Flick. Light Bulb. I need to do more marketing!

Lightbulb

He told me it was a valuable review of “Marketing 101” – but it was still Marketing 101 and he wanted a deeper dive (referring to our webinar last week about HR B2B marketing is more than social).

And that’s okay (the deeper dives are coming by the way), because not everyone needs that baseline review, although I still run into savvy business owners and marketing pros who do need it.

As if only as a reminder that the number of tactics has exploded in the past decade.

EX-PLO-DED.

The diversity of tactics is just as diverse as the professionals using them, who are just as diverse as your buyers and influencers consuming them -- while your strategy remains focused on generating visibility, website traffic and sales leads.

So it was refreshing to hear these words from another one of those savvy business owners:

“I need to do more marketing!”

That was Lindsay Colitses, Principal at Windridge Consulting, a professional hiring and coaching consultancy that helps companies identify “best fit” candidates for their clients’ positions.

Here’s what she has to say about our Marketing 101 webcast review:

It brought me back to a "marketing" mindset. Seriously, social media is great, but it shouldn't replace other more traditional marketing streams…Email sends used to be a mainstay for me. I abandoned them because of the difficulty of getting past spam filters, and quite honestly, the cost was prohibitive when people were not spending money on virtually anything anyway. It feels like we're coming out of that "battened down" phase - I hope!

An interesting aside, I had a returning client ask me last what happened to my e-newsletter, which I abandoned for blogging. It made me reevaluate the fact that my clients like getting something specifically targeted to them…

Lindsay and I are going to talk soon about tactical strategy, but keep these three things in mind:

  1. You have to constantly evaluate your marketing mix to ensure you’re generating the visibility, traffic and leads that sustain your sales efforts and growth. If not, then it’s time to revisit tactics that maybe you haven’t engaged in for a while.
  2. Larger companies may have the budgets and staff to manage dozens of marketing activities, but smaller companies can still manage at least a dozen effectively and reasonably. Really.
  3. You need to prepare, plan and execute a monthly marketing strategy. Then measure and revise – and re-prepare, plan and execute a monthly marketing strategy.

As Mark wrote yesterday, if all you do is social media you are not doing enough and it's not going to work.

It all starts with content. And once you have a system in place to produce ongoing, non-promotional, credible content on a regular basis that is valued by your business audience you must then have a system to distribute and communicate that content - which includes not only social media (blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts) but more TRADITIONAL marketing and PR such as press releases, media relations, direct marketing, webcasts, advertising, trade show participation, and so much more.

To help you get started we again recommend some content HRmarketer produced, starting with another webcast today, Tuesday, July 26, at 10 am PT (1 pm ET) titled HR B2B marketing is much more than social. Dude - register now.

Future webcasts will deep dive into topics such as social media marketing (go figure), event marketing, traditional media relations, lead nurturing, branding and much more.

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