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The TribalVision marketing team knows small business inside and out. We’ve been in the marketing trenches with small to midsize businesses for years, and we often find that small business owners suffer from the some very common pain points that can be, thankfully, fairly simple to resolve. In a series of upcoming posts, we’ll discuss some of these pain points and how they relate to getting the most out of your marketing budget.

First up: the sales force. Quite often, small businesses do not view their sales teams as a natural extension of their marketing efforts and are therefore not providing those teams with the resources and attention needed to ensure that they’re optimized to bring in as much new business as possible. At TribalVision, we see companies’ sales forces as the most money lead generation channel a company has, yet it’s the most overlooked aspect when it comes to ensuring that each marketing channel is optimized.

For example, many businesses simply hire sales personnel and say, “Hey, get out there and do your thing.” There’s no training, no real job description, no accountability or goals. When viewed under the same microscope as other marketing channels, however, simply sending a sales representative off without any concrete goals or objectives is unthinkable. Over the next few posts, we’ll discuss this and related marketing pain points and provide some actionable tactics for ensuring that your organization is making the most of its marketing (and sales!) dollars.

When marketing a small or mid-sized business, most business owners focus on promoting specific products or services they offer, and of course this makes sense. People need to know what’s available if they’re going to consider doing business with a company. However, there is one big factor to promote that people often fail to take into consideration when marketing their companies: their team.

Particularly in businesses that engage in a lot of face-to-face interaction with their customers, it’s not enough to sell people on a product or service. We have to also sell prospective clients on our team members and ourselves. One way to do this is to maintain, enhance, and expand our team members’ skills by providing continuing education opportunities and chances to attend and participate in conferences and seminars.

Consider, from a prospective client’s outlook, how you would feel if you asked, “Who will be managing my project? How do I know they’re qualified?” and heard this:

“Joe will be in charge of your project. He’s been with us five years, has a Master’s in Business Administration, and just came off a project with very similar parameters, so he’s well suited to the job.”

That sounds ok, but consider how much more competitive your company appears (and is) when you can answer like this: “Joe will be your Project Manager. He’s been with us for five years now. In addition to an MBA from NYU, Joe completed two ongoing education courses last year about managing large-scale projects in your industry. Additionally, he’s attended the annual [Your Industry] seminar for the last three years and will be presenting at next year’s [Your Industry] conference, discussing ways to make client dollars go farther in the new normal economy. He’s the best in the business, easy to work with, and a real asset to our team.”

In the second example, there are a few key factors at play:

1. The client hears that your company is invested in its people as a means of providing better quality to your clients.
2. The client (and your team) can see that you know your team members’ CVs well and value them not only as employees but also as professionals.
3. The client hears that you are taking his/her concern seriously and taking the time to answer thoroughly instead of simply assuring him/her that your is qualified.

Taking the time to plan, budget for, and value continuing education, conferences, and seminars shows your clients that it is important to your company that your team is always well informed and trained on the latest techniques and ideas. It also demonstrates to your team members that you value them and are invested in their careers. This leads to more confident clients and team members who feel appreciated and valued, all of which creates a better working environment with lower attrition and better results for your clients.

A few parting tips for planning next year’s training budget and marketing activities:

1. Ask your team members which conferences they want to attend and why.
2. Ask your department heads which team members they would like to have take part in continuing education courses.
3. Have each department provide your marketing representatives with updated CVs that include all ongoing training in process or completed as well as all seminar attendances and presenter credits so they can promote your team as being as well-trained and up-to-date as they truly are.

How do your team members view continuing education, seminars, and conferences? Do they see these events as opportunities or obligations? We want to hear from you!

One of the most important components of a successful marketing campaign is the ability to accurately target the consumers or prospects most likely to be interested in your products or services. Skilled marketers will often refer to wanting to take a “laser” (narrow) focus rather than a “shotgun” (wide) approach to targeting their potential customers. One of the best ways to selectively identify your target customers is through the use of demographics.

Demographics are a statistical measurement designed to identify population segments based upon certain criteria, such as age, income, sex, job status, and more. A SMB (small or mid-sized business) owner turns to demographics data in order to gain insights into which prospects are best suited for his/her services and/or products.  They can then use these insights to craft their brand messaging, customize packaging, create advertising, and establish pricing.

Here at TribalVision, having recently opened an office in the Boston/Cambridge metropolitan area, we thought it would be a fun exercise to do some analysis of demographic data for the Boston region, as provided by the United States Census Bureau.  On the US Census Bureau website, there is a wealth of information available about the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metro Area, and for the infographic we created below, we used their 2011 ACS (American Community Survey) 5-year estimates (average data from 2007-2011).

We tried to balance rigid statistical analysis with a little bit of fun in this project, and we hope you enjoy this demographics-based look into the makeup of the Boston region.  From a marketing perspective, there are some good nuggets within this data. For example, although the average household income in Boston is listed at $71,878 annually, there are over 150,000 households earning in excess of $200k per year.  High-end retailers would certainly find that information to be valuable.

Feel free to add your comments or your questions below, and note the embed code provided below if you’d like to feature this graphic on your own website or blog.

There’s quite a lot to be learned from this year’s Super Bowl, and we’re not even talking game strategy, unless your game is real-time marketing. February 3^rd’s game between the Ravens and 49ers was, as usual, a serious marketing bonanza with the expected crop of big-ticket ad campaigns. But some of the best marketing opportunities came not only for those companies that planned far ahead and paid for those prime commercial slots, but for those that were on the ball in real time.

Much of that real-time marketing took place on Twitter, which scored big during this year’s game with an estimated 24.1 million Super Bowl-related tweets. Their Tweets Per Minute (TPM) analytics showed that Beyonce’s appearance during the halftime show brought in a whopping 268,000 TPM, and the now-infamous power outage was a close second at 231,500 TPM.

The power outage, while unfortunate, was a great real-time marketing opportunity, and companies that recognized this chance jumped in with quickly laid out graphics and clever tweets

• Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) tweeted, “Power out? No problem.” They accompanied this text with a graphic of an Oreo in semi-darkness with the words, “You can still dunk in the dark,” and the Oreo logo. Simple, fast, and clever.

• Tide (@tide) tweeted, “We can’t get your #blackout, but we can get your stains out.” They included the hash tags #SuperBowl #TidePower and a black graphic surrounded by brand imaging (logo and tagline) with the tweet’s content in white lettering. By including the #SuperBowl hashtag and anticipating that #blackout would start trending on Twitter, Tide ensured that their clever tweet would reach a broader audience than just those people who already follow their feed.

Small business owners may not have Oreo or Tide’s 70,000 to 80,000 followers, but they can take a knee here and learn from their real-time marketing successes:

1. Be quick to respond to events in pop culture, sports, and news.
2. Tie your product or service to a currently trending hashtag.
3. Remember that a TwitPic is worth a thousand words (or maybe retweets). It’s not expensive to train one or two of the people responsible for your social media in Adobe Illustrator or a similar graphic design program for the purpose of making simple images or memes for tweets and marketing materials.

Do you tweet during major events, or do you only tweet about your own activities? How do you use twitter for business?

Businesses spend a great deal of time and money establishing a brand, and it makes sense. A lot goes into creating a strong brand presence:

• A user-friendly, well developed and maintained, search engine optimized website
• A well managed and consistently analyzed social media presence on all major platforms
• A consistent stream of valuable content marketing material that helps establish your company as a thought leader in the industry
• Professionally developed and printed traditional marketing materials that reinforce the Internet-based message your website and social media are sending
• Clean, consistent imaging, across all marketing platforms, including colors, fonts, a logo, and design work that appropriately represents your company and its purpose

Creating and establishing a brand, however, is just the beginning. Just as the company itself needs nurturing, attention, and planning in order to grow and succeed, so too does the brand, and the two are actually quite different.

• Your company is your actual business – your accounts, your clients, your employees, your product, your service.
• Your brand is your image – how people perceive you, the voice that speaks “from” your company, your marketing, your reputation.

So, while the hierarchy of your entire company is usually mapped out with flow charts that let everyone know who is responsible for what when it comes to serving clients and growing the business, brand management is often left to the marketing folks, and that is a major oversight.

Brand management is about more than knowing when to update a logo or keeping the social media fresh. Brand management is about a uniform image you work to protect. That means everyone is responsible for brand management:

Boots on the ground: Your service technicians, sales team, and other customer-facing employees are responsible for brand management. Even off-duty, if someone is so much as wearing a shirt bearing your logo, they need to take the responsibility of representing the company to heart.

Words on the web: Facebook and Twitter are the two largest social media platforms, and, as such, they’re the best places for engagement as well as the most dangerous places to have disgruntled employees or customers. Twitter, in particular, has a reputation for backfiring on companies. Be sure that there are always multiple people monitoring your Twitter and Facebook accounts so that you can catch hashtag pirates and negative posters quickly and control any damage before it gets out of hand.

Wheels on the road: Your company vehicles should always be clean, well maintained, and driven in accordance with all local laws and regulations. When consumers see a speeding, dirty vehicle with your brand’s name on it, they perceive that your company doesn’t care about quality, safety, or other people.

How do you manage your brand? What kinds of brand management activities do you delegate across your organization?

There’s no question that online advertising is an integral, effective method of reaching today’s consumers. In our ongoing conversation about the benefits of paid, owned, and earned media, online advertising is the most cost-effective form of paid media available today. Further, by its very nature, it lends to exponential creation of earned media because online advertising can be shared via social media and other electronic means such as email and text messaging.

Sometimes, though, it’s still hard to quantify exactly what it is about online advertising that makes it so much more cost-effective and beneficial than traditional methods such as flyers, postcards, and billboards. We sat down to dissect exactly what it is that makes online advertising so superior.

Word-of-Mouth: As mentioned above, online advertising is remarkably effective for increasing word-of-mouth advertising via social media. Very few people are likely to keep and share a paper advertisement (even if they mean to), so that paid media ends with the recipient. However, when an online ad is properly targeted, users need only click a few times to share that information with others, and they very often do just this, turning paid media into earned media with no extra effort on the advertiser’s part.

Targeted Volume: The sheer size of the audience of any one Internet advertisement far exceeds the audience of a traditional paper mailing at the same price. This not only increases your overall reach but also, because Internet ads can be displayed to a truly fine-tuned target audience, you’re reaching the right people. Why spend money advertising to people who are far outside your target demographic when you can reach more of the right people for the same price?

Flexibility and Data: Once you commit to a billboard or a postcard campaign, it’s set and it runs one consistent message. There’s a need and a place for this in many industries and markets. With online advertising, however, there’s much more flexibility. You can run a group of ads and vary the content by audience, time of day, geography, or online location. You can fine-tune the ads as analytics come in demonstrating which are more or less effective, a level of feedback and control that simply isn’t possible with traditional marketing materials.

How has online advertising changed your business? Do you still use traditional advertising at all? We want to hear from you!

Throughout 2012, we spent a lot of time here on the TribalVision blog talking about marketing in the “new normal” economy and how important it is to pay attention to your paid, owned, and earned media. Given that a great website pays for itself countless times over and that it’s a modern business’ most influential and important piece of owned media, we’re always on the lookout here at TV for great websites that really fulfill that ideal role of a successful, engaging, useful company website. To that end, here are some of our top picks from 2012. We’re looking forward to seeing what the web has in store for 2013!

First up, we have http://traveloregon.com/.

Of course, the first thing visitors notice here is the outstanding photography and screen-filling home-page image. While it’s unusual for a website to open this way, for this particular site, it really does work well, transporting the viewer right into the look and feel of Oregon, and inviting us to scroll down and read more about what we’re seeing.

Additionally, we really like the unique font choices throughout and particularly in the top navigation. Play around, and you’ll see how the top navigation responds just by mousing over it. The responsive design is exactly on-trend for last year, and we expect to see a lot more of it this year.

Next we have http://orcabayseafoods.com/.

This is another extremely interactive site. It’s just different. It has a distinct look and feel with truly solid branding built into an engaging, responsive design. Mouse around a bit and see how the site reacts to the movement, adds sound, and engages with visitors. Very well done.

Our third pick, and we should mention these are in no particular order, is http://www.boldchat.com/.

Again here, you’ll notice bold, strong photo imaging across the top of the home page, which goes far beyond the standard scrolling banner. We really like how this B2B uses its hero images in a powerful way with limited text, yet gets the message across loud and clear. It’s enjoyable to receive the message as opposed to feeling as though you have to slog through a ton of boring text. A great balance here. Additionally, the entire site is remarkably easy to navigate and has a clean look and feel many sites strive for but can’t quite achieve. In this case, however, a home run.

Who doesn’t love our next pick, http://www.oakley.com/?

Oakley has been around since long before websites, and this is one company that has turned its site into an invaluable piece of owned media that captures the “cool factor” the brand is so well known for without sacrificing the need to share information in a concise and palatable manner. That balance is hard to find, and Oakley does it well by making its site everything the product is: sleek, cool, edgy, modern

Last, and certainly not least, we have http://www.in-n-out.com/.

If you live on the west coast, In ‘N Out Burger is a household name. This family-owned fast food giant is truly a southern California institution. The website is fun and happy, which is the environment in the restaurants themselves. Each time a visitor refreshes the home page, a different restaurant location is featured in the main image, passively reminding viewers that In ‘N Out is just around the corner no matter where you are out west.

The site sports a fun, interactive timeline and even has downloadable desktop wallpapers visitors can download free. Sure, it’s a little cheesy, but it’s a burger joint. This is a great example of how a site can be fun and not take itself too seriously while still getting great info across while maintaining proper branding. We give it an A+…especially if they promise to open one in Rhode Island soon!

Most professionals have a LinkedIn profile, but a significant percentage of those people are only using part of this useful tool or aren’t using its features effectively or efficiently. Failing to spend some time establishing, building, maintaining, and promoting a solid, engaging LinkedIn profile is a significant missed opportunity in today’s marketplace, and not just for job seekers. To that end, today, we offer our Top Ten Tips for LinkedIn Engagement.

1. Be there. As with all forms of social media, LinkedIn is an organic, changing entity that requires attention and engagement so that you can ensure that you’re keeping up with your contacts and with changes to the platform itself. Set a reoccurring appointment in whatever electronic calendar you use, reminding yourself to check in on LinkedIn at least twice a week.

2. Update your status. When you provide a status update, it appears in your contacts’ news feeds, just like it does on Facebook. This keeps your name in front of your business contacts regularly, even when you’re not having any actual interaction.

3. Share. Consider posting useful articles and information relevant to your industry, so long as you’re certain the material is reliable, well written, and worthwhile to a significant portion of your contacts.

4. Be brief. LinkedIn is not a place for wordiness and long blocks of text. Craft yourself a concise, unique “About” section, and remember that this part of your profile is about you, not your company. Keep it informative and to the point without being afraid to show a little personality.

5. Get involved. Join professional groups via LinkedIn to strengthen your connections, increase your networking effectiveness, and gather great new information.

6. Use the apps. Explore the apps in LinkedIn and add a few that demonstrate your personality and show that there’s more to you than the professional designations after your name.

7. Let people know you’re there. In your email signature, make sure you either list your LinkedIn profile or embed a link. Wisestamp is a great tool for integrating social media links neatly into your signature.

8. Make it meaningful. Rather than clicking around, sending random connection requests to anyone who seems remotely involved in your industry, build an account filled with real-world connections. Meet someone at a work function, seminar, or meeting? Instead of following up via email, follow up with a LinkedIn inmail and connection request. You’re more likely to retain the contact information in a useful way because the person’s name is associated with an account and a photo as opposed to when you enter someone’s email into your Gmail account.

9. Tweet. If you use Twitter for business, connect your accounts so your LinkedIn statuses push to Twitter.

10. Finish what you start. Last, but definitely not least, make sure your profile is complete. You wouldn’t hand an incomplete resume to a prospective employer; don’t provide professional contacts with an unfinished profile.

How do you use LinkedIn? We want to hear from you!

Aside from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, there’s an emerging social media leader that is worth taking a look at: Tout.com. Tout is a video-based, real-time social media network that enables users to upload 15-second videos as their status updates. The layout of the status updates looks similar to Pinterest with a home screen feed filled with visually appealing boxes to choose from: sort of a Pinterest of constantly updated video Facebook statuses which represents a hybrid of both social media giants in one place.

The possibilities here are limitless. With nearly half of all American adults using smartphones, and therefore carrying around video capability right in their pockets, the notion that people can stop, record a 15-second clip, and upload it as a status update is a potential goldmine for businesses.

Imagine what your company could do with Tout:

• Host a testimonial contest in which the customer whose positive video testimonial is shared the most wins a promotional item, coupon, or gift certificate.
• Run “name that product” contests and similar fun promotions with nothing more than an idea and a smartphone.
• Announce new products with video demonstrations, and watch those videos and their descriptions automatically push as status updates to your other social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
• Provide better customer service. Have a customer with a question that’s just better answered visually? Record your response and push it right to Tout!
• Keep customers engaged by keeping your face, name, and brand in front of them in a more dynamic way than by text updates alone.

Tout is new but growing exponentially. Log on today (you can even join by logging in with your Facebook account) and take a look around. Already on Tout.com? We want to hear from you! Let us know what you think so far and tell us how you’re using Tout!

Modern marketing is a constantly evolving activity filled with new opportunities, seemingly on a daily basis, for success, failure, and every point on the spectrum between. One constant, however, remains true from the old days of traditional marketing: we can learn always learn from our history and by watching and actively listening to our competitors. As Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires, writes, “Businesses should follow and learn from others’ successes and failures in order to better understand and predict their own.”

In the spirit of active listening, today the TribalVision blog brings you the Top 20 Marketing Quotes For Successful Marketing in The New Normal Economy.

1. On listening: “The Internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one-way message into a real-time dialogue with millions.” Danielle Sacks, Writer, Fast Company
2. On strong web presence: “Companies are learning that it’s much better to offer customers a place to give direct feedback at their virtual doorstep than to ignore complaints and let them crop up everywhere.” Brian Reich and Dan Solomon, Authors of Media Rules!
3. On social media: “People share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.” Malorie Lucich, Facebook Spokesperson
4. On technology: “Understand why and how your audience uses technology and then start trying to align your communication efforts.” Brian Reich and Dan Solomon, Authors of Media Rules!
5. On adaptability: “People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.” Brian Halligan, Co-Author of Inbound Marketing, CEO, Hubspot
6. On planning: “The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” Carl von Clausewitz
7. On selling: “Yes, I sell people things they don’t need. I can’t, however, sell them something they don’t want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to.” John O’Toole
8. On consumer psychology:  “Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse.”  Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog
9. On real-time marketing: “Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.” David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
10. On nuance: “Clarity trumps persuasion.” Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director, Meclabs
11. On word of mouth 2.0: “The way you can understand all of the social media is as the creation of a new kind of public space.” Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher, Microsoft
12. On direction: “Focus on the core problem your business solves and put out lots of content and enthusiasm and ideas about how to solve that problem.” Laura Fitton, Founder, oneforty.com
13. On innovation: “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
14. On websites: “In today’s information age of Marketing and Web 2.0, a company’s website is the key to their entire business.” Marcus Sheridan, Author of The Sales Lion blog, Marketing Speaker
15. On risk: “Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing.” Mike Volpe, CMO, Hubspot
16. On feedback: “Customers can’t always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what’s wrong.” Carly Fiona on the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast
17. On new media: “Institutions that once had to go through media to deliver information are now themselves media.” Andrew Nachison, Founder, We Media
18. On research: “If you want to understand how a lion hunts don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle.” Jim Stengel CMO of P&G
19. On alignment: “To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.” Brian Halligan, Co-Author of Inbound Marketing, CEO, Hubspot
20. On focus: “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.” Guy Kawasaki, Former Chief Evangelist, Apple, Co-Founder of AllTop.com.

What are your guiding principles in marketing? What quotes inspire and motivate you? Leave us a comment and let us know what’s on your mind.