How-To Marketing Guide

Transcription

1 How-To Marketing Guide STRONGER TOGETHER.

2 How-To Marketing Guide 8 FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENTS OF A MULTI-CHANNEL MARKETING CAMPAIGN There are 8 Foundational Elements to Building a Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign 1. UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION 2. TARGET AUDIENCE 3. COMPELLING OFFERS 4. CREATIVE STRATEGY & COMMUNICATIONS PLAN 5. LEAD CAPTURE 6. LEAD PASSING 7. LEAD FOLLOW-UP 8. ROI REPORTING 1. DEVELOP YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION (UVP) A unique value proposition is a short statement that encompasses the services you ve provided and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Once identified, your messaging in all communication vehicles in your multi-channel campaign will carry this message forward, creating a clear, consistent voice for your company. A Strong Value Proposition Must: Capture the attention of your target audience Be easy to understand Differentiate your company from your competitors Be enticing enough to sway a purchase decision Questions to Ask to Help You Identify Your Unique Value Proposition Include: What pain do you solve? What makes you different? Who is your market? What are the alternatives? Why can t they say no? 1 CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE

3 1. DEVELOP YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION (UVP) CONTINUED Many companies use a SWOT analysis to help them develop their UVP a simple chart that articulates Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Use the SWOT Analysis Template in the back of this booklet to develop your own SWOT. Ask your team for their input in this exercise. STRENGTHS OPPORTUNITIES WEAKNESSES THREATS Strengths and Weaknesses are Internal Factors and Relate to the Present Situation Opportunities and Threats are External Factors and Relate to the Future Strengths List 3-5 bullet points describing your company s strengths Weaknesses What weakness do you have in regards to market demand and your current offerings? In regards to your competition? Opportunities What opportunities do you have to increase revenue/profit and gain market share? Threats What are the threats to the market? To your company directly? 2. MAP YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE The next step is determining which types of companies will appreciate your value proposition. Start by evaluating your best customers with the mindset of finding more just like them. What types of industries, markets and demographics do they represent? If those qualities aren t reflected in your current prospect list, you ll need to build or acquire a new list. CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE 2

4 2. MAP YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE CONTINUED Today, acquiring a targeted list is just a click away. You can purchase or rent lists from a variety of companies. InfoUSA, Experian and other list brokers let you build business-to-business mailing lists by selecting from a multitude of attributes, including: Industry type Years in business SIC code Geographic location Company size Number of employees Contacts by job titles And more TIP: A great source for targeted lists are the publications that target the audience you want to reach. Manage Your List To increase the value of your list over time, you ll need to manage it. Implement a documented maintenance plan to periodically cleanse and append your existing data. Compare mailing lists to the National Change of Address (NCOA) or Canadian Change of Address (CCOA) master databases to improve address accuracy and deliverability rates. For lists, check deliverability reports after every send. Remove or correct addresses that result in a hard bounce. At each prospect touchpoint, look for ways to collect information beyond basic address. Supplement your list with sales/purchase data from your own systems to understand who your best customers are (so you can find more like them). Extend Your Reach Outside of Your List While direct marketing (such as direct mail and ) requires a database/list, many communications vehicles in your multi-channel campaign are designed to help you reach outside of your database online banners, 3rd party enewsletters, print ads and social media. Identify the publications and other channels that target your audience and build them into your multi-channel campaign. 3. CREATE COMPELLING OFFERS A strong offer will be relevant to your target audience and enticing enough to motivate recipients to take action. Your salespeople and customer service reps are good sources for brainstorming. Think about the types of offers that will be of most interest to your targets, then give them a compelling reason to respond by making yours: Time sensitive Create a sense of urgency by limiting the time or number of offers available. High perceived value It doesn t have to be expensive to have value to your prospect. Easy to understand Keep your offer simple and easy to explain so it can be grasped quickly. Prominent Use color, imagery and type size so they don t miss your call to action. 3 CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE

5 3. CREATE COMPELLING OFFERS CONTINUED Types of Offers As you brainstorm, consider these tried-and-true offers and how they might be adapted to your marketplace. Discounts % off Dollars off Introductory price Buy one, get one free Seasonal discount Promotions Premium Free sample Sweepstakes or contest Content Marketing White paper Research enewsletter Case study Keep in mind that while a free gift card offer might generate a higher response, you may get a better quality lead with a content offer, such as a white paper, that is relevant to what you are selling. 4. ESTABLISH A CREATIVE STRATEGY & COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR When you use a variety of communications vehicles to communicate your message and offer, it is important to develop a consistent look and feel, or creative strategy. By doing so, your prospects and customers will begin to recognize you in the marketplace, whether in a print ad, online banner or direct mail. TIP: The My PressGo! program features a number of templates you can leverage for your multi-channel campaign. Be sure to check it out at A well-thought-out creative strategy clearly articulates your unique value proposition. It defines what you want to say about your product or service and explains how you want the audience to think about your brand. Use an overarching theme and corresponding imagery to create consistency across all media channels. When working with an agency or graphic designer, preparing a Creative Strategy Brief for them to follow will help you guide the end result and ensure your creative strategy is aligned with your goals and unique value proposition. Use the CREATIVE STRATEGY BRIEF TEMPLATE in the back of this booklet to help articulate your goals. With creative strategy identified, you can then develop a calendar of communications vehicles you will utilize to communicate your messages and offers and prepare to launch your multi-channel marketing campaign. The COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR TEMPLATE in the back of this booklet can be used as a guide to get you started, and you can add or remove communications vehicles as appropriate based on the goals of your campaign. CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE 4

6 4. ESTABLISH A CREATIVE STRATEGY & COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR CONTINUED Now that you ve developed your unique value proposition, target audience and creative strategy, it s time to select the various communications vehicles (or channels) that you will utilize to deliver your message and offer to your prospects. Today, marketers have more communications options than ever before. Here are some of the communications vehicles you may want to consider as part of a multi-touch, multi-channel campaign: Direct mail enewsletters Outbound telemarketing Paid search Organic search Online banners 3rd Party enewsletter Webinar sponsorships Social media: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter Advertising (print ads, radio, outdoor, online) 5. CAPTURE LEADS How are you asking the prospect to respond? Call a 1-800#? Visit a PURL or microsite? Send an or go to your company website? When you launch each of the communications vehicles in your multi-channel marketing campaign, you will want to ensure you have included a way for them to respond. Many marketers like to give their prospect a variety of ways to respond so that the prospect can easily engage. It is helpful to create a standardized process such as making it a practice to ALWAYS include your company s 1-800# and company url in Extended Marketing, and the 800# and personalized urls in Direct Marketing. PURLs have many advantages, including taking out the registration process for the prospect. As a side note, if you haven t used PURLs, increasing your response rates is certainly one reason to do so! Industry benchmarks have shown that there is a 50% abandonment rate when a prospect reaches a registration page meaning they click off the page and do not register. That means you lose 50 of 100 responders. With a PURL in place you remove the registration barrier and capture all 100 responders! There are a variety of ways to get your prospect to respond/engage with you, including: 1-800# Company website PURL Microsite address QR Codes 5 CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE

7 6. PASS LEADS (RESPONSES) It is well known that converting responders to qualified leads requires timely follow-up. Once a prospect responds to your campaign, the response must be quickly followed up on to lead qualify the opportunity. There are many software tools that can automate your lead (response) passing process. Whether you use these tools or pass responses manually, you must have a well-thought-out strategy to get the lead passed quickly to the person who will qualify the opportunity. Know before a prospect responds to your campaign where the response will route to and who will followup. Ensure they are aware of the campaign and equipped with the right talk or call guide and sales tools for follow-up. 7. FOLLOW-UP ON LEADS/RESPONSES Once the response is quickly passed for lead qualification, it is equally important that TIMELY contact is made to lead qualify the opportunity. Research indicates that nearly half of all inquiries/responders are not followed up within two weeks if at all! A Marketing Sherpa study confirms the likelihood to connect is 80x greater if you attempt follow-up within 5 minutes vs. 20x greater if you attempt within 30 minutes. The odds of making contact with and qualifying a lead decrease dramatically the longer you wait to follow-up. Responses should be passed and followed up on within hours for the highest conversion rate. 8. REPORT ROI The only way to know if your campaigns are meeting your goals and optimize future campaigns is to be diligent in tracking metrics on each communications vehicle. Use the CAMPAIGN REPORTING TEMPLATE in the back of this booklet as a guide to create a reporting template unique to your campaign. Continue to add onto it with each and every deliverable you launch into market. Then, you can begin to compare and contrast the success and get a good understanding of which vehicles are performing for you and which need to be optimized. Common metrics you will want to include in your reporting: Open Rates Click-Through Rates Bounce Rates/Undeliverable Response Rates (# of Responders/# Targeted) Response-to-Lead Conversion Rates (# of Leads/# of Responders) Lead-to-Sale Conversion Rates (# of Sales/# of Leads) Cost Per Responder (Campaign Cost/# of Responder) Cost Per Lead (Campaign Cost/# of Leads) Cost Per Closed Deal (Campaign Cost/# of Closed Deals) ROI (Gross Profit Margin attributed to campaign campaign cost/cost of campaign = ROI) CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE 6

8 Appendix SWOT ANALYSIS TEMPLATE Fill out the SWOT analysis below to aid you in developing your unique value proposition. The examples listed are intended to help you get started, but ask your team for their input, as well. STRENGTHS What characteristics of your business or team give you an advantage over competitors? Capabilities Equipment and technology Knowledgeable staff Customer service Quick turnaround Experience and reputation Geographic location Pricing strategy Sales strategy Innovative leadership STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES WEAKNESSES What characteristics of your business or team are lagging behind competitors? Capabilities Equipment and technology Inexperienced staff Customer service Order fulfi llment Geographic location Pricing strategy Lack of innovation Lack of expertise in selling new services OPPORTUNITIES What external forces are providing opportunities for your business? Industry move toward integrated marketing services New markets like short-run book publishing New technologies and equipment Seasonal demands holiday and election campaigns OPPORTUNITIES THREATS THREATS What external issues could cause problems for your business? Less demand for print Commodity pricing Economic downturn Equipment and technology obsolescence Competition from marketing service providers 7 CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE

9 APPENDIX CONTINUED CREATIVE STRATEGY BRIEF TEMPLATE Objectives Target audiences Unique value proposition Desired customer experience Audience pain points Messages Tone and manner Offer(s) Calls to action Medium or channels that will be used Points to Consider Use messaging to tell the audience What s in it for them Address audience pain points Use a tone that reflects your company s personality Differentiate your offering from your competitors Create a consistent and recognizable theme and graphics Make your call-to-action easy to find and easy to respond to Always connect graphically and with messaging your communications to the response mechanism (landing page, PURLs, etc.) recipients will use to respond CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE 8

10 APPENDIX CONTINUED COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR TEMPLATE JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUNE JULY AUG SEPT OCT NOV DEC TARGET AUDIENCE: Direct Marketing - enewsletter/ - Outbound Calling - PURL Site - Microsite Extended Marketing Social Media - Facebook - Twitter - YouTube - Blog SEO Print Ads - List Publication - List Publication Editorial Sponsorships - List Sponsorship Online Banners & 3rd Party enewsletters - List Publication - List Publication - List Publication - List Publication Live Webinars - List Webinar - List Webinar Offer Development - List Offer - List Offer 9 CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE

11 APPENDIX CONTINUED CAMPAIGN REPORTING TEMPLATE WEBSITE DASHBOARD Date Visits Unique Pageviews Pages/visit Time/visit Bounces Conversions Leads New visits TOP 5 REFERRERS TOP 5 REFERRERS % Adwords Organic Direct Online Ads Adwords Organic Direct Online Ads GOOGLE ADWORDS - PAID SEARCH PROGRAM Adwords Monthly Cost Lead Forms Avg. Position Cost Per Click ORGANIC SEARCH PROGRAM POSITIONS #1 Top 5 1st Page 2nd Page None CSA HOW-TO MARKETING GUIDE 10

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