Blog Insights

There are many reasons companies of all sizes and in all industries invest time and money participating in trade shows. From improving brand perception to generating leads to offering insight into what your prospects want/need, questions they have about industry topics, and hesitations they may feel about your brand, trade shows are a valuable resource.

Customer testimonials are a necessary part of your marketing strategy, but getting them can be daunting. A good place to start is choosing a dialogue. 

In the game of getting leads and closing sales, you need a solid strategy. These seven strategies involve both the responsiveness of people and the immediacy of the web and will help propel your efforts. 

I was recently asked to participate in a panel discussion about marketing trends and challenges for technology consulting firms. I thought the questions and answers were worth sharing.

I am continually surprised by business owners who haven’t stayed current with marketing trends, techniques, or technology … yet expect to pay pennies to hire a team of people who have invested in continual learning in the craft. (I know – I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am).

Which of these phrases best describes marketing in your tech company?

1. We suffer from random acts of marketing
2. We’re really good at drive-by demand generation
3. We think of marketing as arts & crafts

Over the last three years of working in the marketing trenches, I’ve come across countless reasons why people’s marketing efforts are ineffective. Often, these efforts, which require monumental energy, have, at the center, the right intention – but are in some ways misguided. I came to this conclusion after attending a salsa dancing social where I learned some important lessons about dancing salsa but also about marketing.

Marketing without a strategy is like a blind dragon – it can breathe fire and cause destruction (usually to your budget) but without purpose. And though we can all agree that no one likes wanton destruction, more and more I see tactics without strategy in many of the potential clients that come through our door.

(nod to Michael Lewis)

I had a long-time client of mine pose this question to me recently. He went on to say that in looking back over the four years we had worked together we had implemented a lot of change.  

We had updated the website and spent a lot of time on SEO, we had put in place a clear content marketing strategy. We were blogging. Doing videos. We were following up on website visitors, we were nurturing the names in his database on a regular basis. We had implemented referral marketing programs and made networking as effective as we could with his current staff and we were regularly participating and leveraging social media.

Over the past few weeks I have inundated with information about how much the world has changed in the past 30 years. From trying to explain to young staff about the emergence business software needed to track and maintain inventory for manufacturers and distributors, to a great presentation by Scott Brinker discussion the almost impossible progression of marketing technology, to National Geographic’s series on the 80’s. Wow, I can’t believe I have lived through all of this and there is more to come.

The marketing guru’s have been writing about marketing automation and technology changing the average marketers life for several years now, but it was never as clear to me as it is now. Most growing businesses are trying hard to take advantage of the changes, but it is really to keep up. Even the guru’s find it hard!