Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 53 - Creative Agency Secrets

Networking to find a job

16 March, 2023/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

There’s a recession coming.

What does that mean for marketing jobs? Two things – a lot of in-house teams will be “let go”. [I hate that phrase.] Secondly, a lot of freelance, contracting and short term jobs will be created.

When enterprise finds resources constrained, an easy way to de-risk is to use self-employed talent on an as-needs basis. You know the expenditure, the duration and it can be tied to project delivery too.

Will you win marketing contract work?

In all likelihood not, especially if you rely on getting hired from job adverts.

It’s supply and demand. The supply is too high and it’s very hard to stand out from the crowd. You won’t be the cheapest (some employers will want that); you may not be the best (they’ll hire someone they already know for this) and you likely won’t be the first to apply either.

What to do?

Use. Your. Network.

Yes, your friends, past colleagues, acquaintances and work connections are your network. They are key to getting your next work placement.

Anyone who puts forward someone they know for a job will stand out – you will go to the top of the pile, you have a recommendation and an endorsement from a trusted third party AND if you’re good enough, the employer won’t bother advertising the role.

That’s how to bypass the crowd and land your next marketing job.

LinkedIn Rocks

This situation is when you have a hidden advantage – the network you have already built.

I posted this onto my profile.

I need a BIG challenge.

And so I am looking to join a purpose-driven company who needs an experienced marketer. If you are in #B2B, #SaaS, or #ProfessionalServices marketing …. read on.

I have worked with growing businesses from NZ, AU, USA, UK with #marketing and #brand strategy, go-to-market plans, CRM, SEO, copywriting, partnerships, communications and community.

I’m looking for my next challenge now. to do my best work. Full time or 1-3 days per week.

I’d appreciate an introduction to your business – or others you know.

Please share with your network to spread the word

In gratitude.

The result? Several nice public comments about my skills. In private – over a dozen serious enquiries from employers.

Why does this text work?

Firstly, it has a strong headline. It creates impact by being short and to the point.

The next sentence is only partially visible and the reader has to click the “more” button to read it. That tells LInkedIn that this is interesting content – which boosts the algorithmic display properties of this post.

The short list of industries and skills enable the reader to quickly qualify themselves in or out. This means you don’t get contacted by people who are not right for your skills and areas of expertise.

The “ask” is also short, and generously worded.

Hat tip to Justin who did it first.

trade show, marketing for trade shows, B2B marketing trade, trade marketing, channel marketing,

The Essential Checklist for Choosing a Tradeshow Company

2 February, 2023/0 Comments/in Conferences / Exhibitions /by Rebecca Caroe

You’ll need a lot of planning and preparation for a trade show. You must create a budget, craft your brand message, set goals for attending the event, and prepare your supplies in advance. Choosing a tradeshow exhibit company to assist you with this can help you to get the most out of your investment.

Craft your brand message

There are many things to consider when choosing a tradeshow exhibit company. One of the first steps is getting a good idea of your business and its offers. Once you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, it’s time to start thinking about what you can do to make your brand stand out. One way to accomplish this is to build an integrated marketing campaign that includes print, online, and even electronic outreach. This way, your booth can be the center of attention while still being able to connect with your prospective customers. Another effective tactic is to offer giveaways that tie into the central theme of your exhibit. These may include promotional items such as pens, key chains, or t-shirts. However, it would be best if you were careful not to overwhelm visitors with too many choices.

Set specific goals for attending a tradeshow

You must set specific goals to make the most of your 7 Trade Show Booth Ideas for Small Budgets. While getting caught up in the event’s excitement is easy, setting goals can keep you, and your team focused. Whether you’re exhibiting your company’s products or services, setting specific goals will help you get the most out of your investment. The right goals can put you ahead of your competitors. Your goal could be to increase your brand awareness. An excellent way to do this is to make a memorable first impression. For example, you could offer prospects a personalized photo of yourself if they fill out a personality quiz. Or you can acquire a few email addresses. Identifying your goals before the event will make choosing an exhibit company that fits your needs more leisurely. Make sure your goals are in line with your marketing plan.

Set a realistic budget

Getting ready for a trade show can be a costly process. Setting a realistic budget to make the most of your investment is essential. Let’s start by planning early. One of the most considerable costs involved with exhibiting is booth space. The cost of a booth can range from twenty to thirty-eight percent of your total budget. While you may be tempted to go for a more affordable booth space, sacrificing quality can result in your trade show needing to be taken more seriously. For an adequate budget, you need to take into account several factors. These include the size of your market and your target audience. It is also essential to account for the amount of time you dedicate to your display and your goals for the show.

Follow up on trade show performance

If you are looking for a tradeshow exhibit company, you will want to ensure they can help you measure and improve your post-show performance. The best way to achieve this goal is to set objectives and metrics before the event. Those objectives should include the sales and non-sales goals of your team. Measuring and tracking the effectiveness of these goals is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign. For example, your objective may be to generate leads, but how can you determine whether or not those leads were generated through effective meetings, foot traffic management, and lead tracking? Some critical metrics for trade shows include the number of contacts invited to the show, the number of press distribution entries added, new connections made, and the progression of CRM prospects in the funnel view. However, you must note that these measures are just some of the ones you should consider.

Additional resources

3 simple new business hacks for 2022

1 December, 2022/1 Comment/in B2B, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

I”m always looking for new clients and customers when working with a B2B brand n their marketing.

Sometimes I see a cute tool or tactic and today I’m sharing three of them.

Home page call to action

Loved this because it shows light humour and a pretty persuasive message. Yes, I have scrolled a long way down the page (this is just above the footer) and so maybe I SHOULD be booking a demo or contacting the sales team.

The copywriting is clear, simple and unambiguous.

Home page website call to action graphic. Clear copywriting.

Clear B2B copywriting

LinkedIn last names

Frequently on LinkedIn, people with whom I’m not closely connected have their last name (surname) hidden or only the first initial letter published.

For many, this is easily solved.

Clicm on the person and open their full profile.

Check the URL

LinkedIn uses your full name (as registered on the site) as your unique URL identifier.

You can probably work out the last name and first name from this URL.

How to find last name in LinkedIn URL

Improve your Social Media Bio

There are lots of list sites which allow you to publish a list of URLs which you’re associated or have profile on. Here’s a new one set up by Squarespace – BioSites.

As their launch promo says

Select a custom URL- Claim a free username to create a URL. Add it on Instagram, TikTok, or to any social bio.
Add unlimited links. Connect your followers to your websites, social pages, stores, videos, and more with your Bio Site.
Publish and share your link anywhere.
Connect your content
Use your mobile device to update your Bio Site in seconds and build consistency in your online presence.
Accept payments and more.

They make it easy for you by supplying template designs.

Alternatives are Linkkle and Allmylinks.

BONUS – my reflections on LinkedIn Groups and Company followers

I am constantly frustrated by LinkedIn Groups – they used to be great places to build community but since their prominence in the news feed has been dialled down to zero, most are invisible.

These used to be good places to find prospects – folks interested in your products and services. Since few people join groups nowadays, they are becoming a redundant part of the LI platform.

Time to make an offline list of the members and try to connect with them elsewhere – preferably on a platform or medium which you control.

Company follower lists are another good place to find prospects – and often competitors!

There are a range of ways to download these – contact me to find out the latest easy method.

advert, advertising hoarding, unsplash, john cameron photographer

How to Create Brand Name Ideas

21 October, 2022/0 Comments/in Branding /by Rebecca Caroe

Coming up with brand name ideas is no easy task. However, companies like NAMIFY are making it easy for businesses of all sizes to create unique, memorable brand names that will help them stand out from the competition. There are a few things to remember when brainstorming brand name ideas. Below are some things to consider when creating your brand name and why this process is important.

Does My Company Need a Brand?

All companies need a brand, which is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer.

Take the time to research your industry and target market. This research will better understand what your customers are looking for and how you can reach them. You must know the competition and what sets your company apart to create a strong brand.

It’s also important to clearly understand your company’s values and mission. Your brand should reflect these values and be appealing to your target market. Remember that your brand will be customers’ first impression of your company. Studies show that it takes a mere seven seconds to make a first impression, so first impressions matter to consumers.

Creating a Memorable Brand Name

Brand recognition is the ability of consumers to identify a particular brand. The best brand names are easy to remember and can be easily associated with the company or product. To create a memorable brand name, it’s essential to keep it short, simple, and easy to pronounce.

The better your brand recognition, the more likely customers are to purchase from you. To help you create memorable brand names, use a service like NAMIFY to create bold, easy-to-remember names that can help you stand out from the competition.

Ideas To Create a Brand Name

There are several ways to come up with brand name ideas. The best way is to use a tool like NAMIFY, which can help you create unique, memorable names for your business or product. Another way to generate brand name ideas is to brainstorm with a group. Group brainstorming sessions can help you generate various ideas and get feedback on the names you come up with.

When creating a brand name for your new business, it’s essential to consider the industry or niche you will be operating in. This will ensure that the name aligns with your business and helps establish your brand identity. For example, if you are starting a jewelry business, consider incorporating the word jewelry into your brand name, as it will make it easier to establish your brand identity, including your niche in your site’s domain name, and take advantage of related keywords.

You can also use a thesaurus to find synonyms for words related to your industry. Using a thesaurus can help you create brand names that are unique and descriptive. Finally, you can look at other companies in your industry to see what they’ve named their products or services. While you don’t want to copy them, this can give you some inspiration for your own brand name.

Ways to Test Your Brand Name

Once you’ve come up with a few brand name ideas, testing them out is important, as it can help you see how your target market will receive the names.

One way to test your brand name is to conduct a focus group, which is where you gather a group of people in your target market and ask them their thoughts on the names you’ve come up with. This can give you some valuable feedback on which name is the most memorable and appealing.

Another way to test your brand name is to do a Google search, which will show you how many other companies are using the same or similar names. Choosing a unique name that will help you stand out from the competition is important.

Why Is Creating a Brand Name Important?

Creating a strong brand is important for any company, large or small. The more successful your company becomes, the more your brand name will matter. A brand can help you attract new customers, build customer loyalty, and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Further resources on naming brands

local swing, swing in a tree, pavement swing seat,

Benefits of meetups for B2B marketers

21 October, 2022/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

A neighbourhood swing. With the message “sit on the deck”.

A place to meet informally

For a business, would it be good to have a place where people could come and drop by to have a chat?

Customer insight is notoriously hard to get. It’s easy to get from your passionate customers. It’s easy to get from your haters, but it’s the ones in between this ‘Marmite’ brigade who are more challenging.

If prospects just dropped by for a chat, would you get a sense of what their priorities are? Where your products fit in (or don’t)?

#b2bmarketing can do this using a forum, a group chat or a regular meetup group.

What would happen if you did not set an agenda? If attendees talked about their priorities instead of yours?

I am hosting a B2B Marketing Roundtable on 26th October at 2pm. Join us?

B2B Marketing education ideas

11 October, 2022/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

I’ve got a red book – and it’s where I write notes from any educational things I do. It’s fascinating – the current book starts with “Trusted Content Creation” by Brian Clark and the most recent entry is about YouTube Video production by Evan Carmichael.

The thing I like best about it is not the factual notes, it’s the ideas they spawn. I like to draw a light bulb in the margin next to these…. they are scattered around and it delights me that I can innovate in the B2B Marketing I do for clients just by going and listening to experts.

What’s the latest thing you studied? And where do you record your notes / ideas?

#continuingeducation #b2bmarketing

Link Outreach Services Purposes and Advantages

29 September, 2022/0 Comments/in SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

SEO link building is an investment that can pay off big time in the long run. It’s cost-effective, repeatable, and personalized. But it can also be tedious if you don’t know where to start. Link outreach services can help you build the right link profiles for your business.

Link Outreach Services are a great way to get quality links for your website. However, they are time-consuming and expensive. Luckily, several companies out there will do the outreach for you. Keep reading for tips and strategies to help you make the most of your outreach efforts.

Link building is a Strategy to Get Links from Other Quality Websites

Link building is gaining links to your website from other websites. It is important for search engine optimization. Google measures backlinks as one of the most important factors in ranking a page. For example, a page that ranks on the first page of Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than a page that ranks at the bottom.

The process of link building involves acquiring hyperlinks from quality websites. Links signal to Google that a website is an authoritative source and has high-quality content. While Google’s algorithms are complex, backlinks are still important in its search rankings. This is because sites with more links earn better rankings.

It’s a Time-Intensive Part of SEO

Link outreach is a key part of SEO strategy. It involves building relationships with websites and blogs to generate links. Link building is not about building a big list of contacts. Instead, the key is to target prospects that offer value in return for a link. This can be a product or service or even your personality.

Link outreach requires creativity and imagination. Standing out from the crowd in an online environment full of competitors is important. You may even want to consider unconventional methods to achieve your goals.

SEO Link Building is a Long-Term Investment

Link building is a crucial element of SEO and is an effective way to raise your domain authority. A higher domain authority means higher rankings, which in turn means more traffic. Not only that, but effective link building can also generate traffic through other channels, such as referral traffic. If you create strong links with high-quality publishers, you can expect to receive separate referral traffic on top of the traffic that you receive from search engines.

Link building can also help your business achieve its goals by promoting brand awareness. You can begin by building links with niche sources and build your way up to high-authority sites, such as Forbes or the Huffington Post. The goal is to create a consistent flow of referral traffic to your website, increasing the likelihood of conversions. This means more direct revenue for you.

It’s Cost-Effective

Link outreach services are a great way to generate links for your website. They work by exposing your website to more audiences and increasing your relevance. They also can generate more traffic and potential revenue for your website. As a result, you will be able to reach a larger audience and receive more links to your site in a shorter amount of time.

You can find several link outreach services that are cost-effective and easy to use. It offers four packages that you can choose from. The Standard package provides keyword alerts for one keyword, the Advanced package provides three keyword alerts, and the Premium package provides unlimited keyword alerts and support.

It’s Personal

Link outreach services can be a powerful tool to boost your website’s visibility. This process involves building relationships with various sources and creating engaging content. This strategy takes time, but it is very effective for gaining links. In addition to outreach, it can also be useful to your digital PR campaign.

Link-building outreach is all about quality rather than quantity. Targeting prospects that provide real value to your company is essential. Your outreach should explain exactly what you can offer them in return for a link.

It’s Repeatable

Link outreach services can help you improve your content’s visibility on the web and generate backlinks. Backlinks improve the visibility of your content on search engines. They are also helpful for promoting your site to the press. However, link building requires organization. A simple spreadsheet can help beginners and intermediate link builders, but this method becomes cumbersome when you have several campaigns to manage. Link outreach services can help you avoid this issue and increase the efficiency of your outreach efforts.

Link outreach services can help you attract your target audience with crowd marketing, which involves contacting bloggers and site owners to leave a review about your product or service. Commenting on blogs and websites improves your brand’s image and attracts new clients. In addition, this method is affordable and safe. The goal of outreach is to gain backlinks and establish an agreement with the blogger or site owner.

It’s Automated

The outreach process is one of the most effective ways to build links and generate referral traffic. Automation can automate up to 90% of the process, allowing for better productivity and more time for other tasks. Outreach software automates finding and checking websites for link opportunities, sending messages to website owners, and more. To begin using outreach software, you must activate a license and set up the program.

Link-building outreach is typically done manually at the beginning stages, but as the pipeline grows and the amount of content increases, the process becomes more complicated. Automating the process can help you save time and effort by eliminating the guesswork. In addition, it can help you get a better quality of link traffic.

Scams and marketing spam

27 September, 2022/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

A collection of spammy adverts I’ve been served in the past few days.

I’m feeling a collective sigh of resignation about these.

So much waste, so many poor decisions, bad marketing and yet the $$$ spent and earned is high enough to continue to make it worthwhile scamming, spamming and misleading.

Is there a lesson to be learned?

What do you do?

spam advert

LI Search filter, B2B marketing, LinkedIn Marketing,

Build your B2B audience on LinkedIn

14 September, 2022/0 Comments/in B2B, Case Studies, Content Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Here’s a case study with a difference – it’s repeatable, copy-able and also very do-able. By you.

You’re a B2B organisation and seeking an audience for your products and services. I’m assuming you are interested in content marketing as one part of your marketing strategy – you wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t. And if you discovered it through online search, you’ll realise the power of search engine optimisation for B2B marketing.

Either way, welcome. Let’s get started.

Find your B2B audience

I helped several clients build an opted-in email marketing audience of thousands using LinkedIn as the start point. After building an audience and communicating (two-way) with them many became paying clients.

So what’s the step by step process to getting this going?

Define your ideal customer persona
Find individuals within LinkedIn who meet the criteria
Test your messaging by manually connecting with them
Refine messaging (if needed)
Find LinkedIn Groups who serve this audience
Join the group(s)
Once in the group, you can direct message any member of the group without being a connection (you don’t have to pay LI for in-mail).
Start your prospect acquisition campaign methodology using the messaging from 2 – 4 above.
Migrate your audience off LI to a platform you control as soon as possible.

How did this work?

For my first client we built an audience of >800 contacts, assembled an amazing ‘voice of customer’ research database and were able to validate the brand’s go to market strategy as well as identify a core group of global influencers to work with.

For my second client, we tested a range of groups, refined the audience selection criteria and worked on two core messaging texts. The voice of customer research delivered key phrases which copywriters incorporated into campaigns. During this we discovered a missing block of content currently unfulfilled by any other brand – BONZA – a key positioning decision which led to creating in-person and virtual community building on Meetup which hadn’t been in the original plan.

The third used Sales Navigator – LinkedIn’s paid sales tool – to deepen the research phase into a much more targeted set of prospect accounts. This enabled us not to use the Groups tactic described above, and to change the focus of the first filter. This worked because the brand was mature and had a very tight minimum viable audience already defined.

Messaging is key

When you’re ready to work on these tactics, understand that finding the audience is really the easy part. Getting your message noticed, replied to and acted upon is where the ‘magic’ happens.

Having a skilled B2B copywriter on your team is essential – invite me for a scoping discussion here.