Association Membership Marketing: 12 Steps for Success

Member acquisition is a constant challenge and a top priority for most trade associations. Who do you target? How do you reach prospective members? And how do you convince them to join your organization?Here’s how the American Advertising Federation-Cleveland (AAF-CLE) developed a successful membership marketing strategy and campaign that exceeded its goals and laid the foundation for future member acquisition.

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How to Use Your Brand Voice to Be Heard in Social Media

Social media is the noisiest place on the planet. Every day, there are over 1 billion Facebook posts and 400 million Tweets.If you’re straining to be heard amid the social media din, try using one of your most powerful marketing assets: The voice of your brand.Here’s why brand voice is important in a smart marketing strategy, especially for social media marketing.

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11 Ideas for Using White Papers in a B2B Marketing Strategy

If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) marketer, white papers can be a powerful way to demonstrate your expertise and differentiate your company from competitors. In part three of a three-part series, here are 11 ideas for using white papers as marketing tactics in a smart B2B marketing strategy.

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B-to-B Marketing: The Power of the Personal Note

There’s a simple business communication tactic that can have a huge impact on how your clients and prospects feel about you and your organization: The handwritten personal note.Here’s why personal notes are so effective in building strong client relationships and six tips for using personal notes in your smart marketing strategy.

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10 Ways to Get Great Client Testimonials for B2B Marketing

10 Ways to Get Great Client Testimonials for B2B Marketing

There’s nothing more powerful in marketing than a testimonial from your customers about the value of your products or services.That’s why so many smart marketers, especially companies that sell business-to-business (B2B) professional services, use client testimonials in their advertising, sales presentations, brochures, and websites.So how do you get a client to give you a great testimonial for your marketing campaigns? Follow these 10 tips.

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How to be a Great Content Curator on Social Media

How to be a Great Content Curator on Social Media

The most successful social media marketers create and publish a high volume of original content through blogs, videos, white papers, and other vehicles.But they also share quality content produced by others. Gathering, sorting, and republishing content from other authors that you believe your followers will value is called curation. By being a great content curator, you help customers, prospects, and colleagues find the “good stuff” online and know what to read. This not only makes you an informative and influential social media contributor, but it also helps attract new followers. Here’s how to find, filter, and share the best content with your social media followers in a smart marketing strategy.

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Shut Up, Already: How Over-Marketing Kills Relationships

Shut Up, Already: How Over-Marketing Kills Relationships

Permission-based marketing is now at the heart of relationships between companies and their customers and prospects. People opt-in to receive your emails, like your company on Facebook, subscribe to an RSS feed from your website or your channel on YouTube, or follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn.But having permission to market to someone isn’t a license to bombard them with marketing messages. In fact, not knowing when to shut up is a classic marketing mistake.Here’s how over-marketing can kill a customer or prospect relationship and 7 ways to avoid this costly error in your smart marketing strategy.

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New Sales Rep, Key Account: Top 10 Tips for B2B Success

Smart business-to-business (B2B) marketers work hard to create and keep great relationships with their clients.In my last post, I shared the story of how a new B2B sales rep nearly destroyed a 10-year client relationship with my marketing agency by making six crucial mistakes in the first meeting.But transitioning a legacy client to a new sales rep doesn’t have to be a sales minefield. When handled well, assigning a new rep to a key account can be an opportunity to increase the client’s satisfaction and boost sales.Here are 10 things a new sales rep can do to ensure a smooth transition and earn a long-time client’s trust.

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21 Tips for Power Networking: When the Product is You

If you break into a cold sweat at the thought of walking into a business networking event as a complete stranger, you’re not alone.Networking is essential to building and growing a business, especially for business-to-business (B2B) marketers who participate in professional associations and trade shows.But it takes skill and experience to feel confident in a networking situation, and it takes careful planning to capitalize on the value of networking for lead generation.Here’s what I’ve learned about personal marketing and successful networking at B2B events, and 21 tips you can use to make networking a powerful component of your smart marketing strategy.

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