Xmas Greetings Cards
Last year I posted about whether or not companies should send out Christmas greetings cards, or if in this day and age it’s more appropriate to send ecards (making a donation of the cost saving to charity). Well it seems 2007 saw a bumper crop of e-cards (in fact I only received 1 work related traditional Christmas card) being sent. However this year the motivation was more around reducing carbon footprints than CSR.
So it seems the traditional card is falling from grace and slides further towards the trash can. In all honesty I doubt it matters much how you send your Christmas greetings, as long as they are genuine, timely and consistent with the rest of your communications.
With that in mind I thought I’d share a couple of ecards I received this year.. enjoy! (It would be nice if they actually said Merry Christmas though… is this political correctness gone mad).
ICICI Bank - nice but where’s the Christmas message..?
Fresh Minds - a London based research agency
If you received any particularly good Christmas ecards them send them on and I’ll post them up here.
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!
Tag:marketing mixcomments
The Rise of Influencer Marketing - What is it and Why is it Important?
I first learned of the term ‘influencer marketing’ at a Social Tools for Business conference in London last year when I had a brief conversation with Duncan Brown of Influencer50. As a quick intro Influencer50 is a marketing agency working with tech companies to engage in influencer marketing programmes.
So what is influencer marketing?
At its most simple level, influencer marketing is the practice of targeting marketing activities at those people who most influence the sales decision buying process. But surely I hear you say, all sales and marketing activity is designed to reach those influencers. You know, the people who buy your goods and services.
Well yes, but in actual fact in influencer marketing, the influencer is defined by Duncan as:
Influencers are not your customers. Influencers have no budget. They are not your market. They influence your customers, influence budget, influence your market.
or on Wikipedia:
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orientates arketing activities around these influencers.
So you see, not only does your marketing have to target the guy with the credit card, but also those that ffect whether or not he uses that credit card. For example, if you’re selling stationery you not only need to communicate with the administrator who places the order, but all the other people in the compnay who influence the decision of what to buy, i.e. the product users and specifiers. In fact the list could be endless so it’s important to identify and target specific individuals who carry the most influence, those who Influencer50 say are the people responsible for sales cycle objections.
For a slightly different definition head to Influencer Marketing 101 and watch Marcus Colombo’s short video. He’s a practising influence marketer and effectively says his job is all about getting sample products into the ands of those that influence the market.
It’s clear then that influencer marketing is not just about communicating with potential buyers of your product, but other influencers and information gatekeepers in what marketers call the decision making unit (or DMU). There are two different approaches to influencer marketing as well:
1. Influencer50 suggest it is more about joining up your marketing and sales teams to identify the objectors (and objections) that most impact their sales figures and then devising a plan to communicate with these people, and
2. the second approach is to ensure product samples get to the right people at the right time, for example ournalists, analysts and more increasingly bloggers or other social commentators.
So why is it important?
Much has been written of late about how traditional marketing methods no longer have the same impact. It is probably fair to say that both consumers and businesses have become more resilient to traditional marketing methods such as advertising and direct marketing. However they have not actually become immune, yet. In reality these methods are still powerful tools for any marketer as long as they are well integrated.
That’s where influencer marketing seems to fit for me. Influencer marketing could well be the glue that brings together our existing marketing campaigns and ties them into your sales campaigns. In other words it is taking an integrated approach to your sales and marketing, which seems very sensible and key objective for many marketers in big companies these days.
So what can you do about it?
I’m no expert and I would suggest heading over to Duncan’s blog to learn more. But it would seem there are some simple steps that a small and medium business could take to introduce influencer marketing techniques into the sales cycle.
Have a look at the Influencer Marketing Wheel below:
Well, with that written I’m off to look at the biggest sales objections I receive and who they’re from. If the big boys like HP, Xerox, Microsoft and co are engaging in Influencer Marketing then there’s no reason why us small business shouldn’t try it out also.
Duncan, if you’re reading this, I hope I’ve done influencer marketing some justice. However it would be great to get your comments. Please fell free to drop me a line or post a comment..
Tag:marketing mixcomments
Small business advertising
- link to
YouTube Directfantastic video
I love entertaining TV advertising. This one by Nike is a classic example of big brand advertising at its best - funny, carrying a message, memorable and so much more. But as a small business can you use brand advertising as a marketing tool?
Unfortunately the answer is almost certainly NO. The cost alone prohibits most companies from getting in on the action. But not only that, as a small company, it’s unlikely you will have a strong enough brand in the first place to reinforce through TV advertising. So what can you do to advertise your business?
There are lots of options, but my first suggestion is to consider direct response advertising. This is when your adverts are designed to promote a specific call to action from prospective customers. For example:
- Call now to save 50% on carpets!
- Log on to www.megaDVDdeals.com for cheap blockbuster DVDs!
This will encourage prospective customers to contact you and enter your sales process. Compare this to a brand advert like the Nike example - whilst you may come away thinking how great Nike is, have you actually gone a step closer to buying a pair of trainers?
The second, and final option for this post, is to consider which advertising is the correct medium for your target audience. For the carpet example above, your best choice might be a local newspaper, whereas for the DVD Mega deals an online search campaign might be better. This is what media planning is all about and there’s a whole industry dedicated to this.
Advertising is a massive subject, so please come back regularly for more posts. I’ll do my best to showcase some of the best advertising and viral marketing campaigns like the crazy Indian cricket Nike ad.
Tag:Advertising branding marketing mixcomments
The online marketing mix - 4Ps or 8?
For anyone writing a blog as a means of making money, it would be worth reading Daniel’s Daily Blog Tips blog. I especially like this article that applies the traditional 4P marketing mix concept to blogging (www.dailyblogtips.com).
Daniel makes some great comments about the 4Ps (Product, Promotion, Place, Price) and how these are outdated when applied to blogs. For example he suggests Promotion should be replaced by Persuasion, with bloggers encouraging their readers to share ideas and contribute to the discussion. This makes perfect sense as blogs become more valuable when they are interactive.
However, the 4Ps model was actually usurped firstly by the 7PS - which mostly applies to services marketing - and now the more recent 8Ps.
So what are the extra Ps and are they valuable for your business?
The first to think of is People, which in a red brick company means your employees. However in the more interactive world of blogging this also applies to your readers. You need good readers that interact and subscribe in order to grow a sustainable business. How do you get good readers = good content.
Physical Evidence. In an offline business this refers to your restaurant, or the invoice you send out, or the letterhead you use. But in an online environment it equally applies to the quality appearance of your blog and other materials - your online brand if you like. Develop this with a clear and consistent feel if you want to maintain a good readership. You will see a lot of over designed blogs but simplicity is the key here.
The third extra P is Process. This usually means the steps in which a customer goes through from first contact with your business, to receiving their good or service. For bloggers, this means the ease of which readers can sign up to an RSS feed, or newsletter, or even comment on your posts. Make this as simple as possible as it is all too easy for a reader to click away from your blog. Chances are unless your content is excellent, this will happen fairly quickly anyway.
The final and most recently added P is Planning. As with any business, you increase your chances of being successful by planning what you want to achieve ad how you will achieve it. Think short, medium and long terms (i.e.1,3 and 5 years) with a series of objectives, strategies and tactics i.e. where you want to get to, how you will get there and what will actually happen.
So there you have it. A great idea from Daniel, developed to add the further 4 Ps of the modern marketing mix concept.
Tag:General marketing mix Peoplecomments
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