Pollen Marketing

An interesting study just out from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project> reports that, despite the known rising trend in social network usage among adults, email and search engines still reign supreme.

Pew found that though social network use is on the rise (65% of adults now report using social networking sites as opposed to only 11% in 2005) email and search have a grip that are hard to release. 92% of American adults report using both email and search engines with about 6 of every 10 doing so daily.

These figures make come into better focus. Social networking, though important, cannot compete with the importance of reaching customers through email. This is compounded by the fact that email’s hold as the top ranked online activity has been consistent for 9 years running (since 2002).

Adults are creatures of habit and though the rise of social networking sites and marketing through them represents a viable opportunity to expand brand awareness to new niches, there is a resounding call to stay true to what works and to that which we know people use: email.

Information drives the Internet. Content Marketing seeks to engage potential clients with meaningful information, related to what they are looking to buy. Basically, as opposed to your sales pitch and unashamed advertising, content marketing focuses on customers during or before they are researching products.

So how does this work? It pays to think of the Internet as an interrelated community of shoppers looking for information. Giving readers something to take away other than a sales pitch will heighten your brand name and make them more likely to come to you when they are ready to move along in the next phase of the buying cycle.

This stage is very important in the B2B environment, as there is often a buying committee that needs to be satisfied. This is also a valuable exchange for contact details to re-market to prospects through trigger email campaigns or email marketing, until they are ready to buy.

Providing your clients with ‘downloadable’ practical guides such as research papers,  presentation notes, cheat sheets or behind the scene insights is a sure way to build rapport and establish your company as a trusted advisor an industry expert. (I have taken to calling them ‘downloadables’ but think I just invented a word- again cc: @evanfosterufg ).

Your goal is to create a sense of trust and credibility, so that you become your customer’s solution before they have a problem. You do need to be subjective to invite trust and create the relationship that will lead them to you.

 

Came across this take on Digital Marketing in the Twitter stream of my good friend @nottheword.

Slide Deck summed up in one sentence – Digital must enhance what is great and amazing about life to work.

Note to self: Must find out what the not word is?!

Or is it life?