We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Many of us traveled, some stayed home and hosted company, and some did their own thing. Either way, it was relaxing and we’re all recharged here and ready to get back to VLG dialog marketing creation mode! Our writers are writing, our designers designing , and our account execs, managers, and sales reps are on the phones, making connections and getting things done.
Give us a call, we’re here for ya!
The holidays are quickly approaching and you know what that means- tons of ad noise. But how can you tell what’s clutter and what’s actually valuable, or at the very least, memorable. Consider stupid, wacky campaigns such as the infamous Office Max “Elf Yourself” campaign. Who doesn’t want to do that during their two hour time span of idly perusing Facebook?
Why does this get so much attention, feedback, and buzz? Because it’s highly and personally interactive. You get to choose who you insert. You even get to choose which picture you insert. These seem not to ever get old.
VLG strives to do campaigns that never get old. Ones you go home from work and say, “Hey, honey, check out this personalized site I got a URL for in the mail today.” The difference between us and Elf Yourself: We stay closer to the strategy and message of our clients.
Maybe it’s the recent Inc 5000 acknowledgement. Maybe it was a great month of sales. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of wacko’s. Either way, people are loving us and we love them back.
A VLG campaign, as our followers and clients already know, is a different kind of animal. We don’t go for the “big idea” cliché. We go for huge ideas, small and perfect ideas, weird ideas, custom-fit ideas… you get the point.
These are ideas that any member of our team could have churning in his or her head. That’s why late yesterday, our sister company BakedSoft did this:
It’s creative ballot box time at VLG and BakedSoft! Who doesn’t want someone with an arsenal of creative ideas and concepts about everything on their team?
Guess who made the Inc. 5000? Yours truly.
Here were our first thoughts upon learning that our gang landed on the list of America’s fastest growing companies two years in a row:
“Yea, baby!” (think Mike Myers)
“Well, alright alright.” (think Matthew McConaughey)
“That’s right, we bad.” (think Richard Pryor)
Upon reflection we think the more important measure of our success was the fact that six VLG customers also made the list. Our congratulations go to Certiport, Coverity, ExactTarget, Flexera, Kronos and Research Now. You kicked a little butt and we’re proud to be in the (marketing) mix.
We are truly fortunate. VLG customers are the best.
Now I can’t get those movie lines out of my head…links on our Facebook page.
Marketo put up an inspiring Slideshare– a sharable digital slideshow–on the topic of visual content marketing. As any VLG fan might guess, this is right down our alley.
Being advocates of more visual content, Marketo brings up a great thought: “Death By Text: We don’t have enough time to read everything we want information about.”
We’ve been over this. The internet’s a busy place. If you want content, just hit up Google for a search or give your Twitter feed a few scrolls. I’ve got so many internet tabs up right now it’s not even funny.
So how can we prevent this ominous fate? The solution is obviously the topic of this post… WE NEED MORE VISUAL! Visual aides such as infographics, photos, videos, and even memes are bound to stand out the most in a word-heavy internet world.
Think about it. Are you more likely to immerse yourself in an eight-paragraph mountain of text or briefly scan a few images to receive the same basic message? Reading is work. It’s intimidating.
This ties back into marketing practices. Make your message enticing instead of intimidating, and your audience will be much more likely to check it out.
And how do we do this? With visual content.
Good, you’re learning.
Here’s a little treat for those who skimmed:
Building a relationship with an audience can take a lot of time and effort. People these days don’t always trust statements made by businesses, especially in a crisis. What’s one of the most effective ways to build trusting relationships and brand loyalty? Honesty. More specifically, transparency. Let your audience in.
How? Consistently interact with your audience. Show them what you have to offer. Don’t cheat and cover things up. Disasters happen. Glitches happen. And when things go wrong, you want the first place your disgruntled audience turns to for answers to be you, not a competitor or any other external third party.
So, say something goes wrong with one of your products.. How do you respond? Well, you can give a post-corporate huddle speech and beat around the bush, or you can personally and publicly put a clear, unmasked message out there. The sooner you do this, the better. Don’t let your customers stew over a glitch or bug. The longer they do, the more they’ll talk amongst themselves about the issue. The longer they’re left in the dark, the more unhappy they’re going to become. So get out there and give them the scoop. Don’t hide behind business jargon. Talk like a person, not a corporation. Don’t be a human user manual. The amount of goodwill a simple and sincere response can have a tremendous impact on goodwill..
So don’t be scared of admitting mistakes. Be prepared at all times for damage control. And if you’re doing things right, it should be easy, since in this case it’s all about telling the truth.
Read more about the impact of transparency here.
If you know VLG (or simply glance at our website domain for that matter), you know we’re anti-boredom. We started out with the idea that B2B advertising can be creative and interesting. We’ve proven that over and over again.
How and why should you apply creativity to your own life? Because creativity doesn’t only serve advertising and art. Creativity is a vehicle by which anyone can problem-solve and innovate. And if you look at every action as a solution to a problem, you’ll quickly realize that creativity is non-exclusive.
That being said, one way you can increase your own creativity is to do unusual things. Go do something you’ve never done before. The more weird stuff you experience, the more you’re stretching your mind to think beyond normalcy. View an article advocating this practice and read about a couple studies supporting it here.
Since the classic childhood game appropriately coined “Follow the Leader,” the practice of granting certain individuals extra pull when it comes to where we go and what we do has been in our nature. In the digital space, we call these esteemed individuals influencers. And they’re really, really important to your business.
Why?
They’re being watched.
Thousands of people you want to reach are bypassing your advertising attempts, choosing their influencers and listening to what they’re saying. From product trial, review and adoption to publication frequenting and referrals, trusted influencers help today’s consumers weed through the clutter and get right to what they consider the good stuff.
They give your audience power.
Influencers are hardly self-acclaimed, at least not from the get-go. You can’t hop on your blog one day and start ranting about a niche market’s competing products and expect your audience to increase and change their behavior. Consumers choose who they trust by trial, error, and most importantly, word of mouth.
Social media is a democracy.
What does it take for an influencer to gain 100 more pairs of eyes and ears? It could be one Facebook share or twitter post by an average person with a few hundred friends or followers.
If you do it right, it’s free.
Marketers are constantly identifying and reaching out to influencers to try and get recognition in the social realm. The really amazing businesses don’t even have to push for attention. If someone’s doing something really right, chances are an influencer somewhere will take notice. This could mean a staggering increase in sales with earned media.
These are only a few highlights. We have yet to see how much the social realm is capable of when it comes to impacting our successes or failures.
Sounds like these guys are great, right? Beware. If an influencer is talking about your product or service, you could be gaining invaluable digital credit. But you could just as easily be suffering damaging criticism. The good news for consumers is that this keeps the market competitive, the bar high, and puts some of the power to control brand reputation into unbiased, or at least less biased, hands.
Get some tips on how to enhance your influencer marketing from Mashable Business’s article here.
Squarely in the just-in-case-you-missed-it bucket is a post on HBR’s website entitled “The End of Solution Selling.” If you read between the lines it doesn’t take long to realize that our approach, or something very similar to VLG’s Dialog Marketing is needed to shake up sales.
Be somewhat disruptive, while causing future customers to take a step back and consider new alternatives that include you, for example. It’s no different than getting into a pitch before an RFP. That was never easy and it’s even more difficult today, but top sales reps out shine the rest of the pack by doing just that. Marketing professionals pressured to “think” more like sales should read this blog post. You’ll thank me later. It’s time to get ahead of the RFP.
Emotion, greed, benevolence, exclusivity… effective marketing is knowing what elicits response and interaction.
People appear to be driven by their ego.
You can increase fans, create more personal relationships with customers, help to foster a feeling of investment in your brand, all while vastly reducing marketing spend. For instance, Papa Johns asked their fans to submit recipes for their next pizza, Corona flashed your profile photo to a huge digital billboard in Times Square when you Like their page, Vitamin Water asked fans to help them choose their next drink flavor, and Pringles let you easily create funny videos using your friends’ profile photos.
People want free stuff.
You give, they get, you get. Clairol gave away 100,000 free packets of makeup, and grew from 27,000 fans to over 262,000 fans in 4 days.
People want to feel selfless and charitable.
Kohl’s ran a campaign to give 20 schools $5000,000 each by asking fans to submit their votes, earning them 1,500,000 new fans in the process. Target asked fans to help them decide to which charity to donate $1,000,000, helping them bring their total fans to 4,000,000. Jack In The Box gave 5¢ to charity for every new fan. Southwest Airlines earned over 1,000,000 fans by donating $1 each time a fan checks in to a Southwest-served airport.
B2B marketers sometime fall into a trap by focusing on industries, functional groups, and business units at the expense of good old fashion human interaction. Ultimately, people make purchasing decisions for companies.
Those of us in the B2B space face an uphill battle. Unlike consumer advertising, B2B must clear two hurdles. First, we must evoke emotion in our target audience. Second, we must give our customers a reason to spend the companies’ money on a product or service. It’s harder than selling a ketchup Popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves.
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