The Competitive Advantage

October 24, 2017

A difficult client… can they be good for business?

One of the services we offer our clients is content development… creating blog posts, eBooks, etc. We have very talented writers on our team – they know the topics and they know how to write.

We also had this one particular client who nit-picked (at least we thought so) all the time and pushed back on our writing until we got it “perfect.” Very frustrating!

Amongst ourselves, we used to frequently complain about this client… that they were just a big ol’ pain in the a**!

But, guess what? We were wrong!

January 3, 2017

Blogging in 2017? What do I write about?

A few weeks ago, I had a conference call with several contacts at one of my clients about Content Marketing in 2017… and specifically, about blogging.

The have committed to blogging a couple of times every month. Great! They understand the value of blogging in helping to position their firm as Subject Matter Experts, for building awareness and for helping with SEO. But every one of them had the same question…

“What do I write about?”

April 12, 2016

LITTLE things can make a BIG difference in marketing

The value of A/B Testing

A true story… Down the hall from our office is the sales & marketing office for a construction company that specializes in steel buildings. I’ve gotten to be friends with the heads of sales there.

He was telling me about a new video he recently placed on his website’s home page. He had hired a professional spokesperson, written a friendly script and produced a very nice little welcome video. Immediately, site activity dropped and bounce rates jumped. Huh?!

March 29, 2016

Not doing Client Satisfaction surveys for yourself? Whuuuuut?!

8 Tips for Building Better Services with Surveys

In the perfect personification of ‘the cobbler’s’ children having no shoes,’ I am amazed at how many market research firms – that conduct studies for clients across the U.S. and around the world – don’t conduct any for themselves.

And the oddest one of those is the huge percentage of firms that don’t conduct a client satisfaction survey after each project. Why is that?

June 25, 2014

Great business quotes #4 – on measurement.

If you’ve read any of our previous content, then you know we believe that marketing is a process… and part of that process is the commitment to measure each step along the way.

It’s this philosophy that leads to the 4^th great business saying in our series…

What gets measured gets done.

February 5, 2014

Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret… It’s Not an Exact Science!

Here are the kinds of questions I regularly hear from my clients…

• “What email open rate should I expect?”
• “How many downloads will my new white paper get?”
• “What’s the average bid conversion rate?”
• “What are the ‘right’ steps for the lead nurturing process?”

The correct answer for all of the above is… “It depends!”  Sorry… wish I had a better answer.

September 17, 2013

Get ready to exhibit this fall… part 3 of a 3-part series

Twenty years ago, before I started in into the MR industry, I worked in the conference and trade show industry.  Back then, one of the industry’s key associations – the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (ceir.org) – reported that only 20% of all leads generated at an exhibition were ever followed-up on.  Today, with all of the new tools and technology available to exhibitors, that number is still 20%!

Stated another way, 80% of everyone who gives up their time to come into your booth this Fall (at TMRE, CASRO, ESOMAR, QRCA, etc.) will not hear from you afterward!  That’s not just bad business… it’s downright stupid!

July 30, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 7 – develop content ideas

I hope you’ve been following along this summer and implementing some of the ideas we’ve been discussing.  Whether it’s getting ready for the fall conference season, targeting new sales prospects or even cleaning up your in-house database, the summer is a great time to work “on” your business.  But we’ve got a few more to go…

One of the most popular tactics in marketing today – and it’s popular because it works – is ‘content marketing.’  That is, sharing information and ideas to help your clients and prospective clients.  And in helping, it builds credibility for your firm and positions you as a subject matter expert.

This content most often takes the shape of blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, ebooks, podcasts and videos.  Throw in the occasional webinar and that about covers it.

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is deciding what to write about… what the ‘content’ in ‘content marketing’ is going to be.  Which leads us to…