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VIA Idea #29: Strategic outbound marketing has a place in your marketing plan

Frequent Reach billboard image

It seems that lately we’ve been advising a lot of our clients to add more inbound (pull) marketing to their marketing budget. This fact triggered a discussion among our staff about the shift in marketing strategies. What percentages should a business spend for each inbound and outbound tactic?

Although it’s less dominant than in years past, traditional (also referred to as outbound or push) advertising remains a strong component for a lot of industries. It isn’t going away anytime soon. Think about Super Bowl ads and, on a more local level, all those fireworks store billboards along the expressway. But you don’t own a major brewery and your name isn’t Kaplan Fireworks. So does outbound advertising still work for your business? The answer in many cases is still “Yes.”

Ideally, your marketing budget and strategies should in part be based in relation to what percentage others in your industry are spending. If you’re the only car dealer for miles around, you likely don’t need to do much advertising. But if you’ve got a half-dozen competitors up and down the street, you’re going to need to work hard to keep and grow your customer base. The same is true for professional services: the more competition, the more you need to spend on advertising and marketing.

Whenever you talk about push marketing, you also want to consider reach and frequency. Reach refers to the number or percentage of different homes or people exposed at least once to an advertising message over a specific period of time. Frequency is the number of times that a household or person is exposed to the same message during the same period of time. Reach without Frequency is ineffective. For example, it’s better to place a smaller ad in a publication several times than a large ad just once or mail a postcard to 500 homes four times than to mail 2,000 postcards once.

The shopping habits of your customers are more factors to consider. Are they reading the local newspaper, clipping coupons and looking for services in the phone book…or do they seldom or never use these media, instead opting to find recommendations on their Facebook feeds or via Google reviews?

Before making marketing decisions, it’s wise to think through your goals and define your audiences:

  • Who are we trying to reach?
  • Why do they need our products or services?
  • Are we trying to build brand recognition or change customer behavior?
  • Are we trying to accomplish a sale or engaging future buyers?
  • What message, information or offer would entice them to act?
  • Can we offer a special or coupon?
  • How will we measure response from each tactic?

After answering these questions, you should have a clearer picture of how to move forward. If you want more advice, we’ve got access to market reports and can share other information and insights that will help you make informed advertising and marketing decisions.

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VIA Idea #28: Understanding Paid Online Media Tactics

Lions and tigers and online advertising? Oh my! Even though it may be scary at first, you don’t need the Wizard to enhance your marketing strategy by adding paid online tactics into your mix. In the same general category as traditional or “push” advertising, the advantages of online ads are quick publishing of information, ability to change the message upon demand and no matter your business’ size, you have a track-able way to reach your niche audiences.

Types of online ads include floating, wallpaper, pop-up, video, map ad, and mobile, all with or without animation. See what I mean about scary? Let’s sort through some of the choices:

The variety of online paid “pull” tactics include:

  1. Email ads target your database of names Allows direct marketing to current or prospective customers through permission-based emails (this is not spam). Send specially designed offers to sub-groups. These can even be personalized.
  2. Search engine marketing (pay per click) ads reach those who are actively looking Incorporate SEO (search engine optimization) techniques using keyword analysis and optimized landing pages to draw visitors. Your ad appears on a page when someone is looking for information about your product or service. Available to any budget, we suggest buying only keywords that are not getting you on the first page organically.
  3. Social media sponsored ads and stories reach those you select Choose geography, gender, age, special interest, etc. to filter and find the right person. Your advertisement will show up on that individual’s social page. You set a monthly budget.
  4. Targeted display ads reach market segments with highly relevant messages Box-sized or banner-sized, these ads are displayed on relevant websites. Media fees are paid to website publishers when the negotiated amount of traffic is garnered.            
    • Demographic targeting lets you select, age, gender, income, using data compiled from registration information.
    • Behavior targeting, compiled from someone’s recent internet activities, lets you select based on interests.
    • Contextual targeting reaches viewers through keywords. The process interprets and classifies the main subject of the page, then populates it with targeted advertising spots. By closely linking content to ads, it’s assumed that the viewer will be more likely to show interest (i.e., through engagement) in your advertised product or service.
    • Job title targeting lets you reach people based on profession.
    • Retargeting lets you re-engage a potential customer who has already visited your website.
    • AND more – they are everywhere! Online ads are available by industry categories, on premium news networks, mobile, YouTube, pre-roll video, and streaming audio websites.
  5. Affiliate marketing places ads on privately owned websites like blogs This model rewards affiliates for each visitor or customer brought to the website by the affiliate’s own website and marketing efforts. For example, when a visitor clicks from the associate’s website to Amazon and purchases a book, the affiliate receives a commission.

Leverage Landing Pages

For the best possible results, create optimized website landing pages specific to each keyword or audience or offer. These pages should be well-designed and laced with engagement opportunities. Landing pages are mandatory in a solid paid search campaign.

Remember that paid online marketing needs to accomplish the same four things as inbound marketing:

  • Attract visitors to the company website
  • Encourage those visitors to become leads
  • Nurture leads into becoming customers
  • Engage customers to keep them happy

If you need help in sorting through what to do first, contact Julie for a free consultation on how we can create an action plan.

PS

In the United States the Federal Trade Commission has been involved in the oversight of behavioral targeting for some time. In 2011 the FTC proposed a “Do Not Track” mechanism to allow Internet users to opt-out of behavioral targeting (See bottom of this page.)

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VIA Idea #27: Improve your Sales Strategy with Inbound Marketing

Back in the day, advertising was simple: TV and print ads pushed products or services and we responded by buying those products or services. Those days are gone. Prospects of all ages now Google items or brands they’re interested in, visit the company’s website and ask Facebook friends for advice.

To thrive, businesses large and small must continue to evolve their sales strategies by employing inbound marketing. Effective inbound marketing engages early-stage potential customers as well as fosters relationships with established customers. Inbound marketing includes a variety of “pull” tactics:

  • Web content
  • Blogs
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Reports (inc. white papers and ebooks)
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletters/ezines
  • Press releases
  • Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, etc.)
  • Infographics
  • Mobile offers/coupons
  • Apps

Note that none of these are “pushing” customers to buy; each serves to demonstrate your company’s expertise, builds trust and encourages conversations. Because you want to engage existing and potential customers, the key is to generate fresh, relevant content often enough that they pay attention. Everything you generate should be optimized with your top keywords. Search engines love inbound marketing tactics and done right, will reward you for your participation with higher rankings.

The goal is to structure inbound in ways to get someone’s permission to capture data such as a name and email address. This is a great way to fill your pipeline with leads for follow-up programs. The beauty of inbound marketing is that once you create strategic content, it works for you as long as it’s active. You have an asset that keeps on giving.

 Inbound Marketing needs to accomplish these four goals

Our industry says many businesses are currently budgeting an average of 30 percent (up from 26 percent) of their marketing dollars to inbound tactics. They also say many businesses haven’t even begun to work in this arena. HubSpot, the company who literally wrote the book on inbound marketing, revealed that inbound marketing’s cost per lead is 60 percent lower than traditional outbound marketing.

How do you know which inbound marketing tactics are best for you? Ask yourself the same questions that you would before starting any marketing initiative; keep in mind that marketing must be about customers and prospects, not you.

Who are you trying to reach? Why do they need you? What message, information or offer would entice them to start a conversation with you? How are you going to follow up? How often are you going to post or email an offer?

If you need help in sorting through what to do first, contact Julie for a free consultation on how we can create an action plan.