Utilizing Social Networking to Drive Viral Marketing for Your Branded Events

The ongoing trend of social networking has become a staple in the marketing-communications mix for effective viral marketing.  Everyone is well aware of the success from such sites and services as Facebook, WordPress and Twitter.  In this post we’ll briefly touch on how to maximize your campaign reach by encouraging peer to peer viral marketing while at your branded events.

Many brands and companies do an extraordinarily great job producing innovative experiential marketing campaigns and events.  The one element that is sometimes overlooked is an on-site viral marketing push targeted towards consumers.  This element carries with it a low fixed cost for implementation, a value added asset to your event blueprint as well as an incubator to drive those highly cherished peer to peer communications evangelizing your brand.

While building out your event blueprints it is crucial to remember to add in the on-site elements of laptops, wireless, unsecured, high-speed Internet, a multi-phone charging station and at least one computer expert to assist with the user interface – you could call this an impromptu communications station.  As your consumers are engaged at your event, promotion or seminar, the brand representatives working on-site should highlight the ability of the consumer to access their blog, Facebook account and Twitter account from your laptop and wireless network.    Build in elements that offer memorable experiences the consumers may wish to post on their social networks such as on-site event photos, contests for those who visit the communications station or promotional giveaways.  This element also offers an additional touch point for you to add in a brand dimension through the photography element as well as the home page for your laptops.  Of course, your computer expert working that communications station should be well versed on your brand to continue discussions engaging the consumers to help strengthen your efforts for a meaningful brand experience.

Offering the resources for consumers to chat with their networks about your brand while in the moment of the experience provides new opportunities to grow your viral marketing efforts while keeping the overall operational costs and campaign ROI within range of your program goals.

Daniel Bussius is a global marketing professional who has over 15 years of marketing and communications experience.  He has worked with over 115 brands worldwide and has led many industry leading brands in optimizing their marketing and communications strategy.  Daniel has owned his own agency, In The Mix Promotions for 11 years and has had the opportunity to work on over 4,000 projects with clients across all sectors of business.  For more information on how Daniel Bussius and In The Mix Promotions can help build your brand please email daniel at daniel@danielbussius.com or visit www.danielbussius.com or www.itmpromos.com.

2009 Is Going To Be A Challenging Year, How To Expand Your Reach With A Reduction In Spending

With the economic recession in full swing and continued market contraction across most sectors, how do you effectively implement a robust marketing, advertising and communications strategy using fewer of your marketing dollars?

This is becoming the million dollar question amongst marketers this year and I will lay out five brief but effective basic marketing approaches for you to implement into your marketing mix that will lower your costs, expand your consumer base and strengthen your department’s effective rate of return.

1. If you are currently running print advertising campaigns than this may be something that is old news to some of you.  For the most part though, this is an area that has received fairly little mention in trade articles so let’s briefly cover this now.  Print medians have been hit hard with the boom in technological use amongst consumers across all industries as well as the general population.  Recent data from a wide variety of sources have proven that consumers are utilizing the Internet to read articles, get their news and for general entertainment.  Newspapers and magazines are feeling the hit and are willing to drastically reduce costs across the board for ads and will provide even deeper discounts if you are running a campaign.  Furthermore, reevaluate the need for full page ads.  Do you really need that full page, four color ad in Sunday’s newspaper?  Dig down into the readership demographics and more than likely you can save money by placing an equally efficient half page ad with a few supplemental topper ads for half the cost.  Additionally, don’t hesitate to request that you get gratis coverage for the on-line version in the form of a static banner or skyscraper.  You’ll find that not only have the costs come down significantly once you begin to negotiate but they will be willing to provide an assortment of free placements for you.  In a nutshell, rate cards should be viewed at with a grain of salt as everything is up for serious negotiation saving you thousands right off the bat.

2. TV viewers have become increasingly accustomed to going on-line to see their favorite shows as well as recording those shows on DVR’s.  This translates into a smaller, but still significant, reduction in the overall impressions of your commercial spots.  This means that the impression rates you’re given are less accurate than you expected.  Most TV commercials are not shown in the on-line content for TV shows and I think it’s safe to say no one watches commercials viewing a recorded TV show.  So how do you regain that audience you have lost?  Bundle your spend for airtime into a package for on-line exposure and make certain you gain that exposure on the right section of the website that targets those viewers you aim to reach for the shows within that block of airtime.  Your advertising campaign should entail a 365 degree approach ensuring that highest amount of impressions is reached by your target audience across all medians within the scope of delivery vehicles you are using.  If you are going to pay for spots during the time slots of a TV show make certain you have sufficient coverage with the network on-line for that same time slot. 

3. Radio stations offer a range of advertising products and a hybrid of those products should be implemented for your campaign.  If you are going to run a flight of 30 second spots during weekday drive time then you should also purchase plugs from the on-air talent as well as tie in on-line exposure through banner ads and distribution during your radio campaign for their newsletter blasts.  If you are in the CPG business or consumer based service business than an additional outlet should be considered – radio station promotions.  Most stations conduct remote broadcasts on-site at events as well as run promotions with their street teams featuring on-air talent.  Radio stations spend very little of their own money to hand out prizes so this offers your brand or service a perfect opportunity to increase exposure through one on one impressions.  Since it’s tax time let’s use a local tax service as an example.  Not only should the tax service utilize radio spots, on-air plugs, on-line banner ads and inclusion in the eblast but also tie into a few remote broadcasts where the listener base can obtain free tax counseling services.  Your brand has covered every avenue of communication within that network as well as built in one to one marketing.  Your sales rep will work with you when negotiating these deals so make the most of it to ensure that you are spending wisely as well as gaining the largest percent of coverage.

4. Media Partnerships – something the big players are doing more often and savings millions of dollars.  Why not your brand?  Have you noticed more and more recent commercials are tying in multiple brands within their ads?  Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Target, Motion Picture Companies and the like are all producing commercials that advertise multiple brands.  They share a portion of these costs enabling more coverage for less money with the same impact.  The take away from this is that every business is feeling the impact of the economy and complimentary brands with similar consumer bases are leveraging their buying power.  Dig deep into your client portfolio as well as your vendor portfolio and more likely than not you will find a few that would compliment a joint advertising campaign.  Some perfect avenues to do this in, even within the most conservative industries, are trade shows, sponsorships, promotions and print buys. 

5. Leverage the on-line component more than you have in the past.  The marketing spend per customer is much lower utilizing on-line advertising so spend some time reevaluating your current on-line marketing campaigns.  Seek to expand their reach, the amount of publishers you are using as well as the impression thresholds you have them set at.  Reinvigorate your email marketing campaigns, refine your landing pages and develop your drip campaigns.  These methods can lower the cost of consumer targeted communications while providing detailed tracking analysis for you and your sales team to review.  If you haven’t already, make sure you have these campaigns integrated into your CRM or Salesforce.com tool sets and then analyze your global lead scoring on a weekly basis.  This will help to make your sales force more efficient as well as proving real time analysis for your communications approach.  If you are finding that your website or landing page bounce rates are increasing or that you are noticing a trend in drop offs at point “X” in your sales process then you now have found an area that needs refinement (this goes with the assumption that as you increase your traffic by “x”% you should see the equivalent in bounce rates which should be pulled from the equation).

That’s it for now.  I hope these five brief points offer you some assistance in empowering your marketing campaign for 2009. 

Daniel Bussius is a global marketing professional who has over 15 years of marketing and communications experience.  He has worked with over 115 brands worldwide and has led many industry leading brands in optimizing their marketing and communications strategy.  Daniel has owned his own agency, In The Mix Promotions for 11 years and has had the opportunity to work on over 4,000 projects with clients across all sectors of business.  For more information on how Daniel Bussius and In The Mix Promotions can help build your brand please email Daniel at daniel@danielbussius.com or visit www.danielbussius.com or www.itmpromos.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Building Business One Brand At A Time, How To Win Over Your Target Demographic

At the beginning of each new year I lay out the “Must Do” Marketing Tactics for my clients.  This year I’ll introduce some innovative new methods for your success as well as some tried and true tactics that have become increasingly overlooked as we speed towards communication automation.  Ready?  Great!  Let’s dive right in!

Do some digging, get reacquainted with Uncle Sam
I’m not talking about taxes (that will come in a later posting), I’m talking about utilizing the data that the US Government compiles each year to help provide in depth analysis of each sector, industry growth/retraction, consumer data, Consumer Price Index and fluctuation in costs associated with imports, exports, manufacturing and tariffs.  Now, one might wonder how this impacts your business if, say, your company focuses on the B2C sector.  Here’s how; understanding what happens outside of your business provides you with a macro view of your business footprint.  Understanding what areas are experiencing growth and retraction as well as knowing what geographical areas have felt the most impact from those changes provides you with a strong foundation for building a sensible marketing and communications plan.  Most executive marketers I have worked with and consulted for don’t utilize this resource and therefore build their annual strategies from their “market insight”, industry trends from publications they subscribe to as well as internal data they collect.  That’s a good start but unless your company specializes in data analysis on a macro and micro economic level then you simply don’t have the full picture.   I think you’ll agree with me that every competitive company out there wants as much data to back their executive decisions and annual strategy when the time comes to explain the plans they have acted upon. 

Know your markets intimately, your understanding of them can make or break your company’s growth goals
As the medians of communication expand consumers can pull content from a number of resources almost instantaneously.  The messaging you use in Philadelphia won’t have the same impact in Seattle so gone are the days of using one message to reach your entire target demographic.  A masterfully crafted marketing communications plan segments the country into similar sections based on factors including, prime industry contributors, demographic profiles of the population including political views, unemployment indexes, industry growth/retraction, housing starts, average annual income per household then overlay these findings with your internal data.  You will start to notice trends, patterns and a story will emerge that can then be adjusted to align with your marketing and communications plan.  If you understand that one area of the country you are marketing to that has a strong manufacturing base has been hit with higher costs for importing raw goods and their geographical unemployment rate has increased then your messaging should reflect value, cost savings and efficiency.  After all, even the decision makers who do the P.O.’s have to report up the ladder.  A well crafted marketing message replaces the underlying thought process of determining value and embeds your key message tied to your brand.  If your message isn’t hitting home and your sales team is finding it harder to close deals then this is a key indicator that your marketing message must be refined. 

Proper data tracking is your best friend, spend some quality time with this new best friend and reap the rewards
We are all familiar with the standard reporting processes we have in place currently and they usually provide us with what we need right?  Not always.  Some of the more experienced marketers have broken their reporting into segments of the country so they can see a much more accurate glimpse of what is occurring in their business.   Sounds simplistic right?  It is if you are drilling down to record all sources of communication based on these predefined geographical segments.  This will be the litmus test for your marketing communications as they are aligned with your sales performance.  Reviewing these metrics broken into segments will deliver robust results for you to quickly react either allocating more of your department’s assets or pulling back and refining the communication plan for that area.  The ultimate benefit from this method is the ability to quickly pin point what is working where while taking the guesswork out of figuring out where the problem areas are.  Hopefully you can now see why customized messaging has become so crucial and the troubles that are inherently tied to one unified message across the country.

Embrace technology, ask the folks in the IT department out for lunch
The world is changing rapidly and so are the methods of communication.  Regardless of what industry your company specializes in has little impact on how the individuals in that business find their information.  I’m expecting to get some feedback from this statement but let me present you with an example of mobile communications.  Mobile phones are subsidized by the carriers therefore enabling individuals at nearly any income level to possess a smart phone.  Even the most basic of models now tie into the Internet, email, instant messaging and RSS feeds.  With this influx of information the CEO of one company could be using the same resources as the construction worker down the street or across the country.  You simply can’t afford to ignore the facts – the current advertising standards are broken and have yet to be corrected.  You must have your message everywhere and understand how much financial resources should be allocated for each median.  You need to spend some time with your current contacts with whom you publish your advertisements and corporate communications with to get a better insight on where they can be found.  For example, say you advertise with an industry publication that has a high rate of readership with your target consumer.  OK, that’s a start but do you know if they offer an online version?  Is their site optimized so it can be seen via a mobile device such as a Blackberry?  If not then your readership base just dropped more than you know.  Where does your company stand with search engine rankings on all three of the top sites?  Is your website optimized and does your content remain fresh and dynamic?  Do you have Ad Words programs running?  Can you been seen in respected blogs, forums, and on industry specific websites?  If not then, again, you are missing another large chunk of your target base.  Finally, what about discreet branding?  What has your company done lately with a charity that has a strong PR backbone to it?  Is your company gaining press and mentions throughout the communities because of your involvement.  These are “quick fixes” that many traditional marketers have not spent much time on which is a mistake because as you fail to do so one of your competitors is not.  The fastest and most painless way to go about conquering this task is by taking some of those folks in the IT department out for a lunch and explain your marketing goals.  Have them help define the requirements for what you need to ensure that your message envelops your target audience.

Daniel Bussius is a global marketing professional who has over 15 years of marketing and communications experience.  He has worked with over 115 brands worldwide and has led many industry leading brands in optimizing their marketing and communications strategy.  Daniel has owned his own agency, In The Mix Promotions for 11 years and has had the opportunity to work on over 4,000 projects with clients across all sectors of business.  For more information on how Daniel Bussius and In The Mix Promotions can help build your brand please email daniel at daniel@danielbussius.com or visit www.danielbussius.com or www.itmpromos.com.