Thank You MarketingSherpa, for Your Useful and Timely Wisdom

I’m never disappointed when I click over to MarketingSherpa.

Chances are, you’re familiar with this organization.  But if not, MarketingSherpa is an online community dedicated to providing useful marketing resources and research.

As they note on the About section of their website,  the name "Sherpa" refers to the Sherpas – or guides -- of Nepal who guide climbers up Mount Everest. The goal of this for-profit entity is to guide marketers through their tough climb toward great marketing results.  They do this by providing research on 'what works.' 

Chart of the Week

The chart of the week is especially interesting – there's a new one shared every Tuesday. The one posted above summarizes top objectives of email marketing, as gathered from one of their member research analysis.

Wisdom Report

Other content offers additional value. For instance,   I just stumbled upon a useful document entitled the 2011 Wisdom Report.  As always, it is a concise and succinct summary of shared wisdom related to direct marketing, list management, social media marketing, and online marketing.

Subtitled “Real Life Stories of Success & Lessons Learned from the MarketingSherpa Community”, the 32-page document is worth saving.

Please read it for yourself – it is available as a free download (not sure how long, the offer will be valid, though). 

In the interest of this blog posting, here are a few standout nuggets of wisdom.

Importance of  driving traffic to website

No matter the b-to-b marketing program, be it a press release, media coverage, guest blog posting, Tweet, LinkedIn update or banner ad, never minimize the importance of driving traffic to your website.  Embed links to your site, as many as you possible can. Of course, you must provide a clear “call to action” on your website once folks land there, but all programs should aim to drive traffic back to your own domain, not somebody else’s. The report shares the conventional wisdom other folks have learned about this important goal.

Social media marketing

I’ve covered this before in various blog postings, but this research reminds us that social media marketing needs to be “social” and focus on =connecting and engaging with folks relevant to the business.  Don’t just blast your message.  Engage, connect, pose questions, answer questions about the topics and industry trends that make sense for your company. Consistency is key.  A regular (daily) stream of postings goes a long way to communicate about a company’s brand.  

One especially useful nugget: “Successful social media marketing is about identifying the most influential members of your audience and leveraging them to achieve your key business goals.”

Pay attention to the horror story one company experienced – engaging with an agency to manage their social media marketing at a rate of $7500 pre month, only to garner a miserable ROI. 

The importance of communicating  "targeted content to segmented lists"

The more timely the message, the better the open rate and conversion rate (amount of people who take an action like download a report) when it comes to direct mail.  We’ve proved this time and again at various clients.  Open rates of messages improve when a subject line is tweaked to target the list segment of recipients. This research reminds us of this important fact.

Download the 2011 Wisdom Report today. Bookmark the MarketingSherpa website and visit it often!