B2B Researched Marketing Truths.
The Institute for the Study of Business Markets celebrated its 25th anniversary this summer, with a two-day conference probing the current and future state of business marketing practice.
How many of these “indelible truths” apply to your business?
Understand, quantify, demonstrate and document customer value. When both seller and buyer focus on creating value and sharing its benefits, everyone wins.
Look beyond what customers say. Finding customers’ real hot buttons, and understanding how different purchasing influencers work together on buying teams, are keys to successful selling to business.
Your customers can develop valuable new offerings for you if you let them. Customer co-development programs and studying how your most innovative and unusual customers use your product will spur innovation in market-oriented directions.
Take a long- as well as a short-term view of markets. Even in times of economic recession, marketing is a necessary investment.
Implement STP. Following the discipline and logic of “segmenting,” “targeting,” and “positioning” ensures marketing efficiency and focus.
Never doubt the power of brands in business markets. A brand name built and nurtured to connote value opens business customer doors and impresses buying decision makers.
Keep the right customers; lose the wrong customers.
Communications are no longer from “us” to “them.” The communications models of the 20th century don’t describe a digitally networked world.
Cost and price have never had a fundamental relationship. Effective segmentation goes beyond the obvious ways of categorizing customers, such as industry, size, or location.
In B2B, customers are a scarce resource. Many times you know all of them. “Go deeper” with customers you have, to create and capture additional value.
Email and Social Networking: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
We all know about Twitter and its phenomenal growth during the past year. Last night I read a post about Facebook’s share of social networking traffic jumping from 20% to 59%, leading the vast migration to social networking sites, or what I like to call the “Famous for 15 Minutes. . .Or Less” web sites.
Then, today, comes this article from the Wall Street Journal about the demise of email and a follow-up piece from OnlineMediaDaily suggesting that email might still have a role to play in the way that people communicate.
All this makes me wonder if the growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are slowly killing off email as an effective marketing tool?
It’s important to put the email versus social networking contest into perspective. As the WSJ itself points out, email continues to grow, as does social networking, albeit at a faster rate:
In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.
The problem with the Journal’s “death of email” article is the assumption that two methods of communication cannot coexist, each having a unique role to play. For decades now, television and radio have managed to survive — and even compliment each other — even though many media experts believed that TV would kill off the radio box. Likewise, the Internet was supposed to kill off everything — but it hasn’t (though I know some magazine and newspaper publishers who believe the Net gave them two shots in the hat).
Email and social media both have a specific utility. One does certain things better than the other — and that utility can and will change over time. Right now email works best for longer messages, communicating with more personalized, targeted audiences, and adding embedded content. Social networking offers greater immediacy, ease of use, a sense of personal empowerment, and potentially higher levels of frequency.
Email and social networking sites are used in different ways and communicate different kinds of information. One easily compliments the other. Like many of you, I tweet, participate on social networking sites, and send out and receive tons of email. (I also blog, manage several web sites, and participate in various forums, but that’s another story!) I don’t see the two as competing for my attention. I use them in the way that I need to and choose my tool according to the task I have in mind.
Given the increase in email use by 20% in the past year, I think we can safely say it is not going away. What does alarm me, however, is the attitude within some companies that social networking is somehow evil and should be ignored by employees and the marketing department.
Ignoring 300 million users on social networking sites? Unless you’re selling cruise missiles to the Pentagon and don’t care about consumers, that’s more than a little short-sighted.
The Ten Best Free Press Release Services
Internet businesses, consultants, coaches, service businesses — all have a nearly insatiable need to market their services. “Keeping the pipeline full” is a constant source of worry and an on-going battle.
Most businesses wisely use an integrated marketing approach: networking, directory advertising, local and Internet advertising, and participation in various online social networks. One marketing tool that is often under-utilized or applied ineffectively is publicity, either generated by news releases or feature stories.
Although ”getting ink” in the local newspaper and business magazine is a terrific lead generator, many other publicity channels are frequently overlooked. Blogs, web sites, RSS feeds, and online news outlets are all hungry for new information. And one of the best methods of delivering news to these channels is through online news distribution services.
We’ve put together a list of the ten best free press release services. All of these sites are suitable for businesses trying to market their services. In fact, there is no reason why you could not use several of them to extend their reach. Most offer additional, fee-based products in addition to their free services.
Of course, to distribute a press release for free means you need to write a press release, or have one written for you. At the end of this article, we provide links to three short, but helpful articles about writing press releases.
If you are looking for professional assistance, Frank Marafiote offers press release writing and other marketing services through his company, Emerge Communications. Frank has been writing news releases since 1976 and promises a professional job.
Here’s our list of the Ten Best Free Press Release Services –
#1 Free Press Release.com
Free-Press-Release.com has been the No. 1 in the free press release distribution service area since 2003. Customers can submit an unlimited number of release, up to 3,000 words in length.
#2 Prlog.org
Some of the features of this service include: HTML links in the press release body, search engine optimized dedicated web page & PDF version, multiple categories & keywords, spam protection on your email address, the ability to edit/delete press releases, press release scheduling. Press release distribution includes Google News, numerous search engines, numerous javascript, html & RSS feeds.
#3 1888pressrelease.com
Customers can distribute releases to search engines, news-wires and websites to help increase awareness of their product, company, or self. Services aim to help customers reach journalists and improve visibility in search engine listings, a concept known as search engine optimization, so customers can get the most publicity possible.
The service allows customers to attach files, logos or images to their press release so they’re ready for journalists and others who need the information for publication. A customer’s website can also be displayed within the press release to make it easy to lead readers directly to the site.
#4 I-Newswire.com
Customers may only submit one release per week per website per company. Customers found abusing the free submission can be banned from using the service. They do not allow the placement of html in the releases; however, customers may use complete URL’s in their releases.
#5 PR.com
PR.com is a directory of businesses, products and services, a press release distribution service, job search website, and online publication of articles, reviews and celebrity interviews. Customers can submit news and press releases via their global online news and press release distribution service with distribution points such as AskJeeves News, Excite News, Topix.net, MSN News.
#6 Free-Press-Release-Center
This is an online news and press release distribution service for small and medium-sized businesses and corporate communications.
The service allows keyword linking. With each press release customers can choose a keyword and a URL which will appear as a link (using the keyword as the anchor text) in their press release.
#7 24-7 Press Release
Through their strategic partnership with PR Newswire, this service’s Mass Media Distribution distribution package offers broad exposure for customers. The PR Newswire network allows press releases to be accessed by nearly 80,000 journalists and distribution to approximately 4000+ web sites including Yahoo News, Google News, CBS Marketwatch, MSNBC, ABC News, CNN.com, and AOL.
In addition to their free press release service, they also offer submission approvals within 48 hours, the ability to schedule your release for a future date, over 400 industry channels, distribution to opt-in journalists, freelance writers and RSS/Javascript subscribers, and press releases stored in database for possible future story seekers.
#8 Free-Press-Releases
This service says its press releases end up on Google News and thousands of niche sites across the Internet. Many websites with focused subject areas take content from its categories relevant to their readers and display as news on their own sites. Freepressreleases is also indexed by many global news mining organisations that hunt for specific information. Freepressreleases also offers each category as a specific RSS feed.
#9 PressAbout.com
PressAbout.com is a free press release distribution service in the form of a blog. This allows customers to distribute press releases to search engines, news-wires and websites to help increase awareness company or personal products and services for free. The service aims to help customers reach the public directly and improve visibility in search engine listings. All press releases will be read to ensure the quality of the site is maintained.
#10 PressMethod
PressMethod is an international free press release distribution company. Their mission is to help the Internet community access interesting stories happening in the business world.
Want to write your own release but need some pointers? Check out these brief articles –
Let the world know who you are!
