Growing up, my siblings and I often heard those words from our farm-raised father. For him, even easy days meant pouring blood, sweat and tears into his work, home improvement projects and various community organizations. I didn’t inherit his handiness with a hammer, but I believe the work ethic I developed makes me particularly adept at the business of marketing communications.
Why? Because marketing communications is hard work. To do it effectively requires constant focus, the ability to finesse a plan and the need to be flexible to change it all at a moment’s notice. There is no clear roadmap, no magic bullet and no crystal ball that can show you the right way. Hard work is really the only way to be successful in marketing communications.
Ever wonder why so many professionals blog, tweet and give away free marcom advice? Because they know that most organizations don’t have the resources or willingness to do the really hard work of pulling it all together. Today’s marketplace demands that you connect too many dots, align too many strategies and juggle the different needs of too many people.
Effective communications are entirely possible to pull off, but you need to roll up your sleeves and flex some marcom muscle. Tired of just thinking about it? Call a b2b marketing communications resource that’s ready to get to work and will be with you for the long haul.
With football season gearing up, I was drawn to an article titled, “Colts spurn conventional wisdom to win over fans.” The article discusses how the Indianapolis Colts continue to move the marker on their march to making themselves a model NFL franchise.
The team has grown its sponsor count to 240—up 20 from last year and well above the league average of 190—and has a season-ticket waiting list of 17,000—up from 11,000 last year. And, they did it all in an unconventional way.
So, how did they get there?
In 2000, the team abandoned its traditional television, print and radio marketing campaign and opted to invest in more personal community visits from team representatives. Turns out, this unconventional path has been a real success for the team over time.
This same theory or approach can be applied to B2B public relations and marketing. Sometimes, the best way to grow your customer base, increase sales, raise awareness or drive interest isn’t through traditional marketing tactics. Sometimes, the best way to reach your marketing goals is to ditch some of the traditional tactics and really figure out what motivates your customers and prospects. It’s time to start thinking outside of the box and put new marketing tactics in the game.
It’s that time of year again. Here at Canyon we’re in the throws of 2011 planning and beyond for many of our clients. As part of the planning process we’re constantly exploring opportunities in the B2B space.
Did you know that by 2013 cell phones will outnumber PCs for surfing the web? Is your company’s Web site ready? I found this great blog post by Jeffrey Cohen on the impending social mobile experience and some initial steps your company can take to prepare:
Check out your site on several mobile devices to see what users currently experience.
Plan for the future mobile experience by creating a hardworking mobile site.
Don’t forget your blog. Make sure your content is easy to access, read and share.
Remember as with all communications you need to approach it from the customer’s point of view. Consider what motivates them to purchase your product or service and speak to that.
JR Raphael from PCWorld had an amazing column, “The 10 most uncool moments in tech” that showed up on MSNBC.com a couple weeks ago. His column highlights tech companies that try as they might to come across as cool, completely miss the mark.
The column includes video of each of the failed attempts at cool viral and ad campaigns. Check them out for a few chuckles, but you’ll probably find yourself more often shaking your head in disbelief—yes, they really are that bad. Here’s a quick example of just how horrible these marketing moments really are:
Raphael’s commentary, however, is absolutely riveting and will definitely make you laugh.
Beyond the humor, there’s a lesson to be learned. Don’t try to force your brand to be something that it simply is NOT.
Every brand can’t be cool. Every brand can’t be classy. Every brand can’t be a hero. But, every brand can fail if its position is not defined.
Your brand position is the crux of your marketing program. And, if you haven’t defined your brand position and brand persona, for goodness sake get on it! While you’re here at B2B Fishbowl, check out what our very own Matt Hensler has to say about brand personas too.
Millions of people use Google everyday to look for a product, service or information. I guarantee that a substantial amount of these people are potential clients looking for your particular service or product. Below are eight ways I’ve found that can help increase your Google page rank.
1. Know Your Current Page Rank: The first step to increase your Google ranking is to know your current Page Rank. Visit PR Checker to find out.
2. Submit Your Site: You want the search engine spiders to come to your site and start indexing it into their database.
3. Quality Page Content: Make sure to update your website or blog regularly. Good content will increase your ranking. It’s that simple. More good, relevant content means more visitors. This eventually leads to other sites linking to your pages.
4. Link Often: Google looks at both inbound and outbound links. One of the easiest ways to increase your Page Rank is to exchange links with other websites or blogs that have similar content.
5. Social Networking: Submit your website or blog posts to popular sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Facebook and Twitter. These sites will help you generate backlinks.
6. Make Your Graphics Search Friendly: Keep Flash to a minimum. People may enjoy reading Flash, but search engines tend to skip over it.
7. Clean-coded Site: Make sure that your website’s coding is clean and simple so it’s easy for web crawlers to crawl the content.
8. Use Meta Tags: Include Meta keywords, Meta descriptions and page titles on every page.
