When your in-house team finds itself with a skill gap or a resource issue, outsourcing is an increasingly viable solution to getting the work done. Many small to medium-sized business lack the budget to keep a full-time marketing team busy. That doesn’t mean they don’t have need of high quality marketing services to meet their business goals. The solution? Work with an out-of-house provider who can be an important part of your team to get the work done.
When you decide to outsource some or all of your marketing strategy, planning or execution, keep these five points in mind. This will help you avoid some of the more common problems we hear about in the world of outsourced marketing support. Continue Reading →
When something works, leverage your success and repeat it for other clients. This simple yet powerful marketing tactic positions your organization as a ready-made solutions provider in a particular niche. This is vertical market targeting at its most effective.
We understand that Facebook, and other social media channels, represent a challenge for many business owners. The major complaint? “I don’t have the time to spend hours on Facebook…looking at grumpy cats or watching videos of your second cousin’s kid’s piano recital.” We agree. You probably don’t have time for that! However, with more than one billion users worldwide, Facebook has become a de-facto search engine for a huge number of consumers and business people. Not being searchable on Facebook is akin to not being found on Google or any other search engine.
Facebook, that ever-changing social media with which many business owners and marketers have a love/hate relationship, recently released a new feature called “Graph Search.” This feature allows Facebook users (i.e. your customers and prospects!) to perform detailed searches within the system. For example, a user might be able to search “insurance companies that my friends have liked.” (This feature, like all new FB updates, is being rolled out slowly, so you may or may not be able to access it on your own Facebook profile or Page right now.)
For the first couple of years I was in business, the company grew a lot by picking up what my competitors “spilled.” Our industry has been notorious for not recognizing the lifetime value of the customer. At least, that was true in the growth years of the 1980s and ’90s. It may not be the case as much today, but it’s still the situation with too many companies.
