Why you should increase your marketing budget during an economic downturn.
It’s understandable: when times are tough, when the country enters a recession, when people just aren’t spending as much as they were previously, or even when there’s, say, a big old global pandemic, panic sets in. Belts need to be tightened and budgets cut.
Read MoreEssentially, marketing is about experimentation. It’s about being willing to try new strategies, analyze their effectiveness, and then alter your strategy accordingly. It’s about adopting a fluid approach rather than a static one.
Read MoreIf there’s one aspect of business that has increasingly blurred lines, it’s marketing. These days it seems that absolutely anything that could conceivably bring in more customers or increase revenue falls under the banner of marketing.
Your facebook ads? Marketing.
The new logo and branding package you paid big bucks for? Marketing.
Your sales page? Marketing.
Read MoreWhen it comes to tracking results, many small businesses make a common error: concentrating on sales and revenue, and neglecting marketing.
Of course, it’s completely understandable. After all, sales and leads are what keep your accountant happy and business ticking over. They’re often easier to track too; it’s far simpler to track sales figures than to measure something less concrete like brand awareness.
Read MoreYour marketing content can create a buzz around your brand which can help you stand out against everyone else. Demonstrate your wealth of experience through consistent, high quality content and establish yourself as a n expert in your field.
Read MoreCreating great-quality content — and promoting it properly — takes up valuable time and resources you don’t necessarily have to spare.
The good news is, there is a way to make the whole process far more efficient so you get more bang for your content buck:
Repurposing content.
Read MoreMany business owners make a key mistake, hoping to drive interest, awareness, and revenue through their social media content, but missing their targets because they’re posting the wrong content in the wrong places.
If you really want to use social media to move the needle on your business, you have to look beyond simply picking your favorite platform and going all in. You have to create a solid strategy to help you direct your efforts to the right places, and the right people.
You have to meet your customers where they are.
Read MoreContent is king — we know this. We know it’s one of the key tools we have to grow brand awareness, to reach our ideal audience, and to establish ourselves as experts in our field.
Yet, many businesses get stuck in a content rut. They pick their preferred content form — often a blog — and run with it, hoping rather than knowing that it’s working for them.
However, if that sounds like the content strategy you’ve fallen into with your business, you might be missing a trick. Because, not only are there several other incredible content vehicles available to you, there is also a readily-available (but often untapped) source of incredible content inspiration, right at your fingertips:
Read MoreWe’re all familiar with the phrase, “build it and they will come”. And hopefully, by now, we’re equally familiar with the fact that it’s a lie.
Because even the very best products, the most-needed services, can’t sell themselves.
For that, you need quality marketing. Marketing is what turns a good business into a great one, it’s what creates household names, sells products, and grows revenues.
Yet, despite being one of the most important parts of any business, it’s often overlooked, especially in small and mid-sized companies….
Read MoreAll over the country, companies that, on paper, shouldn’t have been able to survive the pandemic, let alone thrive during the turbulence of the last year and a half are doing exactly that.
So what’s the secret to their success throughout a tumultuous year? Luck? Healthy reserves of cash in the vault? Or something else?
In my experience, 9 times out of 10, it’s down to this:…
Read MoreIt’s frustrating: everywhere you look you see ad campaigns and innovative marketing strategies from the big companies…and you wish you could make waves in the way they can.
But, while you may have the ideas, the passion, and the motivation, what you don’t have is the budget or the resources you’d need to keep up with the bigger fish.
That said, it’s not all about money and resources. In fact, there are plenty of ways that you can make a big impact without a big budget backing it up.
And the best way to go about it? Tackle your marketing head on instead of shying away from it.
Read MoreYou care about your customers. Of course you do. You’ve thought deeply about your products and services and how they can truly address your customers’ needs and you’re confident that you’ve created an offering that serves them well.
However, a customer-centric B2B organization isn’t one that focuses solely on the suitability of the end product — it’s one that builds the needs of the customer into the very fabric of the business. It’s a company that cares about the customer’s entire experience and puts the customer front and center from the very first moment of contact and far beyond the moment they’ve closed the sale.
Read MoreTimes are tough for everyone right now, and marketers are no exception. They’re increasingly expected to deliver the same results with lower budgets, fewer resources, and smaller teams — and that often means making tough choices.
So, as a business owner or marketing professional, how do you know which choices to focus on? And how can you squeeze every last drop of value from the tools and processes you’re already using?
You just have to get a little creative!
Read MoreIn the most obvious newsflash ever, it’s been a hard year for businesses. As consumers, the pandemic has fundamentally changed how we live, affecting how we shop, how we exercise, how we socialize, how we learn, and how we relax.
And by and large the businesses that have thrived — or even just survived — over the last 14 months or so, have been those that have taken a hard look at the way they operate and strived to refine, tweak, or completely alter their products or services in order to stay relevant to changing needs of their customers. For many of them, that has meant a serious move into the online space.
Read MoreCustomers aren’t just a number. Of course, they aren’t. But with a heavy reliance on hard data in marketing, marketers run the risk of neglecting one of the most vital skills in the marketing toolbox: empathy.
Empathy in marketing equals an understanding of your buyers, their problems, and what keeps them up at night AND actually caring about what you know about them. It’s a combination of head and heart — and it’s an invaluable sales tool.
Read MoreMost businesses start the year with great ideas — and high hopes — for their marketing. But, by the time you hit April, you often find that client projects, day-to-day tasks, and the occasional crisis, have helped derail even the most robust marketing plans.
Which makes this the perfect time to conduct a quarterly marketing check in.
Read MoreIf there’s a watchword for marketing it’s this:
Patience.
Of course, we’d all love to write one stellar blog post that immediately leads to hundreds of new sales, or create a video that goes viral and makes you a household name overnight, but it just isn’t going to happen. Because the truth is, marketing — and particularly B2B marketing — is a long game.
Read MoreIf you’ve poured time and money into social media ads for your business, with no noticeable difference to your bottom line, you’ve probably been bombarded with advice from well-meaning marketing pros and other business owners. They’ll tell you things like:
“You just need to up your spend.”
“Tweak your sales copy.”
“Refine your audience even further.”
But that doesn’t work. Here’s why…
Read MoreWhile everyone is (naturally) trying to do more with less, and save any little extra space in the budget they can, marketing is not what you want to cut. Many people think marketing should be the first thing to go when you start making budget cuts. This couldn’t be more wrong. If you’re getting fewer leads and fewer sales, the answer isn’t to stop doing the thing that brings you leads and sales.
Read MoreI’ve been working in marketing for ... longer than I’d like to admit! With all that time spent both in the corporate sphere and the entrepreneur world, I’ve seen marketing trends come and go. And, even in this incredibly unusual time, I’m still seeing some familiar swings.
That’s why I wanted to start this year off by doing a little trendspotting, walking you through the four big marketing shifts I’m seeing right now.
