Eli Logan Dallas

So you’ve created a Facebook page for your company and a LinkedIn profile. Your business has a Twitter profile and you might be considering Google+ or Pinterest. You have social media visibility, but do you have a presence?

It all depends on what you’re posting.

Different sources provide different ratios for how much of your social media content should be self-promotional versus informational, but the verdict is clear on the necessity of both. Informational posts position your company as an industry expert and have the potential to expose your product or service to customers before your sales team even picks up the phone. The earlier you can make an impression in your customers’ buying process, the more likely you are to land the client.

So where is all of this quality content supposed to come from? Chances are, you’re already sitting on tons of it. Any technical material that your organization has produced to walk potential buyers through the purchasing process is ideal for social media posts. That can include everything from white papers and PowerPoint presentations to product brochures and sales scripts. The key to unlocking the power of these items as compelling social media content is knowing how to repurpose the message:

Use “teasing education”: Repurpose a product demo as a YouTube video and post only the first thirty or sixty seconds of it. Ask your community to visit your booth at an upcoming trade show appearance or check out your website to see the remainder of the demo.

Extract nine lives out of every piece: Turn a presentation or a product training video into a Slide Share presentation or a webinar (see “26 Webinar Tools for Small Business Owners” on SmallBizTrends.com for the how-to). Turn the webinar into a podcast. Turn the podcast into a blog post. Turn quotes from the blog post into attention-getting visuals for Twitter and Facebook. Comb through the feedback you get from all of these channels to find an angle for a press release. All of these make for valuable, informative social media posts.

Create and contribute guest posts: Do you have a channel partner or a vendor whose products or service compliments your own? Gain exposure with a new audience and expand your presence by taking any piece of repurposed content you’ve shared with your communities and share it as a guest post.

Does your organization use techniques that aren’t covered here? Share them in the comments. For more tips on how businesses of any size can cost-efficiently reach their customers, follow, friend and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Content marketing is the best way to get information to your clients or customers. This is also the perfect way to gain the trust of your customers and increase your sales. The problem is choosing the most effective type of content and presenting it in an attention getting manner. Here are some tips on choosing the most effective content for your content marketing.

1. Point out your competitive advantages. People, in general, want to avoid painful experiences as much as possible. Pointing out all the ways your business overcame obstacles to make life easier for your potential customers works to your advantage. Top ten lists on this kind of thing such as “10 most common mistakes” or “10 things you don’t want to do” are especially effective in driving people to you, rather than your competitor. I’m not saying you should specify or point fingers at specific competitors here. That’s not professional. Instead, use general statements and point out what makes your company better than others.

2. Give out industry “secrets.” They are not really secrets but if you let people think they are then their trust in you grows. Create content with bulleted lists showing how to do things faster and easier or how to make something work better. People love lists about things because lists are easy to filter through and pick out those points that pertain to them specifically. They also help people retain the information.

3. Organize it for them. One of the biggest hurdles for some people is the organization of certain things. Do the work for them by giving them plans and ways to organize things to make their life simpler. If you can make something straightforward and easy for someone, they will appreciate it and repay you with their business.

4. Answer common questions. When you're discussing a common problem or situation, people tend to have the same questions. By providing the answers before someone even asks the questions, you make them feel more comfortable. It gives them the impression your company truly cares about them and their needs because you’ve taken the time to learn what they want or need.

5. Latest trends reports. This is a way to help your clients and customers keep up to date with the latest information from your company. This type of content lists the newest information or technologies and explains them in an easy to understand fashion.

Effective content marketing is all about continually giving the client or customer whatever information they deem useful. It demonstrates to prospects your company is paying attention to the needs of their clients and responding in an resourceful and expeditious manner. If the frequency and/or quality of information begins to slow down, your client base will begin to find another source of information, taking their sales dollars with them.

Making use of a freelance writing service is a good way to fulfill the needs of consistent and effective content writing. By using writers to help create your content, you can easily continue to provide fresh, new content. Once you have the articles, reports and other documents, offer them to your customers freely through email or a blog. Not only will your customers thank you in replies and comments but, more importantly, with their continued loyalty.

When marketing your product or service, you need to have a firm understanding of your audience, the message you want to deliver, the offer you’re willing to make, and the optimal timing for your marketing campaign.

Too often novice marketers, even marketing veterans, make costly mistakes that result in poor performance of their marketing campaign. Common marketing mistakes can be avoided with adequate planning, attention to detail, and ongoing measurement and evaluation.

If you’re considering a traditional marketing campaign, an Internet marketing campaign, or something that’s never been tried before, be sure to avoid these common marketing mistakes.

1. Timing. You may have a great list, a fantastic offer, and even a well designed marketing piece, but if your timing is off, so too will be your results. As an experienced marketer, I have seen some very expensive marketing campaigns that were very compelling but failed to produce results. This is because the campaign reached consumers at a time in which they had no interest in buying the product. For example, trying to sell snow shovels in July would not be considered good timing.

2. Failure to Test Your Headline. As the first thing your prospect usually reads, the headline is essential for luring your prospective buyer into the message, your offer, and the action you want them to take. Regardless of the medium, you should continually test your headlines (or subject lines) by running split tests and evaluating response. This ensures that your marketing message attracts the largest number of prospective buyers.

3. Failure to Test Your Offer. In direct marketing, the offer is directly correlated to 40% of your response. If you have the right offer, people respond. There are other factors to consider as well, but providing a compelling offer is required in most instances. Offers can range from discounts to “hurry while supplies last”, but the commonality remains. Test your offers for optimizing response.

4. Having a Good List. Having the best offer and award-winning design is not enough. For many types of marketing campaigns, success is directly tied to having a targeted list. With today’s sophisticated list generation tools, you can acquire lists that are highly segmented based on demographics, psychographics, buying behavior, and many other characteristics. The key here is not to be penny wise and pound foolish. If you’re wondering where to invest your marketing dollars, spend them on developing a good house list (names you acquire on your own) or by renting/purchasing a well segmented marketing list.

5. Relying on a Single Communication. On average, consumers are hit with over 2,000 marketing messages everyday. In fact, recent studies have indicated that consumers need to see your marketing message an average of 12 times before they take notice. If there is any truth to the claim in part or in whole, it means that you must communicate to prospects on a regular basis. Placing a single ad in the newspaper or sending a single email cannot deliver effective results. Determine the media that prospects use to gather information and develop an ongoing campaign that works within your budget.

6. Not Measuring Campaign Effectiveness. Over time, your business is going to do a lot of marketing. Even if you are a small business wondering how you’re going to communicate to a prospective audience, you’re going to eventually have some type of communication. Regardless of the marketing campaign size or expense, you need to track your results. This can be done with a simple spreadsheet or a multi-million dollar CRM system. The bottom line is you need to record what works and what doesn’t so that you can improve your results in the future.

7. Failure to Continue the Dialogue. After consulting for a number of large companies, I’m still amazed at how many fail to communicate to customers on an ongoing basis. Often times, consumers or businesses only hear from the seller when its time to buy again. If you have an established customer base, chances are you’ve worked hard to acquire them. You should be spending some of your marketing budget to retain them. Be sure to open a dialogue with customers, solicit their feedback, and communicate with them regularly. This will help to build your business over the long-term.

If you’re new to marketing, have experience as a marketing professional, or simply want to improve your current marketing results, be sure to learn from the mistakes of others. To be successful, continually work towards improving your marketing effectiveness. Avoid the 7 most common marketing mistakes, and you’re on your way to delivering tangible results.

Corporations often need to exhibit at simultaneous trade shows in different locales and for different reasons. They often have two trade show exhibits in the same city at the same time. Going one step further, a company may even have two separate trade show exhibits at the same trade show.

Oracle is an example of a company exhibiting at two trade shows at the same time in the same city. Why does this happen?

Quite simply, each trade show appearance had a different objective. One trade show exhibit concentrated on new lead generation, while the other trade show display’s focus was on new product launches. Even though these trade shows differed, Oracle’s message needed to be consistent in presenting their corporate brand. Trade show visitors may have a different agenda for attending each trade show, but the corporate message must remain consistent and easily identified with the corporate DNA.

Every aspect of trade show exhibit presence also must match up with company promotional materials, advertising, public relations, online marketing, website and direct mail. Companies lose identity when they dilute their image with mixed messages. Marketing pros say the golden rule is to stay true to your corporate message, reinforce the brand, and let everything else follow suit.

Event Marketer Magazine advises corporate marketers to be wary of delegating trade show activities to their product development staff. Product teams understandably tend to focus on products rather than the corporate message. This can seriously undermine the corporate image agenda.

So, in order to avoid mixed messages, pre show briefings with all the trade show staff team are essential. Then be sure to keep communication channels open and ongoing. Be on guard for any off the wall, wacky surprises that could distort your presentation. Also, have company monitors drop in at the trade show booths on the trade show exhibit hall to assure that the discipline of your corporate exhibiting goals is maintained.

As an example, Event Marketer Magazine sites the experience of DaimlerChrysler. With some 60 national auto shows, DaimlerChrysler works with its eight business units to develop trade show programs for these multi-market trade shows. They then send staffers from zone offices to check on the execution at the trade show. “Although we all have the objective of moving the metal, we also have to maintain the brand consistency,” says director of global event marketing Don Schmid. “That doesn’t always fit into what the dealers want to do.”

The DaimlerChrysler zone staffers leave a show after a few days, and dealers are often tempted to add additional makes and models to the exhibit space. “They might try and move in 15 percent more vehicles, which makes the space look like a parking lot,” says Schmid. “We have to be ready at all times to play sheriff.”

When exhibiting at a trade show, here are a few things to remember about corporate image reinforcement and brand consistency:

Understand the basic objectives of the design your corporate look.

Adhere to the parameters of the corporate image guidebook. All visuals must meet specific guidelines. Be aware not only of the physical specifications of visuals but also how to incorporate them for trade shows with multiple audiences and products. Stay true to your corporate colors and fonts and be conscious of how the name of the company is used.

Be consistent in your brand “mindset” –whether it be upscale, sophisticated, young or old. Not only with the way your trade show exhibit looks, but also with the dress style and comportment of your trade show booth staff.

Be sure everyone who represents your company is knowledgeable about all communication aspects of the company. Be able to articulate the brand in trade show booth graphics, sales pitches, promotional hand outs, email and web messages, even on business cards.

Many brands such as Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, Apple Computer Inc. in Cupertino, eBay in San Jose, Google in Mountain View, Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Oracle in Redwood City, and Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara have distinctive logos and have a certain “personality” and feel about them.

Although they are all in the high tech industry, each of the brands is noted for their individual character. All have colorful and consistent images. Their brands are distinctive and successful, and their representatives have learned to speak with one voice.

Your company’s brand image will have a much great return on investment if you enforce these
basic disciplines.

To be competitive today, trade show exhibitors not only need to grab attention to their trade show displays inside the exhibit hall but also beyond the exhibit floor.

More and more, creative trade show exhibitors attract crowds to their trade show booth by using nearby venues as a springboard. Attracting attention at neighboring hotels where the trade show visitors are staying or public places where attendees frequent, is a good start. This goes for neighboring restaurants, bus routes, cabs and local night clubs as well.

Increasingly, instead of letting a custom or trade show diplay rental at the expo stand on its own, savvy marketers are adding value by identifying key places outside the trade show to tee up traffic to the trade show display arena.

Event Marketer Magazine spotted three brands that successfully made the tie-in connection to their trade show booth from sites outside the exposition hall.

The first was in Chicago. GE Healthcare launched their campaign, Healthcare Reimagined at the Radiological Society of North America trade show in Chicago in 2005. They were on the lookout for popular locations outside the trade show hall to enhance awareness of their trade show display presence. According to Sean Burke of GE Healthcare’s Diagnostic Imaging and Services, “We were looking for something different that would create word of mouth and buzz.”

The trade show had over 60,000 attendees staying in Chicago. GE came up with the concept of all-white-clad “molecule people” that roamed Chicago sites before and after show hours, in nearby hotels and on the RSNA bus routes, as well as at neighboring restaurants and night clubs.

Wearing branding for GE Healthcare, the all white molecule actors batted around giant inflatable molecule structures and used bubble machines to complete the look and feel of what they wanted to portray. They were able to visually and kinetically capture the health care aspect of GE Diagnostic Imaging. This played directly to the imagery created at their trade show exhibit.

The second was at a consumer oriented show in Washington DC. A month before the Auto Show, Chevrolet started its awareness campaign at sites around the capital city. They set up mini tailgating parties out of the backs of Chevy Silverado Hybrids at construction sites, George Washington University, Home Depot stores and commuter rail stations. Consumers got to drink coffee and play Xbox 360 games. Chevy representatives gave out cards to visitors they could redeem at the trade show for a chance to win a Silverado Hybrid.

Chevy wanted to drive traffic to the trade show display. It worked. The results were measurable and dramatic. Because the scan cards were handed out at dealers and at the tailgate parties, over 20,000 consumers visited the trade show booth or were able to scan their cards with Chevy reps in the convention main lobby. The scan cards brought in 1,900 dealer leads.

The third one was in Las Vegas. That city is a natural for all types of trade show display marketers every hour of the day. At the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas in 2005, Yahoo! wanted to draw attention to a custom auto web site among car enthusiasts. So they decided to customize two Mitsubishis inside their trade show display booth.

To complete their exposure they went outside to showcase their cars on the Las Vegas Strip. Yahoo! hit it big. Knowing that Las Vegas is always wide awake 24/7, they were able to shut down traffic on the Las Vegas Strip at 3 a.m. Even at that time, throngs of people watched their two custom Mitsubishis race down the strip. “We didn’t want to just do a booth and pass things out,” says Bennett Porter Yahoo!’s senior director-buzz marketing. Emulating Frank Sinatra, he continues, “We wanted to do it our way.”

The above are just a few of the examples of how you can use outlying venues to tie into your trade show display.

So let’s say your firm is in the electronics field and you want exposure for your upcoming trade show appearance in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the high tech industry so heavily concentrated in Silicon Valley, California, many of the high tech leaders live there.

There’s Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Apple Computer Inc. based in Cupertino, eBay based in San Jose, and Google headquartered in Mountain View, to name a few. You can focus on Silicon Valley executives and market to them within close access to Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, and the Santa Clara and San Jose Conference Centers.

The hotels, restaurants, athletic clubs and other popular sites make them targets for high tech trade show tie in messages once the high tech trade show comes to town.

It’s smart to think outside the trade show exhibit hall box to compound your trade show exhibit investment.

Whether you are a one-map operation of a vast corporation (or any business operation that falls between the two), you need to plan your digital marketing process if you are going to have any kind of benefit derived from your marketing efforts. The bigger a business grows the more elaborate and sophisticated the marketing tools become. The thing is that these tools can help anyone but unless you are on the larger side of the business pool, you probably cannot hire twenty people to analyze the global market and present a report telling you exactly where your business is, where the competitors are, what they are doing, what you need to do, how to do it, and how much it will cost for how long.

However, just because it sounds so intimidating does not mean that you can it without further thought. You do not need an army of marketing gurus in order to plan your digital marketing process. All it needs a little common sense and business acumen, both of which can be acquired through education, training, and experience.

The best to go in case you are new to the whole digital marketing game is to do what is known as "micro level planning". Micro planning is a good way to knowing exactly where you are and where you wish to go from here.

Here is how to plan your digital marketing process using micro planning.

Being by asking yourself a simple question: Why are you marketing on the digital anyway? Is it to increase public awareness, to increase sales, just to build a community, or all three? Then you should note down how much of your marketing efforts would be online and how much time you intend to spend on online marketing tasks.

There are many strategies to help you plan your digital marketing process. Make a checklist of the ones that you would like to use including but not limited to Forums, eBooks, Newsletters, Contests, Banners, Articles, and Viral Marketing.

What type of analysis will your marketing be subjected to? What is the return on investment that you expect and how are you going to monitor it? What is your annual digital marketing budget and how will this be divided among the various marketing strategies that you have selected?

Timelines are equally important because they help you to set milestones. Without timelines you are in constant danger or falling behind or getting confused within your plan for digital marketing. Keep a strict note for dates and time all projects.

Have booth staffers prepare questions that they can ask of attendees at the networking event for specific types of referrals. Most people are happy to help and make introductions. Here are a few examples they can use to start with:

• Is there anyone here you can refer me to who needs a ____ type of product (service)?
• I'm hoping to meet with ____, can you point me in the right direction?
• Can you suggest people I can speak with about ____?
• One of my goals for today is to meet someone who does/supplies (____). Do you know of anyone here who fits that description? Can you introduce me?
• NOTE: Add specific phrases for your business to this list and provide to booth staffers.

Never underestimate the importance of your trade show booth staff.

They are your front line ambassadors and the critical links to your overall trade show success. It makes sense that if you want to have a positive experience at your trade show display, you need to pay attention to all the elements of trade show exhibiting. By putting a premium on grooming and training your trade show booth staff, you can rest easy they will be performing at their best.

The first step in your company’s trade show venture, then, is to recognize the importance of the trade show booth personnel. The second step is to invest in the training of your booth people.

To launch this process, make sure you get executive “buy in”. If top management respects and values their trade show team, then face- to- face training skills become effective. Remember the key value of exhibiting at the trade show is to engage real people about real products/services in real time. A typical company representative can often hold meaningful conversations with about 3 or 4 people in a ½ hour at a trade show as opposed to spending an entire day in the conventional field selling process.

Not only are the number of prospect contacts at trade show increased, but the entire sales cycle can also be sped up as well. Trade show display training helps fine tune this process, making it a positive experience for prospects and your staff. What is the logical end benefit? A boost in sales productivity is more likely to follow. On the other hand, untrained booth staff can trigger negative reactions and turn prospects away.

According to Matt Hill, a trade show trainer and president of The Hill Group, in San Jose, California, “The finishing touches of booth staff training usually take place at a pre -show meeting either the night before the trade show begins or early in the morning of the first day of the show. The training covers all those fundamentals that a lot of people don't understand or don’t think to do.”

He says that research shows you must engage the person within 15 to 20 seconds of their presence at your trade show booth or lose them. What attracts people to the trade show booth is a friendly staff in addition to alluring exhibit elements such as sound, motion, and color. Your staff generates excitement by being enthusiastic and helpful. If one staff person cannot respond to a visitor’s inquiry, that staff member is trained to escort the visitor over to another staff person who has the answers and can be of help,” he adds.

Hill has conducted trade show training for many companies for shows around the world and closeby to home at the Henry J Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, to Moscone Center in San Francisco to Convention Centers in Santa Clara and San Jose. He has trained Silicon Valley companies headquartered in Cupertino, Mipitas, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose and beyond to Sacramento and throughout Northern California.

With regard to the nuances of booth staff training, Hill says, "A lot of technical people never thought their jobs involved anything but answering questions or talking to each other. We get them to look at the strategy of the trade show. The basic strategy of going to a trade show is to get face time with people who might become customers. It's really quite that clean and simple.”

Some booth staff behaviors to avoid include: talking to other booth members when they should be engaging prospects, talking rather than listening to booth visitors and making social mistakes that turn customers away such as chewing gum, avoiding eye contact, sitting rather than standing, etc.

Even when training is done properly, keeping the momentum going over 3 days of a trade show is a challenge, so here are some things for the trade show exhibit manager to consider to keep their trade show display staff motivated:

Give them the confidence to successfully understand and manage visitors by using sound training techniques

Give the staff constant feedback during the show. Give them a specific goal and tell them exactly where they are in reaching that goal.

Listen to their feedback – make them feel like an integral part of the show and that they are truly making a difference. Ask them what they like about the booth and what they would change.

Give the trade show display staff a say in what is going on

Give them incentives for a job well done

And provide lots of water to keep them hydrated

A clever incentive offered by Matt Hill is a $2 dollar bill given out when he sees someone doing something right. It is a real morale booster and even the CEO of a company who gets a $2 dollar bill gets a big kick from it. Hill specially orders the bills from the bank and hands them out to booth staff people who are asking the right questions of visitors or who do their work with style, enthusiasm and, of course, good boothmanship.

Almost all products being sold in the market today have already been sold before by their competitors but what makes other products a hit despite their being new in the market? Most entrepreneurs say it is a matter of marketing your products to your target market.

Marketing can be done in various ways depending on the expertise of the marketer. However, one common way to market a new product is through participation in trade shows. Trade shows are held at any time of the year and they do attract buyers and prospective customers.

There are general trade shows but you can choose from niche trade shows depending on your area of business. Companies join trade shows not so much for actual selling but most importantly for showing off their products and for the possibility of getting bulk orders during the trade show.

A company or a sole proprietor planning to join a trade show should take note of the following:

1. Able personnel to man the trade show booth. A trade show is not just an ordinary selling venue but it is a venue where prospective clients abound so make sure that you send your best personnel to man the booth. Some companies take trade shows for granted and allow inept personnel to watch the booth. The people who are put in charge of your trade show booth can make or break your product. A good staff with public relations skill can attract more clients to your products. It is also important to instruct your booth personnel to dress properly depending on the venue of the trade show. Business attire will always be safe.

2. Invite visitors to your booth. The booth personnel must be trained and instructed to invite visitors to the booth. Most visitors walk away from trade show booth when they see the staff busy with their own thing. Tell your staff the main reason why they were assigned to the trade show and that is to get as many visitors to see your products. Booth personnel should be able to answer questions from the visitors because the visitors may already be potential customers. A booth demo will catch the attention of visitors especially if the demo is useful to them.

3. Prepare your brochures, leaflets and business cards and make sure you do not run out of them. Always expect plenty of people to visit trade shows so never be caught without your marketing tools. Imagine if a potential client asks for your brochure or your card and then you cannot give him anything just because you did not prepare for an influx of people. It is better to have plenty of left over marketing materials after the show rather than miss the opportunity of showing off what you have to offer.

4. Keep a visitors’ book. Most companies who join trade shows require visitors who get their free marketing materials to sign up in a guestbook. However, only a few of these companies will communicate with the people who signed in their guestbook. Be creative and use the guestbook as a sourcebook for potential clients. The people who visited your booth and who got your materials are definitely interested in your products or else they will not even glance at your booth. Why not take advantage of their contact information? Mail them a thank you letter along with more information about the product and where they can buy the products.

5. Promote your products but do not be too pushy. Visitors are often turned off by very eager booth personnel who call out to the visitors using their loudest voice. No one would want to visit your booth if your personnel are boisterous. Allow the visitors to go inside your booth and look at the items you have on display but always keep a welcoming smile. Entertain their questions and try to respond to them accordingly. Never shout your words of welcome to the visitors since they might feel defensive all of a sudden and decide against looking at your products.