BLOG ROLL
ARCHIVES
September 27, 2007
I was reading a number of articles on the language used by marketing professionals and it made me think. Can a simple change of words result in effective communication? and can using words that resonate with your audience increase the conversion rates and response rates of your communication and email campaigns?
Quote from one of the articles:
"The difference between marketing language and real language is that
people don't think in marketing-speak. That is, their actual thought
processes don't include the words found in marketing language."
The following examples were some talked about in the articles I read:
- Think about your audience as opposed to verticals or markets
- Think user experience as opposed to features and functions
- Think memories as opposed to promotions
- Think of creating a lasting impression as opposed to generating interest
- Think of telling a relevant success story as opposed to listing testimonials
- Use real language instead of marketing language
My lesson to be learned from reading the articles is to take a moment to think every time you are adding content to your website. If there is a better choice of words or messaging that is more relevant to your target audience it could potentially increase the overall length of time a visitor is on your site, increase email campaign conversion rates, and generate leads for your company.
The best way to succeed is to test, adapt, and refine. Multivariate testing can be used to test multiple combinations of elements on a landing page. So you can swap about picture-1 with headline-2 and button-3 and see how it works against picture-2 with headline-4 and button-2, etc. Its basically just testing a bunch of different variables and see which combo is the most effective (e.g., yields highest conversion rate)
The answer to the title "Can a simple change of words result in effective communication?" is Y-E-S. Even a 1% increase in conversions can substantially increase revenue.
September 17, 2007
When I first heard about Twitter awhile back, I thought it was pretty limited in its use for both business and pleasure. It's the concept of microblogging where you send your network of contacts updates on exactly what you are doing at this exact moment. Since you are limited to 140 characters, your posts are very short. You can update your status via SMS, IM, or email. Taking a snapshot of some blogs on Twitter today, you can make posts such as:
"lamenting"
"going home see you all later"
"or was it Tom Cruise?"
"hope you feel better. a bad back is always a pain"
Sooooo I won't go as far as to say "asinine" as Mark Simon wrote on his blog (simply because this is a corporate blog), but I thought the idea would eventually die off. I see that Twitter and marketers are still grappling for ways to use this technology: It seems like "cool" technology, how can we turn it into YouTube success? The ideas that Jennifer Jones presents in her blog for Twitter just seem like a stretch. Wouldn't a simple RSS feed do the trick? I think it's great that marketers are becoming more open to using technology and web tools to initiate and continue a conversation with their audience. But people shouldn't be dazzled by the hype of new technology. Just because it's the newest thing doesn't mean it's necessarily going to apply to your business needs. Anyway, I will remain a skeptic until convinced otherwise. If you have any ideas for valid business applications uses of Twitter that cannot be achieved by a more simple, easy method then let me know.
August 30, 2007
As I sit here trying to power through all of my work, I stare at my growing pile of unopened mail in a lonely corner of my desk. I wonder if I'm the only marketer who doesn't open, much less read, my mail? They're all sorts of trade publications or promotional pieces trying to get me to buy their particular service/product. I give my new mail a quick skim, pick out the high priority items, and chuck the rest in that pile.
So what does compel me to open/read a piece of direct mail? It will grab me if 1) it's a clever piece of marketing or 2) it clearly targets my marketing concerns. For example, the piece may be a unique form factor or scream "lead generation ideas!"
Then once I've read the piece, what compels me to actually visit their landing page? If they just point me to their general URL then I won't bother. I'll go to the landing page if they mention an offer of some type (doesn't have to be a physical giveaway, could just be promise of more valuable information) or an intriguing URL. For example, they may be offering an interesting whitepaper or point me to a URL like "/marketersonly".
A direct mail piece that is complemented with an email that is consistent in messaging and branding will also increase the chances of getting me to take any action. Direct mail is such an expensive venture that I'm not sure why marketers don't just focus on email? I'd say the competition for attention for both media is fairly even anyway. Email is just so much cheaper, and you get instant responses.
I dread the Christmas holidays when all the cards start coming in....
August 28, 2007
Thinking out loud as I usually do, it came up in a conversation that I should become regular contributor to Marqui’s Blog. It has felt a little quiet on our company blog so weekly I’ll be sharing my thoughts and I welcome your comments and feedback. *handshake*
Viral Web Marketing – 6 Tips
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about new tips for viral marketing. It is a marketing practice that facilitates and encourages people to communicate and pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral marketing campaigns are also known as word-of-mouth campaigns, referral marketing or network marketing.
To date, viral marketing is the most cost effective form of marketing and can produce a powerful impact. Using viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own - and start to spread like wildfire.
Here is a recent Viral Marketing campaign we all have seen lately from Dove:
August 3, 2007
I just read Tod's blog posting today about the CBC's requirement to approve personal blogs for all employees (who publically state that they're CBC employees). That's a tricky one. I can see from the blogger's standpoint that you want to be transparent about your life on your personal blog, however, if you're going to write provide your political opinions or potentially compromise the reputation of your employer then it just makes common sense to nix your employer's name. At this point, I don't think the CBC is being entirely unreasonable in trying to protect the integrity of their brand and organization, particularly when they're trying to maintain a reputation of being an impartial news provider.
There's also another recent article just on this very topic of employee blogging that you may want to give a quick read.
July 19, 2007
Yesterday was an absolute zoo. I had three new webinar presentations to deliver yesterday, and the Internet connection at the office was down***. These were the first of our marketing webinar series (check out updates on our webinars), and we had many attendees registered. It was a mad scramble (I won't go into the crazy details) to get online somewhere. If you've ever seen the old John Candy and Steve Martin movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"...well it felt like that.
There were a lot of details I'd like to improve for future webinars, but overall I think the first round went well. I had fun amongst the chaos, and I do love hearing the sound of my own voice :) Thanks to Shar for laughing at my "knocking on wood" joke. We may do some in-person presentations as well, as I find those much more interesting for both the presenter and the participants.
If you have any suggestions for future webinars please send them to me. These webinars are focussed on topics of interest for the marketer. We'll hold webinars on a weekly basis, but I'll be developing new topics every few weeks.
***Note that this in no way affects our service to customers, only the Internet connection in our office.
July 16, 2007
It's certainly been awhile since the last post, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a flurry of activities. Shar and I have a lot on our plates, but you will see more posts from us in the future. There certainly have been great marketers here before us, so we do have quite the act to follow with regards to their prolific blogging.
Although I have been blogging for many years, I was hesitant in participating in a "corporate" blog. Does it mean I have censor myself, keeping my weird thoughts or rants in check? The team has always encouraged me to blog about anything and everything on here, so we'll see. Besides, I have admin rights to this blog :)
So onto my current random thoughts....
During a seminar today, they touched on the topic of website analytics. This reminded me of all the instances at trade shows when I asked attendees how well their website was performing. Most of them didn't have a clue about their web traffic. So even with great free tools like Google Analytics available today, why do some marketers still neglect their website analytics? I think perhaps it's because they are overloaded with so many stats that they don't know where to begin or what it all really means. Some of them may take a peek at their stats once a month and then just continue on with their other projects.
I think in order to get a lot from your website analytics sometimes it's about measuring trends and as well as thinking outside the box to interpret the stats. I think that's the really interesting, albeit sometimes challenging part.
February 22, 2007
I do enjoy attending/exhibiting at vertical-specific tradeshows. I always find that they provide a great place to validate marketing messages, getting immediate feedback to what messages resonate and what do not. It is kind of like watching your AB split test results for an email marketing campaign getting returned in real time. Say the message one way with one person, say it differently with the next. Measure, compare. Rinse, wash, repeat.
Today, for example, I was marketing Marqui at the BC Tourism Industry Conference in Victoria (along with one of Marqui’s web marketing consultants – Mike Sommer). As most of the attendees here are Tourism and Hospitality focused, a standard one-size-fits-all boilerplate description is not appropriate. Yes, marketers within this industry are just as concerned about attracting new sales leads, brand consistency, and effective communications as those outside of the sector, but they also have other worries. Here is the elevator pitch that I was using today that appears to be resonating:
Tourism and Hospitality organizations are focused on delivering an exceptional customer experience. This is what they are trained to do. This is what “customer service” is all about. At Marqui, we improve the “pre-experience” experience as well as the “post experience” experience for travel and hotel companies alike.
The pre-experience addresses everything from attracting people to your website (SEO, PPC campaign integration, dynamic website content) to delivering precision marketing that sets the stage for the experience (e.g., sending a targeted email to a visitor notifying him or her of an upcoming event that coincides with their visit or “Your weather forecast is…”).
The post-experience involves following up with the visitor and marketing to them in the means that they prefer (e.g. an email thanking them for their business, an RSS feed of a promotion or special in an off-peak time, or a newsletter with more details about the region or experience). The post-experience also involves engaging your clientele in a dialog: fostering a sense of community through a blog that the users can contribute to, posting a photo of the client of the eco-tour excursion so that they might share it with friends and family, inviting comments/feedback be it through a survey or bulletin board, etc.
For those interested, more insight into the messaging of our hospitality marketing can be found at this landing page (created through Marqui of course).
February 15, 2007
Some of you may have already noticed that when we launched our new Website a month ago, we also had reference to a new product called “Marqui Mail” listed under the Solutions tab. I guess you could say that this was a quiet launch.
Marqui Mail is an affordable, on-demand electronic newsletter and e-mail solution that simplifies communications with existing customers, sales prospects, and the community at large. It was built to accommodate the needs and requests from several customers who wanted the email campaign and newsletter functionality contained within Marqui On-demand, but without the full feature set.
How affordable? Let’s just say that at less than half a cent per e-mail (that’s $0.005), you could have sent out your Valentine’s Day campaign to all your customers and still have money left over for a box of chocolates (assuming of course that you have less than 20,000 customers … more than that, and it would have been a few pennies more).
For those of you who are interested in e-mail marketing (and really, who isn’t), I would encourage you to look at Marketing Sherpa’s E-mail Marketing Survey from late last year. The following excerpt sums it up well:
January 18, 2007
For those of you in the Travel and Hospitality sector -- a vertical that Marqui has had some good success in -- I would encourage you to take a stroll over to Chris Clarke's blog at Chrispitality.com ... and I'm not just saying that because he wrote this piece about us recently and our relationship that we're building with Best Western Hotels. [Promotional note for all Best Westerns: Call us...We can help!]
I like Chris' style. He seems to have developed a slightly irreverent tone and touches on many themes that seem to be resonating in Hotel and Hospitality marketing (Travel 2.0 I think he calls it). In his words:
"Although there is much trade talk about the value of social media as a whole, the hospitality trade has been fairly slow to embrace it.
Organizations that leverage these tactics to create brand dialogue with consumers and industry stakeholders are creating a more transparent, integrated community of brand-champions. Increasing transparency and creating dialogue between the guest and the industry helps facilitate relationships and strengthen brand confidence, thus inspiring purchases."
Unfortunately for those hospitality marketing managers who are struggling to get corporate buy-in for innovative, next-gen marketing ideas via the Web, this sector is a little naive and slow to embrace the web at an individual property level. It amazes me still that with 2-year old stats indicating that 70 percent of online users use the Web for travel planning, a significant number of hotel and tourism destinations aren't taking advantage of the tools at their disposal.
Here's a quick exercise: take a Tier 2 destination or hotel in your favourite city, do a quick web search with the proper name and see where they show up. By my completely unscientific counts, about one in four weren't on the front page. Many weren't even in the top couple of pages. What's the big deal you say ... I can find the hotel referenced close to the top via TripAdvisor or Hotels.com? The big deal is that when you or I click on these sites as opposed to the site directly, the property loses 5 to 20 percent on the cost of sale between travel agent commissions and GDS fees.
[Hint to those that don't know the trick. If you find a hotel you want to stay at, call it up directly even though it is so old fashioned and say you want a room discount that takes into account the percent that they would be paying the GDS or agent. You often get a better rate than you can find online anywhere else... and you save significant research time looking for the best deal].
Consider it another way and apply it to your industry ... In order to recoup the money you are losing, you would have to boost your marketing budget by the comparable percentage ... just to get back on even ground.
| Marketing Automation | Web Content Management | Campaign Management Privacy Policy | © 2008 Marqui Inc. |
 |