Most marketers now recognize the term ‘content marketing,’ but few companies in the industries served by Meister Media have committed real resources to incorporating this concept into their marketing program. More companies are going in this direction, however, as I was reminded this morning upon receiving the new Grow in Media enewsletter from peat moss supplier Premier Tech Horticulture (web version available here).

Of particular note to me was the educational nature taken by a company that has historically focused its marketing around product messaging. The first two stories carried informative production tips for growers, while the third story talked about handling the company’s bulk product efficiently. The fourth story was a striaght-forward product push, which i imagine interested much of the audience as well.

Our experience producing enewsletters for clients tells us that this is a recipe for success. And this view is backed up by the recommendations of Patricia Traveline, vice president at content marketing firm Skyword. Their philosophy regarding content market focuses on what they term the Three S Model for Content Success: Searchable, Snackable and Sharable. The Three S Model is Skyword’s formula for creating content that is easy to find and consume and compelling enough for the consumer to share with a larger audience.

• Searchable content captures the passion and pain points of the consumer and is optimized with trending keywords, boosting the content’s search ranking.
• Snackable content is made for the on-the-go consumer who needs answers to questions in a moment’s notice. When done right, snackable content leaves the consumer hungry and eager to come back for more.
• Shareable content serves as the root of discussion across social channels. This content is compelling enough for readers to share with their network of friends and followers.

The Premier enewsletter meets each of these criteria. The content speaks to the audience’s needs (not the company’s!), the stories are relatively brief, and social media options abound.

Other models can certainly work well, too. Each company must find what works for them, but I wanted to share an effective example from our markets that can serve as a template for any company looking to get started.

Click here to read the rest of Travaline’s articles with additional tips on following the Three S Model.

The author is the Director of Interactive Sales for Meister Media. To continue this discussion on content marketing and how your company can put these ideas to work, contact him at 440-602-9129 or bwest@meistermedia.com.

A new CropLife magazine study examining the use of tablets among ag retailers reveals fascinating details regarding just how widespread retailers’ use of these new tools has become, including the when, where and why of their use.

About the respondents

More than 200 retailers completed the survey with nearly 68% of them indicating they use a tablet for work. And while it may be logical to assume the tablet users are the youngest part of the ag retailer universe, that is not the case. More than 51% reported they are over 51 years old, and nearly 80% reported they are over 40 years old.

This is a high-value audience, as well. More than 80% are involved in purchasing decisions at their company, and almost half of the respondents whose organizations apply fertilizers do so on more than 100,000 acres per year.

About their tablets

Not surprisingly, ag retailers are an Apple audience right now. Slightly more than 80% of the tablet user respondents have iPads, while Android and Windows devices are each favored by about 10% of the audience.

The tablets are company issued in about 60% of the situations, while slightly more than one-third of them are owned by the individual.

About their tablet use

The tablets are being used for work all over the place – 85% of the respondents note they use theirs in the office, while 79% use it in the field and 54% use it in the cab. More than half of the respondents report working on their device more than 7 hours per week, and almost 86% of these retailers note they are using their tablet more this year than they did in 2012.

Ag retailers clearly appreciate the range of activities that can be completed on a tablet. When asked to check off work-specific activities they tackle on their tablet from a list of nearly 22 options, each task was noted by at least one retailer, and 10 different tasks were checked by more than half of the respondents. The most commonly performed functions were:

As many companies wonder about the value of investing in an app for their ag retailer customers, this survey illustrates the opportunity and the risk of such an investment right now. Approximately one-quarter of the tablet users report using at least half of their ag-specific apps once a week. However, nearly half of the audience reports using apps less than 20% of the time.

Key takeaways

So, what does this mean for marketers serving ag retailers?

• As tablets and their operating systems continue evolving, a clear distinction is developing between tablets and ‘mobile’ systems with mobile essentially equating to phones.
• The use of technology by senior personnel at the largest ag retailers continues evolving. At the very least, you need to remain current on these trends and devices so you speak the language of the customers to whom you most want to sell.
• How does your website appear / function on various tablets, particularly iPads? Is your site built to look good and function the way you want for the increasing number of retailers accessing it from a device other than a computer?
• Arguments can be made for and against investing in an app. Regardless of your decision, be mindful of ag retailers many uses for their tablets, and look at how well you and your digital products serve their informational needs. What opportunities exist to deepen your engagement with them?

The author is Director of Interactive Sales at Meister Media. To further discuss lead-generation ideas, you can contact him at 440-602-9129 or bwest@meistermedia.com

As digital marketing grows in significance, many tentative ag marketers are keenly interested in ‘what everybody else is doing.’ Well, the place to learn that was the Sheraton Crown Center in Kansas City, where I spent much of last week moving from the lobby to the restaurant to the bar in meeting after meeting with ag marketers. The purpose was the 2013 Agri-Marketing Conference produced by NAMA, and the discussions ran the gamut. Here, some observations on what the folks we met with are doing:

• Digital marketing was at the core of nearly every conversation. Whether or not every marketer believes in the value of digital marketing, they all recognize the need to understand their options and where these tools fit.
• The audience’s comfort with metrics continues growing, which takes the discussion to much higher / deeper levels. I cannot stop thinking about the process one agency told me they use to ‘score’ or evaluate different websites.
• Marketers continue looking at video with dubious eyes and struggle to see the value in investing in an outlet that may “only” net a couple thousand impressions.
• Many marketers look at social media options because they have to, not because they want to. Boss / client demands or competitive pressure drives these marketers there, and they readily (albeit quietly) admit they don’t personally use these channels they’re tasked with evaluating.
• Audience segmentation is increasingly important to media buyers. Kept hearing about advertising in “relevant” places, even if that means reaching fewer eyeballs. Quality is clearly more valued over quantity.
• Content marketing interests some folks but still lacks widespread appeal. Sessions on this topic were delivered to 30% or 40% capacity, while sessions on figuring out the right media mix had a standing room only crowd.
• Quote of the week: When deciding where to spend digital dollars, listen to the numbers, not the HiPPO. (The HiPPO = the Highest Paid Person in the Office.)
• Lastly, I know the ag industry has its stereotypes, but it clearly holds tremendous appeal as well. One only had to look at the packs of college students attending the NAMA Student Competition to see that. Their professionalism, enthusiasm and competency was obvious and uplifting.

The author is Director of Interactive Sales at Meister Media. To further discuss lead-generation ideas, you can contact him at 440-602-9129 or bwest@meistermedia.com

We’ve talked a bit in this blog (and will talk much more in the future) about the concept of content marketing, and one organization that works hard to create new customer engagement through educational content is the team at Swanson Russell. The latest Quick Tips mailer from this Nebraska-based agency with a long history of success in the ag and ornamental horticulture industries focuses on an area that gets surprisingly little discussion among our clients: lead generation.

I’ve been wanting to develop a post or series of posts on lead gen for awhile, so I will start by sharing some of the tips from Swanson Russell.

Lead generation – the process of the identifying and cultivating new sales prospects – matters for every organization, although those companies that sell through distribution obviously emphasize it less. Swanson Russell’s report looked at key findings from a recent benchmarking study of business-to-business marketers and their lead gen activity with each tactic evaluated based on four criteria:

• The frequency it was used;
• The quality of leads it produced;
• The quantity of leads it produced; and
• The cost per lead.

Email and SEO Lead the Way

In-house email marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are the only channels that ranked near the top on all four criteria. These are the most frequently used lead gen channels, are viewed as generating the highest quality and high quantity of leads at among the lowest cost per lead. It is important to note that email marketing through third-party lists was not perceived to generate such high quantity or quality leads.

Social media: Low cost, but low quantity and quality

Social media (not ads) was viewed as being among the lowest cost-per lead sources, and social media ads were not too far behind. However, both channels ranked near the bottom in quantity and quality of leads. Social media is the third most widely used channel behind in-house email and SEO.

Four high-cost, quantity and quality channels

Trade shows / events, telemarketing, third-party lead originators and third-party webinars are all seen as generating some of the higher quality leads and above-average quantity of leads, but at a higher cost per lead.

This was expected. What is surprising is that all four of these channels still ranked slightly behind in-house email marketing and SEO in perceived lead quality.

Mixed perceptions of digital ads

Search engine ads rank at the top for quantity of leads and ranked above average for lead quality. On the other hand, online display advertising scored below average for lead quantity and at the bottom for quality of leads. Somewhat surprisingly, both ranked worse than average in cost per lead.

Free trials, live demos, and webinars

B2B marketers also were asked to rate the quantity and quality of leads generated by 12 types of content offers. Free trials, live demos with reps and webinars all ranked among the top in quantity and quality. White papers ranked high for quantity, but lower for quality. Price quotes ranked second among offer types for lead quality, but in the middle for quantity.

The author is Director of Interactive Sales at Meister Media. To further discuss lead-generation ideas, you can contact him at 440-602-9129 or bwest@meistermedia.com. For more marketing insights from Swanson Russell, check out their blog here.

Marketers targeting the tremendously valuable market of agricultural retailers throughout the United States are increasingly using online advertising to engage this audience. A 2012 survey by the CropLife media group (publishers of CropLife magazine, developers of CropLife.com) shares valuable insight into this audience’s online activity and the type of information that marketers can provide to engage them the most via their own websites.

The Online Audience

B2B websites generally attract a diverse audience, and that is clearly true with CropLife.com. The online audience clearly skews toward the larger ag retailers, which makes sense given that employees at larger operations tend to have more time to spend online while also being more progressive in their use of different information sources.

These survey respondents also illustrated a key trait that makes online advertising particularly worthwhile: 78% said they are responsible for purchasing products or services for their company.

Their General Web Use

Ag retailers are clearly spending more time online for work, and nearly one-third of the survey respondents reported they spend at least one hour per day online for work. And, like most web users, ag retailers depend heavily on the most common search engines in order to find the information they want. Almost two-thirds of the respondents said their online activity starts at Google, which reinforces the importance of effective search engine optimization for a supplier’s website.

The Growth of Mobile

Mobile web use is climbing tremendously among this audience. Ag retailers use multiple devices to connect to the Web. While 99% use a desktop/laptop computer to access the Internet for business purposes, 74% also use a smartphone and 38% use a tablet. The computer is still the preferred tool – 44% said they use their desktop/laptop most compared to 27% who reported using their mobile device(s) most often for work – while nearly a quarter of the respondents told us they often use their tablets in the cab and/or field.

Their Views on Email

Despite the ever-increasing number of emails filling in boxes, ag retailers clearly value informative emails. In fact, almost 70% of respondents expressed interest in receiving additional email, particularly those focused exclusively on fertilizer/micronutrients, crop protection or business management content.

Use of All Online Technologies

Not surprisingly, as ag retailers use the web more often, they also expand their use of different web-based technologies. For example, 79% of the survey respondents reported having attended a webinar (up from 47% previously), 64% report having downloaded work-related apps and 60% note they have watched online video for work.

At first glance, online video and social media appear to have little in common, but I see one very obvious connection between the two: they top the list of marketing tactics so many in our industry have been slow to embrace thus far. And new research out this week from the e-Tailing Group and Invodo illustrates the significance of the missed opportunity when you don’t incorporate video into your marketing tactics.

The report notes that 57% of its respondents said watching a video about a product before they buy it makes them more confident about purchasing that product later. In addition, 52% of the survey respondents said they are more likely to stay on a website longer if that site offers product videos.

It’s worth noting that this survey focused primarily on consumer buying habits rather than the B2B world, but our own internal research at Meister Media has consistently underscored the audience’s interest in videos that focus on new products. And ocould logically argue that B2B buyers would be even more interested in watching video about a product before buying it given the average purchase price of so many of the products needed for a business.

Growers of all types tell us year after year that videos about products (whether they’re new products or not!) are more interesting to them than videos on other topics. So, why aren’t more companies developing videos to feature their products? I imagine that concerns about the cost and questions about how to work in this new medium are the most common culprits, but both are easily overcome (see this blog post, “8 Ways to Make Video Jump Off the Screen“), if you’re willing to try.

If you would like to talk more about how your company can produce cost-effective videos, please contact our Director of Interactive Sales, Bob West, at bwwest@meistermedia.com or 440-602-9129.

If you’re not learning from others’ experience then you’re missing chances to speed through the digital curve, so we want to share as many of these experiences as possible to help out.

A client inquired this week about their animated ad that appeared very static, and they wanted to know why this was the case. The answer is simple (and easily remedied), but this is a good learning to share, so…

Animation can be built into an ad via three different means:

1. Developing the ad as a Flash file.
2. Developing the ad as an animated gif file.
3. Developing the ad as an HTML 5 file.

Not all web browsers support all three of these file formats the same way. In particular, most mobile devices (particularly those made by Apple), do not support Flash. So, if a client supplies with us with a Flash ad for the web, they also have to supply us (or we create) a jpg file of just one screen from the animation, and this jpg is what the audience will see if they view the site via a particular browser (ie, an iPhone or iPad).

If a client wants its ad to be animated on all devices (or at least on any many devices as possible), they should submit the ad as an animated gif for their fallback image or they can supply us with an HTML5 Rich Media Ad.

Confession time: I’m a numbers geek (blame my father, the CPA). I love statistics, enjoy looking for trends in data and think Excel is a gift from above.

But I know not everyone shares my fervor for facts and figures. Most people (including many of you?) run away from statistics as quickly as possible, even if that means ignoring some simple but critical reports about your website.

Google Analytics (GA) is a powerful program that can tell you so much about your website, and it is 100% free. There is no good reason not to be using it to measure and monitor the traffic to and through your website. And while GA can tell you so much, users need not drill deep to track the four key metrics on their site, which are:

• Unique visitors – The number of different URLs from which your site is accessed in a given period of time. This basically tells you how many different people visit your site, and this gives you an idea of your breadth of market coverage.
• Visits – How many times was your site visited? Does your audience return to your site?
• Page views – How many pages on your site are viewed? This number talks to how effective your site design entices the growers to stick around by interesting them in more content.
• Avg. visit duration – How much time does the average visitor to your site spend there? How engaged are they at your site? Do the growers read one paragraph and leave, or do they end up reading three or four stories?

GA records these numbers over any period of time you choose, so, beyond getting the tracking code in place, the key becomes consistently monitoring and recording this data on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify trends and position yourself to act on them. For us at Meister Media, that simply means updating and reviewing metrics for the previous 30 days on the first of each month.

Again, you can (and should) measure so many more numbers from your site, including traffic sources (how does your audience get to you?), mobile (should you build a mobile site?), and top content (what information interests your audience most?

But first things first — make sure Google Analytics (or some other metrics tracker) is monitoring your site and instill the discipline necessary to review the data on a regular basis. Through these numbers your customers are telling you many things about your website … why wouldn’t you listen to them?

If you would like to talk more about understanding web metrics and how to use Google Analytics, please contact our Director of Interactive Sales, Bob West, at bwwest@meistermedia.com or 440-602-9129.

Move over ‘social media,’ there’s a new digital marketing buzzword, and marketers need to know it and figure out where it fits for them. The buzz is all about ‘content marketing,’ and this concept has real substance to it.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

The critical phrase in that definition is “relevant and valuable content.” No offense, but boasting of four features of your great new product is not necessarily content marketing. A case study of how a grower used your new product to improve his yield? That’s content marketing.

The odds are good that you’re engaged in content marketing to a degree today. Do you have your own newsletter or enewsletter? That’s content marketing. Do you post educational content to your website? Yep, that’s content marketing, too.

Two factors have contributed to the enthusiasm many marketers have developed for content marketing and its likely growth:

1. The proliferation of the web makes it possible for companies to talk directly to their customers, whereas only the media used to have access to such broad audiences. For example, John Deere has more than 1.5 million Facebook likes, which equals 1.5 million opportunities for direct conversations.
2. The explosion of content has overwhelmed the average individual. Everyone receives too many emails, struggles to find time to watch as much TV and so forth. How then does a marketer get in front of the right people and keep their attention for long enough to deliver their message? Relevant and valuable content.

A client working with Meister Interactive on his content marketing (new web stories, repurposing proprietary research into video podcasts, and pushing it all via a monthly enewsletter) terms his program “the most effective format we’ve found for driving new traffic to our website.”

So, what does all of this mean for a marketer in an agricultural or specialty ag world? For starters, you need to understand this concept of content marketing and consider where it fits in your marketing efforts. Only a handful of firms in our industry are true content marketers today, so having done nothing thus far does not leave you too far behind. In addition, you need to take a hard look at the content on your website and / or social media sites and evaluate whether you’re truly working to inform the market rather than just sell to them.

If you want to go down this road, the content should not be hard to find. Writing up the research your company conducts, re-formatting educational presentations your technical experts have given, or summarizing answers to the questions your customer service personnel field most often are three examples of content that is likely already in your building.

I also strongly recommend you check out the Content Marketing Institute and look at the research and tools they offer – there’s good info there to help you navigate these waters.

For a more in-depth conversation of content marketing and how we can help you strengthen your marketing and include it, please contact your Meister Media sales rep or our Director of Interactive Sales, Bob West, at bwwest@meistermedia.com or 440-602-9129.

By Charlie Craine

So your company has a website and you go to Google and search for it. Obviously, showing up atop a list of search results when you enter your company’s name is good. But how ‘high’ on the page is your new website when you search for key products you sell or services you offer?

Only 10 websites show up on the first page of Google’s search results and you need to do everything possible to ensure you are on that first page for the right search terms. No one knows the super-secret algorithm Google uses to rank sites in search, but there are certain basic website development steps you can take to boost your search engine optimization.

1. Content – Do you have content (think articles!) on every page that offers something of value or do you have a lot of pictures with the text in them linking to other areas? If your site isn’t text heavy then you probably will not show up as high in search. Having a good content strategy is critical, especially considering the newest updates to Google, which places emphasis on quality content.
2. Page titles – Make sure that you have page titles and they are unique for every page on your website.
3. H1 tags – Make sure that you have something assigned with an H1 tag so that Google or other search engines know what the content emphasis is for your page.
4. Meta descriptions – When you see the summary under the title on a Google search results page, that is usually your meta description. This information is extremely important. Without effective meta descriptions, you run the risk of Google deciding what information to put there.
5. Alt text – Do you have images on your website? Do they have properly named alt tags? If not, your search ‘score’ drops because the search engines cannot ‘read’ or properly identify the images.
6. Robots.txt file – If you don’t show up in search at all, this is often the primary reason. If you tell Google or some other search engines that they cannot search your website, they won’t and you will be invisible. Start here if you don’t seem to exist.
7. Technical issues – Have you checked your website and made sure all of your navigation is setup for search? Some websites are built with JavaScript navigation, which means Google cannot crawl the website properly. If this happens, search engines will only ‘see’ the home page and won’t realize how many other pages of information you have on your website. You don’t want this to happen on your site!
8. 301 redirects – Did you kill an old page or redesign your website so that every page is new now? Did you do a 301 redirect to the new articles? If not, Google may still be indexing those old pages and showing them in search results, so when people arrive there they get an error. Worse yet, they may hit the back button to go from your 301 page back to the Google results page, which tells Google they had a bad experience. What does that mean? It means that Google doesn’t think you have a quality website.
9. Sitemap XML – Do you have an XML sitemap setup for your website? Have you submitted it to Google? If not, then you are not providing Google with all available information regarding your website. Not providing the XML sitemap to Google also means you are missing out on seeing what is (and is not!) being indexed by Google and where problems may lie with your search engine optimization.
10. Canonical – This odd term just means does your website / webpages only show up via one URL or does Google think you have many variations of the same web page? Examples:

• If www.website.com goes to the same page as website.com (note the lack of the ‘www.’) then Google thinks you have two home pages. The result is Google will likely devalue both home pages and score you lower in search.
• www.website.com also works with website.com/index.html – same as above
• www.website.com/news/1231/news-article.html also works with www.website.com/news/1231 – same as above
• There are potentially hundreds of scenarios like these on your website, and if you are not using a content management system that fixes these issues you are potential facing a lot of clean up work – unless you use rel=canonical.

To discuss a search engine optimization for your website, please get in touch with your Meister Media sales rep or contact our Director of Interactive Sales, Bob West, at bwwest@meistermedia.com or 440-602-9129.