Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

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Even if you don't use it you already know Facebook is one of the most powerful social network platforms. You have probably come to realize that it’s not just for teenagers and socialites, but also for the small private business as well. Why? Because Facebook gives every business owner  an effective and affordable marketing tool. But we will agree to one thing: Facebook marketing can be intimidating.

When it comes to marketing your small business, social media should be part of your game plan. If you do not yet have a Facebook page for your business, stop what you are doing and call a marketing agency! Okay, it's so simple you really can do it yourself and in under half an hour but the point is DO IT!

Once you have your Facebook page up and ready to go, you will need to know how to use it to increase brand recognition, customer response and user activity. Here are a few simple first steps:

The first thing you will need to do is to gain followers, or friends, for your page. You can do this by promoting your Facebook page via email marketing or in your physical location. Create a special offer (perhaps a percentage off the customer's next purchase) if they sign up to be your friend on Facebook and remind them of that while they are at your location doing business. Restaurants can use tent cards on the tables. Retail stores can have signs at the registers. Place the special offer on all of your print advertising.

Once you have your first few followers, you can begin your first Facebook marketing campaign.

Posting the occasional discount or reminder to come into your store is not enough and will quickly put your audience to sleep. You will need to engage clients and share posts that are worthy of re-sharing. For example, if your business is a car wash, you might want to post a cartoon about how much pollen is in the air and then remind folks that it's time to wash their car.

And use photos! It has been proven that readers react significantly greater to image-driven posts, a major difference between Facebook and Twitter. Photo's in posts draw more attention. And phot's can elicit a humorous response!

A tip about pictures: crop them. Facebook shows tiny versions of pictures so you need to focus on the most important area.

Getting your readers engaged in answering questions on your Facebook page is another way to have them become more involved in sharing your business with others. For instance, you could ask a question such as, "What is your favorite car wash memory from childhood?" Readers love to share nostalgic answers to questions such as these and every time they post an answer, it not only shows up on your Facebook page, but it also shows up on theirs. Then, their friends can see the question and response as well and you have just introduced your brand to an entirely new set of potential clients.

Use the Facebook search feature for the keywords that relate to your business. The search for car washes in central NJ delivered someone looking for an affordable auto detailer and someone just back from Florida looking to get the bucks off the front of her car.

Think your car wash can help? Tell them you can! And now you are a solution provider instead of just an advertiser! :-)

Here are a few things to keep in mind regarding posts:

• You can write about any current event that is related to your industry or brand.
• If you find any fun or interesting video (hosted on Vimeo or YouTube) that is related to your brand or procuct/service, share it on your page.
• Encourage your audience to post pictures, stories, or questions that relate to your industry.
• From whatever the fans post, repost the content that you find the most interesting and credit that audience member.

When it comes to marketing your small business on Facebook, remember to be engaging and fun. If you only post boring business posts, your readers will not share them, nor will they be impressed. Keep it light and social and success will follow.

After all, it is called social media for a reason!

Inbound Marketing is Cold Callings Best Friend

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What inbound marketing does really, really well is eliminate the cold call. After all, when you have scores of interested people taking the time to visit your landing page or blog and then leaving you their contact information the odds are pretty good your call will be taken.

This behavioral bridge is amplified when they have taken advantage of a download (white paper, case study or some other relevant piece of information) and have something really tangible... and it has your brand on it!

What we are actually describing is an effort to create a warmer environment and avoid a cold one. To accomplish this a good sales professional will usually "prime the pump" with an introductory letter (print or e-mail) to make his/her reason for contact known, introduce his/her product or service, present his/her company's value proposition, and set up the real objective... getting an appointment.

Landing pages can play a large role in this, and a good letter is designed to trigger a visit to a dedicated landing page. The landing page can provide a lot more information (testimonials, images, product reviews) than a single letter can (or should!). And the right marketing platform (we use and recommend Hubspot©) makes creating and deploying landing pages quick and painless.

However, this article is intended to remind us of some best practices from the past. I would like you to consider one important but often overlooked aspect with the introductory letter tactic...

The quality of the paper that you use, the design of the letterhead that you use, the ink on the page... all of these come into play and can separate the wheat from the chaff! Want some proof?

We were retained to redesign an existing corporate identity package for a prospective client, and to prove the best efficacy we ran a test. 400 introductory letters were crafted and distributed to a totally cold list, a B-to-B list which we purchased. All of the companies played in the professional services arena and all were privately held companies. All of the letters were identically messaged, with the call to action being a visit to one of four landing pages for a complimentary report download (which, thanks to our Hubspot© platform, we can easily build effective landing pages and track them back to the respective letter).

Here is how we constructed the mailing:

• 25% were printed using a solid toner Xerox Phaser printer with 32-lb HP Premium Choice paper (great hand-feel and very bright). We used a full color letterhead design (which we designed and were striving to get client adoption of) - variation A
• 25% were printed using an HP Officejet Pro Inkjet with 24-lb Hammermill paper (still better than almost anything else), using the same full color letterhead design - variation B
• 25% were printed using a monochrome Dell laser, with a store brand 24-lb laser paper on the identical but preprinted full color letterhead - variation C
• 25% were printed using a monochrome Dell laser, with a store brand 24-lb laser paper on the client's existing one-color letterhead - variation D

Here are the results:

Variation's A and B more than doubled the response rates of C, and had far better response rates than D. Variation A was slightly better than B but the difference in the paper quality is mostly in weight and unless compared side by side the difference isn't really appreciated. But I do enjoy watching people run their hands over a report I've brought to a meeting having used the combinations found in variation A.

So when you are using a introductory letter campaign to support a call-based sales tactic consider the design, the printing, and the paper because it does have an effect on the behavior you wish to drive in the recipient.

By the way, 69 recipients downloaded the report, 18% overall (net of the bounces, but that is a matter for another post all together, isn't it?).

Reverse Cold-Calling, or How to Lose a Customer in 10 Seconds or Less

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We know it as Cold Calling 2.0 (in our office we refer to it as interruptive sales) but there is a tactic in telemarketing and phone sales that is guaranteed NOT win the hearts and minds of your potential customers. Don’t know to what I am referring? Reverse – cold calling is the act of trickery in getting someone to phone you. Here’s an example:

“Hello, is Mr. Jones in?” “Will you please leave him a very urgent message about a significant purchase we would like to make?”

Obviously, when Mr. Jones returns to his office and is told by his secretary that a very important call may mean a big sale. Of course Mr. Jones will call you back immediately. In this tumultuous economy, every chance at a sale is a big deal.

“Mr. Jones, thank you for calling me back. I really don’t need to purchase anything from you; I just wanted you to hear me out, blah, blah, blah.”

Can you hear the irritation in Mr. Jones’ voice? The angry breathing? The sudden slam of the receiver hitting the base of the phone? Without a doubt, that is the last time you will ever hear his voice again, unless you face him in court.

There are a lot of ways to trick someone into calling you back, or, even better, to ask for a fraudulent name you know won’t work, and when the response is that there is no person by that name; you ask for the person that does. This manipulation is the types of “cons” that have been used by swindlers and “magic beans” sales people have used for centuries, only now it can be performed on the telephone or the internet.

There are business owners trying reverse cold calling every day in this country, and the chances of this working are even less than actual cold calling itself. Cold calling 2.0, or what ever you wish to call it is not only unethical, it borders on fraudulently conducting a business enterprise, which by the way is illegal. Wikipedia doesn’t even have a definition for either of these “new and improved” methods of telemarketing.

It has been my experience that this type of deception is typically used when sales people are pressured for a certain number of call backs or appointments set; results only responses. These people are “smilin’ and dialin’” as quickly as they possibly can, so any technique can be rationalized and a perfectly acceptable business practice in their minds.

I sincerely hope my readers do not participate in these sorts of shenanigans, and I’ll leave it at that. There are other ways of growing your customer base without the need to stoop as low as trickery and manipulation.

The Art of Persuasion……Building a Relationship

The best sales people, or the folks responsible for sales are best served using the age old art of persuasion: Win Friends and Influence People. Despite the methodology of marketing; traditional or digital, the highest success will come to those that practice ethical, customer centric relationship building tactics.

The economic storm we continue to live within shows little signs of recovery, and therefore every penny a company invests in growing their enterprise must produce ROI in one form or other. Telephone sales no longer works, unless the prospect is calling you from some other form of marketing has captured your attention. It should never be the result of some form of trickery or deception.

Your marketing efforts to generate leads may comprise of a variety of “offline” methods, which is fine if they’re ethical. They can be augmented with online “inbound marketing’ strategies, which are performed via the internet and email. It may be in the form of a blog, or series of articles, eBooks, White Papers or other digital products. These content pieces should be designed to impart sincere, relationship building information that will help people. That is the way marketing is performed today. The slash and burn methods of the past are no longer effective.

Here at Zen Marketing we utilize relationship building as our foundation for all things marketing. As an inbound marketing agency, it is our job to not only develop comprehensive marketing plans, but in many cases, implement them as well. Some of our clients use us for everything, while others perform much of it themselves, and we fill in the gaps with which they are not comfortable with, or lack the resources to fulfill the task at hand.

I have mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating. At Zen Marketing, we offer a no obligation marketing analysis of your present marketing methodologies, and offer you a solution based strategy to help you make an informed decision on how to proceed. While inbound marketing may rival traditional marketing methods in termns of investment, it offers measurability and processes that might replace everything you are presently doing. Traditional and inbound marketing integrate cohesively to increase your leads, improving your chances for sustainability and growth.

Give us a call to find out more.

Maximizing Your Direct Mail Campaign in the Digital Marketing Era

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You rarely hit a home run in small business marketing; small ball works best. A well defined marketing plan around a realistic number of differing tactics will run up the score nicely. But because of restrictive budgets (or sometimes attitudes) many small businesses try a tactic and when the home run doesn’t happen abandon it and move on to the next “idea of the week”.

This is certainly the case with direct mail. Before the onslaught of the internet, websites, e-mail marketing and social media the war was between newspaper advertising and direct mail. The savvy business person who was unafraid to invest the time and money to secure a well defined mailing list and manage it properly had a tool to better engage his intended audience. He/she controlled the message, the delivery and the timing.

There weren’t many home runs but when done well, following the best practices of design, message, offer and USPS regulations, and repeated regularly it could provide a business with a following.

But in my regular interviews with prospective small business clients, while reviewing their past marketing examples, I often hear “direct mail doesn’t work” or “direct mail is too expensive”. Is this because the execution was poor, the budget to scarce, or the campaign was lacking in repetition? Almost always one of these three tenants of direct mail marketing was not addressed properly.

But why bother with direct mail, because today we have digital marketing! We have digital brochures we call websites, we have e-mail marketing and we regularly share what we have done lately with our 97 subscribers, and we have social media like Facebook and Twitter, whatever that means.

And how exactly does that lead to new customers or clients? [insert the business owners best deer in the headlights stare here].

The genesis for this article is simple:

• Direct mail is perceived as old, tired, and ineffective
• Social media and e-mail marketing are all the buzz but people often don’t  realize how much time it takes to reach critical mass
• Through their e-mail lists and largely through their social media efforts small business owners are speaking to their existing audiences. This is great for engagement, and can assist with referrals, but it provides very slow growth in regards to new business development.

Stop and consider the how an integrated approach to outbound marketing can generate new customers or clients. Blending the traditional direct mail tactic with the information and processes of digital marketing and you can stop hitting singles and begin hitting doubles and triples.

The Process is very straight forward:

• Use targeted direct mail – the data is the most crucial part so take the time to find a good source (be it a marketing firm or a list provider). Break it down to saliency and budget but have a really good plan for who you wish to speak to and build the list around it.
• Design a compelling piece – clearly define your offer or value proposition and drive the reader to a specific landing page. Good layout and visual is important to make it stand out amongst the other mail and to support you are credible. So don’t skimp on the design and (please!) don’t design it using a word processor. Clip art does not make your business look professional or credible. The right layout can and should be used over and over again, so your initial investment is extended and the repetition helps develop your brand top of mind awareness.
• Let the direct mail be your driver not your sales force – far too often we see postcards crammed full of verbiage. It is as though the post card is intended to be the sales force! Instead be clever with your copy, create interest rather than try to create demand, but always point the reader to a website landing page.
• A vanity URL is great but mobile use is growing exponentially so add a QR code. Make it easy for those of us on the run to visit your landing page and learn more.
• What is your call to action? Stop talking about you and give me a reason for me to act now.
• And how about a little risk reversal?
• Build unique landing pages – adding a landing page to an existing website is inexpensive. You should restate your direct mail message or value proposition and strong call to action. Here you have the room to add more content, like testimonials and images. There is that pesky risk reversal opportunity again. If we structured your landing page can be a complete source of information, offer risk aversion, and drive the intended action.
• Require something for your offer: get the reader to share their contact information, answer a question, fill out a survey or poll, etc.
• Be aware of best SEO practices when selecting a title tag and page name.
• Use a good analytic package to study traffic and keywords… or better yet just ask your marketing firm to provide this to you and focus on running your business.

Now comes the really fun part!

• Adopt a well organized lead nurturing process. This is where you utilize an email marketing process to routinely drip relevant information to your new list of prospective clients.
• Share your blog. The impact on SEO and organic search is crucial so blog often, make it real, and then share it through your e-mail database and social media. And forget the newsletter- none of your prospects have the time to read all that anyway! Newsletters are for existing customers to reinforce the relationship.
• You can now stay connected, build top of mind awareness and continue to share content while developing credibility. Along the way you can also drum up interest in your social media outlets to get more followers, fans, etc.

When executed properly your direct mail investment will drive awareness in your business and allow you to shift your marketing to less costly e-mail and social media.

And if you reinvest the difference in investment into purchasing additional data, and then repeat the process, you can quickly develop your small business into a World Series winning team. And you are no longer relying on only one tactic to extend your business’s marketing reach!

Lead Your Competition with Content Marketing

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We have covered the value of creating content marketing to allow prospects to find your website (and find you!) for quite a while now.  One way to lead your competition and establish yourself as an industry expert is by creating engaging content in a variety of media.  You not only bring valuable attention to your brand, but also gain recognition as you rise above the competition.

Content marketing is not really all that new.  Neither is the concept of being a market or industry leader.  Leading your competition may not be your goal, but driving new business should be.  Content marketing IS the way today to build credibility and drive new business creation.

Actually, content marketing gets its humble beginning by way of the earliest of human beings; telling stories around a campfire to get a point across.  Storytelling is the way people relate information to themselves, remember important things and develop deeper relationships with those telling the tales.  Content marketing is the same, except for the age of storytelling, and the delivery.

Companies across the globe are taking content marketing seriously, and the concept is gaining worldwide traction. Don’t take my word for it, take a look at reports featured on the Internet from CMI, the Content Marketing Institute. Their recent report on Business to Business (B2B) marketers states that more than 90 percent of them are invested and utilizing content marketing to drive their brands and draw prospective clientele.  Also, when it comes to content, more than 86 percent of Business to Customer (B2C) share the same enthusiasm for the practice of providing engaging content to drive leads and their brands. 

If that doesn’t convince you check out MarketingProfs, another industry leading organization, wherein their recent reporting reflects similar data.  Additionally, these reports indicate that more than fifty-four percent of each type of marketing focus expects to increase spending next year.  

Leading your competition will take some doing, but if you never start, you will never know if and how it works.  Here are three tips to seriously consider.

      Lead the Field – CEO’s must become the champions for change.  If your company is not currently utilizing content marketing as the primary marketing strategy, yet you have a website, you are missing the boat.  Change is difficult under any banner, from redirecting a team project or changing the way your business operates.  Big or small, change is tough, but in this world, change is the only constant in business. Simply put it is grow or die.

      Candidly speaking, professional service firms such as lawyers, accountants and CPA’s, the medical profession and others are not known for their poetic prose or compelling storytelling.  In fact, these professions are filled with industry jargon, or even the use of Latin to avoid the average person from understanding them. Doctors and lawyers have very specific language that sets themselves apart from the rest of the world, and that is just fine for conducting business.  If you are using the same terms in your marketing, it is no wonder why most do not have much success with lead generation from the public.  If people cannot understand what it is you are saying, how can they develop a relationship with you?

      Content marketing is only picking up speed, and the technologies to provide multi-media content is growing by the day.  If your competition is not on the cutting edge along with you, why not get out ahead of them.  After all, articulating what makes your firm different and stands out from the crowd is how we succeed.

      Tell Great Stories - Put a team of content experts together from your internal staff.  If you don’t know marketing, you had better learn.  Marketing is everyone’s job, from the front desk attendant to the CEO.  Your customer service area is a great place to start, due to its natural interaction with your customer base.

What are some of the comments and stories they hear that can be used as a basis for a victory over a problem they faced that only your business made successful?

How did someone on the staff go out of their way to make the customer happy?  An interesting bit of history about the early days of FedEx reflects just a tale, as made legendary by Tom Peters:  FedEx and the Helicopter

It seems a blizzard in the California Sierras took the telephone lines down, leaving the local FedEx office without phone service -- or any way of connecting with customers.

So a junior FedEx staffer decided to rent a helicopter to fix the problem. Without asking permission from his managers, he put the helicopter on his personal American Express card and instructed the pilot to fly to the top of the mountain where the failed equipment was located. There, the employee jumped onto the snow-covered mountaintop, trudged three-quarters of a mile in chest-deep snow and fixed the line to get FedEx back in business. An excerpt from: HOW YOU CAN UNLEASH THE POWER OF STORYTELLING by Ann Wylie

FedEx was perhaps one of the earliest corporations to utilize storytelling as a way to grow their brand and gain new customers.  They have become famous, and infamous for their ability to take customer or company actions that affected customers and turn it into compelling, engaging content.  Every business across the globe has these type of stories to share, they must unearth them and begin to use them for the sake of marketing.

Evaluate, Analyze, Rinse and Repeat – In order to know what affect your content is making on your business, it is critical to develop a set of metrics and evaluate routinely.  By analyzing your content inventory by type (video, white papers, multi-media, articles, blog posts, etc) or topic (customer success story, improvements to make people’s lives better etc), you will understand what aspects of the individual pieces have on your business marketing.  Does your audience prefer articles to multi-media?  Do particular topics resonate better than do others?

Doing so will not only keep you abreast of your marketing efforts, it can lead to re-developing existing content into a different or expanded version in another medium.  Perhaps you have a series of articles from six months ago that can easily be updated and converted into a white paper or eBook.

If all of this sounds overwhelming and too much to consider, you may be right.  What you have to do is evaluate the above and then evaluate your goals and your competition.  Is this going to get you where you want to be financially, and will this separate you from your competitors, only you can answer those questions.

The team at Zen Marketing has the expertise, the talent and the tools to conduct a marketing assessment, develop an affordable plan and set you on your way to leading the field.  Or, if you do not have the time to invest, we serve as the outsourced marketing department for a number of clients.  Feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience and insure 2013 will be your best year ever.

Top Three Great Reasons to Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency

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While there is a plethora (love using that word!) of good reasons to utilize the services of an inbound marketing firm, it is our belief that they all boil down to the three most important, as outlined below. We at Zen Marketing Inc., a fully digital inbound marketing agency believe that we can build your business using the latest methodologies and tactics.

Over the past five years Harvard Business Review (aka HBR) studied how patterns of business has changed to the point that instead of solution sales professionals pushing products and services, companies are already 60% involved in the acquisition process for the needs of their particular business processes or concerns. It is in that light that the conversion from push advertising to pull methods grows businesses today. Zen Marketing Inc. is a boutique marketing agency that helps businesses “get found affordably.”

Rather than attempt to conquer the Internet alone, we suggest the following considerations why you should consider working with us.

Broader Perspective – This is what we do for a living. Our staff of professionals works with a variety of industries utilizing inbound marketing strategies and tactics on a daily basis. We have in-depth knowledge of the constantly changing marketing landscape, and how to best utilize best practices of the marketing opportunities available today.

• Your Team is Already Working Full-time( or more) – With budgets under constant scrutiny and margins shrinking, do you have the necessary staffing to conduct an effective marketing program? Your team is working at capacity, and if not, you have already initiated steps to get the most out of available resources. Through the use of a dedicated marketing team, you can let your staff do what they do best, and leave the lead generation to the professionals.
• Certified Marketing Executives – At Zen Marketing, we only hire certified inbound marketing executives, from web developers and copywriters to graphic artisans and beyond. Our in-house and external teams provide on-time and on-budget performance on which you can count.
• Access to Industry Specific Marketing Data – Today’s marketing information is growing at a pace that few can keep up with, but a Zen Marketing, our research team is on the job to not only understand what works, but knows where to find the answers to complex marketing challenges.

Availability of Quality Content – Content is the core of the inbound marketing process, and at Zen Marketing, we have a dedicated staff of copywriters that are unmatched in the industry. Our writers craft compelling and engaging content full-time, and when we have everyone generating content for our clientele, we have a bank of content writers of more than 2000 certified copywriters. There is no shortage of compelling content crafts persons at Zen Marketing.

• Generates More Leads – It is a proven method of generating more leads than your present marketing efforts. Our strategies work because we utilize the most up to date methodologies. Content creation, repurposing, curation and multiplicity of use, specifically targeted to your buyer personas will build your leads quickly and effectively. White Papers, eBooks, Videos, Webinars, Special Reports, Articles and Blog Entries, all supporting a comprehensive content strategy, as well as well-crafted email marketing campaigns will boost your lead generation activity beyond present production standards.
• Landing Pages for Calls to Action – Through the use of Calls to Action landing pages, our content marketing strategies will not only improve your brand positioning, your lead generation efforts too will quickly pay off. By capturing leads at the point of content review, you can invest more time in lead nurturing and sales preparation than ever before.

More Robust ROI – Business is about dollars and cents, so it makes good sense to maximize revenues while minimizing overhead and expense. Through the use of an inbound marketing strategy, your return on investment will improve dramatically.

• Less Expensive - It has been quantified by industry leaders that inbound marketing is 62% less expensive than traditional marketing efforts. Digital marketing is far less expensive than print, television or other mediums. By hiring an inbound marketing firm like Zen Marketing Inc., you control the budget. We will craft a comprehensive marketing campaign designed around your goals and budget constraints. As an external agency, you avoid all of the health and welfare costs typically encountered with employees. 
• Better SEO – Search engine optimization has become a complex process since Google decided to change their algorithms. Companies that once held front page positioning on the search results have fallen into obscurity overnight as a result. Yesterday’s SEO is sorely outdated and no longer effective. It is imperative that the responsible party be Internet and Search Engine savvy to produce the proper results. As such experts, our team specializes in companies “getting found.”
• Marketing Tools – With inbound marketing solutions such as HubSpot software, lead generation and brand positioning is easy. As a Certified HubSpot Partner, we are fully knowledgeable in all of its uses, from landing pages and social media interactivity to deep analytics and reporting, so you know what is working and what isn’t. There are a number of ways to take advantage of HubSpot’s capabilities, from Do it Yourself (DIY) to Shared Participation, to Do it For Me (DIFM). A no obligation review of your current marketing efforts to a custom designed program is available at the asking.
• Integrated Marketing Efforts – We utilize the latest in solutions that are fully integrated into the marketing software. Everything from email campaign solutions to tracking and reporting software, your marketing can be automated and streamlined to perform with little oversight.

How about Zen Marketing? We enjoy working with clients in the architectural, finance, accounting financial services sectors, and many others... but we aren't working with you? Why not? Feel free to inquire as to how we might serve you by contacting us today.

How to Join in the Social Media Conversation

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Social media is the new word of mouth, so when the conversation online with customers or prospects begins, the friends and contacts that like what they see and react, and are going to join the conversation as well. Perhaps you aren’t monitoring your social media feeds; in that case you are missing out on information.

One of the best ways to spark a conversation online is to write about questions or comments your customers may have mentioned, and reply to them in your content. By incorporating your social media connections into the dialogue, you are enabling a discussion specifically about your brand.

How you handle (or do not) questions and requests through social media will either polish or tarnish your company brand. Responding to public style questions deserve public answers, but don’t air your dirty laundry. Weigh your responses, and teach your social marketing staff to do the same.

The main thing to remember

When considering or maintaining a social marketing strategy you must realize that it needs to be based on contact. Contact is the foundation of today’s marketing, so it not only must engage the reader, it must answer some concern or question of your targeted audience. Without the correct keyword strategy, publishing calendar, timely topics chosen or injection into your social media, nothing is a bigger concern. Engaging, compelling content in any of its forms must attract and capture the reader, or it isn’t worth the time invested in producing it.

If you are one of those companies that have set up a social media business page and then abandoned it need a crash course in what is happening through the mechanisms of social sites. While Facebook uses an open format, with image, video and/or multi-media postings at your avail, Twitter limits the entries to 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. It takes a bit of education to master either site, so just don’t jump right in without learning a few things. LinkedIn is yet another social media site that has grown dramatically in the past couple of years, and it has its own protocols. What works on one will certainly not work on the other. There are strategies that can meld them and other sites into a cohesive marketing methodology, however.

Your website and offline communications vehicles should carry your points of contact; Facebook page, Twitter handle, Pinterest page, LinkedIn profile and business page should be readily accessible to click through or to navigate with. QR codes are another tool for use to incorporate into print media, like Coke creatively accomplished. It’s just another way for their consumers to interact with their brand.

Here's A Great Demonstration

If you haven’t viewed the Coca-Cola 2020 two-part project, you owe it to yourself to see the future in full view today. Their ambitious plan has gone through numerous iterations, and will certainly change the marketing scene globally.

The Coca-Cola2020 video series is an excellent use of multi-media, as it is built on a new platform called Prezi. If you are interested in the future of marketing, these two organizations are driving marketing innovation like no one else.

When your prospects and customers interact with you as a result of your content, you must be active in the conversation. As content is the vehicle for driving the social media conversation, joining in is critical.

Zen Marketing can deliver marketing campaign development, consulting and content creation, curation and marketing analysis. We’re confident in our capabilities to ensure yours.

Email Marketing for Accounting Firms

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Email marketing is a great way for you to attract or shore up some of the client base, and accounting firms know that once the rush begins, there will be no rest until it is all put aside in late April. It won’t be long until tax filing season comes into focus; often this is no sooner than the holiday decorations are returned to their resting place.

Hopefully you got some rest over the long period between holidays, and didn’t suffer too much post-bubbly on New Year’s Eve. You are going to need your strength once the pressure builds and the back and forth of communications starts with your clients and your staff.
Marketing is probably not even on your mind, especially email marketing. If it isn’t in your wheel house, you just may be in deep water. Not to worry, we at Zen Marketing have life safety devices nearby to bring you back on dry land.

We all know that competition is stiff under normal standards, and this year will be no exception. Competition combined with the ever-changing regulations in the Tax Code, expiring incentives and the rush to get it all done can make your head spin off your shoulders. Add marketing to that mix and some may be considering moving to a desert island.

Utilizing email marketing can streamline the process of getting or staying in contact with your client base, as well as nurturing existing leads that have yet to commit. Getting some of that work done early can put your firm in good stead once the filing season is over. Normally, clients rush in, and then rush away just as quickly. Generating some leads and nurturing them with an automated email marketing campaign is a great way to smooth out the bumps and dips in clientele once the madness of April is behind you.

Email marketing is one of the most affordable methods of lead generation, so why not exploit it. Scheduled content delivery builds reputations, relations and keeps your potential client in the loop. Utilizing a pre-planned and coordinated email marketing campaign can be automated, so you can focus on matters at hand.

The affordability is one of the most attractive aspects of lead generation through email marketing. Still considered a formidable part of the lead nurturing process, when you blend it with direct mail and advertising email provides cost-effective sustainability and expanded marketing reach. With the postage rates and paper costs in a constant upward motion, it has become cost prohibitive for most accounting firms and other small businesses to rely solely on direct mail. Email provides a bridge.

As for other forms of marketing, the costs for television and radio ads have skyrocketed, mainly because of lagging viewership, DVR, satellite radio, and streaming web usage. Revenue targets must remain so even though usage has declined, the average cost per ad has gone skyward, and will remain in an upward climb. Another compelling reason for email marketing.

Inbound marketing (aka content marketing) also relies heavily on email marketing, especially where there is a need for diverse methods in developing engagement and especially with lead nurturing campaigns.

You can cross-sell targeted batches of your overall database by segmenting them into their position in the sales process. Sending get acquainted email content to seasoned prospects is not productive, and may even offend or disenchant prospects. Using data culled by what we call “lead score” will allow for targeted messaging to the right group of prospective clientele. The same holds true for selling buying decision email messaging too soon in the process may cause you to lose that prospect all together. Targeted lead nurturing is a tactic that works well, if implemented correctly.

Another worthwhile benfit that email marketing provides is the ability to personalize the email marketing messages so that the information is deemed “just for me,” which builds your brand and the relationship. Using the prospects name in the salutation and in the body of the content makes you get noticed, and it can be done through technology rather than individually creating each message.

Email marketing is a great tool for accounting firms of all sizes. You know the big boys use it, and you can as well. All it takes is a bit of knowledge, effort and someone to help guide you toward a successful campaign.

Have a profitable tax filing season.

The USPS Changes More Than Just Direct Mail Stamp Prices

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In a meeting today, with seven business people, a comment was made that direct mail was "making a comeback", and "all that social media and e-mail is just confusing". Like many marketing tactics there are right and wrong ways to use the a proven tactic. There are some tactics better suited for a specific business persona than another. The best tactic can be misused and later thrown aside as ineffective or out of touch.

As you are no doubt aware, the postal rates were increased Monday, January 28, 2013. The straight First Class Letter rate rose by $.01 from $.45 to $.46 per piece and a Postcard (the postal definition of a postcard) also rose $.01 from $.32 to $.33 per piece.

However, the actual “sorted” rates did not change very much. Our estimation: the implementation of the new Intelligent Mail Bar Code (IMB) contributed to that, but that is only an estimation.

According to Chris Halligan, President of Associated Mailing & Printing in Branchburg, New Jersey: "when we propose the use of direct mail we suggest using the highest automated rate and then round it up to determine an “estimated” postage rates. This usually ensures that the "estimated" postage is on the high side. You should know, you can not determine “actual” postage without the list and at least specifications of the piece. Often when we are asked to provide a quote we do not have that information, hence this formulation". This is a very sound approach.

Here is a list of the “estimated” rates that Associated Mailing & Printing is providing for general information. 

Estimated Postage (Per Piece)
New   Previous

• First Class Presort $.41 $.41 
• Standard $.29 $.28
• Non-profit $.17 $.17
• Postcard** $.26 $.26
• EDDM (Actual) $.16 $.145

**This is for cards that are sized between 5 X 3.5 and 6 X 4.25.

We were not surprised that EDDM increased 10%. The USPS has likely realized that they needed to protect mailers more than they were previouwsly. Plus the individual post offices were not prepared to accomodate the popularity of the program.

Also, with the letter-size “Carrier Route” rates not raised, it makes the option of a “normal” occupant mailing much more attractive than the EDDM mailing. EDDM mailing becomes attractive if the sender wants to do the sorting work themselves, or if the sender really wants to mail a “flat” size piece. Otherwise, the more traditional “occupant” mailings could actually cost less overall.

Besides the Intelligent Mail Bar Code (IMB), the postal service announced a number of changes affecting folded self-mailers (FSB) that also went into effect on January 5th. Most of the changes affect mailers and are really just an enforcement of regulations already on the books. The biggest change: tri-folded pieces, where the mailing panel MUST be in the center panel. In addition, the “closed” (or folded) end of the pieces must be on the bottom and on the right.

If more information is needed regarding the changes to the regulations for folded self-mailers, please share your questions below.

Five Reasons Why Accountants Should Do Their Own Marketing

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(...and other misnomers for professional service firms)

There are five really great reasons why architects, Lawyers, CPA’s, financial planners, consultants, and other professional services providers should be responsible for their own marketing. You are intelligent beings, after all. The list below makes all the sense in the world, right. Let’s see if you feel this way.

• I learned to write reports and essays in school. How hard could blogging, article writing, email campaigns and web content be?
• Search Engine Optimization is just a fancy word for “getting found” on the search engines. I can buy an ad and be at the top of the page.
• I don’t need analysis; I know how much my leads cost and where they come from.
• I send my sales people to trade shows all year long, and spending that much is a huge impact on my budget. We check on our competitors there, so why spend even more hiring an inbound marketing agency to tell me what I already know.
• The younger people on staff already know how to surf the Internet. I can rely on them to do this stuff.

There is a challenge for all businesses today. Whether you operate in the Business-to-Customer arena (B2C) or the Business-to-Business sector (B2B), the ability to "stand out in the crowd" is more and more difficult, regardless of which sector you might play in. And the old mentalities simply will not get your brand the attention it will need to thrive. Heck, even just to survive!

I’m not sure how you feel about the above statements, but if you are still reading, I think there are things to discuss. Let’s address them in order.

Article, blogs, email campaigns and more

Marketing today is a lot different than it was even just a few years ago. Traditional marketing methods are not performing at the same level they were in the first decade of this millennium, and even more so than the 1990’s. Inbound marketing is about content; engaging, relevant, compelling content. Writing to the personas of your target customer is a bit of an art, and is much different from report or essay writing. Now that consumers are utilizing the Internet to perform their research, content is extremely important. The distribution of original and curated content in multiple forms is now part-and-parcel of the marketing strategy. Consumers are making up their minds what they want and from whom before you even hear from them.

An effective blogging campaign (where the majority of new leads now emanate) requires a dedicated effort of blogging five times per week. Add to that commitment the creation of content such as video, audio, webinars, white papers and eBooks can be a full time effort.

Search Engine Optimization

While it is true that a PPC campaign may place you in the top tier of the ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing, there are hundreds of search engines. PPC, or pay per click can be an important aspect of an overall inbound marketing campaign, but it can be very expensive, and results may not yield much in the way of qualified leads. Remember also, that each time someone accidently clicks on your ad, you are paying anywhere from $.50 to $4.00. A PPC campaign is merely one of the tools that can be implemented to drive traffic. Doesn’t organic traffic make more sense? Look at this chart from Marketing Sherpa, which identifies the business-to-business answers to the survey conducted at year-end 2011. There is more to inbound marketing than SEO and PPC.

As the above chart indicates, there is a lot more to SEO than getting on the first page. The full complement of marketing sub-categories all interact cohesively to create the visibility and reach for firms today. More B2C and B2B sales occur through online activity, flipping the sales and marketing process from push to pull.

Analytics Tell a Big Story

I am sure you will agree with me that knowledge is power; it forever will be. Knowing about your competitors’ online positioning and effectiveness, as well as off line activity can identify weaknesses or strengths to be exploited.

Statistics represent the story of what is or is not occurring, if you know how to read them. Some statistics reveal consumer behaviors, while others display the effectiveness of your actions and offerings. Through comparisons of competitive data as well as internal information can aid sales and marketing personnel, thereby arming them with the right weapons to generate revenues. Big data can reveal big opportunities, to refine or to conquer.

According to Hubspot®, the cost per lead through inbound marketing has been proven less expensive than outbound (traditional) marketing by 62%.

Image courtesy of Hubspot®

Off Line Marketing – Trade Shows, Direct Mail, Display Ads, etc.

It’s a fact that trade show traffic is down across all industries. The cost to build out a booth, travel and per diem expenses for sales personnel and printed materials continue to rise, with fewer “qualified” leads from all the expense. Additionally, the burden the office feels resulting from fewer personnel at the office is weighty. Display ads are expensive, and tells you nothing from where your leads came. You have no clear idea where to place your marketing dollars for their best ROI. It is all about risk and return after all. Having a targeted campaign beats the shotgun approach every time.

Direct mail campaigns are at their worst efficacy in the history of marketing. The high cost of postage, print production and stuffing envelopes is tedious and produce a low yield. While television advertising is still a valid source of qualified leads for B2C business, it remains one of the most expensive forms of marketing, even with local cable as the vehicle.

Full Time Staff Already Have Full Time Jobs

Most firms have felt the pinch of the economic storm we are facing today. Staff is working at near capacity or more. The expectation of them taking on the social media, blogging, email campaigning, and article writing, offer creation and developing landing pages and understanding analytics is unfair and unrealistic.

Your job is to get the best from your resources, not wear them down and create dissention through unrealistic expectations and overwork. Besides, these tasks take dedicated focused effort, not some half-hearted attempts at keeping up.

Still Considering Doing it Yourself?

If more qualified leads is your objective, can you honestly believe you can perform the marketing task independently? Can you look your staff in the eye and ask them to take on even more responsibility? Do you plan to maintain the status quo with your current marketing efforts, despite the predictable poor outcome?

An inbound marketing agency can perform all, or some of these time consuming tasks with specialists in their field. From in depth analysis to email marketing campaign design and implementation, the right agency has the experts to help your business evolve.

It might be a good idea to consider looking into an inbound marketing agency. Nearly all of them offer a no cost consultation, and an intensive review of your goals, current efforts, the competition and other facts to determine your needs. The evaluation can be performed on the phone, to minimize the impact of face-to-face meetings.

Zen Marketing is fully qualified to assist in the conversion of your business from the traditional model to inbound marketing. Combining state of the art marketing strategies and traditional tactics can produce the kind of results you are seeking. It may serve you well to contact us today.