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Back to Basics: Know your Audience

by Randy Duermyer  ||   No Comments

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Talk to marketers and they’ll have no problem describing their target market to you. Unfortunately, many don’t take that knowledge and use it to better understand their target audience when writing copy, blog posts or website pages.

If you don’t fully understand and consider the target audience for your marketing and sales materials, how can you expect those materials to succeed in attracting more business?

Here are some basics on better understanding your audience that will help you sharpen your focus.

Understanding Your Audience

Tags: , | Posted in Audience
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Back to Basics: Email Marketing

by Randy Duermyer  ||   No Comments

Image for Email Marketing

Some marketers have given up and abandoned email marketing as a viable tool for building their business, crying, “Email marketing doesn’t work anymore.” Others simply believe that reaching out to prospects by email is tantamount to spam.

Our experience has been that email marketing most certainly does work, and if you follow certain guidelines, you won’t be seen as a spammer.

Here are some basics on using email as part of your online marketing efforts and how you can get started or just get back on track.

Email Marketing Basics

Tags: , | Posted in Email Marketing
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Getting Back to Basics: Blogs

by Randy Duermyer  ||   No Comments

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Are you still on the fence about a blog? Maybe you haven’t made up your mind if a blog will be useful to you. Or, maybe you have a blog but it doesn’t seem to be working the way you thought it would. Sometimes, getting back to basics can help.

Blogs can provide greater visibility within your industry, help position you, your company or organization as a thought leader in your field, and generate speaking opportunities.

But, like anything else in the digital marketing arena, blogs have their downsides too.

Here’s a look at the basics of blogs and blogging, why they work and what you’ll want to watch out for if you have a blog or are planning to use one for marketing purposes.

Blogs and Blog Marketing

| Posted in Blogs
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Email Marketing: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

by Randy Duermyer  ||  

Email Marketing Image for Hub Post
Email marketing can be a form of eitherdirect marketing (“push marketing” – advertising, distributing sale coupons, etc.) or indirect marketing (“pull marketing” – informative newsletters with tips, advice, etc.).

The benefits of email marketing include:

  • Your messages go directly to youraudience 
  • It makes it easy for readers to keep your organization top of mind.
  • Subscribers can read your messages at their convenience.
  • You can incorporate your brand identity in HTML-enabled email messages.
  • Compared to the costs of direct mail marketing, it’s downright cheap.

The Elephant in the Room: Spam

Since the advent of email as a communications medium, consumers and businesses alike have become inundated with unwelcome spam messages.

Regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) and the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003, have helped, but have not come close to eliminating the problem of unwanted email. Hackers and spammers (think Viagra) make matters worse, as do marketers who buy lists of contacts who have not opted-in to receiving their messages.

As a result, some marketers have given up and abandoned email marketing as a viable tool for building their business, crying, “Email marketing doesn’t work anymore.” Our experience has been that it most certainly does work; you just have to do it right.

Despite some disillusion, email marketing remains the top area of investment growth among marketers and business leaders (65%) for 2011, followed by social media marketing (57%) and search marketing (41%). – StrongMail (2010)

If you still think email marketing is yesterday’s news, see Time to Stop Sending Email Newsletters?

Why Email Marketing Works

Despite hackers and spammers, email marketing can be a very useful and effective tool:

Not only are online newsletters more affordable than print newsletters, but also the response time is shorter, results are easier to measure, and data is available almost instantaneously. Once you have meaningful data on your email newsletters, you’ll be able to quantify your success and gain insight about what is (and isn’t) working.

Some Email Marketing Best Practices

Here are a few best practices you can use to help make your email marketing a success:

  • Always secure opt-in permission before sending marketing messages via email
  • Know your audience
  • Keep your message brief and to the point
  • Deliver consistent, high-quality content
  • Avoid being overly ‘salesy’ in your message (that doesn’t mean you can’t include a well-worded call-to-action)
  • Provide messages in both HTML and text format to comply with your readers’ preferences and technical capabilities
  • Survey your audience frequently to gauge reader satisfaction, engagement, and overall experience with your message
  • Include CAN-SPAM compliant messaging in the footer of every message and make it easy for readers to unsubscribe
  • Respect your readers’ privacy by not sharing your list with (or selling it to) others

The Email Marketing Tool Belt

Another big advantage of email marketing is the wide array of free and inexpensive tools that help you manage your email messages and campaigns. Tools like ConstantContact, AWeber and others provide tools that allow you to easily:

  • Design and lay out your email message to correspond with your branding and make it easy to scan its contents
  • Build and manage your list by providing sign-up forms and securing the necessary opt-in permission
  • Schedule delivery of your messages
  • Send autoresponse messages at pre-defined intervals for themed, serial messages
  • Make your email easy to share with forwarding, social media sharing, and printer-friendly-version links
  • Track key analytics, including send rates, open rates, bounce rates (message returned as undeliverable), click-through rates for links within your email and more

Segmenting and List Building

Segmenting Your Audiences

Because your readers will identify with information that is most relevant to them, you may decide to build and maintain more than one mailing list or to segment a single list by whatever characterization applies to that audience. It’s not unusual for a business to target more than one market.

Segmenting your list is a matter of creating separate lists according to the common needs (and/or message timing requirements) of an audience. If you decide to create segmented lists, the sooner you set them up the better because it can affect the information you collect during opt-in. Trying to segment a single list at a later time can be troublesome from both a technical and a labor standpoint, depending on the size of your list.

Building Blocks

Ways to build your email list include:

  • Adding a sign-up form on your website and/or blog
  • Including opt-in links or forms on social media profile pages, splash pages or online advertisements
  • Collecting customer information from sales data or prospective customer inquiries

For more ideas on building your list, see:

6 Ways to Grow Your Mailing List
Want More Newsletter Subscribers? Use a Bait Piece

Getting Email Marketing Help

If you’re still not sure if email marketing is the best choice for your business or organization, or if you need help with a fledgling email marketing program you’ve already got going, reach out to us; we can help. You can also sign up for our newsletter or connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook right from the Connect with Us box on our home page and get savvy email marketing tips and ideas that can keep you at the top of your game.

MORE ON EMAIL MARKETING AND NEWSLETTERS

More Email Marketing Topics
Tips for Choosing Newsletter Format
Time to Stop Sending Email Newsletters?
Subject Lines: How Do Yours Stack Up?
8 Tips for Value-Packed Newsletters
Living Dangerously with your Email Marketing?
Looking for Newsletter Content? Read this.
10 Tips for Click-Worthy Subject Lines: Do yours Stink?

| Posted in Blog, Email Marketing, Marketing

Blogs and Blog Marketing

by miwadmin  ||  

Blog Basics

Blog stands for ‘web log,’ a type of website that uses a journal-type approach. Unlike websites, the meat of blog content comes from posts (individual entries), not pages. Blog posts usually appear in reverse chronological order, so think of it as starting your journal on the last page and working your way toward the front cover.

Posts may consist of several different types of content, including:

  • Articles
  • Summaries or viewpoints on other articles
  • One or more photos
  • One or more videos or audio podcasts

Each post lives as its own separate page, under a unique URL. Therefore, each post becomes a potential way for visitors to find you.

  • Blogs can be set up as standalone (nothing but the blog) or as a section within a website.
  • Blogs can be set up and managed on a free or low-cost blog hosting services, such as Google’s Blogger or WordPress.com or set up and hosted on your own domain. The Market it Write blog is an example of a blog hosted within the website’s domain (https://www.marketitwrite.com/category/blog/).

Blog Benefits

Can You See Me Now?

In its 2010 State of the Blogosphere survey of more than 7,200 bloggers, Technorati (the leading blog search engine), reported that of the corporate bloggers who participated, 57% blog to share their expertise and experiences with others, while 39% blog to get published or featured in traditional media. In other words, they want visibility.

Blogs can provide greater visibility within your industry, help position you, your company or organization as a thought leader in your field, and generate speaking opportunities.

Go Play in Traffic

Most businesses find that, in addition to establishing themselves as thought leaders, blogs help drive traffic to their website.

Why?

Primarily because of the way items published on a blog are made available tosearch engines and potential readers. While individual blog posts may rank well in search results – by accident or on purpose – the real power lies in what’s called RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

RSS sends out a feed of your blog’s content. As new posts are published, they join your blog’s RSS feed. Search engines and subscribers pick up new content via your RSS feed. Every time you publish something, it’s a little like the shot heard ’round the world.

Wrangle the Content Beast

Blogging platforms provide tools that allow you to create and manage content with ease. Creating a new post requires little more than word processing skills. In other words, rocket scientists are not required.

If you combine your website and blog within your blog platform, you can apply the benefits that come with an easy-to-use content management system to your website, too. In that case, any new pages you publish on your website also get placed into the RSS feed, acting as an automated public service announcement to search engines and subscribers.

Access to most widely available blogging platforms is provided free via the web. So you can log in and take care of business while you’re vacationing with Aunt Tillie and the kids or out rustling the bushes in search of new business.

Wake ’em Up

Another primary benefit of blogs is they offer interactivity to readers. Instead of slogging through your text, going cross-eyed and nodding off, your visitors can watch a video, leave a comment, vote in a poll, share your content on their social networks, and otherwise interact with you.

Get and Stay Organized

Blog platforms have a built-in organization system to make it easy for visitors to find posts on a specific topic. For one thing, blog platforms typically provide a built-in (or easy-to-add) search function. Secondly, you can select one or more categories for each post. Your visitors can then browse for posts within the categories that interest them.

Blog posts are also archived and labeled, allowing you to make your content findable by date published or by tag (label). An easy way to understand tags is to think of them as smaller subcategories or as keywords, making it easy for any content miner to find gold in them thar hills.

Blog Downsides

The Time Suck Elephant in the Room

Content development. Once you have a blog, you’ll be expected to publish content on a regular basis. While the most common rate of publishing reported in Technorati’s survey is two to three times per week, consistency is more important than focusing on a specific number of posts.

Content is indeed king, but quality only trumps quantity to an extent. If you only publish a new post once or twice a year – no matter how gut-wrenching your content – interest in your blog is likely to vanish.

Maintenance. Besides the time you’ll need for publishing regularly, you’ll need a little time for oil changes and tune-ups.

Most blog platforms push out regular platform updates and enhancements (free). Failing to install updates can leave gaping security holes for hackers to pounce upon. Fortunately, maintaining the blog usually requires only a minimal time commitment and can be tended to while in the process of creating and publishing posts.

Promotion. Although your blog posts (and pages, if you include them) are distributed via an RSS feed, you’ll still need to shamelessly promote new content because it’s competitive out there. It’s a safe bet your competitors are doing it, too.

Various methods to get your content found and build your blog traffic include, but are not limited to:

In no time at all, the tasks of content creation, blog promotion and site maintenance can become an unwelcome time suck.

Why Sweat the Details?

If you’re concerned about the demands that a blog and blog marketing will place on your already limited time, you can outsource some or all of the tasks of creating and promoting new posts, as well as blog maintenance and management. (Consider partnering with a marketing agency that specializes in writing killer content. Ahem…)

Contact us if you want to discuss whether a blog (and blog marketing) is right for you or how we can help with your blogging needs.

MORE ON BLOGS AND BLOG MARKETING

Your Blog: Useful Tool or Time Waster?
10 Tips for Click-Worthy Subject Lines: Do yours Stink?
Blogging Tips from the Noveling Front

| Posted in Blog, Blogs

Latest from the blog:

Website Traffic and SEO

In this post, I’ll take a closer look at SEO and the process of optimizing websites for better placement within organic search results to improve website traffic.

Read the Article »

What our clients have to say:

Terry Yoffe

“Market it Write was able to take the content from my last website and transform it to my new one, making the content clear, informative and to the point. The clarity of the content has been so powerful that I have gotten several new clients based on my website. I found Mistina and her team to be easy to work with and very willing to listen to concerns and objectives and work through them in a very professional way.”

 

Terry Yoffe, TRY Coaching
Industry: Professional services   |   Services: Website content

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2015-04-25T18:49:53-04:00

Terry Yoffe, TRY Coaching
Industry: Professional services   |   Services: Website content

“Market it Write was able to take the content from my last website and transform it to my new one, making the content clear, informative and to the point. The clarity of the content has been so powerful that I have gotten several new clients based on my website. I found Mistina and her team to be easy to work with and very willing to listen to concerns and objectives and work through them in a very professional way.”  

George Donohue

“Market it Write makes the copywriting process painless. Their responsiveness and professionalism kept the project on track, despite a tight deadline. Mistina has a keen ability to understand the client’s needs, and she uses her intelligence and creativity to convey those needs in succinct copy.”

 

George Donohue, GMAC Real Estate IPG
Industry: Real estate   |   Services: Newsletters, corporate communications, investor relations

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2015-04-25T18:49:31-04:00

George Donohue, GMAC Real Estate IPG
Industry: Real estate   |   Services: Newsletters, corporate communications, investor relations

“Market it Write makes the copywriting process painless. Their responsiveness and professionalism kept the project on track, despite a tight deadline. Mistina has a keen ability to understand the client’s needs, and she uses her intelligence and creativity to convey those needs in succinct copy.”  

Arianne Andrusco

"Have I mentioned how wonderful you are lately? This is good stuff. It is such a pleasure to work with someone who hears the feedback and just gets it immediately. You really are making my job a lot easier. Thank you!"

 

Arianne Andrusco, NewYork-Presbyterian
Industry: Healthcare   |   Services: Direct mail campaigns

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Arianne Andrusco, NewYork-Presbyterian
Industry: Healthcare   |   Services: Direct mail campaigns

"Have I mentioned how wonderful you are lately? This is good stuff. It is such a pleasure to work with someone who hears the feedback and just gets it immediately. You really are making my job a lot easier. Thank you!"  

Lee Angus

“I loved having Market it Write do the interviews and walk us through the drafts to the final version, and I was impressed with your ability to condense the story to meet our needs. It was also nice to have someone ‘outside’ write the story. The results seemed more objective than they would have been if I had written it.”

 

Lee Angus, Legacy Alliance
Industry: Professional services   |   Services: Corporate communication

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Lee Angus, Legacy Alliance
Industry: Professional services   |   Services: Corporate communication

“I loved having Market it Write do the interviews and walk us through the drafts to the final version, and I was impressed with your ability to condense the story to meet our needs. It was also nice to have someone ‘outside’ write the story. The results seemed more objective than they would have been if I had written it.”  

Barbara Centrella

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Industry: Publishing   |   Services: Media kit

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Barbara Centrella, children’s author
Industry: Publishing   |   Services: Media kit

“You made the experience fun, and you brought so much to the table—things that I would never have thought of on my own. You added a dimension that brings the work to life. I was very pleased with the first media kit and am blown away by the second.”  

Adam Wolf

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Adam Wolf, Wolf Communications
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content, copyediting

Market It Write
2015-04-25T18:51:53-04:00

Adam Wolf, Wolf Communications
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content, copyediting

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Albert Barette

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Albert Barette, Bowles Security Group
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Brand strategy, website development, marketing materials

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2015-04-25T18:46:25-04:00

Albert Barette, Bowles Security Group
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Brand strategy, website development, marketing materials

"Our executive staff reviewed the final product, and it was excellent. Thanks to you and your team for all your input and contributing to our new website. The vertical market sheets were also excellent."  

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Hiroto Takagi, Bryton Harry
Industry: Sports marketing   |   Services: Website content, marketing support

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2015-04-25T18:52:52-04:00

Hiroto Takagi, Bryton Harry
Industry: Sports marketing   |   Services: Website content, marketing support

“Many writers want to say things their way, but Market it Write understood exactly what I wanted to say—and that’s what they wrote. Market it Write works for me and for my business. I recommend the company to anybody who needs writing help.  

Howard Levy

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Howard Levy, Red Rooster Group
Industry: Creative Agency   |   Services: Marketing consultation, bylined articles, blogs, website content

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2015-04-25T18:47:41-04:00

Howard Levy, Red Rooster Group
Industry: Creative Agency   |   Services: Marketing consultation, bylined articles, blogs, website content

“I have known Mistina for a while and have since hired her firm on retainer to write our website copy, email newsletters, postcards and articles. Market it Write understands my business, helps develop ideas and writes great copy. They are highly professional, dedicated to their craft and easy to work with.”  

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“Market it Write does fabulous work. Mistina's team takes the time to understand both their clients and their clients' audiences. I highly recommend engaging them for any communications efforts you have.”

 

Samuel Vinicur, TSS International
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Corporate communications, press releases

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2015-04-25T18:48:35-04:00

Samuel Vinicur, TSS International
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Corporate communications, press releases

“Market it Write does fabulous work. Mistina's team takes the time to understand both their clients and their clients' audiences. I highly recommend engaging them for any communications efforts you have.”  

Stephen May

“Market it Write is amazingly adept at working as a team player on a variety of projects and has consistently proven to be a valuable asset. Bottom line: if you need creative and powerful writing for your marketing effort, look no further.”

 

Stephen May, Crescent Leaf Technologies
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content

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2015-04-25T18:50:35-04:00

Stephen May, Crescent Leaf Technologies
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content

“Market it Write is amazingly adept at working as a team player on a variety of projects and has consistently proven to be a valuable asset. Bottom line: if you need creative and powerful writing for your marketing effort, look no further.”  

Lucien Harriot

"I'm always inspired after a meeting with Market it Write. Mistina's insight into the needs of my company's marketing strategy brings clarity to our messaging and pushes our company closer to the high-performance business model we strive for."

 

Lucien Harriot, Mechanism Digital
Industry: Media   |   Services: Marketing strategy, marketing materials

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2015-04-25T18:47:19-04:00

Lucien Harriot, Mechanism Digital
Industry: Media   |   Services: Marketing strategy, marketing materials

"I'm always inspired after a meeting with Market it Write. Mistina's insight into the needs of my company's marketing strategy brings clarity to our messaging and pushes our company closer to the high-performance business model we strive for."  

Gerald Pennington

“The Market it Write team has the ability to grasp what we want to accomplish and put those concepts into words quickly—faster than we could in-house. Whenever they communicate, they respect the demands of our schedules and politely get right to the facts.”

 

Gerald Pennington, Stryker Spine Global Marketing
Industry: Healthcare   |   Services: Employee newsletters, corporate communications

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2015-04-25T18:49:09-04:00

Gerald Pennington, Stryker Spine Global Marketing
Industry: Healthcare   |   Services: Employee newsletters, corporate communications

“The Market it Write team has the ability to grasp what we want to accomplish and put those concepts into words quickly—faster than we could in-house. Whenever they communicate, they respect the demands of our schedules and politely get right to the facts.”  

Larissa Nycz Montecullo

“We have had the pleasure and opportunity to work with Market it Write on a daily basis over the past several months, and regularly for over a year prior. Their writing talent, attention to detail, and business savvy across industries make the Market it Write team an incredibly valuable asset to any company.”

 

Larissa Nycz Montecullo, Tribecca Designs
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content, marketing materials, ad copy

Market It Write
2015-04-25T18:50:56-04:00

Larissa Nycz Montecullo, Tribecca Designs
Industry: Creative agency   |   Services: Website content, marketing materials, ad copy

“We have had the pleasure and opportunity to work with Market it Write on a daily basis over the past several months, and regularly for over a year prior. Their writing talent, attention to detail, and business savvy across industries make the Market it Write team an incredibly valuable asset to any company.”  

Joe Biondo

“Market it Write adds a level of professionalism, insight and creativity rarely seen in our industry. They consistently deliver exceptional marketing ideas, unique materials and solutions that have allowed us to move forward with our business development and marketing programs. They ‘get it’ and know how to articulate your message. They are true professionals, a pleasure to work with, and I would recommend them without hesitation to any business or organization looking to increase their business, membership and/or public image.”

 

Joe Biondo, Summit Investigations
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Sales letters, advertisement copy, website content

Market It Write
2015-04-25T18:48:07-04:00

Joe Biondo, Summit Investigations
Industry: Security & Investigations   |   Services: Sales letters, advertisement copy, website content

“Market it Write adds a level of professionalism, insight and creativity rarely seen in our industry. They consistently deliver exceptional marketing ideas, unique materials and solutions that have allowed us to move forward with our business development and marketing programs. They ‘get it’ and know how to articulate your message. They are true professionals, a pleasure to work with, and I would recommend them without hesitation to any business or organization looking to increase their business, membership and/or public image.”  
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