Category: Social Media

An Online Marketing Strategy that Works for YOUR Business

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There is no shortage of email, social, and online marketing to sample from.  It’s a common occurrence for us to get a forward saying, “Can we do something like this?”  While there is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other marketing campaigns; trainers, consultants, and professional coaches need to assess whether the marketing strategy works for their business.

Recently I had a client forward one of Seth Godin’s emails to me and say, “Let’s make our emails just like Seth’s emails.” The email sample was very simple with a short bit of content and a handful of social options.

No disrespect to Mr. Godin, he offers great content and I’m sure he has a clearly defined plan for his emails being the way they are, but this client wasn’t Seth Godin.  Seth Godin’s campaign was built around short content driven by name recognition and a library of well-established books and concepts.  This client was fairly new to his market and offering in depth consulting relationships.  The focus of the email campaign and audience size was much different.

So we said, “We can do something along the lines of what Seth Godin did but there is not any direct lead generating mechanisms on the email.  Are you comfortable if leads go away for an extended period until you’ve built up a following in the way Seth Godin has?”  The consultant adamantly replied, “Well no, I need leads to keep coming in.”

What we ended up with was short tactics and insights like Seth Godin’s email but coupled with a single call to action that would change based on the content.  It’s great to be inspired by other marketing strategies but pay attention to the details.  What works for one business won’t work for all businesses.

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Business to Business (B to B) Social Media

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There tends to be two extremes to opinions on social media in the business to business marketing world.

The one extreme is that it’s the same as any other business.  Put in the effort and you’ll see the same result as any other business.

The other extreme is that it’s not a good medium for business marketing.  Avoid the time suck that social media entails.

As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Social media can be a valuable marketing channel for trainers, consultants and professional coaches if they offer valuable content while driving clients and prospects to relevant calls to action.  Here are just a few key differences for business to business social media pages:

LinkedIn is the Heavyweight

LinkedIn is a social media site tailor made for business.  People on the site expect to see professional topics. It’s perfect for a B to B environment.  Provide relevant posts to your targeted contacts or groups in LinkedIn and business opportunities will come from it.  LinkedIn tends to outperform other social media sites by 300% for having people click a business to business call to action.

Quality of Contacts Trumps Quantity

Many social media marketing stats revolve around how many people like your page or follow your posts.  For B to B this can be a false metric.  A better metric is analyzing the quality of your social network.  If you are a sales trainer your network should be full of sales people, sales managers, and executives.  If you find that most of your contacts are not business related or the wrong demographic then you need to refocus and restructure your social media marketing campaigns.

Don’t Expect Overly Emotional Interactions

While you might have a big fan that can’t wait to tell the world how they didn’t know what business was before meeting you, those will be few and far between.  Emotion will get toned down.  Rather look for interactions and comments that highlight the business advantages to what you offer.  A sales trainer might get something like, “My revenues increased by 50% and the average time to complete a sale decreased by three months.” This doesn’t speak to how much a client loves their consultant personally but it’s a powerful comment that will get the attention of your target audience.

Always Have an Obvious Call to Action

Every post should include a next step, even if it’s an obvious one.  If you post an article the next step is clicking to read it.  If you post a video then the next step is clicking to see it.  If you have an event the registration link should be obvious.  etc.  Your call to action might have a follow on call to action but the first step should be a no-brainer.  There isn’t a lot of room for random asides in B to B social media posting.  Have a point, make a point, and provide a next step that supports that point.
Of course there are other differences but these are some starters to get a true sense of how B to B social media can be profitable.

Business to Business (B to B) Social Media

There tends to be two extremes to opinions on social media in the business to business marketing world. 

The one extreme is that it’s the same as any other business.  Put in the effort and you’ll see the same result as any other business.

The other extreme is that it’s not a good medium for business marketing.  Avoid the time suck that social media entails.

As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Social media can be a valuable marketing channel for trainers, consultants and professional coaches if they offer valuable content while driving clients and prospects to relevant calls to action.  Here are just a few key differences for business to business social media pages:

LinkedIn is the Heavyweight
LinkedIn is a social media site tailor made for business.  People on the site expect to see professional topics. It’s perfect for a B to B environment.  Provide relevant posts to your targeted contacts or groups in LinkedIn and business opportunities will come from it.  LinkedIn tends to outperform other social media sites by 300% for having people click a business to business call to action.

Quality of Contacts Trumps Quantity
Many social media marketing stats revolve around how many people like your page or follow your posts.  For B to B this can be a false metric.  A better metric is analyzing the quality of your social network.  If you are a sales trainer your network should be full of sales people, sales managers, and executives.  If you find that most of your contacts are not business related or the wrong demographic then you need to refocus and restructure your social media marketing campaigns.

Don’t Expect Overly Emotional Interactions
While you might have a big fan that can’t wait to tell the world how they didn’t know what business was before meeting you, those will be few and far between.  Emotion will get toned down.  Rather look for interactions and comments that highlight the business advantages to what you offer.  A sales trainer might get something like, “My revenues increased by 50% and the average time to complete a sale decreased by three months.” This doesn’t speak to how much a client loves their consultant personally but it’s a powerful comment that will get the attention of your target audience.

Always Have an Obvious Call to Action
Every post should include a next step, even if it’s an obvious one.  If you post an article the next step is clicking to read it.  If you post a video then the next step is clicking to see it.  If you have an event the registration link should be obvious.  etc.  Your call to action might have a follow on call to action but the first step should be a no brainer.  There isn’t a lot of room for random asides in B to B social media posting.  Have a point, make a point, and provide a next step that supports that point.

Of course there are other differences but these are some starters to get a true sense of how B to B social media can be profitable.

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Consistent Online Marketing Activities Are Required for Consistent Results

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There seems to be a common misconception among trainers, consultants, and professional coaches that once you get your online marketing campaigns rolling that it then runs itself.  There is never a time where you should be asleep at the wheel.  Every online communication channel requires consistent activity and a lull in activity will almost guarantee a lull in results.

Online marketing is like any job.  If you stop showing up, you’re not going to get paid.  A relative of mine has been running a blog for several months and is just starting to get some traction.  He was asking about blogs and how difficult it can be to get off the ground.  I commented, “People seem to think once the blog is established that it runs itself.  It’s still hard work creating content consistently and maintaining relevancy.  And try not writing anything for a short period of time and see your stats fall off a cliff.”

He laughed and said, “It’s funny you say that.  I went on vacation for a week, when I checked my analytics my traffic sharply dropped.  By the end of the week my daily traffic was only at 25% of where it had been.  The numbers didn’t rebound to their previous state for another two and a half weeks.”

We’ve not done strict testing on his numbers but it appears to be a good rule of thumb.  If there is a period of inactivity on your online marketing, it will take twice that amount of time to recover.  This isn’t just for blogs.  It applies across the board to websites, social media, and email marketing.

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Social Media and Email Marketing: Your Movie Trailer

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trailerI love movie trailers.  I will seek out the trailer for movies I am interested in and take in about any trailer that comes across my path.  I will actually get irritated if I am not in my seat at a theater when the trailers start.  But why seek out or get irritated about missing something that amounts to a short commercial for a movie I may or may not be interested in?  There are two primary reasons, one it’s an exciting sample of a larger offering, and two it provides a quick overview of something I might want to know more about.

Successful social media and email marketing campaigns provide the same two incentives.

Engaging Sample – What you email or post to social media should be your A material.  When’s the last time you saw a trailer with long developmental pieces of dialogue?  Never, because they want to show the most exciting or engaging parts of the movie to provide incentive to see it.  Many consultants, trainers, and professional coaches hold back their best information for fear that if they use it for marketing their audience will “figure out” what they do/teach and never pay for it. That won’t happen, at least not with people that are truly motivated to buy.  No one feels like they saw a movie because they took in the trailer. Make sure to provide samples of your most powerful metrics, insights, and tactics.

Content Summary – Providing quality content in your social media and email marketing is a draw for people that happen across it.  Those people are unlikely to organically take an interest in your products or services because they have not had a reason to look or think it doesn’t apply to them.  However, if they encounter something insightful that is easy to take in, they will pay attention.  Many times I’ve never heard of a movie or assume it’s not something I’m interested in. But if I see the trailer of that movie and it has engaging content, it can alter my perspective.  Your social media and email marketing has the same potential.  If you are providing quality information that grabs someone then they are likely to look further into it and be more receptive to future marketing communications.

Use social media and email marketing like a trailer.  Keep it short but powerful and remember to always provide a next step.  A trailer without a release date letting you know when the movie premiers might get interest but will also breed frustration on when the movie can be seen.  Always provide a next step to more information or a call to action so that the people that like your trailer know where they can see the movie.

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Social Media: Quality Over Quantity

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Are you abusing your social profiles? A lot of trainers, consultants, and professional coaches don’t think they are but on analysis their profiles contain very little quality information.  Rather it’s a long series of hastily crafted messages or reused content with little or no value add. Social media marketing isn’t about finding and posting anything with relevance to your profession.  The value of viewing or subscribing to your social profile is in getting expert viewpoints on industry or professional topics.   Social media marketing is much more effective when the focus is on quality rather than quantity.

Regurgitating other profiles
Reposting is the most prevalent abuse of social profiles.  There is never a situation where your profile should automatically repost everything from an industry or professional resource.  People can link to that resource’s profile if they want to see everything they post.  Your social profiles should reflect you or your firm’s view on a topic. It’s OK to selectively repost from an industry or professional resource but, at minimum, any repost should have a short note on why you are linking to it.  A follow on commentary can be a nice touch if what you want to say won’t fit the space restrictions in the first post.

Posting low value blurbs
Space restrictions are a fact of social media life.  That isn’t an excuse to post gibberish that no one cares about to fill a lull in posts.  Take some time to write a message that means something to your audience. Here’s a real-life low value message from a sales training firm: “Do your behaviors today!”  That has no meaning to people unfamiliar with their content and little value to those that do know the content.  With a little tweaking it could be more impactful, something like, “Sales success comes from doing assigned behaviors designed to meet goals. What are your non-negotiable behaviors for this week?”

Pawning off other’s Content as their own
Some people ensure that they are “scooped” on everything they post to their profiles.  This happens when they largely plagiarize from other industry sources.  The internet is a big place and many people get away with taking content but it’s never really an original thought.  It’s impossible to steal an authentic consistent voice.  Worst case scenario is that your content is exposed as copies of other’s information which damages credibility.  Best case is that you have an inconsistent set of postings that provide no overarching principles.

Too much one way communicating
The beauty of social media that many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches ignore is the potential for interaction.  Ask questions of your audience.  The above revised post is an example of writing a question that can be rhetorical but invites interaction from dedicated clients or interested prospects.  There’s a fair chance that interaction will be low but the post is designed to add value even if no one responds.  However, if someone does respond then it makes for a quality interaction and encourages others to participate in the future.

Frequent reposting of the same content
It’s ok to repeat an important point.  Reuse can be spawned from calendar recurrences or current events.  Using the example above, the same post might be used at the beginning of the year for a sales training firm, something like, “The new year is here.  Are your sales goals set and behaviors written down?  If not attend our goal setting workshop on ____”.  But it’s important that some time has passed between posts and that reposts have a logical reason for reuse other than a scramble to put something new on the social profile.  For instance, if you have an event or a tactic, don’t use it back-to-back.  If you have to post something similar within a few weeks of one another, at least change the message up to generate interest.  There should never be a time where the same thing is posted more than once in a week.

There are two techniques to avoid quantity over quality.

  1. Set a social media editorial calendar.  A monthly schedule is a manageable amount of time.  At the end of a month, take a few hours and write out all your posts for the upcoming month.  This ensures a balanced calendar and gives some time to write well thought out, quality posts.
  2.  Links are your friend.  Sometimes space restrictions prevent a quality communication going right on the social profile.  Use links to your advantage by creating content on your website and then linking to it.  In that way, the social post just needs to function as a subject line teasing people to view your more robust content.

Quantity is often the focus to “fill up” a social profile.  However no one ever complains if they get higher quality content but it come less frequently.  Better to post once a week with something impactful to your audience, than to post several times a day with content that holds little value.

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Article Schedule with Social/Email Integration

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Many times with online marketing simply completing the tasks is the most difficult aspect of doing it.  So why not kill a few birds with one stone?  A blog’s posting schedule can be synced with email marketing and social media marketing programs to cover all the channels at once.

The simplest way of doing this is by making your blog your central content hub.  Once you have an article ready for posting you can create an email marketing message that features that article.  Provide a teaser for the content and then link back to the blog.  In this way, the content is not just a blog post but also an email marketing communication.

Same principle applies to social media.  Once a blog posting is live it can be featured on all your social media profiles.  Feature the title or a short teaser and a link back to the blog.  Again the content serves as a blog post but also as a social profile feeder.

Most online marketing campaigns for trainers, consultants, and professional coaches is based around valuable content and the blog serves as the central place for that content.

Once you have your schedule in place and are using the content for multiple marketing channels, you can focus on streamlining the process further.  There are a lot of automated tools to automatically feed your blog to social media channels.  Some are integrated right into the blogging platform, others can pull new blog posts from the blog.  Many email marketing platforms have social media  integration so your email subject line can be used as a social media post and eliminate the need to feed the information separately.

When you duplicate where the blog content is being used, it exponentially adds to the value of the blog because the content for the blog has several channels to engage prospects.

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B-to-B Online Marketing Around the Holidays

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As the holiday season grows closer, many of us associate it with the busiest shopping season of the year.  But for B-to-B the inverse is often true.   While consumer shopping spikes business to business transactions often lag.  Consultants, trainers, and professional coaches need to modify some of their online marketing plans to account for the decreased activity without abandoning the time period as a lost cause.

There are two bad plans for your B-to-B marketing over the holiday period (late November through the early part of January in the US).

The first is pretending the time of year does not matter.  While you’ll want to schedule any informative content that you regularly provide, sales or offer emails are unlikely to convert well.  For example, if you run a monthly event to find new opportunities, it’s likely that registrations will suffer.  Instead of forcing your regular events an alternative “gift” incentive might be more appropriate.  For example, offer a free whitepaper download or training webinar as a thank you to people that subscribe to your email newsletter.  Make the offer simple to redeem.  Prospects don’t even need to leave their office to take advantage of either example.  The holiday period is a challenging time to get people to take advantage of more elaborate or expensive offerings, so find ways of providing simple value add incentives.

The second bad plan is giving up the holidays as a lost cause.  This plan abandons regular communications because “no one’s paying attention now.”  Your regular informative emails or newsletters are a given.  If you publish monthly or bi-weekly, then you need to meet that expectation.  True, rates will likely be somewhat lower but being consistent with your offer assures your audiences that you will deliver on your commitment.  Furthermore, this time frame is not a total lost cause for B-to-B.  Some businesses might have put off a decision until the end of the year.  If their budgeting cycle will reset, they might be primed to close a deal with a consultant, trainer, or professional coach.  Keeping your online marketing churning through this time period provides an opportunity to stay top of mind with prospects and clients.

Take the holidays into account for your online and email marketing.  It’s not the boom time that consumer businesses experience but it can be fruitful none the less.

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When Scheduling Goes Bad

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Having automated processes in place that allow you to pre-schedule email or social media messages are a great tool.  However, the people behind the tools always need to be aware of those sends and make judgment calls in extenuating circumstances.

As an example, Hurricane Sandy is hitting the east coast hard this morning.  Many businesses are closed as people rightly look after their welfare and the welfare of their loved ones.  Sending out an advertisement or an invitation to an event today is likely to be ignored or ill-received.  However, there are plenty of automated messages that will go out today because they were pre-scheduled or out-of-town marketers won’t be aware of local circumstances.

After working on a communication and crafting the message, scheduling is a good way to ensure it is sent at an ideal time.  However, marketers need to remember that extenuating circumstances will come up and send schedules should be modified in these cases.

It’s not always practical as emergencies can rise without warning.  But in situations where there is a looming threat (like a hurricane) then delaying sends until after the threat has passed is advisable. 

Best wishes to the East coast cities hit by Sandy and stay safe.

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When Do I need Online Marketing Help?

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One of the most challenging questions for trainers, consultants, and professional coaches in regards to online and email marketing is knowing when they need to hire outside help.  There’s not a hard and fast rule but there are three guidelines of when to look for help:

  1. Don’t Have Time – This is an easy issue to identify.  If you or your staff does not have time to consistently do the online marketing activities, then hire outside help that will stay on top of it.  Online marketing typically isn’t effective when done sporadically.  If pieces of your marketing campaign aren’t getting done because it’s being forgotten or postponed, get some help.
  2. Lacking Quality – This is a guideline that’s harder to define as standards for quality can be subjective.  Sometimes this can be solved by upgrading you or your staff’s skills.  This is often the case if the person responsible for your online marketing wants to do the work but struggles. Before investing time, money, and/or energy into upgrading a skill set, make sure that you or your staff member is close enough to a professional quality to make the investment worthwhile.  Often times, if a person has a poor aptitude for online marketing, trying to train them is just a frustration that still results in sub-par quality.As a general rule if you find that the quality of the content comes off as unprofessional or get feedback that others do, then the person producing the work needs to improve the product or outside help needs brought in. An online campaign that looks home grown because the quality is lacking can often do more harm than good.
  3. No Results – An online campaign should produce results in either business leads or sales.  How many leads or sales depends on the campaign but some results should exist.  If you are producing high quality communications on a regular basis but getting nothing from it than the approach is probably flawed.  This can be the most difficult problem to solve and often warrants hiring outside help.

Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches can produce quality online marketing campaigns on their own but it takes effort and dedication.  If you find that you aren’t meeting the guidelines above, then it might be worth hiring outside help and invest those efforts elsewhere.

If you decide to hire outside help here are some things to look for . . .

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