Forget Conventional Marketing - Embrace the Web!Written by Lee Traupel
Tactical marketing processes are once again undergoing fundamental shifts from traditional to web-based processes. Many traditional marketing firms/agencies are still touting tried and true to their clients; i.e. Tradeshow attendance, Print, Traditional PR, TV and Radio. However, these conventional marketing processes work best for broad market awareness and/or branding, especially for a Fortune 1K company with significant resources to spend on demographic analysis, test marketing and more test marketing. It's much more difficult for a smaller company (startup to $50M per annum) to leverage economies of scale that are typically available for a larger company for media buy and operational efficiencies. It's obvious that lifestyle and business processes are shifting towards a much greater dependence on digital media - people are traveling less due to cost issues and ever-increasing speed of business is underscoring usage of Internet for information and research. If you're a small to medium sized business chances are that you've probably cut your marketing budget significantly - by eliminating or scaling back tradeshow attendance, trade magazine advertising and/or direct mail in favor of response driven marketing on web that can be deployed faster and more cost-effectively than traditional marketing methods. Capturing leads from a web site generated by opt-in e-mail, newsletter inserts, text link advertising and/or other forms of pay per click marketing is still absolute best way to generate leads that are quantifiable as soon as they are generated. You have ability to easily track where lead came from and via what interactive advertising process; assuming this has been setup for you by your interactive ad agency or with online publisher. And, there are typically no lead times like more traditional marketing processes - we've created and deployed campaigns (creative, media buy, testing, ROI analysis, etc.) for our clients in 3-5 working days in some cases. There are some pitfalls to web-based lead generation and follow through that you need to be aware of as you deploy an interactive campaign. Here are five of most important "gotchas" that you need to think about as you build an interactive lead generation program around your web site: 1) Don't make it difficult for people to contact your company - make sure your web site really communicates with your prospects - by "communicating" I mean by providing telephone contacts, e-mail address and/or a lead capture form that is short. Note: this form has to be supported by a published Privacy Policy ("we won't divulge your info to a third party under any circumstances") and it absolutely must be short; i.e. don't request any more than baseline information, name, phone, e-mail and address, augmented with a comment box.
| | New Realities for E-Mail MarketingWritten by Lee Traupel
Spam e-mail is no longer mild irritant it once was - it's clogging corporate networks and ISP mail servers and has become a real productivity drain, forcing corporate and consumer e-mail users to spend 20-30 minutes a day dealing with this deluge of junk! According to recent figures, unsolicited bulk e-mail now makes up to 36% of all e-mail, up from under 8% just over a year ago. And, what's worse, more and more legitimate e-mail is not getting through to recipients due to Spam filtering taking place via ISPs and/or corporate networks. Opt-in E-Mail Marketing 30K foot Picture Opt-in e-mail marketing is clearly losing some of its effectiveness as a viable marketing tool much to consternation of those of us who have been advocating its effectiveness for years! This is not to say opt-in e-mail isn't a viable way to market goods and services - but ROI (read response rates) is heading south quickly and needs to be considered when assessing viability of this marketing process, as response rates have dropped on average from 10-20% to 3-10%. However, opt-in e-mail is not disappearing off marketing horizons - Forrester forecasts spending on e-mail marketing will grow from $1.3B (USD) in 2001 to $6.8B in 2006 and Jupiter Media Metrix is even more optimistic, forecasting growth rates from $1B in 2001 to $9.4B in 2006. But, there is a dark undercurrent to these numbers that is fueling market growth and driving down response rates - some opt-in agencies, brokers and media representatives are "flogging" lists by overselling them - so caveat emptor. Five Offsetting Marketing Strategies 1) Deploy opt-in e-mail campaigns very selectively (!) - buy opt-in e-mail lists from legitimate top-tier broker/list managers who are well established, are not "over-sending" messages to list subscribers and who are constantly refreshing their list quality by adding new subscribers. Critical questions to ask brokers include: how many messages ("frequency" in ad speak) are sent to each list recipient per month, how are new subscribers added and what is percentage of new members added per month, are they using "third party" (someone else's list) lists to augment their own, are their lists "double opt in" (meaning, you sign up and then must reply to a signup confirmation to be added to a list) and last but not least, what is their privacy policy and how strictly do they adhere to published industry standards.
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