Oct

When it comes to content marketing, it’s best to focus on what you do best

written by Stan Carlberg

Businesses are built around simple, straightforward ideas that are supported by compelling value propositions. Unfortunately, the original vision often gets lost or loses sight of why they got into business in the first place.

As marketers, we’re always trying to keep it simple. We know that if the message gets too convoluted, it can impact how the industry perceives your brand, not to mention the success of your campaigns.

I once worked for a niche company that did a few things great. As a result, they quickly earned a stellar reputation within the industry. Their clients trusted them so much that they begin asking if the company would take on additional services that were outside the scope of their core offerings. To make their customers happy, the company invested in the resources and began offering the new services to other customers. Over time, however, they couldn’t deliver on the expectations for the additional services. As a result, they began to lose the trust they initially earned with their clients. Then they realized, instead of being a jack-of-all-traits, they needed to reel things back in and rescaled their service offerings. They got back to what they did best.

The moral of the story is to focus on what you do best. (more…)

16

Sep

Startup marketing strategy: Building thought leadership

written by Stan Carlberg

We’d all like to be recognized by our peers as thought leaders, someone who promotes innovative ideas to help others and move our respective industries forward. Building a reputation as a thought leader within your industry is not easy. In fact, it’s an ongoing process that starts with you and continually evolves through industry perception. This can be especially challenging for startups staring into a blank marketing canvass and asking themselves, “Where do I begin?”

The key to turning on the thought leadership engine is by focusing on your company’s strengths, experiences and differentiators, and delivering something of value to your audience. When developing content for a thought leadership program, there are a few things you need to consider, including:

Industry expertise. Having a deep understanding of your sector is the first criteria for thought leadership. Since startups are formed by individuals with vast knowledge and experience in a particular field, this is something you should focus on to demonstrate your expertise and start building confidence with your audience.

(more…)

Tags: content marketing, content marketing strategy, Mindlink Marketing, startup marketing, startup marketing strategy, thought leadership
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14

Sep

Startup website essentials – answering 5 key questions

written by Scott Olson

Creating a website is one of the first startup marketing tasks. Your website is an essential element in your early sales calls and serves as a company resume of sorts. Many people get too caught up in the design elements of a website but overlook the critical content that must be present to generate interest in your product and to encourage prospects to find out more.

If you are designing a new website, be sure that your final site can answer these five key questions to visitors:

What do you offer? – Don’t be cute. It is essential that you plan your content strategy to clearly identify what it is you offer to customers. This is important for search marketing as well as ensuring that people that do find their way to your website stay and find out more. Use industry accepted terms for both the category your product is in and the customer problem you address.

(more…)

Tags: content strategy, marketing strategy, startup, website
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26

Mar

Why lead nurturing is so critical to moving prospects through the sales cycle

written by Stan Carlberg

Now I know we’ve all been guilty of it at one time or another, but I’ve often viewed the lack of appropriate follow up as one of the biggest missed opportunities in business. The results can be costly, particularly in sales where the inability to build and nurture relationships with prospective customers not only impacts how your company is perceived by others, but can result in the loss of potential revenues.

I guess that’s why lead nurturing has always rang true with me as a marketer because in the end it all comes down to relationships. With so much time and money spent on building sales pipelines, why do we let the majority of new leads slip away when often times timing is the difference between prospects and buying customers?

I recently came across a nice article, “Lead Nurturing Maturity,” that discusses the importance of establishing best practices around lead nurturing, and how to maintain the interest of existing contacts throughout the sales process and eventually move them into the buying stage. Much of this is driven by content that’s relevant to their problems and where they are at in the purchasing process.

Unfortunately, the world of “close your leads or close your doors” has everyone in a frenzy to find more leads and turn them into actual revenue sooner than later. But from a buyer’s prospective, today’s slow-recovering economy still has many organizations slow at pulling the trigger, even when the need is there. This is why lead nurturing is so important to any marketing plan.

I’ve seen countless numbers of sales people come and go without closing a single deal partly because the sales cycle was so long. Was this the salesperson’s fault that a deal didn’t get closed? Maybe. But some of the responsibility also falls on the marketing plan. Without a plan to nurture the leads they’ve generated, too many unworked prospects drop off or are lost to competitors down the road.

Having an effective lead nurturing game plan that delivers relevant content to customers not only builds stronger relationships with your prospects, it keeps your company and products top of mind throughout the sales cycle, and most importantly, at the time the customer is finally ready to buy.

Tags: content marketing, lead nurturing, sales cycle
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18

Mar

Social Media Collapse? No, it will simply shift from quantity to quality.

written by Scott Olson

I came across a post today on the blog Content Management Connection titled “The Collapse of Social Media?” It makes some good points relative to the decreasing value of an advertising business model for the social media industry. Ultimately, Jay points to the need for a new utility for social media through innovation away from an advertising business model. With social media I believe that shift will be in the form of finding ways to enhance close quality interactions and away from quantity metrics.

Jay had this to say about the growth of social media in his blog:

“It is simple, most of the people on Twitter don’t use Twitter regularly. Twitter growth is slowing down. Only 30% of the members actually do it. Advertising on Twitter gets the same dismal response rates as everywhere else, 3% or less.

While the stats show usage growth of other sites like Facebook and Linkedin the corresponding click through rates on ads placed on these sites is static or decreasing. Most of the people using search don’t click on the ads. Advertising has been the foundation holding up all things social and sooner or later it will collapse.”

This point is well taken and the ultimate point of the article was not that social media is going away, but rather that it will have to evolve in its business model away from a total reliance on advertising, instead adding “utility through innovations.” (more…)

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1

Mar

Stan Carlberg joins MindLink Marketing

written by Scott Olson

I’m very excited to announce that Stan Carlberg, a long time colleague, will be joining MindLink Marketing as our Content Marketing Manager. I have worked with Stan in the past and am excited about getting someone with his energy, talent and integrity on board at MindLink Marketing.

Stan will be taking the lead on developing our lead nurturing and content marketing services for our clients. Ultimately, we are all about helping our clients connect to their ideal customers and fresh, relevant web content is a critical component of that strategy. We help our clients think like editors and not like marketers and deliver content to their customers that has a high value to them and builds long term relationships.

Stan’s background is a perfect fit for what I was looking for for this position. Stan has over 15 years of experience in managing web content and corporate communications strategies for technology companies. I’m excited to work with Stan again and am very excited about the value and experience he will be bringing to MindLink Marketing clients.

Welcome aboard Stan!

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12

Feb

Productivity software I love – Tungle and Things

written by Scott Olson

From time to time I like to post about software that I am really enjoying using and am getting good benefit from. This time it is a meeting scheduling software, Tungle, and a task management software, Things. Both are quickly becoming indispensable to me in my daily routine.

The founder of one of the clients I work for, Luke Kanies of Reductive Labs, turned me on to Tungle and I’m not going back. It is a perfect tool for determining the time for a meeting between a group of people. Simply go into the application, create a new meeting, select the times you’re available, and send to your invitees. They can choose the times that work for them and Tungle chooses the meeting time and syncs it with your calendar. It is a great time saver when you have a meeting with more than one person, especially outside your own organization.

Things is a simple Mac tool for task management that I have really been enjoying. It isn’t overpowered, but does what it was intended to do really well … track tasks. It’s great if you work on a variety of projects, or in my case with multiple clients as it allows you to keep your items straight and even assign them to fellow team members. If you are looking for a simple task management software I would definitely recommend checking them out.

Tags: software
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28

Jan

Top 6 reasons I want the new Apple iPad, the ultimate media consumption device

written by Scott Olson

Steve Jobs introduced the new iPad to the world yesterday and as you might expect the reaction has been swift and is all over the social media world. Search #iPad on Twitter and you will get a variety of reactions, not too few of which are negative. The top complaints? There are many, but here are a few that I think have merit:

The name – iPad? Really? I love Apple, but this name sucks. iSlate, which was rumored to be owned by Apple is far better. Don’t we have enough childish jokes in the world without this name?
Lack of camera – I especially don’t get this one as I think that video chat would have been a perfect application for this device.
Lack of support for flash – Ultimately this is a device for media consumption and flash remains a prominent component of many websites. Lack of support here will be even more noticeable than with the iPhone.

All this said, I think that most of the detractors are missing the point of the iPad and remind me of the people who complained about the iPhone for not having a built in keyboard, 3G, etc. Netbooks and the like are about media consumption first and creation second. Desktops and laptops will still rule when it comes to creating almost anything ranging from a document to an application. Smaller devices simply aren’t as useful for that function.

Where small devices rule, is consuming media on the go. With this criteria in mind I see no equal to the iPad, bad name and all. The following are my top six reasons I will be purchasing an iPad and there is no device that can even come close to offering me the experience I would get with this device. (more…)

Tags: iPad, technology
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20

Jan

Record your customer interviews for the most impact

written by Scott Olson

I have been involved in quite a few customer interviews lately and I have piece of advice that I would like to share. Be sure to record them. Not only is this a handy way to make sure that you capture all of their feedback but it is a tremendous tool for enhancing the value of the reports you generate to communicate the feedback you have received.

I personally use RecordiaPro with great results for both quality and an output that I can edit. Whether you are running a win/loss analysis, a customer advisory group or are looking for product feedback on new features, a recorded audio clip incorporated into your presentation (I use Keynote because it has great multi-media integration) adds tremendously to the impact of recommendations. There is no substitute for a 1-2 minute clip directly from the customer explaining a particular point or recommendation.

2 Comments You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Startup Marketing Content Services | MindLink Marketing

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

When it comes to content marketing, it’s best to focus on what you do best

Startup marketing strategy: Building thought leadership

Startup website essentials – answering 5 key questions

Why lead nurturing is so critical to moving prospects through the sales cycle

Social Media Collapse? No, it will simply shift from quantity to quality.

Stan Carlberg joins MindLink Marketing

Productivity software I love – Tungle and Things

Top 6 reasons I want the new Apple iPad, the ultimate media consumption device

Record your customer interviews for the most impact

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