You know passive income, what about passive marketing?
Not the term used by some to refer to the lack of proactiveness of marketers - not getting out to network with people, making presentations, cold calls… but passive marketing that works for you in getting leads while you spend more time going out to meet people and following up with leads.
You could do that with static microsites that ends with a form or you could get much better response and lead conversion with automatically created personal urls. L2 has been building one such site to allow marketers and digital service providers to testdrive L2’s Fuse product. Like a microsite, it involves a static data collection page ( www.1to1campaigns.com ) which collects basic information like first and last name to create a purl along with some contact information.
Once this information is filled out, prospects are taken to their very own personal url (1to1campaigns.com/firstname.lastname) which tracks interest based on what the prospect saw. For insurance companies this would be knowing whether the prospect is interested in auto insurance, health insurance or disaster insurance even before you make the call!
It also sends an automated email to remind prospects of the URL so they can return to the site easily keeping them involved and participating on the personal url.
With an entirely automated campaign like this one, you will have the time to focus on the other elements of your marketing (following up with leads, direct mailers, conferences, telemarketing…) but still ensure you get good response off PPC ads, print ads, your corporate website, etc.
Marketing that works for you 24/7, what a concept!
I’ve seen a lot of stuff written on other marketing blogs about the US election. While most came off as fluff, Al ries makes some convincing points on his monthly post on Adage about what marketers can learn from Obama’s campaign.
Some good points Al made:
- The average guy with the right message can take on large corporations (watch out Google!)
- Sticking to the same message. Telling it often makes it stick.
- The keywords you use and own matters!
- Differentiate from your competitor
- Simplicity, consistency and relevance are key to campaign success!
Note: A huge budget helps too, but we don’t all have that.
Read more from his post at http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=132237
Rohit Bhagava included a good visual analysis of Obama’s campaign, highlighting the flexibility and use of buttons. Check out his post at the influential marketing blog
The biggest mistake marketers make with email campaigns is sending too much too often. “They’re cheap, so let’s blanket our prospects with our emails”. This might have worked before, but your prospects can easily protect themselves from this now.
Campaign success doesn’t only depend on email open rates, open rates won’t get you the sale. Instead you should be sending information only when you have something new to say, something big to announce, a good offer to make.
Move away from the mass marketing approach. Segment your prospects and customers into groups according to metrics like how much they like your product, (e.g. Apple fanatics get more product updates than the average ipod user) and how often they buy (borders customers that purchase once a week get offers more often).
Each business/ campaign will have an optimum campaign schedule that works. To get you started with yours, try sending out 2 emails between expected purchase dates, adjusted as the length of time increases. If your customers buy every week, send them 2 offers a week. If purchases are a yearly affair divide your campaigns into bi-monthly campaigns.
Make sure you vary your campaigns. Send them an email linked to a personal url, follow up with a direct mail piece then a call from your sales staff, send a letter thanking them for taking the time for the call, include a better offer in that letter… The methods of reaching your customers are endless, don’t abandon other channels because you think emails are cheaper.
Remember your marketing campaign goal should always be to get better response that lead to a sale not keeping campaign costs down!
Joetheplumber.com may have already been taken up, but picking domain names for your Personal URL campaigns should not be a difficult task. Here are some tips for making sure the domain name you pick improves your marketing response.
1. Leverage your company name and domain name.
You would have already done the hard part of getting your company domain name. Use a sub-domain name to increase credibility and assure your prospects that the email is from you.
For example:
Promotions.CompanyName.com/firstname.lastname
Rewards.CompanyName.com/firstname.lastname
2. Pick a new domain name with your name in it
Use a new domain name to spread a message or use a catchy phrase to generate interest.
PayLessWithJoe.com/firstname.lastname
Joecleansyourpipes.com/firstname.lastname
3. Use the same URL with subsequent campaigns
Using the same URL in each campaign you send your prospects might be a good idea, if you do not expect them to buy immediately, but want them to remember you when they’re ready to buy. Car dealerships, Insurance companies, real estate agents… for example can get their campaign response rates limited by the low frequency of purchases. Keeping the same URL keeps you in the back of your prospect’s mind for when they’re ready to buy.
Vote early, Joe wants to buy the plumbing business!
Saw this event on the Tornado Marketing Blog.
Join the trio in a call this friday 24th October. Sign up even if you cannot make the call and get the recording link.
Sign up here: http://www.authorteleseminars.com/tribes2.html
Here’s a description of the live call from the sign up page.
On Friday, October 24 at 1pm Eastern Time, meet NY Times bestselling author, Seth Godin, and learn why it’s more profitable, powerful and productive to be a leader rather than to sit back and do nothing. You’ll discover why you already have the skills you need to make an incredible difference and how you can start leading right now.
You’ll not only hear from Seth, but get to hear from two other inspiring leaders who know exactly what it means to effectively lead a tribe:
- John Jantsch, bestselling author of Duct Tape Marketing and columnist for Entrepreneur magazine
- Dave Lakhani, author of Persuasion, Power of an Hour and Subliminal Persuasion
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The Direct Creative Blog wrote a great post about “The power of color in direct marketing“. Check out their write-up on the “vocabulary of color”.
How does color affect your marketing? I suspect that for most, color selection would already be limited to your brand colors and you would be hard pressed to change them. Using a different color would even confuse your customers (Expect to see a Coke advertisement in Blue?) |
However, color still plays an important role in whether your creative sells and using it well is an important element in getting better response from your marketing.
Here are some tips for using color in your campaigns:
- Use contrasting colors to highlight certain text
- Orange does draw attention: Use it to highlight your call to action
- Some colors have added meaning on special occasions (Red/Green in december)
- Use different colors for clickable and non-clickable links
- Using different shades of the same color can provide enough contrast
- Having more than 3 secondary colors is generally a bad idea
Remember though, Direct Marketing is still about getting a response/sale from your campaign.
While many agencies would probably disagree, sometimes the most professionally designed campaigns might not get the best response and vice versa. Getting the combination right is the real key to success!
PPC ads is important even to marketers that rely mainly on direct mailings. They help shortcut the lead generation process by pulling in a more qualified, captive market and getting to the sale quicker.
An effective PPC ad campaign is not just about higher click-through rates or better keywords or blindly increasing spending. This is where Google’s advertising metrics fails to tell the entire story. For example, you could run an ad to give away $100 everyday and get phenomenal click-through rates but clearly it would not be an effective PPC campaign.
Rather, an effective PPC campaign involves:
- creating relevant ads
- landing pages that follow-through on these ads
- useful offers
- CRM to follow-up with contacts effectively
- seamless integration with your sales process
- periodic monitoring and updating of ad campaigns
Relevant news:
Google Yahoo Deal: Google blog
Google deal with Yahoo draws more opposition: NYTimes
Tom baker mentioned us in his article about how Personal URLs could be a “purple cow” for agencies.
He made some relevant points which I highlight below.
- Personal URLs make your direct mail piece unique (something people have never seen before in your marketing)
- Personal URLs help maximize your marketing dollar (Especially important in today’s economic climate!)
- Per the DMA, more people prefer to respond to a direct mail piece online (You should too! This gives you better and immediate response!)
- Personal URLs gives your customers/ prospects a better “experience”
Read the full article: “PURLs of wisdom for effective mass marketing“
