Training Marketer

Marketo recently posted their “9 Commandments” for marketing high-tech companies, beliefs that can be followed across the business to business marketing world. Especially with training marketers, who just like high-tech marketers, sell their brands to niche markets and face similar challenges.

Most marketers face the same challenges: limited budgets and limited resources. Through it all, they’ve been able to establish a strong brand and “powerful marketing machine.” The following are some of the lessons they’ve learned that are most relevant to training marketers:

1. Be omnipresent. Training product buyers are using the Web to shop for products the same way they shop for products themselves. Marketo “spread out as many online tentacles as possible” to reach their customer in multiple areas on the Web. If your budget is spread thin, focus on high ROI tactics like a blog and search engine optimization.
2. Test, but don’t over test. Testing helps you decide what is truly working and what you should throw out. Over testing, by combining too many variables may lead to insignificant results and wasted time.
3. Train your sales team. While focusing on the marketing is important, it’s also important not to forget about the sales team that is in charge of selling your product. Make sure your marketing message is delivered evenly across all aspects of your business. Your sales team is the voice of your company. Train them to deliver the value of what your selling and explain why you’re different than the rest.
4. Find balance. Being everywhere at the same time, like we said above, is tough. Don’t let it get you stressed out trying to cover all the bases. Instead, focus on what is working and let go of what’s not.
5. Build in stages. Don’t try to do it all at once. You may think that you need the best website, with the latest and greatest bells and whistles programmers have to offer, but you can’t do it all today. Build your marketing in pieces.

Last week, MarketingSherpa published a great “how-to” for all of those companies out there who are lacking in time or money and want to improve search results. They talked with an expert who revealed seven free SEO tools and one paid option to help save you time and money.

Will Reynolds, SEER Interactive Founder, gave the Sherpas a guide on how to sift through the numerous search tools out there to “distinguish the helpful and free ones from the useless and costly ones.” He shares the eight tools he uses on a daily basis, and only one costs money to use.

He warns to not rely solely on any one method and advises to use the tools like a team. Reynolds also tells people to know your business well enough to know when data from the search tools is flawed. He personally ignores up to 20% of the data returned by the free SEO tools.

Here are the seven free tools Reynolds depends on:
(Read the full MarketingSherpa How-To for complete information)

Google Advanced Search - Allows you to limit a search to: anywhere in the page, title of the page, text of the page, URL of the page, and links to the page. Reynolds thinks the most important one is “links to the page.” He uses the tool to target link campaigns and keep track of the competition.

Google Trends - Gives you a picture of keywords’ historic search volume on Google dating back years and illustrated with graphs. The tool is best used to decide on a keyword (ex. singular or plural?).

Microsoft adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 - This tool is only free to adCenter account holders with Excel 2007 and is still a beta version. It can be used to measure MSN traffic directly from an Excel spreadsheet.

Rank Checker - A Firefox plug-in that takes keywords and reports your rankings on top search engines, including Google in other countries. The tool automates the process of manually going into each search engine and checking your rankings.

SeoQuake - Another Firefox plug-in best used for researching your competition. It can also help you determine why the competition is outranking you and give you reason to adjust your SEO strategy.

Today’s Hot Trends - A part of Google Trends that shows the top 100 fastest-rising search terms on Google. The tool can help you seize an opportunity or create a blogging strategy.

Yahoo! Search Assist - As you type in a term in the Yahoo! search box, Search Assist gives suggestion for related keywords, loosely based on word content and search volume.

And, one paid tool:

VoiceStar - For a cost of about $500 a month it can help you connect telephone conversations with online searches. The tool delivers traceable phone numbers in search ads. Reynolds uses this tool primarily for his business to business efforts, especially when large purchases are involved. Many people would rather pick up the phone and talk to someone when placing a $10,000 order.

You can now create Facebook pages for products and brands. I have to thank those at the MarketingSherpa blog for bringing this cool feature to our attention.

Facebook is giving marketers the chance to create product and brand pages for free (as of now). Enthusiastic customers can become your friends, giving you the chance to network with their friends. It may open up a whole new world of product promotion, and it’s right there for free.

Be aware that it’s not the same as creating a regular Facebook profile. You have to go to the Facebook homepage, click on the like titled “Advertisers” in the footer. It will take you to a page where you can buy ads, but look closely for the free offer to post a product without being a paying advertiser.

The Sherpa blogger foresees a charge for this new feature sometime in the future, so take advantage of the offer now. Good luck.

Marketers learned how to sell to Generation Y and the Millenials from the time they picked up their first Nintendo controller. The same generation has now moved behind desks in the corporate world and has given them a paycheck, giving them more buying power than ever.

The marketing once used to sell to your grandfather will not work with these youngsters. There are large differences between Gen Y and past generations in how they were brought up and what they expect out of life.

How they’re different from older generations:

They are digital natives. They have grown up with computers, cell phones, the Internet, Nintendo and mp3 players attached to their hands at all times. And, they can usually use all of them at the same time.

They watch less TV. Rather than watching TV, you would most likely find Gen Y in front of their computer, watching videos online or playing a video game.

They think advertising is full of lies. They would rather know what their friends think. This generation has grown up with marketing being thrown in their face wherever they go, almost becoming immune to it. They also don’t have brand loyalty and will move on to whatever the next big thing is.

They’re environmentally friendly. They care about what’s happening around the world and want to do their part to help. News is read not on paper, but on a computer screen complete with interactive polls and video.

How marketing will change:

Because of how skeptic Gen Y is about marketing and advertising, marketers must work to build a level of trust between the two. Those marketers who succeed will have an open dialogue with customers, admit when they have done wrong and become more transparent.

Web sites targeting Gen Y will adopt more Web 2.0 practices. Social networking and blogging will be the main way Gen Y learns about products and the main way companies will reach customers.

You may think you’re ahead of the game now by using Twitter to update customers, but that could change tomorrow. Gen Y will choose what will be the next big thing to hit the Web marketing world.

Web sites will also have to cater to short attention spans. Long, boring and big paragraphs of text will not be read. They shift topics quickly and multi-task like pros.

This generation is anxiously biting their nails, waiting for the next version of the iPhone to hit store shelves. Web sites must adapt to a culture that is increasingly comfortable with mobile Web.

The future of the Web is whatever Gen Y wants it to be. While they continue to land jobs in the real world, business to business marketing will be changing along with it. Before long, these young employees will be running the show and Web marketing must follow suit.

“When did Marketing become the make-it-pretty department?” asked Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo at a recent conference.

Many times marketers get caught up in making marketing “pretty” and lose focus of the main reason for their being - the customer. Their responsibilities include finding, keeping and growing the value of customers.

MarketingProfs recently published an article outlining what it means to be a marketer and how we can all get beyond what they call the “Make it Pretty Syndrome.”

The Profs bring us back to Marketing 101 by explaining what they believe to be the four “critical customer-focused marketing processes.” So, take out a pen and paper, there will be a test.

Instead of focusing on the “pretty,” Marketing must be fully concerned with these four processes:

Creating value
Communicating value
Delivering value
Managing customer relationships

Organizations depend on the Marketing department to do more than just create “pretty” marketing pieces. While it should still look good, marketers should focus on developing strategies that create and deliver the best customer value possible.

Stop worrying about Google search rankings and forget the even exist. Excuse me, what?

It’s actually the exact advice from a Copyblogger post I came across today. The headline “Here’s How to Stop Worrying About Google Once and for All” was very effective in catching my attention, and the following article had some great advice.

Brian Clark shares how his initial strategy with Copyblogger was to ignore search engines. Why? Because he believes you shouldn’t depend on them for traffic.

Clark’s advice is to pretend like search engines are not a traffic option and focus your efforts on repeat traffic and referral sources.

His three “S” strategy includes:

Subscribers - “Getting someone to voluntarily pay attention to you over time is the greatest gift you can get as an online publisher.”

Social Media - Get other people talking about you. Chatter on other Web 2.0 sites creates quality links and encourages people to visit your site.

Selling - Build trust in your audience through social media referrals and loyal subscribers. Once you have the trust, then you can start selling.

According to Brent Wilson at the B2B Marketing blog, pre-Internet marketing could be compared to deep sea fishing - like throwing a line out into deep water, with the right bait and waiting for a big fish to hook and reel in.

“The Internet has now changed the game of fishing for customers from deep sea fishing to fly fishing in a mountain stream for willey cutthroat trout.”

This isn’t a story of what marketing could do in the future, this is what is happening now … Marketing sends out an e-mail piece with unique urls personalized with the prospect’s name. E-mails are set up with cookies and tracking information allowing sales people to see when a prospect is on a certain url. The sales person gives the prospect a call - “I noticed you were looking at the online offer you received in today’s e-mail, can I answer any questions for you?”

I don’t know about you but I would be out of my seat faster than Speed Racer, poking my head above the cube walls, examining the office for strategically hidden surveillance cameras.

Marketing should be transparent. With regard to what your customers are viewing at this exact moment - remember, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Your follow up should be planned in a way that you won’t “scare off the fish.”

“So back to that cold mountain stream and the internet metaphor; You can now see the fish in the shallow waters as they approach your drifting fly and watch as they rise all with the magic of analytics, cookies and tracking alerts. You can change the type of fly to get the desired response just like you can change your offer or your message. But let em’ take it before you set the hook. The mantra still holds true… ‘you need to have patience.’”

Having trouble getting started on Twitter?

Summize is a great tool that lets you search tweets in realtime. Search for topics you regularly deal with and strike up some conversation.

Also, check out Twistori which uses Summize data to create a really cool, and colorful Twitter visual.

Big-name pharmaceutical companies are planning to move truckloads of marketing dollars from traditional methods to online marketing. Special thanks to Mark at HRmarketer for bringing this to our attention.

As a whole, pharmaceutical drug companies spend about $30 billion each year on marketing (yes, that’s a ‘b’). This year, those billions will be spent less on radio and TV and more on Web sites, search engine marketing and direct e-mail marketing.

Drug companies have been marketing for a long time and know how to do it very well. Their move to the Web should be a reassuring sign to all industries, including training providers, that putting money into the Web is crucial to growing your business.

After peer advice, the Internet is where HR professionals go to find HR product and service vendors.

“Those HR professionals make up the majority of training product buyers for their companies,” said TrainingTime e-Commerce Manager Helene Kopel. “Because HR managers rely so heavily on the Web, as marketers we must have an equally strong online presence and target our buyers directly.”

Web 2.0 is not the future, it’s today and it’s where your customers are. Your marketing efforts should follow the same trend - blogs, email marketing, social networking and SEO can all boost your online presence and help get your training product or service in customers’ hands.

After reading an email that someone new is following me on Twitter (very exciting news, since I have about 3 followers so far), I go to the site and get this message on the homepage:

“Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing–we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.”

Apart from scheduled maintenance, do you think shutting down your whole site when having technical difficulties is the right thing to do?

I think it’s a good decision. It will save both you and your visitors wasted time and frustration.

You could spend hours answering lists of emails from irate customers about how your site isn’t working. Instead, shut it down, put up your message acknowledging the problem, let them know you’re working on it, and maybe throw in a funny message or picture to make them smile.

Be honest with your visitors. Most people will understand and come back later when you’re up and running again.

At least that’s my opinion, anyone out there have other ideas? Please share.