[caption id="attachment_6665" align="alignright" width="226"] Mike Salem, CEO, Vorex[/caption] Integrated marketing means managing a lot of different channels, including the synchronization of those channels. Lately I've met more and more public relations and communications professionals who are training in project management, even going so far as to...
Event marketing typically only consumes 20 percent of a company's budget, according to inbound marketing software platform HubSpot. Meanwhile, 67 percent of B2B marketers consider event marketing its most effective strategy, reports an infographic by WebDAM. Event marketing doesn't have to be expensive or even complicated to be highly effective. You can set up an event in hours and get started on improving public awareness for your business. Here are some ideas to get started:
Even when it might not feel like a priority, business blogging is a critical component of your business' success. At times it may be tempting to give up on your business' blog, but don't do it — Hubspot reports that marketers who use blogs receive 67 percent more sales leads than those who don't.
Here's how you can sustain you blog easily while still juggling the other aspects of running your own business.
By Dina Ely
I recently had the “pleasure” of having to update approximately 60 business local listings for a client across the Google and Yahoo local business networks, and what I experienced working with both companies on this was an eye-opener. In the end, I think I've figured out why Google will always trump Yahoo, and how out of touch Yahoo is with the needs of small and medium businesses. (Marissa Mayer, take note - there are a few things I think you've forgotten since the Google days.)
For this grand adventure I worked in the dashboards of both sites as well as extensively on the phone with support. Let me compare and contrast the overall experience and discuss a few takeaways.
Yahoo
Both Google and Yahoo play an important role in local search (as do a few other players – but that's another post for another time). Google is used more by customers in local searches, but to ignore Yahoo altogether would be foolhardy. Especially since Yahoo, like Google, offers free business listings. What they also offer, and pretty much give you no choice but to use, is a variety of subscription-based services including Localworks, which starts at $29.99/month per listing.
Here's where I hit my first road block. In order to do anything substantial with these 60 some odd listings, I really had no choice but to pay for a Localworks package just to get a fully-featured version of the marketing dashboard. If you try to go the free route, the tools available to you are minimal and it's virtually impossible to do anything on the kind of scale I needed. I claimed and prepared to edit every outdated listing, but everything came to a grinding halt when I hit the log jam of verification postcards. (This will come up with Google too, in just a minute.)
IMC measurement doesn't seem like a very sexy topic but it's really important for a lot of reasons. At a micro level, testing tells you when linked tactics are working or not working. At a macro level, measurable objectives give you a concrete way to say...
Few brands have truly harnessed the power of integrated marketing communications as well as Starbucks. They embraced the concept of integrated and multi-channel marketing techniques well before most other brands, recognizing early on the value of, for example, a direct mail campaign that's supported by e-mail and echoed in social media. When it comes to the holistic picture of integrated marketing communications, Starbucks continues to blaze a trail that other big brands – and small businesses alike – should carefully examine.
The foundation of Starbucks' strength in IMC is twofold: consistent branding and consistent customer recognition. Visually, the Starbucks brand is undeniable. Travel to any major city around the world, and quite a few less major ones, and you'll see the familiar Starbucks face peering at you from coffee cups held by passersby. You'll identify a place to get the coffee you love in an airport, or wandering down some strange new street. There are other brands for which this phenomenon also occurs – like McDonald's – but whereas the reaction fast food creates can be mixed (especially when the restaurants are very close to historic or religious landmarks, which seems tacky), the concept of a soothing cup of coffee or cooling Frappucino is almost universally well received.
Starbucks is also meticulous about getting to know their customers, and maintaining long-term relationships. They've always understood the value of perks like birthday gifts, delivered via postal mail to customers like an actual present. And they have a website dedicated entirely to customer feedback. My Starbucks Idea brings together a global community of Starbucks lovers. Customer ideas can be voted upon by others and the company provides feedback. Some ideas have even been implemented. At this time, 214,553 ideas are cataloged on the site. My Starbucks Idea is powered by Salesforce, so there is a huge CRM component behind it.
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Direct marketers have been using landing pages for a long time. QR codes were a great hope, but haven’t really worked much however other promotional codes seem to still work well. I like those that are branded and include a bit of messaging as well. (As a side note, you can include a bit of branding with unique bit.ly shorteners, another micro tactic that works well for me.)
Don’t ever underestimate the power of traditional and online tactics combined. They provide some of the best results I’ve gotten for my clients. Another example of this are combining print ads with online channels. Print ads have become more of a “boost” mechanism for me and less of a direct draw. In fact, we’ve reduced the spend on print ads by half for one of my clients, and still increased our results. That’s because the print ads are now supporting many of the content marketing and digital tactics we’re using. The lesson there is that for this client, traditional tactics have become the "boost." Not the primary vehicle for messaging. (Don't forget, we do a recap of a great IMC campaign every month. This is a great place to find examples of linked tactics. The BJP Party campaign, for example, linked a lot of bleeding edge stuff with traditional media. )
Finally, we need to measure our objectives at the end of the campaign of course, but there are many ways to measure how your tactics are responding on an iterative basis.
Although Facebook may be the inspiration for startups around the world, the company nearly bankrupted itself with monthly utility bills, bandwidth, servers and a rapidly growing payroll. In 2008, the social media juggernaut burned through its startup funding by spending nearly $1 million on electricity each month, reports TechCrunch.
While it may not cost you a million dollars to keep your own startup going and the lights on, even modest estimates by Babson College puts startup costs around $65,000. To keep your eye on your bottom line and put more profit in your pocket, use these online tools to slash your overhead and save a bundle:
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You may or may not have heard the term "linked tactics." I consider it so important that I'm going to devote the next couple blog posts to it. First I'll explain it. Then we'll talk about how to derive your set of linked tactics, and how to build your IMC toolkit. Then we'll talk about how to measure those tactics and keep the momentum going.
First, what do I mean by linked tactics ? Marketing people argue about the real power behind the results we see in integrated marketing. Personally, I think linked tactics are the heart of IMC. At a minimum they provide the fuel that accelerates IMC campaigns way past their traditional counterparts. When you link tactics, they become much more powerful than merely executing components in a silo'd fashion. When planned well, the synergy between a set of two or more tactics boosts the results of a campaign astronomically. It's a simple idea - but like so many simple things, it's not so easy to implement.
Why so hard? Because every brand has a unique set of linked tactics.