6 Tips For Marketing Spring Cleaning
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on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 
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Spring is the perfect time to make a proverbial clean sweep of your marketing efforts and see what needs to be cleaned up, decluttered or re-vamped. (Of course, scheduling something like this once a year, no matter what time of the year, can be a great thing). By springtime, all those resolutions you made at New Year’s have either started their implementation or have possibly been forgotten.
Here Is Your Marketing Spring Cleaning Checklist:
- Dump The Old Stuff
Time to look at your materials, both online and offline. Anything that is old and out of date needs to go. If the material has some merit, then put it to the side and use it to repurpose later (after your spring cleaning efforts are done). But you may be surprised to find old brochures with incorrect contact information. Or web pages that show pictures and details of employees who no longer work for the company. Things like this make it appear as if you don’t pay attention to detail. So it’s imperative that you dump the old and make way for the new.
- Scrub Your Social Presence
Spruce up your avatars and cover photos. Make sure all the contact information and other details are current. Then look at the past year’s updates. Determine what the “hits” were and what the “misses” with your audience were. Focus on the content that resonates and as you go over your editorial calendar for the year, make sure you are concentrating on the content that clicks.
- Missing Anything?
While you’re working your social media profiles, make sure that you’re not missing another social media platform that would fit in with your goals and your audience. There are many, many social media options out there, and new ones popping up all the time. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to connect with your audience. And thankfully, it’s not like you have to take on additional work beyond setting up your profile. There are services available that allow you to synchronize your tweets, posts and updates so that everything can be scheduled out. (There are also companies who can do it all for you – like Grow Socially – which makes it easy to stay on top of it all and reach your audience.)
- Time It Right
Content is important, but did you know timing is crucial as well? Pull out that editorial calendar again and look at what you have scheduled. Is it too little, too spaced out? Is it too much, information overload? You want to find the sweet spot of staying in front of your audience and being an informational resource, but not being the annoying know-it-all pest.
- Check The Search Results
Google is constantly tweaking the way it ranks pages. You should never get complacent about how your business is pulling up on searches. You want to see what’s ranking high and what’s not and figure out the “why” of both.
- Do A Little Redecorating
Maybe your website can change up from a 2-column to a 3-column. Maybe some of your online materials are due for a bit of a spruce-up. Taking some time for Marketing Spring Cleaning can help ensure your company stays on track and looks its best. It’s easy to let some of the little things slide, but you want to show your audience that you place high importance on even the smallest of details. A little cleaning goes a long way!
Allow our marketing team to spruce up your marketing > > >
Tags The Top 5 Practices For Selling Marketing Services
Selling marketing services may seem like one of those “pie in the sky” endeavors at times. There is more of an emotional component to selling services (versus products), because the intangible is involved. And the results desired (after your awesome services have been utilized) may mean different things to different people.
You aren’t selling an item, you are selling the idea of results and what those results mean to your prospects. Here are the top five practices for selling your marketing services:
1 - If you haven’t already, you need to narrow that target market.
Let’s face it, you can’t be all things to all people. And you don’t want to work with everyone. You want to work with the “right” companies. Companies you can help. Companies that fit your brand and “get” your work. Companies that appreciate your expertise.
2 – Since you don’t have a product to offer as a sample to your prospective clients, you need to show them what you can do, without offering up your services for free.
The best way to do this is to create an in-depth online portfolio of sorts that showcases your abilities. Make everything you put out – blog, white papers, newsletters, etc. do “double duty” in that they should be a promotional item that shows off your marketing capabilities, but also provides some information or tips that can help the prospect.
3 - Use testimonials and case studies to your advantage.
Prospects like to see what others have to say. A great testimonial is good stuff. But don’t just stick with testimonials. Ask your current happy clients for referrals. Obviously they aren’t going to offer up their competition. But, since no business operates inside a bubble, your clients work with companies (perhaps on joint ventures) that likely need your help. And your clients, when happy with your work, may have a few suggestions on who you should contact and market your services to.
4 - Track down the decision maker – don’t get stuck with the gatekeeper.
When you are given referrals, you typically get to go straight to the person who will make the decision whether or not to work with you. But when you acquire leads through other means it’s not unusual to get stuck with someone who doesn’t have the authority to make the decision. You need to determine who is in charge of saying yes to your marketing services and get to that person. Don’t waste your time with the employees who can’t give the green light. Be polite. Be business-like. But push past the keeper of the gate and get to the “right” person.
5 – Since results can be somewhat subjective, you need to pinpoint exactly what your prospective client’s individual needs and wants are.
You may be promising them A, and they really want B. Or they may not understand that A will eventually lead to B. It’s up to you to make the possible results crystal clear. Explain how you can measure the results and what those results will translate into for your client’s business.
In the end the prospect should believe in your abilities, understand what it is that you can do, and believe that you are worth every penny you charge for your services.
To learn more, here is a free White Paper from John!
Make Your CRM A Successful Collaboration
As technology has evolved, so has CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Historically, CRM tended to focus on internal operational effectiveness. It was all about providing easier access to information for employees and ideally help promote collaboration between departments within the company. It was a little black book on steroids, designed to help store a company’s valuable contact data and it grew to include the ability to generate automatic follow ups and beyond.
Today’s CRM has to take into account social media, mobile marketing and more. CRM captures the attention of prospects with relevant content and makes sure that content is available via multiple channels. It’s an integrated customer experience via various touch-points. It’s a much more social CRM model, using blog posts, videos, podcasts, tweets and other social media posts to disseminate information, educate prospects, invite conversation and develop relationships.
CRM is not only for the “big” guys in business. Today, businesses can find the right fit for their budget and their strategic needs with software products that streamline everything. Software as a service (SaaS) has created an even playing field, allowing companies of all sizes to implement CRM tools and strategies at a much more reduced cost than was required in the past.
When you combine the current philosophy of social CRM and the right software package, you can have a match made in heaven. You have the process in place to help coordinate efforts, but you have the strategies that embrace the conversational nature of CRM that helps develop relationships. It is sort of a yin-yang thing. You want to balance the internal operational efforts with your outside lead development.
With today’s CRM, if you get a complaint on Facebook, you face it head on and contact the customer. You work out a solution. But it doesn’t end there. You make sure the practices and procedures are in place internally so that the issue doesn’t arise again. And, you may even turn the whole situation into a case study, versus yesteryear’s sweeping issues under the proverbial rug.
Look at the little things – talk to your current clients and prospects via your website blog by inviting comments, on your YouTube channel and other social media profiles. Ask and engage. What are their likes and dislikes? What are their suggestions? Thoughtful or stupid, they all may at least have a little merit.
In the end, successful CRM is all about a synchronistic collaboration – between sales, marketing, customer service, social media, and a great software platform. Every company (well, the ones that want to make money and stand the test of time) wants to develop strong, lasting relationships with their customers. And in order to do that, a company needs to understand their customers’ needs and behaviors. How can you cross-sell or upsell if you don’t fully understand your customer’s needs? You can’t.
You need all the pieces in place in order to succeed.
Learn more about interlinkONE’s CRM tool here.
What Is A Pick Ticket?
In every warehouse that holds items to ship, there must be a way to tell their staff what inventory to pick off the shelves and pack for shipment. Inaccurate picking will lead to inaccurate deliveries.
Then you have upset customers and your customer satisfaction takes a nosedive. A pick ticket tells the operator what to pick and how many.
This pick ticket may be paper, or a large sticker (especially if part of the pick ticket is used for the shipping label), or it may actually take the form of some sort of electronic file on a small handheld device or computer screen.
On a typical paper pick ticket you will usually see:
- a logo
- where the shipment will be delivered
- who placed the order
- date and time of order placement
- date and time of order fulfillment
- the list of items ordered
- quantity of each item ordered
Accuracy on the pick ticket is crucial. The warehouse operator is going off what is provided. The ticket needs to be clear in terms of items, with any special instructions included.
The paper pick ticket can also double as a packing list. Check out the next box you receive. There should be a piece of paper alongside the item(s) ordered and it should be pretty clear in terms of quantity and item. It may have other wording and text that is gibberish to you, but it means quite a bit to the warehouse staff.
Certain codes may indicate where the item is located in the warehouse. Certain letters may indicate the initials of the warehouse staff picking your order. The end result is that the pick ticket has information that is imperative to the efficient running of the warehouse.
Learn more about pick tickets and warehouse inventory management!
Is It Time For A Mobile Marketing Make-Over?
Whether you are an early adapter or late to the mobile marketing game, it’s never the wrong time to take a look at what you’re doing and see whether you need some small or seriously major updating.
So, when is the last time you’ve checked out your mobile site or app? Yes, you know it exists, but do you know what it currently looks like? Make sure you check it out on several different mobile devices to see how it looks. Is everything still useful and relevant? If not, make sure it gets updated. Relevancy is important and you need to make sure you provide your audience with a relevant experience.
Have you been tracking your mobile marketing efforts? If so, what have you done with the information gathered? It’s easy to nod and then do little to actually address what your results are telling you. You may be on the right path, but you may be veering off-course without even realizing it. Looking closely at the successes and failures, both big and small, can help you pinpoint where corrections to your mobile marketing strategies need to be made.
Look at the goals you set in place when you first outlined your mobile marketing efforts. Did you set measurable goals, or just some more broad objectives? Either way, you need to look at these and decide if you are hitting those goals. If not, are you closing in on them? Or are you way off target? It’s time to evaluate where you are in terms of your mobile marketing goals. And then you can determine what changes need to be made. This can be a good gauge of whether a major overhaul of your mobile marketing efforts needs to be implemented or if you just need to make some tweaks here and there.
Even if you have achieved your goals, while that is great, you cannot get complacent. Technology is changing all the time. And the expectations of your audience change as well. What works right now may not work in the near future. Sooner than you realize.
The phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is true in some cases, but shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule in mobile marketing.
Think about a world class athlete. Even a runner who breaks the Olympic record will set goals and push him or herself further to see what’s beyond that most recent record-breaker. As a marketer, you should always be striving for more. Celebrate when you hit your goals and important milestones, but then see how you can push yourself and your mobile marketing goals even higher.
Makeovers don’t have to mean major overhauls. They can encompass small changes that make major impact. By keeping an open mind and going back over goals and your current efforts, you can make sure your mobile marketing keeps itself targeted on the bull’s-eye – reaching for those goals you consistently set.
Want more information on mobile marketing? Follow @iflymobi on Twitter, and be sure to connect with me as well!
