The Competitive Advantage

February 21, 2017

3 Reasons Why You Need Email Automation

Email automation, the programmed sending of prepared emails based on some trigger event, has been around for several years now.

It originally fell within the purview of marketing automation platforms (e.g. Hubspot or Marketo), but more recently, has become integrated into even the low-cost email platforms (e.g. EMMA or MailChimp).

Here’s an example of how it might work… let’s say you send out a monthly enewsletter to your sales database. Inside the email is a link back to a blog post about Product Testing on your website. Pretty standard, right?

Now imagine that everyone who clicks on that link is automatically sent a second email 3 days later, linking them to another blog post on a related topic. Pretty neat, right? [Note: it’s the clicking on the link that’s the ‘trigger event.’]

February 14, 2017

No 2017 Marketing & Sales Plan? There’s still time!

Here we are… a month and a half into the new year and you never got around to putting together a marketing & sales plan for 2017. First of all, know that you’re not alone. A busy Q4 plus the holidays put a lot of businesses behind the eight-ball when it comes to planning.

But, don’t use that as an excuse! Just because the new year had already begun doesn’t mean there’s not time to still put down on paper what you’re going to do this year to achieve your revenue growth goals. So, here are my suggestions for getting it done…

January 17, 2017

Strategy & Planning are Easy… Marketing Execution is Hard!

OK, strategy and planning are not easy… not even a little. They require focused time and critical thinking – two assets often in short supply around the office. But once they’re done… they’re done. Then the real work begins.

I was out of town last Thursday and Friday working with a new client. It was for two days of coaching on marketing strategy and planning… helping them to focus their business development efforts then putting in place some targeted tactics to execute over the coming months. And it went really well.

Now the question is… will any of those agreed-to tactics actually get executed?

December 27, 2016

The Top 10 Marketing & Sales Posts of 2016

During this past year, we’ve posted more than 50 articles and blog posts to our website… and they were read by thousands of website visitors. Thank you for your interest. We hope you found the information and stories in those pages to be helpful in some small way. And in case you’re not a regular visitor, below are links to Harpeth Marketing’s top 10 posts and articles of 2016.

November 21, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 3 of 6

5 Ways to Spruce up your LinkedIn Profile

In the first two weeks of this 6-week series on getting ready for growth in 2017, we discussed:

• Reaching out to past clients
• Blogging

Today, we tackle social media… specifically – how to improve and enhance your LinkedIn profile.

Our research shows that the first action a prospective client will take when conducting their due diligence on new suppliers is to go to their websites. No surprise. The second thing? They visit the LinkedIn profiles of the firm’s key executives and the ‘sales rep.’

So, it’s critical that your LinkedIn profiles are as up-to-date and complete as possible. To that end, here are 5 tips for sprucing yours up…

November 8, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 1 of 6

It’s getting to be that time of year… when we start looking ahead to next year and thinking about and planning for how we’re going to move our business forward (and upward). To help with that, we present this 6-part blog series. Each week, we’ll outline a different – and fairly easy to implement – activity that you can employ to get a leg up on revenue growth in 2017.

August 30, 2016

They’re not just clients… they’re people!

Think about each of your top 4 or 5 clients. Collectively, they’re likely worth 50-60-70% of your firm’s revenue…. or more!  And I’ll bet you could tell me how much revenue each generates, which services or products they’re buying from you and some details about each of their last few projects. That’s good.

Now think about your key contact at each of those clients – what details do you know about them? No, not their title or their biggest challenges at the office – though those are important. But… are they married or not? What about kids? Their hobbies or favorite sports team? Where they went on vacation last week? And so on… and so on.

Don’t think knowing that kind of thing is important? You’d be wrong!

July 19, 2016

Creating a New Booth for the Fall Conference Season? Follow These 4 Guidelines…

It’s mid-July and the Fall conference season will be here before you know it. Are you ready?

One of the elements of successful exhibiting is a compelling booth. Whether you’ve got a big, solid structure or a simple pop-up, you can still deliver a message to the marketplace that gets attention. Because if you don’t, your ROI on those expensive conferences will be severely limited… not a message you want to take back to the boss! So if you’re thinking about a new booth for this Fall, consider these guidelines…