Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category

The Components and Elements of a Successful Marketing Plan

admin | Thursday, May 20th, 2010 | No Comments »

http://ideaseller.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/24/goinguphires.jpgMarketers, PR professionals, advertisers: they all create plans to help implement the best campaign and to conduct the best practices. Every professional and every team will have a varying definition of what should be included in an effective and successful marketing plan, but here are some basics that should definitely not be absent:

  1. An Introduction (or Executive Summary): This section can include things like the company mission, the company’s overall objective, and the reason for implementing and even creating this plan. Additionally, this will include a summary of the plan. Many people suggest (or even require, for themselves or students) that this summary be created last. While I see the value in that, if you are creating the plan for your company and with a team whom you’ve discussed the plan with in the past, creating a summary outline, or even the entire summary itself, can be done in the beginning. The only reason for creating the summary last, that I can gather, is to make it easier to account for any changes you’ve made along the way and to ensure all aspects of the marketing plan are included.

  2. Objectives/Goals: This section will cover the plan’s objectives and goals, as its title suggests. These should differ from the mission of the company or the overall goal listed in the introduction, but they should also be related to and created from those components. If the plan’s objectives are not in line with the company’s goals and objectives, the plan is useless and should n0t be implemented. What point is there in partaking in marketing activities if it does nothing for the company? Even if the company’s goal is to help the community, it is essentially helping the company in return with PR, investments, etc. Ensure these objectives and goals are in line with the company goals.

  3. Strategies/Tactics: These are not the same thing, but they are related. Just as the objectives and goals should relate to the company goals, the strategies ought to relate to the objective and goals. From there, you can create your tactics that help you to achieve your desired strategic points; ensure that the tactics you implement stem from the strategies you create. Just remember, if you implement tactics that have nothing to do with the company goals, you may be wasting your time.

  4. Budget: This is somewhat common sense, but unless you have oodles of disposable income in your marketing budget and money is of no concern, a budget is vital. This is where you present your ideas to executives, where you ask for buy-in and support, and where you can define the areas where you will need to hire outside or additional help.

  5. Timeline: Create an in-depth and detailed list of events and time frames for the tactics laid out in the plan so you can know when to implement.

  6. Measurements of Success/Results: This is a crucial component to the marketing plan (and any business plan, for that matter) that will allow you to create a benchmark for each tactic to measure success. While success is not required for each tactic to be successful, you do need to measure the plan’s results and effects to see where you can improve next time. Moreover, it gives you a snapshot of how you did this time around.

Overall, remember that a professional, successful, and overall beneficial marketing plan is one that is specific, measurable, achievable,  realistic, relevant, and timely. Do your research and make sure that you create a plan that makes sense for you and for your customers, because, no matter how much you like your plan, it is the response of your buyers and audience that matter.

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Posted in Business Development, marketing

Marketing Plans | When They Work, and When They Don't

admin | Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

Marketing Plans When They Work and When They Dont 186x300 Marketing Plans | When They Work, and When They Don'tMarketing, like public relations, sales, advertising, etc., is a tricky area to master. As such, it’s hard to define a “formula” to use for each new marketing campaign or plan. To help you to create your own method of creating an effective marketing campaign, here are some tips:

  1. Don’t use the same plan you used last time. Your company, the environment/industry in which you operate, and your customers have all changed. People are consistently changing their tastes and worldviews, and you need to keep up. This means that for every new venture or marketing goal you set out to reach, you must create a new marketing plan. Even if all things were the same internally and in the industry, you would have to cater to your customers in a different manner when it comes to different aspects of your product or services. Know that what worked last time may not work this time.

  2. Avoid implementing without first knowing your objectives. Tactics are nothing without accompanying strategies. Your strategies must stem from your company objectives, and before you can implement tactics, you have to know the destination. While you cannot predict what the road will look like on the way there, you can map out where you are now, the desired goals you have, and the vehicle (pun intended) that will take you from Point A to Point B.

  3. Delegate responsibilities. This helps to keep everyone on the same page and also helps to make everyone accountable for the success or failure of the planning and the actual implementation of the plan itself. This can also help to encourage people to work together, enhance their strengths (or weaknesses, depending on what area they work on), and to create a collective ownership of the plan.

  4. Research, research, research. This step can help you to craft your objectives and goals and can also you to define the vehicles and methods that will be helpful to you in this marketing plan. Additionally, at the end of the marketing plan’s life, you can research where you went wrong and what went well so as to create an even better plan the next time around. Really evaluate the results of the plan to get an idea of what happened and where.

  5. Integrate other aspects of business. Marketing and PR are closely related, and with the help of the Internet, the defining line between the two is become more blurred as the months go on. That means your marketing team will need to work with the PR team to ensure things aren’t being done in an overlapping manner. For example, PR and marketing should both be using social media, and if one team hopes to use the same social media tool for a different reason than the other, there could be some disastrous results.

Just remember that marketing and PR plans need preparation and, well, planning. It’s a team effort that requires participation from everyone since there are different skill sets even within a small team.

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Posted in marketing

Educational Marketing | A Brief Defintion and Overview

admin | Friday, May 14th, 2010 | No Comments »

Educational Marketing A Brief Defintion–and Overview 200x300 Educational Marketing | A Brief Defintion and OverviewEducational marketing is a tool available to everyone, thanks to the easy access to social media tools and platforms. What is educational marketing? Some may argue that it’s simply PR being done online, but the Internet has greatly blurred the lines between marketing and PR. The most important thing to remember, however, is that regardless of how you define it, educational marketing is a useful tool that can benefit both you and your customer.

A quick definition: it is a different way of marketing that entails the sharing of information and educational resources for buyers. Not a tactic to sell your company, but a way to share your expertise to assist buyers in their decision making.

So, why use educational marketing?

  1. Consumers no longer rely on advertising messages to make buying decisions.
  2. Educational marketing gives customers and resellers the background they need to understand your messages and appreciate your products and brand.
  3. Educational marketing also gives your sales and marketing teams the opportunity to develop deeper relationships with your customers’ marketing professionals.

Customers are skeptical. They want to do their own research, or “homework”, to gather the facts and make their own decision to buy. Plus, they have more information available to them than at any other time in history. The Internet makes it easier than ever to learn anything about any topic. As such, it complements traditional marketing, sales training and customer training, benefiting your buyers, sellers and brand.

The key to successful educational marketing: Make your educational marketing resources free to access. The goal here is to begin the sales process by first earning the buyer’s trust by providing them something of value.

This post is part of the Educational Marketing series; check back for part two!

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Posted in Business Development, marketing

Creating a Customer Profile/Buyer Persona for Your Marketing Objectives

admin | Thursday, May 13th, 2010 | No Comments »

Creating a Customer Profile Buyer Persona for Your Marketing Objectives 300x200 Creating a Customer Profile/Buyer Persona for Your Marketing ObjectivesCreating an effective and successful marketing plan and reaching you marketing and sales goals requires an in-depth definition of your target audience so as to target them more effectively. That can be rather difficult if you lack a great understanding of your target audience. A way to help alleviate that difficulty and to make it easier to cater to your target audience is to create a buyer persona for each customer/buyer that can be found in your target audience, which requires that understanding referenced above.

Though marketers and PR professionals have been using buyer personas for years, David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR explains it well and helps readers to grasp the concept.

He writes,

Smart marketers understand buyers, and many build formal ‘buyer personas’ for their target demographics… [I]f we break the buyers into distinct groups and then catalog everything we know about each one, we make it easier to create content targeted to each important demographic. (New Rules of Marketing and PR, pg. 32.)

Whether you plan to market to them or to target them in your PR tactics, knowing who ‘they’ are is a vital part to getting that right. Scott continues on to say that “[u]nderstanding buyers and building an effective content strategy to reach each of them is critical for success.” (pg. 33) He also features some commentary from someone who has been using these buyer personas for more than 20 years. Adele Revella (who has an entire blog dedicated to buyer personas) relays to him:

A buyer persona profile is a short biography of the typical customer, not just a job description but a person description. The buyer persona profile gives you the change to truly empathize with target buyers, to step out of your role as someone who wants to promote a product and see, through your buyers’ eyes, the circumstances that drive their decision process. The buyer persona profile includes information on the typical buyer’s background, daily activities, and current solutions for their problems. (pg. 119-120)

In essence, these buyer personas are a way to give a face to the customers who visit your site, who buy your products, and who generate WOM (word-of-mouth) for your company. Give the buyer personas names, going so far as to even give them a picture of what you think they look like. This can help to make the marketing and PR process more personal and more tailored to the people who are looking to you for a new or better solution to the problems they are currently experiencing.

Some important components of the buyer persona include (but are definitely not limited t0)

  • Who the customer is: age, sex, race, culture, etc.
  • How she/he lives: their hobbies, patterns, places they frequent, etc.
  • Where they live
  • Where they work, what industry they work in, etc.
  • What their needs and wants are
  • How you can cater to those needs and wants; how you can solve the “problem” at hand
  • What about the alternatives that would make them want to come to you
  • What their morals are; what their beliefs are
  • What they think, hope for, believe, dream for, etc.
  • How best to connect with them

While the above can be seen as stereotyping, but there is a difference between doing that and categorizing customers to better speak to them, provide solutions, and provide services/products that they want or need. Just be sure to remember that though stereotypes are in place because it can “define” an overall group of people, they are not always true, nor do they define the entire market. Be careful, too, when marketing to a group of people; avoid using advertisements or marketing initiatives that further stereotype a group in a negative or positive way.

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Posted in Business Development, marketing

Marketing and Public Relations | What's the Difference?

admin | Monday, May 10th, 2010 | No Comments »

Marketing and Public Relations What%27s the Difference%3F Marketing and Public Relations | What's the Difference?Often times, marketing and public relations get lumped into one category. While the two categories have been growing more and more similar with the Internet and companies being able to do their own marketing and PR, there are still a few differences to keep in mind. Also important to remember is the existing differences between advertising, PR, branding, and marketing. These four components of business are all interrelated and need to work together to ensure that a business is successful. In order to understand how to use each of these components, you must first understand how to identify them.

Marketing is more closely related with selling than public relations. While the ultimate goal of both marketing and PR is to gain customers and business, PR is more focused on the relationship aspect of the buying process that a buyer goes through. Moreover, PR helps to maintain the relationships with current users and new customers, whereas marketing is primarily focused on gaining new business. PR also helps to maintain and build relationships between the company and the public.

Some state that public relations is all about building relationships. While that is true, PR also has a dual purpose in a company: to help maintain relationships, as noted above. Once marketing has helped to instill recognition of a company in a buyer’s mind, it is PR’s job to foster these relationships and ensure they continue to grow in a positive manner. This can be done through communication, honesty, and engagement of those audiences.

Reading materials from other blogs to see what my take on this was, I came across a few things that made me wonder: ‘What is the difference between marketing and PR?’ Other bloggers were stating that the difference between the two were that marketing asks buyers to take an action, whereas PR does not. (I disagree.) Some were stating that marketing has nothing to do with relationship building. (I disagree here, too.)

So, what does differ between PR and marketing? I think perhaps it boils down to the bottom line: marketing aims to increase sales and overall company performance. While that is an outcome desired from having great PR, that is not what drives companies’ PR. We do PR because we want to have another side to our companies that customers can see, talk to, and engage with. This PR side of our companies is a more personified and honest interpretation of our company that does away with the advertisements and marketing seen in our other business objectives. While we would love for this tactic to earn us more business, we know the ultimate PR goal is to build relationships with our customers, potential customers, communities, and general public.

Marketing, on the other hand, is looking to convince customers of something, whether that be that our company is awesome or that our competitor is not; we are trying to force-feed customers and buyers the beliefs we want them to hold. This is more difficult than what PR does, which is to allow customers to make their own interpretations of our company (with a little help). We want to put our company in the best light, but there is only so much we can do without reverting back to marketing or advertising. With public relations, customers are given more to go off of, and can create a message or idea of their own in terms of what our company means to them.

Public relations, then, is seen as more credible than marketing. When a customer comes to a conclusion on their own, it is easier to believe and it makes more sense to them than the overdone methods of advertising and marketing. There is a very fine line between marketing and PR that is being ever blurred with the available online tools. The Internet has made it easy to perform tasks that were once labeled marketing and are now classified as PR, such as distributing press releases to the public.

When it comes down to it, customers will embrace the company they like more. Getting a customer to like your company more cannot easily be done with marketing, though it is possible. It is easier for them to like your company when they hear about you from someone else (PR), when they read about you in a newspaper article written by the paper’s staff (PR), when they see your press conference on the news (PR), or when they see the news at your awesome fundraiser event (PR).

What do you think the difference between PR and marketing is?

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Posted in Public Relations, marketing

PR & Marketing Tips | SEO & Your Blog

admin | Sunday, May 9th, 2010 | No Comments »

PR and Marketing Tips SEO and Your Blog PR & Marketing Tips | SEO & Your BlogThere is a lot of talk about search engine optimization (SEO), and rightly so; SEO can greatly assist in your marketing and PR efforts, and may even help to reduce your advertising costs. When using SEO properly, you can increase your traffic and search engine strength without having to spend as much on ad words or other forms of advertising. Here are a few quick tips that I’ve used that have helped my blog traffic grow:

  • Optimize titles. Use keywords that people often search for (which you can find from the Google keyword tool). Remember too that new searches are made everyday, and most other blogs and websites don’t optimize for the smaller, less searched for terms. The long tail of the keyword curve needs to be paid some attention. These keywords include three or four word long searches, and can greatly increase your traffic.
  • Within the posts themselves use keywords a few times in a blog post, and try to use them at the beginning of the post. Also, try bolding or italicizing them. Google and other search engines periodically send out spiders to sift through your content to use in their search engine results. When users search these engines for content that your website has optimized for, your site will show up higher in the results due to the spiders recordings of keywords that you’ve used.
  • Make sure the URL for your post or blog utilizes the best keywords from your title. With Blogger, the URL of a blog post is automatically made from the title of the blog post. More often than not, the title is cut to make the URL shorter. Thus, it makes sense to use critical or more important keywords at the beginning of a post title.
  • Optimize images that your blog uses. Spiders cannot “see” images, but they can read the tags, names, and other notes associate with images. As such, name or tag your images with keywords.
  • For the overall blog, within the HTML source code, use meta tags. These are also searched by spiders, and show up in search results. Using these tags also gives your site more keyword associations, and allows you to give your site a description in search engine results. Meta tags are added within the portion of your HTML source code, and can be customized to fit your own needs. (Though the spelling is a little atrocious, this blog post offers some clear cut tips for adding meta tags.) Some say that meta tags are part of a ‘keyword stuffing’ technique (where keywords are overused), but I find them to be useful either way.
SEO can take some time, thoughtful planning, and dedication, but the results are great and can help increase your return on investment. Also, WordSell has a great tool here for scheduling articles based on content you want to cover on your blog and keywords you want to touch on.
Have tips to add? Add a comment!

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Posted in Public Relations, marketing

Hedge Fund Marketing Tools, Databases & Directories

admin | Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | No Comments »


Fund Marketing Tools

Tools for Hedge Fund Marketing

Third Party Marketing Tools Hedge Fund Marketing Tools, Databases & Directories
We have created this page to list a collection of hedge fund marketing tools available to professionals within the fund marketing space. Email us at team@investordatabases.com to have your third party marketing firm or service listed on our site.

  • Fund of Hedge Funds Directory Fund of Hedge Funds Database which profiles the contact details of fund of funds within Excel format and is available instantly. 
  • Directory of Hedge Fund Investors: We have collected our various hedge fund investor directories of potential hedge fund investors into this one resource with three package options.
  • Email Newsletter Creation Tool: Aweber is the #1 provider of email newsletter creation and management services. Creating an email newsletter keeps you in front of your prospects and loyal customers. Aweber offers a suite of low cost professional email newsletter templates and their how-to guides, quick online support and email tips make them a favorite of thousands of firms. Click here now to see what Aweber offers.
  • Endowment Directory: A source of contact details for over 900 of the largest endowment funds.
  • Private Equity Investors: We have combined a few of our private equity investor directories into this one resource with three package options.
Additional Directories & Databases of Investors & Investment Funds:
Tags: Third Party Marketing Tools, Hedge Fund Marketing Tools, Hedge Fund Sales Tools, Hedge Fund Selling Tools, Hedge Fund Sales Help, Hedge Fund Marketing Help, Hedge Fund Asset Raising Help, Hedge Fund Capital Raising Help

Posted in Hedge Fund, Hedge Fund Marketing Tools, Hedge Funds, Markets, Selling, Tools, finance, hedge fund marketing, investing, investments, marketing, sales, stock market

Hedge Fund Marketing Tools

admin | Friday, August 15th, 2008 | No Comments »

Fund Marketing Tools

Tools for Third Party Marketers

Third Party Marketing Tools Hedge Fund Marketing ToolsWe have created this page to list a collection of online third party marketing tools available to professionals within the fund marketing space. Email us at team@investordatabases.com to have your third party marketing firm or service listed on our site.

  • Fund of Hedge Funds Directory Fund of Hedge Funds Database which profiles the contact details of fund of funds within Excel format and is available instantly. 
  • Directory of Hedge Fund Investors: We have collected our various hedge fund investor directories of potential hedge fund investors into this one resource with three package options.
  • Email Newsletter Creation Tool: Aweber is the #1 provider of email newsletter creation and management services. Creating an email newsletter keeps you in front of your prospects and loyal customers. Aweber offers a suite of low cost professional email newsletter templates and their how-to guides, quick online support and email tips make them a favorite of thousands of firms. Click here now to see what Aweber offers.
  • Endowment Directory: A source of contact details for over 900 of the largest endowment funds.
  • Private Equity Investors: We have combined a few of our private equity investor directories into this one resource with three package options.
Additional Directories & Databases of Investors & Investment Funds:

Tags: Third Party Marketing Tools, Hedge Fund Marketing Tools, Hedge Fund Sales Tools, Hedge Fund Selling Tools, Hedge Fund Sales Help, Hedge Fund Marketing Help, Hedge Fund Asset Raising Help, Hedge Fund Capital Raising Help

Posted in Fundraising, Hedge Fund, Hedge Fund Sales, Hedge Funds, Money, Selling, capital raising, finance, hedge fund marketing, investing, marketing, third party marketing


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