Technology Marketing Specialist

Why Use Customer Testimonials To Benefit Your Business.

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:07:59 +0530

Let’s face it, today’s consumers are skeptical. Can you blame them? With all the marketing hype and sales pitches people receive each day, we are all a bit jaded. However, to make the sale we must overcome our prospect’s natural skepticism and create a relationship of trust. One of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal is customer testimonials.

Testimonials are a strong motivator. They help prospects see the power and benefit of doing business with you. Because they’re provided by an outside source, they’re perceived as unbiased and therefore carry more weight than sales copy.

Vera Raposo describes how testimonials can be used to benefit your business in her post here.

Testimonials are powerful. They create believability, credibility, and a sense of security for your customer. They help to break down the natural barriers and distrust that most buyers feel towards you or your business. Watch any infomercial and you will see that they are loaded with customer testimonials. Why? Because they work!

An extra bonus is that testimonials will also create more loyalty in your customers. Once people have put their name and reputation on the line by publicly endorsing a product or service (or person), they will stand behind that decision even if they find out it’s a bad one.

We have been encouraging our clients to use testimonials in more than one ways to help their products or services help generate credibility and authority.

Testimonials are a powerful tool in helping you to break down your prospects skepticism and fear. So go on and urge your customers to give you testimonials about your business. You can’t have enough customer testimonials.

Is Your Marketing Spend Really Working for You?

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:05:35 +0530

One of my articles, Is your marketing really working for you?, was published in a newsletter of our client, Softlink Logistic Systems.

Businesses spend in a variety of ways in order to attract potential customers. These expenses are made with a view to generating enquiries, closing deals, and growing business. However, most of us do not know whether a particular marketing investment is really achieving these objectives, as we usually do not have any way to measure or track effectiveness.

Using a common sense approach, and sound systems, you can move your company towards a culture of really knowing what works in marketing, and allocating your budgets there.

Check it out here.

The 12-Step Social Media Program for Traditional Marketers

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:50:24 +0530

The 12-Step Social Media Program for Traditional Marketers:

Audience Identification.
Platform Development & Design.
Brand Campaign Integration.
Content Creation/Coordination.
Goal Mapping.
Brand Identity.
Audience Attraction.
Social Media Listening.
Community & Social Responsibility.
Internal/External Community Engagement & Response.
Brand Advocacy.
Customer Service.

What will be the future of work?

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:22:09 +0530

Will social networking and instant messages replace the standard business phone call, the client lunch and the handshake? A new survey by Directions Research, Inc. commissioned by Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.

The research suggests several trends:

The leap in new technology options and the shifting demographics of the workforce mean that the old, traditional way of doing business is rapidly being enhanced by new ways of working. More business will be conducted using emerging communications technologies and social networking platforms.
Technologies that people prefer to use in their private lives will become the technologies people want to use at work.
The younger generation prefers to use multiple channels of communication, often choosing social networks, text messaging or instant messaging instead of e-mail and in-person meetings. This shift could lead to increased support for work technologies that offer these capabilities.

The survey was conducted by Directions Research via Internet in late February 2009. Roughly 90 percent of the respondents were white-collar-workers. College students account for 10 percent of the survey. Survey responses were divided equally between men and women.

Key Findings:

While email is still the leading technology tool of choice, usage of text messaging, instant messaging, social networking and online productivity tools are on the rise with white-collar workers under 35, with nearly one in three reporting they use these technologies at work daily.
50 percent of technology “leaders” would choose text messaging or instant messaging if they could have only one technology for a month for personal use.
In the next five years, white-collar workers plan to increase their time working remotely by 50 percent, resulting in average white-collar workers spending 30 percent of their time working out of the office.

Link to survey: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=6183dae4-c6f6-4a98-a35d-32e97bda4ab9

5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a LinkedIn Group

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:30:09 +0530

5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a LinkedIn Group:

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a great place to network professionally, post and find jobs, and answer questions and build thought leadership. But if you’re using LinkedIn solely as a place to maintain an online resume, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to reach and engage with potential customers — LinkedIn groups.

HubSpot’s Inbound Lead Generation Manager, Prashant Kaw...

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:59:00 +0530

HubSpot’s Inbound Lead Generation Manager, Prashant Kaw shares a few of the lessons he’s learned, and three tips for improving your sales and marketing funnel.

1. Conversion starts with marketing and ends with sales. Make sure you are analyzing your entire sales and marketing funnel. It’s not over after you deliver your leads. Make sure those leads are converting to customers.

2. Everything works in cycles. Make sure you track which lead channels lead to the most closed deals. Focus on those channels in your upcoming lead generation campaigns. This is the essence of closed loop marketing!

3. Measure your marketing frequently. If you were an accountant, would you check your balances only at the end of the month? Of course not! The same concept applies when delivering quality leads to your sales force. Meticulously measure your lead programs daily (or even multiple times a day) to ensure your efforts are bringing the best results.

[via: Inbound Marketing Blog]

Great diagram on Why We Love Twitter

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:43:03 +0530

Great diagram on Why We Love Twitter

Tips for pay per click landing pages

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:00:32 +0530

As we are setting up a series of landing pages to roll out a huge SEM and PPC campaign for a couple of our clients, I found the the 9 tips listed here very helpful and thought would share them with our readers:

Your landing page should be neat, easy-to-read and use a lot of white space.
Place call-to-action copy front and center on your landing page.
Provide simple and compelling descriptions of what you do.
Include business information. Don’t be afraid of redundancy on your landing page. Even if you’ve listed your hours of operations, your phone number, your email, a map to your offices and more on your Pay Per Click ad—it is good to reinforce that info here.
Repeat keywords from your ad on your landing page.
Make sure the customer finds what they expected to find. If you feature a special offer or promotion in your ad, be sure to provide easy access to it on your landing page.
Avoid graphic intensive or Flash heavy landing pages. Customers won’t stick around for a slow loading page.
Don’t disable the “browser back” button on your landing page. Doing so will only annoy the user.
Make sure your landing page effectively represents your brand. Use logos and color to highlight your company brand.

Webinars: Can They Help Your Business Grow?

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:05:36 +0530

Posted an article about “Webinars: Can they help your business grow?” over at our website. Check it out if you’re working towards generating B2B leads for your products or services and have ruled out the idea of hosting webinars (even in India) to:

Gain thought leadership
Branding
Lead generation
Lead incubation.

Designing and executing an effective webinar, however, remains a challenge. We have provided some pointers to design an effective webinar.

Do let us know if you found the article useful in the comments section below!

Free Webinar Series: Effective Utilization of Microsoft Office

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:40:00 +0530

MaxOffice, an organisation which is focussed on the effective utilization of MS Office products, has announced a series of FREE webinars in association with Microsoft to enhance your productivity.

Dr. Nitin Paranjape and Manmeet Chaudhuri will help you free yourself from the monotony of repetitive office tasks by showing you how to work smart with tools you spend most of your time on - MS Office. Below are the details. help yourself work smart & grow fast!

Webinars are scheduled for every Wednesday from 11:30 hrs to 13:00 hrs IST (UTC +5:30).

April 15, 2009 - Top 10 common mistakes in Excel - Register here
April 22, 2009 - Top 10 things you must know in Word - Register here
April 29, 2009 - Top 10 time and task management methods in Outlook - Register here
May 6, 2009 - 10 ways to create a successful presentation in PowerPoint - Register here
May 13, 2009 - Why you should not manage projects in Excel (instead use MS Project)? - Register here
May 20, 2009 - Top 10 features you must use in MS Project - Register here
May 27, 2009 - Managing multiple projects using Project Server - Register here

Visit Microsoft’s webcasts page - www.microsoft.com/india/webcasts to register and know more about the events.

8 cardinal sins of B2B Search Engine Marketing

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:19:00 +0530

As a B2B lead generation tool, search engine marketing (SEM) is gaining popularity in the Indian context. We are in the process ourselves to start PPC campaigns for several of our clients.

We recently came across an informative list of mistakes that companies make which result in waste of money, disappointing results and lost opportunities.

Sin #1 - Not establishing a clear and realistic goal

Sin #2 - Viewing Search Engine Marketing as a temporary tactic

Sin #3 - Not having basic fundamental sales and marketing elements in place

Sin #4 - Not performing adequate preliminary research

Sin #5 - Unwillingness to invest some money – and lose it – for your campaign to be successful.

Sin #6 - Not being diligent about testing and refining

Sin #7 - Not putting the experts on it

Sin #8 - Neglecting your PPC landing pages

As Todd Miechiels rightly says:

Don’t let wasted time and money be your penance for committing one – or all - these sins. While it’s tempting to jump into a campaign, especially with all the hype about SEM, you should approach it with as much, if not more, consideration and thoughtfulness as any of your other sales and marketing spends.

[via: Marketing Sherpa]

10 ways to measure social media success

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:33:00 +0530

Interesting article on econsultancy about how to successfully measure social media campaigns. Chris Lake who wrote the article takes an interesting approach in that he says:

Rather than focusing on the smaller, campaign-specific metrics, such as traffic from Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook, wouldn’t it be better to look at how it helps to shift the most important business KPIs, such as sales, profits, as well as customer retention and satisfaction rates?

The ten ways to measure the effects of social media campaign that Chris identified are:

Traffic
Interaction
Sales
Leads
Search marketing
Brand metrics
PR
Customer engagement
Retention
Profits

For an elaborate post on this go to Chris’ blog here.

Top 5 Lead Generation Practices

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:35:00 +0530

Jon Miller in a recent post at Marketo.

Top Five Lead Management Best Practices:

1.Be everywhere. “Cast your marketing net wide so customers will find you no matter where they are searching,” he advises. (as long as they are within your target market profile).

2. Build prospect profiles. Create a lead database to manage and store all your leads, and then make sure you have a strategy in place to keep that database clean (e.g., lead de-duplication).

3.Automate lead handoffs. He offers an example: “Define different lead status values to indicate whether someone is a qualified prospect but still nurturing, or a true sales-ready lead.” Then update their lead status in the CRM system.

4.Provide sales-lead insight. Give the sales rep the prospect’s history, and offer insight about the “interesting moments” that caused that person to become a lead.

5.Recycle leads as necessary. If your sales rep can’t follow up right away, or the prospect isn’t available, don’t let a lead just sit and turn stale. “Have a process in place to reassign the lead or escalate the issue,” Miller advises.

3 Tips for Improving Ecommerce Experiences

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:01:03 +0530

Tip #1. Display differentiators and value propositions on the homepage

It’s as easy as constructing a simple statement, or bullet points, or a general voice that relays: Welcome. Here’s who we are. Here’s what we sell. Here’s how we’re different. Here’s why you should care. Here’s what you should do.

Tip #2. Look at the site from end-to-end

Companies should get into the habit of clicking through their site every day. Go to the site, click on the sale or promotion creative. Where does it take you? How can you make that process make more sense for the user? How can you give them exactly what they want?

Tip #3. Customer service is the key

Don’t slack on customer service efficiencies. If a customer says the product doesn’t work, invest in a proactive customer service department that offers to expedite a new product immediately. The positive word-of-mouth garnered from that simple gesture is worth thousands of marketing dollars.

via [Markeitng Sherpa]

Study reveals PR scores more than advertising in building brand value

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:06:33 +0530

Clients want to keep track of all their money spent in this economic downturn . They want to know how it helped in building the brand value. Keeping this in mind, recently Text100 Global Public Relations [Press Release] and its research arm, Context Analytics, announced the results of their Media Prominence Study [PDF]. The study establishes that public relations may be more important than advertising to brand value, especially for companies that sell feature-rich or complicated products such as consumer electronics, financial services and automobiles.

Brief findings:

PR is more powerful than advertising in building brand value and delivering real business value.
PR is more cost effective than advertising.
Consumers, especially in high involvement brands, trust more the reports out in publications than a 30-second commercial. The more complex a product is to a buyer, the more likely they are to research the product category and to look for information they can trust – from editorial content rather than advertisements.
Advertising is more important for low involvement brands

via [Exchange4media]

Brainstorming - An art or a process?

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:44:32 +0530

Over years of experience of coming up with ideas and making sure the creative juices flow in the right direction, our team has evolved certain best practices in brain storming. Here is a very brief list of the same.

1) Size matters. Make sure you have a group of not more than six people in your brainstorming session.

2) Prepare the group. Don’t surprise them. Allow your team to prepare by sharing notes, research, and maybe a few ideas here and there to get the ball rolling prior to the session. Let them know what is it you want to brainstorm about.

3) Don’t stretch over time. The mind can only stay stimulated for a certain period of time. Split up teh sessions during different parts of the day or throughout the week. Don’t brainstorm for more than 30 minutes.

4) Don’t be a leader, be a facilitator. Individuals are afraid to present their ideas if there is an authority present in meetings. So dont be one! Productivity increases when individuals are less afraid to perform or say the wrong thing.

5) Environment matters. Make the environment as comfortable as possible, it can greatly help increase employee efficiency and well worth the dollars spent for the million dollar ideas coming out of them.

6) Relax & have fun. Learn to relax and let ideas flow, and to listen to others. It can help stimulate your own thoughts and place things in perspective. Consider the session as your chance to think wild and be imaginative, regardless of the problem.

7) Don’t criticise. People need nurturing and assurance, regardless of the person. Therefore work as a team and help one another out. Negative criticism can ruin your brainstorming session so avoid it while the ideas are flowing!

In case you find it difficult to understand what we are talking about, mail us at info@edgepartners.biz

Video lectures From The World's Top Scholars

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:23:53 +0530

Video lectures From The World's Top Scholars:

A user-friendly platform for educational video that would let anyone be able to freely access instruction from the scholars and guest lecturers at the leading academic universities.

The site offers 60 full courses and 2,395 total lectures (almost 1300 hours of video) from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton that can be browsed by subject, university, or instructor through a user-friendly interface.

The site clearly takes its cues from Hulu and iTunes on its design, but it’s ten times better than either, because it’s open. The videos can be embedded anywhere or downloaded and enjoyed wherever you want to take them. It’s easy to use, has tons of great content, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

[via TechCrunch, LifeHacker]

Low Cost Advtg. Campaign For a Low Cost Product

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:13:00 +0530

After spending just Rs 2.4 million, Tata Motors has been deluged by enquiries by the thousands from far and wide for their Rs 100,000 (2,500 USD approx.) car - Tata Nano says this news article from Mint.

The social networking era has become a great aid for the Tata Motors’ Nano sale buzz to flourish in the online world. The Nano campaign, prior to its release, has been intensified through its extension to networking sites like Facebook and Orkut making the ‘world’s cheapest car’ known to a larger mass.

Here are some social media details about Tata Nano from Watblog:

Official Orkut Community Members - 6,906 & growing
Official Facebook Group Fans - 4,210 & growing
Highest View Count on YouTube - 303,006 & growing
No. of Blog Posts - 61,664 & growing

At the Nano page on Facebook, the response is gushy, almost. And so you have Darlene who says: “Please bring this car to Toronto, Canada!!!”

This is not the first time that an Indian firm has used online techniques to market wares and ideas. Indeed, the likes of Microsoft India, organizers of the Indian Premier League cricket tourney and, even, political parties such as the Congress and BJP have done so, some beginning as early as 2006. Even auto makers such as General Motors India (GM) or Yamaha Motors, took social networking as their marketing overdrive.

We think it is only smart to spend proportionately to a product’s buzz already in the market and the Rs. 2.4 million seems a good number to start with. These kind of strategies are also replicated in the past by other buzzing companies in the west like Google, Apple (prior to their iPhone launch) and have worked well.

The Art of the Tutorial

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:15:00 +0530

The Art of the Tutorial:

How many companies overcome the challenge to make people understand what the company does in two minutes or less using video?

As a small business owner your website has got to explain what you do in under two minutes. The explanation has to be fast, interesting, and compelling.

Mediums, and the message

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:08:52 +0530

Political parties are using a mix of mediums to communicate with different voter segments…

While door-to-door campaigning and political rallies continue to be the mainstay of election campaigns, political parties in India are looking at advertising campaigns across media platforms to reach the elusive voter, especially in urban areas.Political parties are now more focused in their marketing strategies, and communication campaigns are going beyond reinforcing the party symbol.

Effectiveness of using various mediums for the political parties in India:

Television

Although India’s 115 million television households (75 million of them cable and satellite homes) make TV an ideal platform for any advertiser who wants to reach a mass audience, the medium has failed to click for political advertising campaigns.

The combined spending of the two major political parties—Congress and BJP—on TV is Rs60 crore, or 15% of the Rs400 crore advertising budget (for all political parties in the fray), for the ongoing assembly elections in six states.
Advertising experts believe it is because TV does not give political parties enough bang for the buck. A 10-second spot can sell for anywhere between Rs5,000 on a regional language channel to at least Rs1.5 lakh on a popular channel during prime time, say media buyers, while other platforms such as radio and outdoor are as effective and cheaper.
With 400-plus TV channels, 60-70% of which are regional language channels, TV does hold potential—if used intelligently.
Radio
Radio is a localized medium that reaches out to 19 crore listeners (above the age of 12) and unlike print and TV, where there are time and space restrictions, radio allows parties to actually communicate to listeners in their language.
Radio accounted for Rs20 crore of the Rs400 crore political advertising budget. The Congress took six radio spots, the BJP took three.
Reaching out to 23% of the population, radio may be a more effective and cheaper medium.
Digital
The digital media makes up at least 10% of the advertising budget of political parties.
With 40 million Internet users and Internet penetration in urban India at around 9%, the importance of digital media in political campaigns cannot be ignored. Add to that the fact that 100 million youngsters, half of whom live in urban India, are expected to cast their votes for the first time in the Lok Sabha polls next year, and the Internet emerges as a very useful tool to engage with young people.
On Facebook, for instance, a BJP group has 275 members who engage in discussions and post information on important dates and events related to the elections, while Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have their own communities built on the site, with 358 and 1,310 supporters respectively.
In addition, the two parties have engaged voters through video-sharing sites such as YouTube and video ads on popular websites such as MSN and Rediffmail.
The approximate cost for an extensive online campaign can be Rs1 crore over a month.
Print
Print accounts for 40-50% of the Rs400 crore budget in the latest assembly elections.
India had 64,998 registered newspapers as of March 2007, with a total circulation of 190 million.
Experts believe the entire effort may be a waste. The quality of print advertisements is still very tacky. All it does is familiarize voters to their faces, so when someone does go to the poll booth, they might just recall the face and make a connection.
Outdoor
Hoardings, bus stands, mobile vans and floats have proved to be the most effective forms of communication and are used extensively by political parties. In fact, the outdoor medium gets a higher budget than television.
20% of the Rs400 crore advertising budget was spent on outdoor, while 15% was spent on television.
This platform connects with the rural population the best because it talks to them in the language they understand and is effective in delivering results.
Apart from effectiveness and recall, outdoor media is more cost-effective than advertising in the mainstream media.
For reading the full story on this, read the descriptive article by Priyanka Mehra in Mint here.