Marketing News
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 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.
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...
B2B companies without a LinkedIn marketing strategy are missing big opportunities.
Did you know that there are nearly 800 million individual users on LinkedIn in more than 200 countries?
And there are over 57 million companies with business pages on the platform.
LinkedIn is definitely the place to be for businesses and professionals to market themselves. According to LinkedIn, their growth rate is currently two new members joining per second. In Microsoft's FY21 Q2 update, it was reported that user sessions grew 30% over the previous three months, and the platform's total revenue increased 23% in that period.
Things have only continued to grow. This past January, Microsoft reported that LinkedIn had record engagement on the platform last quarter. "LinkedIn has become one of the world’s largest platforms for professional events, with...
Do you ever feel like your brand identity gets lost in the day to day operations of the company?
You aren't alone! Maintaining a strong, consistent company brand takes effort and a bit of planning.
The Beckmann Collaborative team usually asks new clients about their brand values, brand guidelines, and overall brand identity while we are onboarding. Surprisingly, the responses to these questions are often something like, "here's our logo, but we don't have any guidelines or anything."
Our reaction internally is something like this....
While a brand can be whatever you want it to be, not knowing or sticking with your brand identity is a problem.
Brand Identity: This is your brand's outward expression. It includes the company name, logo, brand values, value proposition, and all communications. It is how the world recognizes your brand as uniquely...
What is your business doing to have a successful holiday season and wrap up the year nicely?
We have a few ideas that may help you think about the joyful to-dos for your business this December.
1. Send Personalized Cards
Yes, this is a no-brainer on your holiday to-do list as a business that cares for its customers. However, the important word in this to-do is "personalized."
Whether you send a printed card, a gift, or even just an email, the important part of the experience for customers and partners is personalization. No one wants to feel like another number in your rolodex. Make sure they know that you know who they are and that they matter.
Yes, there are semi-automated ways of doing this (if you really cannot afford the time). However, I emplore you (specifically B2B companies) to make time to think about your customers / clients. Aim to...
Accounting and Bookkeeping Automation Ideas
As we continue our journey through some great automation ideas, this week the focus shifts to finance.
Yes, there are things in your bookkeeping and finance software to automate and make your life easier. Since we use the Zoho Finance Suite, most of the automation ideas here will reference those apps. However, many of these can be done in other platforms or by using tools such as Zapier.
If you missed the previous articles in the automation series, you can catch up. The first article was about Automations for your Sales Team. That one provides useful CRM Automation Ideas to help your sales team close deals faster. The second article talked about Email Sequences and Email Automations where we shared clever Email Automations to engage both prospects and customers.
Avoiding Double Data Entry
Connect...
