Marketing News
As a small business owner, I prefer working with Independent Contractors
Why? Simply put, independent talent is excellent to work with.
When you run a small business, it's important to have people ready on your "virtual bench" who can quickly jump onto a project or work with a new client.
What kind of person becomes an independent contractor? Why would someone take on the risk of being solo instead of having the security of a full-time employer?
Contractors have more flexibility, autonomy, and room for creativity. It's ideal for people with an entrepreneurial spirit. And THAT is a big part of why they are so great to work with when you're a small business owner or entrepreneur yourself. In addition, hiring a contract worker rather than a full-time employee could save your business money.
There are some limitations and potential...
Content Marketing is about presenting your message(s) across multiple channels in a way that clearly and consistently reflects your brand (and the ideas you're sharing). Executing a strong content marketing strategy means having unified messaging, which requires a connected team using connected marketing apps or platforms.
As a B2B marketing strategy team, Beckmann Collaborative's primary goal in content marketing is to drive engagement at every touchpoint using an easily managed process. Let's emphasize this part - having an Easily Managed Process is key to being successful. You can write the best copy and make cool images, but if it's too complicated to get it published and shared, then it's useless.
The marketing data from different apps must be connected for actionable reporting and consistent user experience. The good news is that it's no longer...
In the past, we've talked about using your customer intelligence to improve content marketing. This article digs in further at how you can be generating more website traffic with SEO by leveraging your CRM data. Businesses rely on online visibility to attract new customers and connect with existing ones. Today, search engine optimization (SEO) remains one of the most effective ways to solidify a business's digital presence by ranking high in search engine results.
According to data from StatCounter, Google remains the search engine market leader at 93% of search traffic as of January 2023. Bing is the closest competitor with 3% global share while Yahoo!, Yandex, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo share the majority of the remaining 4% search traffic.
You can find out about your website's search engine traffic in your Google Analytics under the Acquisition reports and changing the dimension...
How can a marketer stand out from the thousands of others?
Marketing leaders are in a tough spot. The world is changing fast, and the skills required to succeed in the modern marketplace are rapidly becoming more sophisticated.
"Hard skills" refer to those things you can learn in a classroom or through hands-on training, such as how to use spreadsheets or write code. "Soft skills" refer to more abstract qualities like communication and empathy—things that aren't necessarily taught in schools or on the job, but which can make or break your professional success. Though soft skills are a vital way to differentiate yourself from other marketers, gaining certifications, continuous education, and training for your hard skills are important for driving your career forward. Many technical skills continue to be acquired while on the job, but marketing managers still...
Your Big Time Saver: Integrating Zoho Forms with Zoho CRM
This fall we've worked with several clients on some CRM maintenance - cleaning up fields, making sure data is complete, getting up to date information filled in, etc. It can be very tedious if you do not have several people contributing or one person dedicated to the work. Instead of waiting until December to cram in a bunch of maintenance clean up work, maybe you should make it easier by going to the source - Your Clients / Customers.
Many people think of Zoho Forms as a way of collecting information from cold sources for email sign-ups, bug ticket tracking, event registration, and so on. However, there is much more you can do with it. This article includes both strategy and some specific how-to steps for you. The goal is for you to have less work while keeping your CRM database up to date AND creating a useful...
Your business can have social impact without ignoring revenue or growth
When a business aims to do more than sell products or services by giving back to the community in some way, we call it social impact or corporate responsibility. This is an initiative that aims to improve the lives of others while continuing to generate revenue and representing to the public that the company is altruistic. Larger companies use their social impact initiatives to recruit and retain employees by providing them with a sense of a bigger purpose.
If you are a small business owner with limited cash flow or resources, this may seem like a far fetched or unrealistic idea for you. Today, we challenge you to consider the good that social impact plans can make on everything - your community, your band, your team, and your bottom line.
While we are huge fans of using a customer database tool such as Zoho CRM for your business, one of the biggest pain points can be CRM analytics and reporting. After you and your team have gone through the process of dutifully inputting data and keeping things up to date, how do you measure sales and marketing success?
This article aims at preparing CRM users, especially those using Zoho CRM, for how you can slice and dice your data to make the most of your CRM analytics.
What is your goal for CRM Analytics?
Yes, this may initially seem like a silly question but we promise it is important. When we've asked clients this question, often there is a long pause. Sometimes the client will tell us they need to think about it more and get with the team. Why? Frankly, people know that data analytics is important but without a goal in mind it's just a bunch of...
There's something about marketing the intangible that seems to have unlimited potential for creativity when you're a marketer. Unlike product marketing, services marketing requires a unique approach to reach your target customer or client.
When we compare the effort of selling a widget to that of selling a service, there are noticeable differences. With a widget, there is usually just one primary person to target, one specific product use, and many obvious ways to promote it. The incredible challenge of building trust with the target audience is a big part of what makes services marketing so fun and challenging. We're often surprised to learn that many service companies do not have any kind of marketing plan.
How Building Relationships is Core to Services Marketing
Most marketing these days is already considered "relational" or based on building a...
Will a marketing communications strategy help sales and prevent breakdowns?
Simply put... yes. Documenting any strategy can make a significantly positive impact on whatever the focus may be in that context. Here we're talking about marketing, but there's a larger document you may also need in your business that some people refer to as a corporate communications plan. Do you have anything like this for your team and business?
Before getting into the details, let's pause to ask why we should be talking about communications strategies. For me (Candice), this topic recently came up when I started reading Amelia Bedelia to my toddler.
The story of Amelia Bedelia's incredibly silly and over the top mis-interpretations of her chores list make us laugh out loud. One of my favorite moments is when she reads, "Put the lights out" and interprets that to mean...
Every brand has their core values. When a colleague asked me (Candice) about Beckmann Collaborative's values about 5 years ago, I froze. I was so caught up in the day to day operations that I had not really paused to think about WHY I was doing this marketing strategy stuff. And I had not documented the values I expected in the WAY the work is done.
It is interactions like this one about core values that make me such a believer in building a strong community. Thank you to everyone who has ever contributed to the growth, learning, and innovation that Beckmann Collaborative has experienced in the past 7 years.
These are our core values
Wisdom, Integrity, Collaboration, and Freedom
Wisdom:
The thoughtful application of knowledge we gain along life's journey teaches us many things. Wisdom brings both grace and humility. Beyond consulting, we aim to educate...
