The Thomas Blog

5 Ways for Industrial SMB Owners to Make Time for Marketing

“Really work morning to night. Think about it in your sleep. Seven days a week. No breaks.” Those are Elon Musk’s (Tesla CEO and real-life Iron Man) words of advice to budding entrepreneurs — but, as you probably know, they apply to just about every small business owner, regardless of your company’s age.

With the day-to-day grind of making sales, fulfilling orders, and generally keeping the lights on, who has time for sleep, let alone marketing?

What Are Your 2014 Marketing Resolutions?

It’s that time of year again: holidays are over, and it’s time to focus on what’s ahead. In all honesty, we’re not huge fans of resolutions here — we think any time is a good time to change for the better.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common (and quickly-forgotten) resolutions — and how you can use them to prime your marketing plan for success throughout the whole year.

Social Media Marketing: A Look Back, and A Look Ahead

It may sound a little strange, but social media is reaching a mature stage in its development.

Its importance as a communication tool is no longer in question, and its legitimacy as a marketing platform is clear: 77% of the Fortune Global 100 use Twitter, and 70% of Fortune 500 companies are on Facebook (including 9 of the top 10).

The social networks are vastly different places now than they were even just a few years ago — and the best ways to use them have evolved as well.

Marketing and Sales for Today’s Buyers: Three Tips to Get the Most Out of the Relationship

It’s always been a tough relationship to nail down, but today’s landscape of buyer behavior has thrown yet another money wrench into the workings of your sales and marketing unit.

On the marketing side, the challenge is to address the diverse needs of prospects who get as far as 70% of the way to a purchase before contacting a salesperson.

You Are Your Content

Your content typically takes the form of blog posts or portfolios — educational content that lives on your site. Readers find it in the course of searches for topics that they’re interested in, come to your site, and we see content marketing at work. In order to really supercharge your reach, though, it helps to expand — expand what you think of as “content,” and expand where it’s going to “live” — beyond your site.

When Marketing Gets Scary: Three Tales of Terror

Who doesn’t love a good, fun scare?

With Halloween now come and gone, that season may be winding down, but unfortunately the potential for a frightening marketing situation stays with us year-round. Fortunately, like the hero left standing at the end of our favorite scary movie, we have ways to fight back against the horror of marketing gone wrong.

Want to Write Better Headlines? Follow These Three Tips

It’s almost like a cruel trick: you read a great headline or Twitter post, click the link, and expect to see more of the same: useful information, instruction, advice, or humor.

Once you get to the article, though, it all falls apart — poor writing, worn-out topics, or it’s just plain boring. You can spend all the time you want on a killer headline — it might even get you some better click metrics — but without the quality content to back it up, it’ll never turn into leads or customers. 

Know Your Leads: Using Nurturing Campaigns Effectively

One of the primary benefits of online marketing is the opportunity to be there for prospective buyers at the moment they’re ready to buy. Your product information, your blog, your robust website — they all act in service of letting buyers find you (rather than vice versa).

9 Industrial Marketing Lessons From Hubspot’s Inbound 2013

The Red Sox were on the West Coast, but there was no time to catch a game anyway. Unfortunately, not even a chance to venture out for a lobster roll. Industrial Marketer attended Hubspot’s Inbound 2013 marketing conference in Boston this week, and we’ve come back with a wall-to-wall information download of perspective-changing ideas for the possibilities of marketing today.