Our Marketing Roundtable session at Photonics West provided helpful insights into the kinds of marketing tactics that are working today. Here are some activities that participants – and we, ourselves – have found to be successful.
Webcasts
One of the participants shared that they were happy with the quality of leads they received from a webcast. We agree; we’ve seen 125-300 highly qualified leads from webcasts, and closed deals have proved this to be a really strong tactic.
We’ve also seen recorded webcasts continue to perform after the fact. With one of our clients, a sensor and instrument company, we experimented with a Google+ Hangout aimed at aerospace customers. While 27 people watched this casual educational discussion live, the recorded video had 268 views on YouTube in the first 2 weeks.
Use our step-by-step guide to set up your own Google+ webcast.
Social media
Another participant, also a sensor and instrument company, said that they ramped up their social media presence this year. Although it took a while to get everyone on board with the idea, they’ve been seeing promising results.
It will take some trial and error to determine which social media channels and approaches work for your business; for example, for us at Launch Solutions we've found LinkedIn to be much more effective for sharing news and participating in discussions than Facebook. Knowing your audience/personas and how they interact online will help you make that call.
CTAs
Sometimes a few simple changes can make a huge difference. Launch Solutions switched up the wording and location of a call-to-action button on a medical molding website, and it generated 2x the conversion. This, paired with other work we did on the website, resulted in this customer going from 0 leads per month to 30 good, qualified leads per month.
T-shirts
For the sensor and instrument company we work with, we created a “punny” physics T-shirt that read, “It never Hz to ask,” referencing their new terahertz-energy measurement system. The shirts were a big hit at the American Physical Society (APS) March conference, and we had all sorts of requests for them, even in onesie sizes! While kind of a silly tactic, it hits exactly their audience: physics students who wear Ts and hoodies in the lab. And the shirts will continue to increase product and brand exposure every day.
Find more ideas like this in our post on alternatives to traditional promotional.
