Holidays are a great way to get ahead.

To get ahead of your work, get ahead of the game, take a step back and think about where your marketing is going/ where your business is going, while spending more quality time with the people you love.

This year has been a really turbulent year for marketing. The economy resulted in slashed budgets, more cost-consciousness (see ‘death of direct mail‘), less time for ‘real marketing’ more time on social networks, lower consumer spending has meant lower campaign ROI and ultimately a lot of jobs lost).

So if anything, this weekend is a good time to take a step back, get a view from 15,000 feet and re-learn marketing if necessary.

Here’s how:

#1 Sign up for these feeds:

Network for Good (Learn best practices in non-profit marketing)

BtoB magazine (Because B2B requires different strategies)

Chris Brogan (Social Media Business Strategy)

Hoovers (Marketing with a perspective on data)

DPS Magazine (Keep ahead of what’s next in print)

American Printer (The latest printing news)

#2 Pick up a great marketing book and devour it this weekend

#3 Watch these videos we compiled for you on youtube.

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#1 Use different channels.

Lots of celebrities make money from different channels. From showbiz to sports, the key to making a fortune is multiple streams of income. Tiger woods is a fine example of this; he’s made over $25 million in prize money. Not a lot? Together with off-course earnings, he’s made almost $1 bil. Currently ($97,919,714).

For marketers, the core statistic is probably response rates and ROI, but the method is the same. Use different channels including email, direct mail, personalized web-pages, social media, print, traditional media,… to achieve your goal. The better you get each channel to complement each other, the more success you will enjoy.

#2 Prepare for the unexpected.

Wimbledon fans will remember the longest final in history just a year ago between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Many tennis fans call that match the greatest in history, but it required that both players were prepared for the unexpected and were physically and mentally in shape.

Are you prepared for the unexpected with your marketing campaigns? Do you have the tools to understand the underlying dynamics behind your campaign statistics. Is a new marketing segment beginning to respond to you, are your competitors imitating your campaigns, do you need to change your approach.

#3 Bad publicity is still publicity

(Just ask Paris Hilton)

If you’re reading this, it is likely that you won’t have to deal with bad publicity often. Frankly you almost wish you had some bad publicity to deal with. This point is still important to you as a marketer.

You still have to deal with negative sentiments towards your campaign. If you’re mass marketing the same campaign to the same list regularly. Chances are you are damaging your brand and making your recipients less receptive to what you have to say.

Learn from Paris, take a bad and use it for your benefit. Use the opportunity to rebrand your company/ marketing campaigns and turn negative sentiments around. (Of course not everyone will be convinced, remove them from your list! )

#4 What do people remember you for?

Take a page out of Donald Trump’s play book. When you hear the name Trump, you associate it with perfection.

What do your recipients associate your brand with? Humourous campaigns, long boring text, spam? Make sure you control how people view your brand and keep to it. Marketing success often comes with repetition.

#5 It’s all about the campaign

On her current concert tour, Lady GAGA very boldly tells her fans that for her, it is all about the music, not the money. This refreshing approach to music is however the reason for her success.

Similarly, by focusing your campaigns on the recipient’s experience, making the conversation about them (not about you or your brand), then campaign success will follow. Make sure the campaign tools you have in your arsenal: design, messaging, campaign offers, marketing channels… work to this purpose.

#6 Practice, Practice, Practice (or Test, Test, Test)

Only 1 player in the recent history of the NBA has the ability to unite the world around a sport. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the NBA, often attributes his success to his focus on training.

Similarly, marketers need to constantly hone their skills and test each campaign. Will a simple change in email subject line improve responses? What about a new offer, a new marketing channel, a new way to use social media, a new presentation style, a new sales pitch…

Make sure you are constantly testing, the marketing landscape changes quickly, what works today may not work tomorrow.

—> In remembrance of another MJ

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Your customers and prospects are social. They like interacting with brands online. You already do email marketing, you already send direct mail, some of you are already creating effective multichannel marketing campaigns, but do you have the right strategy for going social?

Chris Brogan frequently blogs about social media strategy and how technology can be used to create applications that interacts with the online community.

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Often the greatest divides result from the simplest of things. 1 chromosome in your DNA, the continuous flow of a river or whether your prospects enable images in their emails.

Whether you are marketing B2B or B2C this problem is the same, but the solution is very simple.

Send email messages in the right format to everyone on your list!

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I recently attended a day of events at Ad:Tech Singapore, mainly to get a feel of the general sentiment in the marketing community in Asia.

I have to say, much of the sentiment is the same. The main focus is still on the dollars and sense; basically measuring the performance of the various marketing mediums, finding cheaper/better ways to reach the user/customer and providing better user benefit.

A lot of talk was on digital marketing, and how it has to be connected with traditional media as well as social media on different ends of the spectrum.

In terms of marketing technology of the future, mobile seems to be the unanimous way to go. Although I still have my qualms about its unique ability to more deeply invade and distract the user and in some cases make them pay for it.

Incidently, Yahoo now has mobile advertising. See http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/mobile/

One of the main differences in Asia (apart from the less mature markets) is the distribution of online spend. As far of marketing budgets go, the online budget is almost about 1%, much less than the (>20%) average in US and Europe.

I heard the same complains from online advertising companies that 30% of your customers are online so shouldn’t 30% of your budget be allocated to online mediums. I still disagree with this thought process.

Simply because online marketing (when done right) provides a better ROI than a print ad in a popular publication/ tradeshows and especially TV ads. So while I agree that online budgets should increase, I do so for an entirely different reason, they work!

In the words of one of the panelist from Yahoo. Online marketing flattens the marketing ‘ecosystem’ - your prospects go from awareness to retention to acquistion almost immediately.

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According to the DMA, L2 has the second most popular whitepaper on the DMA’s website.

L2’s whitepaper, ‘8 Tips for Selling a Direct Marketing Campaign’ is even more relevant today then it was when it was written a year ago.

The 8 tips were written to help marketers and marketing service providers sell that initial direct marketing campaign and convince colleagues/ bosses/ or sometimes themselves of the effectiveness of direct marketing campaigns.

If you have yet to adopt 1to1, personalized and targeted marketing campaigns, then these 8 tips are for you.

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“A cowboy rode into town on friday and left 3 days later on friday. How did he do it?”

I assure you the quiz question is relevant and it all has to do with the channel. It’s the same in marketing!

Elizabeth Gooding, the Digital Nirvana, recently discussed personalized URLs and how it should be used in conjunction with email and direct mail.

We’ve been touting the same message almost all year but we’re finding that the channels you use to reach your customers and how you put them together are becoming more important this year. Especially when more than ever, marketers need to show results and find a way to get the same response at less cost.

In her article, Elizabeth quotes a statistic provided by podi.org which indicates that

“Relevant campaigns generate, on average, 300% better response than those that are simply personalized”

Now imagine what that boost in response will be if it is personalized, relevant and continuous.

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According to Inc.com, Software as a Service is one of sixteen industries to be in.

According to them,

“Although software spending is expected to increase just 5 percent through 2013, the software-as-a-service niche is forecast to expand by nearly 20 percent annually over the same period, as companies continue to see the benefits of on-demand, flexible applications, according to Gartner, a market-research firm.

The industry is expected to produce $8 billion in sales by the end of this year and $16 billion by the end of 2013. The office suites categories will lead the pack this year, increasing 376 percent to $512 million.”

Here’s why you should be working with a SaaS vendor for your communication needs. As we go through this recession, marketers are realizing that marketing as we know it has to change. Consumers are more conscious and as they get distracted by increasing amounts of marketing messages, they are learning to ignore them.

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