Successful Blog

Are you missing out on this under-the-radar marketing resource?

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They’re everywhere.

Interviews, case studies, Q&As with your ideal client.

man being interviewed

They’re happening on competitor blogs, podcasts, marketing blogs, YouTube channels, magazines, and more.

Your ideal client (or her colleague) is spilling her guts all over the place.

Are you catching that inside information?

One example is the ChiefMarTec blog, run by Scott Brinker. He’s been interviewing CMOs over the last several months, and one question he usually asks is, “What does a day in your life look like? What are the toughest and most interesting parts?”

Well wow. If I’m someone who sells to CMOs, I’m reading that interview and taking notes.

It’s so important to be able to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What better way than to listen to them talk about their daily challenges?

Here’s your actionable tip for today: think about your idea customer’s job description. Once you have it firmly in mind, go seek out media outlets where they might be giving interviews.

Even in more obscure industries, investigate the big trade show or conference for that industry (they all have them). Usually the keynote speaker will be interviewed, or there will be presenters giving interviews. Pay attention to the media buzz, and soak up those insider stories.

Look for the trade magazines. They are always doing profiles of key management. Whether it’s online or in print magazines, this is another good resource to find out about the daily life of your prospect.

Take it another step farther if you have your own business blog—interview your own existing clients. Ask them what their day-to-day work is like, what their key challenges are, and what solutions they’re seeking.

Armed with this information, you’ll be able to provide services that directly address those challenges.

Do you use interviews as a resource?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: www.audio-luci-store.it via Compfight cc

The Secret to a Successful Marketing Strategy

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acres of farmland

The ambitious farmer, fresh out of agricultural college, wrote up a detailed plan for his farm.

He designated which crops he was going to grow, how he was going to rotate them, what equipment he would need, and how many farm hands he was going to hire.

After gathering all of his resources, he and his farm hands went out and planted acres of crops. It was laborious work, but when he looked out over his acres of fertile land, he was very proud.

Then he and his farm crew got into their shiny pickup trucks and drove away.

The young farmer took continuing education classes in pest control, irrigation, and hydroponics.

He went to some conferences.

He started writing an e-book about farming.

He and his farm hands finally returned to the fields the next year to find acres of weedy, rotting crops, half-eaten by wildlife. No corn. No potatoes. Nothing to harvest at all.

You will get no potatoes from your detailed marketing plan unless you have a system in place between January and December.

The secret to a successful marketing strategy is follow-through. Do it, measure it, adjust, and do it again.

Set Your 2015 Marketing Up For Success

Analytics and measurement – For tactics that support your key strategies, decide how you will measure success. This should be a number or a concrete result. Set up a spreadsheet and track the results from each tactic.

Did you send out a direct mail piece? Track how many people called the phone number or visited the special landing page. Did you create an infographic? How often was it shared? How many people downloaded it? Don’t include any activities in your marketing plan that can’t be measured in some way.

Decide in advance how often you will look at the numbers. Is it weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Once you look at the numbers, be prepared to take action based on them.

After-action reports – At the end of every campaign, schedule time to review it. Not just the statistics and analytics, but also budget, resources, how the campaign resonated with customers. What could you have done better, more efficiently? Is it worth doing again? If it failed, why did it fail? Record this information and save it where you can refer back to it in the future (perhaps a Dropbox folder, shared with your team).

Budget updates – Hopefully you included budget projections with your plan. Those projections need to be tied to real-time numbers on a regular basis. The more you do this exercise, the smarter your estimates will be next year. You do have to spend money to make money, but you want to spend it intelligently. If you have your finger on the pulse of your budget routinely, you can reallocate funds if necessary. You will know whether you have the cash to invest in that sponsorship opportunity that pops up in April.

Focus your efforts – Unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, you probably can’t move forward on five big marketing campaigns at once. When you’re writing your marketing plan, don’t assume that you’re going to do it all in January. In fact, you may not want to plan out your entire year up-front. Consider going quarter by quarter. Plan your first quarter’s efforts in detail, and then have possible campaigns outlined and ready to be slotted into the next quarter.

There’s a sweet spot between completely unplanned and rigidly scheduled…you want to go there. Give yourself the gift of flexibility, but don’t wait until the last minute to prepare the next quarter’s actions.

Accountability and reporting – Even in a solo entrepreneurship, you need to have accountability to the business. It’s not a waste of time to put your marketing plan down in writing, even if you’re the only one reading it. It’s not a waste of time to do a weekly review of your numbers and prepare a written summary. When your business grows, you will be happy to have records! In a small shop, grab that extra set of eyeballs for your campaign reviews and budgeting. It doesn’t have to be an all-day event, just make sure you’re not stuck inside your own head. It’s important to relate your marketing activities with the sales person, the customer service person, and the rest of the team. You’re all working toward the same corporate strategic goals anyway, right?

So while you’re preparing your 2015 marketing plan, don’t forget the systems. And we’ll be harvesting lots of potatoes next year!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Ian Sane via Compfight cc

Avoiding Death by Cookie Cutter

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By Lisa D. Jenkins

Have you ever been doing one thing and found a correlation to another that sidetracks you? It happens to me all the time.

Cookie cutter man

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about doing what I love, it’s that sitting on my butt and working online for hours is all too easy. I’ve gone from running 5 to 7 miles a day to working 7 to 9 hours without ever getting out of my chair. It’s not good for me.

So two weeks ago, for the first time ever, I hired a personal trainer because I wanted some expertise and experience to help me avoid hurting myself while I got back in shape.

At our first meeting, I expected to be told how ‘the program’ worked and what I should be prepared for. Instead, we had an hour long conversation about what I wanted to achieve, any goals I was pursuing, how I ate and how much water I drank in a day. She was serious about food and water.

We talked about all the different nutritional plans out there – paleo, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, raw, etc. Then she said, “I don’t want you to change how you eat, I do want you to keep a food diary. Write down everything you eat each day. Make a note on the days you feel great, get enough sleep and have a good workout, and make a note on the days where things aren’t feeling right for you. When you find the eating pattern that works best for you – stick with that. It’ll be the best Lisa Jenkins diet I can recommend.”

That’s where the correlation happened.

Most of us with online businesses look to others for support and inspiration to build stronger, more successful businesses. We seek out blogs like the one you’re reading now and conferences like SOBCon and Genius Shared to help us learn from people who’ve gone before us.

But that doesn’t mean we should blindly pattern our success on a cookie cutter version of theirs. We have to know what advice fits our needs and we need to know how to measure the effect of that advice against our unique goals. Here are a few simple ways to get started:

  • Create landing pages for each online campaign and track conversions using Google Analytics.
  • Collect email addresses instead of Likes, Follows and Connections and use them to segment customer markets for targeted campaigns you can track.
  • Use A/B testing.

Adapt the tactics of others, don’t copy their steps.

There’s nothing wrong with looking to others who’ve successfully built online businesses for inspiration and guidance to build your own business. It’s a smart move. Just make sure it IS your business you’re building and not a shadow of someone else’s.

Keep YOUR goals in mind. Track what works FOR YOU and what doesn’t. When you find what works best – stick with it. That’s the best strategy I can recommend.

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+

Thank you, together we are successful

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In the United States, today is a day for stopping the usual work, gathering with loved ones, and expressing our thanks.

Wherever you are, whatever your plans today, know that I’m including you in my list of “things I’m grateful for this year.”

This blog is a labor of love that sprung from Liz Strauss’ generous and creative intellect, and I’m so thankful to be part of the Successful Blog team.

You, our faithful readers, commenters, and supporters, are a diverse and energetic group of entrepreneurs, business owners, and aspiring business owners, and we love you.

Here’s wishing you and yours a warm and abundant Thanksgiving.

Successful businesses use Google Analytics to super-charge their marketing

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Google Analytics is the Ferrari of analytics platforms. It’s fast, sexy, and can super-charge your marketing.

However, most entrepreneurs and small business owners are just sitting in the car, afraid to leave first gear.

A recently released white paper from Formstack pulls together some interesting stats about how marketers are really using (or not using) Google Analytics. One that stood out to me is that only 33% of marketers track ROI via Google Analytics. Perhaps that’s because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of tracking only the surface, vanity metrics.

Want to know how many unique visitors we got last week? Sure!
Want to know which page on our website leads to the most conversions? Uh…hang on a second…

If you actually have goals set up in your Google Analytics account, congratulations, you’re in the 40% minority!

It’s time to dive deeper into those numbers and turn them into useful, actionable information.

The infographic below offers a path to improve your use of Google Analytics. One crucial step is knowing how to A/B test your landing pages and take advantage of tools like Google’s Content Experiments to see what’s working.

Try testing different versions of your headline, main content, design, call to action, and forms (like your sign up, subscribe, or purchase forms). Sometimes a small shift can make all the difference when it comes to conversions.

Are you using the free tools at your disposal to step up your marketing?

infographic - landing page ROI
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Video: Show Us What You’ve Got

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By Lisa D. Jenkins

Coupled with the mass adoption of smartphones and mobile devices, platforms like Instagram and Vine allow social brands to take advantage of video’s popularity with online audiences.

The days of expensive, drawn out video production are gone. Video is easier than ever to create, publish and share.

If you think video is something that should be added to your marketing strategy but don’t quite know where to start, read on for some inspiration.

I just found Bart’s Fish Tales on Instagram. Fish Tales uses 20-second video to produce the world’s shortest cooking show featuring recipes, tips and tricks on how to make great sustainable fish dishes.

On Vine, Home Depot has a variety of 6-second videos that show followers “what it takes to go from to-do to done”. Here’s a great one that shows us how to plant an easy-to-care-for kitchen counter herb garden.

PowToon publishes video on YouTube that shows viewers how to use their animated presentation tool to produce demos, business presentations, social media clips, etc.

GoPro encourages people who use their camera to tag their own videos with #GoPro, creating a wealth of user generated video content the brand shares online.

Video isn’t out of reach for you.

While there’ll always be a space in the market for professionally produced video, the reality is that today’s easy-to-use tools and video-friendly platforms make it possible for SMB’s that couldn’t afford the medium a few short years ago to give it a try.

Go ahead! There are any number of ways video can be used to advantage in your marketing – share your mission, create a how-to, show off your customers. What do you have to show us?

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+