Don’t Forget about direct mail

05/21/2013 | Cliff Callis | marketing, Trends | 0 comments

In my regular blog series, I’m going through the alphabet with marketing principles that follow the a,b,c’s. Today, I’m talking about a tried and true method of communications that many companies have dropped from their marketing arsenal – Direct Mail.

The other day, we received a nice thank you note in the mail from my dad. We celebrated his birthday a couple of weeks ago and he always responds with his appreciation. It’s a great life lesson. What hit home for me though is how little mail we get anymore (other than the tons of magazines we get from Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, etc). More about that later.

Marketers have redirected their efforts away from direct mail and into less expensive, faster, electronic, contact. We’ve done the same thing. I think this paradigm shift presents an excellent opportunity for those companies who have the flexibility and resources to start doing direct mail again.

At work, I hardly get any mail at all anymore. I do get tons of emails, many of which go unopened or have the potential to get lost in the sea of sameness. Mail is different. It’s now special, because you get less of it. It can look like whatever you want it to, versus a line listing on your Google mail page. It can be small, large, colorful or plain. It can be you.

Don’t get me wrong. Email marketing is not going away, and it shouldn’t it. It’s a far too valuable tool in the marketing toolkit. But if you want to stand out from the competition and position yourself in whatever way you choose, direct mail is a great way to do it. It is expensive, but what marketing isn’t? And it is effective. Why else would some of the most successful retail operations in the world use it on a regular basis? Because it works.

Direct mail can be an ongoing way to stay in front of your targets or a once in a while way to make something happen, like spur sales. It can compliment whatever else you’re doing (ie. Integrated marketing). It can be tracked. It can be measured.

The next time you review your marketing plan, think about direct mail and how it could make sense to get your message out. Look at the mail you got today. It probably stood out. You can too. Are you using direct mail in your marketing program? How effective is it for you?

A new way to draw a crowd to your twitter account

05/16/2013 | Chris Young | social media | 0 comments

Businesses can leverage Twitter to facilitate an ongoing dialogue with customer advocates, prospects, and even the media. But it can be a challenge to build your business’ base of followers. Well, this month, Twitter provided two new tools to marketers faced with the challenge of gaining quality Twitter follows.

Every business that’s trying to grow their brand – and even those looking to build their personal brand – should understand these new tools.

Twitter has created a self-service ad platform composed of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. If you’re a Twitter regular, you’ve seen these before over the past year or so. But because they were available only in a limited release, you’ve likely not had access to them until now.

Promoted tweets are just as they sound: paid tweets. They are seen in line with the regular content on a Twitter user’s newsfeed, and labeled “Promoted” (along with a Follow link).

Promoted Accounts are (paid) account suggestions that show up in the “Who to Follow” portion of a Twitter User’s homepage.

So want to gain a user base? Put out great content. Then promote those tweets (or your entire account) to the demographic that you are targeting (age, sex, location, even users with interests similar to users who follow someone else). Twitter will indicate the estimated size of your target audience as you set your demographic profile.

You’ll pay when users interact with your account (i.e. follow, click, retweet, reply… you get the idea). As a Twitter advertiser, you’re able to set a maximum daily budget and maximum bid per follow/interaction. You don’t have to show up with a fat wallet to play this game. The minimum daily budget is just $1.00. However, though the minimum bid for Promoted Accounts or Promoted Tweets is $0.01, you should not expect to get exposure at those bid amounts.

Twitter recommends bids of at least $1.50 per engagement (for Promoted Tweets) and $2.50 per follow (for Promoted Accounts). Advertisers can choose to adjust that up and down. In my initial test, a $1.50 Promoted Tweet bid would let me reach about 21% of the target audience I’d defined, while Twitter reported that a $2.50 Promoted Account bid would open my ads up to about 40% of my target audience. Doubling the maximum bid approximately doubled the reach. Of course, to reach those people, I’d have to also have set my maximum daily budget high enough to allow the ads to stay live through the day.

I’m watching as Twitter continues to grow in importance, and I’m confident that these new advertising tools will help a lot of brands make connections that they’ve missed in the past. We’ll have this discussion with our clients as part of our regular marketing meetings. Let me know what you think: will Twitter Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets have a role in your Twitter strategy?

Get in with the big hitters

05/10/2013 | Rachel Michael | Inspiration | 0 comments

If you wanted to be the biggest hitter in baseball, would you consult with your next door neighbor? Probably not. You would want to find the best in the business, and learn from them.

If you are fortunate enough to enter a room of ten successful men and women of your profession, lock the door and stay there with them until you become the eleventh successful person in your field.

Well…don’t really lock yourself in a room with people. But, if you want to move up in your field, look to the top. What do the most successful people do; what do they talk about or write about; what advice can you get from them. If it’s your boss who is super successful in your field, model his/her work behavior and attitude.

With the right information, some self-conditioning, and serious effort on your part, you too can become the eleventh successful person in the room. Dream big!

C stands for Content Marketing

05/09/2013 | Cliff Callis | marketing, SEO | 0 comments

There’s much conversation right now centered around the premise that “content is king”. At our marketing agency, we see the positive results of it every day. It’s most evident in SEO performance, where you can tie search marketing strategies into keywords and phrases and then improved search engine rankings and (finally) into conversions. But there’s more to it than that.

To be clear, the “content” I’m talking about is every piece of material you build into your web presence that will be of interest and value to the visitor. Press releases, white papers, case studies, photos with tags, and video with closed caption transcriptions can all play a role in building a robust, dynamic and performance based content marketing program. All of this can positively impact your SEO performance if you choose your key phrases well and you build valuable content (or content that Google sees as a value to those people who are searching for whatever it is you’re talking about). This is the direct benefit of generating quality content and it can be very valuable.

The indirect benefits of content marketing are the opportunity to tell your story, build your image and position yourself as the expert in whatever field you’re in. Today, there are many different ways to tell your story. To put it into perspective, think of yourself as a publisher with the opportunity to say anything you want about your company, your products, your services, and other topics of interest to your target audience. Then, using the tools available to you, you can distribute this message to those people who you want to see it. That’s pretty powerful.

Through storytelling, you can build your image over time. It can be whatever you want it to be and it can be totally unique to you, because guess what, you do have a unique story to tell. You can also reinforce it as often as you like, and that should be very often. You’re only limited by your own imagination, ingenuity and resources. As you build your image with interesting news articles, technical papers solving customer problems or videos showing how to use your products, you are positioning yourself in the manner in which you choose. Who are you and who do you want to be? The power is in your hands. Content marketing is powerful. Content is king.

If you’re not already using a content marketing program to build your business, get started today. It doesn’t have to be hard; just generate valuable information that your audience will find interesting and do it as often as you possibly can. It’s a long term marketing strategy that will improve your SEO performance over time and help you position yourself against the competition. You can win through content marketing.

Sharpen Your Axe for Trade Show Results

05/03/2013 | Brandon Butler | marketing, Sales, Trade Show | 0 comments

Only a few hours remain in my last day at the office before heading to the National Rifle Association Show for three days and I’m cool, calm and collected. It’s moments like these when some people find themselves frantically making last minute preparations. If you are one of those people, perhaps it’s time to create a system for sharpening your axe.

The axe analogy comes from President Abraham Lincoln who once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Each year, I attend at least a half-dozen or so trade shows. In my early years of these exploits, I didn’t take the time to create a plan of attack for each show. This was a big mistake. If your plan is to just show-up and hope good things will happen, then you are likely wasting precious time and money.

Begin strategizing at least three months before the trade show takes place. Most trade shows publish a list of exhibitors on their web site. Go through the list and highlight the companies you hope to meet with. Next, make an “A-list” of contacts you need to connect with. Send an email to your contact at each of these companies asking if they will be at the show. If their response confirms attendance, ask to set up an appointment. This way, you fill your schedule with the most important appointments first.

Once you have communicated with your A-list, move on to setting up appointments with your “B-list.” The B-list should be made up of other potentially valuable contacts that you hope to learn more about or develop a relationship with. Again, try to set up appointments so you can have an agenda to maximize your time at the show.
Most trade shows also publish a map of the show floor on their web site. Print one of these maps off and highlight the booths you’ll be visiting. Your feet will appreciate the planning. Aimlessly wandering from aisle to aisle for multiple days will put a hurt on you.

To optimize your trade show attendance, know where you need to be, when you need to be there and what you hope to accomplish with each meeting. Sharpening your axe before heading to a trade show takes all the guess work out of your trip and will surely add value to your experience.

Keep On Bloggin’

04/23/2013 | Chris Young | interactive, Trends | 0 comments

It’s the age-old question: “If a tree falls in the forest, but there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If you’ve just begun blogging, you might feel a bit like that tree, and wonder if anyone is going to listen. After all, unless your website already has significant daily traffic, it’s doubtful that your early blog posts will receive much attention initially.

If Google Analytics isn’t showing stellar numbers and you aren’t receiving feedback, don’t pack it in. Only as you develop a base of content can you become a thought leader, or have an interesting blog in general. Like almost anything in life, blogging takes time, planning, practice, and dedication. It takes time to build a following. Remember your reason for beginning your blog in the first place, and recognize from the outset that results come over time, not instantaneously.

While you continue to post to your blog regularly, though, stay mindful of other factors important to your blog’s success:

• How will you get word of your blog out to your customers, prospects, and the world? Integrating the various aspects of your marketing is important. When you blog, are you referring to it via other social media?

• What is your website’s SEO like? Does it speak to search engines in a way that will help you to gain high rankings with good content, or does it cripple your good intentions?

• Does your content speak to the needs and interests of your target market? Will it bring in the right traffic?

• Is your blog content consistently valuable? When you understand your audience and their needs, it’s easy to provide information that they’ll find useful. Remember: as you pick topics, don’t stuff your blog with things that you want your audience to know (your “pitch”). Instead, put yourself in their shoes, think about what they will want to know, and write about it. Do it the right way, and you’ll become a valuable resource to your readers. Do it the wrong way, and you’re just another blogging pitchman.

The rewards of a successful blogging strategy don’t come particularly quick or easy. Remind yourself of that when you’re tempted to give up early on your website’s blog. There are plenty of points (such as those above) to consider and possibly tweak to keep your blog on track. But when it comes to the writing, be patient. If you abandon your blog after a couple of posts because you’re not immediately feeling the love, it’s doomed to fail. Stick with it, and keep producing quality content with frequency. Eventually, there’ll be a crowd around to hear those falling trees.

How Can I Help You?

04/19/2013 | Rachel Michael | General, Inspiration | 0 comments

There are five words that are music to any person’s ears. The scenario may be that you’ve dropped a bag of groceries in the store parking lot, or it may be that you’ve walked into a store with no idea how to find what you’re looking for. The words that make a difference: “how can I help you?” These five words provide a quick answer for many and it’s never too early to instill in your children the value of the words and what they mean. Throughout your child’s life they will have so many opportunities to help someone else and when they do, that is a great way to help boost their self-esteem and get them prepared for any future career they may have. In any walk of life and in any occupation, a service is always being provided, and it is best to do it happily! Here are the best ways to teach your child the “how can I help you” way of thinking:

• Be a good role model. Show these qualities in your interactions with family, friends, and even strangers.

• Introduce your child to other adults who provide a service (in many different occupations.)

• Volunteer work is a great way to help someone who is in need, and when your child is old enough, bringing them along to help will show them that they too can always help someone.

• Use everyday experiences to provide examples or to “quiz” your children on what they can do to help another in a specific situation (such as hold the door open or help an elderly woman pick up something she has dropped.)

• Help your child find their interests and if you have a child who is on the reserved or shy side, show them that helping someone else often gets them “outside” of themselves and helps them to open up to others.

• Be on the lookout for people who need help and encourage your kids to reach out to them with your guidance.

When this valuable way of thinking is taught to your children, coupled with teaching them the value of money and how it is earned, this can lead to an adult who is doing what they love for a living, and making great money doing it. When children learn this at a young age, they become an adult who is always willing to provide a helpful service and to make a difference.

ABC’s of Marketing. Today: AIDA.

04/09/2013 | Cliff Callis | marketing | 0 comments

Today, I’m starting a new series of weekly blogs to help those in marketing re-engage with some of the marketing principles they may have forgotten, or just don’t think about. My goal is to write about a broad range of subject matter. Some articles, such as today’s, may seem very elementary. Others I hope will be “out there”. All will be fundamental to the development and execution of a solid marketing program. I’m using the ABC’s as a way for me to stay on track and systematically review a wide variety of topics.

So have you heard of AIDA? If you have and you’re using it, then you’re giving your advertising the punch it needs to be effective. If you’re a little blury on AIDA, let me clear it up for you.

A stands for Attention. To get your ad seen, heard and experienced, you have to get the attention of your audience. This can be done a lot of ways. Online, colorful and moving graphics are probably the best way to capture attention. On TV, relevant images and powerful sound works well. On the radio, you need a strong opening line, sound effect or catchy musical clip. In print, strong benefit-driven headlines and compelling graphics grab attention best. If you don’t get the target audience’s attention right away, the rest of your ad is unimportant.

I is for Interest. Once you have caught the attention of your viewer/reader, you now have to generate some interest for what you’re advertising. Why would someone want to read more or listen longer? You do this by speaking to them – telling them what’s in it for them. You make a promise. You offer a key benefit. You make it relevant and interesting and they’ll stay with you. If you don’t, they’re gone to the next ad.

D drives Desire. People are busy and they are inundated with messages all day long. At this point in the process, you have to stimulate desire in your audience by backing up what you’ve already said. Prove it. Reinforce it. Nurture it. You have to tell them things that will motivate them to move to the next step.

Action. Call for it. If you’ve gotten someone to this level, you need to now tell them what to do. Call you. Visit your website. Come into the store. Stop by your favorite dealer. You surely know what you want them to do. Whether your ad is print, electronic or digital, call for action. You’ll see better results.

Are you following the AIDA principles in your advertising? Next time is B. Be sure to check out our blog on blogging.

Making Money with Social Media Marketing

04/04/2013 | Brandon Butler | marketing, online marketing, social media | 0 comments

Back in 1999, modern day marketing guru, Seth Godin wrote a book called Permission Marketing. The premise of the book focuses on the power of being able to market directly to customers who give you permission to communicate with them. Godin wrote this book five years before Facebook launched. At the time, no one could have imagined a social media platform would connect over a billion people worldwide, but would also be segmented into groups based on shared interests and geography.

Thanks in large part to the current political climate, AR platform firearms and accessories are in greater demand than supply can support. When a retailer does acquire a replenishment of goods, many are turning to social media to spread the word. Buffer Technologies (www.buffertech.com) manufactures and sells AR and tactical supplies. Over the last couple of months, Buffer Technologies has strategically used their Facebook page to inform their “Likes” when hard to find items, like magazines, are in stock.

Through Facebook, Buffer Technologies is able to communicate an immediate message to those who want to hear from them. Posting a message doesn’t even take an employee 10 minutes and the platform is free.

It’s not always about having the most Facebook “friends.” More often, it’s about having the right Facebook “friends.” Buffer Technologies is an example of how a business can leverage social media to communicate with their customers and increase sales.

If you want to test the value of social media, you can create specific landing pages within your web site and link to them exclusively through social media. Build a page for a sale on a product or service, and then only release the link on your social media platform. Either sales will happen or they won’t. Whatever the case, you can track the activity through analytics to see exactly how many people clicked on the link, viewed the offer and converted to sales.

The good news is you’ll be able to tell if your efforts are paying off. Facebook analytics will answer your concerns about conversions.

Facebook isn’t the one and only answer to all your marketing concerns. In fact, it probably isn’t the most important piece of your puzzle. But it should be part of your overall plan.

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