How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.
The New Rules for Marketing
- Marketing is more than just advertising
- PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience
- You are what you publish
- People want authenticity, not spin
- People want participation, not propaganda
- Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
- Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
Reaching Your Buyers Directly
- Let the world know about your expertise
- Develop info your buyers want to consume
- Buyer personas: the basics – break them into five distinct groups to create appropriate content
- Tell your organization’s story directly
Social Media and Your Targeted Audience
- Your best customers participate in online forums and so should you
- Moderate them
- Actively post/participate
- Manage Wikis and Listservs that mention your band
- Create your own so people can add content
Blogs
- To easily monitor what millions of people are saying about you, the market you sell into, and your organization and products
- To participate in those conversations by commenting on others’ blogs
- To work with bloggers who write about your industry, company, or products
- To begin to shape those conversations by creating and writing your own blog
- Let employees blog
Audio and Video Drive Action
- Have fun with your videos
- Podcast
New Rules of News Releases
- Don’t just send releases when big news is happening; find good reason to send them all the time
- Create news releases that appeal to your buyers
- Write news releases with keyword rich language
- Include offers that compel readers to respond
- Place links in releases to deliver customers to landing pages
- Link to related content on your site such as videos, blogs, or ebooks
- Optimize news release delivery for searching and browsing
- Add social media tags
- Drive people into the sales process with news releases
Going Viral
- Just create something valuable that people want to share, and make it easy for them to do so
- Nobody cares about your products (except you)
- No coercion required
- Lose control
- Put down roots (you need to be involved in the communities you want to spread within)
- Create triggers to encourage people to share
- Point the world to your doorstep
Content-Rich Website
- Tweet thoughts to your market while they are watching
- Comment on regulatory changes in your industry
- React to another company’s announcement in news releases
Making this all come together
- Identify your goals
- Identify your buyer personas and their relationship to the organization
- Interview representatives about their needs and wants
- Measure:
- How many people are eager to participate in your online efforts
- How many people are downloading your stuff
- How often bloggers write about you and your ideas
- And what they are saying
- Where are you in appearing in search reports for important phrases
- How many people are engaging with you and choosing to speak to you about your offerings
- Where are you appearing in search results for common phrases
- How are sales looking
- Develop thought leadership content
- White papers
- Ebooks
- Email newsletters
- Webinars
- Wikis
- Research and survey reports
- Photos, images, infographics
- Blogs
- AV
- How to do this:
- Don’t write about your company and products. Solve buyer problems
- Define organizational goals first
- Based on goals, decide whether content comes free or needs registration
- Think like a publisher by understanding your audience
- Write for your audience
- Choose a great title that grabs attention
- Promote the effort like crazy
- Drive viral marketing effects
- Measure results
- Make a buyer-centric website
- Develop a site personality
- Interactive content
- Feedback loops
- Allow customers to interact with one another
- Make sure your site is current
- Include social media share buttons
- Making News Releases work
- Nontargeted, broadcast pitches are spam
- News releases sent to reporters in subject areas they do not cover are spam
- Reporters who don’t know you yet are looking for you
- If you blog, reporters who cover the space will find you
- Pitch bloggers
- Personal relationships with reporters are important
- Tell how you solve customer problems
- Follow journalists on Twitter to see what interests them
- Does the reporter have a blog? Read it.
- Be familiar with the org you’re pitching to
- Getting the help you need
- Ask your potential agency for its social media presence – blogs, Twitter, videos, websites – if an agency can’t blog or tweet about itself, it can’t for you