Training Marketer

Forget the chickens and listen to a little marketing advice from a real expert …

When customers and you sales team are telling you to lower your prices, remember what Seth Godin says - there’s “no such thing as price pressure.”

“You need to increase your value. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because you’re not delivering enough value for the money you’re charging.”

More important than price, companies should feel pressure to increase value for the customer. Lowering your prices may also mean lowering perceived value and could turn customers away.

HRmarketer.com published their “Trends in HR Marketing” report, providing information on trends and best practices for marketing to human resources professionals and on HR buyer purchasing behavior.

The reports can be downloaded for free from HRmarketer.com (after filling out a quick registration form).

It is usually the person in the HR role who is purchasing the training products for their company, so knowing their buying behavior can offer insights on how best to market your product. This report could help you market more effectively, by knowing the best tools and methods to reach your target audience.

Covered topics include:

• Use of Internet search engines by HR buyers
• HR and Web 2.0
• How important is exhibiting?
• How often do HR buyers go out to bid for various products and services?
• HR “pain points” for the coming year
• How HR buyers “go shopping”
• Where should HR vendors spend their marketing and PR dollars?

Last Thursday, Seth Godin pointed out a known, but scary truth about Website traffic -

“When traffic comes to your site without focused intent, it bounces. Any site, anywhere, anytime. 75% bounce rate within three seconds.”

It’s happened to all of us, you find a great looking article on Digg or click on what seems to be a promising search result, but come to find that the site you land on doesn’t have what you were looking for. So you leave, and do so quickly.

On the business side, a high bounce rate can seriously devalue your Website’s visitor counts.

Seth’s advice - Instead of devising ways to get your bounces to stay, focus on keeping your current visitors engaged.

Here are some of our tips on how to keep visitors on your site and keep them engaged:

Have a clear purpose. You must be able to communicate to your visitor the purpose of your site in a matter of seconds. If a person can’t figure out why they landed on your site, they’re on to the next.

Keep your site simple. Make it easy for visitors to find what they need with organized navigation and keep a close eye on broken links

Use targeted advertising. Create targeted pay-per-click campaigns and take clickthroughs to tailored landing pages.

Provide valuable, timely content. Give visitors access to articles, archives, white papers and past newsletters with archives to old content. Also, create libraries full of audio, video and past webinars for viewers to watch.

Build an interactive community. Create a forum or host message boards focused on hot topics related to your site. Topics can range from product information to industry tips.

Whether used at trade show booths, on your Website or in customer emails, a well-products product demo can help explain your product and reinforce your marketing message.

A product demo can also get your sales team on the same page with the same marketing pitch and help generate quality leads.

MarketingProfs posted an article today on the best way to create marketing demos for products. The process should start by asking yourself four questions:

1. What is your demo’s objective?

A clear objective will help your team stay focused when deciding on visuals and message.

“If you’re a marketer for a retail Web site and your goal is to encourage more users to purchase products online, build a three-minute demo using actual screen shots of your site with a voiceover that tells users how to buy online as it shows them.”

2. What type of demo should you produce?

Should it be focused on the product, or conceptual? Product demos are very useful for people who want to see a product and understand how it works before they purchase. A conceptual demo can be used when the customer is already familiar with the product. Think about car commercials these days that barely show any features, but you still know what they’re selling.

3. How do you get the greatest return on investment with the demo?

The demo should be easily accessible to all of your customers. Make sure the demo does not take a long time to watch or load on your site. Don’t force people to download an application before being able to view a video, because they won’t take the time to do it.

Make sure the demo is easily portable in order to show it at trade events, to use on sales team laptops while on the road and easily sent via email.

4. Should you produce the demo in-house or outsource the work?

Do you have the resources in-house to create a professional demo in a timely manner? Outsourcing the project to a reputable firm that specializes in demo-development will free up more of your team’s time. If you choose to keep it in-house, be sure to produce a demo that you’re proud of. This is your chance to create a lasting first impression with customers.

Demos should be used anywhere you see fit - linked to in emails, newsletters, on your homepage, even given to your customer service and sales representatives to email customers.

The demo may be the first time a customer has ever come in contact with your company, make sure your marketing message comes out loud and clear.

Recent news headlines have been full of talk that our country is in a recession or very close to one. Consumer spending is down, layoffs are up and companies have put hiring on the back burner until our country finds it’s way out.

Historically, when the economy turns south, businesses tighten up their spending and marketing efforts are the first to be cut back.

Marketing Sherpa released the first half of a special report on marketing during an economic downturn that reveals key insights for business to business marketers.

A MarketingSherpa survey found that 60% of large companies reported a budget cut or plan to make marketing budget cuts this year. Marketers have been moving their spending from traditional tactics to online marketing tactics.

Online spending gets a boost

Of survey respondents, 38% are increasing online investment while 36% are decreasing investment on traditional tactics.

“Marketers could be investing more online because it’s less expensive and easier to measure ROI than it is for traditional tactics.”

Online events will experience higher attendance levels than in-person events during a downturn, according to the report. Attending an online event costs next to nothing when compared to the transportation, hotel and food costs that go along with in-person events.

More than half of survey respondents are investing more in email marketing to house lists.

Forty-seven percent of marketers are increasing spend on Web 2.0 strategies. Social media and Web 2.0 tactics cost little more than the cost of time to implement and upkeep, most likely the reason for increased spend according to the report.

Stay tuned for the results of the second half of this MarketingSherpa special report with information on how your business to business marketing can get through an economic downturn on top.

Download the full first half of MarketingSherpa’s report.

You’ve done the SEO, and made the first page of Google.  You’ve designed your page for maximum usability.  Your products are easy to order.  But the person landing on your page is just looking.  So how do you keep them there and more importantly, keep them coming back?

For many site owners, the answer is widgets and links to free goodies.

Widgets are small downloadable applications that relate to your customer’s business or personal lifestyle.  For example, a realtor might include a desktop mortgage calculator prospective clients can place on their own computer and use as they house hunt.   An elementary educational supplies site might want to add a widget for creating word search puzzles or word of the day lessons.  Trainers and managers might find the Citrix’s Extentrix Widget, an online meeting organizer, a great addition to their computer.

Sites like Widgetbox  or Yahoo Widgets can provide you with hundreds of free or low cost widgets visitors can use on your site or in many cases, download to their own PC or Mac – either way, it’s a great way to associate your site with value and functionality.

Widgets and freebees that help the client or prospective in their personal life are also a way to create value and “stickiness.”   Consider creating a catchy free ring tone that visitors can send to their own handset – sites like PhoneZoo will let you create a ring tone all your own.

Or use one of the many ring tone-creation software packages to create free tones to embed directly in your site for download.  Either way, every time the phone rings, your customers will think of your site  — a free and simple way to help brand your company among site visitors.

Whatever type of widget or freebee you choose, be sure to test it first from several computers over a variety of OS platforms.  While widgets and freebees are a great way to add value a site, there is nothing worse than offering a prospective a give-away that won’t work.

Web 2.0 (pay-per-click advertising, blogging, podcasting, press releases, etc.) will be used for the first time this year by one fourth of smaller HR product and service suppliers to generate leads.

Large vendors, with $50 million or more in annual revenue, remain slow to join Web 2.0, according to a survey buy HR Marketer.

There is an overall trend in the HR world to adopt new Web-related marketing and public relations activities. After lead generation, HR product and service vendors find their biggest marketing and public relations hurdles were search engine optimization and Web 2.0 technologies, according to the survey.

Read more findings here.

Has your company taken the leap to Web 2.0? What have been your greatest struggles?