by admin | Jan 24, 2013 | Blog, Content, Design, Promotion, Strategy
What are you going to do differently in 2013?
Checklist for New Year
The Mayans were wrong, we are all still here, your clients and prospects still need you, but
they are increasingly harder to communicate with; grabbing attention is more difficult and
keeping it is even harder.
Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is not only the definition of insanity but
it also means that today you will NOT get the same result, but one that is substantially worse
– you will be going backwards.
For your convenience we have prepared a summary of Hubspot’s 27-page Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2013 and one we have turned into a simple Marketing Action Plan Checklist.
1. Inbound Marketing (Get Found*, Convert, Analyse) will become more important and both
small and large enterprises are dedicating more of their budget to online / digital and away
from Outbound / Traditional Marketing.
*Get Found = Social Media+SEO+Blogs+PPC
CHECKLIST
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- Do you have a costed Marketing Strategy Plan for the year?
- Have you established your KPI’s, e.g.: Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Sale
- Are you being found by enough new prospects?
- Are you getting enough referrals?
- Do you have a Referral Strategy?
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2. Marketing Communication is moving away from Campaigns to Real Time Communication thanks to Social Media and immediacy of client expectations. Prospects are increasingly contacting / finding (Inbound Marketing) prospective suppliers / sellers and they want answers NOW! Technology will keep driving these changes with new widgets, gadgets, readers and scanners, RFID tags, and of course apps! Gamification will also grow as a marketing tool beyond product placement to improve the delivery of content in a more enjoyable way.
CHECKLIST
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- Do you have all of your Social Media profiles set up correctly; do they reflect your
company and personal brand?
- Do you know which Social Media channels to focus on?
- Are you interacting with prospects and customers via Social Media?
- Do you have a Content Marketing Plan so that you can be “active and successful” on Social Media?
- Have you personally or your company carved out a niche that you are known for?
- See how we deliver Content Marketing for our clients
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3. CRM and Unified View of the customer will become more and more important, and some
of the new systems are now integrating Social Media information for their client records.
ACTION
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- If you are thinking about these issues please give us a call. Choosing the CRM system
(or getting the most out of your existing one) is a minefield and we have access to a number
of world-class experts at qubePartners as well as our own team that can assist you.
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4. Mobile Optimisation of Websites will keep growing and become a must have channel for
many businesses.
ACTION
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- Pretty easy to do depending on what your current website has been built in. Give us a
call and we can provide answers very quickly.
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5. Social Media, Content Marketing and Off Page SEO will keep overlapping and merging
and On-Page SEO “tricks of the trade” will play a less important role. Social Search and User
Generated Content with Facebook’s and Google’s focus in this area will undoubtedly
make a big impact!
ACTION
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- Start treating these practices not as separate channels, but as one part of holistic
process.
- Have a Content Marketing Plan for each of the channels and work out how they
should be integrated amongst each other and your website.
- Check out our website dedicated to LinkedIn Training and Consulting
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6. Smart or Dynamic Content (ala Amazon Recommended for You) will enable you and your
competitors to serve up highly personalised messages to the right audience at the right time.
CHECKLIST
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- Can you easily segment your database and get insights into the behavior of your
customers?
- Can your CRM, ERP, Email Marketing technology / software act on the insights?
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7. Story telling will become even more important as companies scramble to be seen more
human (than their competitors) and develop a trustworthy, approachable and caring brand
personality.
CHECKLIST
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- Do you have a powerful, unique brand with an interesting story to tell clients and
prospects?
- Are all your staff singing from the same hymnbook?
- Download our Brand Design Questionnaire from our Free Marketing Resources
Section (it’s the 4th document down the page) – knowing and acting on the answers in
this document should be the cornerstone of your marketing communications.
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“The advent of social media has meant that the world of separate internal and external
messaging has disappeared. If a customer talks to your Customer Service department, they
expect the same response they’d get if they talk to marketing, or sales, or engineering.
Creating a unified external face is critical. If you want to build long-term relationships,
you’ve got to have a consistent, human voice – coming from all levels of your organization.” –
NICK JOHNSON founder useful Social Media
8. Email will not die but become more personalised, relevant and targeted based on real time
data.
CHECKLIST
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- Are you communicating regularly with your database and is the marketing
communication tailored to different segments?
- Are they engaging with your content and offers?
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9. Content will remain King and more marketing teams and departments; small and large
businesses will invest into more quality content and attempt to make it go viral or at least
improve the chances of it being passed onto to a secondary audience. With falling production
prices and better and simpler technologies, we see Online Video as the ‘biggest and most
effective mover and shaker’ in Content Marketing. Most small businesses do not have a great
website, let alone reasonable video content, so this area will keep booming.
CHECKLIST
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- Do you have great content?
- Is it promoted sufficiently? No point creating more content if not enough people are
engaging with what you have!
- Check out our great Fixed Fee Marketing with Online Video Marketing Packages
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10. “Sites like Pinterest and Instagram prove that visual content is really worth 1,000 words
(or in instagram’s case, $1 billion). Infographics, photos, picture boards, video, and other forms of rich-media will increase over the coming years as humans look to digest more information faster than ever before.” – Hubspot Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2013, p.23.
CHECKLIST
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- Does your brand have a well developed visual palette?
- Do you have a suitable image library? Make sure this is part of your Content
Marketing Plan
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Wishing you a healthy and productive 2013. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you need any assistance in improving your marketing results.
qubePartners
by admin | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
If we accept the notion by the grandfather of modern management, Peter Drucker, that “Business is about two things and two things only, innovation and marketing” and that people are in fact our greatest assets, then it would make perfect sense to deduce that your company’s marketing consultants are your most important and valuable assets. So much for theory, the stark reality of marketing as a discipline and a profession in the small business arena is quiet different.
Why is it so? Because unfortunately, for most small and medium sized businesses, marketing is an expense and not an investment. Most small business owners do not understand the meaning of marketing or branding let alone have any basic understanding of advertising principles to effectively and efficiently reach their target audience. Hence much of the small business marketing efforts are wasted and as proof all you have to do is to open your local paper, look into your mailbox or jump online and that’s just in the consumer space, the business to business and professional categories are even worse!
But this is not another article pointing out the shortcomings of marketing by small business owners. We’ll focus on those entrepreneurs who understand the importance of marketing for the success of their business. The 8% (PWC survey “Private Business Barometer IV”) who didn’t nominate the slashing of their marketing budget as a coping strategy during the Global Financial Crisis; the 8% who know their history and understand the importance of maintaining or even increasing marketing investment in a weak economy. They know that competitors tend to cut spending during a recession thus creating opportunities and that maintaining promotional spend during tough economic times will sustain or even grow their market share.
Yes, we are talking to you, you the minority who carry the hope of all small business owners and it is for you, that we write this guide on how to get the most out of your marketing resources – your human marketing resources.
You who would never dream of appointing your personal assistant to the position of Marketing Coordinator or Manager! You would never promote an engineering professional to the position of Marketing Director or make the HR person responsible for marketing your professional services firm! Sounds crazy right? No-one in their right mind, with any understanding of the marketing profession (noun, a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science) would ever do this? Unfortunately it happens every day, so we won’t waste precious space on the CEO’s, MD’s, GM’s and business owners who allow this to occur. We’ll focus on those who understand and appreciate the importance of professional marketing in their business, where maybe our message and advice will do some good and not fall on deaf ears.
So you have come to a realisation, a point in your business when you recognise, unlike 92% of your small business counterparts, that most people couldn’t walk in off the street and run your business, so you do not expect to somehow be an expert when it comes to marketing.
So, where to from here? You have 2 choices; to outsource your marketing services or employ a marketing professional.
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