As marketers we should be talking with customers ourselves and bringing research to sales. But whether it’s an enterprise sales rep closing $1 million deals or a retail salesperson in the clothes section helping people buy something that looks good on them, salespeople have orders of magnitude more customer contact than we ever will. So be close to your salespeople and learn from them about your customers. Continue reading
GE has been around for 130 years. It has 300,000 employees, ranks 11th on the Fortune 500 with $140 billion in annual revenue, and its brand is considered the 10th most valuable in the world.
Around Christmas it’s not uncommon for companies to send consumers small product samples in the mail. And if you’ve ever owned a small business you’ve probably gotten sample company pens from promo companies. Done more creatively dimensional direct mail is a good way to get the attention of a prospect who has otherwise been ignoring your other marketing. Continue reading
A few weeks ago a senior executive of Facebook predicted that it would be all video in five years with no text or photos. That seems highly unlikely to me, but it does reflect the rapidly growing importance of video for storytelling and engaging with audiences. There’s a good reason why brands will pay so much for TV ads. Continue reading
It’s kind of a hassle for people if every time that they come to your website and want to download something you ask them for the same information (name, company, email, whatever) over and over again. And you’re not learning more about them in the process. Progressive profiling is a way to improve the customer’s experience while also deepening your knowledge about them. Continue reading
If the overnight success of Pokémon Go means anything, it’s that augmented reality has entered the mainstream and will be understood by many more people. And augmented reality (AR) has many applications in marketing.
For those who haven’t heard of AR, it’s adding data or images to images of the real world. While it can be done with a special headset it’s far more accessible if it’s done with a smartphone camera and app. Continue reading
It’s often said that acquiring new customers is something like five times as expensive as retaining existing ones. As a result customer retention programs tend to be much more profitable than customer acquisition programs. A study by Bain and the Harvard Business School said that increasing customer retention by 5% increased profits by 25-95%. Continue reading
Usually I am recommending that you have ads with strong calls to action for an offer (sign up for our webinar, download our market brief, get our infographic, etc). Those lead people to click, complete forms, give you their contact information, and enable you to further market to them.
However, you can use Google AdWords inexpensively to grow awareness by running display network ads that you pay for on a cost per click (CPC) basis that don’t have any calls to action at all. Continue reading
People buy with emotion and justify with logic. Sales people have known this forever and good marketers do, too.
Bob Johnson at IDG Connect and Kim Wallace of Wallace & Washburn had done research into the behaviors of B2B buyers. They found that in 97% of cases vendors introduced in the first buying team meeting were the ones that made it to the short list, so if you weren’t a pre-favorite it was almost impossible to get in on the opportunity later. Marketing is critical for becoming a pre-favorite. Continue reading
Marketing is not an island. Truly valuable (to their companies) marketers aren’t focused on marketing metrics such as increased web traffic, low cost per clicks and social shares, they’re focused on contributing to the company’s revenue growth and profitability. And to do that they need to work closely with sales. Continue reading