You’ve taken the plunge into starting your own business; all those tales of overnight success stories and raking in the big bucks are flying around your head. It’s great to dream big, right?
But annoyingly, the ‘build it and they will come’ theory just isn’t always true. Marketing your business is essential to get your new brand out there into the world, in front of real-life paying customers. And for a start-up the marketing challenge is even tougher, because of limited funds, resources and time. Let’s face it, you’re stretched enough as it is!
But worry not – we’ve got 5 top tips to get your marketing machine well-oiled and working for you, rather than wasting your precious time.
In a nutshell, what is your key selling point? What makes you stand out from other companies out there? This has to be in line with what makes your customers tick; your USP (unique selling point) needs to resonate with their pain-points so they think Ah! Here’s the answer to my problems!
Know yourself and be consistent; staying true to your brand will only make you more powerful and pack a hefty punch in your industry.
Everyone jumps on the social media bandwagon, without stopping to think are my customers actually using this? For example, if Pinterest’s largest demographic is teenagers, they’re unlikely to be using your geospatial products any time soon.
Talk to your potential customers, find out what social networks they use. You need to market your brand where your customers hang out, or your efforts will be fruitless. For example, surveyors are going nuts over Instagram at the moment. Remember, Instagram is very much a ‘look at me’ medium, so think carefully on how you can attract their attention if ‘surveyors’ are your market.
Spend a couple of hours a week studying social channels to see where your customer demographic is spending their time online.
Find out who the key influencers in your industry are and start interacting with them. It’s a super-effective way to get more exposure, by simply following and sharing their content on Twitter and LinkedIn.
How does it work? Well it’s all about reciprocation. If you’re sharing and promoting their content, the powers that be will be more likely to respond in kind. The result is your brand being exposed to their humongous followers and all you’ve invested is a bit of your time. Check out Daniel Priestley and his book, “Key Person of Influence” – it’s jam-packed with goodies; including a whole section about ‘partners’.
A great examples are Surveying with Robert (who sells Trimble equipment and has become a world wide name within the Survey Profession for his brutal honesty) or Lee Landman (Surveyor in South Africa who has over 10,000 followers and a true Trimble advocate)
‘Content’ is a bit of a marketing buzz-word right now, for the simple fact that it’s a powerful marketing tool (if done right). Get a blog set up on your website and create engaging posts that reel your customers in to create a following. Focus on two or three potential buyers (Buyer Personas) and address their goals and pain-points with super-valuable posts that leave them wanting more.
This KissMetrics post gives top tips on creating a killer content strategy, including blogging, ebooks, webinars and videos.
Don’t forget to take a breath to analyse how your efforts are paying off. If you don’t, you risk just blindly ploughing on with no real understanding of which bits are working and which aren’t doing anything for your business.
Remember, your startup needs a marketing boost to give it the exposure it needs (and deserves). In this day and age, resting on your laurels just isn’t an option. You need to get focused, get active and get up to speed with marketing; I promise, your competitors will be.
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Hey up (as we say in Yorkshire) Surveyors. I’ve pulled together a quick guide on how to get the most out of a tiny marketing budget! Focused at Surveyors: directors and managers of survey teams and their marketing and admin personnel. I walk you through how to use your hard earned cash wisely.
A step by step approach unpicking each element in order for the surveyor to focus his/ her efforts and capture the attention of your target audience.
You don’t have to have a lot of cash but you do need to focus your efforts in order to attract potential buyers who want and need your services.
If you need to ask me anything or would like me to do another How-to-Geo, then drop me a WhatsApp on +447825517850
Take a look at this paragraph for a moment:
“We empower corporations to future-proof their construction investments by leveraging site-specific seismic motion best practices that deliver tremendous value and continually delight our clients. By moving the needle on core competencies like nonlinear and equivalent-linear ground response analyses, we’re shifting the paradigm in the field mapping arena.”
… Hmm, sounds interesting, huh? If only it was written in A LANGUAGE THAT REAL PEOPLE SPEAK.
Because, seriously: what in the *&%! does that even mean??
I’m gonna hit you with a big ol’ truth-bomb here: jargon does not make you sound smart. Equally, choosing the longest, most complicated word you can think of to express an otherwise simple idea does not make you sound smart. Frankly? It makes you sound like a thesaurus in a washing machine. It’s a load of nonsense.
But hey? What do I know. Let’s hear it from Jennifer Chatman, a Professor in Management at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business:
“Jargon masks real meaning,” she says. “People use it as a substitute for thinking hard and clearly about their goals and the direction that they want to give others.”
Oof. Harsh words – but she’s right. Jargon is the opposite of effective communication.
Of course, marketers everywhere fall into this trap. But when it comes to B2B, tech, and niche markets, they really let their hair down. In the geospatial sector, which is about as B2B, tech and niche as it gets, most of what you read sounds about as natural as a malfunctioning Google Alexa trapped under a lawnmower.
But it doesn’t have to be this way! To help you save yourselves and your clients from a fate of certain boredom, here are nine top copywriting tips that really work for Geospatial.
If it was good enough for Einstein, it’s good enough for you. Don’t overcomplicate things when you don’t have to! If there’s a word in there that doesn’t add anything, strip it out. If there’s a term that’s clearly corporate-speak cliché, change it for something simpler. That does NOT mean dumbing things down; it means finding the clearest, most accessible way to explain what you do.
This is YOUR field. YOU are the expert here. Remember that this is what will win over your clients – your knowledge, expertise and bursting portfolio of happy clients / awesome past projects that prove you’re the right vendor of that product or team for the job.
So why mask that with impenetrable language? Talk through your credentials simply, sticking to the facts without embellishment. Weave testimonials and quotes from clients into your website copy. Link to case studies. Talk about how long you’ve been doing this for and any industry awards or recognition you’ve had. These are the things that will really earn prospective customers’ trust.
Where possible, avoid vague claims about saving clients money or outstripping the competition. It’s much more effective to give actual stats and figures. For example if your technology helped a client to conduct land surveys in half the time, say that.
If it improved accuracy by 22%, point that out, too. This is a scientific industry, and hard evidence and numbers will be much more convincing for your customers than general boasts.
Hey, don’t be shy – we’re all geeks out here in geospatial! Feel free to show just how excited you are about the capabilities and features of your product, and new developments in your industry.
This is where blogging comes in useful. By keeping this separate to your direct marketing copy and company information, you give yourself far more freedom to get the team involved, talk through use cases, demo the potential of the technology and generally show off your knowledge in an engaging, non-salesy way that’s super engaging for your audience.
On a similar note, try to find a tone that’s conversational and interesting. Yes, yes, I know: you’re worried you’ll sound less professional, but you won’t.
Think about the best presentations you’ve ever seen in the industry. Were they the driest ones? The ones where the speaker droned on and on like a robot, reciting long, dense, complicated sentences and lists, and occasionally pointing to a graph? Of course not: you were asleep by the end of those ones.
Written copy is no different. If you want people to read through to the end of it, show a bit of spark, a bit of personality. Imagine you’re explaining what you do to a client you really want to work with, in person, at a busy conference. To keep their attention, you’d need to be charming, interesting, to the point – and excited about what you do, right? Great copywriting just means transferring that to the page.
Oh, and while you’re at it, include as much visual content as you can with your copy. You might not have thought about it before, but geospatial is actually a very “visual” industry.
After all, we deal with mapping out and understanding the surface of the earth, with drone and satellite imagery, with cool technology that often looks pretty damn awesome in action. The more videos and images you can include to bring what you do to life, the better.
Copywriting covers a lot of bases, be that your website, your blog, eBooks and whitepapers, PowerPoint presentations – the works. Some of these things, like your home page, need to be open and general enough to appeal to all visitors. Most of the time, though, it’s important to establish exactly who in the company will be reading this copy, and tailor it accordingly.
For example, your marketing materials might target: the company CEO, who is mostly concerned about growing the company, improving productivity and raising profits, operational and engineering managers, who are deeply interested in the capabilities of a product and exactly how it fits with the way they work, and/or business or procurement managers, who are less tech-savvy but want a solid option with great ROI that they can present to the higher-ups.
In each case, you’ll need to create content that is targeted to what this type of person wants to hear about, the language they use, and the level of technical detail they are interested in. It’s not enough to create one-size-fits-all content: to be really successful, be as specific and tailored as you can.
Your clients are busy people. They want to be able to glance over a page and tell immediately whether or not this content has any use to them.
That means taking care not to waste their time. Keep sentences short. Don’t go overboard with 5,000 word blog posts, case studies and product descriptions. Cut out all the fluff and avoid huge chunks of text. Rather than pouring all the information into one place, include “read more” links that take them through to more detailed descriptions / documents if they’re curious to know more, but don’t bombard them if they aren’t!
Remember that your audience knows their stuff – they’re cautious, cynical and have a low bar for b*%%&£$^. Overblown claims that promise them the Earth won’t cut it – so show, don’t tell. Explain exactly what your company offers and how it can solve their problems convincingly, but without hyperbole or guff.
All make sense to you? Great! Now let’s take a quick look at how this works in action. Remember that hideous paragraph we started with? Here it is again, but edited using these tips:
“We work with some of the world’s largest construction companies in areas prone to earthquakes, helping them to reduce the risk of damage and protect their investments in the future.
Using the latest seismic motion and field mapping technologies, our experienced team conducts nonlinear and equivalent-linear analyses to assess how safe a plot is for development, and what measures should be taken to improve it.
Click here to read more about what we do, or click here to find out what our clients say about working with us.”
…. Ah, that’s better, don’t you think?
Ready to give your geospatial marketing a makeover? Tweet me @Eballball | email me: elaine @ elaineball.co.uk | call me on +44 7825 517 850 PS: I don’t bite but I may talk about horses!
Search Engine Optimization
You know that sinking feeling when you dash into your local supermarket to pick something up in a hurry, and they’ve changed everything around? All you can think is: great, all I need is a carton of milk and a tin of cat food, but now I’ll have to waste twenty minutes wandering about trying to figure out where the hell they’re keeping it today.
Now imagine that this supermarket doesn’t just have some annoying redesign every six months or so – they do it every single day. Every morning, when customers arrive, they’re faced with thousands of products spread over dozens of aisles, and no idea where to find what they want without help.
Every day, billions of new pieces of information are thrown onto this mammoth pile, and search engines like Google have to figure out how to organise them so that users can navigate to what they need.
If you were one of the brands whose products are stocked in that supermarket, you’d want to make sure that the overworked shop assistants could tell immediately what each item is and where they should put it. You’d want to make your products jump out and look familiar so that customers can locate it in a hurry. And you’d want to do plenty of research on how the supermarket organizes and directs people around the store, so that you can label products in a way that fits with their system – and your stuff doesn’t end up left in the store room gathering dust.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and that’s exactly what it does – it optimises your content for search engines.
When someone searches for a particular term, Google (or Bing, or whatever search engine you’re using) scans through millions of websites looking for matches and suggests the ones THEY think are most relevant. If the person searching for that term clicks their suggestion and stays on the site, they take this as a sign they’ve got it right.
If a lot of people clicking the link take one look at it and leave immediately Google takes this as a sign that the page wasn’t much help – and pushes it down the list of suggestions for next time.
Firstly, you need to clearly label your content using the same language as your intended audience – the terms they enter into the search engine – so that Google knows where to put your stuff and who to show it to.
Secondly, you need to make sure that when people click through to your site, they get useful, relevant, high quality content that’s easy to find their way around.
There are a whole bunch of tools you can use to figure out what keywords and search terms to focus on.
These tell you how many times a particular term is searched each month, giving you a better idea of how your potential customers frame their queries – and how to word your site.
For example, imagine you’re a geospatial company that specialises in remote sensing technology.
According to Google AdWords, the term “remote sensing” gets 40,500 hits a month, but the term “remote sensor” only gets a measly 2,400.
This means that, in theory, you could show up in nearly twenty times as many searches, simply by changing this sentence:
“We specialise in remote sensors for mapping the surface of the Earth”
To this:
“We specialise in remote sensing technology for mapping the surface of the Earth”
Search engines understand that different elements on the page carry different weight. Google will pay more attention to a keyword that shows up in a title or header than to keywords that turn up in the body text.
That’s because putting a keyword in a header makes it clear that this is the main focus of the page or section – it’s not just a passing reference.
So, to use the example above, if you have a header on a page (marked out in HTML with proper <H1> or <H2> tags so that the search engine KNOWS it’s a header!) that says: “Remote Sensing Technology for Geospatial Analysis”, Google feels pretty damn confident that someone searching for “remote sensing” and “geospatial analysis” will find your site useful.
To a lesser extent, putting a keyword in bold, italics or a bulleted list also sends the message to your search engine that this is more important than the others, i.e. that this is an important term that shows what your site is about.
Using a keyword a couple of times on the page helps to make it clear that this the point of the site, too. Just don’t go nuts, as we’ll look at in a moment.
Oh, and make sure you include keywords in the file names of any images you use – and in the ALT text for that image, too – especially if you’re using the image to link to another page. Search engines gather clues about what the destination page site is about from what the links to it say. This also means that text links are generally better than images, as they provide more information!
Put simply, If you stuff your site with keywords but don’t deliver answers, solutions or helpful information, the visitor will “bounce” straight off it.
Then, Google’s robots will think, uh-oh, this site isn’t great, so let’s push it further back in the queue of search results.
This means that simply squishing in as many keywords as possible can actually do you much more harm than good.
Case in point: if you’re more worried about replicating a search term than writing like a human, your audience will spot that, and they’ll be suspicious of your site. Plus, by chasing the most popular terms instead of the most accurate ones for your site, you could be attracting the wrong audience.
For example, let’s say you sell drones to the geospatial industry for site scanning and surveying.
The terms “video drone” and “camera drone” are a LOT more popular than the terms “drone surveying” and “site scan.” But if you try and shoehorn in references to “video drone” or “camera drone” where it doesn’t really flow, your readers will be put off.
And, of course, you’ll also get tens of thousands of hits from ordinary people searching for videos taken by amateur drone filmmakers, or who are looking to buy a drone off Amazon for a couple of hundred quid. You might get more traffic, but it’s useless to you.
Better to get 100 potential customers finding you by searching for “drone surveying” than half a million who turn out to be teenagers searching for cool drone footage!
Having outsiders link to you is one of the best things you can do for your SEO. Basically, the more times Google or Bing see a link back to you, the more likely they are to think you’re a trustworthy site and push you up their rankings.
This can only happen when you produce top quality content. That’s why blogging, as well as other forms of content marketing, are so valuable – they give people a reason to post links to your site, boosting your credibility and making you more likely to show up in searches in the long run.
Here’s how Peter Kent, author of SEO for Dummies, sums up what you need to do for effective SEO:
“Here’s the ideal optimized page:
Lastly, remember that this stuff takes time and effort. Great SEO is essential, but it takes effort. You need to win people’s trust, give them plenty of first rate content, and take the time to test out what works.
There are no cheats to it – but when you get it right, it’s worth the work. I promise.
Ready to take your geospatial marketing to the next level? Give me a call today on +447825 517 850 Skype: elaine_ebtm or email elaine @ elaineball.co.uk for a chat about how we can help!
How often do you use Google on an average day?
If you’re anything like me, you probably use Google Search at least a dozen times a day – it’s my default for checking or researching everything from train times to marketing strategy to how to spell an unusual name. And that’s before I’ve even factored in Google Maps (I can barely find my way out of the house without it) or tools like Gmail and Google Drive that help me stay in touch with colleagues and clients and run my projects more efficiently.
And then there are all the other cool products and services Google is famous for. The amazing stuff going on inside the top secret Google X Lab. Google Analytics and Adwords that revolutionised online marketing. Heck, I’m even using the Google Chrome browser right now.
Basically, Google has created the most formidable brand in the world. They’re known as being ahead of the curve. Of embracing new tech and ideas before their competitors even cottoned on to how big these things were going to be. Their laid-back, creative-nurturing corporate culture is so famous that 7 year olds are writing to the CEO (and getting replies!) to say that their dream is to work there when they grow up.
Google isn’t just a tech company, or a search engine, or a service provider, or whatever. What makes it a success is the fact that they know exactly who they are and what they stand for, and this runs through everything they do.
Yes, their actual products change and evolve – but the core message does not. They’re excited about what they do and what they can do in the future, and that’s what’s so compelling to their clients and users.
Now compare that to one of their biggest competitors, back in the early days: Yahoo.
When Yahoo started, it was a cool idea. In the early days of the internet, when it was hard to locate the good sites out there, two Harvard buddies had this stroke of inspiration and invented a system for keeping track of their favourites. As searching became easier, they developed their idea into a search function. So far, so good… but then what?
In 24 years, do you know how many times Yahoo has changed its mission statement?
… 24 times.
That’s once a year.
Yes, once A YEAR, Yahoo completely scraps whatever it is it’s supposed to stand for and comes up with a new brand identity.
But that’s not a brand. That’s a case of frantically scrambling after whatever’s hot right now. Read: whatever Google’s up to. Whatever someone who DOES know what they’re aiming for manages to have some success with.
And you know what?
Yahoo is crumbling.
It has been failing for years… because it doesn’t know what the hell it is, what it stands for or where it’s going.
The tech branding expert Denise Lee Yohn, who used to head up branding and strategy for Sony Electronics, summed up the problem perfectly when she wrote:
“Yahoo has also been vision-less. While many credit [Melissa] Mayer with leading the company’s transition to mobile, the shift was born out of necessity to catch up with the world, not out of opportunity to change it. In fact, Yahoo has been operating in reactive mode for the last decade. Even the new homepage design it recently introduced is merely an incremental evolution of its past designs and its latest attempt to mimic the popular features of other sites.”
In fact, even when Yahoo tries its level best to drag itself back into the running, it comes off as just listing things Google does well and planning to rip them off as a ‘strategy’:
“Yahoo doesn’t have a brand vision that would propel it forward, leapfrogging over existing realities and pushing the limits of what is possible. Mayer once described her vision for the company’s future saying, “As digital content becomes richer, as search and mail become richer, we need to change what the format of that guide is, as we move to mobile, wearables, TVs, cars, and all the other formats in the future. So, we’re focused on search, communications and digital content, all of which we think are incredibly important parts of that role as a guide, and those are the products that we’re investing in and building on.” Her statement merely reflects the company’s reactive stance to changes that it must address — not new growth opportunities it is creating for itself.”
In its heyday, Yahoo was valued at over $100 billion.
Guess how much Verizon bought it for last year.
No, really – guess. It will shock you.
… $4.83 billion.
That’s a collapse of 96% of its value. Can you imagine what would happen if your company lost 96% of its value?? But that’s what happens when you have a decent piece of tech, but no brand to back it up.
Now I want you to think for a moment about the geospatial sector.
How many players in your market do you know that genuinely have a “brand”?
I don’t mean a good offering. I don’t mean a product or a service that does what their clients need them to do. I mean a BRAND.
Put another way, how many companies in your corner of the geospatial industry can you look at and say: yeah, I get what those guys stand for. I get what they’re about. Not just what they do or make, but what their vision is. What they represent. Where they’ll be in 5 or 10 years’ time.
And what about your company? Can you say that about yourselves? Could your clients answer those kinds of questions about YOU?
Because here’s the thing. Right now, you might think that stuff doesn’t matter. Perhaps you’re the only guys on the block doing what you do. You’re one of the few companies that makes the particular piece of equipment or software that your clients are desperate for.
Well, that’s what Yahoo thought, too.
Drone dude coming to steal your customers!
But sooner or later, the Google of your industry is going to come along. They’re going to target the same customers and try to fix the same problems. But they’re also going to have this exciting, passionate brand story to go with it. They’re going to push the idea that they alone are the big-vision innovators. That they are the future of your sector.
And you know what? Your clients are going to buy into it. Because branding is just that powerful. Yes, even in our low-key, geeky, tech-heavy, super-practical, no-nonsense industry, your brand – what people think your company represents – matters.
Don’t wait around
So don’t wait around for some shiny new competitor to come marching in with their awesome brand and turn your company into a future Yahoo. Don’t risk throwing away nine-tenths of what you’ve worked for because you didn’t think early enough about who you are as a company, where you’re going and what image your clients have of your role in the sector.
You’re in the amazing position right now of being in an industry that has been slow to realise the full power of a compelling brand. So instead of letting someone else steam ahead and leaving you picking up the dregs of their business or copying all the stuff they do well, it’s time for you to be proactive.
Lead the way in creating that incredible brand and I promise you, you’ll find it one hell of a lot easier to push your way to the front of the queue.
Feeling inspired? Give me a call on +44 (0) 7825 517 850 | Skype: elaine_ebtm | email: elaine @ elaineball.co.uk to talk through how we can turn your brand into the Google of the Geospatial Industry!