Today we hit a huge, I mean big, social media milestone. It took us 3 years, 3 months, 2 weeks, 1 hour and 14 minutes to reach 1,000 Tweets. We clearly only Tweet when there is something worth Tweeting. Our Tweets don’t suck and if they do you’ll only see a Tweet every 2 days. We are a great follow. Why are we so great? Here are the Top 10 (Recent) Tweets by VLG.
Day three. John told Jill this was the most important boredom fighting decision he ever made. Jill agreed.
3. Personalize direct mail even a little bit goes a long way. Personalization is so readily available today that you shouldn’t send another non-personalized piece of mail again. It’s just too easy, too cheap and too effective to do otherwise. You’re more likely to drive web traffic with personalization and the web is where all marketing magic happens.
Our countdown of five ways you can fight boring B2B direct marketing continues with the most controversial of all suggestions.
4. Save your brand for the web. It is very tempting to slap your brand on everything from pens and pencils to towels and t-shirts, but the word is likely not quite as proud of that mark. You spent a lot of time and money to get the brand just so, but show restraint and keep the brand off your mail piece if you can. Mail gets higher negatives than a microsite, so don’t burn yourself with your own brand. Do you want your branded mail piece sitting in the trash can staring up at the recipient all day? Probably not.
I recently stumbled upon a post by Paul Holmes endorsing Edelman’s decision to reposition itself as a communications agency instead of a public relations firm. That’s certainly a subtle move that will go unnoticed in most circles. Firms are evil. Lawyers have firms. You have to dig a little deeper to find an evil agency. Well, depending on your political leanings (e.g. CIA, NSA, ATSDR) you do. Anyway, thought I’d share.
Oh, what about us or any “interactive ad agency”? Do we keep our category or spruce it up a bit?
Nah, none seem to fit.
Play Frosty’s Revenge. Follow Frosty on Twitter.
We know guerilla mail and microsites work. Would a traditional mail piece (with personalized URL) get enough traffic to a Facebook game to make it worth the effort (READ: investment)?
The jury is out.
After Jan. 1 we’ll give you quick stats on this new campaign approach. If our theory and research by other marketers holds, this is the start of VLG’s new product solution in 2011.
Of course the same targeted solutions, with a long history of success will continue to create revenue opportunities for our clients, but it’s time for B2B marketers to embrace a social medium after a couple years of tap dancing around the role Twitter and Facebook play in lead generation activities.
Even though we build really awesome microsites and extremely creative campaigns (back pat, pat), all may be for naught if the list sucks.
“I don’t have a list,” is like death to a direct marketer. Nothing strikes fear into a marketing department faced with the very real need to introduce direct marketing into the mix. What to do? What to do?
Here’s our advice:
Build a list. Use cross media to turn an unkown into known. Fire up a viral microsite and promote it via FB, Twitter and LinkedIn. Put a banner on your homepage. Buy some clicks on Google. Before you know it you’re building an opt-in list you can use to prospect further.
Go to your customers. You already have this list. After working so hard to retain a customer don’t forget to nurture them. HINT: You can use the same microsite as above with variable copy that personalizes the campaign copy on a per customer basis. Let’s retain, up-sell and cross-sell people!
Buy a list. Oh, I know. It’s not pretty and might feel a little dirty, but effective. (Disclosure: Bought lists should be used only for direct mail and never, never email. Filter that list through a personalized microsite to weed out the bad apples and create a smaller, cleaner list for future engagement–follow up dm, email to opt-ins, social media, incentives an more. HINT#2: You can use the same microsite as above with variable copy personalizing the campaign for individual prospects.
That’s our advice. What’s yours?
Social media can be a difficult channel for some B2B companies to utilize. If they do have a presence on social media sites such as Facebook, companies tend to suffer from an overemphasis on selling or a failure to grasp the non-traditional way in which social media audiences communicate. While there is no silver-bullet approach, B2B companies can maximize positive recognition of their brand by following these simple steps:
When Rob Leavitt was asked by a friend for his advice on taking over a B2B marketing organization, his advice was to make sure the following B2B marketing engines were up and running:
Content Engine - Different content is needed at each stage of the buying process, and who hasn’t had a difficult time coming up targeted, relevant information on their own? That’s where your Content Engine comes into play.
Relationship Engine – The phrase “Relationship Engine” is something of an oxymoron as ideally you’d want to personally maintain relationships. That’s how they strengthen, but you do need a consistent and focused approach that goes beyond that Holiday card each year and results in increased loyalty and sales.
Lead Development Engine – The holy grail of sales and marketing, the qualified lead is a bit hard to come by these days. Think long-term campaigns that move leads through a process that creates opportunities rather than just leads thrown over the fence to sales.
Solutions Development Engine – Product development has to respond to customer needs by prioritizing and strategically offering new products with the right value propositions. This should be a routine process with specific stages and metrics.
Also, thanks Rob.
It’s that time again. Free t-shirt Friday is back. Supplies are limited. Once they’re gone they’re gone, so getcha some knucks today. All we ask… just tell the masses VLG set you up with some new threads. (psst. click the shirt)
If you know anyone in the hospitality industry looking for a steal, boy do we have the hotel for you! Name your price.
For two years Crescent Bluffs has been the destination for weary marketers. It is just the place to relax, recharge and renew your commitment and passion for good, un-boring direct marketing.
However, for us, the honeymoon is over. We’re ready for new challenges and new adventure. We want to risk more, push the envelope and skirt the laws [hint, hint] that typically govern B2B direct marketing. We want to stay true to our mantra. We fight boredom!
Backstory: We broke ground in 2008 and opened Crescent Bluffs by invitation only in January 2009. Crescent Bluffs was a figment of our imagination, an internal marketing campaign meant to show our customers the power of intriguing, personalized marketing programs. Over the past 2 years we mailed over 26,000 people, had 20% of those visit the “hotel”. Seventy percent of respondents answered our questions and witnessed the brand reveal. Over the past 22 months the campaign generated a 705% return on investment even though 2009 was a terrible year for ad agencies. It is the bar by which we measure all campaigns built for our customers. It is a very high bar by industry standards, but we are anything but standard. Crescent Bluffs is a new genre, a fresh approach to direct marketing. We call it Dialog Marketing.
We mailed 26,000 people a hotel key and bar napkin. Fifty-two hundred visit our micro-site. Ten percent of those were and many still are VLG customers today. It’s quite a story. If you’d like a Dialog Marketing program please contact us today. 214.299.8688.