Marketing Lesson from the Music Industry

September 19, 2016 by Brent Pohlman

Do you know of another industry that has dealt with change the way the music industry has? Since the 1970’s the format of music has changed considerably. We have gone from records to 8-Track tapes in the 70’s to Cassettes in the 80’s to Compact Discs in the 90’s to .mp3 in 2000’s to paid music sites like Spotify and Pandora in 2010+. Artists continue to market their music, but the the way they do has changed. In fact I would argue that many artists are touring more these days to help keep their music fresh with respect to their listeners.

(Paragraph #2) If you were an artist trying to make it today, what would you do? In my case I would probably make it a point to engage more with my audience by posting information on Facebook, Youtube and maintaining my own website. I would see the whole process as a way of being responsible to my listeners. I would provide insight into music I am currently writing. I would provide updates when I am on the road touring. I would encourage followers to post and share their concert and listening experience. Word-of-mouth advertising would be the focus.

After looking at this industry, it is amazing to me to see the parallels of the music industry and the current culture I am in with respect to the analytical testing arena. In my current industry, people rely on the results of various analysis. The analysis methods used to be done by hand. Today, there are approved methods that are implemented using new instrumentation technology and more precise analysis. When it comes down to it, our clients still want to answer basic questions like: (is my water safe to drink?), (does my soil have the right nutrients for plant growth?), (what does the nutrition information look like in my food product?).

In addition, I am currently reviewing (Paragraph #2) is my business that much different than an artist in the music industry? In a world full of noise it is easy to get lost with respect to others in my industry and an ever changing culture of new processes, technology and increased content being shared everyday. The goal here is to not get caught up in the change, but continue to plan and change the way we approach our clients. It is all about building influence.

Building influence is my goal. In order to do this, I need to make sure people know how the service we provide offer value. At Midwest Laboratories, we provide a wide array of analysis. One of the areas we provide valuable analysis is in the area of pet treat analysis. I recently took the time to describe what our analysis provides and I have been quite pleased with the questions and responses I have received from this article. The process is really quite simple, if you take the time to look at what you do and how you can get that message out to the people who need or may want your service in the future.

My Favorite Marketing Resources

September 15, 2016 by Brent Pohlman

As a leader who wants to keep up with the pace of change, I am in the middle of some planning for 2017 and one of the areas I am really working on is identifying potential marketing projects.

Marketing is becoming this huge cloud of new processes, technology and approaches. There is so much information today, but where should one turn to for the best solution. This is where I am at. I have really found a new resource in podcasts. While I workout, I try and listen to some of the newest podcasts out there. There are quite a few that are very good and the hosts of these shows are also looking for the best processes and technologies out there. Simply by listening and gathering information, I am formulating more ideas with how to address my current marketing needs.

Here are some of the podcasts I listen to:

Duct Tape Marketing – Listen to the SEO for Growth podcast from September 14, 2016. It is very good.

Six Pixels of Separation – Great insight on processes and new technology

Marketing Over Coffee – Great analytic podcast

VB Engage – New in 2016, great speakers and topics

All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett – Great insight for business owners

Social Business Engine – Great topics and insight from business leaders

The Marketing Companion – A great perspective on Social Media

Content Pros Podcast – Talks about some great software programs I have never heard of

#AskGaryVee Show – I never miss an episode and I don’t watch the video. I listen to the audio.

The information contained in these podcasts are better than any book you can buy. Trust me, I am still looking for the perfect book out there. I really believe collecting ideas is critical to forming a solid marketing plan. Today, it is critical to find information from reputable resources. I think all of the resources listed here are very reputable and informative. The best part about podcasts is that you can listen to them on your time like driving in the car, working out or early in the morning/late at night. The media is available and most of these sites are updated at least once a week.

If you are looking for ideas or you are stuck in your ways, listen to a few of these podcasts. I actually went back and listened to all the #AskGaryVee Podcasts in 2016. I wanted to change the way I looked at marketing and Gary Vaynerchuk has such a different perspective on things that I found his ways refreshing and controversial at the same time. It helped me form my own opinion and direction of where I wanted to go. That is just one example. Try listening for yourself.

Customers Want to Buy From Us

September 14, 2016 by Brent Pohlman

Over the past few weeks, I went back and looked at some of the questions we received from clients. As I looked back at the answers we provided I noticed a few things. Customers Want To BUy

People are in a hurry and want answers now.
Information provided to potential customers is often very vague and useless.
People will make decisions electronically as much as over the phone.
Response and service are often bigger differentiators than price.
Often times, companies never follow-up on potential work available to them.

Maybe you’ve seen some of these items in your own company or had experience with these items in trying to buy products or services from another company. The point here is that today I feel a lot of business is coming in the door and leaving because we did not take action soon enough.

The big takeaway for me is that follow-up is the key. I continue to look at this topic and try to find ways to better manage this process. I am coming to the fact that client service is really critical in this process. Timing is everything. There have been times when we missed out on a big transaction because we did not act fast enough getting back to the client. In one case we received a request for information by email and we sent a response back to the client an hour later. The customer replied back to us and told us he went with another company because we did not react fast enough.

In other cases, I am finding that the experience of getting information back to clients needs to be improved. Many people are quick to respond to client responses using text that is not well thought out or proofed before sending back to the client. Information that has misspellings or incomplete sentences does not reflect well on companies and today with mobile technology, many mistakes or auto-correct spellings are sent to customers.

Another area I am seeing changes is shorter lead times. In the past, companies were given RFP (Request for Proposals) and given a 30 day lead time to send information back. Today, companies are lucky to have 24 hours to get pricing information back to the client. It is a sign that companies are trying to shorten the process and they want to move much faster today.

I bring up this article as a wakeup call to myself to continue to work harder in this area. It is an area I will be monitoring more closely in the future.

Time to Become a Digital Media Company

September 13, 2016 by Brent Pohlman

Marketing Online How many of you watch the local news in your area?

How many of you have a local newspaper subscription?

I can tell you that my consumption of news information in these areas has fallen off dramatically over the last 10 years. Today, everything is about instant news information. By the time the story hits the air or is printed, it is almost old news by then. Using this example, why am I so surprised that people’s interest in our websites are falling off. As a marketer, I am seeing this time as a huge transition period. I am constantly looking at different mediums and systems to find a good fit.

It is really coming down to the fact that I need to think about our company having a media arm in this new environment. I am looking for ways to make our company message resonate with people. The biggest hurdle for me right now is there is not a lot of good information out there on this topic. Many people would disagree with me, but the truth is each company approaches their clients a little bit differently. This is not a cookie-cutter system. This system is a very real system and I know I need to figure out the best way for our company to succeed.

I have gathered some information in this area and here are some of my findings:

Executives – The companies that succeed in bringing a media arm to their companies are those executives who roll up their sleeves and get involved. This isn’t a project for a new hire. It takes a whole new team of employees. I know I need media technical people, strong, knowledgeable client service people, marketers who have experience in bringing new media ideas. Overall, if the plan is going to succeed, it will be the people at the top who take hold of the responsibility to see that plans are implemented, killed, monitored, killed and implemented again. It is all about getting in and trying different media to understand better what works and what doesn’t.

Website – Website strength is huge. I believe a website has more value than an app or a social media platform. I can only speak to my experience, but it really comes down to building a whole new experience for clients and for me an app or social media platform is too limiting.

Content Creation – It is critical to continue to develop content. In 2016, I created less content and it showed in the number of people coming to our site. The good news was that older content 1-5 years old still has value and purpose. This is true, if this content is reshared today. Today, some of the articles that create the most traffic are those articles that someone has recently shared.

Social Media – It is one piece of the whole media pie. For me, I’ve found a couple of platforms that work and I keep experimenting with the others to see if any additional value can be found.

Network with Others Who Use Media – I’ve really found tremendous value here. It is really key to make connections with people who are using digital media and not just talking about it. There is a difference. These type of people can be valuable resources and are better than any book or article out there. Learn from others where you can.

Adding a digital media arm to our company is a necessity in my mind and it something worth spending time and resources in. I am hopeful that the work we are doing in 2016 will pay dividends very soon. I have also learned that testing new ideas in this area is critical. The only way to know if something works or doesn’t work is to try it yourself. Don’t rely on people’s opinions because you can always find an opinion to back your own position. Find out the truth for yourself. You will be a much happier person and will see the value of a digital media arm.

Content Marketing – What I Learned in 2016

September 12, 2016 by Brent Pohlman

Content Marketing 2016 Lately, the nay-sayers have been getting to me. Do this, stop doin this. This works, this does not work. Frankly, if you believed everything out there, you would sit back and say nothing works so I am not going to do anything.

Many people believe content marketing is dead. Time to move on. People don’t read your articles anymore.

I want to set the record straight. For those people who don’t listen to the nay-sayers and produced content on a regular basis for the past 5-7 years, you are leading the pack and you have a strong basis to build on. This year I had the great idea to start another site, leadmanageexcute.com. After 71 posts, I decided to come back to this site. I would post 1-2 articles a week and the most traffic I would receive is maybe 10-13 visits a day. Meanwhile, my former blog site, marketingdirectorblog.com, continued to receive 30-50 visits a day and I only posted 3 additional articles in 2016.. With over 800+ articles, this site had the juice and volume that the other site could not achieve.

My takeaways from this exercise.

Content can still resonate well past the day it is published.

Content marketing takes time. If you want to accelerate the time, post more content, not less. I used to create articles every weekday on the marketingdirectorblog.com site. People thought I was nuts, but in the end it was all about creating content and starting conversations.

Yes, social media helps distribute my content. For me, Twitter is still my platform of choice. Many people have left Twitter for snapchat or Facebook. I feel if Twitter has worked for you in the past, why leave it. In fact, I see a whole new audience these days on Twitter. I think people are coming back to Twitter and these are the people who did not get on Twitter right away.

Don’t leave your website for some other platform or new domain. Domain strength still counts.

If you have not posted for awhile, consider going back and revisiting your content. It’s not too late.

It is very hard for a new website to gain traction and grow organically. Don’t believe the hype that if you create quality content, you will receive more visits. People need to be able to find you. The amount of information produced each day is astronomical. People are going to have to find ways to cut through the noise. Herein lies the really hard work.

Finally, I will be coming back to this site for future articles. I don’t have 5-8 years to grow a new site and frankly I am not sure who does. I am just glad I started this site a few years ago and I did not decide to retire it. If you are thinking about transitioning a current site to a new domain site, think again the return may be hard to achieve.