTC is more of a product story: good product, higher stock price,” said Hong Kong-based portfolio manager Michiel Van Voorst, who manages $1.2 billion in Asian equities for Robeco.
“I think investors will be a bit more reluctant now to price the stock at earnings that have not yet materialized,” added Van Voorst, who substantially cut his holdings in HTC late last year after the company repeatedly missed profit forecasts.
The HTC One, currently available in five countries including China, runs a version of Google Inc’s Android software that allows users to customize their homescreen.
Research firm Daiwa Capital, in a recent report, said HTC One was one of the top-five best selling smartphones offered by U.S. carriers and that it was out of stock at some operators and retailers in Britain, Germany and Taiwan.
KGI Securities analyst Richard Ko believes this popularity may be short-lived.
“While we think HTC’s shipments will rebound strongly in Q2, we also think Samsung and other second tier players will continue to exert pressure on HTC,” he said. “We remain cautious because of HTC’s execution capability and long-term structural weaknesses.”
Delays in the full launch of the HTC One due to a shortage of a camera component led HTC to report a record-low net profit in the previous quarter.
Future sales volumes were also thrown into doubt after rival Nokia Oyj won a court injunction last week that would prevent HTC from using microphone components made by STMicroelectronics NV in HTC One phones.
HTC has said it does not expect the decision to have any immediate impact on sales, and that it will find other suppliers once its inventory of STMicroelectronics microphones runs out.
HTC was the world’s 10th-biggest smartphone maker by shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IT research firm Gartner, jostling in a crowded field behind Samsung and Apple.
Shares in HTC have slipped 1.8 percent this year, underperforming the broader market’s 5.6 percent rise. On Thursday, HTC shares closed down 2 percent compared to a 0.43 percent rise in the main share index.
(Corrects timing of when fund manger cut holding in paragraph 8)
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Gordon; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
Article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/us-htc-outlook-idUSBRE94109M20130502
I’ve sent you an email. Open it and I’ll trigger another one. Jump through that email hoop, and I’ll send you an offer for a free trial. Ignore that, but click on something else in the email, I’ll automatically send you another series of emails. Sound like fun? Unless you love marketing emails, probably not…
If-then logic is one of the most powerful concepts in computer programming, and it’s the foundation of most marketing automation software. But, sometimes, if-then branching logic can lead to a snarl of over-communication with only a loose relevance to the recipient’s true interests and needs. Think about it: Does one click sum you up?
As marketers, we shouldn’t rest on the laurels of automated email flows. Just because we can build a complex branch of if/then statements for every possible action doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, or that it’s going to get us any closer to understanding our leads.
Instead, we ought to challenge ourselves to bring a customer-centric approach to marketing automation. Marketing automation should make our lead- and customer-related decisions easier, not more cluttered.
Understanding Customer Personas
Since a single click doesn’t approximate a complete view into the interests and motivations of a given lead, let’s start by focusing on what does.
In B2B marketing, a lead first becomes known to you usually by completing a form of some sort. It could be an inquiry form, a content download, or any similar opt-in. The information gleaned from that first conversion gives you a foundation on which to build an understanding of that lead’s persona. Depending on your form fields, you’ll know things like the lead’s industry, company size, and role.
Even though a person’s industry and role are central to their interests, that information alone doesn’t make for a complete persona, nor does it tell you what content they’ll find most useful. To get at that, you have to pair professional information with a running history of their interactions on your site and with your company.
I say a running history, because themes take time to emerge, and judging on single actions can be misleading. A true persona takes into account who a person is (e.g., a marketer at a midsize technology company) and what they express interest in (e.g., predominately reads materials on ROI measurement).
For any persona, you should be able to point to their needs, how they measure success, and what keeps them up at night, among other points.
Understanding the Customer Lifecycle
Understanding the buyer persona is good. Knowing where that persona is in his or her decision process is even better.
Even if you have a crystal clear understanding of your buyer personas, and relevant content for your campaigns, a customer-centric marketing automation strategy has to be agile enough to adapt to a person’s needs over time.
In the following example, we’ve got two very clear personas: Architect Aaron and Contractor Charlie. Each is interested in different content; we’ve learned that through a combination of contact data, pageviews, and download behavior.
But note that as their decision process progresses, each moves onto different, more advanced content. Push the late-stage content in the beginning, and you’ll come off as a spammer. Start with educational, informative content, and then move to more product/service-focused content when the lead is further down the sales funnel and ready to evaluate your company.
You should understand for each of your personas which actions indicate that a person has moved into a different stage of the decision process—what we at HubSpot call the “customer lifecycle.”
What to look for—the indicators that a person has changed stages:
- A shift in content consumption: Maybe the lead started by reading your blog but has progressed to looking at your product and pricing pages.
- Contact made: A proactive call to your sales team or a demo request is a clear indicator that the person is ready to move forward.
- Ramped up activity: The visit patterns to a site increase and the lead has downloaded an increasing amount of content.
Bringing Persona and Lifecycle Stage together
Personas as well as lifecycle stages are important to a well-rounded and customer centric marketing automation strategy. Triggering off of individual actions alone disregards the bigger picture. For each marketing automation campaign, you need to know who you’re communicating with, what’s important to them, and where they are in their decision process.
Apply each of the following to automatically assign a persona and lifecycle stage for each contact, then use those overarching characteristics to fuel your marketing automation:
- Pageviews
- Forms completed
- Contact property or characteristic
- Miscellaneous actions
- List membership
Using More Than Just Email
Understanding personas and lifecycle stages will get you much closer to building a customer-centric marketing automation strategy.
In addition to thinking of the right message for the right person at the right time, don’t forget to also think about the right medium. Too many marketing automation programs rely exclusively on email for their targeted communications. Email is a great channel, but it’s just a fraction of the total experience that a lead or customer has with your company.
In addition to email, make sure your marketing automation helps you provide a more personalized experience throughout your communication channels:
- Website content: Use marketing automation workflows to dynamically change the images or call-to-action buttons on your website depending on who is looking at it.
- Offers: Use marketing automation to direct website visitors more quickly to content that meets their persona characteristics and reflects what they need at their individual lifecycle stage.
- Sales calls: Send your sales team notifications when a lead’s actions indicate that he’s moving to a new stage in his decision process. Make sure your sales team can see each lead’s history of interactions with your company.
- Help desks: Webhooks enable some marketing automation systems to send notifications to different systems, such as your helpdesk software.
- SMS: In some cases, it might make sense to send personalized text messages and alerts via automation; just make sure that the service is something a customer has opted in to and finds useful.
- Social: Though it’s not possible to send automated messages via social media, incorporating the social media activity of your leads and customers into your understanding of their interests and lifecycle stages can help your team market to them better.
A lead may not be opening your emails, but she might have clicked on six of your most recent social media shares. Without knowing that, and incorporating it into your data on the lead, you’re missing some meaningful information.
Marketing automation should make potential customers’ lives easier. It should remove irrelevant clutter and rise to meet the needs and answer the questions of a given email recipient, lead, or customer.
Branching logic enables you to do much in marketing automation, but don’t forget the customer amid all of those capabilities.
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10623/build-a-customer-centric-marketing-automation-strategy
Content marketing is a precise art. It is an art because it relies on creativity for its successful consummation. It is precise because the right type of content, aimed at the right kind of people in the right type of place at the right time, will facilitate the achievement of your online marketing goals.
Content marketing is not rocket science, but it can appear so in the absence of a clear-cut strategy. It is all too easy to produce a piece of content and not really have a clue about where to place it to maximize its potential.
Without thorough planning, your content marketing machine will be firing on three cylinders instead of being the turbocharged V8 behemoth that it could be!
Point your machine in the right direction
Where do you want your machine to take you? What do you want it to do for you? If you think content marketing is about link-building, you need to change your ideas. Don’t worry, links will be a welcome consequence of a good content marketing strategy. However, connecting with prospects via content that will interest and inspire them to share is primarily what content marketing is all about.
Consider the car insurance niche, for example. Car insurance is a pretty dull subject, and content about various car insurance products has as much chance of going viral as England of winning the next World Cup.
But how about if you apply a little lateral thinking, and create a series of instructional videos showing how to correctly perform the driving maneuvers one has to carry out in a driving test? You then have content that is likely to get shared by people learning to drive—future prospects for buying car insurance.
Before you set off, check your machine
Taking the time to make a thorough check of all the content you have in stock must be the first thing you do. Is there old content that could be updated and re-used? Does your client have whitepapers offline that could be converted into online content through sites such as SlideShare?
Taking such an inventory will also highlight any potential content gaps and direct your efforts into creating the right type of content in the required areas.
Where do you want your machine to take you?
A good content marketing strategy must be aligned with your overall business goals. Using our car insurance example above, the use of instructional videos ,when published to the right places online, could help increase the sign up rate for young driver car insurance—a clear business goal.
It is vital to establish what you want your content marketing strategy to do for you; otherwise, you have no way of knowing whether your efforts are paying dividends.
Before you set off, look at the map
Thorough research is an integral part of any content marketing strategy. You need to have a 360-degree view of your niche, and you must know the answers to these fundamental questions:
- WHO? Who your target audience is.
- WHERE? Where online they are hanging out.
- WHAT? What they are talking about and what they want to know.
The answer to who your target audience is will often be gleaned from the goal of your content strategy.
If your goal is to convert more young drivers to buy your insurance product, the answer to who is people in the 18-25 age bracket, probably of a low income and single without children.
Where does this demographic visit online? Well, there’s a whole host of places, such as student forums, music sites, sites about learning to drive, and of course Facebook and Twitter.
And how about what they’re talking about? A little imagination, and visits to the plethora of social media sites that pepper the Web, will supply you with that valuable information.
Plan your journey
Any strategy that doesn’t have a plan for implementation is doomed to failure. Having an editorial calendar is essential so you don’t omit any important steps and so that you know what content needs to be produced and published by when. Another piece of vital information that can be included here is where you wish to target the content.
Your content marketing plan is the keystone to ultimate success and will ensure the smooth running of your machine.
At this point, having carried out the earlier steps, you should be in a strong position to…
- Know the type of content that will wow your target audience.
- Know where this content needs to go.
- Know whom to contact.
- Know when it needs to be published.
Fire up your machine and start driving
At last we get to the fun bit, where we actually create content. Of course, your content needs to be relevant to your business goals, and there can be as many types as your creativity allows.
This is where the brainstorming takes place. Have a notebook app on your phone so you can jot any inspirational ideas that come when you’re away from the office.
Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea. Don’t restrict yourself to the usual mix of blog posts and infographics.
Remember to fill up with fuel
Once your content has been created and published, it needs to be promoted socially. Promotion will add fuel to your content marketing machine, driving more traffic and links than you would otherwise get.
Publication and promotion are the essence of what great content marketing is all about.
Reach your destination
Or, maybe, the journey never ends. Because once you have published and promoted your content, you must analyze the results and determine whether the goals you defined earlier have been achieved. At this juncture, determine what could be done better and what is working well. Use that information when developing your next content marketing strategy.
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Any content marketing strategy requires a large amount of goal-oriented planning before anything can be created and published. Without thorough planning, you are likely to get lost and to waste time and effort creating content that isn’t going to work in harmony with your business goals
Being methodical in your actions will ensure you are in the driving seat of your turbocharged content marketing machine!
Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10621/turbocharge-your-content-marketing-machine
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