It is the time when you are looking forward to 2012 and beyond. Now is the time to take all of the good and bad from 2011 and turn it around with a positive spin in 2012. Rather than giving you a laundry list of marketing to-do’s, I thought the below three hand picked infographics will give you the most bang for your buck when you are thinking about what to do in 2012 marketing planning.

Three key takeaways from these infographics covering marketing automation, inbound marketing, and word of mouth marketing:

1. Use marketing automation to improve your prospect’s experience and increase conversions
2. The days of annoying marketing and advertising tactics are certainly numbered, and inbound marketing is more than just a cool ‘new kid on the block’.
3. People rely on each other for recommendations on purchasing decisions whether passive or outright. Earn credibility.

Enjoy the following infographics:
[Read more...]

Keenpath founder and President, Mark Mathson, has joined FullQuota, a business-to-business (b2b) marketing, lead generation, and inside sales outsourcing company.

Keenpath is in the process of transitioning client accounts to partners, and will continue servicing some existing clients until the end of this year.

“I am excited about the opportunity to join the talented FullQuota team and to grow personally, professionally, and technically; while at the same time allowing me to bring to the table what can help with the company’s mission and objectives, and clients,” said Mark Mathson.

—

For those interested in contacting Mark Mathson you may contact him at http://markmathson.com/ or by emailing him directly, or by phone (406) 205-4040

With enterprise inbound marketing the importance to truly understand who your clients are, what words they use when they speak about their needs and interests and to understand how not to irritate or annoy them in the communication process.

Because enterprise inbound marketing is dependent on high-quality verbal, visual or text communications, this is essential in today’s market.

The concept of blogging to interest potential clients has everything to do with touching a person at a deep personal level. Before when sales representatives received training– trainers would say “relationships, relationships, relationships.”

This is still true, yet today we have vastly differing tastes, cultures and markets online.  It’s even more important to understand connection to interests, needs and emotional responses.

When people are online searching for something important to them, how do you discover what word combinations will pull them into your site? How do you keep them coming back? Human nature tells us it matters not what country they come from, or what language they speak as long as an emotional connection can be made you can have a chance at establishing loyalty and camaraderie with that person.

This is the reason social networking has become such a phenomenon. This is the secret to finding and keeping the connections with clients and potential repeat buyers. One way to verify this is simply watching the political campaigns in any country. Emotional and physical need is the product. Change for the better is the driver. The candidate who impresses the masses most wins. He who’s got loyalty of the crowds gets money in their pockets.

Building The Connections

With enterprise inbound marketing the world is looking for you. You as the provider of the emotional or physical need have the job of discovering what will hold and return that seeker to your site to get that need met. Really smart company managers put teams of competent communicators onto LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and other social connection sites to connect with clients around the need for what you offer. You know – making friends, personal connections. Finding sweet-spots and working with those needs/wants for potential buyers.

If sales teams online working social networking sites actually have authorization to offer deals and negotiate prices while in the field having conversations in this way through personal contact online sales for that team will soar. Not only that, but those workers will discover the tone, site and place where those clients and customers are talking about their need. This gives them words and sentence combinations the client is already using.

Content, connection, meeting emotional and physical need. This is the only way it has ever been done successfully when supporting integrity for the customer.

How close are you to clients today? How well does your company track repeat buyers and how well do you survey or do outreach to identify what keeps the repeat customers coming back? This is the answer to the dilemma. Loyalty through friendship. You know – relationships, relationships, relationships.

(photo credit: Gary Cope)

Many business owners find it difficult to come up with a highly specific marketing strategy that fills a specific niche. Niche marketing, however, is much more effective for the needs of your business, especially if you focus on online marketing.

Internet provides one great advantage – a target audience. Only people holding specific interest in a topic will pay attention to your message. Discovering the right marketing niche is the best way to make sure that the right audience for your business message is approached.

Do you know how to find out the best business marketing niche?

Finding Your Inbound Marketing Niche

You probably have various products and services for sale. Niche marketing focuses on one of them or a specific group of products. Niche marketing allows you to occupy a smaller sub-sector within a larger segment. Discovering the right niche will help you beat competition and position yourself better on the respective market.

It may seem like a difficult task but discovering the best business marketing niche is a relatively simple task.

Simple website analysis will help you determine the right business marketing niche for your promotional needs. Which are the pages that attract the biggest number of visits? What is the product or service that website visitors spend the longest time looking at?

The behavior of potential customers is the first type of indication you need to use when choosing a niche for corporate promotional purposes. Website visitors will let you know what interests them and what they will be willing to purchase.

Go for a business marketing niche that features relatively limited competition. It will be difficult to achieve popularity in a niche that already benefits from the presence of several important players.

A simple online search will let you know which niches generate the most intense competition. You will then need to start looking for the niches that only feature several websites competing against each other. This is the business marketing niche that you should be making use of.

Competition research plays an important role in your marketing strategy. Knowing what others are doing and how to dominate the sector is of vital importance for the success of a business marketing niche campaign.

Selecting the right niche for your online promotional efforts is a smart way to quickly establish your positions and to increase your website traffic. Higher traffic will naturally mean more potential sales. Take the time and know how to choose the correct marketing sector. A good strategy is a guarantee of success in the intense and dynamic online business world.

(image credit: Fieldstone Alliance)

When the holidays roll around, most professional business owners know that business is going to slow down. However, that doesn’t have to be the case, and the holidays can be the perfect time to start turning prospects into customers. In this article we look at how you can use inbound marketing for your holiday business marketing efforts, to increase sales now, and in future.

Create a Holiday Discount

One great way to leverage your inbound marketing plan for holiday business marketing is to create a seasonal holiday discount or special offer. If you already have an email marketing list thanks to your inbound marketing activities, you can send that offer out to your list. If you don’t, you can integrate the offer in your other marketing activities.

Create a Free Gift

The holidays are the time for giving, right? So why not incorporate that in your inbound marketing plan, and your holiday business marketing plan.

Create a free report, ebook or trial offer that you incorporate into your marketing. It’ll ensure that you’re growing your list over the holidays, and it’ll keep your existing clients and prospects happy. There’s nothing people like more than a gift, so give your clients one – you’ll be very glad you did!

Let People Know You’re Working

One of the reasons business tends to slow down over the holidays is that most people just assume that you won’t be working. If you aren’t, that’s fine, but if you are, you could find that being available when your competitors aren’t is a great way to gain new customers!

Use your existing inbound marketing channels to create awareness that you’ll be available over the holidays, and you might be surprised at how many people get hold of you!

Automate

Even if you’re not working over the holidays, that doesn’t mean that your inbound marketing plan has to stop working, just because you do.

If you don’t already have one working for you, now is the time to get an autoresponder, and write a series of holiday messages for the people who do respond to your inbound marketing strategies. That way, even if you’re not working, your holiday business marketing will be – working hard to build relationships with prospects!

Never Too Late

Even if you’ve never considered inbound marketing as a viable strategy, you should remember that it’s never too late to start. You still have time to incorporate inbound marketing into your holiday business marketing plan, and to make sure that even while you’re taking time off, your marketing network is working for you.

Start today, and you should find that while you’re enjoying some time off, your inbound marketing plan is hard at work, capturing leads and prospects, and that when you get back, you have a long list of people who are just waiting to buy from you.

(photo credit: Jeremy)