ClearEdge Marketing: Innovative Marketing Solutions

Ready, Aim, Send: How to Keep Your E-mail Marketing Campaign Out of the Junk Mail and Increase Open Rates June 18, 2009 | Jessica Elliott

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

Posted in Business & Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Selling: It’s Not All About You. May 26, 2009 | Kathy Dooley

Aligning Your Sales Process and Value Messages to Your Clients’ Buying Behaviors.

Successfully selling your services and solutions in a dynamic and highly competitive marketplace requires a solid understanding of your customers’ needs — and a sales process and messaging strategy that clearly demonstrate your ability to meet those needs.

Unfortunately, many companies continue to rely on out-of-date sales processes and sales materials that tout features and benefits of their offerings but have little relevance to the client’s challenges or goals. A key to an effective sales methodology is the incorporation of customer-relevant messaging focused on how your solutions solve the buyer’s pain or increase their gain. In failing to incorporate and reinforce their value proposition through targeted messaging at every stage in the buying cycle, these firms are missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.

Here’s what savvy companies are doing to ensure they are providing the right message at the right time during the sales process:

1. They take the time to truly understand their customers’ buying cycle and the selling activities that take place within it. Then they ask salespeople what they are trying to accomplish at each step. This helps to determine what kind of messaging is needed at each stage in the sales cycle.

2. They create impactful value statements and customer-orientated communications focused on buyer needs, challenges or goals.

3. They embed this messaging in their sales process and all marketing materials, and provide the sales team with tools specific to each stage in the buying cycle.

4. They train and re-train their sales team on how to deliver the right content based on the current selling situation. Instead of focusing the conversation on their company and its services, they first determine the customer context, and then map out how to respond to these situations.

5. They make sure all necessary content is available in a single, central repository.

Where does your organization stand?
Here’s a checklist that allows you to quickly evaluate whether your sales messaging strategy is on target and effectively supports your sales process:

 Have you assessed and enhanced your company’s sales messaging within the past 12 months?

 Is it current, streamlined and aligned with challenges facing your buyers?

 Is it supported with built-in proof points, testimonials and case study summaries that objectively convey your value?

 Is it integrated into your selling process and sales cycle?

 Have your sales professionals embraced the messaging and are they conveying it consistently and appropriately to their clients and prospects?

 Does your sales team have access to, and use, the appropriate sales collateral at the right stage of the buying cycle?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, it’s time to find out. And if you don’t like the answers you are getting, it’s time to make a change!

Create a game plan
The first step in a sales messaging optimization strategy is to ensure your sales cycle is aligned with the decision makers’ buying cycle. Once you’ve identified how key steps in your sales cycle (e.g. prospecting, qualifying, presenting, closing and penetrating) align with your buyers’ cycle, you need to:

• Develop impactful messages tailored to the specific needs and buying preferences of customers at each stage in the cycle. Provide “messaging roadmaps” for the most pressing business objectives facing your target buyers. Build content that conveys your understanding of their objective and communicates how your firm has helped other clients meet similar objectives through your solutions. Validate your capabilities and value with proof points and mini client success stories.

• Involve members of the sales team in drafting the messaging to ensure it is timely, on target and will be used. Consider creating templates that allow for some customization based on different customers and segments.

• Integrate these value statements into your sales process, sales training program, Web site content and marketing materials.

• Train your sales team how to effectively convey your value proposition and message to the right person at the right time.

• Create one central online repository for all sales and marketing materials. Salespeople should only have to go to one place to find everything they need to help identify, develop and close deals.

• Inspect what you expect: Have ongoing dialogs or role plays with all sales team members to ensure your messaging is being appropriately and consistently communicated.

Continuously evaluate and improve your messaging
Just as the goals and challenges of decision makers continuously shift in response to changing business objectives, so should your sales strategy and messaging. Stay closely attuned to the trends in your marketplace and the buying patterns of your clients. Periodically evaluate and adjust your sales process and sales messaging to ensure you’re able to capture the attention and business of target buyers.

Kathy Dooley
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

Posted in Sales Best Practices | No Comments »

Do Client Layoffs Mean an End to Business Opportunities? May 22, 2009 | Jessica Castaneda

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

Posted in Business & Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Tweet Tweet: Twitter Takes Over April 30, 2009 | Elizabeth Smith

As we’ve entered the age of social networking, Facebook continues to garner attention – but it’s Twitter that now dominates the headlines, both offline and online. It seems that everyone is “Twittering” – from Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Whole Foods and Best Buy to your next door neighbor and local small business owner. In fact, in 2008 there were an estimated six million Twitter users in the U.S., with a projected 18.1 million users in 2010, according to eMarketer. Twitter also grew 1,382% year-over-year in February as reported by Nielsen Online.

Defining Twitter
While these figures are impressive, you may be wondering what exactly Twitter is and why it is important to you. Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows people to post news and other important events to their group of followers. It enables your followers to be “in the know” on the latest developments with you/your company. It also allows you to more easily identify trends – which, in turn, will help you sell more. Users create an account, set up their profile and have 140 characters of text per “tweet” (aka post) to highlight a certain topic or news article/event.

With Twitter, you establish an online community of people whom you connect with (follow) and/or they follow you. In Facebook they’re called “friends” or “fans,” in Twitter they’re called “followers.” Your followers will also have their group of followers, and so on and so on. Those that Twitter engage in viral marketing every minute – all it takes is an interesting/relevant tweet for another person to republish it to their followers (this is called re-tweeting). As you imagine, a good tweet can be spread around the world in a matter of minutes.

At the end of the day, Twitter is an effective and efficient communication tool that enables businesses to join in the conversation and engage directly with their clients/prospects, the media and other key audiences. You can hear what other people are saying (or not saying) about your brand and other issues that matter to you. Remember, even if you ignore Twitter, those conversations will take place without you.

Beyond the Twitter Hype: 5 Tips to Getting Started
Before your business joins the conversation on Twitter, here are five etiquette tips that are important to know.

1. Define your strategy
Like you do for any campaign, you need to define your approach and strategy. What are you looking to accomplish by having an account on Twitter? Who is your target audience? If you have multiple reasons for establishing a Twitter account (i.e. customer support, brand awareness, public relations, humanizing your brand), you may want to look at creating different Twitter accounts for each area of focus.

For instance, Kelly Services has 15 different Twitter accounts; whereas Technisource has one, but does an excellent job at leveraging Twitter. In fact, Technisource appears to be the only IT staffing-related Twitter account that is really using Twitter to engage its audience. Their tweets are relevant, user-focused and insightful. In case you’re wondering what they’re saying, here’s an example: Jump-starting a tech job search | Career Advice - InfoWorld - http://tinyurl.com/cfhzav.

Regardless of the number of accounts, make sure that you have consistent messaging and branding. As a reminder, Twitter should be just one component of your integrated marketing strategy, which should include other social media marketing tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

2. Be transparent
Companies should tweet as individuals. Be candid, be real. Twitter provides an opportunity for your followers to get to know more about your company – but most importantly about you. Your tweets demonstrate your ability to understand their needs and concerns – and that you are looking out ahead of the curve to help address and solve those needs. Your tweets should detail different areas of your life – not just work or business-related items. Like everything, do it in moderation – sprinkle some personal tweets throughout your regular tweets.

3. Join in the conversation
While following key people within your industry/areas of interest is a must, don’t just sit on the sidelines and listen in on the comments being said about your company or a topic of interest. Get into the conversation – especially if there are comments about you or your company. One of the key things with Twitter is to not only get engaged, but be real in your tweets. People want to hear what you have to say.

4. Add value
At the end of the day, people are interested in “what’s in it for me?” Make sure that your tweets are customer-centric – not self-promoting and self-serving. While it’s okay to have a few tweets that promote your business, too many and you will lose followers. Your tweets should focus on the needs/interests of your followers; after all they are following you for a reason.

5. Tweet frequently
In today’s busy world, front-of-mind awareness is everything. Like everything else, the more you put into it – the more you get out of it. The more tweets you have, the more likely you are to gain new followers. Good news is that you can leverage technology to reduce the amount of time it takes to make a tweet so you can post multiple tweets each day or week, whatever your preference.

Once you start Twittering, you will begin to wonder how you lived without having instant access to relevant, pertinent information. Next month we’ll address some next steps that you can take to make your tweets as relevant as possible. In the meantime, have additional tips or thoughts? Let me know. Or you can follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/elizabethsmith.

Elizabeth Smith
Director of Social Media Marketing
ClearEdge Marketing

Posted in Social Networking | 1 Comment »

A Recession Refresher: Insights on Business Best Practices from the SIA Executive Forum March 27, 2009 | Leslie Vickrey

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

Posted in Business & Marketing Strategy | 2 Comments »

The Best of ALL Worlds: Why ClearEdge Embraced the Outsourced Model January 26, 2009 | Jessica Castaneda

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

Posted in Business & Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Social Media: The Next Great Marketing Tool January 26, 2009 | Elizabeth Smith

So what’s all the buzz over social media? Speak to anyone in marketing these days and chances are that you’ve heard the term “social media.” But what exactly is it? Wikipedia defines social media as “primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.” The tools range from social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon to targeted blogs, communities and user forums. What makes these tools different is that the actual content created on them is often user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Social Media Observances
In speaking with several clients from different industries, we’re seeing more and more companies interested in harnessing the power of social media - specifically Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Social media is rapidly becoming the new marketing communications tool for companies to reach and build relationships with candidates, job seekers and clients alike. It’s a way to differentiate themselves and stand out in today’s saturated online marketplace where everyone has a Web site.

Companies have successfully leveraged social media to increase their brand awareness, and ultimately sales, by generating interest and gaining constant attention to their brand. One such way a company capitalized upon this fast and growing free marketing tool was to promote its first annual tradeshow via Facebook. The results: tripled the expected attendance! Upon analyzing clients’ Web analytics, I’ve also seen social media sites generate referring traffic for a company’s Web site.

Facebook: The Most Popular Social Networking Tool
Many of our clients get their first taste of social media by creating a profile page on the popular social networking site Facebook. It is rapidly becoming the most popular social networking site, with 600,000 new users being added each day. With minimal associated costs, Facebook serves as a great stepping stone that allows each client to express their brand in an edgier, more targeted approach. It enables companies to speak directly to job seekers and candidates, as well as provide their targeted audience the opportunity to provide feedback or input on a specific topic/item. Facebook also allows the opportunity for our clients to expand and build upon their page as the page gains more traction or as more tools/resources become available – in essence creating a microsite.

Get On Board
So what are you waiting for? Jump into the social media world with a Facebook profile page for your company and start forging those online relationships. But before jumping in, make sure that you understand your target audience’s needs and interests so you can feature the right information that resonates with them. Already launched a Facebook profile page for your company? Share your story with us.

Elizabeth Smith
Director of Social Media Marketing
ClearEdge Marketing

Posted in Social Networking | No Comments »

Enhancing Your Online Presence to Generate Additional Revenue January 23, 2009 | Elizabeth Smith

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

Posted in Business & Marketing Strategy, Social Networking | Comments Off

A Holiday Message from Marketing: Three Simple Tips to Help You Close out the Year December 10, 2008 | Sarah Schunk

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” offers many timeless lessons, including one of my favorites: a day in your pajamas can be one of the best and worst days of your life. Many business leaders this year must be feeling caught between two very different Christmas outlooks Dickens wrote about: 1) Ebenezer Scrooge’s ba-humbug philosophy and 2) the down-and-out Cratchit family’s united and cheerful defiance of gloomy realities.

Marketing can be a sentimental business unit—look at me beginning this blog by referencing a classic holiday tearjerker. But sentiment has its place, sometimes in sales, frequently in customer appreciation and retention and often in brand image. With that in mind, we at ClearEdge are going to get caught up in the silver bells, mistletoe and Tiny Tim-like joys of the season and share three simple marketing tips to help you cheerfully close out the year.

Send Glad Tidings
Even if you don’t feel like making merry, take time to wish your customers, prospects, partners, suppliers and employees well this holiday season. In downtimes, business and personal networks are worth their weight in golden jingle bells so make an effort to make contact before the end of the year.

If your budget cannot include a holiday mailing, e-greetings are acceptable and personal calls are even better. It gives you a chance to check in with important resources, underscore the importance of key relationships and, perhaps, gather some valuable market information.

Make a List, Check It Twice
Build and vet your first quarter prospect list now! 2009 is going to be a tremendously competitive year, and you need to have your sales strategy in place long before that apple starts to fall in New York City.

Take several hours this December to work with your sales teams, analyze the existing pipeline and build strong prospect lists you can begin working from at the first of January 2009.

Put a Penny in the Old Man’s Hat
Corporate giving programs have swelled in popularity and generosity in recent years. If your organization has made a commitment to a charitable organization, see if it’s possible to continue or even boost those contributions this holiday season.

Client and employee retention are powerfully influenced by a company’s culture and image. Continuing your good efforts despite difficult times speaks volumes to the values most important to your organization.

We at ClearEdge wish you a safe and joyful holiday season. May your merry days be many and the ba-humbugs be few and far between!

Sarah Schunk
Senior Writer
ClearEdge Marketing

Posted in Sales Best Practices | Comments Off

The Importance of Face-to-Face Communication When Announcing Layoffs October 30, 2008 | Jessica Elliott

Did you hear about the recent faux pas the HR VP at Carat, Aegis Group’s media-buying company, committed? I read about it in the article, Carat Missive Goes Astray, in the Wall Street Journal. Basically Carat’s senior management team had been preparing materials to announce a restructuring, including significant layoffs. Instead of sending the working drafts of the communications to its intended audience of select few, the VP of HR sent it to the entire company. It was recalled by the IT department, but the damage was done. In fact, the messaging documents have made their way outside the company and even been published online by Advertising Age.

Yikes! My initial, knee-jerk reaction was not unlike those who posted messages in response to the AdAge.com article. How careless? How could she? It immediately reminded me of a similar situation. In August 2006, RadioShack communicated layoff announcements by e-mail. Approximately 400 employees walked into work on August 29 and received the following message in their inbox: “The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.”

However, having been the author of layoff messaging in a past life, and one of a handful of individuals with the technical permissions to distribute company-wide e-mails to several thousand employees, I quickly began to empathize with Carat’s VP. After all, one false slip of a keystroke and that could just as easily have happened to me. I don’t believe she maliciously distributed the draft documents by e-mail in advance of a planned formal announcement. It was most certainly an accident.

And that’s when it struck me. The RadioShack and Carat layoff situations are actually quite different. Though both companies, it appears, developed thorough communications plans and messaging to share the unfortunate news, RadioShack purposefully chose e-mail as its method for making the announcement. RadioShack’s decision to alert affected employees that their positions were eliminated by e-mail resulted in a number of not-so-positive headlines. RadioShack defended its actions saying it had forewarned employees at its Fort Worth headquarters about the impending layoffs and that they had told employees they would learn about their job status via e-mail. Given the open office environment, RadioShack felt it was the best way to preserve the person’s privacy and dignity, as opposed to walking through cubicles and tapping people on the shoulder to call them into the office.

Many of the outplacement experts cited in the numerous articles written on the topic said the approach was inappropriate. In a New York Times article, Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of employees being notified about a layoff electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing. “If I put myself in their shoes,” Mr. D’Souza said. “I’d say, ‘Didn’t they have a few minutes to tell me?”’

I believe most workers have come to accept that workforce reductions are part of the normal course of business. While it still won’t be easy for the employee being let go, the person delivering the news, or those left behind, taking a timely, honest, personal approach will do a great deal to minimize animosity. No matter how large or small your organization is, creating a cohesive internal communications plan that addresses how, when and to whom you’ll make your announcements will allow you to coordinate the organizational changes face-to-face affording employees the dignity they deserve.

As you would expect, Carat has received some harsh criticism in the press. While it’s still too early to tell what the exact fallout will be from the Carat VP’s mistake, I doubt it will be much more than a stomach flip at the thought of it happening to you and a reminder to always double and triple check the To:, Cc: and Bcc: boxes of your e-mail when distributing sensitive documents. RadioShack on the other hand continues to serve as a good example of how not to communicate workforce reductions to employees.

Jessica Elliott
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

Posted in Communication Best Practices | Comments Off