August 2009 Archives

Marketing Sherpa have outlined 5 guiding strategies from a mobile marketing expert who has successfully incorporated mobile as part of their communication mix. The strategies for success, include:
o Why you should always start a mobile campaign with an SMS strategy
o How to segment your audience
o How to use mobile to measure the reach of offline ads

Not everything has to be created from scratch. I noticed this design agency offering customers the opportunity to adapt previous designs for websites, logos and brochures that they haven't been used. A good way to get professional design services more cost effectively.

Not everything has to be created from scratch. I noticed this design agency offering customers the opportunity to adapt previous designs for websites, logos and brochures that they haven't been used. A good way to get professional design services more cost effectively.

Interesting chart from Marketing Sherpa looking at what sales want from marketing - quality of leads is at the top of the list:

In these leaner time, most marketers understand the importance of ROI and are keen to measure the impact of their activities to justify budgets. The result has been an obsession with promotions that result in clicks and other direct response metrics - all of which are extremely important. However, it can be quite easy (and tempting) to just focus on the direct response metrics which are easy to collect and easy to communicate.

The risks associated with this approach are that you ignore the impact that a combination of promotions have had on the overall result and place too much emphasis on direct response channels alone.  For instance,  an online display advertising campaign may not result in many clicks itself, but would have promoted a brand, built some awareness and over time will lead to a boost in sales.   Here's an interesting piece of research from the Online Publishers Association (OPA). It provides a bit more insight into the overall benefits of a branding campaign.

Display advertising ROI.pdf

The conclusions are:

• There are more relevant ways to measure the branding impact of online
ad campaigns beyond clicks 
• Search + Site Visitation + e-Commerce Spending [measured over time
to account for latency effects] = a smart formula for measuring display
advertising effectiveness
- One in 5 exposed to display advertising conduct related searches for the
advertised brands
- One in 3 exposed to display advertising visit the advertised brands' sites

If you're keen to use LinkedIn as a resource to generate leads without alienating just about everyone in your network, Brian Carroll offers some advice, including 6 lessons:
 
Lesson #1. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
Lesson #2. Join groups under your own name, not a company
Lesson #3. Place collateral in the context of a conversation
Lesson #4. Response rate is highly variable
Lesson #5. Create social media-specific landing pages
Lesson #6. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn

An interesting study here from a consultancy firm called CVL which outlines the growing importance of digital as a channel to reach and service customers in B2B organisations.


B2B online_Under the spotlight.pdf

Useful post here from Marketing Sherpa on how to optimise your website to improve conversions - the devil is certainly in the detail!