Marketing in a Downturn

Email marketing gets results

2010-07-30T07:27:20Z

Email marketing can work brilliantly in a recession. I heard about an example from Howies who apparently made the decision to go to sale on the Thursday morning, and by Friday lunchtime, were on for the biggest single day in their history!

The email itself disobeys many of the rules of best practice in email marketing, but demonstrates the importance of having a clear message and very engaging copy. Judge for yourself.

Stefan the Pilot, great example of social media in action

2010-07-20T10:55:11Z

I was at the Farnborough Air Show on Monday. Flightglobal had a chalet with a fabulous view of the main action.

One thing, I was very impressed with was the way they had used Social Media to engage the marketplace using 'Stefan the Pilot', Flighglobal's social media avatar.

Stefan first made his appearance two years ago at the Paris Airshow. Since then, he has grown his profile via an effective use of social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook.

The big idea for Stefan at Farnborough was a competion, offering visitors the chance to win an IPAD if they spotted Stefan around the event. Stefan (who is only 30cm tall) was all over the show, 'checking in' to various locations via Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare. Those who did find Stefan, were given a signed postcard of Stefan which they then took to the Flightglobal Media Lounge to enter the draw.

Pictures

Postard

Advert in Flight Daily

Stefan Outside the Chalet

Further Information

See how Personnel Today exploited social media by creating Career Coach personas

RBI Digital Marketing Conference

2010-07-15T13:32:16Z

The RBI Digital Marketing Conference took place 1st July - it was a really good event and a great opportunity to share lessons on topics including: web analytics, persuasion architecture, online lead nurturing and social media. There was also a really useful presentation from Aziz Musa, RBI's Head of Global Product Management (link: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/azizmusa) who passed on some useful lessons to marketers who need to brief web projects into an IS department:

1. Know what you want

2. Start big and then narrow down your ambitions

3. Do it in pieces (rather than all at once)

4. Measure your success

The overall theme of the day was that the world is changing rapidly and I thought I'd share a few, thought-provoking videos from the event:

Shift Happens

Lead Generation

Social Media

Finally, for amusement, take a look at these cartoons and see if they ring true with you...

B2B Marketing Awards

2010-07-08T12:30:33Z

I spent the bulk of Tuesday judging 8 categories in the B2B Marketing Awards campaigns. It was interesting to see what B2B companies have been doing during the downturn. I can't give anything away, but there were some impressive entries in the categories which included lead generation, new product launch, social media and integrated marketing. You'll have to wait until November 25th to see who has won.

B2B Marketing Awards Night

Is Outsourcing The Solution?

2010-07-07T12:35:45Z

If you've had a similar 18 months to me, you'll appreciate why I like the thought of having a 'flexible' cost base. It's so reassuring to be able to tap into world-class services when you need them, but pull back when there's less demand or at low seasonal times. We took to the decision to outsource all of our creative services at the end of last year. Though a very challenging episode, it is proving to be the right decision as the team now have access to a much wider pool of creative and design talent.

However, though the requirement to outsource may be there, you often can't move forward simply because you just don't know who to outsource to. Certainly selecting, inducting and managing a supplier is a skill that should not be underestimated. Poor briefing, changing your mind frequently, shouting at suppliers, not paying on time are examples of how not to do it.

However, rather than give you a list of do's and don'ts of managing suppliers, I wanted to make you aware of what you can outsource to give you more time in your day and achieve more overall:
1. Virtual assistants - a fabulous resource to assist you with specific organisational and digital marketing tasks. Lots of examples of companies that offer this service eg www.getfriday.com

2. Data cleaning and acquisition - eg http://www.cheersin.com/

3. Copywriting
4. Design

So what's left to do in-house? The overall responsibility to the customer, the strategy and the development - in other words, everything.

Working with IT

2010-06-25T11:27:57Z

With the growth in web-based marketing, success is very dependent on having an effective relationship with your IT team, whether they're in-house or not. This can be a challenge for marketing people for a number of reasons and can lead to wasted effort, wasted money and huge delays to a project.

I was interested to see that Marketing Experiments have started to publish a series of 'back to basics' articles on the different roles that exist in IT. This first one is on the role of web designer and there's another one on web developer. Watch out for more over the summer.

Events continue to take a big share of b2b marketers' budgets

2010-06-24T11:18:38Z

Given the investment in both time and money, I was surprised to read the results of a B2B Marketing survey on events as a marketing channel. Unlike other offline channels, it seems that the recession has had little impact on the use of events. One third of those surveyed have actually increased their investment, with a similar number expecting to increase it next year. In fact, just under 70% of respondents described them as either 'critical' or 'very important'!

What's perhaps even more surprising is that brand awareness was still cited by nearly half of the respondents as the most important objective.

There hasn't been much take-up for digital events, with 47% claiming to have never used them.

Events Survey

'5 steps to using content marketing to nurture leads'

2010-06-22T08:35:55Z

I saw a case study yesterday from the guys who work on ICIS (www.icis.com), one of RBI's brands. Now ICIS is a specialist information brand focused on global chemical markets. They have a fabulous product which delivers true value to their customer groups. However what's impressive is how they get their message to market. Several years ago, they embraced search marketing which has generated a regular flow of leads, now they have moved their attention to creating compelling, multi-media content to help 'nurture leads' and move their prospects through the process of deciding whether or not to buy.

The attached presentation takes you through the five steps of using content marketing to generate leads. It's not rocket science, but amazing how many people will try to short-cut the process and have just two steps which doesn't work.

Here are the five steps in summary form. Click here for the full presentation.

1. Identify/create compelling content - different types of content are suitable for different points in a decision process.
2. Plan the campaign - I can't emphasise how important this part is. Planning means really thinking about what you're going to do; what you want to happen once you do it and putting systems in place to refine and optimise the programme once you can actually see what's going on.
3. Create landing page.
4. Promote the content.
5. Measure and analyse - with marketing automation software, you can measure the impact that your content has had on a prospect. For example, a user may download one of your white paper, watch a video and then go onto to purchase though another channel. Thanks to the analysis, you can attribute the result to the influence of your content.

Further Resources:

Read the ICIS Case Study
Landing page optimisation

B2B Social Media: The Definitive Guide

2010-06-16T11:53:44Z

I was on a train on Friday to London, so took the opportunity to catch-up on some reading. I'd printed off a report entitled 'The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media' from Marketo a couple of weeks ago. It's a useful report. Clearly, Marketo, a Marketing Automation Provider, are keen to promote the benefits of their software, but this sales message is very implicit in the report. When I read that 'according to Forrester, 77% of B2B technology decision makers are active in social media', I decided to read on.

The report's pages include useful information such as:

An overview of social sharing and how to include it on your landing pages
Widgets and the value they add Paid advertising in social media
A checklist to determine if your company is ready for social media and one of the pitfalls to avoid
A whole range of social media tactics and metrics

....And finally the ROI of social media.

If you're either new to social media or have been active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious and the many other emerging channels for a while, I'm certain you'll find the guide useful.

Further references

You can download the full copy of The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media here.

The IPAD: Food for Thought

2010-06-14T10:32:43Z

I wouldn't describe myself as an early adopter of new technologies or someone who just has to have the latest gadget. Far from it in fact. However, occasionally, something new comes along which you know is going to add value to your life and change the way you do things now. On a personal level, my life has changed in a positive way thanks to email, the blackberry, remember the milk, evernote, delicious, moveable type, eloqua...to name but a few. Collectively these things have given me time back...time that has been filled with more activity so that my productivity has increased.

Now - a new tool is about to come along into my life...the IPAD. I'm not sure what the opportunity is for marketers, but it's a great opportunity for people who love reading books, watching videos on youtube and generally keeping on top of things. Mine is now on order!

Here's an interesting précis on the benefits of the IPAD from one early adopter.

- Due to its size, portability and convenience. It will bring the internet and online social
connectivity further into the home and deeper into people's lives much more than the laptop
ever did.
- A major potential impact is what it will do as a reading device.
- The platform is perfect for content consumption, and it's a game changer because it's the
first sit back to consume truly interactive platform.
- There is a real opportunity in service innovation. It can be given to a workforce to enhance
or add value to customer interactions.
- The iPad is already attracting the more premium apps. This offers brands a new medium for
added value, innovative services. Viewing apps requires dedicated attention and this is of
great value to brands.

You can read the full post here:
http://blog.codecomputerlove.com/2010/06/08/our-views-on-the-ipad/#more-645

B2B Social Media

2010-06-10T11:22:51Z

A useful analysis from Emarketer that shows how social media (for example: blogging, microblogging, photo and video-sharing, wikis etc) has rapidly moved up the b2b marketer's agenda. There are some useful trends and examples of how social media has been used to achieve lead generation, thought leadership and customer feedback objectives as well as ways that it has been integrated with other media.

Download report yourself

Picking-up on the lead generation objective, something close to my heart, it's interesting to note the most effective tactics on social networks:

Most Effective Social Media for Lead Generation

The value of A/B testing

2010-06-09T10:37:54Z

Here's a handy tool to test your instincts again what really happened.
'What Test Won' presents two landing pages each week and asks you to
guess which won got the best response. Test yourself here

Further references
Past tests

Key themes from the IDM's B2B Marketing Conference

2010-05-24T09:00:10Z

The IDM's 7th Annual b2b conference took place on Wednesday in central London. The theme of the event appropriately was that change is good and the speakers, from organisations including Vodaphone, Cisco and Salesforce, all had great stories to tell.

The big themes for me were:

1. Technology - use it to automate aspects of the marketing process and align yourself with sales (Vodaphone case study). By having an automated process, marketers can concentrate on the 'value add' elements such as setting up the campaign, analysing the results and refining the process rather than the physical deployment of details.

2. Identify and segment influencers to your marketplace and have a plan to engage them over time. These people's opinions matter and will have a big positive impact if you get it right. Duncan Brown defined Influencer Marketing as 'targeting key people to influence the market in your favour'. Salesforce.com talked through their case study and steps they went through to identify influencers, train them and then work out how much engagement is required.

3. Have a strategy around social media which can be used as another channel to market as well as other purposes. Cisco told how they have twitter to promote events with excellent results.

4. Mobile will be the next big thing was the subject of the debate. Everyone seemed to agree that smartphones are ubiquitous and, in the UK, market penetration is just going to grow. Similarly there was agreement that these devices are increasingly used to access the web and suppliers need to optimise the experience for their customers. In the end, the audience seemed to agree that mobile will NOT be the next big thing in b2b, although it may well be in consumer markets. Why? Simply because it's lower down on the b2b marketing agenda amidst everything else a b2b marketer needs to focus on today.

5. Understand the customers buying process - ie how they are learning, evaluating, deciding and buying - and where they are at the moment based on their behaviour online was another big theme. For example someone who is downloading pricing information is at an advanced stage and needs to be followed-up urgently. Contrast this with someone who is just trying to search via reading white papers - a less aggressive follow-up approach is needed here, or you risk alienating the prospect!

6. Google ran a workshop which helped to group the many free tools they have - they are all listed here (www.google.com/agencytoolkit).

In summary, the mood of the event was much more positive than this time last year. Everyone seemed to agree that the future of marketing will be different to the past as structural change has occurred in the marketplaces. Those marketers who have craved accountability in the past, now have the tools to prove that a good marketing plan, well executed adds enormous value to a business.

Further reference
Twitter: #IDMb2b
IDM Conference programme
The IDM B2b Council
Opinions on Social Media
Event highlights
The IDM Blog
The IDM YouTube Channel
Watch the entire conference here

PR:
Traditional
Marketing Week
Equimedia

Online Channels:
Twitter
Twapper Keeper

Limitations of the Last Click Attribution Model

2010-04-29T13:58:09Z

This is a good example to illustrate the limitations of the last click, campaign attribution model. I heard the story from Andrew Hood from Lynchpin Analysis . It goes like this...

'One spring day, you leave your home nice and early and head for a football match. As you're waiting for the bus, you notice a large poster opposite advertising Guinness. By noon, you're inside the stadium. Guinness is a key sponsor and you see their logo everywhere. It's a great game and your side wins, so you go the pub opposite to celebrate. As soon as you enter the pub, you see one of the bar staff collecting glasses, dressed in a black T-Shirt with the Guinness logo on the front. You walk to the bar and whilst waiting, you play impatiently with one of the Guinness branded bar mats. Finally, a jolly barman asks you what you'd like. On top of his head is a black, woolly hat with the Guinness logo on it. At the bar he notices a Guinness Table Mat. 'I'll have a Guinness please', you say.

From a last click campaign attribution perspective, clearly optimising around the last click can be very misleading.

Marketing Wisdom for 2010

2010-04-27T13:34:51Z

Here's a rich resource of reviews on key topics such as social media, email marketing, b2b marketing and PR. Produced by Marketing Sherpa, 'Marketing Wisdom' presents the real-life stories and lessons learned from 70 marketers and agencies. There's a whole range of companies represented and the document is full of short, but useful practical case studies and insight. Three main trends are highlighted by the editor:

Social media is everywhere - social media is filling the space between all other channels
Adversity created testing opportunities
Free tools and tactics helped

Download Marketing Wisdom