Irritating Marketing
By Andy | August 11, 2008
I read a piece from the Direct Marketing International journal recently that summarised a survey from Pitney Bowes about the forms of marketing found most irritating by consumers. You probably won’t be too surprised to hear that automated telesales won the top prize. I’m sure everyone agrees with me in that the second you hear that automated voice on the phone the only course of action is to hang up.
However there must be some people who respond to automated calls, otherwise marketers wouldn’t be putting money into these campaigns. As such, please, if you have spent money on an automated telesales campaign and it’s generated results for you, get in touch. I’d be delighted to hear your views on the subject and to tell everyone about your success story!
The survey also found that live telesales and spam emails were the second and third most irritating forms of marketing. There seems to be a pattern here with direct marketing receiving a bit of a bashing in the survey. However David Jefferies from Pitney Bowes seems to think that direct marketing is a good tactic, but that companies need to talk to their customers properly:
The message here is clear: spend time and effort on data collection and analysis, and build sophisticated customer profiles
In other words, if you are going to use direct marketing tactics, make sure you target the correct people with the correct message. Or, don’t use a shotgun approach, but a sniper rifle with your communications. This makes sense when you think about it, especially as consumer groups become more segmented by niche needs and wants. Better to run several campaigns with highly targeted messaging, than one campaign trying to reach out to too many people at once.
A little bit of research on Pitney Bowes seems to show they run regular surveys, so keep your eyes peeled on them for more interesting marketing insights!
22/9 Update
I have to share the comment from Daniel Penton who linked to the following hilarious YouTube clip. Anyone who hates telesales will love this (sorry if it causes offence to anyone)..
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Topics: Multilevel Marketing | 31 Comments »
Some Recent Conversations
By Andy | July 30, 2008
It’s been a while since my last post, which in fact was even written by guest blogger Mark Nagurski. But in this time there have been some really interesting comments and conversations on the blog and I wanted to highlight some of these and share some thoughts..
On ‘The Offline Google‘ there’s been plenty of talk around what are the key elements for SEO and pretty much everyone agreed on the imporatnce of:
- original content
- backlinks
However, whilst the post generated some interesting comments on SEO, what Mark was really talking about was taking the concepts of SEO to your offline business. His ideas are very credible, I particularly like the point about targeting niche customer segments:
be specific, address your customer needs, and find a niche where there’s less competition
Very similar indeed to targeting your blogging to niche market segments.
The results from June’s reader poll sparked a few comments around which is the best direct sales tactic for generating new business. By far most people voted for face to face over direct mail, email or telesales. The poll is actually still open in the right hand sidebar if you want to vote.
For my money, the best replies were from those who talked about a mixed approach, for example telesales to set appointments for face to face meetings as mentioned by ‘Mortgage Broker‘. However as Eric rightly points out, getting face to face isn’t always that easy.
There’s a saying amongst marketers that it takes seven touch points with a customer before you can reach a sale, could you use telesales, email, direct mail and face to face as four of those touch points..?
Sally Whittle’s PR advice was also well received. Thanks for all the comments on there and for those who bookmarked this and Sally’s site. If you haven’t read her tips yet I suggest you head there ASAP, some ideal ideas for small businesses!
The Nintendo viral video seemed to confuse most of you. Is it a viral or not, is the remake another viral, is Nintendo behind all of this? All questions still to be answered, but certainly there are a lot of you out there who are cynical about this one.
Any guidance Nintendo?
For those who don’t understand what viral marketing is all about, check out the definitions at Wikipedia, Search CRM.com or Marketing Terms.com
In response to the post about video enriching your blog, it seems an awful lot of you agree. I certainly hope to be introducing more video to this blog to add more humour, make the content more digestible, making the blog more interactive and more.
Thanks to everyone who has commented on the blog over the past couple of months. I’m certainly hoping to reach the next 1000 comments by the end of August, so please do drop me a note and join the conversation.
Tag:Topics: Multilevel Marketing | 17 Comments »
Controversial Advertising Makes Waves
By Andy | July 29, 2008
Here is the recent Mr T advert for Snickers that was cancelled by Mars as it was deemed to include anti-gay references. It seems to me that by ensuring the advert was cancelled, it has actually generated more coverage, made the video viral and probably enabled it to create a bigger splash.
You can vote for yourself in the comments as to whether you think it is offensive or anti gay…
Tag:AdvertisingTopics: Advertising | 13 Comments »
The Offline Google
By admin | June 30, 2008
Search engines are probably the biggest development in the world of marketing since the first TV ads hit our screens decades ago. As marketing tools, SEO and PPC are effective not because of the technology but because they use simple marketing concepts that are just as true offline as they are online.
So what offline ideas can we (re)learn from SEO? Here are a few to start with …
1. Give them what they’re looking for - Broadly speaking SEO is about attracting the people who are already looking for what you have to offer. Google rewards the businesses that use the right terms in their web sites by sending them visitors - precisely because they’re most likely the sites the searcher was looking for in the first place. You type in your need, Google serves up the best matches for a solution.
Offline, the same is true. If I am a business owner looking for an accountant, there’s no shortage of options. But, if I’m given the choice between a generalist firm or one that specialises in working with companies from my industry, I’ll likely choose the latter. The best match (ideally) wins. The lesson – be specific, address your customer needs, and find a niche where there’s less competition.
2. Know what they want - Good SEO depends on knowing what people are searching for – the terms they use. Online that means doing research on popular keywords – offline that means understanding your customer and how they go about solving their needs.
If you find out what your potential customers are looking for – and how they are looking for it (think who is their ‘offline Google’?)– putting two and two together becomes pretty easy.
3. Build Links - From Google’s perspective, the fact that one website links to another is at some level an endorsement of that second website. Moreover, if that endorsement comes from a reliable source (i.e. a well-ranked website itself) then it carries that much more weight.
Going offline the same applies in two key ways. Firstly, a third party endorsement is always stronger than your own paid efforts. Case studies, testimonials, word-of-mouth – they all use or reflect this fact.
Secondly, by building lots of links with other relevant businesses you improve your own profile and ‘ranking’. Links into your business can come from past customers, referrers and marketing partners. In other words, one of the key focuses of your marketing efforts should be creating links from, and relationships with, reliable, trusted sources.
A good marketing strategy will include both online and offline elements. The good news is that what you learn from one almost always applies to the other as well.
What other offline marketing ideas could be inspired by SEO or other online efforts?
Mark Nagurski is a Director of The Really Practical Marketing Company, who provide marketing advice and resources to small business owners, freelancers and startups. You can read his daily marketing ideas blog at www.reallypractical.com
Tag:Topics: Multilevel Marketing | 45 Comments »