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Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
What Social Media Can Do For Your Company
5/23/2011 1:33 PM By William Pirraglia
Social media marketing jobs are growing faster than the average expansion in the global market. Not just a U.S. phenomenon, social media is becoming a powerful marketing option for many employers throughout the world.
Knowing what most employers want to achieve is critically valuable to social media specialists seeking assignments. Here are some of the most commonly stated goals of companies that employ social media marketing.
- Improved branding. Along with “social media,” “branding” is the most used (perhaps over-used) word heard in contemporary business. However, almost every potential employer you find will stipulate that you improve their current brand status as a focus of the project.
- Make positive customer—and potential customer—connections. Some consider social media simply an obese chat room. Engaging current and future customers in conversation can build some positive bonding and branding. While employers also risk receiving criticism for positions and conversations, most want their social media specialist to energize interaction.
- Tight target marketing. As the cost of advertising continues to intensify, target marketing becomes ever more important. Sub-campaigns emphasizing one product or feature—directed at a focused customer group—can be much more cost-effective than other forms of marketing.
- Marketing “seeding campaigns.” Like cultivating a fabulous lawn or garden, consistent seeding efforts are often fruitful. The interactivity of social media sites permits ongoing campaigns that you can embrace to generate immediate feedback to measure the success of the program.
- Effective content sharing. Using the inherent ability to share content, ideas, links and resources to market a company is an important component for social media specialists. It could be in the form of an interesting article, interactive new website or just some food for thought. But when properly used, this feature will keep customers coming back to the employer’s website and social media pages.
- Generate useful customer feedback. Customer feedback, even negative commentaries, is invaluable for current and future marketing projects. While most websites encourage visitor comments, social media sites can be more feedback friendly, since they are more conversation stimulators than informational sources.
- Increase customer loyalty. Establishing customer loyalty is the holy grail of most businesses. The benefits are impressive: Fewer advertising dollars, less product pricing pressure and stronger customer referrals. If you’re able to gain the trust of customers and clients now, it will be easier to grow this valuable pool in the future.
Specific Talent Attracts Freelance Marketing Work
5/19/2011 5:30 PM By William PirragliaFreelance marketing work takes many forms and personas. If you are a multi-talented freelancer, you should consider creating multiple marketing resumes. Employers with a defined project seek those with the specific talent to complete the assignment on time and as agreed.
Since these employers are not seeking full-time marketing directors, they sometimes discount skills other than those needed for the current project. Listing your many abilities (print, digital, SEO, PPC, etc.) may only obscure your precise talent that directly refers to the assignment.
When people apply for full-time employment, they often create advantages (particularly for management-level positions) for themselves by illustrating their multi-talented expertise. However, when seeking contract or freelance marketing jobs, most employers are looking for what precisely relates to their project. Your other expertise, possibly vaulting you above other marketing directors and extraneous competition, may be valuable to the employer in the future but typically does not address the current issue at hand.
Don’t worry; if you are selected for the freelance marketing work needed now, you’ll have the opportunity—and credibility—to impress the employer with your other skills. This will help you be seriously considered for future assignments.
If you believe that this means you should consider creating multiple resumes, you’re correct. For example, if you have three equally high-level marketing talents in different areas (i.e., SEO, print and web campaigns), you should construct unique resumes focused on each specialty.
Just as you tailor your cover letters to specific employers and projects, you should create the number of resumes that highlight each skill subject. If you are really a multi-discipline professional, it is usually impossible to author a single resume that answers the concerns of employers seeking a project X expert.
Although this requries a bit more thoughtful work at the beginning, this strategy allows you to use some diverse keywords to tag your specialties when employers and recruiters perform an Internet search. You can use your website to market all of your skills, using your URL as an additional employer resource, found on each of your resumes.
How Brand Strategists Become Certified
4/29/2011 2:36 PM By William PirragliaLike most talented professionals, top brand strategists are made, not born. But once you’ve reached the upper echelon of your profession, how can you prove to those employers in hire brand manager mode that you are the best?
Product management careers and opportunities are expanding as the U.S. economy finally rebounds. However, as full-time and freelance marketing opportunities increase, so does your competition. You should consider marketing and brand strategist certification.
The Brand Establishment has a program that offers established agency principals, experienced professionals and marketing strategists wishing to stand “above the crowd” an opportunity to earn a Certified Brand Strategist designation. With a combination of course work and lab time, certification can assure employers that they are dealing with the best of the best.
The process usually takes around six months, but you can customize the program to fit your work schedule. Brand strategist certification is conferred by Brand Establishment partners, faculty and an Advisory Board composed of respected professors, agency professionals and brand experts.
Of course, your professional enrichment efforts never cease as you acquire more expertise and experience, but certification may be an achievement that broadcasts your talent to the world. Naturally, no certification can take the place of your commitment to excel and perform at your best for every employer and client.
What Are the Typical Roles of Marketing Directors?
4/19/2011 1:40 PM By William PirragliaMarketing directors must have the ability to wear many hats. Their degree of responsibility is often dependent on their industry, condition of their operating budget, and the skill level of their staff. During the recent recession, some companies chose to outsource some functions to freelancers to control expenses.
Some of the more common roles of marketing directors include the following. Understand that in some settings, these could be full-time or freelance marketing jobs.
- Creating company marketing strategy and/or plans
- Developing intimate customer knowledge, including potential consumer groups
- Expert handling of total customer relationship management software and functions
- Managing the company agency relationships
- Designing and/or authoring marketing copy, whether digital or print
- Encouraging a “marketing mentality” to other company departments
- Investigating and suggesting new marketing opportunities, channels, and markets
- Designing or conducting market research projects
Depending on the size of the company, marketing directors may adopt these roles on a daily basis or manage the contract and freelance outsource functions. Marketing directors may have some, all or slightly different duties than those noted above.
Freelance marketing directors, on a project or longer term basis, may manage the entire company marketing function or handle some of the responsibilities of full-time personnel. As the economy rebounds, shrewd marketing directors should search Internet job boards, use their professional network and explore the top search agencies like Artisan to learn of the full-time and freelance marketing opportunities available.
What It Takes to Be a Freelance Marketer
4/7/2011 2:09 PM By Jeff OrloffNot every company is large enough to hire their own marketing directors or marketing managers. Instead of having on-staff professionals to spread their company’s message, they turn to freelance marketers.
Freelance marketers fill a need in today’s competitive business environment. Companies that do not have a well-known brand struggle to capture their share of the market whether they are looking at capturing brick and mortar traffic or Internet traffic. Skilled freelance marketers help companies stand out and the return on investment that comes from hiring a marketing company is usually an easy sell.
Qualifications
With the boom of ecommerce, many Internet marketing freelancers and SEO specialists started popping up. Some had no more qualifications than the fact that they could spell Internet marketing. However, if you want to really make a go of freelance marketing, you are going to need to have some background.
- Experience: One of the routes that people take in becoming a freelance marketer is coming from an agency job or an in-house marketing job. Put together a portfolio of your past work and describe the outcomes of various projects you’ve worked on.
- Education: An alternate route to having a rich employment background in marketing is to have a degree, higher education certificate or certification from a professional association such as the Professional Certified Marketer or Certified eMarketer.
Other Skills
Like any professional, a wide range of computer skills and soft skills is required to be a successful freelancer. Other skills needed are organizational skills to help you keep track of multiple projects and client needs and confidence. Much of freelance work revolves around you meeting with prospective clients and steering them in the right direction before providing them with an estimate. Going into a meeting without confidence in your abilities will often result in you losing accounts or taking on projects and undervaluing your worth – if you don’t believe in yourself, neither will they.
Five Tips to Get the Freelance Marketing Jobs You Want
3/22/2011 8:00 AM By ArtisanFinally companies large and small are planning to add jobs in 2011. Freelance marketing jobs are among the long-awaited rebound of the recession recovery. With more than 50 percent of employers now stating they are in better financial shape than just one year ago, the business community finally believes the recovery is taking hold and senior executives are more confident in the economy.
But what are employers seeking in a top freelance marketer? Here are five tips to help you take your place as a superior freelance marketing professional.
- Dedication and commitment. Unlike a full-time on-location job where you can demonstrate your dedication on a daily basis, freelance advertising and marketing professionals must exhibit their commitment to excel quickly—this can be challenging. To accomplish this goal, sell yourself assertively, but do not oversell the client. After you learn what the client wants, only make promises you can keep. Save something in reserve giving you the opportunity to over-perform.
- Professional quality work. Never take shortcuts that diminish your output quality. As a freelance marketer, you must develop a strong professional brand. This can only be achieved by producing excellent quality work for every client, regardless of the assignment. If you specialize in one or two industries, word of your work quality will generate referrals and open doors to more freelance marketing jobs.
- Respect and meet all deadlines. There are few better ways to exhibit your commitment and professionalism than by meeting all deadlines to which you agree. Should a project demand deadlines you believe to be impossible, advise the client before you accept or reject the project. Always display, however, that you respect the deadline and understand that there are other people depending on your completed work in order to do their jobs properly. Missing a deadline may affect many other people working for your client, holding back other equally important functions and progress deadlines.
- Encourage feedback. Always valuable for both employer and freelancer, communication and feedback is critical to your success. Useful feedback is a two-way highway. You must initiate feedback and communication to keep your employer advised of your project progress, particularly noting any market, industry or current events that may cause deviation from superior results or timelines. Encourage feedback, evaluations and/or testimonials from your clients to help you improve your portfolio and professional brand.
- Try to add value to your assignment. As important as the word “free” remains in advertising campaigns, the phrase “value added” is always an employer favorite for a freelance marketer. Whenever possible, offer suggestions, tips and ideas to your employer. You will be very pleased with client reactions. Even an idea your client cannot use immediately helps you create credibility and trust—valuable commodities for all freelancers.
With around 34 percent of employers planning to retain freelancers in 2011, new doors for the freelance marketer are opening. Take advantage of these additional freelance marketing jobs by improving your professionalism, brand and quality. Top quality freelance firms like Artisan can be an invaluable source of opportunities for you.
BizBash: BMA’s Gala Auction
5/21/2010 9:28 AM By Sharon PotschHave you ever participated in a silent auction? Well, you’ll have your chance on Thursday, June 3rd, from 5:30 to 8:30 at The Murphy when BMA Chicago hosts its annual gala, BizBash. BizBash is a fun way to network, meet new folks, and bid on some fun items.
Previous items up for bid at this great event have included:
- Charitable contributions
- Architectural tours
- Travel packages
- Electronics
- Luxury items
- Memberships to area museums and cultural institutions
- Tickets to sporting events
Proceeds will benefit future BMA Chicago events, internships, and operations. Early-bird registration of $60 gives you an evening of great networking, live auction fun, an open bar, and great appetizers. What more could you ask for on a Thursday night? Get your department together because groups of 5 or more receive a $10 discount per admission but you need to pre-register for the event.
BMA Chicago’s membership is comprised of local chief marketing officers and marketing staff members, executives in business-to-business advertising agencies, educators, consultants, writers, and industry suppliers. Here’s your chance to mix and mingle and hey, you might actually win a cool thing or two, too!
Secrets of Great Copywriting
9/10/2009 10:18 AM By Catherine TSo you're ready to delve into the exciting world of copywriting, but you aren't quite sure where to begin. Here are some hints to get you started on your first copywriting assignment:
- Start by determining the key selling points for your product or service, and the target market you wish to reach.
- Use design devices such as headlines, subheads, photo captions and drop caps to highlight your main points.
- Focus on benefits to the reader — not "this product has a handle" but "easy to carry."
- Identify with your target audience in your copy, mentioning "fathers" or "concerned citizens" or whatever group you seek to attract.
- Read your junk mail, pick up free brochures, and browse the ads in your newspaper. Notice what works and what doesn't.
- Use testimonials — they're a powerful marketing tool.
- Make it easy for a prospect to order once the sale is made. Include contact information or an order form at the end of a letter.
Do You have a PR Campaign?
6/29/2009 12:20 PM By Sharon PotschGraphic Designers, copywriters, and web gurus–what do you do to market yourself? This section of our blog has talked extensively about marketing yourself in a way that lets you stand out from the crowd. It is more important than ever now, as you know. Here's a great tough-love article on the importance of a solid PR campaign in helping you not only land your next job, but propel your life-long career.
