Author: Kimberly Cronk

What Does Your Business Card Say about You?

Written by Kimberly Cronk on August 23, 2016. Posted in Print & Mail.

By Laurie Hileman

When was the last time you evaluated your company’s business card? For many, it’s treated as a fix-it-and-forget-it business commodity, an antiquated cost of doing business. The result: You look and feel like everyone else.

Feel? Yes, feel.

In today’s increasingly digital world, this little 2-by-3½-inch piece of prime real estate is one of the few opportunities a customer or prospect has to physically interact with you and your brand. The weight, texture, design, and finish all speak to who you are, what you believe, and what type of clients you expect to attract.

So, what does your card say about you? Here’s a look at top trends in business cards this year (you’ll be surprised how easy they are to incorporate).

27,397,260

Number of business cards printed daily.*

Don’t Forget the Back

The backside of your business card is a great way to differentiate yourself without cluttering the front of the card. Consider these ideas from the website Small-BizSense.****

OFFER A DISCOUNT
GENERATE LEADS (WITH QR CODE TO LANDING PAGE)
INCENTIVE REFERRAL
SHOWCASE A TESTIMONIAL
OFFER A FREE CONSULTATION
INCLUDE BUY-ONE-GET-ONE FREE OFFERS

Trending Touches

Minimalist design and eco-friendly touches are two of the latest trends in business card design, according to founder and chief digital strategist Abi Stoker at the New York-based Little Digital Co.*** Other ways to make your card stand out:

UNUSUAL SHAPES
EDGE PAINTING
DIE CUTS
EMBOSSING
FOILS

Sources: 

* http://www.statisticbrain.com/business-card-statistics/

** https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/08/19/business-cards-stubborn-holdouts-in-the-digital-revolution/

*** https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-beautiful-business-card-design-trends-were-loving-right-abi-stock

****http://small-bizsense.com/back-of-business-cards/

Tying It All Together

Written by Kimberly Cronk on August 9, 2016. Posted in Case Study, Omnichannel Marketing.

In the financial institution world, providing value to your customers is what keeps them around for the long haul. However, customers are barraged near daily with messages from competing banks and credit unions, and their attention can shift quickly and easily. Motivating individuals to join and stay with you begins with earning their trust—trust that your financial institution can help them to live their best lives now while also planning for the future.

Independent Bank, a 150-year-old bank with branches throughout Michigan, understood the importance of delivering such a message to its customers and added integrated marketing to its very lengthy business-branding to-do list. But presenting a unified message to multiple key audience segments through various touch points was daunting. With a relatively small on-staff marketing team and a lot of messaging to disperse to different audiences, Independent Bank’s need for assistance became apparent. That’s when the bank’s partnership with The F.P. Horak Company began.

THE BACKGROUND

With over a century and a half of experience, Independent Bank knew a thing or two about relating to its customers. But the information-consumption habits of its customers— and the information being sought—has evolved. Email marketing has become as important as direct mail marketing. Short video clips are now a relevant means of reaching consumers. And marketing collateral has to stand out even more than before because it’s now competing with both print and digital counterparts.

What’s more, the customer’s location within the sales funnel directly affects the type of information that the customer is likely to seek—and act upon. In order to make the greatest impact, Independent Bank needed to expand its reach, focus its messages, and capture its audiences’ attention wherever they were, whenever they were there.

THE PROBLEM

As apparent as the need for integrated marketing became to Independent Bank, asking a small marketing staff to conceptualize, produce, schedule, and launch the new content and initiatives wasn’t feasible. And without a clear plan and a one-person point of contact in place, the bank ran the risk of not marketing enough to one customer segment and over-marketing to another. Even more challenging was the concept of leveraging the new components across multiple marketing channels. (How can an e-newsletter drive traffic to the bank’s website blog? Which financial literacy topics could introduce a video series that would cross-sell products to existing customers? Which types of marketing collateral would have the most impact and result in new customer conversion?) Add in multiple key audience segments, all at various stages of the sales funnel, and the waters get muddy very quickly. The task, no matter how necessary, seemed insurmountable.

THE SOLUTION

After a needs-assessment conversation between Tricia Raquepaw, vice president and director of marketing at Independent Bank, and Marisa Horak Belotti, chief strategy officer at The F.P. Horak Company, a seemingly perfect solution emerged: to use F.P. Horak’s team of highly experienced marketing communications professionals to bring the bank’s overall marketing objectives to life. The bank could establish itself as a thought leader among financial institutions and solidify its credibility with customers, current and future, through a unified message delivered across multiple channels and touch points.

Having one marketing services point of contact (at F.P. Horak) would free Raquepaw from managing day-to-day integrated marketing tasks. Instead of fretting over blog posts, Raquepaw and her own team could focus on bigger picture opportunities such as community involvement and larger bank products/services campaigns.

“This is a huge tool for smaller marketing teams,” says Raquepaw. “This (integrated marketing) is what we had envisioned. We just hadn’t had time to pull it all together.”

THE RESULTS

With short- and long-term marketing campaigns and promotions strategies—including written content and social media, a video series, savings initiatives for youths, onboarding and re-boarding campaigns, and financial literacy awareness programs—now planned in partnership with F.P. Horak, Raquepaw looks forward to what she calls “a growth year.”

Indeed, the growth is already happening. In the short time that F.P. Horak has managed Independent Bank’s integrated marketing strategy, unique visitors to the bank’s new website content blog have increased by over 500 percent, and the emails the bank sends to customers and prospects have seen an email open rate increase of 36 percent.

“Our goal is to make our customers actually want to receive a contact from us,” says Raquepaw. With tailored content and marketing promotions that speak directly to the audiences’ concerns and goals, Independent Bank’s clients will no doubt become more engaged than ever—and that long-term relationship will only grow stronger.

By Liberty Kontranowski

Star Power

Written by Kimberly Cronk on July 28, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Laurie Hileman

Star performer or supporting actor? There is debate surrounding the role of private-label magazines and other custom print publications in a successful marketing mix. They are, after all, a significant line item in any marketing budget. What’s not up for debate? The power of storytelling.

“That’s why more and more companies and organizations today are moving to an owned-media approach,” says Marisa Horak Belotti, chief strategy officer at Saginaw, Mich.-based The F.P. Horak Company. “They’re using classic storytelling techniques to reach their customers and prospects with relevant, engaging content that builds strong affinity.”

Consider Red Bull’s The Red Bulletin. Despite having one of the most sophisticated and successful digital content marketing programs in the world, every month the energy drink giant publishes more than two million copies of its men’s lifestyle magazine in six different languages and 12 different country editions. Likewise, online luxury fashion retailer Net-a-Porter uses its print magazine, Porter, to entice readers with the latest fashion trends, incorporating technology that makes it easy to purchase items seen on the page.

Belotti contends it’s this unified blend of print and digital marketing strategies—whether you’re a global brand, regional manufacturer, or local nonprofit—that delivers the greatest ROI and long-term success.

Here we’ll explore what makes these custom publications so powerful, how they can be used across industries and demographics, and how to tie your publication in to a broader marketing mix that leverages the strengths of print and digital media.

People learn from stories…telling them and hearing them. And storytelling is as relevant to business brand communications as it is to sitting around the campfire.

~ Mimi Bell, editorial director, The F.P. Horak Company

YOUR STORY, THEIR WAY

“Marketers have come to realize what generations of people from all cultures have always known. People are moved by stories. Moved to take action. Moved to make a charitable donation. Moved to make a buying decision,” says Mimi Bell, editorial director at The F.P. Horak Company.

As a custom content specialist who works with businesses and organizations to help them develop their private-label magazines and other print and digital content vehicles, Bell seeks to seamlessly stitch together topics and issues that matter to her clients’ customers and members, all within a distinct brand narrative.

It’s not always easy. “Compelling narrative is so essential to inspire some kind of action,” says Bell. “The goal is to inform but also engage in an entertaining way.”

That can be a challenge for organizations used to a traditional features-and-benefits marketing approach. Instead, the spotlight needs to shift away from the company and firmly onto the readers by addressing their interests and their challenges. “Content needs to really resonate with the readers,” Bell says.

BROAD APPEAL

The powerful thing about stories? Everybody’s got one. Perhaps it’s a manufacturer that goes far beyond the required corporate sustainability regulations, or a financial institution that believes in improving the financial literacy of its customers. Maybe it’s a nonprofit whose donor stories uplift heavy hearts, or a hotel that knows the best-kept culinary secrets in their area.

With compelling narrative at the core, custom publications can come together in a number of different ways. “For example, manufacturers incorporate these storytelling techniques into sustainability reports,” says Belotti. “Others might use custom publications to position themselves as thought leaders in their industry with trend stories and case studies.”

Versioning, or styling the content to meet the specific needs of different audiences, is another trend popular in the financial institutions, insurance, and hospitality industries. For example, a bank focusing on financial literacy may target Millennials with information about student loans and how to start a Roth IRA, while customers nearing retirement age receive wealth management tips. The bank might also customize each piece for the loan officer or bank branch from which it is distributed.

“The more you can build in editorial verticals for key audience segments, the stronger brand recognition and relationships you can develop over time,” says Belotti.

IT’S NOT A SOLO SHOW

Private-label magazines and custom publications, powerful as they are at building brands and increasing loyalty, are even stronger when part of a larger, integrated marketing strategy.

“Digital is very much still a part of the mix,” says Paul Adler, business strategist and director of integrated marketing at The F.P. Horak Company. “The most effective marketing mix is going to be one that includes multiple channels including digital, print, and social.”

The mix is unique to each company’s targeted audience. An organization may use print to drive readers online for further engagement, or it may use digital and social channels to funnel more readers to an in-depth print piece.

Either way, to get the most return on your investment, Belotti says, “You should be leveraging your publication’s content across all of your digital marketing mix. You can break those custom pubs apart and push them out through e-marketing, content blogs, and social media.”

Articles can be broken down into smaller blog posts. Pull quotes can be used on Twitter or Facebook to start a discussion. Even visuals from your publication can be optimized on Pinterest and Instagram to draw additional readers to your publication.

The key is delivering relevant messages to the right people, at the right time, using the right platform.

“There’s never been a time when so many generations were working together in one workforce. Each one considers information differently. If you’re giving that same message on multiple platforms, you’re going to be the most effective at what you’re doing,” says Belotti.

And the real star of the show becomes your reader.

Marketing Relic or Dynamic Tool?

Written by Kimberly Cronk on July 26, 2016. Posted in B2B E-commerce.

By Lorrie Bryan

For decades, businesses have routinely procured and distributed the obligatory one-size-fits-all brochures touting the features and benefits of their respective services and products. Bi-folds and tri-folds, z-folds and c-folds cranked out in large quantities on offset presses using the four-color process were the standard. Spilling out of racks and stockpiled on shelves, too often they became dusty, crusty, and obsolete well before their numbers were sufficiently diminished. Although this practice still persists like a bad time-honored tradition (think fruitcakes at Christmas), the company brochure is evolving into much more than a static, must-have marketing relic. Companies today are transforming their marketing collateral into dynamic tools that provide greater engagement with prospects and offer their own marketing teams valuable insights.

Presenting…the better marketing collateral

Savvy companies, large and small, have discovered a better way to produce, procure, and empower their brochures and other marketing collateral. Using their own unique digital storefront (DSF), an online eCommerce platform for employees and other authorized users (distributors or franchisees) to order materials, companies are enjoying the benefits of simplified warehousing and on-demand ordering that can reduce costs and waste, increase brand control and consistency, and offer unsurpassed and streamlined efficiency. A DSF decentralizes the ordering process, relieving the home office of that task and literally putting it right in the hands of the specific individuals who actually need the brochures, stationery, business cards, and more. On the financial side, companies enjoy streamlined invoicing and accounts payable operations. Storefronts provide detailed reporting on spending by user, cost center, or location, allowing companies to track spending and determine ways to decrease costs.

And that’s just the beginning. Using a DSF, not only can your marketing collateral be printed on demand in smaller volume, it can now be customized for greater relevance and engagement, and it can be accompanied by corresponding downloadable digital assets (videos, emails, and brand standards) that reinforce the company’s message.

Customization

Brad Bitzer, eCommerce manager at The F.P. Horak Company, explains that employees can go to the digital storefront and change more than just the location and phone number on a printed piece. “The company brochure and other materials can be easily customized to target several different market segments. With a few clicks, you can simply change preselected images and some of the messaging to increase the appeal and relevance to the targeted market segment,” he says. “You don’t have to enlist the help of a copywriter or graphic artist, and you can then print the quantities you require as needed for each market segment rather than stockpiling 10,000 generic brochures.”

Although employees can tailor items (for example, select text and images) on the materials as needed, all other design elements remain consistent. And because all products are produced by the same manufacturer, colors and format remain exactly as specified for all materials. “Marketing departments can drastically reduce internal design time and costs to produce simple marketing items by shifting production to an easy-to-use marketing template. Companies can preserve their brand while giving ultimate flexibility to end-users,” Bitzer explains.

Marketing departments can drastically reduce internal design time and costs to produce simple marketing items by shifting production to an easy-to-use marketing template.

~ Brad Bitzer, eCommerce manager, The F.P. Horak Company

Supplementary digital assets

Increasingly, a brochure of products and services is just one element of a multi-channel marketing campaign. To ensure consistency across channels, companies are utilizing digital storefronts to facilitate accessibility to the digital assets—everything from email letters to images and videos—that correspond with the tangible brochures and that reinforce the messaging.

“Digital assets are increasingly popular additions to stores,” says Bitzer. “Adding a digital download as a stand-alone product or in addition to a product that may be ordered for shipping is simple and makes the sharing of information easier for users of a site. Digital assets can be listed alongside warehoused, print-on-demand, or customized products, allowing users to easily find the information they’re looking for in the format they need at any time,” he explains. “Some customers choose to have a small number of digital assets on their storefront—such as brand standards, company logos, etc.—while others choose to have more items like brochures, or even entire categories dedicated solely to downloadable assets and organized according to how their end-users need access,” Bitzer adds.

Marketing collateral that gives back

When a DSF is used to distribute marketing materials, a brochure transcends the tangible ink on paper and becomes an instrument for sourcing data. According to Jeff Moder, a print industry technology consultant recently with Four51, one of the industry’s foremost providers of DSF solutions, DSFs inherently have the capacity to seize data that can give companies timely insights about their customers, their marketing strategies, their distributors, and more. “Using a digital storefront enables companies to capture valuable data that is currently just disappearing into the atmosphere—not documented, not trended, and not utilized,” explains Moder. When marketing collateral is ordered using a DSF, it becomes an element that you can easily track. You can look at the data in the brochure orders—who is ordering the product brochure, if the accompanying digital assets are being downloaded, how many transactions there are, how much they are spending, and what the usage patterns are—and discern valuable trending information.

Using a digital storefront enables companies to capture valuable data that is currently just disappearing into the atmosphere

~ Jeff Moder, a print industry technology consultant

You can also start seeing correlations when these data are synced with the corresponding sales revenue data, notes Moder. “For instance, if distributor A is buying more of a particular brochure for a certain product than distributor B and selling significantly more of that product than the other distributor, that is something that should be examined further. If neither distributor is buying the brochure or selling that product, then that is also cause for follow-up. Digital storefronts offer companies the ability to look at what people are doing in a more insightful way.”

Bitzer notes that on the flip side, companies can also see who isn’t taking advantage of the system in place. “Oftentimes, companies will see a direct correlation between their top performers—who generally use the system put in place for them—and others who might not take advantage of the tools they have at their disposal. Additionally, the reporting on a storefront helps organizations make better decisions about how to leverage their marketing efforts. Perhaps they’ve come up with a concept that looked great on paper but isn’t being used in the field. Why not? If it isn’t as effective as they had thought, they can make changes to better utilize their funds, or focus on different items that serve their constituents better,” Bitzer says.

Future marketing collateral procurement

Chances are that your customers today are more digital-first, mobile-enabled than your customers just a few years ago, and Moder says you need to plan accordingly. When ordering company marketing collateral, these customers probably prefer not to be sitting in their offices navigating a digital storefront at their desktop computer. Rather, they expect a high-quality shopping experience that is easy to use and engages them with the site’s brand. “They are younger, online, mobile, independent, and they are growing in numbers. In fact, for the first time ever, Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers in the workplace. They want to engage with us at a time, place, and manner of their choosing. And when they do, they expect their shopping experience to be similar to the B2C sites they frequent, sometimes characterized as Amazon-like, Moder explains.

The first thing that you need to recognize about your DSF is that is needs to be functional—the ordering process needs to be streamlined and flawless. “Your user audience is changing, and you need to understand and accommodate their buying habits and shopping preferences,” Moder advises. “So, your storefront should be responsive—easily read and navigated with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices—from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones.”

It also needs to be appealing and engaging. If customer experience is the new marketing, then accordingly, your DSF is a prime opportunity for you to elevate your company’s customer experience and thus enhance your brand. “It’s short-sighted to think of your storefront just in terms of functional transactions,” Moder says. Ask yourself how you want to position your company and your brand and engage with your customers—your most valuable assets—when they are buying from you. It’s important to make it easy, but why not also make it graphically appealing and engaging? Unlike the past decade when print distributors deployed eCommerce primarily to make it easier to receive customer orders, the next decade will be about making it easier for customers to buy the way they want to buy,” Moder says.

Going in Circles

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 25, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Kathryn Will

“Closing the loop” simply means that sales teams report to the marketing department about what happened to the leads that they received, which, in turn, helps the marketing department understand the best and worst lead sources.

Effective marketing is becoming increasingly challenging.

Why? Marketers must choose from a growing abundance of platforms on which to market, customers are increasingly demanding website-posted or downloadable content to aid them in making a buying decision, and super-savvy prospects know how to opt out of the marketing messages you send. This makes the task of delivering an effective message and getting the customer to take action more complicated.

The best defense against becoming overwhelmed by having too many to dos is a closed-loop approach that ties sales and marketing efforts together through data and metrics reporting for better pre-campaign decision-making that yields greater campaign ROI.

From a high level, this approach looks individually at each channel you may choose to use—email, direct mail, social media, custom content and publishing, your company website, etc.—and collectively at how they may tie back to one another. Examples include when a print piece uses a QR code to direct a prospect to the company’s website, or where visitors to a social media channel are asked to fill out a form that will enroll them to receive an emailed newsletter.

Closing the loop in this way allows the sales team to see the marketing methods and promotions that are driving the most leads. Sales can then report back to the marketing team as to what works and what needs tweaking.

Closed-loop marketing is marketing that relies on data and insights from closed-loop reporting, according to HubSpot, an inbound marketing software and consulting company. “Closing the loop” simply means that sales teams report to the marketing department about what happened to the leads that they received, which, in turn, helps the marketing department understand the best and worst lead sources.

Effective closed-loop marketing requires that you track specific lead sources and the response rates garnered from each channel and by which promotions. Knowing these details lets marketers identify what delivers the highest lead-to-customer conversion rates. But to get these answers, you’ll need to trace URLs, employ social media metrics, and use an email vendor that allows for easy tracking of open and click-through rates.

And if content delivery offers are part of your marketing mix, landing pages fortified with forms that capture a visitor’s contact information are also necessary. Being able to see which offers get the most traction can help to close the loop even further by pushing visitors to a second relevant offer or promotion.

What’s the ultimate objective with closed-loop marketing? Keeping your brand front and center as prospects cycle through your marketing and sales channels and back again.

Don’t Be Antisocial

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 17, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Martha Spizziri

A year or two ago, companies may have been able to treat social media as an afterthought in their marketing efforts. But no more. If your organization isn’t integrating social media into its marketing plan, it’s a pretty sure bet your brand will fade into the background in consumers’ minds.

“It’s really not something you can ignore any longer, because [for] the younger demographic, this is their primary source of information. And if they can’t find it on your [social media] page, then they’re going to go to a company where they can find it,” says Jennifer Brinks, a social media consultant at The F.P. Horak Company in Saginaw, Mich.

But if you think you can ignore social media because your target audience skews older, think again. “The older demographic is the highest-growing fan base,” says Brinks. “They are getting
on board with technology, and they have more time to learn and
be online.”

There’s another compelling reason to go social: negative customer feedback can spread quickly on social sites. If a company has built up a following there, it has a platform from which it can react quickly and reach people in that same venue to address any negative perception.

And if those reasons aren’t convincing enough, here’s another: People have become immune to online advertising. There’s a phenomenon known as “banner blindness,” whereby people tend not to even look at the parts of a website—such as the right-hand column—where the ads usually are. With social media, you can get users’ attention back—if you do it right.

Which platform should you use?

If you’re just starting to get serious about social media, it’s important to consider who your target audience is, which platforms they’re using, and which are best suited for your product. For instance, the food industry thrives on photos, so image-heavy sites, such as Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram, work well in that sector. But there’s no need to be on every platform out there. “See which ones you can manage, and do those ones really well, instead of trying to be on all of them and do them all not very well,” says Brinks.

Learn the social graces

Social sites create a space where people can talk about your brand and you can interact with them. “You can build a loyal base and educate your fans on why they should do business with you,” says Brinks. But you have to do it subtly.

“You can’t just say, ‘Hey, buy my product,’ because that would still come off as blatant advertising,” says Brinks. Instead, companies should provide useful information, promoting good content and good causes—and not necessarily just your own.

There’s no excuse not to participate

Although retail and service industries tend to generate more fans and interaction than other businesses, it doesn’t mean you’re not benefiting if your social media efforts don’t achieve similar levels.

“Every business—consumer-oriented or business-to-business—has a customer base, a potential fan base. It’s just [a matter of] finding those customers who want that information and appealing to them, and going to where they are going to be,” says Brinks. You can accomplish that through cross-promotions with traditional marketing. “Social media should be on everything: business cards, flyers, magazine ads, billboards, TV, etc.,” she emphasizes.

But what if your staff is just stretched too thin to take on another project? Brinks has an answer for that: “If you don’t have the passion, time, or dedication to run these social platforms, then outsourcing is a must.”

Mission: Content

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 12, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Laurie Hileman

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

“We should start a blog!”

Yeah? I thought so.

For many organizations, this is where their content marketing strategy begins and ends. They publish a few blog posts, maybe even a tweet or two, and hope for the best. A few months later they start questioning its effectiveness.

In all fairness, the buzz about content marketing is at a fever pitch—and for good reason. A recent study found content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62 percent less.*

Granted, “Everybody’s doing it!” is not a sound business approach (just ask your mom). However, a carefully planned and well-executed strategy can drive profitable action and develop long-term relationships with your desired audiences.

Read on, and we’ll give you a clear understanding of content marketing and how it feeds into a content strategy. Plus, we’ll show you how profiling different audiences can help you tailor your content to meet their needs, address their pains, and satisfy their desires—all while smashing your own business goals.

Step one:

Understand content marketing

In a land of a thousand choices, your customers need a reason to choose you. Price, product, location—all of the staples of traditional marketing become overshadowed as relationships take center stage. And that’s where content marketing—when deployed correctly—dominates.

According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), a leading authority on all things related to the field, content marketing is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer interaction.”

It goes on to explain that it’s “an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing.” **

It’s not easy (although some brands that have mastered the craft can make it seem so), but it’s far from impossible. With the right strategy in place, organizations of all sizes can leverage content to achieve their desired goals.

Step two:

Define a content strategy

Back up. What’s the difference between a content marketing strategy and a content strategy?

In his article, “How Content Strategy and Content Marketing Are Separate But Connected,” Robert Rose, chief strategy officer for CMI, looks at it this way: “Content marketers draw on the wall with magic markers, while content strategists use fine pens.”

Rose goes on to explain, “The content marketer addresses the ‘whys’ and the content strategist addresses the ‘hows’—and together they work out the ‘whats’ and ‘wheres.’”

Clearly defining how your content is created, structured, governed, and maintained lies at the heart of a good content strategy. Understanding who is doing what and when helps you identify gaps that may require help from agencies or freelancers and can help you smoothly transition staff members as they come and go.

Another benefit of having a content strategy? It gives you the power to say no. You’ll waste much less time, money, and other resources developing content that is not relevant to your goals.

Step three:

Know your audience

At the heart of both the content marketing strategy and content strategy lies your audience. Without a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach, there’s no sense in starting.

In the content arena, different audiences are often referred to as buyer personas. Depending on the scope of your project, personas may be simple demographics such as age, industry, or income level. Think about the challenges and pain points your different personas are experiencing. What successes are they trying to achieve? The more focused your personas, the more targeted—and effective—your content will be.

As content ideas form, sort the pieces into virtual “buckets” for each persona. Remember to create content that appeals to your personas through every stage of the customer journey—as they discover, learn, try, and buy—with your organization. You’ll want to craft content that helps retain customers, too, and turn them into potential advocates.

“Your content and your content buckets should be focused enough to appeal to the audience you want to reach, while being broad enough to appeal to a few subsets within that audience. Don’t cast the net too wide—it’ll dilute your message and potentially confuse people,” writes Lauren B. Mangiaforte in her NewsCred blog post “10 Unbreakable Rules for Content Marketing in 2015.”

Avoid confusion and watered-down content with a clear content strategy. A good direction will take six to 12 months to gain traction, so commit to it and give it time. With a strong commitment and willingness to measure and tweak content as you move along, your audiences will choose you every time.

* http://www.brianhonigman.com/championing-b2b-content/

** http:/contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/

***http://blog.newscred.com/10-unbreakable-rules-for-content-marketing-in-2015/

Click and Ship

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 5, 2016. Posted in B2B E-commerce, Case Study.

By Laurie Hileman

Josh Puryear was nervous.

The senior marketing specialist for STEMCO watched as a fully loaded 18-wheeler pulled away with his company’s entire inventory of sales and marketing literature. It was traveling from Texas to Michigan where it would be cataloged, warehoused, and used to populate a B2B eCommerce solution that would streamline distribution to the vehicle components manufacturer’s global sales force.

Would the unwieldy collection be too much to handle for the Michigan operation? Would the materials be ready for online ordering and fulfillment when the sales force needed them?

Puryear notes that he was astonished to learn that the entire load was inventoried and accounted for in just four days. “It (the cataloging, warehousing, and printing and distribution capability) was much less painful than I imagined,” he says with a small laugh. He soon discovered there were even more pleasant and profitable surprises ahead.

Background

STEMCO, a division of EnPro Industries, Inc., is an international commercial trucking components manufacturing company with headquarters in Longview, Texas. The company makes everything from seals, bearings, and brakes to new TrailerTails® that save truckers nearly 10 percent on fuel costs.

For years, STEMCO used a local print vendor to produce all of its sales and marketing literature, delivering materials in bulk to the company’s Longview facility. From there, marketing staff added product catalogs and other collateral to routine outgoing shipments to their global sales force as these items were ordered.

Problem

The pallets of marketing materials took up valuable space on the manufacturing floor, plus managing huge box loads of printed items—and shipping them out to multiple worldwide locations as orders were received—had always been cumbersome and time consuming for staff.

Puryear says that at times old and obsolete literature would resurface (and find its way into circulation) if the most recent materials were not clearly marked. And while a certain amount of overstock was to be expected considering STEMCO’s steady growth and acquisitions, out-of-date material “happened more often than I would have liked,” recalls Puryear.

STEMCO’s marketing team started looking for a smarter system. They wanted a B2B eCommerce solution, “kind of like Amazon,” says Puryear, to streamline their ordering, printing, distribution, and storage of all sales and marketing materials.

Solution

Following a careful bidding process that included their existing print vendor and other suppliers, STEMCO selected The F.P. Horak Company in Saginaw, Michigan, a full-service print and marketing communications services provider, for their web-to-print and warehousing needs.

“They promised us analytics, lower prices, and a smarter [literature-managing] solution,” says Puryear. “They promised on all three fronts, and they really delivered.”

The F.P. Horak team created a B2B eCommerce solution where STEMCO sales team members across the globe can order product catalogs, marketing posters, sales fliers, print-on-demand items, static items, warehouse stock, and business cards with point-and-click ease.

And even though STEMCO uses a separate vendor to produce company wearables, an online ordering link blends seamlessly with the web-to-print function for simplified access.

A host of reporting features allows Puryear to track what individual salespeople order, record how much they order, and identify gaps where additional sales opportunities may exist. He relies on Fred Zingg, his F.P. Horak sales consultant, to closely monitor store inventory and make recommendations on how and when to restock web-to-print and warehoused items.

“Him keeping an eye on it frees me up to do other things,” says Puryear.

Results

“The biggest deal [on this partnership] is that we saved even more money than we anticipated,” says Puryear.

As an example, he notes the significant cost savings STEMCO has realized as a result of batching print runs together and adjusting order quantities based on Zingg’s recommendations. And managing and moving around sales literature no longer monopolizes Puryear’s time.

Gone are the days of new salespeople trying to remember literature codes or accidentally ordering the wrong thing on their old system. The B2B eCommerce solution is always stocked and ready to go so orders can ship immediately.

And Puryear appreciates the value-addeds he receives as a result of the business partnership that go beyond traditional printing, too.

“Fred’s offered solutions like mailings, other creative pieces, and pop-up banners that we use for trade shows.” It’s this proactive approach [to meeting marketing communications needs] coupled with technology-based solutions that has attracted the attention of some of STEMCO’s sister companies as well.

“The whole B2B eCommerce solution is a win for STEMCO,” says Puryear.

Unleashing the Power of a Key Stoke

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 5, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Lorrie Bryan

If you are like most people, you probably have never heard of DVORK or COLMAK, alternative keyboard configurations that were touted as easier and more efficient but never widely adopted. In 2013, researchers offered a new split keyboard design, KALQ, that features a layout with two 4-by-4 grids of keys that optimize thumb typing. Tests indicate that it is 34 percent faster than a traditional keyboard, but it hasn’t been readily adopted either. The standard QWERTY configuration, first developed for manual typewriters in 1868, persists today despite its awkward fingering patterns—it was purportedly designed so that users couldn’t type too quickly and jam up the delicate machinery.

So while keyboard layout has remained mostly unchanged, the commercial capacity and capabilities wielded by a single keystroke have evolved dramatically and are increasing exponentially. With a light touch to the keyboard screen on a hand-held device, businesses around the globe today are swiftly summoning terabytes of data, ordering billions of dollars of merchandise, storing warehouses of information in a cloud, and simultaneously sending personalized messages to all their clients. At speeds 100 times faster than Wi-Fi, the emerging new Li-Fi technology offers possibilities that exceed the imagination.

This constant barrage of emerging technologies often leaves overwhelmed leaders pondering which of these new tools are the most essential for businesses today. According to Nick Flor, associate professor of information systems at University of New Mexico’s Anderson Management School, of the technologies described, the customer relationship management system (CRM) is the most important.

Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Automation

“We live in an online world where customers have a tremendous advantage over businesses—the ability to easily switch to another business. All it takes is an Internet search returning a list of competitor products or even substitute products. Often, if those products are sold at a lower price or they have shiny new features that a customer desires, they’ll buy them,” Flor explains. “Utilizing a good CRM ensures that a business stays ‘close’ to its customers. It’s more than just a technology that emails a birthday card and coupons to customers. Many CRMs rely on data from a central website (think Amazon). But next-gen CRMs will aggregate data from a variety of social media platforms and use that data to make predictions about goods, services, and maintenance that add value for customers.”

You can optimize a basic CRM by integrating it with a marketing automation program, a system that uses software designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks more efficiently. A good marketing automation system can result in improved lead management in the form of scoring, nurturing, and segmentation, as well as more efficient email and campaign management.

Mobile Marketing

Another way to stay close to your customers is to be in their hand via their mobile devices. Desktop computers are heading for the same scrap heap as rotary phones and fax machines. With the availability of increasingly complex apps and quickly evolving hardware, consumers are utilizing smart phones and tablets for most of the functions assigned to computers just 10 years ago. All of this mobile engagement is rapidly transforming the business marketplace. Just look at how the Uber app is revolutionizing transportation in cities across the globe.

If your company’s website is not readily navigable and engaging on a mobile device, start there. Consider setting up an adaptive website (websites that automatically tailor organization and presentation based on user access patterns).Then you are assured that customer experience will be optimized regardless of the device in use.

eCommerce

Does your company offer customers a smart phone app that facilitates the purchase of your products or services? Mobile commerce now accounts for nearly one-third of all U.S. eCommerce sales, according to an analysis of data from Internet Retailer’s newly published 2016 Mobile 500. And that number is expected to continue growing. Start with an online storefront that will change your website from merely informational to transactional. More sophisticated storefronts can offer customers the opportunity to personalize and apply their company’s brand to the products offered. In a nutshell, an online storefront can provide you with real-time customer data that you can use to build stronger customer relationships and deliver all the applications needed to attract new customers, secure additional business from existing clients, and become more cost effective in the process.

GURLs and PURLs

Enhanced URLs are another way to engage customers and build relationships. A generic URL (GURL) is a special landing page that shares timely information or promotes a specific marketing campaign. A personalized URL (PURL) is a customized landing page created especially for a specific recipient and is frequently an engaging element of a multichannel marketing campaign that integrates direct mail and email. The benefits of using PURLs are increased response rates and the ability to track responses in real time and follow up accordingly. You can engage customers and prospects at a deeper level by collecting valuable information when they log onto their PURL and then use that information to make subsequent messaging even more relevant and engaging.

Cloud Computing

If your server is waning or no longer adequate, you should consider heading to a cloud. One of the most popular cloud storage services available today, Google Drive offers individuals and businesses free and affordable storage rates, easy access to more than 40 popular file formats (videos, images, Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs), and hundreds of integrated apps to help you get things done efficiently. You can keep all your files online, and they can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Google Drive allows you to easily share files with your team members or external partners, eliminating the need for redundant emails.

Other advantages of cloud service are scalability and flexibility. The technology can be easily modified to meet the changing demands of your business and to integrate future technological advances. With the rate of innovation continuing to accelerate, we can hardly imagine what those future advances may be, but we know they are coming. The mighty digital age will continue to unfold, and the magnitude of a keystroke will be further amplified in days to come.

8 Great Ways to Leverage Your Content

Written by Kimberly Cronk on May 5, 2016. Posted in Omnichannel Marketing.

By Laurie Hileman

Why work harder when you can work smarter?

Creating consistent, relevant content is a tough task but one that can be made easier with a thoughtful eye toward repurposing.

Whether it’s an in-depth blog post, compelling video, or humorous podcast, repurposing your work in other formats can ease your workload (and, oftentimes, costs) associated with creating content. Plus, it opens up opportunities to increase your audience, reinforce your message, and give your website an SEO boost.

Whenever possible, look to repurpose content from the start. After you’ve landed on a core concept, “break your idea down into your key topic areas,” suggests Arnie Kuenn in his post, “How to Fulfill Your Content Marketing Plan Through Content Repurposing,” for Content Marketing Institute. “The result will be a skeleton you can use in adapting the topic to different formats.”

Here are eight ways Kuenn suggests presenting information that appeals to various learning styles and engages audiences in their preferred methods of communication.

Blog Post: When created consistently with your targeted readers in mind, blog posts offer easy-to-consume information.

Infographic: Grab stats and other key tips, organizing them in a graphic depiction that appeals to visual learners.

Presentation Slides: Boil down your key points into slides that are easy to share in formal presentations, impromptu meetings, and on slide-sharing sites to give yourself greater visibility.

Video: By combining graphics, audio, and movement, video is a great way to reach an impatient audience that may be looking to be entertained in the process of learning.

eBook: An in-depth look at a topic that, when offered as a (for-purchase or value-added) download on your site, eBooks can help build your subscriber base for other communications.

Podcast: Whether a snack-size few minutes or a half-hour presentation, these audio discussions can reach on-the-go listeners and quickly establish your brand voice.

Newsletter or Magazine: These publications allow readers to dive deeper into the topic, letting them spend more time with your brand and establishing you as a thought leader in a given area.

Webinar: Presented in real time, interactive online experiences set you up as a subject matter expert.

Developing compelling, consistent content is a continual process of creating, testing, and tweaking as you move along. Allow your strategy to evolve as you see what works and what doesn’t for your targeted audiences.