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Aligning your marketing with your goals

When you’re starting any marketing campaign, it’s really important to clearly define your goals first. This is the single best way to ensure you get the results you want. One of the most common mistakes we see is people getting it backwards. They start by choosing the platform or the content type, and come to us saying “We need to do Google Ads!” or “We need to improve our SEO!” without much thought behind the message or the “why”. When there’s a mis-match between your goals and the marketing platform or action you choose, you are less likely to get the results you want. What are your goals?  Instead, start with your purpose. What results do you hope to get? Look ahead to the end of the campaign – what will make it worthwhile for you? Usually it’s going to be an increase in your [...]

How to maximise ROI in your B2B marketing

As a business owner or marketer, you want to ensure that your marketing efforts yield a positive return on investment (ROI). In B2B marketing, it’s especially important to be strategic and focused in order to maximise the ROI from your marketing efforts. In this blog post, we’re looking at tips to help you get the most out of your marketing efforts. Identifying your goals The first step in maximising your ROI is to identify your goals. What are you looking to achieve through your marketing efforts? Are you looking to build brand awareness, educate your audience, or generate leads? It’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish, so that you can select the right marketing tactics and measure success accordingly. Once you’ve identified your goals, the next step is to ensure that your marketing campaign and measurement methods align with [...]

Debunking common content marketing myths

A few years ago, content marketing was all the rage. While some of the buzz has died down, smart companies in the B2B space continue to use content very effectively, but many others can still get it very wrong. The sheer volume of low-value content out there may have given the concept a bad name, but it creates a better opportunity than ever before to stand out by doing things well. Here we look at what to do and what not to do. What is content anyway? When we talk about content, we mean any information that is valued by the person reading it. Whether it’s blogs and articles, or whitepapers, or graphics, or video – it’s information that goes beyond just getting your sales pitch across, and is something that people would be interested in reading or watching, whether or not they’re immediately planning [...]

The SEO trap

It is well known that most traffic on the internet comes via search, mostly Google, and that nobody looks past the first page of search results, so ensuring your site is optimised for search is vital right? Absolutely! But if you are a business-to-business company, operating in niche markets such as the water, energy, utility, infrastructure or local government sectors, then taking some mainstream advice on SEO can actually backfire and undermine your reputation. How B2B is different To understand this dilemma, first we need to look at some of the main ways that business-to-business (B2B) differs from Business-to-Consumer (B2C). B2C sales are often large-scale and transactional, the target market is large, the decision-making process is quick, and decisions are usually made by individuals. For example, someone might be looking for a new pair of shoes, they’ll search online, click some of the top results, [...]

The marketing mistakes of niche businesses

If you’re doing well in a niche business you should be flat out because customers need what you do or supply. But what if they don’t know about you? That’s when you need to hit the market with some clever marketing. If you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to marketing, get ready to blow a lot of cash for limited results. In the world of marketing, your options seem endless. From print to digital, and then from your website, email, and social media, you’ve got your pick of platforms to use. Then you need to consider content type; such as long-form written content like white papers to shorter articles, blogs, videos, and infographics. Don’t forget your paid boost options, like Google Ads, sponsored social posts and remarketing.  Making your head spin? That’s why marketing these days is a specialist field, and marketing [...]

Multi-channel exposure: The new way to market

Marketing is, and always has been, about capturing the attention of your potential customers, building brand awareness and eventually converting this attention into business. The methods have changed, from TV, newspaper and radio, to the current world where these things still exist, and a multitude of other options have joined the market. To win at marketing in today’s world, you need to be delivering a consistent, yet platform-appropriate, message wherever your customers may encounter you. Today there are multiple mediums and channels competing for customers’ attention. To increase exposure of your message and allow for potential customers to encounter it wherever their attention is, we suggest producing content to be published across different platforms. This approach helps ensure an integrated and consistent message is delivered to potential customers in the likely event that they are exposed to your message on more than one platform. It [...]

Spoilt for choice: What it’s like working with marketing experts

We don’t all sit in an office filled with creatives, but I do, and sometimes I forget how lucky I am to just be able to have something produced to help get my message across. The other day we were talking about how helpful a video would be to explain how speed networking works at our conferences. I put some ideas together and mocked up something that was, in all honesty, pretty terrible, then asked my video expert to take over. Next minute we’ve got an instructional video complete with moving graphics, smooth transitions and a professional voiceover. This kind of stuff happens all the time as my newly designed business cards will show you. We’re pitching for a new client? The design team turn my somewhat boring text into a colourful, easy-to-read, well laid out masterpiece. Need to [...]

More than just magazines

Monkey Media, the publisher behind some of Australia’s biggest trade magazines does more than just print mags. The growth from creating magazines into full service marketing for businesses within the industry was a natural one. Utility Publisher, Chris Bland, said the marketing services branch of the business grew organically as advertisers began to ask if more could be done to help their brand. “I’d always known our journalists and editors had a unique set of skills, in that they could speak the language of the industry as well as craft this into interesting articles. The businesses who were advertising with us also realised this combination of skills is rare and demand for the marketing services grew from that,” said Chris. How did a magazine publisher become a marketing agency? Initially just doing some content writing for smaller clients, the agency side of Monkey Media has [...]

Words or pictures? How to make the most of print space

Buying space in a magazine is exciting. Knowing that your brand, image or story will hold pride of place in a physical publication means something. There’s a prestige associated with appearing in print; a kind of shine that digital has never truly been able to capture. Once you’ve decided on buying space in a print magazine, you should put some thought into what you want to achieve from that space, and your goals will then direct how to make the most of the space. Advertisements help build your brand If brand recognition and familiarity are your goals, a good looking print advertisement can help you stick in the mind of current and potential customers. You can highlight the key features of your business, product or services, but it’s not the forum for an in-depth description of everything you offer. Advertisements that try to tell the [...]

How print and digital marketing can be friends

Digital marketing is often seen as the cool younger cousin of traditional print advertising, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for some good old ink on paper in your marketing efforts. Whether it’s a display ad or some editorial content, combining the forces of digital with print is often a winning formula. You know the taco ad where the family are arguing about whether they should have hard or soft tacos and the little girl cleverly points out they could have both? Working across print and digital marketing sometimes feels like you’re dealing with that crazy family steadfastly arguing for their own preferred medium. Like the happy family who settle on a mix of soft and hard tacos, successful marketing campaigns often utilise both print and digital ads to get their message out there. There is no ‘best way’ when it comes to marketing [...]