Category Archives: Outsource Marketing

Marketing Your Outsourcing Company

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Marketing your outsourcing company – Basics
 
Introduction
If you run a company that provides outsourced services or wishes to do so, it is critical that you know how to market your services effectively.  There are many different types of products and services that are typically outsourced.  123outsource.net is familiar with services only, and specializes in promoting a dozen or so professional categories with their respective sub-categories.  There are many facets for marketing your business involving online promotion, public relations, customer service, and quality of service.  All of these aspects are critical and must be perfected if you intend to gain market share.  Being Visable helps you attract clients, but giving clients positive experience helps you keep them and get referrals.
 
Why listen to us?
123outsource.net is owned by the same individual who owns 123notary.com which has been around since 2000 and is the prime venue for effectively marketing notaries public in the United States.  When it comes to internet marketing, we are experienced.  We have been outsourcing programming and other tasks for years and have some basic common sense ideas for what effectively helps a company function more efficiently and provide more desireable service to clients. 
 
Online Promotion
If clients can’t find your company, it doesn’t matter how good you are.  A good web presence makes you accessible to the public, but is only the seed in growing your business.  The truth is that most companies worldwide get most of their business from word of mouth, regardless of how sophisticated the technology they use is.  A small restaurant or a large international high-tech company get noticed primarily because of word of mouth.  If you have a base of satisfied customers, that base can grow with referrals and repeat customers to result in a much larger customer base.  But, to get your INITIAL clientele you need a good online presence as well as a comprehensive marketing mix appropriate for your company and industry.  This outsourcing blog intends to be very general in its approach, so please use a consultant for specific marketing tips.
 
Components of an Online Presence
A well designed, easy to use, informative website is where every company needs to start.  Websites get outdated in content and design every several years, so don’t be afraid to devote part of your budget to periodic or a regular schedule for renovations.  Typical characteristics of an old style website are pictures with faded colors, broken links, information that was from many years ago, and design styles that were popular in the 90’s.  Sites today use brighter colors, high definition photos, and cutting edge web design. 
 
Optimizing Your Website
Regardless of the quality of your site, you will not get noticed without a good optimization campaign.  Optimization is generally complicated and expensive.  Please  visit our SEO page to learn the basics of optimization so you will understand what SEO professionals are talking about when you contact them.   The basics are that certain pages need to emphasize certain keywords, and that internal pages need to be linked to each other in a way that emphasizes keyword similarities and user-friendly functionality.  Additionally, having supporting content from blogs, facebook, twitter, forums, and other social media is actually magical in terms of search engine performance.
 
Public Relations Outreach
One way a company can market themselves is to contact specific companies that could use their services.  Email campaigns are common ways for SEO and web design companies to do outreach.  However, emails normally get discarded if the sender is not known, especially with promotional emails.  Calling companies manually by phone can be an excellent way to attract new business.  If the employee making the call is polite and helpful, but not pushy, new clients can be obtained.  If you are serious about gaining a new client through outreach, its more effective to offer the prospective client something substantial for free.  A few hundred dollars worth of free services is a great way to woo a serious potential client.  Make sure they intend on spending at least a $500 per month for at least a year before you give them anything for free.
 
Customer Service
If your company offers a pleasant experience to your clients, you are more likely to accumulate long term customers.  Good customer service is critical.  The people who answer the phone should speak well, and emails should be returned quickly. Internal management should make sure that all job tasks are explained clearly to the workers, and that the output of the workers is scrutinized BEFORE it gets back to the client.  Make life easy for your clients even if it costs you a lot more.  They will remember you for this.
 
Quality Work
Doing good work is critical.  The speed and accuracy of your work makes or breaks your business regardless of how good your promotional stengths are.  All of the facets of a good marketing mix need to be balanced. If you are good at work but lousy at internet presence, you are compromising yourself. But, if you can be fairly good at all of the components mentioned in this quick outsource blog entry, then you stand a good chance of succeeding in the outsourcing world. 
 
Please see our other related blog entries to read more about customer service, double checking work, and more!

Tweets:
(1) If clients can’t find you, it doesn’t matter how good you are. A good web presence makes all the difference.
(2) Get your initial clients from the web & then get clients from word of mouth! (or word of mouse)
(3) Marketing your outsourcing company from A to Z

You might also like:

Most BPO blogs use cheap looking pics
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/03/11/most-bpo-blogs-use-cheap-looking-pics/

Creating a vacuum in business
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/02/28/creating-a-vacuum-in-business/

123outsource.net’s online presence

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

123outsource.net – Online Presence
 
Introduction
123outsource.net is a relatively new outsourcing directory for outsourcing companies.  Due to the owners extensive experience in internet marketing over the last decade, we have been able to have a very successful and fast start marketing our site.  We used all of the basic techniques that we wrote about in our SEO section.  We optimized each page for certain related and important keywords, and then created an internal link structure to strengthen those pages.  Additionally, our new social media campaign has worked magic to gain us immediate results on google. 
 
Keywords
We now show up on google on roughly four hundred keywords, and get excellent placement under many of our most relevant and critical keywords, especially:  outsourcing directory, outsource directory, bpo directory, kpo directory, call center directory, lpo directory, etc.  We are currently working on optimizing for roughly twenty other critical keywords.
 
Take Social Media, Mix With Water, Get Results!
The results of our social media campaign were so good, it reminds me of this joke by Yacov Smirnoff in the 1980’s.  I don’t remember his exact verbiage, but here is what I remember.
 
When I first came to America, I went to a supermarket.  It was so huge, much larger than small grocery stores in Russia.  Then I went to Aisle 1 and saw milk powder… mix with water… get milk.  Wow!!  Then I went to Aisle 2 and saw orange juice powder… mix with water and get orange juice.   Everything is so convenient in this country.   Then, I went to Aisle 3 and saw BABY POWDER and said, what a country!  I make big family today!
 
Social media including Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and forums improved our search results on every site we used it on.  But, the results were quick and only took a few weeks which is amazing.  Take social media, mix with water, get results! Its actually time consuming and complicated, not to mention expensive, but the results don’t take long to come.  Google places a heavy emphasis on social media because it shows that you are not only serious, but want to interact with the world around you.
 
Pay-Per-Click
We created an extensive pay-per-click account with google.  We are now visable under 400 keywords in various countries.  Our pay-per-click network gets us over one thousand visitors today, not to mention the traffic from our organic search results which are not excellent under many of our top twenty keywords.
 
Link Building
We are engaged in a link exchange program where we offer free listings on our outsourcing directory in exchange for a link to our site.  We are rapidly gaining more and more incoming links which strengthens our search results on google as well as incoming traffic.

How often are marketers creating content? 42% create 1 piece per week.

September 16, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

According to a report from Oracle Eloqua, less than 42% of content marketers produce at least one content asset each week. 62% produce at least one piece every two weeks, and 29% produce multiple pieces per week.

83% of people surveyed said their organization has a blog
24% said they publish more than 11 posts in a month.

But, how often should you publish content?
The more you post, the more likely other people are to see your posts. Additionally, Google and other search engines give favorable treatment to blogs that post more often. Fresh content is king, even if it is not the best content!

The most views for content are on Mondays. The most links come in on Thursdays. The most comments occur on the weekends. So, when should you post?

What do I do?
I will speak from experience here. I run three blogs. One of my blogs has been around for five years and boasts a healthy 20,000 visitors per month which is excellent for niche blog. This blog began by creating posts once in a while. Then, I figured out that I need to post more regularly. It became an everyday habit to post new content, although I published the content several months in advance using WordPress technology. Through constant blogging, I also learned what type of content my readers like which helped me to write even more popular content.

My newer blog is getting off the ground.
My newer blog (this one) which is about business and outsourcing did not get off to such an easy start. We don’t have personal connections with thousands of outsourcers like we do with the notaries who read our notary blog. For our notary blog, we created a thriving newsletter. It is not so easy to develop a newsletter even with a handful of subscribers for our outsourcing audience. The only tools we have which work are publishing lots of interesting content, and using social media to promote it. So far the blog is growing. But, honestly, if you publish less than six interesting posts per week, your blog will have a difficult time showing up well on Google!

What should you do?
There are people who have a blog just so they can say that they have one, and so their website can link to a blog with pretty pictures and generally dull content written by dull people who write dull blogs for a living. Many of those people are the 42% of content marketers who write about one piece per week. Even if your piece is amazing, your blog will never get any traffic unless you pump up the volume. If you don’t depend on your blog for SEO benefits or clicks, then this behavior is acceptable. But, if you want to milk the web for all its got, start finding a way to write.

What about going viral?
Having posts go viral is a science that involves connecting what you are writing about to what I call an anchor. An anchor is a well known concept, person, or company. In my industry, connecting business ideas about hiring programmers to Steve Jobs, furry kittens, or the term “success” can lead to posts going viral. Promoting content on social media at the right time of day, and on the right mediums can also help your post go viral. What makes sense is to study what types of posts that you of your writers create are the most popular. Also study using anchors as that is your ticket to having a chance. Most of the marketing blogs that I read are utilizing the “anchor” strategy on a daily basis, and if you keep your eyes open, you can see how they connect apple cider with their latest marketing scheme, or how they compare their dog’s lifestyle to some marketing concept that they are promoting. It may seem dumb to you, but the highest calibre of professionals are using this every day, and it is not a difficult concept to grasp.

Summary
If you want your blog to be successful, I recommend six pieces per week, and hopefully six really interesting diverse pieces. Keep it interesting, and don’t keep hitting the same points in every blog otherwise your readers will go elsewhere.