Archive for June 2009

Define Viral For Me

June 10 2009

When you think about viral marketing what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Sharing, you know, like a virus spread hand-to-hand, hand-to-mouth, mouth-to-mouth, mouth-to-megaphone and on and on is straight forward. It’s like the new earned media that bypasses the old media.

From the agency perspective viral is awesome. It gets your creative juices flowing to think of different ways to be disruptive. After all if a virus is not disruptive, what is it?

harvardsucks

There are reasons to be cautious. A couple years back Turner Broadcasting got in a world of hurt after it’s Light Bright episode. You can check the CNN story on it here. Needless to say, having you marketing mistaken for a bomb is not a good thing–not in today’s climate. Nothing says fun like one marketing firm attacking another with what might be described as a viral virus. Check out the skunk pulled on Saatchi&Saatchi in the UK here.

In the B2B sandbox viral marketing takes a different tack. The focus is really hand-to-hand. “Please pass this along to the person that does handle purchasing.” “Share this with a friend or colleague.” Not very exciting stuff. If only we could get our clients to commit to something that will prove more engaging and disruptive without going over the top.

This all goes back to our philosophy that microsites hold the key to online communication. They are faster to build that websites, can focus on a specific message, and do it all before the viewer gets bored and walks away.

People derided USA Today when founded for turning print media into snippets. Look at how far we’ve come. With shorter attention spans (TiVo, Twitter, Text) people are looking for the Cliff’s Notes version of everything.

So if you really want to go viral, consider a small sneak attack that is disruptive. It’s a hit and run opportunity to plant your message and nurture revenue growth without going stale.

Last note. This is a little dated, but worth mentioning. If you didn’t hear about the prank Yale students pulled on Harvard during halftime of the 2005 football game, please take another look. This is the face of viral marketing. Ask yourself, “Who’s smarter a Yale grad or Harvard alum?” Now go to this site and ask yourself the same question.

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Interactive Going Up, DM Too

June 8 2009

BtoB, the magazine for marketing strategists, just updated their “2009 Marketing Priorities and Plans” to reflect some mid-year trends. You can download the report here.

b2bmag

Our own straw poll came to the same albiet unscientific conclusion. Marketing spend in the second half of 2009 will be up. Online marketing spend will go up. Direct marketing spend will go up.

We’re feeling pretty good about the direction we’ve taken as an interactive marketing firm. Three years ago we decided to focus our efforts on what we saw as two converging trends in B2B marketing–an increase in online and direct marketing spend. Hey, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

In her BtoB article, Ms Maddox asked Jim Prothe of Model Metrics to comment on this trend.

“We really didn’t face any significant budget cuts this year, but there is much more scrutiny placed on what we’re spending on and what we’re getting for it,” Mr Prothe said.

Mr Prothe’s right on the money.

money

Marketers need to deliver results in the downturn, but shouldn’t that be true regardless of economic climate. Number of leads, cost per opportunity, cost per lead, cost per target, impression, click-through, touch and on and on are all the product of a down economy and we hope they stay.

Last year our customers went to trade shows. This year they are hosting virtual events. Last year they sent team members to thought-leadership conferences. This year they fired those same people.

The moral of the story is make metrics your new best friend. Marketing will no longer be a safe haven for Liberal Arts majors, but a stat-heavy job that will justify its existence at the end of every program and every quarter. Turn your marketing department into a revenue center, because if you remain a cost center you’ll never get the budget you need to justify your existence. No amount of money fed to a cost center will get credit for generating revenue.

Start with highly targeted direct marketing campaigns that drive web traffic and demand directly to the sales team. Put the onus on sales to close when you set them up.

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Mobile Media is Scary

June 2 2009

In the B2B space mobile media looks like it is light years away from adoption. Maybe it is. The consumer side of the marketing family loves the new media and plans on spending more and more on the platform. Not sure what that means now that our marketing media is converging. Mobile web, web t.v., DVR, text, text-to-web, web-to-text, phone-to-text and more.

These changes force marketers into new content and we’re having to adapt to it in a hurry. Are you struggling to keep up, or have you given up?

baby_cell_mobile

Rather than spew something preachy about new mobile trends, please take a minute to read a couple of these articles. It’s clear we need to prepare for mobile media, or is it. Scary.

Connecting outdoor to SMS is an unexpected blend of old and new. MediaPost

Southwest is looking for a little LUV on your mobile phone. Southwest Airlines Blog

Millenials are mobile media junkies, but they are frugal. What does that mean? eCommerce Journal

This may be a crazy rant by Ray Capece, but he has some good points. Check the brand recall numbers. Wow. Technosailor

Here at VLG we’ve gotten into the game by dipping our big toe in mobile media waters. Go to our homepage, click the iPhone then play along. It’s a simple path that’s easy to execute for SMB, but for most it’s a little scary.

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B2B Needs a Digital Touch

June 1 2009

The trick to marketing metrics today is a digital touch point. Adapted traditional media is an easy-to-measure marketing medium, as long as you go digital.

Send a coupon to drive in-store traffic, then count coupons and calculate your ROI. Easy. Send a coupon for your online store, then count visitors and buyers to calculate ROI.

Rent a billboard and post a huge, easy-to-remember URL, then count site visitors and calculate ROI. Rent a person and put them on a street corner with a big sign and easy-to-remember URL, then count site visitors and calculate ROI.

billboard

The digital touch point is the to ticket quick metrics and ROI calculations. You can spend thousands, even millions automating your marketing programs across digital touch points, but for most that is overkill.

Today’s B2B marketing programs are smaller, more agile and highly targeted. If not, you’re throwing money away. Whether you go to a trade show, send direct mail, host a seminar, or buy placement in industry pubs, the key to all of these is a unique URL and some basic math.

Make sure your marketing has a different URL for every program you’re running, every magazine, every billboard, trade show, mailer or radio spot. This will tell you half the story by revealing the impact of each marketing media. The next metric takes more time, a better database and some elbow grease.

To calculate ROI you’ll have to decide, “Do I include sunk resource costs?,” or “Can we track one person across all digital touch points?” Rough numbers are better than no numbers, so don’t be afraid to spit ball.

If you go to a trade show and no one noticed, it’s probably time to spend that money elsewhere. You might be afraid to find out just how much a trade show costs. We hear the same story all the time. “I have to go to the trade show, because my competition will be there.” Your customers can’t afford to travel, so you and your competitors end up eyeballing each other’s booths. “It’s networking,” how do you capture the return on that investment?

tradeshow

Save your gas money. Go virtual. Find new and unique ways to grab attention and hold it. We use personalized microsites to do just that and at the end of the day our customers able measure the impact of our program. The same may not be true of your other marketing spend.

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