A seasonal thank you to our valued customers

We would like to take this time to thank you for your continued support. It is truly appreciated by each and every member of our PM team.

This year, we have decided to donate those monies traditionally spent over the holiday season to Cancer Research, in the name of Bob Hatfield. Bob recently passed away from cancer at the age of 51. He was Lee Palmer’s first cousin and worked as a dispatcher in transportation for most of his career.

Cancer has taken so many before their time and we thank you in advance for joining us in this endeavour to help find a cure. If enough people believe that every little bit helps…maybe it can.

On a more cheerful note, we truly wish you and your loved ones an enjoyable holiday and may your new year be filled with good health, new moments to cherish and our sincere best wishes.

Happy Holidays
from everyone at Palmer Marketing

"629,000 results. Wow. And all this time I thought that Googling yourself meant the other thing."

What do you do when you are puzzled by something? You google it, like everyone else, since Google is the dominant search engine. Today millions of business professionals are only willing to reach as far as their keyboard for the answers they need. The question is will they find you? Do yourself a favor, Google yourself and find out if you are on the first page. If you’re not, here are some things you can do to increase your visibility on Google:

1. Update your employees’ profiles (photos, bios, links to their online profiles)

Web analytics reveal that the most viewed pages are the About Us and Contact Us pages. Why is that? It is driven by genuine human curiosity. People want know who they are doing business with, their names and faces, and not only that, they want to contact them too!

2. Blog, Blog, Blog.

As highlighted in our previous blog articles, there are many benefits in blogging. You can write about the things your customers want to know, share your insights in the market, and anything else that may interest your clients.

3. Incorporate Social Media on your site.

Social Media creates much larger audience groups for businesses. The Internet is a public and social place and having social media incorporated within your website means you are connected to more people more topics and subjects, thus increasing the chances your website will be picked up by Google’s search engine.

What else do you need? Commitment, Commitment and Commitment! It is a full time job to maintain your website and do it right. Update your website, blog and social media frequently, as a less active site is not going to rank well on Google.

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

1.  Who are your clients / customers?
Many of our clients are operating in a very niche market, with only one or two customers. Why waste resources and time on the cyber space, if you can have an old fashioned face to face communication with them, especially when the client prefers it this way.

2. Do you have resources for it?
Social media will help you to generate leads, but only if you do it properly. If you are not conveying the right message to your customers, the chances are you are conveying the WRONG message. Frankly, if you are conveying the wrong message, you are better off doing nothing at all. What does it take to do it properly? Marketing specialists on social media, time, and money. Many people think social media is cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it is. Social media a free platform for businesses, but marketing specialists and their time will cost you money, just like any other marketing campaign.

3. What is your short-term business objective?
Will social media help you drive sales? It will. But if you want it to happen tomorrow, forget about it. Social media is a very cost-effective channel for you to reach prospective clients; it is not a salesman however. Even if you are using the social media properly, it will take some time before it generates positive ROIs. Why? Because “creating transactional opportunities on the web takes trust, but trust takes time to establish” (Chris Brogran, Co-author of Trust Agent Says). If you are thinking of using it to drive short-term sales, there are better methods to leverage your efforts, such as direct mail, price incentives and enhanced sales support. 

I am not suggesting that social media is not good for B2B, instead I am suggesting that your reason to use social media shouldn’t be “because everyone else is doing it!”

If you find your situation is not as outlined above, or you believe you have a very unique experience with social media in the B2B world, let us know.

Six years ago we took a new business approach at Palmer. We stopped taking the order for the most part and started to discover more about our clients and let that knowledge drive the marketing we deliver. In our case, it has led to deeper relationships with our customers, better overall results and has given us a more sustainable business model.

Everywhere I turn customers are sharing with me that they are up against a “price is everything” environment. People are switching for pennies and loyalty isn’t what it used to be. They point to the economy, the change in decision makers, and the ease of access to competitive information through the web. This mix of variables has changed the game we’re all in dramatically. We need to reset our thinking and restart our engines to take us from “how business was done” to “how business is done”.

There have been a few times I’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire at first, only to have it turn into very positive experiences.  Like creating a good design, if you change one element you always have to follow that change with further moves to rebalance the big picture. I believe this to be a universal truth.

 If you are in the process of making changes, trust your instincts, proceed with caution and pay attention to the new signs on your journey. There’s bound to be twists and turns you aren’t expecting but that doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong road, just a new one. From my experience, not making moves is a much more dangerous position to take.

Interestingly enough, writing instruments are still considered the most commonly used promotional products (about 54%) followed by shirts, caps and bags.

The average length of time people keep an item is 7 months and the reason they have kept it was due primarily to its usefulness.

Bags were reported to be used most frequently, on average 9 times a month, and delivered the most impressions, with 1,038 per month on average.

Analysts have now established a “cost per impression (CPI)” and not surprisingly, promotional products are the least expensive cost per impression at $.004 cents. The CPI for a national magazine is $0.033, a newspaper ad is $0.0129, a prime time TV ad is $0.019, a cable TV ad is $0.007, a syndicated TV ad is $0.006 and a spot radio ad is $0.005.

Customers should keep this in mind when they are considering advertising options. Promotional products are still a proven method to increase brand exposure and drive sales at a reasonable cost. They continue to be part of the integrated marketing solution we deliver here at Palmer Marketing.

What does this mean in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Well, the answer is quite simple, you should primarily focus on optimizing for Google above all others, but don’t forget about Yahoo and Bing, because if the market shifts unexpectedly, it means that you have your bases covered. We all remember when AltaVista was king back in the late 90’s, only to be driven into irrelevancy by its failed portal attempt and the rise of Google. Whatever SEO marketer you choose, make sure they optimize for Yahoo and Bing as well.

Everybody always says: “Why should I bother?” “What is the ROI?” Or, “It’s not right for my business” and the list goes on. There is absolutely no way to promise a certain ROI, a certain number of viewers or a specific number of sales directly related to these outlets. It comes down to common sense; the larger the presence you have on the internet, the more people will notice your company; the greater the chances of one of these viewers utilizing your products or services. It’s always a numbers game and the more, the merrier.

It will take some time to get used to using the various media websites but after a while you will get the hang of it, and you will be able to keep it updated with minimal effort. There is no sense in getting overwhelmed by the thought of tackling all of this at once. Start with one until you’re able to fully understand how to keep it fresh without spending a lot of time. A company blog is a great start and allows anyone in the business to write about their specific fields, showcasing diversity and allowing visitors to understand all aspects of your business.

Another benefit to using Social Media is that it will eventually increase your page ranking on Google. Setting up a blog and writing original, informative articles that the internet community will not only read, but link to, is a great way to start with Social Media. Again, the more original and unique content your business has on the internet, the more Google will visit your pages and it will assume that your information is more important than the majority. It isn’t exactly easy though, it will take a lot of patience so don’t get discouraged if your pages aren’t getting a lot of hits right away. If you’re posting interesting and informative articles on a consistent basis, the people will come, so keep at it!

Please leave a comment or ask a question, we are happy to help!

As an example, let’s say that we have a service announcement to make to our existing client base. With traditional e-mail, we can do this in one of several ways.

One method would be to actually write about the service announcement in the body of the e-mail, which makes it a relatively simple, but an uninspiring way of communicating your message. It’s hard to capture a reader’s attention with a simple text message, and if this message consists of several paragraphs of copy it becomes even less effective.

The other method would be to write up the announcement, and send it out as an attachment to the e-mail. While people e-mail millions of attachments every day, because of security concerns, some recipients may be weary of opening attachments especially when they come from people that they’ve had limited contact with. Some IT departments go so far as actually stripping the attachment from the e-mail before it arrives at its intended destination. Recipients may also not have the correct application installed in order to open the e-mail.

With an HTML e-mail, you can effectively tackle all the shortcomings of delivering your message via regular e-mail. By embedding your advertisement as an image, or a mini HTML web page, you instantly deliver a visually rich message, that the recipient can see instantly, and doesn’t have to do any additional clicking, or open up any other applications, in order to view your message. As a bonus, you can also track the amount of times your e-mail has been viewed by the recipient using your servers statistics software, or via Google Analytics integration, because all of the images that are within the e-mail are hosted on your server.

Now, unless you have a lot of experience in the design and implementation of HTML e-mails, it’s best if you start off with an existing pre-designed template. If you’re going to wing it on your own, SitePoint’s guide of How to Code HTML e-mail newsletters is a good place to start. If you don’t have time to do any of these two options, contact us to see how we can help with your HTML eMarketing campaign.