Posts tagged: Part-TIme VP of Marketing

“Marketing Communications”: Where and how to tell your story

Posted on February 28, 2012

by Tabitha David

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a session within the Entrepreneur 101 series hosted by MaRS Discovery District .This one was entitle Marketing Communications and was presented by Mark Evans. I have outlined the main takeaways from this year’s presentation which are different from last year’s session that Stephanie Goodman attended. She wrote a blog about her findings as well.

Marketing is not a rinse and repeat cycle; in fact it is the complete opposite. When developing a marketing strategy it is important to continually be assessing what is working, what isn’t, and how to improve. There are two main questions to answer when thinking about your marketing strategy.

What is your story?

  • Target Audience: Figure out who your ideal customers are. What kinds of people will be interested in your product? How many of them are in the market? Where can they be found?
  • Competitive Edge: Something that makes you unique. This can include new features, low prices, or excellent customer service. What is going to make a potential customer choose your product or service over someone else’s?
  • Customer Benefits: How does your product or service help a customer’s life become easier, faster, or more productive? Pay attention to what your customers are looking for in a solution.

Once these questions have been answered you have developed your core message which was also mentioned in Stephanie’s earlier blog. A good rule of thumb: you should be able to delivere your core message in one breath in order to engage your potential customer.

Where to tell your story? There are a number of platforms available for the delivery of your story. It is also essential to remember that different people respond differently to messages depending on the channels. Some effective channels include:

  • Website viewers know within 15 seconds of being on a webpage if they want to continue browsing. Create a website that reflects your organizations culture. Focus on the about page; people are interested in talking to other people not a brand.
  • Blog to build good will and to make a name for yourself as an aggregator of valuable content in your community. Also remember that blogs are you own property so they can be refurbished to use in other mediums: for example, presentations, white papers and, social media.
  • Videos hold a lot of potential to engage customers. Consider creating a short video, no longer than two minutes that acts a demo for your product or service.
  • Social media is becoming more prevalent, so think about using platforms that may not be very popular but where your target audience is active in. However, don’t rely too heavily on social media; it is only part of the marketing mix.
  • Newsletters are effective in being a timely reminder for customers who may have forgotten about your product or service. They are also delivered into someone’s mailbox creating a direct connection with a potential client.

As a marketer simply develop a message that a potential customer can relate to and deliver it to them using the most appropriate platform. For more information about the presentation you can view the slideshow.

If you are interested in more events like this sign up for your monthly newsletter which lists events in the area.

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Learning to utilize Email and Social Media Marketing to reach out and keep your customers

Posted on October 11, 2011

by Stephanie Goodman

Social Media and Email marketing are two categories that I’ve found most popular among blogs, webinars and topics of discussion. Common questions from those less social media/email marketing savvy are: Is Twitter/Facebook right for my business? Will I really reach my customers the right way by using an email newsletter? Isn’t this “new” type of marketing a fad? One of the most important things to remember is that social media and email marketing is not a fad, and although I’ve said it many times before, if you are not moving your business’ marketing efforts at the same pace as the rest of the companies in your industry (and the dozens of other industries) you and your brand will be left in the dust. 

Last week I sat in on a webinar hosted by Constant Contact about “Email and Social Marketing” run by Josh Mendelsohn. I took away a few interesting facts from Josh about B2B businesses, social media marketing, email marketing and what those of us in marketing need to remember when targeting our current and future customers.

Watch what you say and do. According to a study presented by Josh, 82% of small businesses have said word of mouth is the most successful form of marketing. Word of mouth may not be taking place on social media but what a company says or does on social media will be talked about. Interact with your customers on Twitter or Facebook, listen to their concerns or their praise and acknowledge that there is a company behind an account. If a customer complains to you on Twitter and you ignore their concern, the likelihood that they will suggest your services at the next cocktail party they’re at or coffee meeting is highly unlikely.

Don’t be a 5 minute tweeter.  By this I mean, don’t spend 5 minutes increments on Twitter throughout the day and only send out tweets during those times. Your followers will notice that you’re not engaging with your audience and instead using Twitter to pump out information at them like an advertisement. Schedule your tweets, using platforms like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, to ensure that you’re consistently sharing information throughout the day.

Find out what your audience wants and respond to it. At VA Partners we use Constant Contact for Email Marketing and have found their “Reports” tool very useful in understanding what are readers are reading and what sparks the most interest. If we see multiple hits for a particular sales blog, we use those analytics to perhaps write a follow up on that blog rather than ignoring useful marketing statistics. Use the analytics from an email newsletter to continue to provide your audience with the information and educational material they’re interested in. Constant Contact also provides an Email Survey tool that can be used in conjunction with the Email Marketing tool.

If you’d like to see what VA Partners is doing with our e-mail marketing, sign up for our newsletter. The newsletter is sent out on the first Tuesday of every month and showcases our featured blogs, recommended events to attend, recommended reading list, connection of the month and links to our social media platforms.

 

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Starting or managing a Social Media strategy? Key concepts you need to know

Posted on September 22, 2011

by Stephanie Goodman

Getting started with Social Media for your business can be overwhelming for anyone, regardless of one’s experience. I recently finished the book “How to Make Money with Social Media” and I was able to take away two types of information. Part 1: Concepts that everyone should know and utilize; Part 2: What tactics you need to make money from social media. Below are the key concepts I’ve taken away and suggest to everyone to review before and after reading the book.

Social Media: Many believe that social media and traditional marketing are to be used in the same way, which is why many social media strategies usually fail. Social media allows for a two way conversation between your prospects, customers and your business, where as traditional marketing only allows for a one way conversation. Social Media opens up the barrier that once stood between prospects and businesses. Once that barrier was broken down with the advent of social media, businesses can listen, understand and respond to what their customers want and need from them. If you use social media to broadcast a message, you’re more situated for a print marketing, not social media marketing.

Social Media Magnetism: Many people ask, “I’m using Social Media for my business, I’m tweeting and posting, but I don’t seem to be having success when it comes to interacting and engaging people with my brand/company.” Social Media Magnetism is when a brand is so powerful that people are attracted to it, the way metal is attracted to a magnet. Many companies assume they are a magnet and their potential customers are metal, attracted to any and all company information. Unfortunately, very few brands work this way. Businesses, especially small ones, have to build a reputation before they can develop magnetism between themselves and their audiences. The book suggests resorting to traditional forms of marketing – such as a brochure – in order to promote your social media involvement and attract customer attention.

Circular Momentum: It is easy to understand this term by breaking the words down, then putting them back together. If you think of a circle, it is round. If you think of momentum, you think of the amount of movement giving to a particular object (in this case, information). Put them together, circular momentum is a circular movement of information. Having discussion about your brand is good, but you want to make sure that it is positive; just like a circle, all the information will come back around. When someone likes your brand, they are likely to talk to their friend, who talks to their friend, who comes back around to talk to your business. Social Media has made positive and negative feedback about your company more accessible to many more people than ever before. If customer #1 didn’t like your service, they might tell a friend, who tells another friend, in need of your services, to avoid your company. Use social media as a PR tool as much as a marketing tool. As mentioned before, it is a way to communicate with your customers so listen, understand and respond to their inquiries when they information gets back around to you.

Part 2 of my book review will go over the tactics you need to know in order to make money with social media. If you have any additional concepts you’ve taken from the book that you think have value-add, feel free to comment. For more information on getting started with Social Media, visit our website and reach out if you have any questions about getting started with Social Media for your business.

 

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B2B Marketing Webinar by @CopywriterTO Recap

Posted on September 15, 2011

by Stephanie Goodman

Last week I participated in a webinar focused on B2B Marketing run by @CopywriterTO. Unlike a lot of marketing webinars that I have attended, this one addressed new concepts, ideas and tips on what tasks to implement in order to enhance your marketing efforts. After looking at my notes from the webinar, I noticed there were three main concepts I took from @CopywriterTO:

Think about Sales when thinking about Marketing

  • Know your buyers’ personas. Every individual is different and therefore, so is every buyer. Know what kind of person you are targeting and arrange your marketing efforts to suit different kinds of people.
  • Ask customers what they want. This is where Social Media performs at its finest. Ask your customers for feedback on your product/service or ask them for ideas on what they would like to see.  By doing this, you are not only developing a strong relationship between buyer and seller, but you are gaining interest of prospective customers.
  • Correspond your content to your lead’s position in the buying cycle. The information you market to your prospects is going to be different depending on whether you are prospecting or negotiating.

What is Content Marketing and why do we use it?

  •  Content Marketing is the art of communicating without selling. The thought process behind content marketing is that if we deliver ongoing and consistent information it will ultimately result in sales. The information needs to be useful to your customers and provide value to their problems/questions pertaining to your solutions. (Example: Using the content space on your website as a marketing platform, not just a place to promote your business)
  • 5 Benefits of Content Marketing:
  1. Generate Leads: Provide information that is useful to your prospects and use their interest to turn them into a customer
  2. Shorten your sales cycle
  3. Have your company recognized as an industry leader
  4. Increase search engine rankings
  5. Gain an advantage over competitors
  • No matter how old you are, everyone has something to learn. Use educational pieces on your website to give a play-by-play of how your product/service is useful to your customers. If we look at a webpage dedicated to an educational piece, 90% should be educational, while 10% is marketing (Ex. Include a small side banner with a call to action).

Social Media is a key factor in any Marketing plan.

  • Interesting fact: 96.9% of B2B marketers plan to increase their social media efforts this year
  • There are 3 ways to make your marketing “social”
  1. Maintain a consistent social media presence. Tweeting once a week or once every few weeks will not make the cut
  2. Understand your target audience. Know who your product/service is for. If your target market is not on Twitter, neither     should you.
  3. Think of all your marketing as social marketing. Remember to stay social with your audience, have a conversation, listen to what they are saying and don’t drop off the face of the earth mid-conversation (i.e. Leaving Twitter because there just isn’t enough time in the day).

If you’re looking to get started on your marketing efforts, or enhance the ones you already have in place, feel free to reach out to our team to find out how VA Partners can help.

 

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“The Medium is the Message” and how it applies to our social media efforts

Posted on September 1, 2011

by Stephanie Goodman

Those who have completed a degree in Communication Studies are all too familiar with the phrase, “The medium is the message,” as said by the infamous Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan did not propose his theory in our era of the internet and social media, his theory applies none-the-less.

When stating “The medium is the message,” McLuhan believed that it was not what we said, but the way we said it that mattered most; the words we use are not as important to the way we choose to say/send them. Although many theories presented 20+ years ago regarding the way we communicate can be outdated, McLuhan’s theory still holds value to the way we structure our B2B marketing efforts today. Why do we communicate through more than one medium? The answer is simple: Marketers know that their audience will respond to the same message in different ways depending on the medium. By using the theory “The medium is the message,” we can see how different modes of communication are used by marketers today and why.

Twitter: The logistics of twitter are unique. Users are only allowed to use 140 characters and the medium requires captivating messages in order to draw attention to readers. As a medium of communication, Twitter is meant to captivate and tap into our short-term attention spans. It is targeting those individuals who are too busy to read an entire article, blog or the newspaper. Readers are given small bits of information with the option to click on a link to read further. Many of us are constantly on the move and need our information quick and simple. This medium is the message of urgency.

LinkedIn: Marketing to your audience through LinkedIn connotes professionalism. LinkedIn as a medium is used for business related purposes. For example, promoting a cocktail party would certainly not be marketed using LinkedIn as a medium to reach your audience. It is does not matter what we say over LinkedIn as marketers, it is that we are using LinkedIn to reach a specific audience. This medium is the message of professionalism.

Website: Websites are another medium most commonly used by marketers to reach their audience. Marketers use a company’s website to promote products/services and connect them with the needs of their customers. Again, it is not the website content that matters, but the medium of the website itself. Unlike Twitter and LinkedIn, there are no restrictions on the length of content.  Websites can also represent any level of professionalism.  Regardless of what content is used on a website, the websites themselves – along with blogs – are used as interactive web pages of a company, allowing the visitors to take a guided tour of what a company represents and provides. This medium is the message of presenting the details of your company to your audience.

Many marketers may interpret McLuhan’s argument to state that the message is irrelevant altogether; this is ultimately not the case. What marketers should take from McLuhan’s theory is that the medium they use is the message they are sending to their customers. Knowing that Twitter will convey a different message than Linkedin and that both will convey a different message than a website is ultimately what McLuhan was reasoning. As a marketer, know your audience and research the best medium or media in order to reach them. After all, whatever medium you choose will be the message.

For questions about your own marketing efforts or the marketing services offered by VA Partners, you can contact myself, Stephanie Goodman, through any medium you still fit: E-mail, Twitter, Linkedin or by phone.

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