February 2010: Effective Marketing NOW!

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After two years of managing through the recession, 2010 is shaping up to be the year where most of us can, once again, plan for growth.

For some, stepping up traditional marketing activities will suffice, but many firms are now grappling with marketplace changes that require a completely different approach to business development and marketing.

Whether it’s leaner, restructured clients; new management; a younger demographic; competition from overseas; a move away from billable hours to project fees; different funding models; shuttered media outlets leaving few targets for PR; or technological developments – the landscape has changed for large, multi-office firms and sole practitioners alike.

All marketing tactics are linked – more than ever before.

The ideal has always been for sales, marketing and communications functions to be connected, but in practice that hasn’t always been the case. Integration requires a lot of planning and many tactics have delivered sufficient results on their own. The Internet and new media have changed that: networking on social sites like LinkedIn, making the first page in a Google search or conducting an e-blast require a website or at least a Facebook company page.

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The website is now the centre of your sales and marketing universe

as Paul Chato, President of Your Web Department and Friend-of-Oomph eloquently puts it. It’s hard to believe, but many companies still don’t have a website and, for the majority of those that do, the website is still just a digital brochure – a static set of pages that are rarely updated.

It used to be that launching a website was an expensive and complex undertaking. But today, anyone can launch a WordPress site for free, in about 15 minutes. This being the case, it means that anyone without a website today is probably viewed as uninformed, rooted in the past and as missing basic business systems – in addition to being invisible to people who are researching purchasing options online – which is just about everyone.

Content rules.

Content is the honey that attracts visitors – both human and ‘spiders’ [which are search engines like Google] alike. Without content that is interesting and fresh, there is no reason to come back after visitors have read your brochure or portfolio. Updating your website’s content is the most basic prerequisite for ‘optimizing’ the website so it appears in Google searches. Content positions you and your firm as dynamic ‘thought leaders’ and is the anchor to all social media activities like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Many traditional tactics are now less effective or altogether obsolete.

Massive restructurings and layoffs have destroyed relationships honed over many years. Cold calling, direct mail, advertising or face-to-face networking don’t appeal to younger replacements or aren’t practical for reaching people who are trying to function in much leaner environments. Bankruptcies, closures and layoffs at newspapers, TV and magazines have reduced coverage options to the point where most traditional PR campaigns no longer produce a return on investment.

Social media is here to stay.

It is true that people use Twitter to announce the type of sandwich they are having for lunch or Facebook to chit chat with Kindergarten classmates. But to dismiss social media outlets as a passing fad of no use for business is to miss out on the most effective marketing channel devised since the advent of radio and TV.

The statistics are staggering: Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on a global basis, with 50% of active users logging into the site each day - 175m users every 24 hours. 35milion of these update their status each day. Six months ago, Facebook had 250million users – a growth of more than 40% in less than 6 months. LinkedIn has 50 million members worldwide. Twitter now has 75 million user accounts and approximately 15 million active users. [Source: Jake Hird via www.larrybodine.com]. I can tell you from our Google Analytics reports that Twitter is a HUGE driver of traffic to our website.

Before you think this is only applicable to companies that sell books, computers or camping gear, I should tell you that we just made the short list for a $100,000 contract in an area of practice we do not promote and for a client in an industry we have never targeted.

The only reason we were invited to participate is because they found us through a Google search and liked what they saw.

To market effectively today you need a website based, content-centered strategy that includes social media as the driver for networking, public relations, website optimization, direct mail, public speaking and brand and thought leadership.

Read a case study on how Oomph is weaving all its marketing tactics together here and learn how to choose marketing tactics that are suitable for your type of practice and get step-by-step directions on how to craft a plan that ties them all together by taking The Most Effective Marketing Tactics – NOW. Workshop details here..