Using Case Studies to Make Your Sales Point
Satisfied, happy customers extolling the virtues of a product or service after they’ve tried it and gotten the results they wanted. It’s the one sales and marketing message that never goes out of date, and never gets old. Finding customers willing to do that isn’t always easy, which is why using case studies isn’t first on every marketer’s to do list, every day. Some of our largest clients consider our products to be part of their “secret sauce” and won’t let us name them. Yet one of the key selling points we make in every sales presentation is based around proven, Read More
How to Give Stellar Presentations
Earlier this year, I was standing in front of a room filled with Indian entrepreneurs. At first, it looked as if I’d be speaking to a half-empty room – but noted Indian investor Vinod Khosla was speaking to a full-house next door and the overflow crowd drifted into the next open door where I was waiting to speak. Soon, I was in front of a room filled mostly with people who’d rather be listening to the hometown hero next door, covering a topic I had not previously talked about. I wasn’t sure I understood the culture in India. So I was Read More
5 Things to Do When You’ve Published New Content
Most marketers understand that content marketing is no longer optional – it’s a requirement. So nearly all of us write blogs, publish white papers, and create a variety of eBooks and PDF’s that are available for download on our websites. At SXSW this year, Jay Baer of The Content Marketing Institute said the biggest content marketing challenges revolve around creating and publishing content. He reported that the institute’s surveys show that the biggest content marketing challenges include: Producing the kind of content that engages prospects or customers (41%) Producing enough content (20%) Finding the budget to produce content (18%) Lack of Read More
Making Email Deliver Financial ROI
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to most marketers when the researchers at MEC Labs/Marketing Sherpa published this week’s marketing graphic: a look at how the ways in which email marketing campaigns are measured has changed over the last two years. How to make email deliver measurable results is a hot topic for nearly every marketer in the post-recession economy. Why? Because if there is one lesson that the recession taught us all, it’s that financial return on investment trumps almost every other measure by which marketers are measured. Here’s the graphic that Marketing Sherpa published, showing the year Read More
Baby Steps Towards Online Reputation Management
It seems like one thing that comes into sharp focus every time there’s a political campaign is just how fast a crisis fueled by Twitter, blog posts, Facebook, YouTube and other social media can strike. That’s true whether you’re a political candidate or a marketer with a brand’s reputation to build or protect. So we all need to take some baby steps toward online reputation management – if they aren’t already part of your multi-channel marketing communications plan, now may be the time to add them. It all starts with social media monitoring that tracks your online reputation. If you don’t know Read More
How to Sell Marketing Automation to the Boss
A few weeks ago, I attended a luncheon where Danesh De Silva, Vice President of Marketing at Orametrix, presented a great case study on how he had used marketing automation technology to transform his company’s marketing operations and the ROI he’s gotten. When Dan was finished with his story, one of the people at my table shook his head sadly. “He’s so right. I know that I could do great things if I just had the right tools. But how do I ‘sell’ marketing automation to my boss?” It’s a common question. A marketing director or even vice president of marketing becomes convinced Read More
5 Steps to Worry-Free Social Media ROI
Sales has always been a relationship-driven process, especially in industries like financial services, insurance, biopharma, and casino gaming. Since many of our clients operate within these industries, we’ve watched with special interest as they started the process of translating their relationships into successful social media marketing campaigns. For clients who operate in industries that are both highly regulated and distributed, it’s not as simple as hiring a smart, talented social media manager and getting started. To begin with, there’s the undeniable fact that most people have relationships with other people – not brands. Sure, they’ll “like” a brand’s Facebook page Read More
Best-in-Class Distributed Marketing Management
We are partnering with the Aberdeen Group on an important new survey on distributed marketing management. Individuals who take the 20-minute survey will receive a complimentary copy of the $399 research report on empowering local marketing through distributed marketing best practices when it is published. Individual responses are kept strictly confidential, and data is used only in the aggregate. The survey is open to corporate and field marketing professionals who work in a distributed marketing environment (where strategy and creative is managed centrally, but campaigns are executed at both the national and local level). To participate, click on this link. Distributed Read More
Marketing Sherpa Features Our Blog
David Kirkpatrick, a reporter with industry research firm MEC Labs’ popular Marketing Sherpa blog, today featured The Distributed Marketing Blog and its parent company, Distribion, in a case study. Case Study #CS32133: Overall Content Marketing Strategy Leads to 2,000% Lift in Blog Traffic, 40% Boost in Revenue looks at the blog and its success over the past 12 months. Kirkpatrick points out some of the unique pain points associated with distributed marketing, and explains how the content marketing strategy that Distribion adopted contributed to the company’s growth. With the focus on distributed marketing best practices and industry news, the company Read More
5 Social Media Tips We Learned This Week
Social media evolves and changes quickly, and even the experts learn something new every day – if they want to remain “experts”, that is. Sometimes it can seem as if the rules for social media are constantly changing. The best way for social media marketing to keep up is to try new ideas, and constantly look for new sources of information. This week, we picked up these five social media tips. What new social media tips did you learn this week? Blog as frequently as possible. Think writing a blog post once a week is enough? High-traffic blogs post new content Read More
