The Chameleon - Adaptive Marketing Ideas For Your Business

Your marketing plan should be about people and your products

Marketing is about people. A good marketer will find out what the company’s customers want, target the right audience, and discover or formulate the benefits that make a product or service unique. If your business, large or small, does not offer something exceptional, you are just selling something that customers can get elsewhere easily. If you want your business to succeed, you must offer something your competition doesn’t.

Back by popular demand - LinkedIn Photo Fails! 

My original post 15 LinkedIn Profile Image Sins You May Be Making is still the most read post I've ever done. It was a lot of fun, but it also got people thinking hard about their presence on social media. 

The following examples are taken from actual profiles I have seen. As to not totally offend anyone, I recreated all of the image types. I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did creating it.

With marketing, there is almost never one correct answer. Most times, what works for one individual or company may not work exactly the same for another company - even in the same industry. There is certainly a try-test-adapt-try again methodology. Notice I said almost. If you are a professional, then listen up because your LinkedIn profile image may need help! There is really only one correct answer on what your profile image should be. It should be a clean, professional headshot of you. Period. This is one of the few times there is not another answer.

“Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.”

Marketing basics for small business are a vital part of the short and long-term success of the organization. You have the opportunity to see increased revenue and profitability by considering every function of marketing and the benefits reaped by creating a sound marketing plan around all 7 functions of marketing.

Business-to-business marketing has changed. In the old days, customers couldn’t use the Internet to evaluate buying options. They went directly to vendors for information. A vendor’s sales representatives cultivated relationships with their customers, and crafted their pitch based on individual customer’s needs and goals. Today, B2B customers usually complete more than 60% of their product and purchase evaluation process before they ever contact a salesperson. By visiting vendor websites and reading online user forums, they eliminate many vendors without ever talking to them.

As I sat on the edge of my seat last night, with the 20 million or so other Americans watching our U.S. Women’s Soccer Team win the World Cup for the 1^st time in 16 years, I was struck with just how similar the attack and strategy employed by the victorious Americans was to successful inbound marketing.

As you may sense from my recent postings, like “3 Tips to Winning at Client Experience” or “The Crumbling Golden Rule”, I am rather intrigued by the client experience, why it’s so important in today’s culture, and the steps to take to achieve a positive experience or quickly rectify a poor one.  What I have not talked about, yet, is the formation of client experience and it’s direct relation to corporate brand.

The Sales Potential from Social Media

Of necessity, today’s B2C or B2B sales or marketing professionals must be proficient at “social selling.” Social media’s current audience of 1.48 billion consumers continues to expand daily. If you can connect with only “one-tenth of one percent” of this audience, you reach a million consumers at minimal expense, since you can use most social media for free.

Marketing automation is a concept we’ve been hearing a lot about this year. Though the concept isn’t exactly new, the technology has come a long way since its start in the late 90s. Taking advantage of marketing automation can help your company become more efficient, capture more leads, and understand data on a more granular level. But what is marketing automation?

A few months back I wrote about the perceived generation gap and inbound marketing, and how companies can bridge that gap through embracing social media marketing.  Recently, I’ve either heard or stumbled across a few things causing me to revisit this topic, but from a slightly different perspective...actually engaging in online conversations.