Creating and nurturing relationships are at the core of every successful business. Done properly, networking can be the catalyst for creating new relationships. Typically, you think about networking for business development, but keeping your network strong can pay off in other ways.

During the first four years of our existence as a strategic marketing firm, Right Source Marketing developed an expertise in content marketing. In October of 2012, we had reached a point where we were ready to scale the business for growth. As a result, we started searching for a key position: Vice President of Content Marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

When we began recruiting for an Account Director three months ago, we decided to be open-minded yet highly selective about the candidates. We knew we needed someone with years of strategic marketing experience, as the success or failure of client engagements would be highly dependent on this person’s ability to develop and implement strategic marketing plans. Outside of that requirement, we were open to a wide variety of backgrounds, as well as where, how and when we might find this person.

The job boards generated lots of resumes, but few qualified candidates. Everyone in the company posted the job opening on LinkedIn and Twitter, which resulted in a few very good referrals and interviews, but none seemed to be a perfect match.

So how about Facebook as a recruitment tool? Isn’t that for keeping up with friends? What the heck…throw caution to the wind and bore our “friends” with a business-related status update. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what I did, and that’s exactly where we found our winning candidate.

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During a successful career that extends beyond three decades, I’ve owned and operated media companies, advertising agencies and marketing consulting firms. During this time, I’ve seen that the best sales and account managers I have worked with treat initial interactions with prospective clients as fact-finding missions rather than sales pitch opportunities.

The key to being a good consultant of any kind is to ask the right questions, dig deeper to get to the core issues, and then present how you are uniquely qualified to solve their marketing challenges. In an ideal world, each client should have a customized marketing plan, so priority one is to learn all that you can about each company’s business goals and marketing objectives. While this exercise of discovery can involve dozens and dozens of questions, I’ve narrowed down the list to seven key questions.

1. What is your company’s mission?  It’s amazing how many companies do not have this right. They may answer what they do or how they do it, but they don’t get to the essence of why they do what they do.  A properly framed mission answers the question of why from the perspective of the customer. In other words, what value does the company deliver to their customers? If the company doesn’t know the answer, it’s the consultant’s job to help them uncover it. Only after a clear mission is stated can a sound marketing and communications strategy be formulated.

2. Who are your ideal customers? Every business serves a variety of customers, but very few businesses take the time to understand who their ideal customer is. The answer to this question will help direct marketing activities, and should be stated in very specific terms. Where do they live or work, what is their education level, profession, job title, income and gender? Equally important, what are they interested in buying and how often will they buy? And, if a content marketing plan is part of the marketing solution, asking how and where their customers get information will give you a great head start.

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Marketing Automation software is on a tear right now, and for good reason. Organizations that deploy marketing automation can more effectively move leads from the top of the sales funnel through to leads that are more inclined to buy at the bottom of the funnel. The software scores each prospect based on a variety of factors and then automatically delivers communications via email based on this behavior.

According to a study by Raab Associates, the industry brought in approximately $325 million in 2011, an increase of more than 50 percent over the previous year. Marketo, Eloqua, Infusionsoft, SilverPop, Hubspot and a whole host of other companies are enjoying rapid growth as they sell their hosted software solutions in increasing numbers.

Wondering whether your company can benefit from automating your marketing and sales through this type of software?  Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you getting enough leads into your company? If not, automating your marketing activities is part of the solution in increasing lead flow. Done properly, information is delivered to qualified prospects even before a need is clearly understood.
2. Are you getting a large quantity of leads with a varying degree of quality? If your sales team doesn’t have the time to follow up on all leads, marketing automation software ensures that prospects are not only getting timely responses, they are getting customized responses based on the information they appear interested in.
3. Is your company already using a customer relationship management (CRM) system? Marketing automation software works most effectively when integrated with a CRM system.  It is based on the concept of nurturing leads with relevant content until the individual appears ready to buy and then forwarding that prospect to a sales rep at the ideal time in the buying process.  Combining marketing automation with customer relationship management is the technical solution of integrating marketing with sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you think of a message, webinar invitation, white paper or eBook download offer that really hooked you?

Were you curious? Did you want to keep reading?  Share, discuss and save it?  Did you finally decide to buy?  If so, that’s powerful content marketing in action. There are lots of definitions for content marketing, but in essence it is a stream of useful information delivered to prospective and existing customers on an ongoing basis.

Consumers and business buyers want to be educated and they want a conversation rather than a one-way sales pitch. Here’s where content marketing really shines. It’s worth taking a moment to think about how many skills it takes to help produce that great content.

Direct response marketing—these folks understand the prospect’s language, they know about powerful offers, and they know how to close.  Granted, in content marketing, the best kind of promotional content actually appears to be the least “promotional,” however, the pros can weave compelling, yet subtle, calls to action into every bit of content they write.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—search engine algorithms are always being revised and the latest trend is toward ranking the freshest and most relevant content highest… there’s an art and a science to incorporating keywords within your content.

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