Think about us here, in our creative playpen…

We poked heads up over daily projects to survey our B to B customers earlier this year. Clients rewarded us with some insightful responses. In our 2016 Client Marketing Survey we scored a proverbial 30,000’ view of client priorities. Thank you for helping us focus! How do their priorities compare with yours?

2016 Client Marketing Priorities

Top 5 client marketing priorities:

• #1 & #2 (tied): Sales Leads & Better Client Communications (73%)
• #3: Website Design & Functionality (64%)
• #4: Building Market Awareness (46%)
• #5: Improving Brand (36%)

Proceeding down the marketing priorities list:

• Customer Education, More Social Media, Website hosting & management issues, keeping projects on track (~25%)
• Learning what does/doesn’t work, getting more outside/inside marketing help (18%)

Lowest marketing priorities:

• Addressing concerns about “Not messing up a good thing” (9%)
• Keeping up with customer demand (0%) Not on any client’s radar.

Then, we drilled down to discover where clients may be looking for help…

Where Clients Need Help in 2016

• Advertising - All want creative and content help (100%), but not everyone is looking for planning and management assistance (20%)
• Website - Almost all (88%) are looking for website design help, followed closely (62%) by 3 other ongoing website-related priorities that include: adding site functionality, content, and SEO.
• Branding - A third (33%) want help in all areas of logo design & branding, including how they apply their brand in the form of Logo Use Manuals, and unifying their brand across multiple channels.
• Brochureware - Who says print is dead among business to business agency clients? Half (50%) will be looking for design & creative help. A third (33%) feel they need help with content and production.
• Direct Marketing, print and/or digital - Half (50% will be needing assistance in all areas of direct marketing, including sign, content, production.
• SEO - A third (33%) want help in all areas of Search Engine Optimizing, including creative, content and ongoing management.
• PR - (75%) seek writing, imaging and distribution help.
• Trade Shows - Less than 20% (18%) completed this question, but those who did acknowledged they needed help in booth design and booth production.

We've always got your back! For marketing, advertising, PR and general lead acquisition and client retention marketing services give EJW Associates a shout.

DYI Market Research - Tips for making it pay

http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/kaden1.asp

As with all things digital, the tools for marketing research and marketing surveys are easy. Expertise for ensuring productive results is harder to come by for b to b marketers. First red flag, be careful what you ask to avoid rabbit holes that waste time, effort, and lead to dead ends. You will be caught like a deer in headlights with too much survey information. So will customers facing a too-complicated survey. Focus before beginning any survey! Ruthlessly winnow survey questions to get fewer answers that can have more impact.
Market Research Surveys can help marketers reduce risks, improve customer service, successfully develop new product or services, and gain new customer sales. Help formulating a survey strategy that includes defining a goal, questions, sample size and analysis will ensure an actionable result. For more information: EJW Associates Marketing Consulting Services and special OLI Marketing Consulting Offer.

Marketing, shmarketing. Who needs it?

Everything starts with a sale. Marketing does not equal sales, or vice versa. Yet, smaller organizations frequently get along fine without a formal marketing function - for a time. Many companies view the sometimes complex functions of marketing as a cost-of-sales, rather than a driver of sales. They wait too long before seriously considering an investment in marketing. Marketing is best implemented before the first dark clouds appear on the sales and profit horizon. With marketing in place, businesses can even circumvent sales and profit-zapping issues as they crop up, and new challenges arise.

Every sales professional knows instinctively what it takes to prospect for leads, right?
Yes, and no. The vigilant sales person:

1) sows the seeds for sales throughout a network that extends to industry groups, peers and acquaintances;
2) is in personal touch with customers to short circuit any customer service issues while probing for new ways to add customer value.
3) provides market intelligence for future product or service development.
4) cannot consistently deliver the same message to every customer all of the time.

Sales is king, but even a king needs support
The need for improved sales and profitability - the multiplication of sales - manifests itself when existing sales processes need a marketing kick, i.e. help that goes beyond one-on-one selling, especially as sales goals change.

Marketing is the multiplication of sales efforts, and comes into play before, during and after a sale. More than simple one-shot-wonder promotions and advertising, marketing orchestrates many tools to help develop and maintain customer dialog - and profitability.

Marketing:

1) softens the field for sales.
2) gets prospects to raise their hands for a sales contact.
3) Perhaps most importantly, marketing helps convey a company's brand to knock down barriers to a sale, lift customer expectations for doing business with a company, creating a preference in the market for a company's goods or services.

Send in the clowns
Prospecting, networking, customer support, and all aspects of customer development that lead to long term customer value is a continuum to be broken at great risk to sales and profits.

Marketing, the anecdote
Marketing is comprised of the strategy, tactics, and the creative implementation of a plan to ensure: fresh sales leads, timely customer communications, non-stop customer service, and continuous development of relevant product and services leading to improved sales, market share, and profitability. Coordinated advertising, PR, website, and other media campaigns create value in a customer's mind. With these tools savvy marketers are able to rise above their competition with better profit margins.