Posts tagged media spend
Fanatic-focused marketing
Sep 8th
a) If you don’t know if this trend is applicable to you (hint: it probably is), it’s important to find out! Tap into your existing data to discover core users and trends. If you’re not a data person, I know two people who can do this type of analysis quickly and affordably. Drop me a note or call me and let me know if you need a reference.
b) Word of mouth is 4X more effective than personal selling and 7X more effective than most types of traditional advertising. If your fanatics are driving sales better than any marketing effort you could dream of, what are you doing to make it easy for them? Wouldn’t fanatic-focused marketing be the most effective ad dollars you can spend?
c) Surround your 4 percent with the tools to help them recruit others to your brand. Ideas – special deals, gifts, logo-clothes, programs available for them to pass on to friends.
d) These people want to give back to your brand. How do you engage them, encourage them, and listen to them in a special and personalized way? Ideas: Invite them to special one-on-one sessions with company employees and executives; develop personal portal websites where they can submit ideas, stories, photos; feature them in your ads and promotions.
e) If you are building your brand with a limited budget, don’t focus your marketing dollars on the masses. Start small with your core fanatics.
f) Now that you have identified and nurtured your core 4 percent, how do you replicate them? Do a simple profiling exercise. Click here for a previous article that will give you ideas on how to do this quickly.
g) Here’s the most important point of all – LISTEN to them. These people are your leading indicators of customer satisfaction and a potentially powerful source of innovation who WANT to help you! Dig deep. Spend time with these people! Show them the love!
Illustration: Cheryy8_15
Reality check
Jul 19th
Photo credit: Hannah BakerA few musings on the real world …
I was fooling around with a new Twitter account and it checked my existing 1,000 + contact list for possible matches to “follow.” Very, very few have Twitter accounts. And, among industrial marketers I know — zero. Twitter is growing rapidly but this makes me wonder if it will reach critical mass in corporate America to be a pervasive and useful tool? What do you think?
I have been selling a few things on Craig’s List over the past few months. For my non-U.S. friends, this is a free online application to post belongings for sale to those in your area. I would say 80% of the people who committed to buy my furniture never showed up and never even called to say they changed their mind. I find this incredibly rude. What is going on out there? Is it an impulse buy that they later regret? Are people who use Craig’s List inherently rude? Or, are all people becoming inherently rude?
Last night I had a discussion with a friend who is the marketing manager for a holding company. He has the difficult job of overseeing the commercial efforts for five disparate companies. “I know I should be getting into the social media thing,” he said, “but where do I find the time?” Of course it is a matter of priorities, but what would you do if you were him? After downsizing, he’s already doing a job that was filled by three people just a year ago. Expense of out-sourcing is not an option. The time requirement of social media is a significant issue for small businesses. Who has the time to patiently build an audience, hoping for a pay-off?
Just read an article about a local company starting up an online eCommerce hub where people can trade (instead of purchase) goods and services. Interesting concept. Check it out by clicking here: Tradingo.
How do you keep up with the multitude of supporting apps for platforms like Twitter? Have you noticed how many articles you see like this: “12 iPhone apps for Twitter reviewed.” Clearly it’s impossible for any single person to surf this tsunami of innovation. If anybody approaches you claiming to be a social media “expert,” RUN! What is your strategy for learning about the latest and most impactful technology developments?
Thanks for dropping by!
Looking into the future of B2B online marketing
Jul 17th
Part 2: Essential B2B social media start-up strategies
Part 3: Developing a social media strategy when the rules aren’t clear
Part 4: Social media time shock strategies
Well thank you, that’s very flattering. I may be biased toward the present, but I think the most interesting online marketing development is a trend we’re starting to see among the largest brands and agencies, both B2C and B2B – the re-integration of marketing channels.
We currently live in a world where B2B marketers largely trade off their budget between online marketing channels, or between online and offline channels — an ebb and flow we have seen in other historical contexts. Choices are made based on the individual ROI of each channel, historic or competitive precedent (e.g., “we’ve always run print ads in that publication, so we’ll continue to do so”), or some combination of the two. The strategy/budget discussion largely occurs around which channel performs best, rather than how multiple channels work TOGETHER to deliver results. This occurs because 1) the online channels are developing quickly, making it hard to keep up with changes, even with a staff dedicated to a single channel, and 2) solid cross-channel metrics are so hard to come by for the vast majority of B2B marketers.
This “either-or” approach to marketing channels makes little sense in B2C and even less sense in B2B where most purchases involve multiple decision-makers and longer sales cycles. Think paid search marketing on one of the “big three” general search engines performs vastly better than banner advertising? Research suggests they serve different roles in the buying process: general search engines getting undue credit for being the major online portals from which people navigate just prior to purchase (e.g., 71% of paid search clicks are navigational) and banner ads exposure – simple exposure, not a click – driving a hidden 22% increase in search marketing conversion rate.
Thankfully, online marketing tools and techniques are catching up and enabling the discussion B2B marketers should be having – how different channels work together to deliver results, and what the optimal channel mix should be, based on these interactions and business goals.
This evolution – the re-integration of marketing channels as we remove technology barriers – is critically important for improving overall B2B marketing efficiency and should lead to a number of fascinating, useful insights in the coming years. Change is never easy, but shedding our “either-or” mentality for a more informed, integrated approach is a change worth making.
Social media imperatives for small businesses
Jul 1st
Full Business Week radio interview
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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