Month: April 2014

Bryony Thomas examines tactics for successful integration.

Marketing people are always banging on about integrated campaigns, indeed there are qualifications and companies bearing the name.

However, so many ‘integrated’ campaigns I see are little more than loosely co-ordinated tactics in the same theme or colour.

The key difference between co-ordination and genuine integration, is whether or not a campaign has been designed to take a person through the whole buying decision. Or, whether it’s just turning on a number of expensive promotional taps using a common theme, without a functioning sales funnel to convert the interest you generate.

If you want to make your marketing pay in terms of real sales results, you need to make sure that you’re not doing half a job.

A co-ordinated marketing campaign

A co-ordinated campaign will typically have a common creative theme and a matching ‘look and feel’, used consistently over a number of mediums. For example, an ad, some web banners, a press release, a direct mail piece and a web landing page. Some go further, with a download or give-away of some kind that relates to the theme. So, while you’re integrating tactical elements, you’re not integrating with sales … which is what matters if you’re after a decent marketing ROI. Typically, these campaigns will generate a number of marketing leads, which are then passed to sales for qualification. This is often where a number of potentially profitable prospects fall through the cracks. If you’ve not developed an integrated plan with your sales team, then you may have wasted precious marketing budget. I’ve often observed:

• Sales people not following up marketing leads immediately, meaning that by the time they pick up the phone, the prospect can’t remember ever having been interested.
• Sales people not being fully briefed (or ideally involved) in the campaign concept, meaning that follow-up calls are disjointed from the original point of contact.
• Sales people being incentivised on outbound volume targets, meaning that marketing follow-up actually dents their performance on paper.
• Sales people working on that month’s targets, seeing marketing leads as slow burn that won’t reward them immediately and, as such moving down the priority list.
• Sales people not being equipped with relevant follow-up material – for me this is the biggie in terms of marketing having let the team down – so often, a great lead generation campaign just isn’t seen through, and the sales person is left with some great people to call, but nothing more to tell them.

A truly integrated marketing campaign

Planning an integrated marketing campaign means equipping everyone in the team with what they need to move a person from one stage in the buying decision to the next. Simply generating awareness is doing less than half a job. Here’s a quick outline for a genuinely integrated campaign that you might find useful. You’ll need a tool for each step and a fully briefed team that understands how someone moved from one to the other, and (crucially) what tool to reach for next.

Creating awareness: Marketing tools that are specifically good for awareness-driving include:

• Advertising: sponsorship, press, outdoor, ambient, web, pay-per-click.
• Direct marketing: mailings, door drops, exhibitions.
• Social media: broadcast tweets, comments on Blogs and forums for example.

Creating interest: Create your own material, and give the whole team some decent bullet-points, cut & paste copy, for use in their own interactions:

• Content: Blogs, guest blogging, videos, articles papers
• Interaction: Webinars, teleseminars, conversations in social media

Surviving evaluation: You can support people who are comparing you against the market with:

• Product literature: detailed facts and figures that allow them to make a comparison, e.g data sheets.
• Case studies: Video interviews, detailed case studies.
• Other customers: have clients lined up who are ready to take testimonial phone calls, emails, etc.
• Proposal copy: a library of well-written copy for proposals and presentations.

Facilitating trial: having an easy first step will make it easier for people to say yes. Marketing can support this with:

• Product demos: have a pre-built dummy client demonstration that they can look at, or a screen capture of key features.
• Special offers: make sure that your sales people have a pre-rehearsed trial offer up their sleeve if people are teetering on the decision.

Closing the sale: Getting people to sign on the bottom line is more of a one-to-one relationship thing, but there are things that marketing can help with:

• DMU FAQs: have materials to hand that the buyer can use to cover off any internal objections in their wider decision-making unit
• Guarantees: Having pre-agreed guarantees can help people get over the hump if they perceive a risk in the deal.

Generating loyalty: Once you have people on-board, it is important to keep them happy. Marketing can help with:

• Welcome packs: introduce key people, provide contact details, outline support arrangements.
• Capture data: ask them to join a ‘club’, or sign-up to updates so that you can keep them up-to-date with the latest.
• Hospitality: make sure new customers are invited to drinks, online events, fun activities in social media, etc.

So, next time your marketing team or agency suggests some great lead generation, make sure there is a next step, and a next tool, through the whole buying process.

Bryony Thomas is a speaker, author & founder of Watertight Marketing. 

 James Leavesley (pictured) outlines why risk managers need to join the social media revolution.

Social media is no longer just the latest buzz word or an experiment for creative marketing teams. Organisations are fast recognising the importance of social media from a customer, employee and business partnership perspective.

Companies are using blogs, videos, Facebook and Twitter to connect with ‘communities’. However, it only takes one disgruntled customer to take to Twitter, You Tube or Facebook and the results can be costly. Even worse damage can be done by a rogue employee with access to corporate social media accounts and a determination to discredit the company.

So here are five reasons why risk managers should get up to speed with social media and how to control it:

1) Defamation and the law

Not many people realise that posting, Tweeting or Re-Tweeting a libel will leave the person or organisation involved open to prosecution. The position is no different to that of email in the early days. A Tweet, any social media post or email which expressly or implicitly makes adverse comments about others can easily be forwarded or Re-Tweeted and it is always unpredictable what will go viral.

The original person/poster can be liable for all subsequent reposts. The Defamation Act 2013 has strengthened the protection for channels such as Facebook and Twitter, which will encourage those who have been libelled to pursue those responsible for media posts or reposts. This leaves organisations open to legal action if an employee or corporate account is involved. It is essential for risk managers to know where an organisation stands in the event of something going wrong.

2) Loss of control over social media assets

It is commonplace for organisations to empower their employees or marketing agencies to create social media accounts on their behalf. But who owns these accounts and who has ultimate control? Accounts can be set up in minutes but who is responsible for keeping track of these new communication channels.

Risk managers need to be sure that social media policies are consistent with contracts of employment and that employees are aware of their responsibilities. There should be processes and technology in place to manage posts both internally and from third party agencies. Regular audits are necessary to establish how many accounts represent the company and who controls them. However, these can become time consuming and costly without the right social media risk software in place to manage activity.

3) Sharing confidential information

Employees need to be aware that their personal social media accounts will be linked to their employer and therefore could come under scrutiny. An example of how unprotected social media activity proved disastrous for one newly-appointed chief financial officer at US clothing retailer, Francesca’s, highlights the point. After a confidential meeting, the CFO Tweeted: “Board Meeting. Good Numbers = Happy Board.” Francesca’s is a publicly traded company and the CFO was dismissed for sharing confidential inside information. An easy mistake but a risky one which could have been avoided with the right awareness and preparation.

4) Brandjacking

Brandjacking occurs when someone assumes the online identity of another entity for the purpose of acquiring that organisation’s brand equity. For example, immediately after the Deepwater Horizon BP gulf oil spill, a fake Twitter account @BPGlobalPR appeared with sarcastic and inappropriate Tweets from a fictitious BP spokesperson. In just a few days, the account had accrued tens of thousands of followers. While it is not possible to completely prevent brandjacking, listening across social media channels to find out what is being said means fake accounts can be intercepted and ultimately legal action taken. However, companies first have to be aware what is happening and able to respond quickly.

5) Social media is good for business

There is no doubt social media is good for business. With some analysts quoting as many as 46% of online users referring to it when making business decisions (Nielsen, 2013). However, in common with any risk – normal rules apply. Risk managers need to be able to identify, record and mitigate social media risk and a good place to start is with a rigorous social media audit and the right risk management technology in place.

James Leavesley is CEO of CrowdControlHQ.