July « 2009 « VLG Dialog Marketing

Pass this to 10 friends, or else

July 28 2009

The chain email you just received from your Grandmother will not go away anytime soon, unless she gets on Facebook.

Since the dawn of email came the dawn of chain emails. Helpful chain emails debunk myths, share myths, pictures, stories, jokes, political rants, nasty gossip and more. However, the dawn of Facebook changes all that.

Instead of long emails forwarded so many times you have scroll to page 5 for the actual content, we have quick-hitting, truncated bursts of information. “Become a fan” takes care of just about anything fit for chain email.

Do you want to protest the amount of special sauce on a Big Mac? No problem. Start a group of People Against Big Mac Sauce, start sharing and build a fan base.

Mashable’s Adam Ostrow shared the results of an AddToAny analysis of its own data. Disclosure: The company presumably has some interest in shared content via social media. They’ve made it their business. Still the results are easy to believe when taken at face value. AddToAny’s database should be the topic of another email. Owning that data, seeing those trends sounds like a gold mine to me.

Facebook leads all comers with 24% of the “shared” content on the web. Harnessing that word-of-mouth opportunity could obviously be a coup for mainstream and guerilla marketers alike.

Email and Twitter finish ten points down, but the three account for just under half of all shared content on the web. The long-tail includes Yahoo that beats MySpace that beats MSN that beats Delicious that beats Digg that surprisingly beats Google. Well, it surprised me.

Lolly’s Blog Till You Drop! blog claims work-related emails account for 99% of her inbox. Though I still see a fair number of FW: FW: RE: FW: RE: FW: Funny Pictures From Redneck Picnic-type chain emails, I will admit a decline.

A while back our client needed a little design work for a new web app called Start-a-Fire. Check it out here. The chain email found a new home in this app and it’s easy to see a demographic easily engaged by this online social media tool.

In the end, email itself appears to be losing ground. Reply to social media via SMS. Tweets post to facebook. Tasks set by me or co-workers arrive as text messages. Sharing skips right past inboxes to phones. If there was/is value in chain email, it’s lost on me.

Is email on the way out the door? It’s not hard to imagine.

Evolution of the Species

July 27 2009

We talk to printers as partners, vendors, and customers weekly. The conversations are pretty much all the same.

The print industry must avoid becoming myopic. Capital investments should be in digital presses. Print is a commodity and solution-selling is the wave of the future. Online media is killing our steady-eddy print jobs like manuals and booklets. All these comments come from printers, not us.

Knowing the print industry’s frame of reference consider this, business-to-business marketers expect little change to the marketing mix in 2010 with a couple exceptions. Online spend is expected to more than double in size. Print media will remain unchanged, meaning increases and decreases in spend should be a wash.

Staring down the barrel of a digital migration, printers are poised to seize opportunities that tie the old to the new if they are willing to evolve. Printers are their own worst enemy. They struggle to sell solutions that both take advantage of print capabilities and incorporate web components to quantify the impact of a printed piece.

The days of counting coupons at the register are fast coming to a close. The dot com industry figured out how to sell online, how to build loyalty online, and how to bypass print media. It’s up to the print industry to prove relevance. Evolution on the web is measured in days and weeks. It doesn’t require a capital investment in a four-up press. The web is nimble.

There will be more consolidation in the print industry. The printers that don’t evolve will fall by the wayside. The others will leverage new and old media to deliver proven value to their customers. We’d love to hear what printers are doing to evolve their businesses. Comments gladly posted below with little filter.

By the way, you should follow me on Twitter here.

Go Deeper

July 21 2009

Consumer and B2B marketing differ on many fronts, but one difference in particular speaks to challenges when selling from one business to another. Buy cycle.

Revenue serves up a universal measure of success. How do you divi up credit for revenue won? If a client was touched by eight different marketing programs, 10 sales call and knows someone that works at your company, who gets a pat on the back? If all these happen over the course of 12 months, how far back do you go to find out how you found that customer in the first place.

Tell us how you do it in your organization.

We talk about the web, because we build web-based marketing programs. Makes sense. Let’s look at some of the key metrics we or our clients use to assign blame. Impressions, clicks, response, lead qualification, deals closed, leftover budget, and lifetime customer value.

Where is this building located?

The most important in the minds of our customer are leads qualified and deals closed. Those are the most important, but often difficult or impossible to quantify. The fact that a qualified lead can be defined five different ways within the same organization makes success all the more difficult to measure.

You can’t go wrong with impressions, clicks and response as long as we can agree on the definition of a response. By that I mean, it’s easy to measure campaigns by these three measuring sticks. Impressions and clicks are often good enough when measuring success of SEM. Clicks and response handle outbound and inbound metrics equally well.

Think of an inverted pyramid with impressions at the top and customer lifetime value at the bottom. The deeper you go the better off you’ll be when handing out those bonuses. (Oops, I wrote this post in 2006.) The deeper you go the better off you’ll be when handing out pink slips.

B2B often has a killer buy cycle. If you can’t remember how you got introduced to a new customer, where will you go to find the next one. Pick a handful of metrics and start following them today. Go deep!

If you’re not, you should be following @wefightboredom on Twitter here!

Never Carry Wooden Swords

July 20 2009

There is a saying in Spanish that translated reads, “A blacksmith should never carry a wooden sword”. At one time or another design/development agencies like ourselves have fallen into this trap. We’re so busy doing good work for our clients that we forget to stop long enough to build a good web presence for ourselves.

Workaholics know what I’m talking about, but that’s why we have spas and gyms, right? Now and again you need to do something for yourself.

Earlier this year we opened a skunk works operation here at VLG. We found that by applying our many talents to other areas of our business we produced new products, solutions and best practices. By taking care of business at home we’re able to offer our clients more and better solutions. Integrated web apps, social media, mobile media are all in the queue. I could go on, but it wouldn’t be skunk works if I leaked everything in this blog.

Spend a little time leveraging your own internal expertise and new ideas or opportunities will percolate. Vanity drives innovation, not always, sometimes.

Like other advertising and marketing firms, VLG’s worth is often in our ability to hold a mirror in front of clients. Helping shift paradigms or capitalize on unrecognized opportunities may define our value proposition. The creative process itself essentially dictates how we see our own products/services/solutions in the market place. Microsites and Dialog Marketing are byproducts of client introspection, the steel blade of message delivery.

It’s a huge advantage over competitors that run around swinging wooden swords.

Consider your own organization. You may not be able to apply your offering to your own business. If you build a jet engine, you may not build your own airplane. Somewhere in your organization you’re carrying a wooden sword. Somewhere you have expertise that can be applied elsewhere. Find some time for a little introspection. You’ll be glad you did.

By the way, you should follow me on Twitter here!

Never Cold Call Again

July 16 2009

For many organizations the “cold call” is a necessary evil dreaded by sales and blamed on marketing. Leads pursued at the right time, in the right way, with the right offers promise higher contact, qualification, and close rates. This may not be news to many, but a recent study conducted by the Kellog School of Management produced some surprising results.

Not surprising was something we’ve been telling our customers for years. If you contact your prospects within one hour of them hitting the web your contact rates, lead qualification and ability to close all increase. Conversely, there is a huge drop off in all of these categories if you wait more than an hour. Huge!

Speed
When asked how much time it takes before a first call is attempted, the study found that 71% of companies take more than one hour to respond to inbound web traffic. This results in a 34% decline in your ability to further qualify the prospect and a 16% decrease in close rates.

We’ve been preaching for years about the need to contact prospects as soon as possible. The study found a 28% increase in your ability to qualify and 8% increase in close rates when a lead is contacted within an hour of web identification. When it comes to lead response time, it’s better to be the hare than the tortoise.

Tortoise photo by Aaron Logan & Hare by Malene Thyssen.

Tortoise photo by Aaron Logan and Hare photo by Malene Thyssen.

Time
The study concludes that the best time to get a prospect on the phone is between 8-9 am or 2-4 pm. However, that’s tough when your calls are driven by inbound web traffic and you’d like to respond within an hour. The best day to call is a Thursday. So, Thursday between eight and nine, or two and four. No problem. Let me get right on that. Call the sales team and let them know they need to block out those hours.

This actually creates a great second touch opportunity. You next email campaign should be sent out in waves on Thursday to maximize impact, but only if the leads are routed fast enough to beat the one-hour buzzer. That’s why we are such strong proponents of personalized URL campaigns that take a prospect from microsite to phone. Real-time lead deliver during these peak hours are a major hurdle to reaching your contact rate goals.

Offering
We know how fast and when to call, but how do we convince a prospect to take that first step toward lead qualification on the web. There needs to be a payoff on the web, a reason why prospects just spent five to fifteen minutes of their time getting to know your company a little better.

The dreaded white paper. In B2B campaigns we see it time and time again. Product sheets, case studies, and market surveys like this one aren’t very good at increasing your contact, qualification, or close rates. In fact, they might have a negative affect in some cases. The best offerings might surprise you, but they shouldn’t.

When talking to the right people at the right time in the right way you should offer them an eBook, price quote or proposal request. It seems prospects just want to cut to the chase. No beating around the bush, just tell them how smart you are, how much it’ll cost to leverage your smarts and a document that can be shopped around for internal buy-in.

Conclusion
A well-coordinated marketing and sales effort has a positive affect on revenue. I don’t think we needed a study to draw that conclusion.

If you work at a large company be forewarned, increases in the number of employees decreases close rates. The bigger you are the harder to close.

Don’t measure your cold calling efforts? If you don’t think you can answer questions like how long it takes sales to follow-up with a web lead, or what offer is used most often to lure web leads, you’re in a world of hurt. Companies that don’t measure don’t know what to change. Companies that don’t measure have lower contact, qualification and close rates.

We’ve been saying this for years, but it doesn’t mean we don’t walk a little taller knowing the good folks over at Kellog have endorsed a measured response to lead qual and close. (Read more…If you’d like to read the 24-page, statistic laden report follow this link to Dr. James Oldroyd, PhD and professor at M.I.T)

How Big Is Your Universe

July 14 2009

Calculating market share requires an artist’s touch. Understanding your piece of the pie can be a guessing game of sorts. Let’s try.

Compare your revenue to all reported revenue for your competitors. Ba da bing, ba da boom!! There’s your market share.

Suitable substitutes, interchangeable solutions, and sourced supplier contracts make a calculation of “relevant” market share difficult math problem. Revenue serves as a quick and easy alternative, but this big number tells us very little.

Critical to market size, or market share are relevant statistics. Stats, metrics and measured marketing should help us get relevant and keep and increase market share. We should take a poll. Who among us pulls together stats that generate relevant market share?

A sobering truth today is that we struggle to define market share, or our piece of the pie. We can’t abandon the metric, but we should use caution. Perhaps you’re losing market share to the competition. Maybe you’re increasing market share because you are promoting and selling your product better than the other guy. Maybe we have no idea what these numbers mean.

Our playground–the marketing space–must evolve in a way that would make Darwin proud. We should pay more attention to the size of your universe. How else would you track world domination?

Captured stats are better than no stats at all, but it does throw noise into the creative process. Companies that implement marketing solutions like Eloqua, Unica, and Aprimo pick up loads of statistics. Those same companies craft new processes that put these numbers to work for their marketing and operations folks. We dig it. Make it happen. Let’s go. Bring on the numbers!!

Life Is Funny, Sometimes

July 13 2009

It may be appropriate to tackle the subject of hangovers. We don’t mean too-many-beers hangovers, but the marketing hangovers.

In a recent brainstorming session we came to the realization that this recession has been like one long hangover. Some might say it’s been a nightmare. No matter how much Red Bull you drink or how much Advil you pop the ringing and pounding won’t stop. (BTW-We don’t endorse either. Read more…) We do have advice, if not the cure.

Think don’t fight your way out of a slump. On the marketing front it is tempting to take what little budget you may have and either hoard it, or start throwing it at products, channels, or consumers. We saw people hoard budgets in the first quarter and much of the second. Next we saw people throw money at the problem hoping for a solution.

Finally, it’s go time! We’re getting strategic with our clients, thinking up new programs that get both internal and external audiences jazzed. Life’s funny. It has taken a rough economy to bring out the best in ourselves and in our clients. We’re all a little more focused and a lot more creative. There’s no turning back.

Remember, if you must do direct marketing, direct responsibly.

We take 20% to web, 60% click-through, and get huge time-on-site numbers. That’s good direct marketing. So good, in fact, that we call it Dialog Marketing. We about to launch our “Hangover” campaign. You need a pair of red decoder glasses to view it, give us a ring. Call us at 214-299-8688 ext. 11 and ask for Liz.

Raise Your Hands

July 9 2009

Some lessons we learn the hard way. Education starts by raising your hand. You may start learning at an early age, but not until you participate does your education truly begin.

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in class, the teacher asks questions and a few people raise their hands. These students may know the answers or they may not, but they are willing to jump into the fray. The rest of us sit quietly hoping the teacher doesn’t bypass the others. “No eye contact,” I’d say to myself. “Look away.”

In our business, raising your hand is a big deal. Our goal is to get our clients’ prospects to raise their hands hungry for more knowledge and a better education. Not everyone hungers for more and that’s okay. Like any good teacher, we help our clients find a way to engage those students.

Your organization needs to find new ways to engage prospects and sometimes drag them kicking and screaming into a conversation with you. Prospects look away. They don’t make eye contact. They evaluate. They analyze.

We’ve always believed that to truly engage your target audience the marketing solution must be as personal and relevant as possible. Nothing’s changed. If you can make eye contact and catch a prospect before they look away, you find more willing buyers than you imagined.

The Internet is the second best place to make eye contact. Face-to-face is first.

You’re sitting in front of a computer what, 8, 9, 12 hours a day? That’s lots of eyeball time. Once you make eye contact with your prospect, once you get them to the web, you need to keep them from looking away.

Like millions of marketers you don’t have the brand and money of a Coke, AT&T, or McDonald’s. The nice thing about digital space is that you don’t have to be a Rockefeller to build a whiz-bang web asset.

Your budget is a little thin. On top of that your product is not soda or a phone, but a gas chromatography flow meter. It doesn’t get more exciting than that.

There are people out there passionate about chemical chromatography. If you sell flow meters, we need to help you find those people, make eye contact, and keep them focused on your solution. It’s not as hard as it might sound.

We build microsites everyday that encourage people to raise their hands. We track our microsites so we can connect with all the people that didn’t raise their hands.

Finding a group of willing buyers is always a challenge, but blending traditional media with web media garners 10x better than old-school marketing.

Facebook Developer Garage

July 8 2009

We were able to get our hands on a number of slide decks from a mini-conference held here in Dallas, but there is one I think warrants inclusion in this blog.

I’ve had several opportunities to talk to and listen to Giovanni Gallucci. He’s a walking, talking case study in self-branding and throws out good marketing advice from time-to-time. (He’ll probably read this, so I don’t want to stroke his ego too much.)

Like many slide decks, the presentation I embeded below won’t make must sense to those that missed the conference. There is, however, a great slide that sums up what we’ve been saying here in this blog and to our customers. Slide #4. Go ahead. Take a look.

Measuring Your ROI - Facebook Marketing

View more presentations from Giovanni Gallucci.

Now, it might be worthwhile to read some of the key “in-person” takeaways from Gio’s talk.

Calculating the value of your social media investment is not debated as much as it should be, but Gio suggests we apply some pretty standard earned media measurements. I assume this is a temporary solution before revenue-pegged stats are made available. So, for example, using CPM or other standard ad rates online we could calculate that 5,000 impressions if bought would be worth $10,000 on some ad networks. If I can get 5,000 people to become a fan of my company on facebook, what’s the value to me. Ad rate + unit of measure = value.

Gallucci went on to talk about mixing black (sneaky) social media tactics with white (above board) tactics to execute a “blue” hat social media strategy. Blue hat has a nice ring to it and I believe he originated the concept. The idea is that you should think like spammer, but keep it clean like Roy Rogers.

From a lead generation/list building perspective there is a really, really way to get access to names and titles at a specific company, but he made us promise not to take it outside the room. I will say that a buzz went through the audience when Gallucci put this tactic in the public domain. (@mosimmons might give you a hint)

We’d consider the conference a success. The one-day facebook cram session generated some good ideas. We can thank the folks at Intel, facebook, CoHabitat.us and Blake Burris for making it happen—for free. There was even free beer and pizza. How could it fail.

Pat My Back

July 6 2009

Couldn’t resist a quick plug for ourselves. Deliver magazine featured some (three) of our campaigns in the “Brag Room”. Who doesn’t like looking at themselves in the mirror. Check them out here: http://www.delivermagazine.com/brag-room/, then come back and let us know what you thought of the three featured in Deliver. Gracias!

VLG Dialog Marketing

Archive for July 2009