The Competitive Advantage

September 26, 2012

If Content Marketing is not part of your Marketing Strategy… it should be!

(Part 1 of a 2-part series.)

Read through any marketing resource, website or blog post these days and you’ll see that ‘content marketing’ is THE hot marketing topic… and with good reason (we’ll get to that in a minute).

First, what is ‘content marketing?’

As simply as I can state it, content marketing is the development and sharing (a.k.a. giving away) of useful information that will help the reader to better understand a particular subject and/or help them to do his or her job better.  As an example, for a research firm, that could include providing content with titles like:

• 10 things to look for when sitting “behind the glass”
• Conducting ethnographic research in the digital age
• How to save time and money with online bulletin boards
• The top 5 coming trends in CPG research

Notice anything unusual?  None of the topics are salesy.  None of them are internally focused.  Content marketing is about providing genuinely helpful information.

Are you giving away some of your ‘secret sauce’ when you do this?  Maybe.  But, it’s the price of admission.  If you don’t – your competitors will.  And those that provide the best content often win.

September 21, 2012

15 Reasons E-mail Still Matters in Sales and Marketing

With the explosion of social media over the past few years, you might suspect that the use of e-mail, that ol’ standby, as a marketing tool would be on the decline. Not even close!

Consider these e-mail-related statistics in the B2B environment:

• In 2013, it is estimated that there will be 691 million corporate e-mail accounts worldwide, up from 657 million in 2012 and 568 million in 2009. (The Radicati Group)
• 71 percent of B2B firms use e-mail marketing. (Forrester, 2011)
• E-mail is the preferred method of commercial communication by 74 percent of all online adults. (Merkel Report, 2011)

September 18, 2012

Download our latest eBook on Marketing & Sales for the MR Industry

This week, we released Marketing & Sales for the Market Research Firm: Part 2 – How to Build an Effective Business Development Structure, a 14-page eBook that can be downloaded for FREE from our website.

Some of the eBook’s topics include:

• Understanding the goals and responsibilities of the marketing and sales functions
• Exploring the different marketing and sales positions common in the MR industry
• Reviewing options for sales commissions plans
• Managing marketing & sales inside the small firm.

To download your copy, CLICK HERE.

September 12, 2012

15 Ways to Focus on the Client Experience

I had coffee the other day with an old friend, Clint Smith, Founder of EMMA (www.myemma.com), one of the Southeast’s fastest-growing technology firms and provider of one of the top email marketing platforms on the planet.  I’ve been a client of theirs for almost 10 years.

After catching up on our families and life in general, we started talking about what specific things were happening at our respective firms.  Clint’s comments were all around one topic – the customer experience.

The on-going focus for he and his team is all about adding to and tweaking little things on his email platform with the goal of making his software easier to understand and easier to use – thus providing a better overall use experience.  And superior performance keeps clients coming back.

Do you think about your firm and the services you provide in terms of your client’s experience?

September 4, 2012

After attending a conference this fall… don’t let the flame go out. Nurture those leads!

Our industry offers up some great conferences, particularly in the fall of the year – CASRO, QRCA, ESOMAR, MRA, TMRE and so on.  They are all great places to learn and (wait for it…) network.

That’s right… these conferences provide you with the chance to meet with prospective clients in a non-threatening environment.  Whether it’s during a conference session, at a cocktail reception or on the exhibit floor, conferences give you the opportunity to shake hands, swap business cards, do a little personal “selling” and lay the groundwork for future business conversations.

But then you head home from the conference… return to your back-to-normal business routine… and before you know it, that pocketful of business cards representing a number of warm leads now has a thin layer of frost on it.

August 28, 2012

Conduct an Old-fashioned SWOT Analysis to Find Your Competitive Advantage

The SWOT Analysis (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats) has been around for a long time as a way to take a critical look at your own company.  Strengths and weaknesses are internally focused… opportunities and threats are for looking outward.

What you do is think about your own firm in terms of each of the four categories: “What are our strengths?”, “What are our weaknesses?” and so on.  In those answers could be ideas for helping you to move your company forward.  Not a bad process.

But even though it’s “old school,” with a few tweaks, the SWOT Analysis can continue to play a valuable role in helping to look deep inside your firm to find your competitive advantage(s) and market position to help drive future success.

August 26, 2012

Come prepared, dress the part and follow up: 10 dos for exhibiting at MR trade shows

In an article last month, I shared 10 things conference exhibitors should avoid when working the booth at a trade show. Now that we’ve established what not to do, I’d like to share 10 best practices that can help sales professionals improve their success at the shows.

August 22, 2012

Don’t Kid Yourself… Social Media is NOT Free

Almost all businesses have embraced social media – at least at some level. Blogging, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the others all represent potential weapons in your marketing arsenal.  And we love them for two primary reasons:

• Reach!  900,000,000 FaceBook users, 550,000,000 Twitter users and so on… the numbers are staggering!
• Cost!  It’s $0.  That’s right… you can jump into social media in a pretty big way and not have to pay anything.

Well… that’s not entirely true.  While there may not be any out-of-pocket expenses, they do require and can take up a lot of your time.  And for very busy or smaller market research firms, time may be even more precious than money.