The Marketing Maven: Industrial Marketing Blog & B2B Marketing Tips

Planning for 2010: Common Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

By now you should be deep into your marketing planning for next year. If you don’t yet have a strategy for 2010 and a marketing plan being developed around it, you’re already making one of the biggest marketing mistakes by moving into the year ahead without a plan. You need to get started now. Otherwise, you will likely fall behind competitors who are moving forward, be forced to make hurried decisions without the support of good data, and waste precious marketing dollars on ineffective programs.

To prevent this gloomy situation and put your company in a position to start out strong in the year ahead, here are some common mistakes to avoid when planning for 2010—and how to fix them.

Five Tips for Better Lead Management

One of marketing’s biggest mandates is to generate sales leads, and often a large percentage of the marketing budget is allocated to this task. But no matter how good a job marketing does on the lead generation side, and no matter how qualified the leads are, the ultimate value of sales leads is determined by your company’s ability to manage them through the marketing and sales process—and convert them into satisfied customers.

Follow these five tips to increase the number of leads you turn into sales and the number of qualified leads you generate.

What You Need to Know About Social Media — Part II

Last month, in Part I of this two-part article series, the Marketing Maven introduced social media and its relevance to the industrial marketer—the what, why, how and when of using social media to support B2B marketing efforts. You can read the article here.

This month, we delve into the most popular social media tools for B2B: Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Our angle is pragmatic, focusing on what each tool is, and why you might want to use it. As for getting started with any of these tools, it’s simple: just visit their Web sites and establish free accounts.

Several concepts apply to all of these social media tools. First, in many ways, the tools are integrated with each other. For example, entries on your company Facebook page can be automatically sent to your Twitter account, or the videos you post on YouTube can easily be embedded into a blog entry. On LinkedIn, you can promote your Facebook and Twitter presence. This interconnection among social media tools helps expand your visibility and reach, and also provides economy of scale when creating content: you can use original content in multiple social media outlets.

Second, as we mentioned in Part I, all of these social media tools are meant to promote useful conversations. By its nature, conversation is two-way communication; you both talk and listen. And useful conversation in this instance is relevant conversation. The key is to connect and converse with others who share similar interests as you, and to keep the conversation going. Social media tools are useful only if you stay engaged with them.

Blogs
A blog is type of Web site you update regularly with fresh content, including articles, commentary, analysis, graphics and video. Blogs offer the ability for readers to participate in the conversation by making comments on entries. Blogs have become extremely popular; the blog search engine Technorati currently tracks more than 115 million blogs.

A blog is often written by one individual but also can be a collaborative effort among multiple writers. Either way, it should have a singular and consistent voice.

Why use a blog?
A blog can offer the following benefits:
•    Allows you to publish fresh content on topics that are timely and interesting to your audience
•    Positions you (or your company) as a thought leader or industry expert
•    Invites feedback so you can listen to what your audience has to say
•    Improves search engine rankings if content is optimized for search engines

Free blogging software is widely available and can be installed on your Web server. Popular programs include WordPress (www.wordpress.com) and TypePad (www.typepad.com). You should get a unique URL for your blog, such as blog.companyname.com or companyname.com/blog. The harder part is posting regularly to the blog. A blog will quickly whither and die if you don’t commit to posting and monitoring it regularly. Before you get started, you should develop a content strategy for your blog that includes details including what you are going to write about, as well as a plan for regular posting. 

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social network that connects professionals. You can create an individual profile on LinkedIn and use it to expand your professional network. Recently, LinkedIn began offering company profiles as well. Think of LinkedIn as the world’s biggest networking event.

Why use LinkedIn?
The ability to create and participate in groups is a big benefit of LinkedIn. For instance, if your company manufactures engineering software, you can create a group around this topic or search for other groups related to this topic. Within the group, you can ask and answer questions, which helps build the visibility of your brand and establishes your expertise on a particular subject.

You can also use LinkedIn to search for professionals with similar interests. It can be particularly beneficial for your sales team, helping them reach out to others - including their prospects and clients - to expand their network, and to research profiles of potential buyers and companies.

Facebook
Mostly known as a consumer tool to stay in touch with friends, Facebook is now being used for business as well. Facebook allows companies or brands to set up profiles, and instead of having friends, they have “fans.” Fans are likely to be employees, customers and prospects.

Why use Facebook?

• Facebook allows you to add information, photos, videos, links to events, and more. When you update your page, the new content can appear on your fans’ newsfeed pages. They will always be up to date with what what’s going on. Facebook is an easy way to get out information about new products, events, and industry information without being obtrusive or pushing it upon your audience.
• Facebook gives your fans a unified place to connect with you, stay updated, and communicate with other fans with similar interests. Your fans can comment on all of the information you put in your news feed. You always know what people are saying about your company and the information you publish.
• Facebook offers a targeted ad program to help get your message out to those who may be interested in your content.

YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing site, where you can set up an account and upload videos and even create your own channel. A video uploaded to YouTube can also be embedded in other Web sites. YouTube provides the code and you can simply cut and paste it from YouTube into any other Web site, blogs, Facebook page, etc.

Why use YouTube?
Video has become a critical B2B marketing tool—so many people just don’t want to read anymore! And YouTube is an easy way to publish and distribute video. The widespread popularity of YouTube has also lowered the bar for production quality. It’s acceptable—almost chic—for business videos to have a homemade quality, whether you are portraying an interview with an executive, a customer testimonial or a product demonstration.

Viewers can post comments on YouTube videos, which gets the conversation going. What feature to take note of: after your video plays, YouTube shows thumbnails of other videos it considers related to yours, which users can click on and view. You don’t have complete control.

Twitter
Twitter, a micro-blogging service that limits posts to only 140 characters, is another social media tool being used by businesses. The text-based messages, called tweets, appear on your account page and on the Twitter pages of people who “follow” you.

Why use Twitter?
Twitter is starting to find its place in B2B marketing. It’s a great tool for listening to what others are saying about your industry, and perhaps your company and products. It’s also a good way to promote and share content: brief statements with links to articles, videos, white papers, events and more.

If you offer good content, people who follow you might “re-tweet” it, which is basically recommending your content to others in their own tweets. This helps expand the conversation, with your content being the subject.

Final Advice

• Before diving into social media, establish social media objectives. Do you want to promote your brand, seek customer feedback, connect with a new audience, or other goals? Let your objectives guide your decisions.
• You may not have the time and resources to use all the social media tools available to you. What you do choose to use, you should use frequently. There’s no fixed timetable, but update your social media pages as often as possible.
• Don’t sacrifice your current marketing efforts for the social media cause. Instead, think of how you can get better results from current marketing efforts by integrating social media into the equation.

Complimentary Webinar: Preparing Your Company for Success in 2010

In challenging times, many companies are unable to increase their marketing investments or are forced to cut marketing spending.  The important question to ask during a downturn isn't whether the economy will recover - it always does.  But will your marketing efforts support your company when the economy begins to grow again?

Join us on Thursday, November 12 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time to learn more about how to successfully emerge from an economic downturn better positioned for future growth, including:

• The reasons and ways your target audience relies on the Internet, featuring results from our latest surveys of engineering, technical and industrial professionals;
• How suppliers like you are using marketing to reach this audience, in light of challenging times;
• Four proven strategies for helping your company successfully emerge from the economic downturn;
• How one company adjusted their marketing plans to help them achieve company goals;
• And more.

This brief, information-packed online session will be presented by industrial marketing experts Chris Chariton, vice president of marketing services and product management for GlobalSpec, and James Stanaway, director of marketing for Epilog Laser.

Register today for this informative event and learn how to successfully emerge from an economic downturn better positioned for future growth.

Federal TAA Program Can Help Manufacturers Recover From Tough Times

There’s no arguing that it’s been a difficult year for manufacturing. Few companies have managed to avoid some sort of decline in business. The good news is there is help available in the form of the Trade Adjustment Association for Firms (TAA). TAA is a federal program which provides financial assistance to manufacturers affected by import competition.

This program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a cost sharing federal assistance program pays for at least half the cost of marketing support or other initiatives that that improve a manufacturer's competitiveness.

To learn more about the Trade Adjustment Association for Firms, visit their web site. The association has regional officesaround the country where TAAC staff will assess eligibility and prepare an application on the firm's behalf.

What You Need to Know About Social Media—Part 1

As if you weren’t busy enough and resource stretched, now there’s this buzz about using social media as a B2B marketing tool. Many companies are starting to experiment with social media to gain a greater understanding of how it can be integrated into their overall marketing strategy to support marketing goals and objectives.

If you’re having trouble grasping social media and understanding how to incorporate it into your marketing efforts, this two-part article series is for you. This first article offers a high-level explanation of social media—the what, why, how and when of using social media in your marketing efforts. The second article, next month, will take a specific look at the top social media vehicles for business—Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter—and offer practical advice on how to take advantage of them for your business.

2010 Marketing Planning Tools

Marketers face a particular challenge in planning for 2010: the economy is on the verge of recovering, yet your budget for 2010 may be in flux. The challenge is that you cannot control the economy and you may not be able to establish a fixed budget at this point.

But you can control how you plan for 2010 and in doing so put yourself in a position to surge when the economy begins to grow again. Now is the time to make sure you understand recent changes in the industrial sector marketing climate, evaluate your current marketing programs, and put in place the most effective strategies for 2010—whatever your budget might be or what the economy does.

One of the biggest mistakes some marketers make is moving into the year ahead without a plan. This creates an uneasy and inefficient environment of scrambling to make marketing decisions without the benefit of established objectives and strong analysis to support the actions you take.

To help you plan for the coming year, GlobalSpec has updated its 2010 Industrial Marketing Kit, which offers tools for evaluating and implementing marketing aimed at engineering, technical, industrial and manufacturing professionals. It includes a six-point checklist for success, tools to calculate the effectiveness of marketing channels and lead quality, and more. You can download your complimentary copy of the planning kit here.

Learn The Facts Behind Third-Party Traffic Estimation

When planning marketing programs, industrial marketers want to know what the statistics are behind a proposed online marketing program.

However, to comprehend what these statistics really mean, a marketer must understand a few key components about how these statistics are derived.

We all know the basics of Web statistics: number of visits, unique visitors, and page views. This specific data helps us to understand the size of the target audience we can reach by advertising on a particular Web site.

An additional piece of information that is really key – yet seldom understood – is what it means when a Web publisher refers to data from third-party Web traffic estimators.

Learn the important facts behind third-party traffic estimation - Read the full white paper, "The Marketer's Dilemma: Estimating Traffic on Web Sites for Online Advertising Purposes".

10 Low-Cost Tactics to Market Your Business

With many budgets getting crunched, marketers may need to pay special attention to low-cost marketing tactics that can help their companies. Many of these ideas can be implemented using your current resources and some extra elbow grease in the form of time and hard work. And they can all help raise the visibility of your company and make your overall marketing more effective.

Some of these tactics you may already be doing, others may be new ideas. In either case, make the most of them to achieve marketing benefits with minimal costs.

B2B Marketing Summit Presentation: Lead Generation Success

Earlier this week GlobalSpec's Chris Chariton, Vice President of marketing services and product management, and lead management consultant Mac McIntosh presented at Marketing Sherpa's B2B Marketing Summit in Boston. The presentation was well received, and generated much interest. The slides be found here.

Chariton spoke about how GlobalSpec was able to generate more high quality leads and deliver those leads faster to their sales team. For example, leads used to be delivered to sales in about two weeks' time, but after GlobalSpec's aggressive initiative, they were able to cut that time down to 24 hours.  

The presentation also covered lead generation and management best practices that GlobalSpec was able to apply, the keys to its success at getting those best practices implemented, and some of the lessons learned along the way. Mac spoke about how GlobalSpec was able to increase their lead generation numbers by creating additional offers despite a limited budget by re-purposing existing content, pulling apart current offers and updating older pieces.

Learn more about these tactics and how GlobalSpec was able to achieve the buy-in from upper management as well as other departments, whose help was crucial to getting their goals accomplished.