Better Marketing Series

Get Ready for 2019 With These 6 Marketing & Sales Activities

September 12, 2018 by Steve Henke

By Steve Henke, Founder & President of Harpeth Marketing

By the time you read this article, the 2018 calendar year will be more than 2/3 over. How has it gone for you so far? Have you started thinking about 2019?

Before 2018 ends and you start scrambling to get ready for next year, now is the time to do a little prep work, a little planning, and a little thinking. To help you get next year off to a strong marketing & sales start, consider implementing these 6 activities…

1. Take a look at 2018 to date… and do a little measuring.

For example, take look at:

Your Google Analytics numbers: how many people are visiting your website, where did they come from and what pages are they visiting?
Did you do any email marketing this year? Look at your open rates and click-thru rates to help you understand what kinds of subject lines and topics resonate with your readers.
How’s your social media marketing? Are you growing your followers and connections? Are you truly engaging with the marketplace… or do you just have a presence?
From a sales perspective, are you adding new prospects to your pipeline and tracking movement through it? How about conversions… bids vs. wins?
And look at your revenue in several ways: year-to-date vs. last-year-to-date, year-to-date vs. goal, by service line and by industry served.

This kind of data will serve as the foundation for your marketing & sales planning for next year.

2. Clean up your databases.

I know… not a very sexy activity, but very important.

Go through your sales database/CRM and clean up any obvious typos, incomplete records, mis-formed email addresses, etc. Also, get rid of any competitors… or at least keep them clearly segmented.
Do you have the right fields available (and filled in)? These are needed for list segmentation.
Look at the “bounce-backs” from your email marketing to help clean-up your email addresses.
Compare your LinkedIn contacts to your sales database – it will show you who’s changed companies; most people are pretty good at keeping their LinkedIn profile up to date.
Keep your social media connections & followers clean, too. One obvious place is with your Twitter followers. If you’ve got a follower that you really don’t want to be there (competitor, spammy or otherwise inappropriate), simply ‘block’ them.

3. Is it time to spruce up your website?

Not a full-blown overhaul, but just a little freshening up…

Make sure any new services/products are listed on the site.
The same goes for any new employees, clients, locations, recent news, etc.
Do you have icons on every page for connecting to your social sites?
Is it time for some new imagery or splashes of color?
Been a while since you posted to your blog? There’s no time like the present to get back into it.
Is your site mobile-optimized? With a large percentage of your website visitors on hand-held devices, make it happen before January.
Go through an SEO audit… then update your content to match the top keywords and phrases.

4. Draft a marketing and sales plan for 2019.

This can be a pretty big undertaking, but for now…

At the very least, write down the marketing & sales activities you’ll commit to next year.
Create a budget and commit to investing in marketing & sales.
Make sure you’ve got some basic way to measure your activities… so you know what’s working and what’s not.
And most importantly, put all of these activities into a calendar, assign responsibilities and then share the calendar with all involved.
Note 1: as part of your 2019 plan… commit to “doing something” every day/every week/every month.
Note 2: as you think about your goals for next year, don’t just focus on the end result… set goals for the activities that will help you achieve the end result. E.g. number of sales calls per week, frequency of social media posts, etc.

5. If you’re going to send out holiday cards and gifts… get to work on it now.

Give yourself plenty of time to come up with something creative and memorable that you know your clients will appreciate.

6. Get out of the office.

Lastly, as a way to prepare to be successful with all of the activities above, consider taking your senior leadership on a retreat away from the office. Get away to a cabin in the woods and start discussing some of the high-level topics that can significantly impact your business:

New products or services
New processes or people
Why you really lose clients
Competitor activity
Key account strategies
New technologies to consider
Differentiating your firm
Level of commitment to marketing & sales
Goals/aspirations for 2019

So, even if 2018 was a good year… now is the time to start working on 2019 to make it a great one! Good luck.

If you’d like some help thinking through and preparing for growth in 2019, register for the Think. Plan. Do. Workshop™, an online program that takes place over 3 weeks in October. You’ll graduate from this Workshop with a complete, customized marketing & sales program all laid out for 2019. For complete details and registration information, Click Here.

Amplifying Your Brand with Thought Leadership: Practical Advice for the Proper Content Marketing

August 1, 2018 by Priscilla McKinney

By Priscilla McKinney, Little Bird Marketing

When writing for a brand it’s easy to become focused on production and output rather than the overall strategy. Consider the last time you and your team reviewed your published content with a critical eye. Sometimes it is so exciting that we are producing and publishing content that we fail to take a step back and ask ourselves if this is truly the best content to meet both short term and long term company goals. But even content that addresses these goals sometimes falls short of truly amplifying your brand’s expertise or prestige as a leader within your industry. Content goals often deal with brand awareness and then lead generation, but a secret ingredient to taking your brand recognition up a notch is the use of thought leadership in your content strategy.

I talk to CMOs, marketing managers and CEOs every day and the reality is that many are confused about how to integrate thought leadership into day to day content output. Sometimes there are multiple leaders within a company whose thought leadership could be highlighted. This can create some confusion about the uniformity or the cohesive nature of content, but more often than not people are simply stuck on one stereotype of thought leadership as a Nostradamus type of visionary thinking as proper thought leadership. One does not need to predict the next major shift in your industry (and get it right) to be considered a thought leader. In fact, there are many types of thought leaders and their multiple gifts can be integrated into a successful, unique, authentic, and therefore very powerful content strategy.

Still HOPING for Revenue Growth? Learn How to Think Strategically About Marketing & Sales

February 14, 2018 by Steve Henke

[From Alice in Wonderland, when Alice comes upon the Cheshire Cat.]

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Wise cat!

That ‘purposeful’ thinking – the kind that Alice is missing – is critical when trying to grow revenue. Without direction – i.e. without “strategy” – when you implement marketing & sales tactics, you’re just “spinning your wheels!” You’ll be doing things, but the results will be minimal and you won’t make any real progress.

As the kick-off speaker at Greenbook’s 2017 Insights Marketing Day in Chicago, Steve discussed the importance of not jumping right into marketing & sales execution, but first, taking a step back and thinking strategically about how to grow revenue at your firm. Then, he laid out a step-by-step process for making it happen.

Enjoy Steve’s presentation below!

Avoiding the “Menu of Methodologies” Trap

January 24, 2018 by Susan Griffin

By Susan Griffin, Griffin + Skeggs Collaborative

Have you ever been to a classic New York diner?

Once you are seated, a waiter throws you a many page laminated plastic menu sleeves with unending options for your meal.

Breakfast all day long. Burgers, soup, eggs 25 different ways, cottage cheese and jello, diet plates, souvlaki and fries, other ethnic dishes, overstuffed sandwiches, salads . . . lots of stuff you can get affordably and quick.

Then there are page upon page of entrée offerings from spaghetti to meatloaf to Chicken Cordon Bleu, all requiring culinary acumen unlikely to coexist with prep of simpler fare.

Get anything you want, at any hour of the day, and that’s is the main value proposition. Everything to all people!

With so many choices, any diner is hard pressed to believe that they are going to get anything special or quality.

Improving Written Content for Insights Marketing

December 13, 2017 by Jack Miles

By Jack Miles, Northstar Research

Our sector – research and insights – is more competitive than ever. Great marketing of your insights agency has therefore never been more important. Written content – blog posts, articles and white papers – are often the focal point for much insights marketing activity.

Therefore, you need to be able to write effectively to market your insights agency and succeed in an increasingly competitive environment.

Blending my own experience as a researcher, insight marketer and editor, here is a list of key do’s and don’ts that will allow you to improve the written content you produce when marketing your insights agency.

The do’s…

Do…Read Before You Write

Reading relevant media in the insights and marketing industries should be a hygiene factor for all insights marketers. This is important as it will identify what your audience want to read about, where content gaps lie and allow you to make sure that your content is providing a unique perspective. Additionally, the best way to improve the quality of your written content is to read high quality content yourself. There are lots of excellent producers of marketing content – learn their tricks and apply them.

Do… Learn About Your Audience

Before you write anything, think about who your audience will be. This helps shape written content in two main ways. Firstly, it will help you decide if a publication is worth writing for – knowing a publication’s audience will help you understand if that audience will help meet your content marketing objectives. Secondly, knowing the audience will help you decide what content is most valuable to them. Are they advertisers who may want to read about your creative testing approach or clientside researchers who may want to read about methodological innovation?

Integrated Marketing: The One Strategy You Must Employ All The Time

September 26, 2017 by Steve Henke

By Steve Henke, Harpeth Marketing

Developing well-founded, thoughtful marketing and sales strategies is the first and most important step in the business development process, and also the most difficult. These strategies lay the foundation and set the direction for everything to follow.

The strategies you develop could be based on any number of concepts:

Differentiating your firm
Go-to-market messaging
Building awareness
Generating & nurturing sales leads
Determining what you’re selling
And to whom
Solving key problems in the marketplace
Pricing

And many, many more.

But regardless of which marketing and sales strategies you decide to follow – and regardless of the size of your firm – there is one over-riding strategy that must be included in your plan: Integrated Marketing.

The Hero’s Paradox

September 12, 2017 by Kristian Aloma

By Kristian A. Alomá, Threadline

“I’m your hero!”

Say that out loud. If someone is in the room with you or nearby, say it to them, too. The reaction is likely to be confusion. That’s because becoming a hero to someone is a lot like getting a nickname. You can’t claim it. It’s given to you. (Imagine Super Man running around shouting “I’m a hero!”) Super powers aside, there’s something even more important about being a hero. And it has to do with how we understand ourselves.

You don’t become the hero by saying you’re a hero, but when we look to agencies all over the world, we see a pretty common communication structure.

We are SuperFirm (Introduction)
You’ve got a problem. (Define the problem)
We promise to solve your problem. (Make a promise)
Look at all these other problems we’ve solved. (Reasons to believe)

This is a pretty standard approach to marketing and communicating with our clients. But this is at odds with how we actually approach our relationships with our clients. The statement essentially says: “I’m your hero!” Clients don’t actually want heroes. They want to be heroes.

[Read more…] about The Hero’s Paradox

Digital Marketing Tools to Drive Influence

August 18, 2017 by Paul Kirch

By Paul Kirch, Websites and Leads

Digital influence exists all around us. From online advertising to social interaction through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and countless other social media applications, it’s nearly impossible to avoid being part of the digital stream of information, insights, and distractions. Clearly, not all content is influential and may simply be adding noise. Just look at email, an ever-popular form of communication within the digital realm that is wrought with unreliability. After all, recipients can ignore messages, correspondence may just get lost in the shuffle, or perhaps it can even end up mistakenly labeled as SPAM or junk mail.

The average business professional receives 120+ emails on a given day, so despite the hurdles, there is a great deal of reliance on email for communication. To put the volume of email traffic into perspective, according to a study THE RADICATI GROUP published in 2017, more than 269 Billion emails are exchanged every day. This jaw-dropping statistic clearly represents the level of adoption of digital streams of correspondence. There are many avenues to pursue when it comes to digital marketing. I want to focus on three core strategies that will help you drive brand influence:

1. On-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Quite simply, this is the process of preparing your website to communicate effectively with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. An optimized website has an analytic component to track visitor activity, showing where they spent time, how long they were on your site, and various other behavior metrics. In addition, your images, text, and other elements have specific tags to show the search engines that your content is relevant to your business.