CONTENT MARKETING PROCESS

Compelling Ideas that Add Value to Your Content Marketing Content Marketing Series-3

Stay relevant, be compelling, follow your corporate mission.

Content marketers face a mix of challenges. Get beyond writer’s block and start creating quality content. You will attain more results. Start with a well, thought-out plan and understand the process: Publish. Share. Increase traffic and engage. Convert and gain loyalty. Then, start the process over and publish more to keep your audience engaged.  Strengthen how you communicate with the following:

10 Innovative Ways That Add Value to Your Online Content

1. Go Directly to Your Source. Approach your target audience. Ask your clients some questions, request feedback, find solutions to their current challenges.

2. Teach from Your Mistakes. Everyone makes errors. Take these missteps and turn them into learning lessons for your audience. Chances are they can relate and it can help them to avoid similar pitfalls.

3. Slow and Steady Does Win the Race. Social media is firmly planted and here to stay. Social channel options are overflowing. Don’t just flood the pool, select your resources carefully. Research which networks are most compatible for your business then, share, accordingly.

4. Exercise Regularly. The advice your doctor gives you works here, too. Show your audience that it is worth it for them to stay connected regularly. Work it – give them ongoing quality content and remain active on these sites.

5. Calendar Your Content. Organize what you have to say. Plot out the industry events, upcoming deadlines, trending topics, and other content opportunities relevant to your business. Now, write editorial content that addresses these areas and post them along these timelines.

6. Polish Your Brand. Yes, indeed. How great is it an opportunity to toot your own horn and have people willingly listen? Written correctly and in a non-sales-pitch way, you can project the personality, essence and look and feel of your brand with every stroke of your keyboard through the quality content you produce.

7. Remember Your Home Base. Your website acts as the nucleus of your online activity. It supports your online strategy where people flock to, from your social networks and web sites. Review your content and how you present your brand. Your website should be a living, breathing communications vehicle – update often – not just once or twice a year.

8. Picture is Worth More. Use images to demonstrate your content’s main point. You can add value to your clients by offering them to post a video or action photo on your website. Create an infographic. Add industry event photos. Is someone notable to your industry, members, or supporters who are visiting your office? Take a shot with your smart phone and post it. Show your audience how innovative you can be, in different ways.

9. Develop a Timeline. Does your business have an interesting history? Offer a historical timeline of your organization. Added bonus: the making of the finished snapshot can also engage your staff.

10. Map It. Where are your customers, distributors, sales reps or members located? Design an interesting or interactive map to show off your growth while informing your target audience. Color code it and add depth of information.

Ready to write? Engage and attract quality prospects or your target audience at least a few times per week. Some experts say you need to add content a few times each day. I think it is more effective to create content that has real substance and value to your audience rather than the goal of making sure you get out information more often.

Give your audience some credit, they’ll figure out what is worth their time. Don’t give them a reason to move on to your competitor…What will your next story be about? What other ideas have inspired you?

Infuse Five helps its association and business clients, across North America and globally, inject smart marketing into their programs without the need to hire a full time communications specialist. Learn more about how Infuse Five can help grow your business with more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

What do your members want
this is the question at hand
The solution will bring forth
recruit, renewal and demand.

This month, the Sales and Marketing VP for the Vancouver Convention Centre presented on the newest developments in association expos and tradeshows at the ASAE Business of Meetings Certificate Program that took place in Washington. This list is a good guide to show you what is trending – giving you added insight to help plan your event communication strategies for the coming year.  I’ve added four more interesting association meeting trends, based on other industry research.

10 Trends in Association Meetings and How To Use Them

1. Hosted Buyers Programs are Growing. Are you familiar with the IMEX example? If not, Google it. The association meeting planner becomes the buyer – where you take the lead for your exhibitors.

2. Increase in Scheduled Appointments. Planning will save, both you and your members, time and makes it easy for your exhibitors.

3. Create New Ways for the Sponsor to Connect. The meetings industry associations are the trendsetters.  Meeting Professionals International (MPI) gains insight from their exhibitors where they are testing and turning booths into standardized, appointment spaces. This minimizing shipping costs. MPI has not entirely shifted to this for their larger shows, but its tradeshow floor is becoming more varied and interactive. This goes beyond integrating food into booths or sponsored relaxation and shoeshine areas.

4. Integrate Education. Associations are offering different ways to transfer education. Examples include: the rise of sponsored poster board areas, sponsored lunch and learns, 45-minute sponsored session on technology or content. These would all be approved by the association’s education department.

5. Integrate Public Exposure. Several association shows are welcoming public attendance. The American Academy for Advancement of Science and Sports Medicine Conference recently tested this with positive results. This is proving to enliven the show for the professional conference participants as well as exhibitors. This also may fulfill the association’s advocacy role.

6. Use of Technology, particularly, of course, mobile show apps. There is a lot of potential for associations to leverage technology into their programs.

A Few More Association Industry Trends:

7. Shortening Programs. Associations are re-evaluating the time investment for its members. Multiple day programs are being reduced by one night. Associations are seeing lower pick-up on room blocks so this strategy helps minimize any attrition fees that they may be charged.

8. Event Attendance is Dropping Up To 20%. What worked before may not work now. Associations need to develop new incentives for its members to attend in-person. Associations need to re-evaluate the content to ensure it is still relevant to its audience and research event timing. Consider whether any other emerging industry events or other issues conflict with your event date or venue.

9. Provide More Value. Members want more value from the events they attend. Beyond the social and educational purposes, associations are developing new incentives that support the idea of ‘communities of practice’. Member-to-member support is becoming increasingly more important (opportunity to learn more from each other, and rely upon each other for other support).

10. Less Profit. It is becoming more challenging to generate profit at conferences. To stay competitive, associations are starting to address areas such as: more closely monitoring overhead costs, reassessing education content offered and networking opportunities, generational challenges, and reduced attendee and sponsor participation.

As you know, face-to-face meetings are more effective, productive and help strengthen the value an association can offer its members. Learning the changing ways your members value your association events can give you the insight to plan well-timed, effective communications strategies.

Infuse Five focuses on helping associations and businesses, across North America and globally, inject smart marketing into their programs without the need to hire a full time communications specialist. Learn more about how Infuse Five can help grow your business with more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Innovative strategies help organizations gain added attention and generate qualified leads. In today’s example, The Simpson’s TV show has broadcast over 506 episodes, it’s in its twenty-third season and is the longest running American prime time, scripted television series in history.

So, what can you expect to extract from this award-winning series that has absolutely nothing to do with your type of business? Deconstruct the formula and find your angle. One of the most memorable parts of the show is the chalkboard quote at its beginning. Sure, most of the quotes are juvenile and absurd. However, they are memorable and to the point.

How to apply this strategy to your business: Ask your team think and write up ‘quotes’ that reflect your business’s image, personality, mission or vision. Make them positive affirmations. Then apply these quotes in strategic ways. Pepper them into your blog or rotate them on your website. An association may include a PowerPoint slide deck of these running prior to making a presentation. You could add them to invoices, email signatures or other communication vehicles that interact with your target audience.

CableTV has compiled the below comprehensive list of the Bart Simpson 288 chalkboard quotes from the last 20 years of the TV show.  Give it a scan and consider what your business ‘chalkboard quotes’ might look like.

Infuse Five focuses on helping associations and businesses inject smart marketing into their programs without the need to hire a full-time senior communicator. Learn more about how Ottawa based, Infuse Five can help your business and get more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

It matters not what type of business you manage, leveraging high creativity to penetrate a new market can reap great rewards. Just getting the attention in and of itself is valuable free publicity.

In this example, glamming it up definitely targets the fashion-savvy female and it will be interesting to find out how successful this campaign will be in terms of getting women to opt for buying a Burger King burger. Right now, it’s a Public Relations dream; this ad photo is popping up all over the internet.

Have a brand you need to promote? What business challenge are you facing today? Some of the best marketing strategies start from the seed of the challenge and grow to become an exciting new stream of revenue or opportunity.

Infuse Five focuses on helping associations and businesses inject smart marketing into their programs without the need to hire a full-time senior staffer. Learn more about how you can drive more business with more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Content Marketing Strategy Series-2

Content marketing gives you control
to convey the message, your brand’s role
Write well, educate and inspire
Said right, it’ll spread like wildfire.

Whether you are a marketing communications executive, business owner, or CEO, you know how important a corporate online presence is these days. You most likely keep your website current and have created some social media personas, but what’s next? Now, it’s time for you to let your content drive demand. A website needs a marketing angle to turn it into a strategic vehicle so it can generate more qualified leads. It can be a secret advantage you can use to help close the deal.

All your social media projects need to be aligned with your business goals and can contribute to what is now called thought leadership.

The Bill Gates quote from 1996 still holds true: ‘Content is King’. DemandGen, a global consulting firm, found that 90% of B2B buying purchases start with content engagement. Executives are strapped for time, so it is important to find a solution for getting the most ROI from these initiatives.

Marketing Solution: Inbound marketing needs to be deliberate with each and every word you select. Audience engagement and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are areas to consider in your approach. Using traditional and new media techniques together can feed into creating a great content marketing campaign. Whether you live in Ottawa, North America, or anywhere in the world, you can use your inbound marketing campaign to drive more demand for your business.

Here are 3 Secret Tools to get you started on a Great Content Marketing Campaign:

1. Create Often. Keep your website and online comments current.
   Action to take: Talk to your sales or promotion team and find out what the pain points are of your audience. Consider company or industry news, and customer stories. Tie content to your business and your geographic location. Think about themes or industry trends that can shape your editorial content.
   Secret Advantage: It will entice your audience to return more often.
2. Write Correctly. This can be under-rated.
   Action to take: Use proper grammar and write in the language of your audience. This can be the winning difference in getting you profitable attention. If you are a building contractor, don’t promote yourself like this (actual company website text): “With the highest quality craftsmanship and great costumer service.We pride our self on making our clients dreams come to life with no detail unturned.With being apart of the Better Business Bureau we stand behind all our work.” [sic] Umm, what exactly is being conveyed here?
   Secret Advantage:  Using proper grammar will increase your SEO results and add credibility to your brand by demonstrating command of the English language (or language used on your website).
3. Delegate Resources. Are you a Superhero or what some call a content engineer? If not, keep your focus on the top-level work and offload this activity to someone else.
   Action to take: Staying relevant and visible is time consuming and takes skill. Don’t hand this project over to your junior staff person, s/he is probably limited in product and business knowledge, and may not understand the corporate tone of your brand.
   Secret Advantage: You define the business objectives and social tools to use. Keep on course by developing a social media policy and guidelines (and mentor a junior staffer to contribute to this role).

Content Marketing is a hot topic and rightly so. It enables you the supreme opportunity to inform, instruct and demonstrate your expertise while finding new ways to connect and add value to your audience.

You rule: You control the content and it is a smart way to strengthen your brand and drive demand.  Many organizations are starting to partner with external professionals to strengthen their team and keep current on the social marketing front – enabling executives to WOW and stay better connected with stakeholders. You also minimize your internal staff time (and reduce grumbles from some of your staff to write them). Of course, all this starts with developing a realistic social marketing plan in writing. Got one yet?

Want to get inspired to integrate content marketing into your upcoming campaign? Look for the next article in the Content Marketing Strategy Series -3.

Previous Article: Generate more leads: How to get started on Content Marketing. Content Marketing Strategy Series 1

Infuse Five focuses on helping associations and businesses inject smart marketing into their programs without the need to hire a full-time senior employee. Learn more about how Infuse Five can help your business and get more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Content Marketing Strategy Series 1 of 3

Content marketing is the newest way businesses can engage buyers or members and drive sales, but in a more indirect way. It is not about ‘hard’ selling or writing ad content to sell the goods.

It is about informing your customers or members; it enables you to have a two-way conversation with the tools to measure engagement. Used in a social media campaign, it can become a major source for selling more or gaining and retaining members. This could be a lucrative area to gain a foothold in an industry, especially for associations and small businesses who work with restricted budgets.

Content marketing is becoming a major form of brand building and direct marketing for businesses. In fact, more than 60% of B2B marketers now say they plan on spending more on content marketing over the next 12 months.

The content marketing goal is to create and distribute relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage your customers and prospects without selling.

In-house marketers are starting to understand how to integrate social media marketing into business strategies and drive these strategies to real business profits. There is a way to get the most out of using both traditional and new media. Specifically, content marketing can position your company (and/or brand) as a thought leader and can help increase the number of visitors to your website.

In the old days, a paperboy stood on a street corner and shouted out the news, hoping passersby would be interested enough to stop and buy the paper to learn the details. Today, people leverage ‘word-of-mouth’ (WOM) marketing in a more efficient way. Blogs, online profiles, e-newsletters, are just some examples – and these can carry a much greater reach capacity. Cyberspace has become a major vehicle to drive WOM referrals.

And, guess what? This can give your business a competitive edge. Using content marketing can do more than just inform your audience, it can develop trust and credibility before you even contact them.

Here are Four Steps to developing an Integrated Content Marketing Strategy:

1. Content Marketing does cost money. Effective campaigns require a significant investment of staff time both in production and distribution. However, this can be significantly cheaper than traditional media.
2. Gain Staff Buy-In. Your C-Level executives need to understand the value of this medium. ABC Selling points: A-Able to maintain control over their message and brand positioning. B-Be where your buyers are. C-Create your spotlight by taking the lead of providing innovative thinking within your business’ industry and/or community.
3. Plan, Plan, Plan. Integrate your content marketing strategy with your overall marketing and business plan. Plot content topics, frequency and channels of distribution.
4. Lay down your measurement tools. How will you measure your program’s success? There are many tools to help you determine how well you’re doing.

If your organization has not started to reach out to your customers through online communications, now is the time. The younger generation is spearheading this mode of communication, but this is a strategic vehicle. If resources are not available in-house, outsource your marketing for the next best solution.  Your online marketing efforts should have more direction than a Sunday drive.

What resources are out there to help you stay relevant and visible? Stay tuned for the next article in the Content Marketing Strategy Series -2.

Check out the next article here. Utilize content to drive demand: 3 Secret Tools to Create a Great Content Marketing Campaign. Content Marketing Strategy Series -2

Infuse Five works with its clients to inject smart marketing into their business programs without hiring a full-time senior employee. Learn more about how Infuse Five can help your business and get more smart marketing tips, subscribe to our e-newsletter.

What’s your company’s current challenge? Identifying your marketing problem is half the work but the skill is in applying the right strategy and execution. Boston Pizza (BP) is a prime example of a marketing success story. The Canadian restaurant chain offers up a family-style dining room and a sports bar. However, the brand awareness is low in some parts of the country and, as is common with many companies, BP became mostly known for a single product.

Boston Pizza Challenge: to broaden their marketing message to a wider customer base in Canada

Campaign goal for 2011: to increase chicken wing sales by 50 per cent

4 steps to BP success:

1. Product research and improvement: based on internal research of complaints that their chicken wings were sub-par, BP decided to focus on this item and improve their chicken wing menu offering (and include more accompanying sauces)
2. Re-define demographics: taking a calculated risk, ad agency identified and focused primarily on males as key target audience (family restaurants usually target busy moms feeding their families)
3. Support messaging by all new marketing campaign: Introduced fake wing critic, Carl Carlson, President of the Flatties and Drummies Association to expound on the delectable qualities of these wings
4. Distribution channels suited to audience:  8-week TV buy with online elements aired during NFL playoffs; Facebook page

Results:
• Sales increased up 160.2 per cent after the campaign began and continued to increase
• Many locations ran out of the product
• Facebook page attracted more than 14,000 new fans during campaign
• Boston Pizza Royalties Income Fund saw same-store sales growth of about 5% in 2011
• Wing sales have continued to remain at double of what they were before last year’s campaign, according to BP

The Take-Away:
Boston Pizza applied strategic marketing to generate more business. Conducting internal and market research enabled BP to identify an existing product that could be improved upon in a way that would enliven and motivate a newly defined audience base.

BTW, online ordering is now driving much of its growth with 10% of its takeout and delivery business and it’s growing. BP keeps in step – it has revamped its website for quicker and easier online ordering and a mobile-optimized version of the site is coming.

Now it’s your turn: How will you leverage your marketing tools to drive business and stay relevant in your industry?

Infuse Five works with its clients to inject smart marketing into their business programs without hiring a full time employee. Learn more about how Infuse Five can help your business, contact Sandra Hamway for a free consultation.

Can you believe January is already behind us? Most businesses are revving up for a busy year of B2B trade events. Biztradeshows.com states: ‘Trade Fairs have evolved into one of the most important Buyer-Seller meeting platforms. Most of the leading manufacturers spend up to 10% of their total advertising budget on trade fairs, the figure reaching as high as 40% in case of companies operating in the B2B sphere.’

What is your plan for 2012? And will you max out the value for each initiative? To help you with your trade show exhibiting, here are nine important event marketing steps to increase your results.

1. Exhibit at the events that are right for your business. Decide which events can be profitable for your business based on your brand, target audience(s), competitor activity, location, and budget.
2. Send the right staff. Once you finalize your event list, ensure your business is represented by the appropriate staff. At a minimum, send an experienced staff person, ideally an extrovert, that can provide an elevator pitch about your organization, as well as be able to talk more technical.
3. Distribute effective marketing and technical information. Make sure your collateral addresses the needs of your audience(s) and their demographics. Btw, a call to action is a must.
4. Give away an item that relevantly connects you with your audience. A trade association could offer technical information in a clever format; a home renovation company could offer a branded carpenter pencil or free software app, etc…
5. Brand your booth. Take a fresh look at your booth. Does it need an upgrade, does still represent what your business is about? Order carpet, drapes, table cloths that match your brand colours. Your booth should have the same look and feel throughout.
6. Educate your staff. Trade show events usually offer seminars – a fantastic opportunity to gain the newest industry information. After the event, disseminate the summaries to all staff.
7. Get the 4-1-1 on install and dismantle. Get the most life out of your booth. Save staff time and money: teach your staff the proper way to pack and unpack the booth. Duct tape should not be an option.
8. Promote. Plan visits for your team with key customers or members, pre-arrange dinners with key stakeholders, host a meet & greet in a hotel mini-suite to create an opportunity to foster greater loyalty and/or initiate new connections. Use social media to create incentives for them to see you at event and to keep audiences informed about event happenings (give your connections more reasons to value your organization).
9. Measure results. It’s good to know staff enjoyed the trade show but attain hard numbers to validate next year’s participation. This can include total attendance, audience demographics, total number of quality leads (and later, conversion rates).

Most organizations participate in the same trade show events year after year. This can be profitable, but it is important to remember that these are strategic marketing initiatives and its value needs to be continually proven. It is also good business to experiment with new initiatives and new markets. Organizations that do not have the resources (experience or staff time) to evaluate the benefits of trade show exhibiting, usually contract out this service to an experienced marketer. Due diligence reports appeal to stakeholders and these actions cultivate more trust in the executive decision making process.

Infuse Five is dedicated to helping people reach their business goals through innovative marketing strategies. Get more information about how you can generate more value into your programs. Inject some fresh ideas into your marketing plan.

Why not get in touch with us today?
Email Sandra directly at sandra@InfuseFive.com .
Sign up for the newsletter at www.InfuseFive.com.
Tweet with us: www.twitter.com/InfuseFive .
Please share this article with others of whom you think could benefit.

Do you have any trade show exhibiting tips you’d like to add to this list? If so, what are they?

Be profitable with your marketing!

Sandra

Sandra M. Hamway
Founder, Marketing Strategist

A business Tweeter needs to understand and follow the corporate brand – s/he is a brand ambassador. The quality of the posts can help to generate interest and business only if the tweets are engaging. The quality of the posts plays a significant role in Twitter. If it is not interesting enough, or your audience perceives that you are trying to sell directly to them, this can cause negative response, which can have widespread effect and very quickly.

5 easy Social Media steps to get your business started with Twitter:

1. Set it up. Set up a Twitter account. Here’s an example of how you can use it: For your annual convention, promote your Twitter account ahead of time so that your event participants are aware of your Twitter name and presence, so they can accept the Twitter invitation.
2. Define objectives. In this same example (in #1) provide objectives and key guidelines for its use to a group of your onsite staff (or committee). Adding competition between staff for generating responses can help boost staff engagement and help to increase responses.
3. Experiment. Twitter, if used effectively, can be a lucrative area to strengthen your brand and promote your organization, without the added media dollars that traditional media can cost. It is worth investigating. Explore it and find out how your industry partners and competitors are using this medium.
4. Educate yourself. The Twitter world can seem daunting and overwhelming. There are acronyms (RT= retweet), tools to shorten web links (to save character space), and slang words hashtags (#tag: way to organize your updates for Twitter search engines). However, it is well worth the investment of time – it is not going away. Smart phones have provided a strategic way to reach your audience virtually anywhere (pun intended).
5. Get started today. The easiest way to enter the Twitter world is to create an account, check out the Twitter help guide for basic information then complete your profile (tip: you might want to set up an alias identity until you have a basic knowledge of how this medium works). Next, explore, add followers, and have some fun with it.

Twitter can be a powerful tool to learn more about the interests of your readers or followers. It has the feature of tracking within it and can give you the opportunity to test business ideas or to gain feedback instantly.

Be innovative: Twitter is just one of many online social networking services out there.

It’s no wonder that retailers are now starting to integrate technology to help track the movements and habits of (traditional) shoppers.  The market research results from tracking shoppers’ physical movements can be very lucrative for a retailer. The results can also be a valuable marketing tool for American and Canadian businesses, associations, and event planners.Winning brand strategies can be based upon the results of this type of research.

Starting on Black Friday and continuing through to New Year’s Day, there will be two U.S. malls (one in southern California, the other in Richmond, Va), that will track its guest’s movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. Data is said to be anonymous, and will follow shoppers’ paths from store to store. This data will show, as an example, how many Nordstrom shoppers stop at Starbucks, and for how long they spend at each stop. Also, tracking will uncover what areas in the mall are least frequented. The U.S. has tracked similar information in the past, but this is the first time they key into cell phones to access personal shopping paths.

Though this can be a marketer’s dream: learning what stores couple well with each other (potential cross promotions), length of time a shopper spends in a store (create future testing opportunities), and personal habits based upon geographic and demographic info, there are a myriad of concerns. Big Brother may need to duel it out with the Privacy police.

The malls do state that no personal data is being tracked, and there will not be any analysis into individual shoppers. There is also signage notifying people as they enter the malls. However, it may raise concern on how this type of accessibility is permitted and whether individuals should have the right to deny access to this information. Currently, the only way to deny permission is to turn off the phone. Alternately, a future consideration may be an opt-in method (BTW, this is where Canadian anti-spam law is heading).

The tracking system is called FootPath Technology and it works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping centre that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer’s IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores. Retailers like JC Penney and the Home Depot are now on board to work with this technology. This could be a great tool to track its shoppers habits within its retail outlets, and to learn about its shoppers habits and paths in different city centres. There is already technology in place online, that tracks customers, and targets them with ads that suit their individual interests (based upon past websites visited) and, based on this historical data, continues to show ads on webpages even after the shopper has left a retailer’s website.

Let’s face it, Thanksgiving is a consumer driven holiday. Black Friday and now Cyber Monday (special online sales) create hysteria amongst Americans. If you recall, last year, there was a woman who died being trampled upon at a Walmart. Is $400 savings from a flat screen T.V. worth it? Apparently so. Retailers yearn for this time of year, it is the blast-off moment to motivate holiday shopping.

As a marketer, it is fascinating to learn new ways on how retailers can persuade consumers to shop at their stores. This technology can definitely become a valuable tool for retailers but could also serve to help event planners, associations, and other businesses. As the technology becomes more accessible, it can help uncover how people move through a special event, or trade show (what booths are visited the most), or how long they stay onsite and in certain locations, at an event.

There is a lot of debate regarding the ethics of information gathering and the predatory-like behavior of ‘Big Brother watching’ from George Orwell’s book, 1984. Both Google  and Apple have been caught using tracking software. Facebook is also guilty. Hungry for more information on this? Check out what other cellular operators and cellphone manufacturers are doing.

We look forward to finding out the results from the mall tracking experiment. What do you think, would you turn your phone off upon entering a mall?

Best wishes to our American neighbours! Have a safe and fun Thanksgiving with family, friends, and football.