Remember when the end of the year was a s-l-o-w time for the staffing and professional services industry? No? Good for you. That means you have been making the very most of end-of-year transitions to finish well and prepare for a new year of opportunities. As you begin that effort, your friends at ClearEdge Marketing have a few end-of-year tips to help you prime your 2010 marketing and sales game.

Five Pre-2010 Marketing Musts

1. Clean Your Prospect List. From Jill Ruiz, ClearEdge Senior Project Manager.
A good or mediocre prospect list is a weakness for any business today. Strengthen your database by ensuring it is a vetted and targeted list of prospective clients that are well worth marketing to. The time you save your sales staff on pursuing poor leads is extremely valuable. The money you save by ensuring marketing programs aren’t pushed out to the wrong contacts is precious. And the more time you focus on strong, qualified leads, the greater your chances are of winning new business. Here are three ways to ensure your prospect list remains lean and effective throughout 2010:

• Purge and update. Get rid of all outdated, inaccurate addresses. Involve your sales team in the clean-up and make it an ongoing effort that is part of your sales process throughout the year.

• Build it out. Grow your list by adding qualified leads from conferences you’ve attended, events you’ve hosted and other networking events and opportunities. Rented lists can also be a good way to enhance your current prospect list.

• Maintain, maintain, maintain. Schedule list clean-up days consistently and in advance to ensure useless addresses are weeded out. Once you’ve implemented multiple list-building tactics, regularly evaluate those investments and their return to determine whether eliminations are required.

2. Leverage Social Media. From Lia Pinto, ClearEdge Social Media Coordinator.
According to Forrester Research, 73% of Internet users worldwide have at least one social media account. Your clients, your candidates and the people you want as clients and candidates are networking, learning and socializing through social media channels in greater numbers. 2010 is not the year to fall behind in the continuous communication evolution. What do you do to keep pace with the social media movement?

• Appoint a person or build a social networking committee. Once you’ve decided to build a social media presence, hold someone accountable. Start with those in your organization who are already familiar with and frequenting social media sites. Identify internal team members who can help contribute content, keep up with networks on a regular basis and watch for information being shared about your business and industry across social networks. And remember-by listening to your clients and peers you will learn how to engage/relate with them.

• Set reasonable, strategic goals. Start slowly and strategically by defining your audience and determining which social media tools and sites your business can leverage with ongoing success. Create a presence on networks where your audience “hangs out.” For example: Are they reading blogs? Do they keep up with Twitter? Do they share content on Digg? Are they viewing videos on YouTube? Are they on Facebook or LinkedIn? ROI for social media should also be different; it depends on what type of interaction you’re looking for and can be different with each organization, industry or social network. Additionally, ROI should not just be monetary, it should be measured “socially” as well.

• Be realistic. When it comes to social media, don’t spread your business too thin. It’s better to become the master of one or two social media sites than to sporadically and half-heartedly post content in five or six places and hope for results. Besides being realistic, also be transparent. Organizations present in social networks need to be truthful and attentive by responding to questions and comments and learning from suggestions and criticism.

3. Review Sales Processes for 2010. From Kathy Dooley, ClearEdge Marketing Director.
Forward-thinking organizations are preparing for the upswing of the market by optimizing their sales processes. Here’s what you can do:

• Examine sales capabilities. Are your sales team and selling approach aligned with how customers buy? Does your staff have the knowledge and tools needed to differentiate you from the competition? Look for gaps in skills and knowledge and find ways to rectify talent and knowledge issues. The beginning of the year is a crucial sales period and you need to have the best team, right from the start.

• Bring process discipline to your sales organization. If the sales process is not clearly mapped out for sales teams, define and map it now. It’s critical to competitive survival today to have a high-performing sales team that management can monitor and support. Without defined sales processes, it’s almost impossible to know how effectively teams are networking and selling.

4. Polish Your Web Site. From Krzysztof Pabian, ClearEdge Creative Director-Multimedia.
To make certain your number one marketing tool is inviting and can deliver bottom-line business results, you don’t need to break the bank. The following small investments in your Web site are worth every penny because they drive traffic and help bring business to you:

• Check the content. A careful sweep will ensure that your business’ messages are strong, clear, appealing and up-to-date. When’s the last time you posted a press release or event? Have you integrated your social media presence into your site? When kept current, your Web site shows visitors what a relevant and credible force your business is. A simple test: What year is your copyright line? We actually see sites with 2006!

• Check your design. Does your site load quickly? Look good on any browser (don’t forget to test Safari and mobile applications!)? If not, visitors could be leaving as soon as they see it. Now’s the time to ensure your site design echoes your brand and company character, and doesn’t get in the way of the site’s functionality.

• Put yourself at the top of the list. Search engine optimization (SEO) will help you achieve strong Internet accessibility. If you haven’t invested in SEO, now is the time. It means the difference between showing up on page one of a Google search, and showing up on page four. Quick fixes: Add title tags to every page and be sure to include meta tag descriptions! Oh, and is your URL registered on sites such as Google and Bing?

5. Get “Creative.” From Jessica Castaneda, ClearEdge Marketing Director.
In our daily dealings with professional services and staffing firms, the ClearEdge team often hears clients say “Once we’re in front of clients, we always win the business. The tricky part is getting in front of them.” What are some of the best ideas for getting in front of prospects for the New Year?

• Use the power and accessibility of the Web. Webinars are an increasingly popular means of sharing expertise and thought leadership in a non-salesy, easily accessible manner. Prospects that may not be open to face-to-face meetings, may be willing to listen in on an informative Webinar as they eat their lunch. As long as the material is relevant and timely and you market your event appropriately, you are sure to gain the audience you seek. For additional credibility, consider teaming up with an association that caters to your target market. Associations are always on the lookout for educational content for their constituency. They may be willing to co-host such events and market them to their membership.

• Form networking groups. Unlike social media sites, networking groups enable you to build long-term relationships with clients and prospects using face-to-face interactions. Building an intimate networking group that enables peers-such as CIOs or CEOs-to share ideas, best practices and lessons learned will position you as an industry insider and trusted partner.

• Prepare to launch a Target Account Program (TAP). A TAP allows your business to rapidly increase awareness and create new business opportunities by honing in on a targeted group of well-researched prospective clients. Properly implemented, a TAP will enable you to increase sales activity and-most importantly-set new appointments!

“Out with the old and in with the new.” You often hear this as the New Year approaches. At ClearEdge Marketing, we say “In with the programs and processes that work,”-be they new best practices or old ones-and out with those that haven’t shown a proper return! The real key to success is taking time to prepare your marketing and sales strategy, and that time is now. Welcome to 2010, the prelude. Be sure and make the most of it.

Leslie Vickrey
President & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing

Be purposeful, be daring, be creative, be likable and have fun. If that doesn’t sound like the droning recession and recovery advice you’re hearing on the cable news stations, I’m not surprised.

These are just a few of the many lessons I gathered at the 2009 TechServe Alliance Conference & Tradeshow in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Since the event, my head has been brimming with bright and bold ideas I took in as an attendee and as a speaker on IT services marketing. I want to share some of what I learned at the Conference with the hopes that these lessons inspire new thinking and clever 2010 strategies for your organization.

Do They Like You? It’s a Question Worth Asking.
In business, being liked is not a question of feeding egos; it’s a matter of closing deals. Ken Schmidt, branding guru for Harley-Davidson, shared this insight in his keynote address, which explained how people buy from people (brands and businesses) they like. No matter how clever an ad campaign is or how ambitious the sales person, a prospect will not buy from a company if they don’t actually like you and want to work with your organization. So how do you get prospects to want to work with you? Here was Ken Schmidt’s seasoned advice:

• Don’t rely on subtle cues. Be clear and consistent in your messages and goals. Don’t be afraid to ask bold questions like, “What do we need to do to get you to try our services?” And remember, the meeting is a much bigger deal to you, than it is the client.

• Be clearly, noticeably, purposefully different. It doesn’t matter how any other company does it. Only worry about conducting business the way you know how, with clients and prospects’ needs at the top of your mind. Let them know you value what they say. If they want to see X happen, tell them you’ll take their idea back to headquarters. Making them feel important and valued will help build and strengthen your relationship.

• Do something they won’t expect. Here’s an example: On your way to your next sales meeting, call the client 15 minutes in advance and say, “I thought about stopping at Starbucks on my way to our meeting, would you like me to bring you anything?” It’s different. It’s something they won’t expect. It will make them feel like you did something special for them. If they say no, you don’t stop. But at least you asked.

• Listen and understand. You MUST understand your clients and prospects’ needs, even if those current needs do not include you. If a client or prospect says they don’t need your services at this time, respect that. Send a note with an article you think they would find interesting, and let them know you look forward to having them as a customer-but until then, you hope they’re well. It’s polite and courteous. And who doesn’t like that? Just remember to stay in touch with them from time to time until they are ready to become a customer, and try to give them reasons why they should be.

Be Focused, Firm and Fun
Keynote speaker Cynthia Pasky, who is the founder, president and CEO of Strategic Staffing Solutions (S3), shared her firm belief in how client relationships built on trust are the ones that last. Pointing to S3’s rigorous, unswerving focus on specific industries, she explained how that strong focus on building rock solid relationships across those industries has allowed S3 to enter its 20th consecutive year of growth and profitability. Pasky offered the following ideas for how IT services organizations could replicate their success:

• Define the market-don’t let it define you. Understand what you want the market to be. And know what you want your business to be in terms of clients, size, industry and what type of GM%. Be clear from the bottom up, and stick to it-even if it means you have to walk away from business.

• Don’t overlook account penetration. Ask yourself what else you can sell to existing clients. Is there market share to be had? Do you see competitors when you walk the clients’ halls? If so, there’s share to be had.

• Keep cold calling. Cindy still does it and believes it should be part of every sales rep’s approach.

• Be creative and have fun. If you don’t have a badge that allows you to get into your clients’ halls, sneak in behind someone who does. You haven’t done your job if you haven’t been thrown out of your customers’ offices a few times. While this approach isn’t for everyone, being bold in the right cases can help set you apart and show you’ll do anything to win the business and service the client. Do everything you can to be selling and take good care of your team as you do it. Have fun. Enjoy what you’re doing.

Make Your Message Your Own
I was privileged to lead two marketing discussions energized by enthusiastic participants who are eager to differentiate their marketplace messages and become more effective sales and marketing professionals. One of the primary keys to increasing sales and marketing effectiveness is better collaboration between these two groups.

A poor sales-marketing partnership means longer sales cycles, increased cost of sales, missed opportunities and the risk of looking incompetent to clients and potential customers. A strong sales-marketing partnership equals a rich, qualified pipeline of prospects that feeds a successful, strong sales cycle. Here are a handful of the winning strategies ClearEdge shared with Conference attendees for improving sales and marketing relationships and performance.

• Alignment to the sales cycle. Marketing teams need to design tools that effectively support their sales teams at every juncture of the sales process.

• Targeted account lists. Every sales professional/account executive should be working off of a short, targeted account/prospect list. By building separate, vetted targeted account lists, a business maximizes its sales efforts. Account execs will no longer end up calling into the same account or accidentally calling an existing client.

• Role reversals. Neither sales nor marketing should work in a vacuum. Send marketing out with sales to meet customers and see their environments, learn customer and prospect challenges first hand, see hard jobs like cold calling and presentations first hand, and understand the responsibilities, stress, routine and tools of sales professionals. Send sales over to marketing to learn how programs are developed, the science behind marketing, the people behind the work and the work behind the work.

• Metrics and measurement. To know the effectiveness of a marketing tool or program, you must measure new revenue and clients by program and campaign, the number of lead generations that can be tied to a specific marketing program or tool, as well as how clients and prospects responded to each program or tool. Successful measurement requires a simple reporting system for sales (e.g. CRM, Excel, or an online tool like Salesforce.com), as well as open and honest communications between sales and marketing.

• Centralized tools and information. Easy access to critical information-for both marketing and sales-will ensure a continued symbiotic relationship between the two departments. Marketing should ensure that up-to-date items like collateral, program results and success stories, as well as tool and program training resources are available to the sales team in a central, easy-to-find location. Sales should make information on program progress, program results and in some cases, prospect lists, readily available to marketing teams.

We’ll here’s hoping you still like me and ClearEdge despite the length of this blog. As you ponder my likeability, please remember I have only covered three sessions from a Conference that was packed with more than 30 lesson-rich sessions. Of course, I might share more next month so be sure and tell me what you’d like to hear more (or less) about and I will gladly oblige.

Leslie Vickrey
Founder & President
ClearEdge Marketing

While the use of print ads, radio/TV ads and event marketing has been down recently, e-mail marketing is one form of communication businesses are really clicking with. A recent Marketing Sherpa survey found that e-mailing to house lists was up 48%. A Forrester Research survey predicts that in five years, clients will be deluged with more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages annually. That’s about 25 messages every day. With more businesses utilizing this marketing method how can you ensure your e-mails aren’t deleted faster than you can say “junk mail?” 

To answer this question, let’s first look at the reasons e-mail marketing is so popular.  

It’s cost-effective. You can run a valuable, effective e-mail campaign with a minimal investment to create and manage. And forget about postage or envelopes. With e-mail marketing, you can get your message out to hundreds, even thousands of contacts in a matter of seconds, by clicking a few buttons. 

It’s simple. Whether you manage your campaign in-house or use a third party, the tools to send it are very intuitive and easy to use, and the results are easy to measure. 

It’s accessible. Nearly everyone has an e-mail address and can be reached via this medium. 

It can be as frequent as you’d like (just don’t go overboard). With a plan and some discipline, e-mail marketing allows you to regularly stay in front of your clients and prospects. 

While these characteristics make e-mail marketing popular, the popularity brings consequences, including a decrease in industry-wide response metrics and in subscriber tolerance. Dozens of e-mail marketing messages every day means recipients may not have the time or interest to even open a message, let alone click through it. And while someone may have signed up to receive your messages, too many will cause them to put you on the top of their blocked senders list. 

What You Need to Avoid the Blocked Senders List

A plan, discipline and the following tips will help you stay in front of your clients and prospects, providing them with perfectly timed, high-quality e-mail marketing messages. 

• Thoughtful, valuable content. Whether you send your message in the form of a newsletter, Keep-in-Touch (KIT) program or e-card, content is king. Your message must be clear, concise and appealing, so that people will read it, gain interest, and ideally, reach out to you. But you can’t just have great content. It needs to be appealing and appropriate for each segment of your target audience. While you may not have the resources to craft a different message for each group, you can create different subject lines that are relevant for each.

• Branded template. Your e-mail template doesn’t have to be elaborate, but you want readers to know it’s from you. A simple, generic design that includes your company logo and reflects your brand can be reused time and again.

• Discipline and consistency. Just as two trips to the gym each year will not prepare you for a triathlon, your e-mail marketing campaign will not gain client interest if you only send it twice a year. To increase open rates, you must be consistent. If your campaign is monthly, it’s important to send your message around the same time month-over-month (e.g. the third week of the month). A little discipline will go a long way in your effort to stay top-of-mind with those on your list, and the more familiar your list members are with your company, the more likely they are to open your message.

• Consider a third-party service. While you can use a personal e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, programs like Vertical Response and Constant Contact allow you to upload your e-mail template, test it, send it to a large (or small) list and track the results of your campaign. Both programs are relatively inexpensive and are easy to use.

Measuring Your Results

Once you’ve blasted your message to your list, programs like Vertical Response and Constant Contact allow you to see results on things like who opened it, clicked on any link within your e-mail, as well as which e-mails bounced, and who unsubscribed from your campaign. MailChimp provides an “apples to apples” benchmark comparison for small businesses in several industries, so you can see how your numbers compare.

If your open rate is low (under 25%) on your first few campaigns, don’t be disappointed. It can take several months for people to become familiar with your company and gain interest in your messages. But there are several things you can try to boost your open rate over time. Play around with subject lines, always keeping them simple and short. Experiment with launch times as well. You may be more likely to open a message on Thursday or Friday afternoon when the week is winding down, as opposed to Monday morning when your inbox is filled with requests. Another method is to identify the recipients who haven’t opened the message and have your sales team and recruiters forward the original to them with a personal note. This helps them see your subject line as relevant to them individually.

While it may take a while to perfect your timing and subject line formula, one thing is certain. A list filled with incorrect or old e-mail addresses will not reap positive results. It’s better to have a shorter, accurate list, than a long one filled with addresses that aren’t in use anymore. So take the time to clean your list! Before you blast your message, check for typos, broken links and missing graphics. And remember: you can never send too many tests.

Jessica Elliott
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

In this economy, IT staffing and consulting firms are seeing many of their clients not only cut back or freeze hiring, but inevitably go through staff layoffs. Our first instinct is to cut and run, don’t waste your time, they aren’t buying. But should you move to greener pastures when layoffs are in full swing at client locations?

Taking the Long-Term View
We all talk about how important it is to build long-term partnerships with our clients. That commitment is never more apparent than when clients go through layoffs. How you treat, value and support clients during the dry spells in hiring activity can have a significant impact on the viability of that partnership when the rains come pouring back. So, how do you demonstrate customer care and build client loyalty when your customers aren’t buying? Below I’ve outlined a simple, two-part approach you can take to help keep your client relationships strong, position yourself as a true long-term partner and enable you to tap into new talent sources and a wealth of future business.

Part 1: Make Your Client Shine Now
Your client is going through a tough spell; tensions amongst their rank and file are no doubt high. Providing a few simple, value-add services can make them stand out to their retained staff, in their communities and to their displaced alumni. While you are not an outplacement firm — nor should you try to be one — you are a master at finding, vetting and placing professionals. Develop a communication your client can disseminate to their displaced workers with a list of available services you are willing to provide, some ideas include:

1. Resume tips and techniques – No one knows resume best practices better than your recruiters. So offer a free webinar to your client’s downsized staff. Review basic resume tips, techniques as well as pitfalls to avoid.

2. Jump start their job search – After a period of adjustment, displaced workers will be ready to start looking for new opportunities. Offer to include their resumes in your database with the expectation that if an opportunity arises they will definitely be called.

3. Become their career expert – Develop a monthly or quarterly newsletter — or develop a career page on your Web site – that gives clients, their current staff and their displaced workers industry information, career advice and current job openings. This positions you as an expert to your client, while also opening the door to future referrals as downsized staff find other employment and possibly run across opportunities for your business.

Part 2: Help Your Client Plan for the Future
While it may seem premature to begin future-state workforce planning while actively going through a downsizing, it’s actually the perfect time. Layoffs are often a reaction to short-term, cost-containment issues; but that won’t always be the case. Downsizes, however painful, give the client a unique opportunity to plan for and develop a more appropriate workforce structure based on future business goals. Offering your workforce expertise during this process will enable you to build an even more solid partnership with the client.

1. Technology and Skills Assessment – Offer a high-level, technology and skills assessment. Will the skills they currently have in place support their six-, 12- or 24-month business goals? Are there key software or infrastructure changes on the horizon that will drive the type of skills they will need to retain or recruit?  By providing your client with an assessment of their current workforce and a forecast of the top skills they will need in the near future, you are helping them make better workforce decisions in order to meet their overarching organizational goals.

2. Flexible Workforce Planning – Having the right skills in place is critical, but developing an optimal workforce structure for their organization will help your client keep costs down and efficiencies high. After all, those were some of the reasons for their current layoffs. By assisting your client in proactively planning for the right mix of direct hires, contract staff and outsourced engagements, they will be in a better position to quickly ramp up or ramp down operations in order to meet the changing demands of the marketplace.

It Pays in the Long Run
For any firm, it is obviously critical to maintain profitability and focus on what is currently making your business money. But, it’s is also important to keep your name in front of clients who may not be ready to buy. The beauty of these value-added services is in the “offering” itself. Just letting clients know you are committed to the partnership despite their current spend will gain you incredible leverage — regardless of whether they take you up on the offers.

Keep in mind, the inevitable economic upswing will soon affect everyone, including your clients. Actively maintaining your relationships, demonstrating your value and supporting your clients during layoffs and dry
spells — when many of your competitors have long hit the road — will put you in the best possible position to shut out the competition and capture significant client-share when activity does pick back up.

Jessica Castaneda
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

After returning from the recent Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum, I’d like to share several best practices from keynote presentations and roundtable discussions that are top-of-mind with many business leaders today. For your benefit, we added “marketing in action” tips and suggestions to each of the key takeaways.

Stay close to your customers.
Customer satisfaction surveys. These are a great way to make certain you’re meeting your customers’ needs. They allow you to learn firsthand what your clients are happy with and what needs to be improved—critical, strategic information no matter the economic climate. But it’s not enough to just distribute the surveys. Once you’ve gathered the results, share them! Let clients, prospects, everyone know that first-rate customer service is a top priority for you. And, if applying for awards or refreshing your message strategy, incorporate the metrics and insights you gather from surveys.

Keep-in-Touch Programs. The purpose of a Keep-in-Touch program (KIT) is to consistently, informatively and creatively distinguish your business by showcasing your internal knowledge and expertise to decision makers. KITs provide a vehicle for persistently reaching out to clients you already have, as well as those you’re trying to win. 

Status updates. Now more than ever, customers want and need to know exactly how you’re helping them. Frequent status updates are an effective way to ensure needs are being met—both on their end and on yours—and that the necessary progress is being made. 

Revisit your strategy and business model.
Get back to basics. Do you know your value proposition? If not, look at your clients’ pain points. How does your company address AND fix these pains? If you can’t sum this up in less than three minutes (1-2 sentences), you’re not focused enough. Once you know what your value proposition is, focus, focus, focus on it and consistently use that message in everything you do. If you communicate your value effectively and clearly emphasize what makes you different, you’ll find clients moving from competitors’ client rosters over to yours.

Create brand advocacy. Get referrals. Ask for client testimonials and create case studies to add to your marketing arsenal. When your arsenal is well stocked with a range of messages and proof points that tell a consistent, provocative story, you’ll be able to produce campaigns that reach the right audience, drive significant business leads and expand brand awareness. If your clients love your work, it doesn’t hurt to ask them to advocate your brand!

Aim for lead conversion, not just lead generation. Measure Target Account Program (TAP) results, and if lead conversion is low, see what you can do to increase it. Make sure your message is reaching the right audience within your target company, even if it means slightly different campaigns depending on the audience.

Be of service.
Examine your existing client accounts. Make sure you’re doing all you can to serve and add value to their business. Come up with innovative ideas to retain your client base as well as shift to growth markets. If you’re tapped out with existing clients, ask them for referrals into new companies. Get them to introduce you whenever possible.

Remember your ABCs. A great tip from one of the marketing roundtable panelists. Always Be Closing (ABC). Everyone on your team needs to be a salesperson, especially in this economy. Your whole team should be thinking about new ways to provide clients with valuable service in addition to ways to bring in new business. Just by answering the phone with the most positive tone possible and being of absolute service can help!

Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Communicate internally, as well as externally. Not only should your clients, prospects and other key stakeholders be informed on what’s happening with your company, but your internal team should be up-to-date as well. If your team understands your company’s bigger picture, they’ll better understand how they fit into it and the role they play in reaching company goals. There’s no such thing as over communicating with your team—during economic downturns and always!

Ensure your Web site is in tip top shape. Keep your content up-to-date and correct. Track where visitors are going, what pages they’re staying on, what they’re interested in—and focus on maintaining and updating those areas while looking for ways to improve the less popular areas. We live in a world where the first thing people do when they hear about a company is visit its Web site. This means there is no marketing tool more important than your site… so make the most of it!

Along with the strategies outlined above, it’s important to remember to network. It’s crucial to embrace social media networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as blogging. Learn what each can do for you, and then actively participate on them.

Leslie Vickrey
President & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing

ClearEdge Marketing may seem like a young team if you were to examine our company timeline (founded in 2006) or become distracted by our youthful good looks. In truth, most of us at ClearEdge have been marketing together for well over a decade.

In the 1990s, the ClearEdge team was deep in the corridors and offices of corporate America. We were building and managing large-scale marketing, advertising, PR and branding programs for professional services, technology and healthcare companies.  We  worked with large publicly traded companies as well as small start-up firms. Today, we are still together doing what we love—marketing, advertising, PR and branding. The difference is our approach. Embracing the outsourcing models we long helped clients to market, ClearEdge now serves as a flexible and scaleable outsourced marketing team to a diverse range of national and multinational companies.

Why does this model work for ClearEdge? First of all, there is a great need in the marketplace. When our founder, Leslie Vickrey, decided to build her own marketing firm, she knew there were copious small and mid-size professional services, staffing and IT services companies nationwide without the budget for full-time marketing resources. They needed on-demand, highly effective marketing support that allowed them to compete with larger, widely established firms while staying within the bounds of modest marketing budgets.

Professional services companies—experts in the consulting and outsourcing model—were quick to see value and cost efficiency of outsourced marketing resources. In just a few years, ClearEdge has become the go-to marketing support firm for the IT professional services industry and continues to deepen its reach into finance, healthcare and legal.

Our outsourced model has also brought ClearEdge back to our roots of big, global corporate marketing. Changing business models coupled with recent economic difficulties have made outsourced marketing support a very useful tool for large companies and global enterprises as well. Today ClearEdge supports internal teams and runs marketing projects for Fortune 1000 firms, demonstrating that outsourcing is as much a part of the Chief Marketing Officer’s toolkit as it is for today’s CIOs, COOs and CFOs.

The amazing part for us—the ClearEdge staff—is that we get the best of all worlds. We still get to work on the dynamic, creative and deliberate marketing programs we love. Some are small and targeted, some are expansive. All are strategic and measured.

We get to work on local and regional projects as well as global initiatives. We get to be part of large, corporate marketing teams, we get to lead marketing teams and sometimes we ARE the marketing team.

Our work is rich in learning and diversity. Marketers are hungry for knowledge, new market research, industry news, new technologies, new ways to share information, new imagery, new words, new ways of thinking. At ClearEdge, learning is our constant working mode as we study and build strategies and tools for taking on the unique and challenging marketing needs of our diverse clientele. The reservoir of knowledge we are continually building has allowed us to bring new and intriguing ideas to our clients time and again.

Best of all, the ClearEdge outsourced model allows us to work with talented, hardworking and passionate colleagues who live and work in locations across the country and in a few cases across the globe. ClearEdge prides itself on being a small team of committed marketers who achieve big success. A close-knit, happy team with big goals and bold resolve. That’s how we see our work at ClearEdge Marketing—the best of all worlds.

Jessica Castaneda
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

With the current economic turmoil, many companies are turning inward and holding on to their cash reserves. While it’s always wise to be shrewd with your money—regardless of how the economy is fairing—the old adage “you need to spend money to make money” still holds true.

The good news is that there are tactics you can employ that will have a minimal cost associated with them—but will produce great returns, build your brand and increase your lead generation efforts. In fact, if done right, the ROI from employing all of these tactics will only continue to improve over time. So just what are these tactics?

1. Incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) best practices
Today, more than ever, we’re inundated with so many messages that when people need to search for something, they just Google it. Making sure your company ranks high in organic search results doesn’t happen magically—nor does it happen overnight. But it can happen. The outcome—a flood of new, and possibly returning, visitors to your site—and therefore, more revenue.

These best practices range from keyword research and incorporating the keywords that resonate with your audience across all mediums to confirming your site structure is search-engine friendly and using correct programming code to draw the right attention to keywords on your page.

2. Improve your Web site
Amidst some speculation out there, content is STILL king. Review your site’s content. Does it resonate with your target audience? Is it up to date? Is it Web-friendly? Does it have a call to action on each page? Beef up and revise content as needed, making sure that you incorporate applicable keywords as part of your SEO strategy.

Also, understand the behavior of your Web site visitor by analyzing your site’s traffic. Once you see a trend or a pattern, take steps to remedy any glaring problems so that your visitors will stay on your site longer.

3. Create a blog
Remembering that content is king, producing a blog with targeted posts focused on key industry topics is a guaranteed win-win-win. Your target audience will gain insight and be able to share their comments about that posting.

At the same time, you will be able to leverage its content across multiple marketing mediums. These mediums can range from e-newsletters as part of a Target Account Program (TAP), Facebook and Twitter, to providing you the option of sending clients/prospects a link to a blog posting highlighting the sales point you’re addressing. Your company will also be able to demonstrate its expertise on select topics and, when done right, it will also help you to become a recognized industry resource. The days of long white papers have been replaced with informative blog posts and shorter articles focusing on key business-related topics.

Lastly, the search engines will associate this relevant content to your company when people are searching for topics related to your post—thus helping you increase in the search engine rankings (in other words, appear higher on the list).

4. Implement a linking strategy
People are short on time and new products and information are rolled out every hour. Unless you’re Microsoft or Coca-Cola, not everyone knows about who you are and what you have to offer. Implementing a linking strategy helps dwindle that percentage down—one comment at a time.

This is done by posting comments on various blogs and forums that ultimately directs others back to your site and/or blog. For example, you’re in IT staffing and are looking to recruit potential SAP developers. Locate and join any user groups and communities focused on SAP. Once a member, post comments and reply to other people’s comments (a.k.a. threads). Continue to do this for a couple of posts, and then start to mention in future posts that your company specializes in IT staffing and is in need of SAP developers. Provide a link to your site and/or job posting. Repeat this process across multiple mediums and sites.

5. Invest in social media
People have been connecting to friends, family and colleagues on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter for some time and businesses have discovered how powerful these social networking and social messaging sites are for reaching their target audience.

Like businesses, consumers are also turning inward during this economic situation. They are making more and more purchasing decisions based upon recommendations from friends and colleagues in their network. This trend is expected to only continue—thus promoting the need to not only have a company presence on these social networking and social messaging sites, but also actively post and comment on them.

As with anything online, these tactics should complement each other. This creates a synergy that enables you to maximize your efforts and build your brand, while generating additional revenue. Another benefit to having an online presence is that it enables you to modify your messaging and/or approach at a moment’s notice—helping you stay current with the latest trends and hot topics.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get online! Start experiencing firsthand the benefits of implementing these five key methods to help you to generate additional revenue.

Elizabeth Smith
Director of Social Media Marketing
ClearEdge Marketing

I was reading an article recently that talked about evangelism. Not the Jim and Tammy Bakker style of evangelism—but customer evangelism. The article started out with this question: What is the most effective advertising tool available?

A. TV
B. Print ads
C. Billboards
D. Your customers 

If you answered “D,” you’re onto one of the hottest new trends in marketing—customer evangelism.

The concept of customer evangelism is all about creating true believers in your company. When you build this kind of loyalty, you gain two priceless assets: a pool of repeat customers and ongoing word-of-mouth referrals to new customers.

The tricky part: you can’t hire or buy customer evangelists. You have to earn them. But how? According to Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, the following techniques can help you build a loyal following.

-Constantly communicate with customers to understand what they love about your products and services.
-Share knowledge with customers to increase the perceived and actual value of a service.
-Build “buzz” based on sincere, personal referrals. 
-Create a customer community, where people who care about your business, products or services can gather.
-Provide “bite-size” products or services so customers can share the experience without an expensive purchase.
-Aim for a larger cause to create emotional connections.
 
How do these techniques translate into real life? Today there are plenty of ways to build customer evangelists. For now, I’ll focus on constant communication and building a buzz based on referrals.

Constant communication. Company blogs are perhaps the easiest, most cost-efficient and widest-reaching way to stay in constant touch with clients. Blog content can be posted quickly, it is informal yet controlled, and it provides a forum for feedback on the subject matter posted. Other benefits to blogs that are often overlooked are that they can give companies higher search engine rankings and exposure to a wider, diverse customer community. An example of a company with a wide-reaching blog is Google. Their blog talks about everything from issues they think are important to society to company news. Keep blogs informative, avoid marketing “fluff,” and keep them fresh.

Another opportunity to turn clients into evangelists is through your company newsletter. Even if your client or prospective client isn’t looking to purchase your services right at that time, they are reminded of you and perhaps learned something from your newsletter that they might share with a colleague. Whether your newsletter is printed or sent via e-mail, you’ve established top-of-mind awareness and another chance to connect with clients.

Building a Buzz. Of course “word of mouth” advertising is invaluable. It says something about your reputation as people typically only recommend a company where they’ve had stellar service and have been treated well. Any opportunity to post customer testimonials on your Web site or to include them in a newsletter gives clients a taste of what other similar companies are experiencing and a look at new ways that they themselves might be able to maximize your services.
 
One final word of advice—keep things natural. While it’s important to encourage customer evangelism, don’t try to force it.

Jennifer Higgins
Senior Writer
ClearEdge Marketing

If you are an IT executive looking for a true thrill and profound inspiration in 2008 (one that I guarantee will make your knees tremble and your palms sweaty), I suggest you consider high tea. Tea might not sound very intimidating, but let me introduce you to the hosts: they are young, bright, thoughtful achievers from across inner-city Chicago, and they represent the future of our IT industry. They are i.c.stars.   

i.c.stars is an innovative technology mentoring program designed to foster the skills of driven young people (ages 18-27) who often lack formal education but are rich in ambition, ideas and smarts. An intensive four-month technology and business immersion, the program is producing skilled, inventive technology enthusiasts who are going on to jobs at leading IT firms across the Chicago community. You can read a profile of the program, its history and its success by Chicago Sun-Times writer and former news anchor Carol Marin here.  

i.c.stars high tea events are part of their leadership training program in which interns host an afternoon tea for a technology leader from the Chicago community. Their job is to interview the professionals they invite to tea in order to gain knowledge, learn from the experiences of an industry veteran and challenge norms. Let me tell you this: The toughest job interviewer you have faced is nothing compared to a table of 10 eager and intelligent i.c.stars interns ready to question, challenge, discuss, debate, laugh and learn.  

My high tea experience with i.c.stars was mind-blowing not only because of the rate at which these young people are learning and growing, but also because I was learning as quickly as they were. I had tea for an hour with the current crop of i.c.stars interns, and it was one of the most important hours in my technology career. They were sponges who, after introducing me to the entire table of interns, began an interview process during which I was put on the spot, challenged, asked serious questions and invited to question their ideas and assumptions. 

It was both exhilarating and exhausting, but most of all it was full of promise. I was able to see the potential of our IT industry in the eyes and ideas of these young interns. And, despite what economic reports may warn, our future is full of promise.  

The goal of i.c.stars is to help develop future IT leaders, which is an important objective for the entire IT industry. If we want a stronger IT industry tomorrow, we must commit to training and educating tomorrow’s leaders. i.c.stars offers today’s IT leaders a perfect opportunity to help strengthen the future of the technology industry while also giving back to the community. If you are like me, finding the time to “give back” in a meaningful way is not simple. However, attending high tea with i.c.stars is a simple (albeit challenging and provocative) way to share your knowledge and give to both the community and the industry.  

I would like to challenge IT executives and leaders from across the Illinois region to have a cup of tea or two with i.c.stars. Discover how i.c. stars can turn one hour into a week’s worth of learning and get a glimpse of how great our future technology leadership can be. If you are not in the Illinois region, then let me encourage you to consider a professional mentorship program in your own community. Giving back to future generations is not only rewarding, it is inspiring. What could be better for the soul or our technology future than pure inspiration?

Leslie Vickrey
President & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing

Your prospect list should be the foundation of your sales strategy. It should be the very first thing your sales team does to prepare for any type of sales or marketing activity – be it cold calling or a full-on target account program. A strategically developed and validated prospect list is the most important element to any successful sales program. Yet it is often the most neglected part of the sales process. 

The best prospect lists are made, not bought.
By this I don’t mean you cannot start with a purchased list. Hoovers, Dun & Bradstreet or even appropriate publications and associations are great channels to gather potential sales targets. But you cannot stop there. These lists are fantastic until about 60 seconds after you purchase them. Without a good degree of validation from sales teams – meaning actively reaching out to each contact and verifying that they are still at the company and their contact information is still correct, they get stale very quickly. Once you have the right information in your system, you can use it as part of a Keep-in-Touch (KIT) Program or Target Account Program (TAP).  

Know your target.
The best way to identify the right target for your company is to know what you are looking for. Take a look at your current clients. Who are your best clients right now? Who are your ideal clients, those you wish you were doing business with? Are your best clients also your ideal clients? If not, why not? Questions like these will help you narrow down the type of prospects you would like to go after. It will also help you segment prospects into categories – “A list” are those prospects who fit your “ideal” criteria, “B list” may be prospects who would be good to have in your client base, but not as ideal as the “A list”, and so on. Moving clients from the “B list” to the “A list” are important too. Once you know who you want and their priority for your firm, your sales team has a much clearer plan of attack and can more productively spend their time getting the right business. 

Know your list.
Once you have a base list of prospects, your team should make sure that list is up-to-date and accurate. Nothing says “uninterested in my business” like a campaign targeted to the CIO who left 10 months prior. I remember a firm who developed a high-end, multi-week direct mail campaign to CIOs. The campaign theme was on target, the message compelling and the giveaways were interesting. Management asked the sales team for its “top tier” prospects to be included in the program. All was set and the campaign launched. Then, nothing. What happened? Come to find out when management “took a closer look” at the prospect lists their sales team swore by, they realized over 50% of the e-mails were incorrect, resulting in only half of the campaign reaching targeted prospects. Not to mention that many of the targets were no longer with those organizations. It’s no wonder the campaign ROI was low. It starts with knowing your list, knowing your targets.  

Grow and nurture your list.
Your prospect list should be a growing part of your business. As you interact with targets on your list, they will move up and down in priority as their needs and interests change. Some “B list” folks may move up to the “A list” and conversely some “A list” targets may be demoted to a “B list” prospect. But, regardless of where on the list your targets fall, they should never be ignored. The point of prioritizing your prospect list is to identify who gets your most immediate and fervent attention – not who gets attention, period. Keeping constant communication with your list is the only way to keep it current. Communication vehicles such as Keep-In-Touch (KIT) Programs or Target Account Programs (TAP) are great ways to do just that. 

Adding to your list.
The best way to grow your prospect list is what we call the “homegrown” approach. This isn’t an earth-shattering revelation. Basically, you add people with whom you’ve come in contact and had a chance to interact and evaluate. It may be someone from a conference, networking lunch or little league. It could be online leads, such as those from LinkedIn or Facebook.  

Don’t forget your current accounts.
If you haven’t captured 100% of your current clients’ business then they should be on your prospect list. Different departments, sister divisions, the list goes on. Use your loyal clients within these businesses to help you spread the word. Penetration programs targeting specific companies are a great way to give you an edge over outside competition. In any sales program, never forget to include your current clients and penetration leads. 

Quality over quantity.
Wouldn’t you rather invest time and resources into 100 solid prospects who will get you the type of business that will move your company forward than in 1,000 prospects who may end up wasting your time and resources?  

A little due diligence, some solid prioritizing and a program of constant communication can help you develop relationships with leads that will pay off well into the future.   

Document list activity.
One last step, crucial to the success of your prospect list, is documenting your activity in a Contact Management System (CMS). While it can be a hassle to keep up, the CMS helps you manage your prospects and keep track of who you called or reached out to, and when. Depending on the CMS your company uses, you can even track the success of your marketing campaigns. It also helps with metrics, so you know personally how much activity you require to meet your goals. When your prospect list is managed properly, at campaign time you can more easily pull your list of contacts and know you’ll see a greater return. And isn’t that the reason for your list in the first place?

Jessica Castaneda
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing