Magic 2 USA

The shape of business-to-business (B2B) lead generation has changed significantly over the past few years. E-mail marketing campaigns continue to deliver results, but the way in which companies interact online has moved into new realms. If internet marketers wish to succeed in the current climate, they must explore and exploit the benefits of social.

Social media tools describe services that bring people and businesses together to communicate in some form or another. Two of the finest examples of successful social platforms are Twitter and Facebook, which have attracted more than 325 million users between them.

Availing of these tools is not easy, however, not least because many firms fail to appreciate the reasons why people choose to network online. As with conventional B2B lead generation methods, simply advertising a brand online is not always enough – users, particularly companies, expect more via social media.

Using social for B2B lead generation is set to become an integral aspect of demand generation in its broadest context, while e-mail marketing campaigns can learn a lot from experienced social media marketers because exploiting social media requires an understanding of ‘buyer personas’.

Buyer personas describe the personality traits, characteristics and purchasing trends of potential consumers, clients and business partners. Online marketing campaigns have suffered in the past for failing to appreciate that the same template cannot be used successfully for all firms within a particular demographic – content must match a more precise target audience. Social media can be used to fine-tune B2B marketing campaigns to the point where marketers understand their audience on a more personal level.

B2B demand generation can be facilitated in this manner because companies are appreciating the value of being represented on Twitter, Facebook and other such websites. Firms communicate through social media with their customers, clients and business partners – tapping in to this vital mode of networking can stimulate lead generation across the board.

The Energy Risk Professional (ERP) is a new professional designation from GARP aimed at risk professionals working in the physical and financial fields of energy. I was actually studying for the CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst) and the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) when I became interested in energy risk management. It was intuitive to me to use energy financial instruments for risk management and hedging, but the physical aspects of the energy risk professional designation were not entirely clear to me. Still, I took the plunge and registered for the November exam in summer of 2010.

Little did I know what I had signed up for: The ERP curriculum stretched over nearly two thousand pages, consisted of over 100 readings different and academic papers, some of them very lengthy. Next to a 60 hour work week, the study material was a mountain of work. Organizing the material, summarizing it, reviewing and practicing for the exam were made even more difficult by the lack of study material and preparation resources, as only one (!) practice exam was available at the time.

The curriculum stretches from physical aspects of petroleum (hydrocarbon genesis, refining, transport with tankers, pipelines) over coal and natural gas, to alternative energy such as solar, hydro, wind, and biomass. There is also a segment of nuclear energy, financial trading instruments, valuation of energy transactions, financial disclosure, and laws and regulations. A large part of the material is electricity. The finance part was easy for me, as it covered mainly options, futures, forwards, swaps and little structured derivatives. Energy futures was a different bag altogether, but not too remote from what I already knew.

Marketing is all about creating value out of thin air, and using this value to apply to all of your products and services. There are all kinds of things that you can do to create value out of thin air, but it all starts with an understanding of the marketplace. If you’re spending your money trying to target the wrong people, then you’ll never become wealthy in your business.

Obviously you want to make money. But you can’t make this money if you’re doing the same thing over and over again. This is called insanity. If you want to make more money in your business without spending more money on advertising, then you’ve landed on the right article.

The bottom line is that if you want to be successful in your business, you have to get creative. I’ve come up with a few core strategies that will help you to boost your sales and profits without having to spend a dime more on advertising. In fact, here’s the first tip for making more money in your spending without spending a dime more on advertising:

1) Offering a “deluxe” package

Your deluxe package should be around $50 to $100 more than your core offer. In your deluxe package, offer something that will be of immense value to your customers or clients right before they are about to buy from you. If you’re stuck with ideas, here are 2 examples of how a deluxe package could work.

If you were a product on marketing, you could offer your core package for $100 – which includes a manual and a 200-page book that you could create. As far as a deluxe package goes, you could include a DVD of you working in action creating marketing campaigns for your prospects and customers.

Executive teams invest a lot of time and capital creating, designing and producing an annual report to communicate their company’s prior year’s results. For many companies, the annual report is the most expensive marketing expenditure that a company will have all year. Consequently, the report should reflect the best planning and thought processes available to the company. Because the annual report is a dominant information source for investors, lenders, employees, and prospective talent, information should be relevant to the readers and clearly presented.

Below are five tips to follow that will improve your annual report:

1. Accurately reflect the values of your company. This point seems to be painfully obvious, but it is amazing when you review a lot of annual reports that many companies fall short in this area. For example, if a company has innovation as one of its core values, its annual report should highlight this area in some way. SAS does a great job in highlighting their incredible efforts in providing an outstanding workplace environment for their employees. This is important to them on a daily basis and it is well reflected in their annual report.

1. Match your brand’s style guide. Do not use the annual report to introduce a new funky font or color scheme. It is best to keep the report consistent with your total brand image. A major soft drink company’s annual review shows the trademarked iconic bottle throughout their report and includes a graphic representation of the bottle in their financial summaries.

Marketing is, of course, the main way a business will get themselves into the public eye and adverts are one of the main avenues that marketers will pursue. Choosing an advertising agency is a decision which shouldn’t be taken lightly and you should familiarise yourself with the sorts of tasks that a fully integrated advertising agency will carry out for you if you choose to utilise their services.

Brands don’t become household names overnight and it takes dedicated advertising campaigns over time to ensure that they become entrenched within the public consciousness. Examples of companies who have really capitalised on the use of skilled advertising agencies include the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Nike and they now have huge customer loyalty and immensely strong brand identities – courtesy of the quality of their products and the creativity of an advertising or branding agency.

Laying an Advertising Campaign Bare

Each agency will have their own way of approaching a marketing campaign but there will be various elements which are fairly universal across all advertising agency campaigns. Just some of the actions an advertising agency will undertake on your behalf include:

• Devise and Manage Creative Advertising Campaigns – Coming up with visually striking, relevant and engaging advertising campaign is no small feat and it takes a skilled and dedicated team of creative professionals to achieve this objective. The company will usually provide a brief of what they hope to achieve from their marketing and then leave it to the advertising agency to come up with a variety of concepts. Advertising campaigns are ordinarily to promote a new product or to reinforce the strength of a current brand.