MarketingSherpa Blog

The last week of October, I had the opportunity to go  to my hometown in Ventura County, California and attend a Public Relations Society of America (PSRA) event featuring Adam Fetcher, Director of Global PR and Communications, Patagonia. I was excited because Patagonia is a brand passionate about sustainability and creating good, quality products.

Patagonia has taken a very unique PR strategy for promoting its brand, as you can see in the photo below, where the company took out a full page in The New York Times asking customers not to purchase a new jacket for the season.

The brand did this in response to the rampant, sometimes violent, consumerism on Black Friday shopping. Instead of slashing prices and trying to put customers into a purchasing frenzy, it encouraged a view more in line with its “bigger picture” brand mentality.

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B2B companies often face a struggle with communications to the outside world. Regularly, products or technologies are shrouded in secrecy with an occasional blimp on social media.

At &THEN 2015, DMA’s annual event, Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, IBM, sat down with Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa, to discuss how B2B companies can have a voice in a consumer world.

Simply, Jon talked about how to communicate brands and products, how to establish authority and credibility among employees and how employees can become company advocates on social media.

You can watch the full interview with Jon Iwata here:

How to communicate brand and products to the world

Although IBM is primarily a B2B company, for many it remains a household name in technology, innovation and computer science.

“Even though we are a B2B company, we want to be a company that is relevant to millions and millions of people,” Jon said. “You can call them consumers; you can call them future IBMers, future business decision makers, shareholders, neighbors.”

“We still want to be known; recognized; frankly, admired; and relevant to people,” Jon said. IBM is an early innovator in taking some of these complex B2B technologies and communicating them through more B2C means.

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We generally think of only companies or campaigns having value propositions. For nonprofit companies, communicating the value proposition effectively is necessary for survival.

There is a value prop behind every action, including each email sent — why should people read your entire email or click through to a landing page? In the case of nonprofits, it seems this challenge is stronger, with no promise of a product at the end of the cycle.

This value proposition of action for email marketing answers the question behind why customers should take a specific action when they get your email — click.

Once people land on your page, that’s when you give them the reason to take action.

At Web Optimization Summit 2014, Tim Kachuriack, Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer, NextAfter, shared his experiences of working with nonprofits on email and landing page designs.

He explained that he was inspired at a MarketingSherpa conference a few years prior, when his page was selected for live optimization and critiqued in front of the entire MarketingSherpa audience.

Although confident that the page could more effectively communicate his value proposition, he mentioned his reservations when asking to test this page for the first time, saying,

“You guys helped me create this ugly, Frankenstein-looking version of the landing page,” Tim said. “It took much convincing and pleading, and many adult beverages. I convinced my client to actually let us,  in fact, test this.”

It resulted in a 274% increase in revenue for the nonprofit.

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At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, Mary Abrahamson, Email Marketing Specialist, Ferguson Enterprises, not only spoke onstage in front of 1,000 of her peers but she was also awarded the Best B2B Campaign.

The video below was recorded at Email Summit, and I recently had the privilege of talking to Mary about how speaking has impacted her career and what other marketers can do to find success through public speaking.

“When I was doing the [interview at Email Summit], that’s exactly how I feel, still exactly how I feel [about speaking at events],” said Mary, describing the importance of public speaking events.

With the Call for Speakers for MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 ending Monday, June 15, I asked Mary what advice she had for marketers selected to speak at industry events.

“You will get out of the experience what you put into it. It will bring you tremendous growth both personally and professionally — don’t take a moment of the experience for granted. Also, just like you do in your daily job, think about your ‘customer’ — the attendee — first. What do they want to hear about?  That is the key,” she said.

Since MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, Mary has had two other speaking opportunities and continues to find ways to improve the quality of her email program.

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When I first started at MarketingSherpa, I was hired under the title of “Visual Storyteller.” Although that title is ambiguous, I learned that I was hired to address a pain point that many professionals face: using PowerPoint efficiently.

My title has since changed, but I remain an advocate for fluent visual expression in the same way that editors are keen on using words efficiently.

As part of my position, I’ve consulted with many speakers over the past few years on creating effective presentations.

Time and time again, I find that confusion lies in how to treat PowerPoint. Many think of PowerPoint as a presentation buddy — that content is on the slides and coming out of the speaker’s mouth and bullet points are simply needed to reinforce the speaker’s message.

This is not true. A person can only process about 1.6 conversations at a time. He can choose to either listen to you or read your slides. The other .6 gets split between emails, texts and interior monologue, to name just a few other channels.

The dictators of any presentation include: audience, context, purpose and design.

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Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

Inbound marketing is typically a term reserved for B2C companies striving to draw customers in with flashy social media campaigns, witty tweets and beautiful infographics.

B2B companies have the very unique challenge of asserting themselves and becoming a voice of authority in their respective industries, and inbound marketing can be a powerful way to do that – the nuances of which are not just reserved for those speaking directly to consumers.

Starting off, attracting the right people and the speaking to the right audience is essential in a B2B inbound marketing campaign.

Using three simple questions that you can use to structure your own campaigns, see how Stephen Bruner, Marketing Manager of Vertical Markets, Precor, detailed how the fitness equipment company successfully navigated an inbound strategy with a complex sale at Email Summit 2015.

Who are we speaking to?

Before you start sending a message, you first need to understand who it is that you’re communicating with. Different audiences require different perspectives, pieces of information and credibility indicators than others.

In the example below, Precor identified three key industries that it targets as customers. Each industry will demand unique selling points that will best serve the end user.

For instance, a traditional club gym might care more about user-friendly entertainment systems and headphone connectivity – features to distinguish them from competition — whereas an educational facility, such as a university gym, would want to know about longevity and quality of products.

What message are we trying to convey?

Once you’ve established who your audience is, establish how you fit into the conversation. This can best be done by either accentuating the positive elements that they already have or reducing, even possibly eliminating negative experiences.

In the Precor example below, the team focused on reducing a pain point or anxiety that a future gym owner is facing. (Realize that Precor first targets a specific audience before refining the messaging.)

Although the content is from Precor, notice that they are not selling product at this level. The content is simply establishing who the brand is in the mind of the future gym owner. The message being conveyed is simply presenting Precor as a resource for fitness center owners.

Creating this type of shareable and digestible content makes it easy to follow Precor on Twitter, with the understanding that these articles will help owners alleviate pain points throughout their careers – creating an association of credibility with the Precor brand at the genesis of the business.

What do we want them to do?

Lastly, establishing a year-long calendar for each persona is essential in maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers and followers.

In Precor’s example below, you can see the color-coded strategy for each persona across the year, having “flow-ups” through the second half of the year.

As you analyze the content schedule, you can see a very clear funneling throughout the year, pointing each group toward a purchase. Pointing, that is, but not pushing.

For example, from January to April, you can see the healthy content mix of infographics, videos, white papers, blog posts, with a few promos throughout. Fitness equipment is a complex sale, with expensive equipment and a limited budget.

This is a very intentional use of email and social content, driving the customer down the funnel with informative and sharable content. This plan establishes when a conversation will happen in a logical order throughout the course of a year, focusing on the long-term relationship between Precor and its customer.

By establishing such a plan and creating a hub of content, Precor is not only helping customers make decisions, but also creating fans and building credibility within the industry as a valuable resource.

You can follow Jessica Lorenz, Event Content Manager, MECLABS Institute on Twitter at @JessicaPLorenz.

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So, you have low blog engagement or a handful of loyal followers that you were expecting to blossom into a world-wide audience — but it’s just not happening.

I’m not an expert content writer or blog wiz. However, working at MarketingSherpa has given me insights that I would not have otherwise about what can make certain pieces of content successful while others flop.

Here are three common mistakes to keep in mind as you structure your individual blog posts and also determine your blogging strategy:

1. It’s all about you

The biggest mistake that content creators can make is centering their blogs on themselves.

They open with a relevant, beautiful challenge that the audience is facing, and then they ruin a perfectly good opening by presenting their product as the flawless solution — or their service as an end-all-be-all to those interested in a DIY experience. Content consumers aren’t looking for a reason to buy from you. They are looking for a resource to solve problems.

Be real, be relevant and be genuine. Make sure that your blog humanizes you, and explain how your audience  can learn from, and apply, your mistakes to their own campaigns.

Lastly, edit — grammatically and for content. Even the world of food bloggers (which I frequent) knows that the audience really only cares about how much salt is too much salt and why cream of tartar really makes a difference in the cookie recipe rather than just adding more baking soda. The annoyingly long charming story about your grandmother’s old pickup truck isn’t a necessary preamble for what I’m really interested in below.

Remember, every sentence should justify the reason as to why your post is solving the problem that your audience faces. It’s about them.

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At IRCE 2014, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS Institute, sat down with Pete Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief, Website Magazine, to discuss email marketing strategy in a constantly connected world.

“Customers are omnichannel,” Pete explained. “So retailers today … really need to focus on building a very rich profile of the user to understand exactly where they’re coming from at the exact time, and historically where they’ve spent their online consumptive behavior.”

When it comes to connecting via email, Pete recommended asking yourself three things:

1. How often will we be sending? How often do we need to send?

Determining how often your customers will hear from you is essential in developing a strategy. Pete indicated that all forms of email — including order confirmations — are included in this plan. All correspondence that necessarily comes on behalf of your company is included as a marketing email send.

2. How can email reflect the product?

“Selling a grand piano is a lot different from selling a pair of shoes,” Pete said. The product should indicate how often you should be in contact with your customers. Large or complex purchases may need more content, testimonials and consideration than a 10% off promotional email every three months.

3. What do we need to accomplish?

This question transcends the content and design aspects of your marketing emails and strikes right to the core of your message: Why? Closely linked to your value proposition, this question should be the crux of your campaign. Is this a complex sale, where you have to build trust or a rapport, or is it a simpler sales process?

  Read more…

It seems like only a short time ago I was sitting at my desk, staring at a fresh new calendar in front of me — an act that spurred feelings of intimidation, daunt and excitement.

But that was 12 whole months ago.

Over the past year, our team of bloggers have written over 100 posts for the MarketingSherpa Blog alone. I’m pulling together the ones that you’ve shared the most over the past year with your friends and colleagues into a single tidy post.

Something that stood out as I sorted the top shares by category (content marketing, email marketing and social media) is that marketers are evolving their mindsets from company-focused messaging to customer-centric messaging.

Content Marketing

Although content marketing may no longer be considered shiny and new, marketers continue to learn how to harness their talents and abilities into this form. No longer are we only marketers, but we are also artists, authors and videographers who strive to reach customers in ways that were not possible only a few years before.

Bolstered by the rest of the categories covered in this post, content is now an essential lighthouse to guide your customer to conversion in a world of saturated and stormy information across the Web.

Posts you shared the most:

• Content Marketing: 9 examples of transparent marketing
• Copywriting: 7 more copy editing tactics to improve your content
• Do You Make These 5 Mistakes in Content Marketing?

What your peers said:

The above tweet is is reference to Content Marketing: 9 examples of transparent marketing.

  Read more…

At Email Summit 2014, MarketingSherpa Reporter Allison Banko interviewed email marketing experts, asking, “What elements do you think are important to implement into your email campaigns this year?”

While responses to the question varied by industry and company size, experts remained keen on delivering constantly diversified experiences for customers.

Identifying elements of email that marketers can harness to see improvements in their campaigns captures the spirit of Email Summit. Leveraging experts that live, breathe and sweat email marketing to help attendees improve their email is a highlight marketers take back to the office.

The big takeaway: Find a way to break through the noise of the inbox.

“We’re going to continue to try to find ways to get close to our users so they feel like we understand them,” Ryan Blomberg, Director of Engineering, Eventful, answered when asked how he’s planning on improving his already award-winning personalization campaign.

Watch this compilation video below for more detailed tips on tactics that you can implement in your own email campaigns.

At Email Summit 2015, experts will share their top takeaway of 2014 in six minutes or less on stage during our Quick Tips session. In these sessions, experts will be working against the clock to communicate their biggest lesson from 2014 and what they mean for your email campaigns.

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