The rock star partnership of sales and marketing revisited

This week I’m going to a seminar on marketing for SMEs and entrepreneurs run by Ulster Bank in conjunction with SmallBusinessCan which promises to be an interesting affair.  Some of the topics under discussion on the SmallBusinessCan website will be addressed, such as:

1. Marketing or sales?
2. Social Media
3. E-commerce, designing your website, app or website?
4. The classics
5. Cloud, social media, software and systems

I’m looking forward to hearing what the panel will say about the first topic.  One of SmallBusinessCan’s founders says “My personal view is that a good sales person is worth 10 marketers.”

First of all it should never be an either/or.  Both disciplines have their place in any organisation and, at their best, complement each other well.  I wrote about this before (and not just so I could post a photo of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in full flow).

Secondly, it is better to make selling everyone’s job rather than marketing.  Developing everyone’s ability to spot a sales opportunity and nurture it to a certain point before passing to the sales team will reap more dividends.  The same cannot necessarily be said for marketing though.  It’s a rare outfit that allows everyone in the organisation to contribute to the Facebook page or Twitter account although hats off to those who do.  This requires good training, trust and a blame free culture.

A recent survey by The Channel Partnership in conjunction with The Leadership Foundation found that over 80% of sales and marketing professionals believe their activities are not aligned, no doubt having a significant impact on the bottom line.  More than half said that the lack of a clear strategy was a key factor in the development of co-ordinated plans, as was lack of time, budgets, structured processes and senior direction.

Hubspot, the lead generation software people, has abandoned the traditional silo structure altogether in favour of wrapping their sales and marketing functions around buying personas, effectively banishing any ‘us and them’, ‘sales v marketing’ rifts.  It must work for them – they’ve recently raised $35m investment money to expand into Europe.

So marketing isn’t quite dead yet, then.

Exposé: your ultimate social media toolkit

Reblogged from Blether And Blogger:

• 

Having live-tweeted several times over the last year, I was feeling pretty confident, highly proficient, and not at all fazed when asked to step-in at short notice to take responsibility for tweeting at a recent event from the CIPR Scotland Twitter account.

I was so busy battering the keypad to keep up with the rich experience being shared that there were standard tactics I over-looked.

Read more… 1,299 more words

A really useful blog post from @marcommskenny featuring top tips on how to live tweet effectively at an event. Live tweeting is an impressive skill to have and requires you to be able to keep many plates spinning, as Kenny says. It's also great fun, too. In the 'Doing your homework' section I'd add that a copy of the agenda with timings and locations, a list of the speakers (including their twitter addresses) and a synopsis of what they're talking about is invaluable. I'd also say, don't worry about the frequency with which you're tweeting in the main sessions versus the coffee breaks - as a reader following the event on Twitter it gives a real sense of 'wish I was there' to know that everyone's just gone for a coffee. Of course, as the live tweeter you can always compound this and make them jealous by tweeting a photo of the cakes the audience is consuming :) A great post, Kenny, thanks!

What Quora says about how to market an app

Over a million apps but how do you market yours?

The global apps industry continues to grow massively – iTunes approved it’s millionth app back in November – yet it is still in its infancy.  It’s a very exciting place to be working right now.

For hard working appreneurs the only stats that matter are the number of downloads and the rate of returning users  – these are the magic numbers that investors want to see.

And getting there means marketing.  Unfortunately there is a derth of case studies, research, advice and online chat about how to do this.

Most of the marketing advice tends to be either:

1.  Buy online advertising to get your users (as eshewed by those platforms with ad space to sell) or

2.  Get an influential person with large social reach to promote your app (as advised by smug people who’ve achieved this).

Neither of which is a valid strategy for most cash and time strapped start ups.

So, here’s a summary of a thread I found on Quora with a bit more useful information about how to market an app.

Essential actions to market your app

1.  Identify your target customers and the pain point your app is solving for them

2.  Articulate this in a value proposition and snappy description

Must do actions to market your app

1.  Provide awesome screenshots (not to be under estimated)

2.  Write a press release and other good PR fodder (research stats etc) and make easily available.  Post them on news distribution sites like prmac.com, prnewswire.co.uk and gamespress.com

3.  Use social media to create a buzz – blogs, Facebook and Twitter were the platforms mentioned

4.  Write on and create new threads on forums like MacRumors, Touch Arcade and Tuaw

5.  Capture email addresses as soon as possible and ask early adopters for reviews

6.  Engage with app influencers to secure reviews

7.  Launch in phases

8.  Identify your (SEO) keywords so your app is easy to find in the App Store

Jury’s out on these actions to market your app

1.  Buy advertising space

2.  Focus all your energy on marketing within the App Store

3.  Learn how to do it properly by building one app purposely to throw away (Angry Birds was Rovio’s 57th game)

4.  Have a lite and paid for version of your app

Have-fun-but-not-high-hopes actions to market your app

1.  Get it featured on The Big Bang Theory

2.  Ask Stephen Fry to play with it

One marketing tactic missed from the Quora thread is the importance of email marketing to drive downloads and engagement.  Another is the clever (ie neither stalkerish nor  so infrequent it’s irrelevant) use of push notifications within the app to drive repeat use.

It stands to reason that best practice for app marketing will evolve in 2013 though, like SEO marketing, it may well be a moving beast as the boundaries and rules set by the App Store change.  But what then of Android?  Time will tell.

Want To Get Into Marketing? Market Yourself First

Reblogged from Just Jennee:

It's time to bring back the careers portion of this blog. Let's face it, I could blog about life and its antics for a very long time.

This post was originally posted on MediaCareers.ca, where I write about, you guessed it, media careers, career advice, social media and media trends.

Happy Reading!

Want To Get Into Marketing? Market Yourself First…

Read more… 465 more words

This great post about how to market yourself for job opportunities in marketing gives tips that apply to job seekers in any industry. It also reminds me of a post I wrote a while back called what job seekers ought to know about writing.

4 steps to a social media strategy (infographic)

The fifth and final infographic I wanted to share this week is another on social media.

This deceptively simple visual gives a good overview of what marketers need to consider when putting together a social media strategy.  It’s a good attempt at removing some of the complexity that can creep in.

I also like the objectives, strategies and tactics approach that’s implicit here.

Source:  Thanks to Marketing Profs for the share.

My infographic blog post series kicked off on Monday with The Social Sickness (social media personas) and Tuesday’s was Opinion Burnout (customer surveys).  On Wednesday there was The Evolution of Time Management Tools (self explainatory) and Thursday saw Common Phobias of Creatives (ditto).  I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

The Common Phobias of Creatives (infographic)

The fourth of my series of infographics for this week is this summary of phobias suffered by creative types.

It raised a smile, especially the client relations comments at the end (I think I’ve heard all of those as a marketer too).  Grr.

I could add a few more, especially the phobia of DON’T TOUCH MY SCREEN!! (you know who you are) but that wouldn’t be nice.

Source:  Thanks to Design Taxi for the share.

And thanks to you for following this mini infographic series so far this week, if you have been.  If not you missed The Social Sickness (social media personas) on Monday, Opinion Burnout (customer surveys) on Tuesday, The Evolution of Time Management Tools on Wednesday.

If you don’t want to miss the last infographic tomorrow just pop your email address into the box on the top right to receive these blog updates straight to your inbox.

The evolution of time management tools (infographic)

The third infographic I wanted to share this week is a journey through time management tools.

There are a lot of tools and techniques to help us manage our time better and I’ve blogged before about how to prioritise tasks.  How refreshing to note that not having enough hours in the day is nothing new.

Source:  Thanks to Generation Demandforce for the share.

My infographic blog post series kicked off on Monday with The Social Sickness (social media personas) and Tuesday’s was Opinion Burnout (customer surveys).

If you don’t want to miss the other infographics this week just pop your email address into the box on the top right to receive these blog updates straight to your inbox.