Presenter: Neil Tortorella
What Marketing Is & Isn't
- What marketing is
- Marketing is everything you do to warm up the playing field for sales
- Every touch point forms your image... your brand... in the minds of your audience
- It's how your marketing materials look and what they say (what differentiate you from the others)
- It's how you answer the phone
- It's your business' interior design and even how you dress
- Every point of contact with your audience builds on the next
- It's done in a planned way
- Marketing is building awareness
- Sales is closing the deal
- Not doing anything
- Not understanding your audience and focusing on their needs (they don't care about YOU)
- Placing all your hopes and dreams in one activity
- Not having a plan
- Not focusing on a niche or specialty
- Not actively marketing when you're at your busiest
- Being a nervous rabbit
- Not understanding that marketing takes time
- Not having a referral system in place
- Not marketing to current clients / customers
- Forgetting that whatever your business is about and what you do it is really all about marketing
Advertising
- Based on multiple impressions (people have to see it multiple times)
- Requires a strong offer (it must entice the prospect to call you)
- Trackable with codes, coupons, etc.
- Choose media cafefully - Is there a lot of waste?
- It's expsensive
- Brand advertising is not effective for small businesses
Direct Response
- Also requires a strong offer
- Have a secondary offer
- Focus on benefits, not features - prospects want to know what's in it for them
- Build your own list (it can be time consuming, but it's better than buying a list from someone else)
- Response rates typically run between .5% - 2%
- Always follow up by phone (don't sell all your products at once)
Website
- Make sure the content reflects the value you bring to people (it's not about YOU)
- Content is king
- Have a website and optimize it for the search engines
- Backlinks (incoming links to your site)
- Optimize page titles with keywords
- Use Google's Keyword Tool to find what your prospects are using for search terms
- Metadata in place
E-Newsletters, Blogs, & Social Media
- E-newsletters
- Email marketing yields over $43 for every dollar spent
- What can you do with it?
- Build relationships
- Provide tips, how-tos, and articles
- Distribute business news releases
- Promote special offers to subscribers
- Blogs
- Builds community
- Easy web publishing solution
- Aids in search engine rank and results
- Low cost
- Passive revenue (adsense, Amazon, or affiliates)
- Generate publicity
- Aids in expert position
- Easily syndicated
- Easy to use (Blogger or WordPress)
- Develop engaging, relevant content that's useful to your audience
- Develop content in advance & schedule future posts
- Submit blog to Technorati and other blog search engines
- Cross-promote blog and e-newsletter with social media, discussion groups, etc.
- Post often to stay visible
- Discussion Groups/Forums
- Find where your audience hangs out
- Be active - post questions, answer questions, links, resources, etc.
- Use a signature to promote site, blog, e-newsletter, etc.
- Public Relations
- Build a media list
- Standard Rate & Data
- Check newspapers, magazines at booksellers for editor and writer contacts
- Develop a press kit
- Backgrounder
- Key personnel bios with headshots
- Products/Services info
- Brochures, catalogs, etc.
- High resolution images (300 dpi)
- Logos (vector format - Illustrator, eps, FreeHand)
- Spot color, RGB, and CMYK
- Most recent news releases
- Authentic news
- Think like a report (5W's)
- Most important infor at the top (editors cut from the bottom)
- Use online release syndicates to gain backlinks to your site
- Become consistent news source for editors and reporters
- Writing articles
- Start with tip sheet - "Top 10 reasons..."
- Good for handouts, downloads on site, secondary mailing offer
- Gather tip sheets into articles
- Gather blog posts into articles
- Focus on common audience problems/needs
- Be conversational (write like you talk)
- Interviews
- Excellent way to position yourself as an expert
- Subscribe to services as PRLeads.com, HelpAReporterOut.com & Reporters Source
- Connects experts with writers looking for quotes & interviewees
- When possible get questions prior to interview
- Do your homework - prepare, then prepare some more
- Speaking engagements
- "Stressful things to do list"
- Great way to position yourself as an expert
- Puts you in front of a captive audience
- Rehearse
- Join Toastmasters to hone your speaking skills
- Speak at Rotary and other business gatherings - they are always looking for speakers
- Networking
- Look for places where your audience hangs out.
- Look for educational events
- Volunteer
- Folks see how you work
- Good for generating news for releases
0 comments:
Post a Comment