The best single marketing tip

It's this, and any marketing firm worth its salt should know it and tell you, although many don't.

Today, the best marketing is all about building relationships by communicating value – and this means that communications are not linear but genuinely (not just nominally) a circle of talking, listening and responding. This simple tip can expand to include a whole range of marketing efforts. To start, marketing is not just about delivering messages, although that's still a major part of it.

Marketing is a bigger deal than ever... but it has changed its stripes. It now includes outreach, support, conversation, customer service, technical support, training, and interaction. It encompasses accepting and integrating feedback from customers and influentials and then letting them know you did. It means providing information, resources and forums prospects and customers want. At its best, marketing now means – dare we say it – building a modicum of brand loyalty in an environment in which loyalty is nigh unto impossible to earn and equally hard to keep.

If your marketing is still all about telling, try completing a circle of communication in which  your company not only accepts but elicits feedback and ideas, provides support, hears and responds to needs, and in many ways talks with – not to – the people you need the most.

Easier said than done? Or course. But building relationships by providing and communicating value via a genuine circle of communication is one of the best ways your company can build a sphere of influence (no pun intended) and enhance its positioning in its industry.

Eight ways to leverage your company's trade show participation

If your company exhibited at ten trade shows ten years ago, perhaps you exhibit at five or six now. If you occupied half a city block with your new products and displays at the dawn of the new millennium, you may be getting by with less space. Or maybe your company has continued full steam ahead – with the caveat that results will be monitored very closely. Trade shows today can provide great opportunities. But they are expensive and so each one in which your company participates is no doubt expected to Produce with a capital P, whether the ROI is measured in actual sales generated at or after the show, new prospects gained, new alliances initiated, or great visibility garnered.

For future shows, you may benefit by going well beyond exhibiting and running a couple of ads.

Here are eight ways to make more of your trade show efforts:

1. Plan ahead to talk to a key audience. Up to a year or more before an important show, secure a speaking engagement for one of your key people. Talk about industry trends or innovations. Position your company and your speaker as thought leaders.

2. Get press before the show. Start several months ahead to assure that your company's name and news are in the publications attendees will read before and at the show.

3. Generate more press while you are at the show. Make boothside appointments with editors and writers from key trade publications and blogs. Be prepared to give them a story worth telling.

4. Introducing a new product or service? Go a step further with the media: hold a press conference.

5. Get off the trade show floor to do some serious business. How often do you have this many distributors, customers and key prospects in one place? Organize an event: whether it's a roundtable meeting for select advisors and customers to get input or plan next ventures, a breakfast or dinner to generate excitement about the year ahead or a cocktail hour to connect, a trade show is an excellent opportunity to enhance relationships.

6. Use social media intelligently. Twitter, Facebook and your corporate blog are good venues with which to let your constituencies know why they should interact with you at this show. Read Skyline's good post on this topic for specific tips.

7. Go beyond selling. Show your customers, prospects, distributors, and other audiences that you are a partner and a resource for them. Introduce new training programs, partnering opportunities, Web applications, and more at the show. Showcase new interactive tools on giant screens at your exhibit – seeing is still believing.

8. Don't file your hard work away. Don't put your new leads, contacts and intelligence aside in the post-show scramble. It's all too common to see gains lost when staff gets back to the office and gets busy. Make and adhere to a plan to close sales, engage with prospects, follow up with the press, and act on intelligence gathered.

We'd enjoy hearing what has and hasn't worked for your company at trade shows - here or on van Schouwen Associates Facebook page.

Brand advocates - why you need them, how to get them

A brand advocate is a person or group that likes your brand, speaks or blogs or tweets or otherwise communicates about it, may buy your brand, and certainly influences others to consider doing so. A brand advocate is a like a billboard with credibility - no, not literally, but you get the idea.

vSA tells its clients that they will benefit from having brand advocates - that, in fact, they need them if they want optimal performance from their companies or organizations.

Here are a few benefits:

-Believability: Isn't it credible when someone else sings your praises? Third-party endorsement tends to ring true.

-Velocity: Talk goes viral. Your advocates are your feet on the street. They have no reason to be "selling" you – they simply admire your company, products, services, or mission.

-Reputation enhancement: People say your company is great. They say it all the time. Point taken.

-Stability: A great reputation can help navigate your company through stormy seasons.

How can you get brand advocates?

-Since Mahatma Gandhi said it, it is worth hearing, "If you don't ask, you don't get." So ask.

-Seek media coverage (print, online, broadcast) that provides third-party endorsement, whether by virtue of an article being published or - even better - a bylined article by someone who speaks well of your brand - an advocate!

-Gather testimonials and case studies. Customers who've used your products and services to solve problems, who come back to you over and over, brand loyalists... it may sound like old school but there is a reason companies continue to use testimonials and case studies - they act as proof that the company has advocates!

-Get your products and services reviewed and tested independently - publish the good news about how they've done.

-Train users in the best ways to employ your products and services, and make advocates of these users. Better yet, make them loyal for life.

-Get involved with independent training and certification programs through which your products and services can be recognized for their excellence in specific usages or characteristics.

These are just a few of the many ways to build brand advocates. We'd enjoy hearing about your experiences, in this blog or on the van Schouwen Associates Facebook page (where, by the way, your "like" vote counts in our book as brand advocacy)!

Where is it? Location-based marketing for B2B

Location-based marketing is all the rage in consumer marketing circles. As B2B marketers we feel, well, left out. But there are a host of reasons that B2B marketers should step into this brave new world.

First – what is it? Location-based marketing is interaction with customers or prospects by their location, offering special opportunities for which the recipient’s location is a key factor. (As in “I’m currently down the street from the latte for which you’ve texted me a coupon.”)

In this new generation of the term “location-based marketing”, this interaction takes the form of electronic messaging to the customer or prospect, often through mobile device but on occasion through that near-archaic box on your desk or in your briefcase – the PC.

Even before marketers started shooting out messages to consumers on their mobiles, and even before consumers started “checking in” to let marketers and friends know their current location, B2B firms were using earlier forms of location-based marketing.

Where did it come from?

“First-generation” examples from my own marketing firm’s experience:

•We’re managing a client event and conduct a live radio broadcast from the event to draw in additional business attendees.

•We’re with a B2B client at a trade show, showing a new product for the first time; we Tweet editors in attendance to invite them to stop by the exhibit for a person-to-person demonstration.

Where is it now?

Examples of ways B2B firms will leverage new forms of location-based marketing:

•“Check-in” apps will be used increasingly at trade shows and conferences to let attendees know about product promotions, introductions, educational opportunities, and cocktail hours available to a select audience that is “on location”.

•B2B companies that conduct road shows and special events to convene with, educate or market to prospects can have these prospects opt in to receive messages and opportunities based on their geographic proximity to an event.

•B2B companies and their PR firms will invite editors to press conferences and deliver media alerts using location-based marketing tools.

Of course, B2B marketers will have to be vigilant not to misuse location-based marketing. People at work are busy and justifiably impatient with interruptions to business at hand. Messages and offers must be relevant, useful and occasional. Text me once and I may respond positively. Text me three times and I will unsubscribe.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

Showing up (online)

A little background: van Schouwen Associates is not a New York advertising agency. van Schouwen Associates makes its home in far-less-visible Longmeadow, Massachusetts, right outside Springfield, close to Hartford, CT and reasonably adjacent to Boston. While it lacks Madison Avenue glamour, it boasts easy parking and two Starbucks outlets and is therefore an excellent location from which to serve clients up and down the eastern seaboard. We do a good deal of marketing and sales outreach, which is only right, since van Schouwen Associates is, after all, a marketing and public relations firm.

Still, every unexpected incoming inquiry is refreshing and welcome. In fact, we're often surprised by the companies that find us, and by HOW they find us. We learn from their experience, and by learning, we can provide better support to our clients.

Aside from referral business, most prospects who find vSA find us on the Web. Like most of our clients, we want this to happen increasingly often, and to involve increasingly attractive prospects. Here's what we've learned...

Lesson 1: SEO is tough when you're in an overcrowded field and when the words often used to describe your services also have other meanings and are all over the Web (take marketing, public relations, consulting, strategy, and B2B as just a few examples of terms nearly as common as pizza or gas station).

Lesson 2: It's sometimes surprising what prospects are looking for, and the very specific terms that allow them to find you. We've had people call from across the country because they Googled B2B Web applications for mobiles.

Lesson 3: Sometimes prospects find your company because they've asked Google a question and you've already put the answer online! Prospects will likely Google questions about how to solve a problem that your company's product or service can indeed solve, and therefore your content marketing should be sure to ask that question, maybe even in an FAQ section on the company Web site, or in your corporate blog.

Lesson 4: Blogs, editorial/media coverage, social media, and other non-sales-promotion-y outreach are credible, well-read and visible, both in real life and on Google (vSA generally focuses on Google for SEO because it certainly holds the lion's share of the search market; sorry, Yahoo).

Think content first, sales second. When you offer value and credibility, sales opportunities often follow.

Lesson 5: Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman) said it all the time. He didn't benefit a bit from it, but your company may derive a modicum of wisdom from the classic phrase: "I was always well-liked."

Be well-liked... or at least well-known. Show up on incoming links on the Web. Comment on relevant blogs and link to your business site. Get listed in directories. Use relevant affiliate links (relevant ones only please).

Lesson 6: Content rules. Make it meaningful. Make it authentic.

Lesson 7: Keep tweaking your online presence. It's a rare company that can't show up better than it does online. Except maybe Facebook or Google.

Topline... why everything in marketing has changed

Remember the fax? Remember the print or TV ad campaign that reigned supreme as the "way to get the word out?" Remember direct mail when people actually read their mail while more than three feet away from the nearest wastebasket?

No, I don't either. Even though I've been a marketing professional for nigh on three decades and an avid follower of consumer culture since about age three when I "invented" a toothpaste that would STILL BE STRIPED when you spit it out. (Unfortunately, I didn't have the manufacturing facility to bring this fine toothpaste to market at the time.)

Remember when you sent a resume on nice paper, through the mail, to get a job? That's gone, too.

Everything has changed, for obvious reasons we've hashed over forever (not included here!) and a few that are somewhat less obvious, even to those of us in the trenches:

• Companies now need brand advocates; it is no longer enough to independently trumpet about strengths. It is instead imperative that the people who could purchase or influence purchasing are enthusiastic about what you do and how you do it.

• Social media... it's more than Facebook. And it cannot be ignored. Smart marketing campaigns send the same key message points across multiple media, in many cases including social media. This is true (albeit sometimes trickier) in B2B. Forget silo marketing.

• People's access to information may not actually make them smarter, but it certainly makes them more easily informed. Or disillusioned. No longer is it true (if ever it was) that "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

• Content is king and queen. The way to break through the noise is to have something worth saying. Educate, help, solve, entertain. If you have nothing to say, go back to the drawing board and figure out why, because content-poor marketing is a waste of money and time.

Business bonding... B2B Web applications

Evidently, just about anything we can do on an illuminated screen, we WILL do on an illuminated screen. Take for example reading (Nook, Kindle). Exercise (Wii). Meetings (GoToMeeting, Skype). Keeping up with friends (Facebook) and with news and gossip (Twitter). Finding love (Match, eHarmony). Business networking (Linkedin).

At the vSA office, we're finding that some of the work we identify as being part of that catch-all "client marketing" has in fact merged with something more akin to "facilitating the process by which our clients bond with their prospects, customers, influentials, and affiliates".

In more than a few cases, this means Web applications. Whether the illuminated screen in question is a desktop, notepad or mobile phone, the need to create synergy and loyalty is well-served by applications that let the user do something that either is not possible or is less convenient any other way. Examples include online training modules, B2B planning tools, calculators both simple and complex, members-only apps, custom purchasing programs, catalogs for sub-licensing, and even games to play to learn about new products. Typically, the process is to build the app, test and test (and then test!) the app, and at last make sure the intended audience knows it's out there and understands how to use it. Depending on the application, a company may make it freely available, or use it as an incentive or reward for customers and prospects who meet chosen criteria.

Some people remember the Web in its commercial infancy, when creating a good-looking site – essentially an online brochure – was the ultimate goal. Next came Web 2.0, with its more personalized experience and its tracking of the user's every move (useful for business, questionable for privacy)! Now, the Working Web presents business with almost unlimited opportunities to provide value – and to bond, so to speak – with the people it most needs to engage.