Content Generation Archives - Page 4 of 5

9 July 2015

[Do Not] Insert Catchy Blog Title Here

Aka, why forcing content will never get you anywhere (at least long term).

Content creation has a lot of benefits. It drives SEO, gives prospects and clients a reason to revisit your site, and helps establish you as an authority in your field. However, this content has to have a certain amount of authenticity to it for people to really resonate. If you try too hard, your audience will notice— and stop coming.

Credit: iStock/Mark Airs

The Internet, as a general rule, hates marketing. Advertisements are met with sighs it’s a necessary evil, Adblock runs rampant, and branded content is met with a critical eye. This means that in order to have content shared, you can’t force it. You have to adapt to the internet instead of expecting the internet to adapt to you.

People Know What Forced Sounds Like

The internet is full of authentic content: offhand comments turned to tweets, blog posts about what people love, and Facebook statuses that are so strange they could only come from that person. People are constantly consuming stuff that sounds like a real person talking to them.

As a result, anything forced sticks out like a sore thumb. Even if you’re not actively selling anything, if you’re purposely going out of your way to sound funny, or clever, or heroic— people will be able to tell. They will click to the next piece of content because they have dozens upon dozens of pieces to choose from.

The Internet is Fickle

If you plan the latest Internet fad into your content, you will likely miss out on the trend as a whole. Even a few days can make or break whether or not you successfully ride whatever the internet is obsessed about this week, or become a source of ridicule among users who talk about how hopelessly out of touch your company is.

Even if you time it perfectly, you have to make sure you’re using the trend correctly. Forcing yourself somewhere you don’t belong is worse than not using the trend at all.

You Want to Build Genuine Relationships

If you’re forcing out content, people aren’t seeing your brand and your company. With the point of social media to build relationships and make your brand more human, trying too hard is the exact antithesis of that.

Social media use needs to reflect your audience’s general habits, not what’s hot this week. You want to become a part of your customer’s day-to-day life, not jump from one meme to the next (especially when your audience might not even be interested in that meme) and gain temporary followers who drop away once you’re no longer following their preferred trend.

Keep your social media authentic, and you’ll find the quality of your followers increases dramatically.

3 July 2015

3 Important Considerations for Engagement

There are certain words related to social media that people tend to use without really knowing what they mean. Working within an international setting these days, I have come to realize that certain words can become unclear or lost in translation. ENGAGEMENT is such a term

We all want to engage our community, we want to increase our engagement online, or what about that engagement statistic on Facebook, what does that mean?

And what does engagement represent?

Will it drive more sales?
Will it create a community of loyal customers?
Will they spread your brand and promotions like wildfire?

The short answer is probably not. But… why not?

Although I am a strong believer in social media, engagement and community, I have come to realize that other factors need to be considered in order to build the right strategy. Here is my list of critical components: Your Customer, Your Offer, Your Goal and Your Industry.

Your Customer

Let’s be fair, not every customer will be the ideal profile to engage online.

Although age is only a number, their Internet behavior will help you better position your engagement.

Overall in Canada, more than 35 million people have home access to the Internet. Out of that group, 86% of 18-34 year olds have a social profile and 62% of 35-54 years olds. Very significant numbers that should be considered in an overall strategy.
From a channel perspective, Facebook remains the strongest with 59% of users but an interesting study from Forum research shows that Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn can be better channels for your customer base depending on their education, location and finally, your own objectives.

Your Offer

I believe you can create engagement around any topic but the nature of your offer will help you determine how much effort it might take. For example, if your business is customer service driven it might be easier to start a dialogue with your customers online. But then you have to be prepared to foster engagement by offering a quick response and have content ready for a diversity of questions and feedback to nurture a dialogue.

Another example could be that you have a new product and want to get feedback from your audience. In that case, you might offer a free sample, use a social network like Facebook to create a forum, or ask your audience to spread the word by sharing pics on Instagram.

Your Goal

if you are in the service business, you, no doubt, use your online network to share info about and promote your service. However you may not be seeing any return. And that is often becauase ther isn’t a clea objective to shape your strategy. Evaluate what you want from your network and how will you leverage the information you gain.Engaging for the sake of engaging will not serve your end goal. Here are a few options to start your thinking process:

You want an engaged community

You will need a dedicated Community Manager that is interacting with your community on a daily basis. This person will be building your community, increasing your followership, posting relevant content on a high frequency to determine what are your community’s preferences and pain points.
You will need to provide content to your community. Get your employees in the habit of sharing their daily activities, their best moments and customers highlights.
You will need to create a discussion. The concept of “build it and they will come” does not apply here. Work hand-in-hand with your Community Manager to find discussion topics, questions to ask and elements for which you would like feedback.
Remember, this will take time and effort to create but once it is built, it will become a powerful marketing tool!

You want to generate leads

You will need to provide incentives to your fans or followers: contests, prizes, free samples, rewards, etc. By enticing your community to register for something, you will be able to gather their email address and build a database of potential leads.
Your incentive can also be GREAT content. Think about sharing tips, how-tos on how to use your product, current news if you are in a news driven industry, education on using your service, etc.
As you grow your database, use your social media to continue to engage your customers. Once they are in the habit of coming to your page or account for contests, prizes and samples, continue to promote to them to generate referrals and eventual sales. For this purpose, you will need to adopt a CRM tool with automated marketing capabilities such as SharpSpring to maintain your newly built relationships.

Your Industry

Finally, take a look at the your industry. What are your competitors doing to create engagement with their users? Are there any best practices that you can leverage?

Important to note that this should not be the only element to consider. It is not because your competition is there that you should be as well. Take the time to really look into their content: are they doing any storytelling, or only sales driven promotions? And what is their level of engagement? Determine which channels will reach your target audience and fit your needs the most. If it seems overwhelming, an agency can help you answer this question and give you a full overview of your market.

30 June 2015

3 Best Practices for Online Lead Generation

Lead generation is a popular phrase in modern sales and marketing, and justifiably so. A number of traditional techniques such as cold phone calls or creative advertising can be used to focus interest and draw attention to a company’s products and services. Wrap a strong company or brand around that attention and interest and you have leads to pursue. Leads are the lifeblood in providing a continuous supply of new business to a company, as any sales manager can attest to.

Thinkstock/iStock

Cold calls and advertising can only reach a limited number of people. Many businesses hope (and expect) that their websites and social media accounts will expand their exposure and gather a greater number of leads for their sales pipelines. This can happen, but online leads are different than those gathered by traditional lead generation practices.

In the online world, interest is generally more focused towards your website and its content since the majority of online visitors are unfamiliar with you and your company. Many visitors don’t know you or care about you much – they want to check out your stuff, for a variety of reasons. Online interest in your website, blog or social media posts is not the same as successfully calling a business, asking some questions and getting an appointment. Initial online interest is not enough to take to the bank since most of these leads are not yet ready–to-buy.

1) Manage and Qualify Leads through Inbound Marketing

If most of the people who first visit your website are not yet ready to buy, how do you identify those that will likely buy later? This challenge is handled effectively by the methods within a structured inbound marketing approach. This approach will manage your website visitors and nurture many to a point where they are actual qualified leads, ready-to-buy. You need a process to manage it all – something with rules, structure and a degree of automation to manage your online traffic efficiently and effectively. Marketing automation is a suite of tools designed specifically for these purposes.

2) Assist the Buyer’s Journey

The online visitor is a different buyer than the traditional buyer of yesterday. The Internet has empowered modern buyers to inquire and buy on their own terms. People are less influenced by disruptive advertising and pressured sales tactics. We all do online research of the products and services we are interested in, checking out websites and online resources until we reach a point of interest and trust to engage with a vendor. This process is described, fittingly, as the buyer’s journey. Our job as an online resource is to guide this journey to a point where the buyer is ready to engage with us.

3) Sell to the Right People, at the Right Time

If we try to aggressively (and personally) sell to every website visitor we will run ourselves ragged for a disproportionate rate of return. Website visits and even online inquiries are a bit like a wild west shoot-out; lots of action from many directions and sources. A structured qualification process is needed to identify those that you actually have a chance to do business with. Your sales process is precious, as is your time, so give your sales people a break and give them qualified leads. Let them sell when qualified buyers are ready-to-buy.

23 June 2015

The ABCs of Tone

“Tone” is an abstract but critical concept for marketing. Just like perfect pitch is rare in singing, perfect tone is equally rare. In general, tone refers to how you’re delivering your message to the audience, and it’s important to understand the importance of the right tone. In the end, tone is the reason people keep listening.

While it’s impossible to create a sure-fire formula for the perfect tone every time, there are considerations to improving your tone across all platforms. Just remember ABC and you’ll be well on your way to better marketing.

Image credit: kadirkaba / iStock / ThinkStock

Audience

As always, the more you know about your audience, the better your marketing message will be. Age, gender, relationship status, and more factors impact what tone will work best. However, do not focus on stereotypes and supposed best practice attempts (especially for groups such as millenials). Research your particular audience segment in depth and, preferably, read content generated by the target you want to hit. That will provide a better understanding of how to tailor your tone to your demographic.

Learn where your audience spends their time, what marketing messages they resonate best with, and the language the audience already uses. Once you do that, your message will go further.

Branding

Your own company’s brand guidelines should influence how you speak in advertising. Depending on the type of product and how you want to position yourself in the market, you could stick to terms like “informative” and “friendly,” or be more detailed about exact wording whenever you discuss the product or service. No matter what you do, keep it consistent throughout the marketing. It’s jarring to encounter wildly different tones within the same company, making consumers less likely to stick with your company.

Make sure your brand guidelines allow for the same general tone to translate across all channels you’re using.

Context

Each media channel out there has its own norms and best practices for effective language. While companies often go for similar messaging but different wording between traditional media channels— shorter, snappy headlines for outdoor and entertainment value for radio— they very frequently they fall flat online. How often have you seen a tweet copied from Facebook, or a blog post that looks like it comes straight out of a magazine? You should be adjusting your tone to the environment you’re putting it in, which includes how people use the channels.

Learn online media as much as you learn traditional media. You cannot simply copy/paste your traditional marketing tone on the web and expect it to work. Take the time to adjust, especially considering how much of your audience is online.

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Remember A, B, C, and you’ll find tone is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

11 June 2015

How to Find Your Ideal Client

Or, perhaps more to the point, how to make sure your ideal client finds you. All organizations face this issue, and it can be especially challenging for small businesses. But done right, online inbound marketing puts you in the driver’s seat – you just need a roadmap for success.

a smartphone with a maps app overlaid on top of a map with a compass and pen — Oleksiy Mark/iStock/Thinkstock

In the same way that not everyone who walks into your physical “bricks and mortar” store is actually going to be a client, not everyone who visits your website or your social media channels will be a client either. So, how do you drive the real clients to your website? And once you’ve achieved that, how do you find them amid all the other site visitors? Is there a way to not only identify them, but also to separate them out for closer attention? There is… and it involves two terms: Segmentation and Target Marketing.

Segmentation and Target Marketing Defined

The online Business Dictionary defines market “Segmentation” as: “The process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics.” This dictionary goes on to say: “Its objective is to design a marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the targeted segment.” Which brings us to our second term…

Target Marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then focusing your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments so you can concentrate on understanding the needs and wants of that particular market intimately. The bottom line is that Target Marketing is about attracting customers who will buy what you’re selling.

Who is your Ideal Customer? The Art of Buyer Personas

If you’re going to target your ideal customer, obviously you need to know who that is. Before you try to identify specific people, groups, or organizations, take some time to define your ideal. What characteristics does your target buyer have? Go beyond just demographics such as age, gender, location, marital status, education level, and income bracket. What are some key personality traits that might make them a good fit for your products and services? What might their interests be? What motivates them? What might they be trying to achieve that your offering could help with? The more information you can determine about your ideal customer, the better you will understand them and the more effectively you will be able to tailor and deliver your messaging to them.

Use this information to develop one or more buyer personas. According to SharpSpring, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Be as detailed as you can. Give each persona a name – Frank the Farmer, or Connie the Coffee Connoisseur – and have some fun with personality traits. Done well, buyer personas help to focus your marketing content and hone in on the right audience to reach out to with your message.

The Advantage of Online Marketing

Working online using inbound marketing tactics gives you more power over your marketing efforts and outcomes. With an ad in a newspaper or magazine, you have no way to determine who has seen it, nor do you have any way to follow up with those who have. By contrast, online marketing allows you to discern who has seen your banner ad or other digital marketing content. Not only are you able to collect information about people who visit your ad, site, blog, or social media page, but you are also able to track that information over time, use it, and act on it:

follow up with a thank you for downloading an article,
respond with an email message or an offer, or even,
have a complete automated campaign set up that guides your prospect through several steps, providing gradually more detailed and more targeted information about your products and services.

You might start with an ad on social media or in an online publication, then provide a useful checklist that your buyer would find helpful in reaching their goals, and follow that up with a more detailed white paper on a topic they’ve expressed interest in during your interactions. This progression gives you more information about what they are looking for at the same time that you are leading them through your sales process and propelling them towards a buying decision.

Multi-faceted Results

If you do the following:

develop strong buyer personas
use these to define a relevant target audience
streamline your online marketing message for this audience
provide progressively more detailed or tailored content to meet the audience’s needs

You will see positive results on a number of different fronts:

Efficient use of time and resources
Cost effective marketing activities
More sales, increased revenues, and improved profit margins
Improved customer relationships and happier customers
Measurable progress and results throughout the entire customer engagement cycle

An important part of the mix is including smart SEO to help attract the right audience. Your content should follow and support your customer’s journey (for all target audiences). As a small business, it can be difficult to set aside the time needed upfront to establish solid buyer personas, to clearly define your target audience, and to create content that will resonate with them. However, experience tells us that these efforts will pay off in spades.

21 May 2015

Is Your Brand Relevant?

Many years ago, we dealt with a local retail clothing chain that catered to a young demographic. They were very aware of their market’s needs and wants, and the importance of how well their brand reflected that market. The owner was relatively young himself, but a very intelligent fellow with valuable experience and good business instincts. Often, when we presented a campaign, he would stare at it for a while and muse over the creative or messaging. He would say something along the lines of “This isn’t anything like I had in mind… but let’s consider how it might play out and what it can do for our brand.” Nine times out of ten he endorsed the campaign. Only part of the credit goes to our team. A large part of the credit goes to the client: first of all for providing us with the insight to fully appreciate his market; and then to remove any ego from his decision and apply his business and market knowledge to best support his brand.

He understood that his brand wasn’t about him or what he thought was cool. He fully realized that his store’s brand needed to be relevant to his market. And he understood his audience well enough to consider each campaign from their perspective. He figuratively walked a mile in their shoes before deciding whether he felt the campaign was a hit or miss. (Check out Marketing and Sales Strategy: The Need For Focus.)

Regardless of whether you produce a product or provide a service, and whether your focus is B2C or B2B — you have a target market that must somehow connect with you in order to choose to deal with you. In order to resonate with your market, they need to be aware of you and feel inclined to learn more. Branding achieves this by grabbing their interest and effectively communicating that you are relevant to them.

Sounds easy, but it’s anything but. And, like anything somewhat complex, it is a process. It’s not simply a matter of creating a cool logo and tantalizing tagline… not that they are typically simple to do. (Check out The Four Pillars to Building a Brand that Builds Your Company.) Without an actual brand strategy and ongoing stewardship, even well-crafted components are only a façade which your market will quickly see through. In my example above, the clothing store hired carefully and trained their staff extensively so that the in-store experience was the essence of their brand. All material, from promotional signage to applications to staff memos were written and designed to reflect the store’s tone and raison d’être. All staff understood the mission and bought into the vison. They had a comprehensive strategy that considered all the touch points for staff and customers. Do you?

To help your organization in putting together such a strategy, consider:

who is your target market
what are their wants, needs, and problems
why do you care
what do you want your message to be
why should they care
how can you reach your target market
what are the touch points to reinforce your brand

This list is not comprehensive, nor should it trivialize the process of establishing a strategic branding plan. It may require a lot of research and planning and writing, and then even more work to implement, monitor and maintain. But it is well worth the investment, for a strong brand is one of the most valuable assets an organization can attain.

What would you add to the list of considerations above?

30 April 2015

5 Things You Need To Know When Writing Ad Copy

With 25 years in the marketing business I’ve had the privilege to work with some very talented individuals and savvy clients. Working with truly brilliant minds can be thrilling, gratifying and humbling all at the same time. One thing that has always impressed me is a well written ad. Good ad copy, be it for print, radio, television or online, captivates and informs the audience, positions the brand, and compels the audience to react in a favourable manner. That’s asking a lot of some text — even if it is dressed up with some nice photos, videos or sound.

Here are five considerations that will help you to be a better ad writer.

1) Your audience doesn’t give a damn

It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that your targeted demographic is just waiting for your pearls of wisdom. The reality is that you have to earn their attention. Your first task is to get their attention. If you are relying solely on text then you’ll need a captivating or perhaps controversial headline. Depending on the medium you can use photo, video or sound to get their initial attention.

2) Your audience still doesn’t give a damn

OK, so you got their attention, but why should they give you any more time? People’s interest is fleeting, so you have to move your audience along quickly from attention to interest. With interest they will read a little further, listen a little more attentively, watch with more focus or perhaps click for more information. The great David Ogilvy (no, I’m not that old, I never worked with David Ogilvy) would argue that you should provide long narratives of information and facts, building a strong case for the product. There is probably still a time and place for that kind of ad, but today’s audience typically demands quick answers in little bite size chunks (thank you Twitter!). So, once you have their attention, move quickly into the meat of your message and give your audience a reason to care.

3) Interest isn’t enough

In order for your ad to have impact, your audience needs to identify with it. This may be relatively easy if they already have a need your particular product/service. In most cases, you’ll need to help them personalize your message. To do this, rather than present a list of facts or features, involve both left and right sides of the brain by invoking a whimsical, reflective mindset. Stories or nostalgia are often used to dramatize the product features and illustrate just how good life can be. Well-crafted ad copy takes the audience on quick mind trip (no, not that kind of mind trip) that enables them to virtually experience and appreciate the benefits of owning your product.

4) They haven’t bought it yet

Let’s assume that you got their attention, then their interest and now they’re fantasizing about having your product in their hands (or something like that). How do you turn their interest into actual action? Now you need a “hook” or “call-to-action” that will compel your audience to behave accordingly. Online this may be entering a draw, or a providing a free download. Other examples are a trial offer, gift-with-purchase, or a limited quantity/special edition.

5) Most people will not buy your product

Even the best ad is not going to persuade everyone to buy. In fact, if you get a small fraction of the audience to buy you’ve done an exceptional job. However, good ad copy will get people’s attention and some interest so it should be strategically position the product as the desired solution. That’s right, branding should be an integral part of your messaging. If you brand effectively your ad will continue to sell for you long after its broadcast. Like a well planted seed it germinates in the mind, ready to sprout when the need arises.

What would you add to this list? What considerations help write a better ad.

26 March 2015

3 Ways to Spring Clean Your Blog

Content management systems such as WordPress are an asset for managing your blog. From one interface, you can do everything possible to make sure your blog is running smoothly.

Unfortunately, even a well working system has posts slip through the cracks, either from an unfocused strategy, still trying to establish what works best, or simply due to a lack of maintenance. Any well-populated blog will eventually collect issues, and if left unchecked your blog could become an impossible to navigate behemoth that leaves readers frustrated instead of seeing you as a thought leader.

With spring officially starting (even if it might not look that way outside), what better time to get your blog in tip-top shape? Here are some key areas to focus on, to get the most polish for your elbow grease.

#1- Purge Your Topics

Topics are like rabbits: they multiply. You start off small and concise, making sure all your core keywords are covered. But as you write, you realize people might not use the same terminology as your topics, so you start adding a few more topics to cover that part of your audience. And a few posts later, you’re focusing on a specific issue and you really should have a unique topic for each specialized issue you blog about, to make sure everybody can find that specific issue separately…

Next thing you know, you have an unfocused and repetitive mess.

Keeping your topics list small is important for ease of navigation and search; the fewer topics you have, the more likely readers are to find relevant posts in your archives. Create a focused list that ties directly into your content marketing strategy and put all blogs somewhere in that list. Try to stay between 25 and 50 topics to prevent readers from getting overwhelmed.

#2- Get CTAs Up-to-Date

Including Calls to Action in your blogs is a great way to encourage prospects along your pipeline, but they only work if the links do. Remember that your blogs are publicly accessible until you unpublish them; all CTAs have to be usable no matter how old the posts are.

Go through your blogs and make sure all CTAs are up-to-date and relevant both to the post and your marketing initiatives. This ensures any reader can keep interacting with your company no matter what post they come across, even if it’s deep in your archives.

#3- Link Internally

If you’ve written any best practices guides, such as whitepapers, on your website, use your blog to drive readers towards them. It helps your guides get better SEO rankings because they’re linked in multiple places, and shows your competency to those who click through. The same goes for any particularly stellar blogs: linking them in relevant areas of your website helps establish your thought leadership and boosts their SEO. The more places your pages are linked, the higher ranked you are in searches, making you easier to find in the first place.

Now, while this can be a tedious task (if you’ve employed a spring intern, assign this to them), it has a strong long term payoff: internal links drive readers to spend more time with your site — getting more information from you rather than your competitors. And more time spent with you means they’re more likely to buy from you. You’re using your content to drive traffic; make sure it supports your sales objectives by driving potential customers down your pipeline.

25 February 2015

Communicating with and Marketing to Millennials and Gen Z in 2015

It is important to be aware that every generation thinks differently. They have different shared experiences that often lead to different beliefs and different values. Accordingly, different generations communicate and want to be communicated to differently. Gen Y and Gen Z are no exception to this rule. Though, they are both different in many ways, they share many important similarities that should not be ignored by companies who want their attention.

So, if you’re marketing to one of these younger audiences you should keep a few things in mind.

First, You Must Understand What They Mean.

Communicating clearly, succinctly, and in the style that best works with your audience has never been more important than it is now. Whether communicating in blog form, on social media, or through writing on your website – the wording you use matters. Younger audiences interpret words and phrases online quite differently than you might.

Certain words have evolved or mean something completely opposite of what they used to mean! “That’s sick!” can mean that’s disgusting and terrible in one context, but it can also mean, “that’s amazing!” in another, to a younger audience.

Additionally, the word “literally” means something completely opposite to its original meaning. Gen Z will say they, “literally can’t stand spinach.” The word means that you are not exaggerating at all, but the younger generation commonly uses it to mean extreme exaggeration.

This phenomenon has been taking place for a long time. To illustrate, generations preceding the baby boomers took the word “awful” to mean “generally good, impressive things”. “Awful things” were in fact, “worthy of awe”. This is where expressions such as, “the awful majesty of God” come from. The difference is that today, with the speed of the internet, words, phrases and cultural memes are morphing new meaning at a far accelerated pace, and it requires a lot more work to keep up.

They Will Only be Interested in Your Content if it is Great.

You’re in a competition with the rest of the content online. Because of the endless options of content to consume, your advertising content has to be as good as or better than the content (paid and unpaid) they find and are exposed to around the rest of the internet. Otherwise, they’ll easily and instantly tune out, clicking the “X” button.

They Want Information Quickly.

They have no patience for longer, time-consuming content. To be clear, when I say “time-consuming content”, I’m not talking about an hour or two, I’m talking about often a video that lasts more than 20 seconds, or a couple of paragraphs of text. They prefer to socialize, inform themselves, and entertain themselves in short bursts, in part because they have so many other great pieces of content competing for their attention.

They Like Images and Short Videos.

Consuming, sharing, and even creating content is easier than ever before and the younger generations are doing it more than ever before. Vine, Snapchat, and now Instagram are places where short video and/or images can be shared.

Instagram has recently launched the ability to advertise short 15-second videos to respond to this audience’s need for short video content. Many of the brands who have tried it have experienced great success on Instagram.

In Summary

Even if these younger generations aren’t your target audiences, understanding them can lead to major insights about the future of all older target markets.

The actions of younger generation cause a spill-over effect to older generations. Inevitably, the younger generations begin to shape everyone else’s consumption of media by affecting technologies and trends that are (and will be) formed. Older generations will play catch-up much like as was the case with Facebook: popular with college student by 2007-2008 but only widely adopted by older generations in 2010 and later. (Most recently, my 87 year old grandmother created a Facebook account and is on it everyday: responding to comments and sharing posts, pictures, articles, and even memes!)

21 January 2015

Marketing and Sales Strategy: The Need For Focus

“You can’t be everything to everyone.”

This maxim has never been more relevant than today. Those that specialize and focus in on what they do best usually outperform the generalists. Focus breaks down a big, fuzzy target into smaller, sharper targets that are easier to aim and excel at. Focus is the stuff of a sound marketing and sales strategy.

The Lists

Focus is all about segmentation. Products and services are segmented by their description and whom they are intended for. Customers and prospects should be similarly segmented and placed into lists. Further segmentation by location, industry, or whatever will help support marketing and sales campaigns and blitzes. Campaigns and sales blitzes are the mini – projects for marketing and sales.

The Campaign

A cornerstone of marketing strategy is the use of campaigns. Campaigns are focused efforts (tactics) in promoting a defined product or service to a specific target market. Campaigns for medium size business enterprises are an effective way to promote new products, e-commerce, or branding. Campaigns, by nature of their simplicity and cohesiveness, are easier to track and measure for success than more complex initiatives.

The Sales Blitz

Campaign’s sales person sibling is the sales blitz. Blitzes are similar to campaigns but shift the efforts from marketing to outbound sales. The sales staff concentrates on a defined product or service to a specific type of customer or prospect for a defined period of time. Marketing campaigns and sales blitzes can run independently or in tandem. The distinction from general marketing and sales is the focus. Sales blitzes can be a morale booster. Sales people appreciate the focus and the momentum attained with a targeted effort. It creates excitement and a reason to reach out to potential buyers.

Trying to be everything to everyone in marketing and sales is a recipe for frustration. Don’t worry about diluting your overall brand by concentrating on just this or that over a defined period. Buyers expect that your brand will encompass a comprehensive group of products and services. In the interest of engaging with your customers effectively and efficiently, it makes good sense to segment your products and your customers/prospects and market and sell to them specifically. Your customers will appreciate it.