Your Marketing and Design Reading for The Weekend
One of our current projects is editing the footage we shot at our production facilities. In doing so, we thought about all the questions potential clients and employees could ask about Affinity Express and tried to have a brief, 20-second video to address them. So far, we've created product shots where people can look over the shoulders of our team members to see them design websites, mobile ads and Facebook pages. We also have interviews with employees and Human Resources personnel offering insight into our culture, training, social responsibility and more. Rather than cover every topic in exhaustive detail, we're trying to educate and encourage prospects to contact us and learn more.
An important point for our project was that we did not use scripts. This is how we kept the content sincere, as this post suggested, because we didn't tell anyone what to say or how to say it.
Four "New Marketing Skills You'd Better Learn Quick
The perspective of this article makes a lot of sense: people who stepped out of marketing for the past few years would barely recognize the roles they are now facing. To cope, they need to quickly learn the following skills:
- Funnel math and revenue performance management: ultimately, we all need to close business and have to work backward from the number of leads it takes to win a deal to determine how we spend our time and budgets.
- Social lead generation and buying signal mining: monitor what your prospects are saying on social media and become a resource for them. If you provide value, "the social web is the greatest source of ongoing free leads ever seen."
- SEO and inbound marketing fundamentals: although the rules change daily (see Google item above!), there are basics that remain consistent. That means publishing great content and securing inbound links that validate the quality of that content.
- Lead management/nurture workflow development: most of our buyers don't make their move immediately and need to be nurtured over time. Various tools and systems can be effective, but it is most important to have a strategy to address how purchases are made and what tactics will be used throughout the relationship with prospects.
10 Ways to Make Your Leads Totally Hate Your Guts
Building on the last of point on acquiring new marketing skills, here's a good selection of things you should not do. From 1) "make it virtually impossible for leads to get their hands on your offer," to 10) "negotiate like a total sleeze ball," I thoroughly enjoyed this post.
