We thought you’d like to know what others are doing:

According to a MarketingSherpa survey - they asked nearly 1,000 B2B marketers to about the most effective tactics helping them to develop marketing content and messaging.

Many organizations have a library of marketing content at their disposal, including press releases, blog posts, whitepapers, etc., and this content typically only reaches a small percentage of an organization’s target audience. This is why repurposing and reformatting existing content has been rated as the most effective tactic in helping organizations develop marketing content and messaging.

Recruiting authors internally from other departments can be a tactic that is not always well-received by individuals outside of the marketing department. Despite the sometimes challenging task of recruiting new authors, 48% of B2B organizations still find this to be an effective tactic.

Outsourcing to a consultant or agency has not been rated as a highly effective tactic. Developing marketing content requires an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the brand and its target audience and at times, this can be difficult for a consultant or agency to acquire. Only when an organization finds a consultant or agency that is a good fit for their organization can this be an effective means of producing marketing content and messaging.

And now…

Blogs are kinda where mainstream social media began. People just had something to say…and Web Logs (a/k/a “Blogs”) were the new, inexpensive, and immediately available way to say them.

Now, we advise businesses to use blogs as part of an overall content strategy to accomplish one or more of these 3 objectives:

1. Define who you are (brand voice)
2. Improve organic search results and increase site traffic
3. Generate leads

With help from Hubspot, here are some tips to help you accomplish all 3.

Define who you are

Blogs are about content.  Lots and lots of content.  For a moment, I’m going to leave all the high-minded talk about brand to others.  I’d just like to address a very practical question we’re asked a lot – “I like the idea of blogging, but finding ideas to write about and the time to write them is overwhelming.  How do I make this happen?”

Does this sound like you?    We get it.  So here’s a thought:

Probe you own mind.  Don’t you get questions all the time from customers and potential customers by email, phone and in person?  Find article ideas in your sent items folder in your email by reviewing how you’ve answered those questions.  Ask your sales and customer service people about the questions they get and the issues they run into.  You’re sure to cover many popular topics.

We think it’s also important to get the whole company involved and not dump all the blogging and content-creation responsibility on one person. How do you engage the whole company? At HubSpot they have 80 different people who have written for their blog. They do contests. Public praise. Executives contribute. And they say they’ve built it into some of the employee goals for a couple of different groups in the company. Get everyone addicted to the process of blogging, the feedback and the positive loop that can happen by publishing an article.

If you want more comments on your posts – ask a question at the end of the article or be controversial. The more controversial you are, the more comments you will get. Also, leave part of the issue untouched. If you completely cover a topic, you’re not really leaving room for people to add something to it.

Improve search results and site traffic

All that content should grab the attention of the search engines.  One of the first things to remember is that your articles should be keyword rich.  Use keywords that your audience would be searching for – in your titles.

We suggest using both e-mail and RSS subscription. Certainly, most blogging services include RSS. There are ways to do email subscription as well. When you publish a new blog article, it can automatically go to the people subscribing to the blog by e-mail. For Hubspot, about a third of their blog subscribers are by e-mail. Other folks have 70 or 80 percent of their blog readers subscribe by email. Some site visitors use RSS, some use email more, and you should have both of those available to make sure that you’re making it as easy as possible for people to get your blog content if they’re interested in it.

Having an image in every article is good as is adding video.  They make it more visually appealing and give people something to gravitate towards rather than just a whole bunch of text on the page.  They make your blog more informative, more engaging, and therefore more useful.

Generate leads

Ultimately, whatever your business, you want new customers.  If you use landing pages in tandem with your blogs (and you probably should), it’s important to use calls to action to drive more traffic to your landing pages.  Strive to have a call to action in every post – acting as a link to someplace that captures visitors and gets them moving down the sales and marketing process. (e.g.; where people can register, opt-in, start a trial, buy a product, etc.)

Hubspot reports that adding calls to action to their blog almost tripled the number of leads they were getting from the blog.

We suggest using these tips as a foundation for your blogging program.  Don’t use them, and you’re probably throwing your time and money away.

What’s the one thing you want to improve about your blog results?  Let us know.

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When I think of a 23 foot high wall of water extending up to 8 miles inland…there are no words.  As always in disaster, the incredible people of the Red Cross were sending help almost immediately.  From their website:

Those who want to help can go to www.redcross.org and donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. People can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific.

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Stat of the week

The vast majority of B2B organizations find direct mail to be either very effective or somewhat effective for their organization. This is likely a result of the various personalization and segmentation capabilities organizations executing this tactic now have, such as personalization for name, location and other data points and segmenting lists based on a number of criteria.

File this under the heading “there’s a right time and a right place for everything.”  Here’s the story:

In Washington DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.  After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing.  He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

Joshua Bell in DC Metro

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly.  The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time.  This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.  Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story.  Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the DC Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The Post’s researchers throught that one conclusion of the study was akin to stopping to smell the roses – missing the beauty around us as we rush through life.

Beauty feed the soul.  But we’re here to make money.  So as professional marketers focused on growing a business we would ask this question:

Even if you had the best product

Or the best service

Or the best price…

Would anybody stop and pay attention if they weren’t in the right frame of mind?

The old adage “Location.  Location.  Location.”  doesn’t just apply to Real Estate.  It applies to everything about how your business is perceived.

Just as a house in a good school district will be worth more to families with young children, your products and services will be worth more if they solve a particular problem for a customer or client.

Just as umbrellas sell better in the rain.  It’s about timing.  Right place, right time.

Always but always, be relevant.

The goal of the marketing budget is to plan expenses and predict revenue. The average amount allocated to marketing budgets is between two and five percent of gross sales. Keep in mind this does not represent individual needs or strategies, so you might end up budgeting more. Other factors can determine your marketing budget, like:

- Percent of projected or past gross sales
- Per unit sales
- Seasonal allocation (especially true for retail operations)
- Projected cash flow

Dust off those old ledgers and compare current and past data to see how much you’ve allocated in the past and the success of each endeavor. If you don’t have past data, be proactive in recording and measuring your marketing efforts now for future comparisons.

I don’t care for the “Blame Game.”  My dad used to drill into me “fix the problem, not the blame.”

That aside, the fact is that the struggles of small business are a major anchor around the neck of the economy.  A recent study from the Labor Department points out that more than 60% of all jobs cut in the private sector in the fourth quarter of last year occurred in businesses with less than 50 employees.

This underscores something we already know – America’s job market depends largely on the health of our small businesses. In fact, some estimates say that small businesses are responsible for providing 64% of the jobs in America.

Generating Positive Thinking

Last month 2,000 small business owners were surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business.  They found these owners to be further losing confidence in our economy. Only 9% of those surveyed said they expected to hire more employees.  That ain’t gonna get the machine running.

Various versions of a small business bill would provide as much as $30 billion to community banks to boost lending to small businesses and would also add $12 billion on top of that in tax breaks for those businesses. Again, that’s not enough overall – but it’s a start and can provide us a psychic boost.  A better vibe.  And a better mindset must take hold for people to get hired.

The ranks of deficit hawks can count me amongst their ranks.  However, even with all the money pumped into the system by Tarp and Stimulus Packages – for the most part, that money remains locked up and out of the hands of small businesses.

Consider contacting your representatives in Congress to suggest they support job growth by directing incentives to small businesses.

He’d traded up to a massive new bike from what he called his “learning bike.”  He wasn’t comfortable on it anymore as he was moving on to longer rides.  He needed comfort.  And didn’t want to continue to build confidence while gaining experience with his existing classic.

His friend’s wisdom – “yeah, learning is never comfortable.”

The story reminds me of what so many business owners must be feeling.  As technology influences customer mindsets and the ways they spend their time, owners and executives are forced to learn new behaviors. Learning means change – if only in the way you think.  And change is stressful.

Learning makes you venture into the unknown, pushing you out of your comfort zone.  But you know what can be even more uncomfortable?  Losing customers.  Missing opportunities.  Losing money.

A business that allocates a certain amount of its resources to testing new marketing methods and learning what works will lead the field when the economy ultimately recovers – and will maintain and extend its lead over time.

Got learning?

IMHO this word – Brand – is thrown around much too casually.  Every creative shop in town talks about “Branding” to their clients.  But, do they really know what branding is?

A complete Brand strategy will accomplish two important objectives.  Here they are along with a sentence to clarify:

1. Explain why anyone should do business with you
   • Defining who you are and the benefit(s) you deliver to a specific target audience over a long period of time.

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2. Aid in recognition and recall
   • Creating a recognizable logo and differentiable tag line along with supportive color schemes and consistency guidelines for how to use them.

Unfortunately, too often Brand is mistakenly thought of as only a visual thing.

A Brand strategy should help you generate business.  It must answer the “why” question to generate profitable action.  It’s more than just the pretty stuff.

Mention the DMV and instantly images of gargantuan lines pop into your head and your eye begins to twitch.  More recently however, the DMV had made some improvements by adopting common sense operational efficiencies and online tools.

Many locations will give the poor motorist an appointment window to respect their time.  Online renewals and payments further helped ease frustration.

But there’s a hole in the DMV donut – the locations don’t necessarily coordinate with the website.

This may sound familiar to those who’ve shopped at WalMart.com.  After finding a great price online, you run to the nearest store to snatch up your bargain – only to find the store price isn’t the same as the online price.

Reason?  They’re run as two separate business.  Frustrating and sometimes angering.  But many retailers have the same arrangement, confusing and inconveniencing their customers.

This morning I heard the DMV has a trap lying in wait.  If you should move during the time of your vehicle registration – and do the right thing by dutifully going down to DMV to file the forms – it won’t change a thing as far as DMV is concerned.

That’s right.  Go down to your DMV office, file the change of address, affix the stickers to your license and registration – and they never even update your file.

You have to CALL their customer service center to let them know or they don’t change your records.  Imagine how you’d feel when your renewed registration was sent to the wrong address and you got a ticket for an expired registration.

Then they charge you a fee to send a duplicate!

Check the forms and the website.  It’s itting right there amongst a sea of words.  In type so big that only those who’ve eaten 3 carrots a day can read is the instructions…you must call the customer service center to change your address.

So, DMV offices, online service, and the customer service call center don’t communicate on a simple, yet important function.  And you’re the loser.

Moral for business.  Embrace technology and efficiency.  Be thorough.  Be clear.  But be sure you’re actually helping those you want to help.

Did you know that Albany is the #1 test market in the United States.  Correct-a-mundo.

According to Acxiom’s  last published study in 2004, Albany, NY was the market that best represented the United States population as a whole.

In other words – we’re the most average market in America.

That holds some real advantages for you as a marketer – especially if you market to consumers.  Rolling out new mass-market products in Albany is an excellent place to start.  The test results could well translate to the national market, and “amped-up” ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)

If that’s you – be thankful we’re so average.

My partner Dave recently had trouble with his iPhone.  As great a gadget as the iPhone is, neither Apple nor AT&T Wireless offer insurance on the iPhone.  Best Buy stepped in offering the only insurance available on the product – serviced by its Geek Squad.

Oh oh…dead cow!

After 2 years of paying $11+ per month, Dave needed service.  He dropped it off at the Geek Squad – “it’ll be ready and back here by Friday.”  Friday comes…and an hour of voicemail hell later…”sorry, maybe tomorrow.”  Saturday…no answer at the Geek Squad all day.  He left a message with the store’s customer service to please call him back.  Sunday…another hour of the run around, “sorry, there are no deliveries on Saturday or Sunday.  Maybe Monday?”

“I didn’t even get a call from you guys, isn’t there a message for you?”  “Truth is we’re really busy, and there’s a whole pile of messages sitting on this desk.  We don’t look at them.  We just wait for the customer to call back.”

Okay – get the picture?  Now ponder this:

Best Buy is in the electronics business.  Why can’t they put your order status online for you to check?  Or shipping status?  Especially when the Geek Squad desk is too busy to even look at the pile of messages on their desk!

Best Buy promised a service that made them unique – but the promise turns out to be pretty empty.  That’s a dead cow.  That’s utter brand destruction.