Marketing, Party of One: Effective Marketing When YOU Are the Marketing Department

February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
If you’ve ever worked for a start-up company or small business, you can no doubt relate to being the Marketing Department of One. At Trada, many of our customers fall into this category as well. While it can be challenging to wear multiple hats, you can run an effective marketing program with a single (or very small) team. Following are a few tips based on experience and in speaking with dozens of other marketers.
Don’t take on too much.
There are more marketing channels today than ever before. You can run display, search marketing and social media advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook and others. You can blog, tweet and build a Facebook page, run webinars, exhibit at tradeshows, run email campaigns, do press and analyst outreach, and the list goes on and on. [Read more...]
Filed Under: SMB Marketing

7 Tips for Great Blog Headlines

February 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

It doesn’t matter how stunning your blog post content is. A lousy headline will ensure your audience never reads it. You have to put the same amount of thought into your blog headlines as you do your topic selection and content writing.

Blog headlines create a first impression. They have to intrigue people and pique their interest, irresistibly luring your prospective audience to read on. Blog headlines are a sales tool. The right wording makes your post stand out from the mind-numbing clutter of literally thousands of other reading options.

Your blog headlines have to be short and sweet, a teaser in our quick-scan world. If your headline is too long readers will drift off before they even to the end, ensuring they certainly won’t be around to read your actual post.

So your blog headlines have to be eye-catching and thought-provoking. If you’re feeling performance anxiety, here are a few tips to help you improve your headlines:

1. Write the headline first … or maybe not.

Experts disagree on this. Some say you should write your headline first, because you have to clarify what readers can expect to get out of reading your post . Writing the headline first also helps you keep your content on-topic and tightly written. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Keywords, SMB Marketing

There Are No Shortcuts in SEO!

February 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

Sometimes shortcuts are good. Like when you were a kid walking to your friend’s house and you cut through a vacant lot to get there faster. But shortcuts in business aren’t usually a good idea, because shaving time all too often leads to shaved results. Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to building SEO.

If you’ve been covertly skipping steps or are tempted to try it, here’s the best advice you’ll ever receive: no SEO shortcuts. Trying to outsmart yourself, your colleagues or clients and search engines is simply a mistake at every level.

Why is “no SEO shortcuts” such good advice?

We’re in such a hurry these days. We want everything to be abbreviated and we have less patience than ever, especially when it comes to the web. But cheating (yes, using SEO shortcuts is essentially cheating) doesn’t mean you’re working smarter, and doing things cheaper and quicker is rarely better. [Read more...]

Filed Under: SMB Marketing

A Guide to Mobile Search

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

You may not have a smartphone yet, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million other people do. And the number of iPhones and Androids in use is growing at a steady clip. No wonder more than 20% of Google searches now originate from mobile devices.

Perhaps even more important for your business, studies show people using their smartphones to search are in the latter stages of shopping – looking for your location, hours, etc. as opposed to basic research. They are ready to buy, or nearly so.

Unfortunately your regular website isn’t necessarily very welcoming to those conducting a mobile search. You need special optimization. Otherwise your site may appear super-slow not even function properly. Even the smallest laptop screen is far larger than a smartphone screen, so you can easily see the problem.

Now is a good time to get in the mobile game. Most businesses aren’t there yet, so you can get a jump on the competition. However mobile SEO is more complex, so you’ll need to think a little differently about what you offer searchers. [Read more...]

Filed Under: SMB Marketing

10 Tips for Bringing Your A-Game to Tradeshows

January 31, 2012 By 1 Comment

If you’ve ever been to an industry tradeshow, you’ve seen them. Those booths that look like they have an interesting product you’d like to learn more about, but the booth set-up and staff say, “go away, we have more important things to do.”Tradeshows are a high stakes gamble with your precious marketing resources. Where else do you spend $20,000 in 2-3 days and take multiple people out of the office who could be working on other things, with virtually no opportunity to course correct once you’re there? If you’re going to make tradeshows a profitable marketing program, you have to bring you’re A-game or your risk blowing a bunch of money with nothing to show for it.

Here are 10 tips to make your next tradeshow a success:

  1. Have a goal, and hold everyone to it.

In my view, tradeshows aren’t a branding tactic. Sure, there is value in having your brand visible to your prospects attending tradeshows, but at the end of the day, all of our marketing programs at Trada are about generating qualified opportunities that lead to sales.  So before you decide to attend a tradeshow, determine what it’s going to cost you, what your target cost per lead or close is, and then set goals for leads and qualified opportunities for the show. If you don’t think there are enough attendees at the show to meet that goal, skip it.

Everyone working the booth should know what the goals are and be held accountable for meeting them. It will set the tone for everyone working with the booth and keep them focused on the task at hand. Your booth team should track their progress to goals hourly throughout the show to be sure they’re on pace to meet the goal. [Read more...]

Filed Under: SMB Marketing

How to Market Your Business With Email Marketing

January 25, 2012 By 2 Comments

Check out Trada’s other posts in our online marketing series: How to Market Your Business on Twitter, How to Market Your Business on Facebook, How to Market Your Business with a Blog, and  How to Market Your Business with Video. Leave us a tip of your own on marketing with email, and the best comment will win a $25 Amazon gift card. Comments must be made by Sunday, January 29 at 11pm ET.

E-mail marketing is an extremely effective tool — if used correctly. I learned from the lessons of hard knocks on what to do and what not to do. As with everything, it’s always better to ask the experts. This time we asked experts from Marketo, SendGrid and social media agency Room 214 for their thoughts on how to use email marketing, understanding regulations and how to create email marketing lists.

Meet the Experts:

Tim Falls, a Community Manager for SendGrid, an email delivery system that simplifies the process and produces better results. Check out his SendGrid’s blog and follow him on Twitter @timfalls.

 

Maria Pergolino, Sr Director of Marketing at marketing software automation system, Marketo.  Check out the Marketo blogs and follow Maria on Twitter @InboundMarketer.

 

Ingrid Getzan, Group Practice Director at social media agency Room 214. Check out the Room 214 blog, Capture the Conversation and follow Ingrid on Twitter @igetzan.

 

 

Email marketing is one of the most heavily regulated online marketing components. What do companies need to know before getting started with email marketing?

Ingrid Getzan: Companies need to know the very basics;  go with a trusted email software company, don’t buy lists, don’t use certain words in the subject line that will be marked as spam, know an acceptable frequency to send emails, and most importantly, know your plan.

Too many businesses send out emails because they think they should, without having a clear agenda of what they would like to communicate. There is no better way to get blacklisted then sending out irrelevant or spammy emails – a sure way to kill your email marketing efforts immediately. Sit down and figure out at least a 6 month plan of what you want to tell to your subscribers. Figure out why they want to receive your email and make the information within your email valuable to them. Don’t just pick a template or extend promotional offers to them – make it exclusive and worth their time.

Maria Pergolino: Get familiar with Can-Spam Laws – this goes far beyond the laws in your country, extending to anywhere you market.  Just because you are in the US, doesn’t mean can ignore laws in other countries you sell your goods.  To learn about Can-Spam Laws, check out this great guide by the FTC.   [Read more...]

Filed Under: SMB Marketing

What to Look for in a Content Management System

December 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

A content management system is a comprehensive software application that gives you a single, automated framework from which to manage your website, blog, e-commerce, website-based customer communications and marketing.

There are lots of reasons to purchase a content management system:

They’re designed to be used by several contributors, and users don’t have to be highly skilled technicians.  Information sharing is easy, but you can control who has access to different areas.  A CMS provides:

  • Consistent look and feel throughout your website and blog.
  • Smooth content creation process (writing, review, approval).
  • Coordinated content processing and publishing.
  • Content storage, organization and retrieval.
  • Increased productivity, to save time and money.
  • Enhanced customer relationships. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Marketing Tools, SMB Marketing

How to Get Started with Link Building

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

What good is your website if nobody sees it?

Links located outside your website give people an opportunity to click through to your pages.  Your website may naturally attract some incoming links, but deliberately working to create them will boost your results much sooner.  Link building is an ongoing and painstaking process, not a one-shot deal.  And while volume is valuable, quality is even more important.
You want lots of incoming links because they build traffic.  They also give you credibility (or “authority”) with search engines, important because off-page SEO is a major factor in raising your overall and page rankings.

We’ll talk here about specific link building techniques, but in the end other sites will only agree to link to you if you have useful, fresh content — something good at your end worth finding. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Marketing Tools, SMB Marketing

Facebook for Small Business Owners

December 7, 2011 By 1 Comment

Facebook LogoDoes your business have a Facebook? Do you actually even use it?

Small businesses, unfortunately, are notorious for neglecting their Facebook pages (up to 50 percent of small businesses do in America), on top of the rest of their social networks, according to a survey done by web analytic company comScore earlier this summer.

Facebook for small business owners should be important to any marketing strategy, especially when taking Pay-Per-Click (PPC) into consideration. So, how can a small business use their Facebook?

  • Promote daily deals that are Facebook exclusive to drive traffic to the page.
  • Hold contests and competitions for your Facebook fans, have the prizes be products or deals from your business.
  • Use your Facebook page to ask questions to further customer satisfaction.
  • In lieu of a website, you can use your Facebook Page, which can also drive traffic and click-through rates.
  • Have a better connection to your customers and a friendlier profile which can be a source of casual communication with customers. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Facebook, SMB Marketing

How to Qualify Leads and Prospects

December 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Success in sales requires mastery of a specialized skill set. Getting in the door, identifying leads and prospects, how to qualify leads and prospects, selling the product or service, and closing the deal. Problems anywhere along the pipeline can potentially kill the deal. But if a sales team neglects to qualify their prospects, they don’t really know if their lead has any vested interest in what they are selling, and if that is the case, valuable time will likely be wasted.

How to Qualify Leads and Prospects:

There are a two methods of how to qualify leads and prospects; the traditional approach and the digital approach. The traditional approach is hands on and requires an understanding of your customer demographics, and digital qualifying means using PPC, SEO, and social media. The most successful sales teams know that the biggest gains come from using both.

Traditional Demographic Analysis: Just like a great reporter, knowing  how to qualify leads and prospects requires the ability to answer the following questions:

Who? Who is interested, who has an obvious (or urgent) need, who has the money to make a purchase, who is able to influence my prospects. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Marketing Tools, SMB Marketing
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