Marketing Consulting Benefits

In a previous blog I talked about marketing advice. This is part two of my advice series, more targeting towards small businesses and marketing consultants. In a big business they usually will have a marketing director or manager. Many small businesses will try to do their own marketing with their dismay no success. Here are some benefits of marketing consulting in small businesses: They can teach team hat they need to know before starting a plan, can determine the medium that will be effective such as social media, and so on. Can benefit of making aware single mistakes with their message and change the call to action, know who to target so you can guarantees to generate revenue this goes with making a persona and picking who to target. The biggest tip is exposure with all the above taken into consideration can lead to great things.

Possible Internship

I have applied for a internship with a group in Ann Arbor Internet2. This opportunity came in my Google Practicum class. They were very fast to respond back and happy for my application. I have a phone interview on July 30. The time gives me time to prep and overlook their site to find out more about them as I did when applying. I have worked in the grocery industry for over ten years. I feel its time to break away and expand my horizons and opportunity at applying what I have learned in the class room as well as learn as much as possible this can allow me to expand my resume but also my skills. I recommend everyone in the class take a hold of the intern opportunities as it helps to get yourself out there and grow.

Networking events I have exprienced in the last month

As the Month of July comes to a clear end I must blog about the networking events I attended last month. I attended the last and my first of the LA2M. It was a very interesting meeting a lot of people and hearing some interesting stories on how people relate the topic of video/media to their jobs. With this in mind I have applied media in my advertising class when filming a commercial, an editing the video. The power the media has is amazing, a lot of people rely on media nowadays you cant execute anything without using a form of media video is the strongest by getting your point across. The other event want officially a "networking" event, I went to the Huron Valley Chamber of commerce meeting and networked with a bunch of local business people by my hometown it was interesting to see the amount of people I already knew from working in retail basic business was discussed followed by coffee afterwords.

Networking

For the past ten years I have worked at a grocery store, not till this class have I realized I have been slowly building a network up. I have many friends and customers who have helped or will help in any situation if it means handing a resume off or even passing it on to other people it is a;ways good to take care of opportunities. What helps is being sociable and finding out as much as possible if a person says they are tired of their job ask what they do? This to e always opens as a gateway and can find out more about their jobs and the person themselves. Reality hits every single day is a networking opportunity, even if its for a couple of seconds the big thing is to get your name out and build up contacts this can be helpful in the big time when finding a job always good to have personal word of mouth and people can do each others favors.

Advice in Marketing

Social media can lead to a lot of benefits for businesses if applied right can be successful. When I see that businesses just have a face book I kinda start losing my mind thinking why stop there. Facebook can be helpful to get yourself noticed, their are a ton of other methods that you can take to make your business even more successful. I would first start with making a simple adwords campaign and make yourself searchable by adding basic keywords that relate to what you do and will be beneficial in the long run. Then take the methods and start a blog/website demonstrating what you do linking the adwords to that page and having a PPC(pay per click). The PPC is great because you can set it how high you want or low and bid on keywords. The hardest part is knowing who you are targeting. Targeting requires knowing who you want to visit your site and advertising on the keywords they will use to find you. After all said and done it is not easy to execute and can take a lot of trial and error. More methods to take start a twitter account this is the easiest thing you can link everything and post special coupons if you do that sort of thing and keep your followers up to date. More social media is available such as tumblr,reddit, and so on. Online marketing is important as stated in the above but also in person marketing is just a successful. Many businesses started out as a word of mouth just building a network and can lead to much success and even much failure just like the PPC it takes a lot of trial and error but can be great in the long run because it is all about "who you know."

Telling A story

I have been doing a lot of research lately on how to present but tell a better story. The biggest advice I found is move beyond the bullet points and story board your ideas. Start with your title what you are and what you represent and set up the audience for who you are. You move to act I who you are inform your audience then your setting, and role of who am I here. After all is said move to Point A the challenges you face followed by a call to action that moves to where you want to be Point B. This al sets up for Act II Develop the action and show what you need to see. Chart all of this out and lead to a resolution. Simply Chart out Act I your setup have your hook and a incident, this leads to Act II Development what are the stakes. All leads to the resolution of what the aftermath should be. Follow all of this and should lead to a good story or put on the right track.

Update On NPO

I am working with a great NPO called Team continuum, their mission statement is "The Mission of Team Continuum is twofold. We provide immediate and vital non-medical assistance to cancer patients and their families when the diagnosis results in disruption, hardship and uncertainty in their everyday lives. We also provide funding to health care facilities and foundations, to enhance the delivery of care, communication and educational services for cancer patients". Team continuum hosts a NYC marathon and each member raises money for the cause. The ultimate goal of the site is to have people sign up for the race itself. That was the first problem I noticed when coming to the site they have a donate button on the top but no sign up. I went through and clicked on Join the team, it takes you to a new page with a statement and a button that says "Join Now." This was rewarding thinking ok just one click, it takes you to another page with a very unnoticeable join team button. This explains why the goals are not being made to register for the race cause after the unnoticeable button it takes you to another page and a register button is there. This type of page causes a really high bounce rate and people will not sign up for the race. I ultimately sent a email to the head and gave some creative criticism, she agreed with everything I said and will talk to the people who run her site to see what can be changed. This is a great step forward and hopefully will bring much success to Team Continuum.

The Power of Twitter

With the incoming semester I have been building my online presence network as well as physical. When blogging, posting articles on google+, tweeting it is all about selling yourself. Blogging and Google plus I understand what about twitter? The significance of twitter is amazing. An article I read stated "Twitter for businesses, most discussions revolve around the relationship of businesses with consumers: marketing to, interacting with and attracting individuals." Now with twitter there is ads in itself and relating to what your looking at and tweeting about so it will get you to click on that product. The future of twitter, I believe that eventually all sales can be conducted on twitter which I believe is happening as we speak. Twitter has a large Business to Business audience. Most are on twitter searching, researching interacting and looking for opportunities to sell, direct traffic to the B2B website and drive tweets to the B2B brands. This comes in with one of my previous blog posts about inbound marketing which I believe you all should read.