Marketing Automation, Web Video and Social Media

Posted: 10/15/2009 4:45:44 PM by Mike Rogers | with 0 comments

On Tuesday, we presented to the Norwalk SCORE chapter. We discussed how to apply Social Media and how to integrate it with your business strategy.

Posted: 10/9/2009 11:54:35 AM by Mike Rogers | with 0 comments

Intelligent Marketing Technology helps businesses Create great marketing, Connect with customers and potential customers, Listen to how people are responding, Measure your results and Optimize your marketing activites.  It involves both online and offline marketing activities. Social Media and interactive strategies are growing in popularity, but will not replace traditional methods in the near future.  Any company who is looking to connect with large numbers of consumers must engage in both traditional (print, direct mail, newspaper advertising, magazine, TV, radio) and digital marketing (Google Adwords, online advertising, banner advertising, podcasting, online video, over-all online content development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing).  At Brainloaf we know technology plays a vital role in the intelligent creation, execution and optimization of marketing and our tagline is "Intelligent Marketing Technology".  

Technology should be a vehicle for the execution of your strategy. The use of technology is not a strategy, but an important tactic. The "intelligent" use of technology can help you reach new levels of marketing success. However it can be a double edged sword. Marketers tend to get bogged down in the details of execution rather than the creation of goals, a strategy and fail to measure execution results against those goals. Without a destination in mind, you will end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The explosion of possible channels for businesses to reach potential customers has made it difficult to know which will be most profitable. In order to manage multiple, fragmented media channels, you need to have a clear plan on how you're going to spend your money, where to place your media and how to measure your results. All to often in our new fast paced media world, the driving focus is to move and do something immediately. In Social Media, there is a low barrier to entry, that companies approach it as a low cost channel that will yield huge profits. As a result there are many poorly designed and executed ideas. You need to set goals. You need to create a strategy. Then build a plan of tactics to execute that strategy. Did I mention you should have goals and a strategy to reach them?

All to often companies get excited about the new shiny object and forget the fundamentals of marketing. Currently, the buzz is about Facebook pages and Twitter. Soon, it will be a different situation. I applaud the willingness of many marketers to try something new. If you combine the enthusiasm for new channels with solid marketing fundamentals, you will succeed.

Properly leveraging technology will help you streamline the execution of marketing programs in multiple channels. It is now possible, to create an  integrated television, print, podcast, YouTube, online banner, web site, micro site, landing page, search engine optimization plan; the number of options has exploded. Of course I am exaggerating. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. However, if you use tools that can quickly generate customized marketing materials and help you connect with people in the marketplace, you can efficiently create dozens of test programs, measure the results and weed out the losers.

To illustrate, I will use a Google AdWords campaign as an example. For those new to digital marketing Google AdWords are the paid search results that appear on the right side of Google. You purchase ads on Google for a specific keyword such as "Tennis". When people click on the advertisement's link, you pay Google a fee. When you create a campaign of Google AdWords, Google gives you the option to create multiple versions of an advertisement. Google will automatically show different ads each time people search for the word tennis. Using this feature, you can test different messages and tactics very quickly.

Let's imagine we created a campaign for a fictional tennis facility. We want people to come to our site and join the club. We may create 3 different messages to test "Come play tennis here!", "1 Hour of Court Time Free", and "Free can of balls with each visit". Using Google's tools you can evaluate how effective each ad is based on the number of people who click and arrive at your web site. Furthermore, if you properly set things up on your web site, you can know who clicked on your advertisement and made a reservation. You can now track which advertisements are generating the most business for you, and can focus more money on working ads.

This example serves to illustrate the use of technology tools in the Creation, Measurement and Optimization of marketing programs. Similar tactics can be applied to all digital media and even traditional media to help your company achieve marketing success.