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I was prompted by this apparently disliked question which got no traction:

Please Provide a Real Life Scenario of Self Marketing Using Social Networking... that WORKED

My question is a lot more specific, and I think, cuts to the heart of the issue.

How do you create "engagement" with a target audience that is, by definition, distracted, very busy, only focusing on necessities, and probably uninterested in following blogs, Twitter feeds, FB and the like in order to "network"?

Engagement means: being read. Being followed. Having people reading your online material that are interested in what you have to say. And in this instance, engagement by particular key players within organizations who are in a position to buy services.

(So don't attack this as not asking a question. I just did.)

(Edited below)

I have a well defined niche - copy writing for software technology providers. And my ideal contact or prospect is a marketing executive or manager within such a company.

Here are the specific problems I see in creating content that interests individual with this profile:

  • They do not seem to reveal themselves on any ISV or startup fora which I have followed.
  • They are the marketing experts within their businesses. What can I hope to give them in terms of useful or interesting takeaways that they have not read before?
  • Every professional service that can be delivered remotely has its own traffic jam of blogs, Twitter feeds, and "gurus". There are a blue million people ahead of me attempting to mine social media for, say, copy writing marketing exposure.

I'm not saying that I cannot also write top quality articles and content. I am wondering if it will pay off given the congestion of the social media sphere.

As a specific example, I've found precious few hits to my web site from my several months of activity on OnStartups. I get a few inquiries here and there but they have never resulted in real business.

I'm not looking for a lot of site traffic. That alone won't help me to reach those whom I need to reach.

I have solved specific problems for my clients but I don't have a clue how to package those stories up as a narrative, a story that will create this magical "engagement", and with potential buyers of services.

I'm ready to throw in the towel and say categorically that inbound marketing really doesn't work to a significant extent for professional services.

So, please provide a road map. Don't reference books and other people's URLs and say-so.

There are plenty of gurus out there who are breathlessly enthusiastic about how "easy" and straightforward this is. The existing advice out there is heavily self referential and mutually referential (IE: each author quotes some other "authority"), non specific to industries or segments (B2B is treated identically with B2C by a lot of authors - a HUGE key problem, IMO), and appears to cover virtually any line of business.

I want someone here to explain how this works for a solo expert professional. Not a product company. Not for a consumer oriented web service.

For someone who needs to sell themselves online.

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Is your question about how to get "Known" or about why there are no leads for you here? – Ryan Dec 17 '11 at 11:44
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I'm skeptical of inbound marketing as well. I think it was very successful back in the day when only a few folks were doing it, but now that everybody does it, it has become a lot less meaningful. There is just too much noise out there. That's not to say it can't work anymore, or that it's not a useful strategy, but you have to be really good at it. I think the key is to be creative and find a way to stand out. If you're participating on this site to get leads, you're going to be disappointed. Don't expect to get many leads from here - this site isn't designed to make that easy. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Dec 17 '11 at 21:12
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I'm wondering if it could be that you're targeting the wrong people. You have a well defined niche, which is great. But why are you targeting marketing executives? As you point out, they are the marketing experts within their businesses, so why would they think they need you? Have you considered targeting startups and small businesses who don't have a marketing expert on their team? A lot of these folks already feel the pain you're looking to solve. Granted, they have less money to spend. I don't know, just a thought. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Dec 17 '11 at 21:29
Zuly: regarding the level of noise and competition, I am waiting for someone here to show a strategy. How does one create interesting stories from essentially boring subject matter - like business writing? Every business function is not interesting and compelling blog material. The social media mavens never seem to speak to this fact. – user2757 Dec 18 '11 at 4:00
Zuly, regarding your thoughts about targeting: I am looking for more profitable opportunities at a variety of business maturity levels. Marketing executives don't appear to write their company's stuff, usually, and they usually need help. That's where I come in, and the presence of a marketing exec indicates a matured company that has stable revenues (can afford professional services.) Startups and very small companies will often cut their own throats to save a few dollars on fees, by DIY. So there's the answer: I am going where the money is - established businesses. – user2757 Dec 18 '11 at 4:01

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted
+50

Don, your facing the same market segment and problem gaining their attention as we do.

Like you the inbound marketing we do is not as directly qualifiable as someone selling a product or online service ... I can't tie someone landing on our website to a "we got this job".

Things I have tried, and it takes a long time to see stuff happen:

  • Facebook and Linked In advertising. These were good, they drove qualified traffic to the site.
  • Twitter. A few of our guys tweet a lot, about their work and we use it as a channel to discover and arrange meetups, hear about potential jobs and get known.
  • Writing a lot this forum, mainly because it forces me to think about the problems which is how I learn myself, but part of it is to qualify me against other people in the field. I'm in the top 10 on this site gets some level of "So why should I listen to you?" benefit.
  • Blog posts for business and technology bring in some traffic but mainly attract link baiters.

The key problem is that the levels I'm am targeting don't use social media or the majoirty of the web centric world past the "safe" Google > brand name news site. They still read newspapers and magazines and most of their discovery comes from Maverns who tell them about us.

Successes I have had that almost qualify.

Linked In as a direct marketing channel. It isn't inbound as such but basically starting with my contacts (and those of my staff) I search for those near me who are in specific roles I can target. They come up with the companies web pages and understand their background. I then pull a direct marketing message "off the shelf" which best suits their situation (currently this is best guess) and send this message to them by post or email, maybe twitter if their profile suggests it.

We spend about a day per week doing this for about 250 candidate per month, this generates around 2-3 meetings a week, of which a few a month convert. (this for us is more workload than we can handle)

Successes I've heard about.

People doing speaking, podcasting or book writing in order to set themselves apart and get infront of the audience in the few times they pay attention (like at conferences). This is a high investment upfront and a series of web releated engagement models afterwards.

So to attempt to answer your question.

I don't think that the use of these technologies get our specific target market to come to us on mass without effort, the dynamics are simply different to the consumer web. They are too busy, too flooded and not inclined by nature to take notice or go hunting themselves directly.

This doesn't mean the entire medium is dead or useless. It just means you need to work with it differently. What it can do is qualify you, put you in contact with the maverns who will act as your word of mouth, allow you to identify and target those candiates specifically with a "high touch" set of contact points.

An alternative strategy.

Really I think your best bet is to find and qualify other non-competing companies who are targeting the same market. Put up the resources they can use in order to help them sell your services in as part of their offering. Remove their barrier to including you as part of their solution to their client.

I'm always on the lookout for companies I can put infront of my client so that long term I'm the one they come to for advice ... part of the workload/solution will end up with me.

If I can easily contact you, know the questions to ask my client, know when to identify when my client needs you, and get an understanding of what I need to look for when talking to my client.

What are the benefits to me? What are benefits to my client? What are the steps before the money has to change hands? Can you make me look good without being liable for it (ie client signs off and pays)? How do we "dip our toe in the water"?

If I can see on your website the end to end process with myself and my client involved, including the process of getting the work done, and the key reasons why I would want to recommend my client to go down that path ... then I would bring work to you hesitantly the first time and without question by the 5th time.

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Hi, Robin, thank you for your answer. I repped you because you provided great talking points and you understand and spoke to the nature of the challenge. While you do not answer my question, you do provide an excellent toolkit of tools to go hunting using social media. You essentially said that given the type of prospect I want to make contact with, the "exclusively inbound" mode will probably not be successful. That's what I think, too, but I want to see if someone can show how the code has been cracked. – user2757 Dec 19 '11 at 16:12
I realise I didn't answer the question, it was an interesting chance to work out what I thought about the concepts. I am watching this one to see if an answer comes out. But really if you got 10 or 20 new clients a day, every day ... what would you do with them? 20 a year is a good number for my company. – Robin Vessey Dec 19 '11 at 23:49
Robin, your answer is the best one. You "get" it. You understand that I am talking about selling services into management circles. You covered issues related to online marketing to this occupational group in high detail. You say "the levels I'm am targeting don't use social media or the majoirty of the web centric world past the "safe" Google > brand name news site. They still read newspapers and magazines" - YES! Exactly. I keep thinking busy/important people don't fart around following tweets/FB. You have pretty much validated my guess that active outreach is really necessary even today. – user2757 Dec 27 '11 at 6:04
up vote 1 down vote

Your prospects are easy to find online right now. There are thousands of them, probably hundreds of thousands of them.

You may have those who blog/do social media and those who don't. The ones who don't you are going to have to get to them by going after them. Finding a contact, filling out online contact forms (bit Spammish) and even traditional marketing. Mail them something.

Those that do some blogging / social media you should start engaging with them. How can you do this easily? Setup Google Alerts, RSS feed notifications of your prospects. When they do something active you will get notified of it... be the first to read their content and make a comment or point them to additional information or a good article on your blog. Start some dialog, some back and forth. Most people have very few comments on their blogs, if they post something and you start a conversation you create report, you make a friend. From there they will also learn about what you do.

Once they are on your site they will clearly see that you do technology writing. Make it clear that companies hire you to write their content or ghost write.

You will probably have to reach out to them for some touch first and then draw them in to you. Engagement doesn't mean posting content and hoping people find it, you have to create genuine dialog between people and that takes effort and time. But can be eased by using tools and technology, and will pay off in the long run.

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Ryan, you say: "Your prospects are easy to find online right now. There are thousands of them, probably hundreds of thousands of them." Are there? My target is marketing managers and executives who actively Tweet and blog. I found a very few when I looked, actually. Programmers and other copywriters and mISV types and startups are quite easy to find online. Internal people with spending authority who blog and tweet are much harder to find. – user2757 Dec 19 '11 at 16:17
up vote 0 down vote

Your question isn't very clear IHMO but I'll give it a go.

Sounds like your basically wanting to know how to get known in a niche - so that will lead to inbound leads.

Simply put - you put out content, advice, tools and other 'free' stuff that your target market will find genuinely interesting and useful. ('fluff' doesn't work - so be honest with yourself, is your stuff really as good as you think it is?)

Some of it's free (blog etc), some of its behind a email signup (white-paper etc). You keep going and build your 'brand' and you become known as an expert in your niche.

The key part is defining your niche. If its too large you won't become known in it. If its too large you will become an expert in a niche no-one cares about.

Check out Hubspots inbound marketing guide as a great first step - not only are they telling you how to do it but they are doing it with YOU at the same time!

http://www.hubspot.com/essential-guide-to-internet-marketing/

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Ryan, respectfully, this is everything that has been broadcast in the past on the subject. I edited my question above to reflect the particular spin that this question has. The question in the context of your answer is - what tools, advice and content can I create that will interest, say, a marketing manager? And, I do have a niche (see other comment responses.) Thanks! – user2757 Dec 17 '11 at 19:41
Don - no offence but the answer is still the same. I think I am almost your target market. I know about conversion rate experts from their great actionable advice and insightful example of past work (I would LOVE to give them some of my cash, but too small fry). I know about Hubspot because of the free grader tools and e-book. I know about SEOMOZ, Jason Cohen, Dave Collins, Andy Brice, Patrik McEnzie, Neil Patel, Avanish whatsisname etc etc etc. because of the same. (To be fair I am not much of a customer though). I don't know about you because ____ ? – Ryan Dec 18 '11 at 18:15
up vote 0 down vote

You are being very mysterious, can you expand on the 'specific problems' that you've solved for clients?

Also, I'm reminded of advice I've heard Jason Cohen give before 'pick a niche/target segment and nail that'. You don't sound like you've definitely got a target customer in mind that would love your product. If you can figure that out then you can narrow down where you focus your energies on creating engagement.

Here are 3 more posts from Jason that might help you:

http://blog.asmartbear.com/get-first-customers.html

http://blog.asmartbear.com/sell-general-purpose-tool.html

http://blog.asmartbear.com/play-fringe.html

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Yes, I have defined a target market. I have a well defined niche - copy writing for software technology providers. And my ideal contact is a marketing executive or manager within such a company. – user2757 Dec 17 '11 at 19:25
up vote 0 down vote

As a specific example, I've found precious few hits to my web site from my several months of activity on OnStartups. I get a few inquiries here and there but they have never resulted in real business.

I have not seen your website (no web address given), but it seems that this statement is emblematic of the problem.

Many (hopefully most) people will attempt to Google for an answer to their question before posting it on one of the stackexchange sites. Of the questions you have responded to, how many were already addressed on your website before you responded to the question here? Did you post a summary of you website article in the answer you posted here along with a link to the full article?

Another way to think about this is that people come here and ask questions because they have specific interests. It is about them, not you. By reading their questions you have learned what they care about. How well does the content on your website correlate with what they care about? Assuming you are delivering content that people want, the next question is how effective are you as a writer? Is it interesting, insightful etc.?

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