We all have fears when thinking of refreshing our marketing – time, cost, ROI…
But from time to time, we hear this nugget…
“We don’t want our competitors to see our ideas”.
Sort of valid, but guess what?!
Continue reading “Are you clinging for dear life (to your ideas)?” »
Last week a corporate told us “we just don’t resonate with potential clients”. Their phone had stopped ringing; it was a struggle to get through to people. To show how they were different.
So whilst you might have a variety of buzz words for it… elevator pitch, positioning statement, value proposition…the answer to the question ‘what do you do?’ is actually the most vital and challenging piece of your marketing, it’s where the rubber hits the road.
You’ve got less than 20 seconds to impress me…what do you say?
GO!
Someone’s always announcing the death of something or other. But this time it’s something to get excited about.
With information so readily accessible, it’s a given that Google is the first point of call when buying anything – particularly B2B services. We can research so quickly now, and get a good understanding of what our options are.
So what happens when you simply have a brochure website, with little information and no way to interact?
There are 6 reasons why cold calling doesn’t work in today’s world:
1. Even the most ardent fan of cold calling would admit it’s less effective than it used to be.
Everyone’s tolerance of being interrupted whether by phone or by email is falling – there’s too much of it because it’s so easy with all the new technologies. So there is too much interruption, but increasingly we have the ability to filter it out. And busy, successful people do just that. Filter it. Continue reading “Scrapping Cold Calling” »
5 ways to use LinkedIn to get new clients It’s one thing to have an amazing product or service. The much bigger challenge is gathering and engaging with the large number of people who need it.
And with over 95% of Australian professionals online, businesses need marketing tools that allow them to capture a piece of this market.
Continue reading “Shortening the sales cycle in the world of B2B” »
A recent discussion on LinkedIn asked – Is email marketing still a good platform for B2B marketing?
It seems like a no brainer but many people still believe that buying a newsletter list is valuable. Newsletters should be reserved for clients and prospects that ‘opt-in’ only. Here was a great response:
If you are reading this you are a member of at least one professional or industry association. Associations that are expensive and so many never seem to do enough to justify their cost.
Now, within 5 years 80% of them will vanish. And the 20% who survive will look nothing like they do now. ‘Social’ networking is changing their world forever.
How are they meeting the threat? Over 90% are rearranging the deckchairs: pretty new websites; working on their ‘positioning statements’ with high priced marketing consultants; and revamping their cash cow, education. Not realising the poor cow will soon be dead meat.
Continue reading “Does your Professional Association have a future?” »
We all get too close to our business, too caught up in the day-to-day operations. We forget that we’ve got a lot of competitors. That our clients have choice and are using it.
On top of this, there always seems to be a shiny new marketing tool, the next silver bullet.
So we implement a few things, put up a Facebook page. But none of it seems to be working, and we’re not sure if it is.
We just want more clients!
But finding new clients requires pizzazz.
Last time we talked about Social Media as a platform for connecting and communicating.
Still didn’t do anything?
Many business people have trouble getting their head around Social Media. At our last event, one of the attendees rightly commented “I’ve got 500 connections, but what do I do with them?” Continue reading “When was the last time you had 135,000,000 in your sales funnel?” »
Events have always been and still are a key part of B2B marketing. But should you charge for them or run them for free? Very few businesses charge for such events. Should they? If they do, would the format and the content change?
What are the psychological elements at play? Of course paid events need good marketing and positioning (we can help!), but it will have a huge effect on the way people perceive your event: Continue reading “Should you charge for your events?” »
