How to Rethink Your Marketing Plan in a Crisis
If an event like the Covid-19 pandemic happens again – or another development upends your marketing plan with little notice – what should you do? Here’s how to quickly rethink your marketing plan for a smart marketing strategy.
After the Pandemic: 7 Lessons for Smart Marketing Planning
The pandemic forced marketers everywhere to rethink their approaches. Some marketers stopped promoting entirely, while others adjusted and prevailed. Here’s what we can learn about smart marketing planning from those who successfully navigated an unprecedented challenge.
7 Ways to Use Your Value Proposition in a Marketing Strategy
Understanding and articulating the unique value your organization delivers to your customers – your value proposition – is crucial for smart marketing. Here are seven ways to use the value proposition insights gleaned from customer interviews in a smart marketing strategy.
What’s Your Value Proposition? Ask Your Customers
Understanding the unique value your business delivers to customers is essential for a smart marketing strategy. Yet many businesses struggle to define their value proposition, especially B2B marketers that sell intangible business services.But defining your value proposition is easier than you think: Just ask your customers.In part one of a two-part post, here’s how Cleveland marketing consultant Jean Gianfagna recommends conducting customer interviews to determine a value proposition.
Why Your Reputation Trumps Your Marketing – Every Time
Why the things people say about your business matter far more than what you say about yourself in your advertising -- no matter how much you spend on marketing.
Marketing Best Practices: Using a CRM System for Marketing
A customer relationship management (CRM) system enables you to store, manage, and use your customer and prospect data for sales and marketing. Here are five best practices for using the capabilities of your CRM system in a smart B2B marketing strategy from my experience as a B2B marketing consultant.
10 Ways to Promote Premium Content in Your Marketing Strategy
Publishing premium content is a powerful tool for B2B lead generation. Here's how to promote premium content in a smart marketing strategy in part 3 of our 3-part guide to creating and using premium content for marketing.
How to Create a New Brand Identity: 7 Steps to Success
Does your organization need a new brand identity? Branding is one of the most important strategic decisions you will make. Getting it right can help your business vault to the top of your industry. Getting it wrong can result in costly misconceptions about your business. Here are the seven major steps of creating a new brand identity from our experience developing branding strategies and brand identities for many organizations.
Why it’s Smart to Audit Your Marketing–Even If Sales are Up
Even if sales are up, critical marketing issues could be lurking behind the scenes that are limiting your company's success – or threatening your future. A marketing audit can help you find out. Here’s why auditing your marketing – when times are bad or good – can be so important to a smart marketing strategy.
7 Ways Your Best Customers Can Help You Market Your Business
Loyal customers are essential to a successful business. But in addition to helping you reach your sales goals, your best customers can also play a powerful role in a smart marketing strategy. Here are seven ways to capitalize on the value of your best customers in marketing.
7 Ways to Avoid Overcommitting with Marketing
Even if you have the budget to execute marketing projects and a marketing agency standing by to help, there’s another factor that can impact your success: Your internal marketing bandwidth. Someone on your team has to make all that marketing happen -- and it's easy to get in over your head. Here’s how to prevent this problem in your smart marketing strategy.
When Bad Data Happens to Good Direct Mail
Customer and prospect data drives direct mail marketing. Data that’s outdated, inaccurate, or poorly processed can turn a good direct mail campaign into a wasted opportunity. Here are two examples of excellent mailings that failed because smart marketers that are usually highly skilled users of the channel relied on the wrong data.
7 Reasons Why Referrals Don’t Turn into Sales
Referrals are like gold in marketing and sales. Someone who knows you endorses your capabilities to someone who trusts them AND needs what you provide. It’s an ideal setup for new business, especially if you’re a B2B marketer selling professional services.But many referrals don’t turn into sales. Marketers make costly mistakes that derail the sales process before, during, and after a referral takes place. Here are seven reasons why a referral may not result in a new customer and tips to avoid these mistakes in your sales and marketing strategy.
How to Create a “Drip” Direct Marketing Campaign
"Drip" direct marketing can be a smart marketing strategy for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Here’s why drip marketing works and how to create a drip direct marketing campaign, from Cleveland, Ohio marketing consultant and strategist Jean Gianfagna.
6 Reasons You Still Need Print in a Smart Marketing Strategy
Do marketers still need printed promotional materials in a tech-driven world? The answer is yes. Here are six reasons why print still packs a punch in a smart marketing strategy.
The Ultimate B2B Content Marketing Tactic? Publish a Book
If you’re a B2B marketer and an expert in your field, there’s a content marketing tactic you should seriously consider: Writing a book. Here’s what makes a book such a powerful element of a smart marketing strategy, as shared by an expert at Content Marketing World in Cleveland, Ohio.
7 Reasons Why You (Still) Need a Blog for B2B Marketing
Here are seven reasons why you still need a blog in a smart B2B marketing strategy, plus a compelling B2B blogging success story shared by Rick Short of Indium Corporation at Content Marketing World 2015 in Cleveland, Ohio. #CMWorld
5 New Rules and 5 Proven Principles for Marketing Success
In this new, technology-driven world of marketing, do the proven principles of marketing strategy still apply? Or are there new rules for marketing success? Here are five new marketing rules created by the enormous impact of technology plus five time-tested marketing principles -- and the reasons to consider both in a smart marketing strategy.
Is that Super Bowl Ad a Smart Marketing Strategy?
The Super Bowl is marketing nirvana for advertisers. Not only is it the most-viewed TV program of the year, but viewers are almost as interested in the ads as the game. But how do you know if a Super Bowl ad will be a winner -- and a smart marketing strategy? Here's my annual guide for how to evaluate the marketing effectiveness of Super Bowl advertising.
