Client – Pucuda Leading Edge

Whatever your business sector, the current pandemic slowdown is affecting you profoundly. It might be good for your company or it might be devastating but one thing is certain; you are feeling massive change underfoot and you know you must adapt.

I’m seeing some small businesses focus their energy on “cutting loss” and applying for government assistance or SBA disaster loans while some are converting their factories to make much-needed PPE for the public. Others are nurturing their key relationships and rebuilding their internal business infrastructures.

Rebuild Your Marketing Infrastructure

My clients are amazing. Most of them are stepping up their communication efforts right now, some of them big time! They have the foresight to position their businesses to be of indispensable service in their own communities immediately, and also to lead their industries during the inevitable recovery.

Image – catholicmedicalcenter.org

For example, a safety netting manufacturer in CT converted part of their factory floor to a mask production facility to make masks available for the public. Another client, a construction firm, was the first to answer the call from NH hospitals to his industry for N95 masks, donating his company’s entire stock of 200 masks to the medical team at Catholic Medical Center. This same client is working tirelessly right now on branding, marketing, PR, helping to write trade policy, and nurturing relationships with vendors, contractors, clients and business partners.

I have several other inspiring client stories but this post could get too lengthy. It’s likely that I’ll write about them in the near future.

What’s Happening Here at Home

Personally, I’ve never been busier in my life! But even though the current work is urgent and a bit stressful, I’m still using this passing crisis to reposition my business as the premium design and digital communication firm in our market with the resources and capability to scale! We’re currently in the process of building out my website’s service offerings and improving both the user experience (UX) and SEO. I even upgraded my website maintenance plan so my developer will make changes and improvements for me on-demand. This carpenter is building his house!

Most agree. Few actually do.

Client – SkiClinics.com

Remember that the best time to blow your horn is when the hall is quiet or your competition is distracted. Hmm… Here’s a thought:  People ordered to stay home or work from home are on their computers a lot. Guess where digital marketing reaches them?

Well, a past client got this message from one of my recent LinkedIn posts and decided it was time to promote his new online offerings in a big way, leading to an exciting new online marketing campaign. Check out the introductory newsletter. We’re helping to sell books and training sessions online. This new project has my juices flowing for a return to the good life we know is on the comeback!

The post That Marketing Thing – It’s now or never! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

In keeping with the theme of real time and the tremendous value of the current moment, I offer you this idea. The reason I keep this newsletter going week after week, even when I scarcely have time to publish it is because it keeps my brand relevant. We all have built in forgetters.

By striving to share useful information with my audience, the vast majority of you opt to stay on the mailing list. You allow me to drop in once a week or so because there is some value for you in most of the articles. You all remember that my business is here in case you ever need it.

So here’s the value for today: Social media is not the be all, end all and I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to worry about it. Email marketing is still the best deal going.  You should indeed establish an active digital social presence but there is no need to obsess over whether you’re doing it as well as your competition. The value of social media is overrated unless you value what other people in your market have to say. It’s a much better tool for learning than for promoting, so relax if you’re anxious about your social media strategy. Build your email list instead.

Shift your focus to what works: personal relationship selling and networking. Email is a fine tool for keeping your relationships alive and staying relevant in your target market with regularity and consistency. It’s also the best way to market events and put butts in seats if that’s your goal. Social media can be an effective augmenter to extend the reach of email based campaigns.

Here’s a more extensive article about why Email is Crushing Twitter and Facebook for Revenue Generation, ironically from Social Mediopolis – The Capitol of Social Media!

Now that social media marketing has been around for a while, “the jury is still out” but is starting to come around to reality and the honeymoon is definitely over. Here’s a fascinating article summing up a survey of top North American marketers: The Declining Value of Social Marketing

Please subscribe to my free newsletter.

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“You cannot be serious!” Imagine if John McEnroe had a meltdown about something he couldn’t believe was so… good!

Every once in a while there’s a new product or service so damn good it’s hard to believeit’s available without an inordinate cost. For example, I’m amazed by the value of email marketing on Constant Contact, Mailchimp and other email services. Just think of the service Google provides free – with very little if any advertising annoyance to you, the consumer.

Let me challenge you (I’m challenging myself starting right now!) to earn your next customer or client by being too good a value to pass up.

This is as transparent as it gets right here:

I screen every ad in this newsletter. I was just given a huge lesson when I clicked on my new ad this morning. It gave me the idea for this article: Be so good that even skeptical prospects will say yes!

My advertising service is just that – too good a service for me to pass up. LaunchBit put me in the online media business just by finding this newsletter (based on its excellent content) and offering to make the Chuck Sink Link actually pay something. All I had to do was give them some basic information and now this little newsletter generates a bit of income aside from the educational service it provides you.

So, just wait till you click on our feature ad today. I’m not saying this to be self serving. I’m blown away by how simple, easy and valuable this online tool is sign up for. If they follow through with their promise, this company will skyrocket. By virtue of their UX (User Experience) alone, this company will do extremely well. It is one of the best websites I’ve visited in a long time!

Quick update: after signing up so easily, a highly professional individual has emailed me twice and was very forthcoming with pricing and product info. We’re connected now as fellow marketing professionals.

Make sure you click the ad below before you exit. If you’re a businessperson, you’ll want to consider arming yourself with this tool because, literally, your competition will be all over you if they do. And yes, Mr. McEnroe, I AM SERIOUS!

Track Your Competitors What’s working in your competitors digital marketing? Let’s not leave that unanswered, so get tracking with TrackMaven – the competitive intelligence platform. (Sponsor this newsletter)

The post Be So Good They Have to Try You! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

By Chuck Sink

In today’s marketing world you need to be a good Content Curator (Curator, huh?)  Curating the content is also known as getting the content so if I use the word “get” instead of “curate,” forgive me. The last real curators I knew worked exclusively for museums.

Give Me an Easy Tool!

A client of mine recently asked her SEO vendor what they use to generate fresh content for the dynamic news feed on their website. What “Curator Plugin” did they use? The answer came back starting this way: “There’s no easy answer on this one…” The vendor went on to explain how they manually get (curate) articles for their news feed. “We all do a lot of reading and we share the best of what we find…” continued the answer.  That answer is one reason I respect this particular vendor so much. They are diligent specialists and very good at what they do.

The post Curate Content that Drives New Business appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Has a headline or subject line ever grabbed your attention and then everything else in your world disappeared for several minutes while you voraciously read a good article? Did your current project take a back seat while your mind relentlessly pursued more information in the article? Perhaps you stopped and wrote a note to the author because you just had to offer your timely and relevant feedback!

Best of all, maybe the article struck such a resonant chord that you finally made a decision to take some positive action and invest in yourself or your company.

That, my friends, is what good content is all about. We hear about “inbound marketing” and “content marketing” all the time these days, but what is it? Is it an article that’s trending with what most of the target market is thinking? Maybe. Is it a thought provoking piece about a controversial or potentially game-changing subject? Could be.

These examples tend to be lay ups in the world of content marketing. Simply sharing a good blogger’s materials is fine but it tends to get the recipient thinking more about the blogger than the sharer! Lay ups are okay for staying in the game but it’s the more dramatic half court and 3 point shots that win tournaments.

The Secret of Good Content

When you can hit someone with information that experience tells them is prescient and relevant, your’re doing content marketing right. Real world experience and true stories are what grab attention and move people to take action. It’s often the repeated issues that are right in front of us – the problems we can identify and solve right now that we need to be talking about.

You need not always be concerned with innovation or cutting edge technology or the latest best practices to get your target audience’s attention. What you need is authentic value communicated in way that your customers and prospects will benefit from.

If you’re an architect or interior designer, offer easy space planning or simple energy saving ideas. If you’re an attorney, provide ways people can stay informed of changing laws. If you’re a mortgage officer, write about how to manage an escrow account to avoid surprise recalculations. If you’re a manufacturer, share your supply chain expertise in ways that would save customers money. If you’re a printer, show off a direct mail piece with an unusually high rate of return.

These are just the first ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure you can come up with better content ideas for your clients. Perhaps someone like me can help you better develop your content and consistently distribute it.

Keep thinking about things that your audience would like to know more about. Chances are, if something interests you, it will interest them too.  Listen closely to your customers and provide content that answers the questions they’re asking. Keep a file of ideas. Always write down your ideas or you will forget them!

When you see a great article you want share, instead of just slapping up a link, take some time and write down your own thoughts on the same topic. Make it relate even more specifically to your customers.

Clear away the clutter of information overload by serving up content your audience wants to consume and can actually use. You’ll become known as an authentic value provider. You’ll be trusted and called first when it’s time for doing business.

The post Good Content Clears away Clutter appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

I will need several business services and products to continue growing my business and many of them I don’t need now, or I can’t afford them yet. That’s why I want you to keep in touch so I won’t forget you.

One of the most common mantras you will hear from seasoned sales professionals is “Timing is everything.”  I agree. Trying to persuade a prospective customer that he needs your product before he needs your product will annoy him. Just as bothersome is attempting to “educate” your prospect about his “pain” when he doesn’t feel any.

A careful sense of timing – to each individual customer – is critical when planning a direct selling message or making a sales call.

You may say, “yeah, but how can you possibly live inside every potential customer’s world and know when the time is right?” In traditional business development, a good CRM (customer relationship management) program works well when combined with good salesmanship. A synonym for salesmanship is relationship. So, that’s one way to use good timing but there’s a better way:  It’s all the time! And here’s the best part:  It’s hard, especially at first. That should be a clue that it works.

Junk goes in the trash!

First, identify your target audience by vertical industry lists or by sales prospecting so you know they have a need for your service or product. Develop your database of names, addresses, phone numbers and EMAIL ADDRESSES. Furthermore, connect with as many as possible on LinkedIn and Facebook. Follow them on Twitter. Then get to work being a sought after genius to each one of your prospects. I’ve probably lost about ¾ of you by now. For the intrigued and motivated quarter, let’s keep going on this.

Why is Apple the most successful company in the world right now? Because they are genius at what they do and how they communicate it. So you need to get busy demonstrating yourgenius to all those prospects in your database.  Be a collector and generator of valuable content – expertise and ideas that make people say “Hmm… or WOW!  Yes, it’s hard but you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it too, maybe better!

Think about the emails you opt-in to and the supplier companies you follow. There are plenty ofgreat marketers who know how to put value in front of their audience on a regular, appropriately frequent basis so they are top-of-mind at all times for their products & services. So, when the time is right for their prospect to buy, guess who gets the call?

The post Not right now but yes, I’m interested. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Marketing Automation is for Small and Medium Businesses!

By Casey Cheshire

My first experience with Marketing Automation came when I assumed responsibility for the Marketing program at a small consulting and training company. There were several major problems to address.

To start, there were no inbound marketing initiatives to drive people to the website. Once there, a Newsletter Signup and Contact Us page were the only ways in which prospect information was captured. Those two types of gateways are extremes – people were either vaguely interested in keeping in the loop or being contacted right away. The majority of the visitors, who fell in between those two types, weren’t being converted.

Further into the Sales & Marketing process, four Account Executives had almost entirely shifted to prospecting work instead of making sales as the quality of daily incoming leads was always in question. No wonder they were frustrated! The bulk of these “leads” were simply people subscribing to a newsletter and not yet ready to buy.

Does this sound bleak (and familiar)? The good news is that we solved all these issues in about three months with Marketing Automation. Several new product solutions in this space had recently appeared on the scene and made the automation tools, once reserved for stock ticker brands, available for SMBs (small to medium sized businesses).

There are several areas where Marketing Automation can provide 10 times the value of its cost to implement (roughly $1,000/month in my case).

Capture – After taking the time to target search phrases on Google, demographics on LinkedIn, and a multitude of other channels, it’s very important to have optimized landing pages to capture those leads. In many cases, you pay for the visitor’s click regardless of them actually completing a form.

Marketing Automation had me hooked at “forms creation.” Some key features include ease of creation with & without HTML, customized fields, and lots of different automatic options after completion. But the most fantastic of all is progressive profiling; the ability to have smart forms that can pre-populate or remove a field if the answer is already known. Taking it a step further, you can ask additional questions that will help your lead make an informed decision.

Conversion (and reconversion) rates skyrocket with smart forms and the ability to progressively profile your leads moves them through the marketing funnel at a much faster rate.

Nurture – Gone are the days of monthly newsletters for prospects. In addition to taking gobs of time to produce frequently, they leave you in a news reporter challenge: “What should we write about now?” Chances are you’ve probably already addressed key questions your future customers were asking in articles from last year’s October issue. Repurpose your content!

With Marketing Automation, I transformed my news desk back into a marketing desk with a series of nurture email campaigns. Often called “drip nurtures,” these campaigns were specific to the industry of my customers and delivered critical content to prospects on a biweekly basis. From engaging demo videos to helpful case studies, prospects were offered a strategic series of our best content designed to aid them and also aid our sales process! Even better, the emails were all personalized in name, email, and signature from the individually assigned Account Executive.

Score – Lead scoring is a hot topic because there are now low cost options available to B2B businesses from large to small. The concept is relatively straightforward: Give your Sales Team the most qualified and active leads possible! Lead scoring is the mechanism to reward demographics & behavior with points or letter grades which can then be classified and prioritized.

Contrary to popular belief, lead scoring models don’t need to be complex. If you build in too many options at the start, you may find that too many or too few prospects make it through. It’s best to start with a few key engagement areas- like form completions and adjust over time. It’s also not a bad idea to separate a lead’s demographic grade (Decision Maker in the Right Industry) from their individual activity score (Visited the entire site over a period of 3 days.). Doing this allows you to focus on the best leads and avoid spending your sales calls on students doing research.

In conclusion, Marketing Automation is no longer the future, it’s “the now.” Simple emailing platforms will be replaced over the next several years by more the complete Marketing Automation packages. Businesses that adopt this new technology will see faster growth from a multitude of automated, personalized, customer touches. These automations will enable Marketing to get back to marketing and Sales to close more deals.

There are several major players in the space and a few to avoid. Which solution is right for you? It’s a question I answer often and would be happy to assist readers of the Chuck Sink Link in answering at no charge.

Casey Cheshire is an online marketing consultant and marketing manager for a global software form. Feel free to contact Casey at: caseychesh@gmail.com  On the web: www.caseycheshire.com

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