80 www.sgr-asi.com May/June 2014

Summer’s just around the corner. Along with vacations and cookouts, that means it’s time for suppliers to think about cre-ating a marketing blueprint for 2015. The question for most businesses is how to go about developing a plan.

For small and medium-size B2B companies like promotional product suppliers, marketing experts say it’s all about establishing trust. And the way to earn that trust is by providing content that helps solve your customers’ problems.

Know Your CustomersThe first step is to identify exactly who your cus-tomers are. For Kevin Jordan, owner of Redpoint Marketing Consultants in Farmville, VA, that means narrowly defining what qualities your ideal customer has and determining the core differences about your business that appeals to that customer.

“I do this with my clients by actually interview-ing eight to 12 of their most profitable customers

By John Moore

When it comes to your 2015 marketing blueprint, experts say it’s all about creating

value through educational content.

PowerKnowledge is

over the phone and having them tell me what they value about the business,” Jor-dan says.

Those conversations can be revealing, Jordan says, because often what the com-pany offers isn’t what the client wants. “The business may think they have the best prices out there, but the customers come back and say, ‘The prices are OK, but we really like this one thing they do that’s part of their service.’ Or it might be the opposite.”

That’s why Chakisse Newton, presi-dent of Columbia, SC-based Cardinal Consulting, says businesses need to be more fluent in the realm of metrics.

“When you sell a product that’s similar from year to year, it’s easy to get into a rut to say you know what the customer wants, but you may not really know what’s driv-ing what they’re doing,” she says. “Even if you market to one group, from your data, you need to determine which of those dis-tributors are your top customers, which of your products are moving. Even among a single segment, you always want to know where most of the money is coming from, both in terms of audience and product group, so that you can move those groups more effectively.”

Develop Trust Through ContentOnce you understand who you’re trying to reach, Jordan says it’s time to transition

to what he calls the “marketing hourglass” – a systematic way of moving customers through the buying cycle.

“It works really well because the defi-nition of marketing is the process of get-ting your target market to know, like and trust you,” Jordan says. “The goal is to turn every customer into a referral source.”

Marketing experts believe the best tactic for achieving this goal is through providing educational content. Some-times called content marketing or thought leadership, it’s a way of providing unbiased information that your clients can use to help navigate the issues they face.

“Let’s say the main problem the dis-tributor has is selling the stuff,” Jordan says. “If I can educate them around how to be more effective in selling, how to be more effective in attracting customers on their own, and win their attention with that information, then it’s really easy to give them information about what it is I’m selling. It’s one of the most effective, easi-est strategies to execute. The person who’s providing that information is the one they’re going to know, like and trust. If you can be the one who steps in and answers their questions, you’ll be in a good posi-tion to be their go-to supplier.”

This type of content can include blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, e-books and videos. “The type of con-tent created will depend on the target

audience, which is why defining strategy comes first,” Jordan says.

It’s crucial to note that educational content isn’t about the hard sell. By becom-ing a trusted source of information, poten-tial customers are more likely to gravitate to your brand, and current customers are more likely to become evangelists for your company. That’s particularly valuable in the promotional products industry.

“In most businesses, what distin-guishes an organization is value,” Newton says. “Value is tough in this marketplace because a lot of people see it as a commod-ity. So it’s better you understand what they really want and then target them to better position that value.”

Track Your TacticsWith a mindset toward educational con-tent marketing, you have to determine the best way to get that information in front of your audience. You can create a blog, develop a video section on your website with tutorials or case studies, even create your own publication. The platforms you use will depend on the message you’re trying to communicate and the customer you’re trying to reach.

Jordan says it’s also useful to create a marketing calendar so you can plan out the daily, weekly, monthly and annual tasks that support your marketing efforts. “The idea is that marketing is a never-ending process, and the marketing blueprint is never truly complete,” he says. “It must evolve and change with the business.”

Of course, you’ll need a way to mea-sure the success of your marketing efforts. Steve Gordon, a marketing consultant based in Tallahassee, FL, says every piece of marketing should contain an offer (or call to action), and that offer should be trackable.

“That could be trackable to a phone number, a Web page that’s unique for that offer, or a coupon code so that you can

track down to the penny how much busi-ness came from this particular effort,” Gordon says. “Then you have very easy decisions to make about where you’re deploying your marketing investments.”

Newton points out that those mea-surements should be baked-in from the very beginning of your campaign, not con-sidered only at the end.

“Whatever tactics you’re going to use, before you do a single thing, when you’re planning it you have to ask, ‘What are we going to measure?’” she says. “If it’s a website, are you going to measure clicks? Are you going to measure calls to a spe-

cial phone number? How are you going to know that the things you’re doing are yielding results? You need the metrics, but they’re only going to work if you put them in in advance.”

Experts say that creating a marketing blueprint around providing your customers with the educational content they need is ideal for an industry like promotional prod-ucts. By presenting yourself as a trusted adviser – not just a product supplier – you create value for your organization.

Gordon says that while the promo-tional products world is a textbook exam-ple of a commodity-based industry, a smart

marketing blueprint can change that. “Falling into that commodity trap is

more a choice than anything else,” Gor-don says. “What gets people trapped there is that they don’t offer anything of more value than the next guy. Then their default is the only way I can give any more value is to give you the same thing but for less money. But the best customers, the ones willing to pay a premium price, they’re going to be much more concerned with all these value-added things.”

Furthermore, Gordon says a strategy based on providing education takes the complexity out of marketing. “If you get this message right, people are going to find it,” he says. “They’re going to spread the word about this message you have that’s about helping them and people like them. Those sorts of things spread, and quickly.” John Moore, a frequent contributor to SGR, is a freelance writer based in Highland Park, IL, who specializes in covering marketing and financial issues.

The Do’s & Dont’s of a Marketing BlueprintCreating a marketing blueprint for 2015 is essential. But it’s important that you don’t fall into the traps that marketers often make.

DO:• Identify your target market. As marketing consultant steve gordon says, “once you understand who they are, then you can decide how to reach them.”• Provide value through educational content. “essentially, it’s understanding your customer and showing that you understand them,” says Chakisse newton, president of Cardinal Consulting. “Pro-pose what they need instead of what they ask for. You can always do that once you really know them.”• Constantly track and measure your results. “You need to break your goals into key performance indicators, or KPis,” says lara McCull-och-Carter of Ready2spark. “These allow you to measure whether you’re heading in the right direction throughout the year, not just at the end of it. An example of this is that you set a goal to increase sales by 20% by the end of the year. Your tactic is an outbound-calling pro-gram. so your KPis could be: 20 calls per week, 12 cool leads, six warm leads, two hot leads and a 50% close rate.”

DON’T:• Confuse strategy with tactics. As newton explains, “instead of asking, ‘How can i promote our company through our website?’ you should ask, ‘what’s the best way to reach the target audience we’re trying to reach to get them to do the thing we’re trying to do?’ ” • Focus on media ahead of strategy. “Most businesses mess up when they don’t have an overall strategy in mind,” gordon says. “if you don’t have that criteria in place, you don’t know what to say yes or no to. in my experience, business owners say yes too many times.”• Emphasize the hard sell. “instead of trying to get somebody to call you up and buy something from you right after they read your ad, it’s getting them to download your free educational content,” says Kevin Jordan, president of Redpoint Marketing. “Things like case studies, testimonials and Roi calculators can demonstrate and quan-tify how your solution is going to save them time, save them money, or both. After that, they start trusting you, they try you out, then buy from you.”

“The definition of marketing is the process of getting your target market to know, like and trust you. The goal is to turn every customer into a referral source.” KevIn Jordan, redPoInt MarKetIng ConsuLtants

Content marketing is a way of providing unbiased information that your clients can use to help navigate the issues they face.