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Using Testimonials to Drive Marketing

Chelsea Junget — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:24:09 +0000

Client testimonials can be a powerful tool in your sales and lead generation arsenal, particularly if you are selling an intangible. Without a product to inspect, test, and handle selling your service is easier when you can produce evidence of satisfied clients. However, many don’t know how to obtain a testimonial, what a good testimonial says or what to do with them…

So, what does a good testimonial look like?

High-quality testimonials should come from actual clients. Individuals with businesses and problems just like those of your prospects. Ask for permission to use their name, business name, location and photo, if relevant to increase authenticity.
Effective testimonials will give examples of how you helped them either save money, increase efficiency, or increase their sales volume. Always encourage specifics: percent of sales increase or percent of money saved over X months.
A good testimonial reflects and reinforces your positioning statement: where you are in the marketplace and how you are different from the competition.

How to obtain testimonials?

Ask. A client, no matter how pleased, will generally not offer a testimonial. You will likely need to ask. A good time to ask is after successfully delivering a project, or receiving a verbal or email compliment. Hit them up while they are feeling satisfied with your work.
Don’t send an impersonal request. Remind the client of the transaction, how positive the outcome was and help them understand what you need. Avoid a form-letter style request.
Help. Offer to draft the testimonial for their review and edit. Busy business owners let this kind of task slip down their to-do list. If they need only review a quote and provide written approval, they will likely respond readily. Or, create a 2-4 question questionnaire that helps them focus their thoughts should they want to draft their own.

How to leverage their power

Testimonials make powerful content for your marketing strategy. Here are just a few ways you can leverage testimonials to improve lead generation efforts:

Proposals
Invoices
Video testimonials
Direct Mail – a great place to use a testimonials to reach new prospects.
Web content – build testimonials into every page of the site.

Social Media – Facebook and Twitter. Positive tweets about your brand or company are mini-testimonials in their own right.
Print ad campaigns. This example shows how Trident featured tweets from gum chewers in a newspaper ad.

Where’s the oddest place you’ve seen a testimonial?

Image Courtesy Flickr user ChicagoGeek

Useful Twitter Tools

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:40:18 +0000

Lately, clients have been asking about how to grow and manage their Twitter following. Unless you are the celeb du jour, its unlikely folks will be seeking you out on Twitter, instead, your company will need to find them!

Here are some great tools to generate new followers, manage followers, and nurture relationships as part of a strategic marketing plan:

Find Twitter users by hashtag and follow them with a single click using BlastFollow. For this tool to be most useful, you’ll need to have an idea of what hashtags fall into your wheelhouse. The idea here is that folks that you follow will follow you back, especially if you are targeting users with an established interest in a topic. For instance, if you are a fitness coach and you follow users who have used the #exercise or #workout hashtag, you are likely to find fitness enthusiasts, your target audience.
Next, sign up for HootSuite. Or TweetDeck. These tools allow you to manage Twitter more efficiently. HootSuite is designed for teams, ideal if your company will have multiple contributors to your Twitter feed. It also allows you to segment those you follow, create searches, view @ replies and monitor conversations. You can also spread your message beyond Twitter to Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

twAitter allows you to schedule tweets. However, if you’re on deck with HootSuite, you can do that there, too.
TweetChat isolates conversations based on the hashtag. Again, using the fitness trainer example, TweetChat shows what folks who use the #exercise hashtag are talking about. Again, Hootsuite does this well through it’s search function.
TweetGrid is a search dashboard that updates in real time. Watch several different searches at once to monitor conversations.

What tools do you use?

Better Email Marketing Through Reputation Management

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:50:37 +0000

To improve the results of your email marketing, it’s important to do everything you can to ensure your company’s reputation is intact. A study by ReturnPath, an email deliverability company, found that 83% of delivery failures are caused by problems with sender reputation.

Here are a few tips to help improve your reputation as a good email citizen:

Set subscriber expectations for the content of the emails and the frequency at which they may expect to be contacted.
Send a welcome message as soon as possible. Express your thanks for subscribing and again reiterate what they can expect to receive and how frequently.
Authenticate your messages through SPF, Sender ID and DK/DKIM.
Use consistent from addresses. Once a recipient has white listed your address, you don’t want to compromise deliverability by changing it.
Use relevant subject lines. You will not build trust by deceiving recipients with bait and switch subject lines.
Use a legitimate physical address in your email to remain CAN-SPAM compliant.
Swiftly honor any unsubscribe requests. You must honor these requests within 10 days; a good email service provider will automate this for you.

Remember, message relevancy builds customer and prospect trust, which in turn delivers greater ROI. You can achieve near-perfect deliverability, but if your message is not relevant to the recipient, engagement will likely be low and not result in conversion.

What does your company do to ensure your reputation is not impacted?

*Image courtesy Flickr user DioMakr

8 Business Blogging Must-Dos for Success

Chelsea Junget — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:16:02 +0000

Blogging is a smart marketing tactic . Research suggests that businesses that blog generate more leads than those that don’t. But it can be time consuming to craft an interesting post that hits all the “blogging dos” at the same time.

This list, adapted from DailyBlogTips.com, is a useful resource to keep your business blog on-track:

Don’t skimp on details. Sure, long posts can be overwhelming to write and sometimes to read, but it’s more likely that you will earn backlinks with complete and informative content. And remember, although you might be an expert in the topic, its unlikely your readers will be so make sure jargon is kept to a minimum.
Use keywords. Just as you optimized your website with keywords, each blog post should also use keywords in the headline, title, description and body of your post.
Craft a catchy title. People are generally drawn in by lists of dos and don’ts, best-of lists and the like. But don’t be gimmicky – if the title of the post does not match the content, you will lose reader trust.
Interlink related posts. Encourage your reader to continue to learn more on the topic and stay on your blog or website for as long as possible.
Give appropriate credit to sources. Just like in school, it is bad form to pass off other content as your own.
Give your post visual appeal. Select an image or video which relates to your topic or supports your message. It’s easy to find Creative Commons blog images with a quick search on Flickr.
Re-read what you wrote. Obvious, eh? Review for clarity, organization, flow and word choice. Try to keep a common tone throughout posts.
Share the news. If you are on Twitter, make sure your followers see a notification about your most recent post. You can also set up your blog to feed through to your Facebook page as well.

Readers, what can you add to this list?

Image credit: Flickr user Foxtongue

Our New Digs

Chelsea Junget — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:45:14 +0000

As of August 2nd, the Strategic Guru world marketing agency headquarters has relocated to Morrisville. We still have a few finishing touches to make but we’re very excited to have relocated. Here are a few shots of our new space:

Welcome in!

Our new lobby

A week in and work spaces are filling with jobs

The kitchen and break area

Plenty of room for expansion

Thanks for coming in. See you soon!

Location-Based Marketing Has a Ways to Go

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:32:41 +0000

Location-based social networking has been the trendy topic in social media for the past few months. And indeed big brands such as Pepsi, Bravo and Campbell’s Soup have launched location-based marketing initiatives. But is it right for your business?

Research firm Forrester says probably not – with a few caveats. A study released this week revealed that only 4 percent of online adults have ever used such apps. Moreover, only 1 percent of these users update these services more than once per week. A vast majority, 84 percent, of online adults report being unfamiliar with location-based apps such as Gowalla, Foursquare and Loopt. Indeed, user data indicates that there’s a long way to go until LBN can claim mass adoption; Foursquare counts around 2 million users. Considering there are around 75 million adults in the US that go online from a mobile device, the market is still young.

So, should you invest time in location-based marketing (LBM)? Consider these points:

Are the majority of your prospects male?

The Forrester report revealed that almost 80 percent of location-based app users are male, suggesting that gaming, electronics and sportswear marketers might benefit from pursuing LBM initiatives. However, these folks are influencers; they report being consulted by friends and family before purchases and reference their phones before making a purchase decision.

Are your prospects 35 and under?

Most users are between the ages of 19 and 35. Because location-based networking relies on smartphones (which are predicted to overtake feature phones sometime next year) there may still be adoption hurdles.

Do your customers and prospects care about your location or visit you personally?

Unless you are Pepsi or Campbell’s Soup, LBM makes sense if your customers physically visit your business. For restaurants, coffee joints, theaters and shops, a positive, face-to-face transaction with customers is essential to keeping the business thriving. Would awarding a free beer to the mayor of your bar encourage loyalty? Might not hurt to try. But don’t expect huge upticks in revenue – LBM is currently a drop in the marketing ocean.

Read more on how one non-profit marketer is using Foursquare to increase engagement.

Old Spice Knows Engagement Isn’t Just About Diamonds

Chelsea Junget — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:56:05 +0000

Cut, Color, Clarity,Carat; the four Cs by which all diamonds are graded. But what do diamonds have to do with marketing? A different set of Cs can be used to examine an organization’s social media efforts. Social media is evaluated by some by it’s ROE , or Return on Engagement. So how engaging, really, are most social media campaigns?

The brilliantly executed campaign for Old Spice is a great case study on how the four Cs of social media work:

Clever: The Old Spice man (OSM) stars in quirky commercials proclaiming he’s “the man your man could smell like”. Through crisp writing and rapid fire visuals, the brand strikes a note with a younger, hipper audience. It’s clear: this sure ain’t your grandpa’s deodorant.

Cheek, Tongue-In: Serious they ain’t. Old Spice isn’t afraid to make fun of the typical cliches found in male product advertising – motorcycles, lumber jacking and handiness with power tools. Among competitors, there’s a lot of talk about speed, precision and high performance. Old Spice goes for humor, speaking to the smarty-pants, savvy internet generation reared on witty web clips to deliver messaging that cuts through clutter.

Consistent: The campaign stretches across the web, television, Twitter (@oldspice), Facebook and YouTube. All channels working together reinforce the message.

Connected: The most inventive part of the campaign is the live video Q + A delivered by OSM. Working live, creative and marketing agency W+K cut videos on the fly talking back to questions submitted by Twitter users. Answering questions from the philosophical to the silly, Old Spice has mastered the art of engagement with their prospects. He even helped someone get engaged, literally!

Seen a better example of a full-engaged social media campaign? Tell us in the comments.

Building a Powerful Brand

Sandy Andrews — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:38:55 +0000

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, recently stated, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

Bezos is obviously not a novice in the area of brand development – a new study by research firm Millward Brown found that Amazon.com is the most trusted brand in the U.S. Rounding out the top 5 are FedEx, Downey, Huggies and Tide.

Credit: Millward Brown

And then there are brands like AIG and BP that have not fared nearly as well.

The key difference? Trust. Would you do business with someone you didn’t trust? Neither will your customers. Your brand is your promise.

How can you build brand trust for your business?

By developing marketing tactics and messages that are relevant to your core consumers, you can establish a brand reputation that builds trust and increases value. Simply put, your company’s image and messaging should convey what’s important to your customers – not what’s important to you.

Communicate your brand and its benefits at each and every touch point – from the office site to the website. Customers quickly form an opinion about your business and what it represents – and how they feel about it.

Where do you start?

Let’s get back to basics. You have to know where you are in the marketplace (now), where you want to be (future) and then create the road map for how to get there (strategic marketing plan). If you don’t control your brand identity (your path), the marketplace will determine it for you – and it may not be what you had in mind.

Bottom line: “A business based on brand is, very simply, a business primed for success,” said David F. D’Alessandro, former chairman, chief executive officer, and president, John Hancock Financial Services.

How do you communicate your brand value in day-to-day operations?

See our set of brand messaging services.

Rising Mail Costs May Drive Growth of Digital Publications

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:34:07 +0000

With postal rates proposed to increase on January 2, 2011, many businesses will be re-thinking their mail marketing strategy. The proposed rate for a first class letter will be 46 cents, up from 44 cents. Catalog mailers will see their postage prices increase by 5.1 percent on average.

Aiming to close a projected $7 billion budget gap in 2011, the USPS’s move to increase prices is seen by some as a misguided tactic. Just as pricing and financing incentives help sell more cars, holding or lowering the cost to mail may prompt direct marketers to deploy more direct mail and catalogs.

What digital solutions should marketers consider?

Digital publications: Online catalogs and magazines provide a similar experience to a paper publication. Lonny is an online-only magazine focusing on home design and décor. An email campaign can be developed to prompt a subscriber list to access the digital doc.

Publications loaded on CD or flash drive: A digital catalog or other sales material can be loaded on a CD or flash. These are less expensive to mail and provide the additional benefit of open/use data. When the flash drive or CD is inserted into a computer, a notification is generated that the device has been accessed and a lead can be tracked.

Will a postal increase change your marketing mailing habits?

Learn more about OnTarget, a lead-generation program from Strategic Guru that can incorporate digital publications.

Email Subject Lines Influence Open Rates

Chelsea Junget — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:40:14 +0000

As prospect’s inboxes fill with all types of messages throughout the day, including personal, business and dreaded spam, users scan subject lines to determine what to open. To increase your email open rates, carefully crafted subject lines are essential.

Let’s take a look at subject line length.

Email users need to quickly decide if an email is worth opening by gleaning the point of the message right away. Research from email marketers suggest that subject lines be no longer than 80 characters. Others say 35 characters should be the cut-off. So what’s the rule? There isn’t one! As always, an A/B test should reveal what your subscriber list responds to best.

Epsilon’s 2009 whitepaper examining subject line length and open rates reinforces the hunch that shorter subject lines drive better email performance. However, it is not a hard and fast rule. Instead, they suggest that word order and content may be more influential than subject line length. Placing the most important words in the beginning of the subject line may be the most important thing to keep in mind when crafting subject lines. “Sale on Flip Flops at Corner Shop” is a short 27 characters, but the point of the message is right up front: SAVINGS!

Share your experiences with subject line length in the comments.