The Ultimate Marketing Machine

The Ultimate Marketing Machine

  • A Strategy & Execution Case

In the past decade, what marketers do to engage customers has changed almost beyond recognition. With the possible exception of information technology, we can’t think of another discipline that has evolved so quickly. Tools and strategies that were cutting-edge just a few years ago are fast becoming obsolete, and new approaches are appearing every day.

Yet in most companies the organizational structure of the marketing function hasn’t changed since the practice of brand management emerged, more than 40 years ago. Hidebound hierarchies from another era are still commonplace.

Marketers understand that their organizations need an overhaul, and many chief marketing officers are tearing up their org charts. But in our research and our work with hundreds of global marketing organizations, we’ve found that those CMOs are struggling with how to draw the new chart. What does the ideal structure look like? Our answer is that this is the wrong question. A simple blueprint does not exist.

Marketing leaders instead must ask, “What values and goals guide our brand strategy, what capabilities drive marketing excellence, and what structures and ways of working will support them?” Any Structure must follow strategy—not the other way around.

To understand what separates the strategies and structures of superior marketing organizations from the rest, EffectiveBrands (now Millward Brown Vermeer)—in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers, the World Federation of Advertisers, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, MetrixLab, and Adobe—initiated Marketing2020, which to our knowledge is the most comprehensive marketing leadership study ever undertaken. Co-author Keith Weed, the CMO of Unilever, is the chairman of the initiative’s advisory board. Todate the study has included in-depth qualitative interviews with more than 350 CEOs, CMOs, and agency heads, and over a dozen CMO roundtables in cities worldwide. We also conducted online quantitative surveys of 10,000-plus marketers from 92 countries. The surveys encompassed more than 80 questions focusing on marketers’ data analytics capabilities, brand strategy, cross-functional and global interactions, and employee training.

We divided the survey respondents into two groups, overperformers, and underperformers, on the basis of their companies’ three-year revenue growth relative to their competitors’. We then compared those two groups’ strategies, structures, and capabilities. Some of what we found should come as no surprise: Companies that are sophisticated in their use of data grow faster, for instance. Nevertheless, the research shed new light on the constellation of brand attributes required for superior marketing performance and on the nature of the organizations that achieve it. It’s clear that “marketing” is no longer a discrete entity (and woe to the company whose marketing is still siloed) but now extends throughout the firm, tapping virtually every function. And while the titles, roles, and responsibilities of marketing leaders vary widely among companies and industries, the challenges they face—and what they must do to succeed—are deeply similar.

Highlights from the Survey

 
Building Needed Capabilities

% of respondents who said that their organization’s training program was tailored to the specific needs of their business

 

 

Winning Characteristics

The framework that follows describes the broad traits of high-performing organizations, as well as specific drivers of organizational effectiveness. Let’s look first at the shared principles of high performers’ marketing approaches.

Big data, deep insights.

Marketers today are awash in customer data, and most are finding narrow ways to use that information—to, say, improve the targeting of messages. Knowing what an individual consumer is doing where and when is now table stakes. High performers in our study are distinguished by their ability to integrate data on what consumers are doing with knowledge of why they’re doing it, which yields new insights into consumers’ needs and how to best meet them. These marketers understand consumers’ basic drives—such as the desire to achieve, to find a partner, and to nurture a child—motivations we call “universal human truths.”

The Nike+ suite of personal fitness products and services, for instance, combines a deep understanding of what makes athletes tick with troves of data. Nike+ incorporates sensor technologies embedded in running shoes and wearable devices that connect with the web, apps for tablets and smartphones, training programs, and social networks. In addition to tracking running routes and times, Nike+ provides motivational feedback and links users to communities of friends, like-minded athletes, and even coaches. Users receive personalized coaching programs that monitor their progress. An aspiring first-time half-marathon runner, say, and a seasoned runner rebounding from an injury will receive very different coaching. People are rewarded for good performance, can post their accomplishments on social media, and can compare their performance with—and learn from—others in the Nike+ community.

Purposeful positioning.

Top brands excel at delivering all three manifestations of brand purpose—functional benefits, or the job the customer buys the brand to do (think of the pick-me-up Starbucks coffee provides); emotional benefits, or how it satisfies a customer’s emotional needs (drinking coffee is a social occasion); and societal benefits, such as sustainability (when coffee is sourced through fair trade). Consider the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, which defines a set of guiding principles for sustainable growth that emphasize improving health, reducing environmental impact, and enhancing livelihoods. The plan lies at the heart of all Unilever’s brand strategies, as well as its employee and operational strategies.

In addition to engaging customers and inspiring employees, a powerful and clear brand purpose improves alignment throughout the organization and ensures consistent messaging across touchpoints. AkzoNobel’s Dulux, one of the world’s leading paint brands, offers a case in point. In 2006, AkzoNobel was operating a heavily decentralized business structured around local markets, with each local business setting its own brand and business goals and developing its own marketing mix. Not surprisingly, the outcome was inconsistent brand positioning and results; Dulux soared in some markets and floundered in others. In 2008, Dulux’s new global brand team pursued a sweeping program to understand how people perceived the brand across markets, paint’s purpose in their lives, and the human truths that inspired people to color their environments. From China, to India, to the UK, to Brazil, a consistent theme emerged: The colors around us powerfully influence how we feel. Dulux wasn’t selling cans of paint; it was selling “tins of optimism.” This new definition of Dulux’s brand purpose led to a marketing campaign, “Let’s Color.” It enlists volunteers, which now include more than 80% of AkzoNobel employees, and donates paint (more than half a million liters so far) to revitalize run-down urban neighborhoods, from the favelas of Rio to the streets of Jodhpur. In addition to aligning the once-decentralized marketing organization, Dulux’s purpose-driven approach has expanded its share in many markets.

Total experience.

Companies are increasingly enhancing the value of their products by creating customer experiences. Some deepen the customer relationship by leveraging what they know about a given customer to personalize offerings. Others focus on the breadth of the relationship by adding touchpoints. Our research shows that high-performing brands do both—providing what we call “total experience.” In fact, we believe that the most important marketing metric will soon change from “share of wallet” or “share of voice” to “share of experience.”

McCormick, the spices and flavorings firm, emphasizes both depth and breadth in delivering on its promise to “push the art, science, and passion of flavor.” It creates a consistent experience for consumers across numerous physical and digital touchpoints, such as product packaging, branded content like cookbooks, retail stores, and even an interactive service, FlavorPrint, that learns each customer’s taste preferences and makes tailored recipe recommendations. FlavorPrint does for recipes what Netflix has done for movies; its algorithm distills each recipe into a unique flavor profile, which can be matched to a consumer’s taste-preference profile. FlavorPrint can then generate customized e-mails, shopping lists, and recipes optimized for tablets and mobile devices.

Organizing for Growth

Marketing has become too important to be left just to the marketers in a company. We say this not to disparage marketers but to underscore how holistic marketing now is. To deliver a seamless experience, one informed by data and imbued with brand purpose, all employees in the company, from store clerks and phone center reps to IT specialists and the marketing team itself, must share a common vision.

Our research has identified five drivers of organizational effectiveness. The leaders of high-performing companies connect marketing to the business strategy and to the rest of the organization; inspire their organizations by engaging all levels with the brand purpose; focus their people on a few key priorities; organize agile, cross-functional teams; and build the internal capabilities needed for success.

Connecting.

In our work with marketing organizations, we have seen case after case of dysfunctional teamwork, suboptimal collaboration, and lack of shared purpose and trust.

Despite cultural and geographic obstacles, our high-performing marketers avoid such breakdowns for the most part. Their leaders excel at linking their departments to general management and other functions. They create a tight relationship with the CEO, making certain that marketing goals support company goals; bridge organizational silos by integrating marketing and other disciplines; and ensure that global, regional, and local marketing teams work interdependently.

Marketing historically has marched to its own drummer, at best unevenly supporting strategy handed down from headquarters and, more commonly, pursuing brand or marketing goals (such as growing brand equity) that were not directly related to the overall business strategy. Today high-performing marketing leaders don’t just align their department’s activities with company strategy; they actively engage in creating it. From 2006 to 2013, our surveys show, marketing’s influence on strategy development increased by 20 percentage points. And when marketing demonstrates that it is fighting for the same business objectives as its peers, trust and communication strengthen across all functions and, as we shall see, enable the collaboration required for high performance.

Another way companies foster connections is by putting marketing and other functions under a single leader. Motorola’s Eduardo Conrado is the senior VP of both marketing and IT. A year after Antonio Lucio was appointed CMO of Visa, he was invited to also lead HR and tighten the alignment between the company’s strategy and how employees were recruited, developed, retained, and rewarded. CoauthCo-author Weed leads communications and sustainability, as well as marketing, at Unilever. And Herschend Family Entertainment, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters and various theme parks, has recently expanded CMO Eric Lent’s role to chief marketing and consumer technology officer.

Marketing has become too important to be left just to the marketers. All employees, from store clerks to IT specialists, must be engaged in it.

Inspiring.

Inspiration is one of the most underused drivers of effective marketing—and one of the most powerful. Our research shows that high-performing marketers are more likely to engage customers and employees with their brand purpose—and that employees in those organizations are more likely to express pride in the brand.

Inspiration strengthens commitment, of course, but when it’s rooted in a respected brand purpose, all employees will be motivated by the same mission. This enhances collaboration and, as more and more employees come into contact with customers, also helps ensure consistent customer experiences. The payoff is that everyone in the company becomes a de facto member of tCo-authoring team.

The key to inspiring the organization is to do internally what marketing does best externally: create irresistible messages and programs that get everyone on board. At Dulux, that involved handing paint and brushes to thousands of employees and setting them loose on neighborhoods around the world. Unilever’s leadership conducts a quarterly live broadcast with most of the company’s 6,500 marketers to celebrate best brand practices and introduce new tools. In addition, Unilever holds a series of globally coordinated and locally delivered internal and external communications events, called Big Moments, to engage employees and opinion leaders companywide directly with the broader purpose of making sustainable living commonplace. Research shows this has led to a significant increase in employee commitment. Nike has a marketing staffer whose sole job is to tell the original Nike story to all new employees.

Inspiration is so important that many companies, Unilever among them, have begun measuring employees’ brand engagement as a key performance indicator. Google does this by assessing employees’ “Googliness” in performance appraisals to determine how fully people embrace the company’s culture and purpose. And Zappos famously offers new hires $3,000 to leave after four weeks, effectively cutting loose anyone who is not inspired by the company’s obsessive customer focus.

Focusing.

When we asked eight global marketing executives in one organization to list their top five marketing objectives, only two goals made it onto everyone’s list. The remainder was a motley assortment of personal or local objectives. Such misalignment, our data show, increases the farther teams are from an organization’s center of power. With marketing activities ever more dispersed across global companies, that risk must be carefully managed.

By a wide margin, respondents in overperforming companies agreed with the statements “Local marketing understands the global strategy” and “Global marketing understands the local marketing reality.” Winning companies were more likely to measure brands’ success against key performance indicators such as revenue growth and profit and to tie incentives at the local level directly to those KPIs. Ironically, almost all companies were meticulous in planning and executing consumer communication campaigns but failed to devote the same care to internal communications about strategy. That’s a dangerous oversight.

Marc Schroeder, the global marketing head for PepsiCo’s Quaker brand, understood the need for internal cohesiveness when he led a cross-regional “marketing council” to develop and communicate the brand’s first global growth strategy. The council defined a purposeful positioning, nailed down the brand’s global objectives, set a prioritized growth agenda, created clear lines of accountability and incentives, and adopted a performance dashboard that tracked industry measures such as market share and revenue growth. The council communicated the strategy through regional and local team meetings, including those with agencies and retail customers worldwide, and hosted a first-ever global brand stewardship event to educate colleagues. As a result of those efforts, all Quaker marketing plans are now explicitly linked to one overall strategy.

Organizing for agility.

Our research consistently shows that organizational structure, roles, and processes are among the toughest leadership challenges—and that the need for clarity about them is consistently underestimated or even ignored.

We have helped design dozens of marketing organizations. Typically we enter the scene after a traditional business consultancy has done preliminary strategy, cost, and head-count analyses, and our role is to work with the CMO to create and implement a new structure, operating model, and capability-building program. Though we believe there is no ideal organizational blueprint, our experience does suggest a set of operational and design principles that any organization can apply.

Today marketing organizations must leverage global scale but also be nimble, able to plan and execute in a matter of weeks or a few months—and, increasingly, instantaneously. Oreo famously took to Twitter during the blackout at the 2013 Super Bowl, reminding consumers, “You can still dunk in the dark,” making the brand a trending topic during one of the world’s biggest sporting events. That the tweet was designed and approved in minutes was no accident; Oreo deliberately organized and empowered its marketing team for the occasion, bringing agency and brand teams together in a “mission control” room and authorizing them to engage with their audience in real time.

Complex matrixed organizational structures—like those captured in traditional, rigid “Christmas tree” org charts—are giving way to networked organizations characterized by flexible roles, fluid responsibilities, and more relaxed sign-off processes designed for speed. The new structures allow leaders to tap talent as needed from across the organization and assemble teams for specific, often short-term, marketing initiatives. The teams may form, execute, and disband in a matter of weeks or months, depending on the task.

New marketing roles.

As companies expand internationally, they inevitably reorganize to better balance the benefits of global scale with the need for local relevance. Our research shows that, as a result, the vast majority of brands are led much more centrally today than they were a few years ago. Companies are removing middle, often regional, layers and creating specialized “centers of excellence” that guide strategy and share best practices while drawing on needed resources wherever, and at whatever level, they exist in the organization. As companies pursue this approach, roles and processes need to be adapted.

Marketing organizations traditionally have been populated by generalists, but particularly with the rise of social and digital marketing, a profusion of new specialist roles—such as digital privacy analysts and native content editors—are emerging. We have found it useful to categorize marketing roles not by title (as the variety seems infinite) but as belonging to one of three broad types: “think” marketers, who apply analytic capabilities to tasks like data mining, media-mix modeling, and ROI optimization; “do” marketers, who develop content and design and lead production; and “feel” marketers, who focus on consumer interaction and engagement in roles from customer service to social media and online communities.

The networked organization.

A broad array of skills and organizational tiers and functions are represented within each category. CMOs and other marketing executives such as chief experience officers and global brand managers increasingly operate as the orchestrators, assembling cross-functional teams from these three classes of talent to tackle initiatives. Orchestrators brief the teams, ensure that they have the capabilities and resources they need, and oversee performance tracking. To populate a team, the orchestrator and team leader draw from marketing and other functions as well as from outside agencies and consulting firms, balancing the mix of think, do, and feel capabilities in accordance with the team’s mission.

Companies are using this model to create task forces for a range of marketing programs, from integrating online and physical retail experiences to introducing new products. When Unilever launched Project Sunlight—a consumer-engagement program connected with its sustainable living initiative—the team drew talent from seven expertise areas. The international cable company Liberty Global uses task forces to optimize the customer experience at key engagement points—such as when customers receive a bill. These teams are led by managers from a variety of marketing and nonmarketing functions, have different durations, and draw from each of the three talent pools in different measure.

The task-force model is both agile and disciplined. It requires a culture in which central leadership is confident that local teams understand the strategy and will collaborate to execute it. This works well only when everyone in the organization is inspired by the brand purpose and is clear about the goals. Google, Nike, Red Bull, and Amazon all embrace this philosophy. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos captured the ethos when he said at a shareholders’ meeting, “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”

Building capabilities.

As we have shown, the most effective marketers lead by connecting, inspiring, focusing, and organizing for agility. But none of those activities can be fully accomplished, or sustained, without the continual building of capabilities. Our research shows pronounced differences in training between high- and low-performing companies, in terms of both quantity and quality.

At a minimum the marketing staff needs expertise in traditional marketing and communications functions—market research, competitive intelligence, media planning, and so forth. But we’ve seen that sometimes even those basic capabilities are lacking. Courses to onboard new staff and teach targeted skills are just the price of entry. The best marketing organizations, including those at Coca-Cola, Unilever, and the Japanese beauty company Shiseido, have invested in dedicated internal marketing academies to create a single marketing language and way of doing marketing.

Senior managers across the company can benefit from programs for sharing expertise on consumer habits, competitor strategy, and retail dynamics. Virgin, Starbucks, and other corporations have created intensive “immersion” programs for this purpose. Executives at the director level can profit from advanced courses that focus on strategic considerations such as portfolio management and partnering. We find that senior leaders often gain a lot in digital and social media training, as they’re frequently less well versed in those areas than their junior colleagues are. Appreciating this, companies including Unilever and Diageo have taken their senior leaders to Facebook for training. We’ve collaborated with partners at Google, MSN, and AOL to develop similar programs, including “reverse mentoring,” which pairs very senior managers with younger staffers. Even the CMO can benefit from continued, targeted training. Visa’s Antonio Lucio, for instance, hired a digital native to teach him about social media and monitor his progress.

Underperforming marketers, on the other hand, underinvest in training. Their employees receive just over half a day of training a year, on average, while overperformers give people nearly two full days of tailored, practical training by external experts. At first blush, the Marketing2020 study reveals what you might expect: Marketers must leverage customer insight, imbue their brands with a brand purpose, and deliver a rich customer experience. They must connect, inspire, focus, organize, and build, as detailed here. The finding that’s striking—and should serve as both a warning and a call to arms—is that most organizations haven’t been able to put all those pieces together. Our data show that only half of even high-performing organizations excel on some of these capabilities. But that shouldn’t be discouraging; rather, it illuminates where there’s work to do. Regardless of how marketing delivers its messages in the future, the fundamental human motivations that marketers must satisfy won’t change. The challenge now is to create organizations that can truly speak to those needs.

David Ogden
Helping People Help Themselves

David

4 Inbound Marketing Tools You Should Know About

inbound-marketing

For most small businesses marketing is either a huge expense or a huge burden. If you are trying to run a small business, or if you are an entrepreneur trying to navigate your way online, the word marketing is kind of a scary one.  

You envision yourself or your team spending hours and hours blogging, or creating content on social networks with no guarantee that your time investment will pay off. Or you pay someone through the nose to handle your marketing, not really sure if that investment will work out any better than doing it in-house.

This might be a bit of an exaggeration, but unfortunately, it is the reality that far too many start-ups and existing small businesses face. Here are some excellent tools that you probably have not heard of, that can help ease your burden. Do not worry, relief is on the way.

Markethive – this is a totally free social network for entrepreneurs and small businesses.  This network can help you, even if you don't have your own website. If you do have your own website, it can work hand in hand for even better results.

It would take an entire blog post to describe everything that Markethive can do for you, but let's just start with their blogging platform. Simply put I get 10X the post views on Markethive compared to the views I get on LinkedIn Pulse.  

Markethive is an engaged social network.  This is quite a surprising comparison, despite the fact that I have 10k 1st level connections on LinkedIn, and only 500 friends in Markethive.  As they say, go figure!

LeadOutcome  – you may or may not be aware that LinkedIn is one of the few social networks that allows the export of names and email addresses.  Your entire database of 1st level connections on LinkedIn whether you have 500, 2500, or 25,000 1st level connections, can be exported and sent email using automated marketing methods. This is obviously extremely significant for marketers.

I am not a big fan of autoresponders, or email blasters, as I like to call them.  Aside from telling you the open rates and clickthrough rates of email, they really do little else.

No autoresponder I know of can tell you who is "hot", and who is not.  There are a number of specialized features that CRM software systems like LeadOutcome offer, but the fact that each action a lead takes is "scored" makes a huge difference.

You now know who is "hot", and who is not. There are a number of additional features of LeadOutcome that make it highly desirable, but given that it's monthly cost is less than most autoresponders makes it a relative no-brainer.

Simple Lead Generator for Facebook and Twitter.  Without listing all of the features and benefits,  (see the video link for details), this powerful software lets you search for and find groups automatically by keyword search.  

You can post automatically to groups, and also to your friends on Facebook.  You can also auto-follow on Twitter and auto-like tweets in order to encourage people to follow you back.  This can save hours and hours of your time if you are active on either Facebook or Twitter.

Group Messenger  for LinkedIn. (see the video link for details) This software allows you to market automatically on LinkedIn.  No need for manual messages one by one anymore.  

You can auto-invite based on keyword searches and auto-invite group members for groups of which you are a member. You can email open networkers over and above the LinkedIn limits for invitations. 

Of course, you will find quite a large number of rather expensive systems for inbound marketing that will schedule and organize your content, etc. etc.  Despite the advantages of these systems, you will find most of what they do in Markethive at no charge.

An essential component of any inbound marketing strategy, or what I like to call automated marketing is about how to gain access to prospects.  There are always restrictions on the manual methods social networks offer to contact, message, and connect with friends and potential prospects.

The above-mentioned automated software systems allow you the access that you need in order to market effectively on these major social networking platforms. You can save yourself hours and hours of manual labor using these systems.

You will not find a more powerful or lower-cost suite of tools for inbound marketing on any other list on the Internet that is current for 2016 than this one.

Please connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadsonline  or call 973-259-6055 for more information.  

Related articles

David

2 Inbound Marketing Tools You Should Know About

inbound-marketing

For most small businesses marketing is either a huge expense or a huge burden. If you are trying to run a small business, or if you are an entrepreneur trying to navigate your way online, the word marketing is kind of a scary one.  

You envision yourself or your team spending hours and hours blogging, or creating content on social networks with no guarantee that your time investment will pay off. Or you pay someone through the nose to handle your marketing, not really sure if that investment will work out any better than doing it in-house.

This might be a bit of an exaggeration, but unfortunately, it is the reality that far too many start-ups and existing small businesses face. Here are some excellent tools that you probably have not heard of, that can help ease your burden. Do not worry, relief is on the way.

Markethive – this is a totally free social network for entrepreneurs and small businesses.  This network can help you, even if you don't have your own website. If you do have your own website, it can work hand in hand for even better results.

It would take an entire blog post to describe everything that Markethive can do for you, but let's just start with their blogging platform. Simply put I get 10X the post views on Markethive compared to the views I get on LinkedIn Pulse.  

Markethive is an engaged social network.  This is quite a surprising comparison, despite the fact that I have 10k 1st level connections on LinkedIn, and only 500 friends in Markethive.  As they say, go figure!

 

Simple Lead Generator for Facebook and Twitter.  Without listing all of the features and benefits,  (see the video link for details), this powerful software lets you search for and find groups automatically by keyword search.  

You can post automatically to groups, and also to your friends on Facebook.  You can also auto-follow on Twitter and auto-like tweets in order to encourage people to follow you back.  This can save hours and hours of your time if you are active on either Facebook or Twitter.

The above-mentioned automated software systems allow you the access that you need in order to market effectively on these major social networking platforms. You can save yourself hours and hours of manual labor using these systems.

Please connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadsonline  or call 973-259-6055 for more information.

 Related articles

David

Become a Guest Post Champion Promoter

For the most part, guest posting is sort of like begging, right?  You have a blog that you are trying to promote, and you are hoping to increase traffic to it, By guest posting on a blog that has more traffic than your blog, you are hoping to trickle away some of the traffic on the larger blog to your smaller blog.  

That pretty much sums it up, right?  The larger more popular blog doesn't mind so much, as long as you provide useful content to the blog owners readers. It is one less blog post the owner has to write after all.

In conclusion then, guest posters are like either beggars or leeches, and blog owners who allow guest posting are a little lazy. This is sort of a cynical way of looking at guest posting, I know, but it is to illustrate a point. 

Suppose you could promise that you would not only write a blog post, but you would post the link out to tens of thousands of your social media connections, and millions of members of Facebook, and LinkedIn groups to which you belong.  Would that make your guest post seem more attractive to the blog owner?  You better believe it would!

You move from the position as a guest post beggar to a guest post promoter, and even a champion.

Listen to these comments from a blog owner on whose blog I recently promoted a guest post at:

10 Ways to get more views on your LinkedIn Pulse Blog Posts

"Hi John, thats awesome! I see that your post is most viewed post of the site and is trending. Also, I see that it is performing well on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you so much for sharing. Great Synergy"! Max Angel – Cofounder at ThatsJournal.

I suggested that he might want to join Markethive, or that he might be interested in some of the automation tools I use.

Max responded.  "You are very welcome, John. Thanks a lot for the marketing inputs. I will check it out. Thanks again for the post contribution. Please feel free to let me know if you or your friends want to share anything related to marketing. We will be happy to help. Thanks!"  I would say that is a pleased blog owner, right?

If we work together, we can help each other find these kinds of guest blog post opportunities, and spread the message about Markethive.  Feel free to contact Max about guest posting on his blog.

John Lombaerde 

PS – did I mention that this promotion also brought in at least 5 or more new Markethive subscribers?

David

Can Inbound Marketing using Markethive give your business a boost?

Inbound marketing is now a trending topic in business, but it has actually been around for quite a while.  It has been used by savvy marketers to effectively attract and keep their audience.  This is the opposite from traditional media such as TV where everyone used to have to watch the same show at the same time,

The trend towards personalization and inbound marketing where anyone can choose which video to watch, which blog post to read, and which content they choose to subscribe is not going away anytime soon, and is here to stay.  Would anyone trade in their smart tv with recording capability and on demand media for their old tv with the rabbit ears?  Not a chance. Would anyone turn in their state-of-the-art smart phone for a land-line phone.  

It is not just about having the latest technology.  It is the availabilility of the content and the way it is delivered that is truly revolutionary.  The days of smoky back rooms of admen deciding what content to deliver are long gone.

Now with the development of social media, it seems as though the content factories have gone into overdrive.  Companies are scrambling now to put out content that can lure their prospects and customers into liking and sharing any kind of mediocre content the company wants to push out there.  Well, how long can people show interest in boring, uninteresting stuff?  Content may be king, but if you only produce junk, you will become the king of junk. 

Suppose you had a plaftorm that could connect all of your social networks together, that would be something desirable, right?  In addition if you had a group of people that had like minded interests, and you could share each others content on your blog, sort of like guest posting, but it would happen automatically. You could lessen your own burden of content creation, right?  And suppose you could automatically connect groups on your social networks with content that you create on your own blog, that would also be a way to extend the reach of your content, right?  If you start to get the picture of how content can spread in this way, then you are beginning to get the idea of Markethive.  

David

Social Media Marketing Made Simple Using IBOtoolbox

 

If you think Social Media is not effective, why are there more people on Facebook than there are people in China?  There are over 200 different social media sites available.

So how does IBOtoolbox fit into this mix?  Like any tool, it depends on how the tool is used.

These are the recommendations to use this tool effectively.  

1) You need to create interesting and engaging content.  This is a challenge for any writer, but goog copywriting really just takes practice.  The more you write, the greater skill you will develop.

2) Use hashtags.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest all use hashtags to let you describe the topic of your content or mark them as part of current trends.

3) Compliment your promotion on IBOtoolbox with more powerful networks.

MarketHive is one of the most powerful networks and gives entrepreneurs a complete platform of tools at no charge whatsoever.  This link will tell you all about this very unique network.  Markethive explained

4) Use video in your marketing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCXwxvLNkY  from Steve Jobs.
 

David

Profile Pages: Online Branding and Building Authority

Profile Pages: “Online Branding and Building Authority”

What is the difference between online branding and building authority? Some would consider it the same thing, but in reality it can be two completely different processes. Online branding is a way to get more exposure for your brand on all levels of online marketing, especially search and social.

Building authority takes online branding to the next level by making each online presence for a brand authoritative. It goes beyond just about creating a blog or social media account. The following are ways you can build your online brand as well as your authority.

Everyone wants to be an authority.  READ: How to be an authority (Know Your Why First)
https://markethive.com/group/marketingdept/blog/how-to-be-an-authority

Start a Blog with Awesome Content

Blogs are beneficial for brands for three reasons. First of all, blogs help you rank well in search engines – Google loves fresh, unique content on websites that are constantly updated. If you’re looking to meet this goal, be sure to use Markethive’s blog platform and build a blog team in a Markethive group to assist in greater content and curation.

RE: WordPress Markethive’s technology super charges WordPress campaigns.

Next, blogs provide for great content to share on social media networks. It’s hard to get traction if your just sharing product and sales pages. But if you’re sharing informative blog posts about your industry, you’re likely to get a lot of traffic and social shares.

Markethive provides plugins and widgets and tech that allows visitors to subscribe to your blog from their Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, thereby allowing your new Markethive posts to publish to their news feed automatically.

Finally, great blogs can help your brand build authority in your niche. This is where you go above and beyond cookie cutter posts that talk about your product to creating awesome content in the form of:

  •     Tutorials
  •     Infographics
  •     Videos
  •     Industry Interviews

Awesome content will show fans of your industry that you know your stuff and therefore are the brand to go with for their business needs. A great example of this is the blog you are reading right now – Markethive has Inbound Marketing technologies, the go to Social Network and infographics  that have been tweeted and liked over 10,000 times and posts that have been viewed on Facebook, LinkedIn and Stumbleupon over 100,000 times.

There are two great fears that brands have when it comes to blogging. One is that they won’t have anything to blog about, and this is a complete myth. Everyone can find something to blog about. You just have to expand your definition of the target audience. Imagine you had a body shop. You probably won’t get a lot of attention if you’re writing about paint booths and sanding tools all the time, but you will if you think about broader topics that would interest the people likely to visit an auto body shop. You can blog about the latest coolest Hot Rods at the coming Hot Rod Nationals show or the latest NASCAR winner to grab fans of those programs. Or you can blog about environmental issues and the Prious to grab environmentalists. Just think bigger!

The other fear is that they will be giving away “trade secrets” and lose their business. This one is especially common within industries like SEO, where a brand might feel like giving out ten steps to link building will give their customers the info they need to just do it themselves. But this just isn’t true. I have found that most of the time, if you give a complex, in-depth tutorial, a potential customer will see that your brand has the knowledge to do the service, but they won’t have the time or resources to do it for themselves. Hence, they’ll go with you because they feel confident that your brand has the expertise demonstrated in the content provided on the blog.

The key with your brand’s blog is to make sure that it is apparent who is behind the content. Whether you have your blog on your domain (yourbrand.com/blog), as a subdomain (blog.yourbrand.com), or as a separate site (yourbrandblog.com), be sure that it is matched to your brand. Check out Markethive’s site, blog, and subscribers profile pages, logged in dashboard and display variances on hand held devices. All are unique yet all are well branded and follow a conventional identity protocol (all on separate domains and different devices) as an example of great branding.

Guest Blog for Others (This is a major component in Markethive)

When it comes to blogging, you don’t want to keep the good stuff all to yourself. Guest blogging (join a Markethive Group to share content is that easy) is a great way to build your online brand presence and authority. The basic goal is to find a (GROUP) blog whose audience will be interested in your brand, and create a great piece of content for that blog.

Notice I said great piece of content. I would go so far as to say that the content you create for another (GROUP) site’s blog should be even better than the content you create for your own site. You want the content you create for another blog (GROUP) to rock. You want that content to generate additional social shares, comments, and traffic for the blog owner.

As you create GROUP posts for others, be sure to save the links to those guest posts for future reference. As you approach new GROUPs that you would like to guest post upon, you will want to include those links as examples of your successful guest posts in other Markethive GROUPS. If you can convince the GROUP owner that your post will be a perfect fit for their audience and will drive significant traffic and response, the GROUP blog owner will have a hard time resisting.

My main tips for GROUP blogging for your brand include:

1. Find the best GROUPs to guest post on.

When it comes to blogs you want to get a guest post on, your goal is to find those whose audience would be interested in your brand. The blog should get a significant amount of traffic and social shares as well – there’s no reason to post on a blog that has no visitors just because it has high PageRank or any other criteria – you want to get some brand exposure out of this! Use the Markethive GROUPs directory to start your search for blogs in your niche or industry.

2. Find the GROUPs blogging policy.

If you see that a GROUP allows guest bloggers or outside contributors, the GROUP should have some page or post posted that describes their post policy. If they do have a policy page or post, then be sure to note any and all criteria.

3. Start building a relationship with the GROUP owner first. (Markethive Groups is excellent for this)

Now that you’ve found the blog you want to pitch an idea to, don’t just jump in and pitch them yet. Start by getting to know the GROUP owner first by following their Markethive blog posts, their Twitter and their Facebook fan page. Comment on some of their latest posts – make those comments valuable to enhance discussion and demonstrate your writing skills and expertise in the industry. CoPromote their posts using Broadcasting tools and widgets. Do this for at least a week or two before pitching content to them.

4. Research and pitch great topic ideas. (Join others in our live Markethive Work Shops)

Don’t create the content first and then try to find it a home. Once you’ve found the right blogs and started engaging with the blogs themselves, you’ll get a feel for the type of content they publish.

To get an even better idea of what content is successful for each blog, subscribe to them in your Markethive back office blog platform. Then you will be able to see the site’s latest traffic scores. The higher score, the more comments, tweets, Facebook likes, and other social shares the post received. Use these high-scoring posts as an indicator as to what content does well on each blog.

Now you can message via the Markethive message system or request to join their group saying that you have recently enjoyed reading their blog (as evidenced by your commenting & social sharing) and would like to contribute to their site as a GROUP member. After reading their guidelines, you would like to see if they would be interested in the following topics. Then add three to four great post ideas that you believe will fit their audience to choose from. And of course, if you’ve done guest posts elsewhere, include some of your best links. If not, just include some great links from your own brand’s blog.

5. Create Awesome Content.

Once you get approval from a GROUP, your next job is to create an awesome piece of content. Make sure it fits the theme of that blogging GROUP and that it has the overall feel / tone of the GROUP blog you are submitting to. Also be sure to add in relevant links throughout your blog post – not to your own properties, but internal links to the blog itself. This shows the blog owner you’re really giving it 100% for them and their audience and not just trying to promote yourself.

The self-promotion piece should come at the end with your guest bio. Check out other author bios on the blogs and create yours to match. This is where you can say you are John Smith, an industry enthusiast from ABC Company.

Again, be sure to consider the blog’s guidelines and previous guest author bios when deciding to add one or more links back to your brand. The blog owner ultimately reserves the right to edit it as they feel is necessary.

6. Support your GROUP post once it goes live.

It’s not over yet. After that guest post goes live, you should give it your unconditional love in the form of social sharing with your brand’s audience on Twitter, Facebook, etc. as well as coming by to respond to comments. That kind of response on your guest post will further boost your brand’s reputation as a great guest blogger as well as a confident authority in your niche.

Don’t Forget Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a great branding and authority building exercise you can do on any blog in your niche. I would suggest subscribing to the top blogs in your industry in Google Reader, and each time there is a new post, be sure to read it thoroughly and add a valuable comment. Remember this isn’t about link building – this is about building your brand’s presence online as an authority in your industry.

Get a Disqus account as well as it is a sort of social network of people that comment.

You can use the blog’s previous comments as a guide as to how you should format yours. Some blogs require you to only use your real name, while others are a little more lenient in using your name – your company. I would suggest linking your comments to your blog as people are more willing to click through to a brand’s blog than their main website.

Your Online Branding & Authority Building Strategy Using Blogs

What is your brand’s strategy when it comes to building your brand’s authority using blogs? Be sure to share what you find brings your brand the best results in the comments!

Create a Consistent Brand Image for Each Profile

Have you ever visited a company’s social profile, and you were not sure that it belonged to the company? One of the most important parts of branding is keeping a consistent image across all of your online properties so that no matter what path a person takes from one property to the next, they will always know it is your brand. For example, someone might:

Find your fan page through a friend’s activity stream and then follow it to your blog, then website

See a tweet from someone they are following, visit your Twitter profile, and then continue onto your website.

Start at your website, then go to check out your social profiles to see if your company is engaging with fans. Engaging is fuel and grows awareness, authority and respect. Comment, recommend. Just drive by liking and endorsing does no one any good and makes you look like a tire kicking couch potato.

Just like you wouldn’t want pages on your website to be different themes, you will want your social profiles to do the same. Markethive also leads the way in doing it right as well:

MARKETHIVE

Markethive probably does the best with branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube accounts as shown above. All five are branded with the honey comb logo, color theme and climbers ascending Mt. Everest in representation of the entrepreneurial social community of entrepreneurs helping each other achieve their agendas, so you can feel the consistency moving from one property to the next.

BMW

The above shows BMW’s branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube profiles. Each online property uses the same color scheme and is currently focused on automotive technology. The logos are all consistent, and the auto focused in the pages is different perspectives, the coloring and themes are consistent as well

BOLTHOUSE

Bolthouse’s (organic farm fresh juices) branding between their website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube profiles as shown above uses the same color scheme, logo, and focus on their primary product, carrots and selections of juices. Excellent example of branding and consistency!

Help People Find Your Profiles

I do a lot of competitive analysis in my line of work, and one of the most frustrating things I have to do is search for a brand’s social profiles. Don’t hide your social media presence – flaunt them! Be sure to:

  • Put Social Icons on Your Website – Let visitors to your website know that you are engaging with your audience on social media as well by adding social icons to your website design. The most common places to place them include the header / menu bar, sidebar, and footer. They don’t have to be large and in charge – BMW’s are none existent on their main page and Bolthouse are right up top left of center where they should be and get the job done..
     
  • Put Social Links in Your Communications – Do you send emails regularly? Add social links to your email signature. Do you send newsletters? Add social icons to them.
     
  • Make Your Profiles Search Friendly – If I Google your brand name + Twitter, I should get your Twitter handle in the search results. To make this happen, be sure that the name of your social profile (and the username if possible) matches your brand name. You might be tempted to keyword optimize your profiles instead of optimizing them for your brand name – this is something you need to resist. You can learn more about social media SEO on how to optimize for both effectively for search engines.

Another frustration is the direct sales industry.

Even though the size of this industry is huge by any comparison with a market measured in the trillions, even the top 100 fail miserable branding with social media. Do not be like them, rather show them a good example with your efforts. After several days of research I was able to find one such company that at least had the top 5 Social Medias registered with a similar array (not the same name) of usernames.  The super majorities only have a token Facebook page, even less with Youtube and Twitter and nearly nonexistent with a Google+ and for that almost none of them are engaged.

BEACHBODY

Team Beach Body with a yearly market of 250 million, struggles with social media but has managed to set up the top 5 social medias, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin and Google+, albeit, the account usernames vary, and across the media branding is seriously lacking. It becomes painfully clear this industry needs Markethive or at least their distributors seriously do.

Get Engaged with Your Followers, Fans, and Subscribers

You probably know that it is important to maintain an active account by posting lots of updates, and that it is best to do something other than blasting advertisements non-stop about your brand. So the question is, what should you be doing to stay active in your social networks? Get engaged with your audience, of course. Here are the top networks to get socially engaged in for your brand.

Twitter Engagement

If you’re goal is to build a strong presence on Twitter and demonstrate your brand’s authority in your industry, you need get involved with your following. Some ways to do so include:

Monitoring Brand Mentions – If you use Twitter itself, just do a search for your brand and save the search for future reference. If you use a Twitter management tool like HootSuite, create a keyword search column that will constantly update you with brand mentions. Anytime someone says something about your brand, whether it is good or bad, you should be responding to it if at all possible. This may mean adding some extra team members to your social media GROUP as a response staff. But over time, if people see that you are always on top of any discussion of your brand, you will gain trust and receive lots of great word of mouth marketing. People will tell their followers what a great response they’ve received from you and likely recommend you based on their satisfaction level.

Monitoring Industry Conversation – One of the best parts of Twitter is that you can jump into any conversation, anytime. So if you are a company providing Inbound Marketing services and technologies like Markethive, you can monitor anyone who talks about Inbound Marketing, SEO, linking, Entrepreneurial interests, and other related topics and just answer simple questions that anyone asks about those topics demonstrating your expertise.

Curate the Best Content – Even if you are the best content creator in your industry, people often like to see a second opinion. Find out who other authorities are in your industry and share their opinion on industry topics with your following. You will gain more relevant followers simply for sharing the best news.

Facebook Fan Page Engagement

There are several different ways you can engage with your fans using your fan page that will keep your current fans active and bring new fans to your brand. These include:

Updating Your Fan Page on Facebook – It’s tempting to use HootSuite and other automated programs to update your fan page. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that if you want your updates to show up in fan’s news feeds that the updates must be organic, or originating from your fan page itself. So take the extra time to disable all of your autofeeds and start updating your fan page manually on Facebook. And when people start engaging with your posts or posting directly on your wall, be sure to respond to them. If they know they’re getting response, they’re more likely to return. No one likes a one-way broadcast.

Try Out Different Types of Updates – Don’t just post links or ask questions. Spice it up – add some video updates and photos. Different types of people like different types of content – be sure to try to cater to everyone by mixing your content up!

Thanks to the last major update to Facebook fan pages, you are able to use Facebook as your fan page. This means you can like pages as your fan page instead of your personal profile and then comment on them as your fan page. If you can find pages that are not direct competitors but whose audience will be interested in your brand, you will want to get active on them. For example, social media consultants should be living on Social Media Examiner’s fan page to connect with other individuals and businesses looking for social media help.

LinkedIn Engagement

If your brand isn’t on LinkedIn, you are missing out. LinkedIn allows you to add a company page where you can post your products, services, job openings, and even send status updates to your company followers including your latest blog posts. But some of the best branding and authority building activities for this network lie in the activity of the professional profiles including:

Participating in Groups – There are lots of great, active groups on LinkedIn in a wide variety of industries. Find the groups that have your potential client base within them and start getting active in discussions and posting useful content. Just be sure not to do anything that the group moderator would consider as spamming!

Answering Questions – The next best area to build a great professional reputation and strong authority in your industry is in LinkedIn Answers. There are questions asked every day in topics ranging from administration to technology. The people who answer the most questions are also featured on the answers’ home page as the week’s top experts!

Gaining Recommendations – Last, but not least, is recommendations. You can get recommendations on both the company pages and the professional profiles of your employees. Imagine if someone is browsing your company’s page and sees that the top employees have a ton of recommendations. It will show that you have a lot of experts in the industry which will make potential clients even more confident in your brand!

David

Having a CRM system doesn’t mean you no longer have to pick up the phone!

 

  In many types of businesses a salesman is required to close sales. This is not only true for big ticket items like cars and airplanes, but a myriad of different types of businesses too numerous to be named.

Even for most of the items on your grocery store shelves, a salesman probably was involved to get the supermarket manager or chain, interested enough to provide shelf space for that particular product at some point in time. Even though new automation marketing may provide prospect data and up to the minute d detailed information on how your prospects interact on your website, this information alone will usually not close the sale.

 

This is quite obvious basic information, of course, but no company with a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) software should be unclear that the CRM software is merely a tool to provide additional data for the salesperson, and to help find the prospects who are ready, willing, and able to buy at the current time.

 

Face to face visits, (when possible), phone calls, Skype calls, webinar events, presentations, etc. are where sales are made. Everything else is just background to the actual sale. Sometimes the amount of data can be a little distracting, but keeping all eyes on the prize should prevent this.

 

The relationship between the salesman and the customer is the most critical one a business has, and all the advertising in the world, cannot substitute for the personal relationship that exists there.

 

Sales and marketing managers also need to make sure that this fundamental level of contact with the customer is taken care of. Tracking calls, visits, and all of these one-to-one connections with prospects is just as critical as the detailed information you receive from a CRM, if not of greater importance. CRM systems, once costly propositions restricted to entrerprise-level companies are now highly affordable, even for the smallest business.

 

For more information, click the link below. click here —-> Affordable Automation for Everyone  

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David

What are all those connections on LinkedIn for anyway?

A segment of a social network  

A segment of a social network (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

The number of your LinkedIn connections is a critical factor in your long-term marketing success on this unique social network. If you connect with someone that has 10k 1st level connections on LinkedIn. That person's 10K 1st level connections automatically become your second level connections. their 2nd level, automatically become your 3rd.

The larger your network, the larger your reach of potential prospects.  Or, to put it another way, large networks command a larger sphere of influence.  With large networks it is apparent that you cannot know everyone in your network personally, but the advantage in my opinion outweighs the benefit of a smaller network of known associates.

As your network grows it will be more attractive for others to connect to you in order to widen their sphere of influence. For example, it is clear that a certain point, you will have to make less effort to find connections.  (It has been reported that this usually happens on LinkedIn when 3,000 or more 1st level connections have been made).

3,000 connections may seem like a big number if you rely only on friends and associates.  If you could add 30 connections per day, however, then it would take you only about three months to accomplish.  Not bad, right?

The larger your network, the more invitations will come to you, instead of having to reach out for every one of your connections. It is healthy for the growth of your network to have a mix of incoming and outgoing connection requests.  If you only send out connection requests and never receive any incoming requests, it may look unbalanced to LinkedIn. You might want to check your profile to see if there is anything that would prevent someone from connecting to you, if you notice this happening.  

Every time you post on Pulse inside of LinkedIn, your post automatically goes out to all of your first level connections.  If you have 10k connections, you have the chance for your content to be seen by over 10,000 people!  You will likely get many more views, likes, and comments with a larger network receiving your posts. LinkedIn is much more likely to promote your content on Pulse, with a greater number of views.  

If LinkedIn does promote your post, it could potentially be seen by tens of thousands of people.  It is not an easy task to get a blog post to command that kind of attention on a typical hosted WordPress blog. It takes quite a bit of time and effort.

One caution here. You will inevitably get more spammy type messages in your inbox. How long does it take to click delete?  If anyone becomes annoying and sends you repeated messages, you always have the option to remove them from your network. In my opinion the rewards far outweigh the risks, so I am busy building a large network on LinkedIn.  See the following links to find out more about the best ways to do this.

MarketHive – Social Network for Entrepreneurs

Goldfinch Digital Marketing – one-stop shopping for all your local marketing needs

Goldfinch Digital Publishing – marketing blog

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David

I Would Have Written a Shorter Blog Post, but I Didn’t Have the Time

Does this sound familiar to you? Originally the phrase has been attributed to Blaise Pascal in the form, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time".

Do you think that the world would have known about Malala if she had not blogged about her ideas and communicated them online? It is a fact that if you want to be successful online, you will have to learn to write.

Writing is not only about blogging. Most digital products have text. Even videos have some sort of script. Presentations, slideshares, webinars, emails, autoresponders, press releases and most forms of squeeze or sales pages, are essentially text. Each of these forms of communication has a different, somewhat specialized form of writing, but learning to blog on a consistent basis can help all of the other forms.

You will often see that some of the best writers in a particular niche are also quite prolific. That is not just coincidence.  It takes time, effort, and consistent practice to become a good writer, and extraordinary effort to become a great one.

You don't have to have a fancy vocabulary, or perfect spelling, (always use a spell checker), but you do have to learn to communicate your ideas in a clear, if not persuasive manner. It is necessary to empathize with your reader, prospect, or customer to hold their attention, and help them to learn something they did not know before.

Blogging in particular, requires good communication skill, but it is more than that. You have to have something to say that is interesting to the reader, and if possible, informative, educational, and even entertaining. This is a tall order, without a doubt, but the good news is that blogging is an acquired skill.

Especially in terms of efficiency, an online entrepreneur has many hats on this head, so no one can afford to spend excessive amounts of time dedicated to blogging. I have to say that a new social network called MarketHive has taught me a great deal about blogging and blog promotion.

For most entrepreneurs, it is not easy to generate traffic to a blog, especially a new one without resorting to paid traffic methods. At MarketHive there is a rapidly growing base of friendly entrepreneurs that view content, comment, and quickly engage with your blog posts.

I find the number of views is quite remarkable considering the size of the network. Sometimes is not only size of the network that matters it is the level of engagement. One final note: It really is true that practice makes perfect. With the right attitude, practice and using the right tools, anyone can learn to publish a blog post in about 30 minutes like this one.

For additional information on this topic visit Neil Patel's Quick Sprout Blog and the following links:

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David