Posts Tagged ‘challenge’

Creating a Buzz on a Budget

1 Comment » Written on July 30th, 2009 by
Categories: Events, Marketing, Strategy
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Today was the first full day at the Assoc of Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) Convention at the Raleigh Convention Center. I was able to attend some great presentations on communication planning and social media that I’m going to write on in posts next week. I found that doing a tradeshow throws a kink in my challenge for a few reasons. First I was using my laptop to take notes on the speakers. After the morning sessions, the exhibits opened and I had to use my laptop to run the demo on the large monitor in our booth. Also between networking, demoing and returning calls I did not find the time to really sit down and write.

However I was able to see the reaction to my show giveaway and a clever promotion that I pulled together for Site Dynamics at ACCE. I had a small budget of under $400 to work with but needed to get a quantity of 1,000 items to put in the attendees show bags (approx 750) with some left over to giveaway at the booth. After searching the web for swag ideas I suddenly thought of doing a guitar pick with logo, web site and some slogan. I found out that it fit my budget and knew that it would be unique.

So I designed the pick below using an online tool that allowed me to upload my artwork and type set my slogan. I had a few days to get it done during the week of July 4th and have it shipped to the fulfillment house. There were a few glitches including shipping getting lost for a day but I got them there in time to be included in the show packages.

Now I know many exhibitors put a flyer to postcard or may a coupon or brochure but today I was assured by many booth visitors that the guitar pick was unusual and different in a good way. Many people commented that they either played or someone they knew played. But most important they remembered our name, stopped by the booth and saw a demo and entered into our giveaway drawing.

So I have a small 10 by 10 foot booth, table top display and demo station. Not very exciting so in order to tie in the pick I created a tabletop display showing our giveaway as the new Beatles Rockband video game. I also connected my iPod to the demo monitor that has speakers and cranked up Beatles tunes. Needless to say it worked. From a creative standpoint I was really happy since I met the challenge of budget and created a buzz in the space of the show that had results. I also used Twitter to promote using the conference hash tag #acce.

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Posted in Events, Marketing, Strategy

Trade Shows Still Key Component of Marketing Mix

No Comments » Written on July 29th, 2009 by
Categories: Events
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I write this post just as I complete setting up a trade show booth at the Raleigh Convention Center. I’m wearing my Site Dynamics hat this week for the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) convention. While setting up the booth I was reminded of how important trade shows and conventions are in our marketing approach.

As we witness how technology, specially the web has changed marketing strategy, we sometimes forget that our relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders needs to happen in person. conference calls, mashups, IM, email and Web 2.0 technologies remove us from that personal experience that was essential to marketing and sales for centuries.
When I worked in the heavy machinery industry, IMTS was the main show. So big it’s held every two years and always in Chicago’s McCormick Place. The first show I did there was in 98 and all the elder salesmen told stories of how not 10 years earlier the show was the place to do actual business. Machines were not shipped back to the factory, they were sold on the floor and shipped to the customer. And this is no small tooling show, or multi-axis, superabrasive grinders and lasers cost $300,000+ each!
My biggest challenge with justifying shows in today’s marketing environment is measuring value. We can all easily measure leads and contacts made, but the impression of your company on the show attendees is the immeasurable impact. I know that for the IMTS show if you did not appear rumors were flying that your company is having financial troubles or out of business!
The other great immeasurable value of trade shows is that it gives the exhibitor a chance to evaluate competition, discover new technologies or possible partners and even recruit future employees. I think it’s important for us to remember that trade shows are not always about how much revenue they generate, but how much value they build for our brands and company.
What’s your take on trade shows today? Are you cutting show attendance, reducing attendees or not going at all?

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Posted in Events

Marketing Toolkit v1.0: Web and CRM

No Comments » Written on July 26th, 2009 by
Categories: Marketing, Strategy
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In the first marketing toolkit I discussed desktop publishing and the role it played in changing marketing strategy and processes. In this post I want to discuss what was the second major technology impact to marketing over the past 20 years, the creation of the World Wide Web and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

I was fortunate enough to be working on a Sun workstation in 1994 and was able to use Mosaic the first web browser. I was fascinated by the technology since it was a gateway to information, but more so in that I saw the web as the game changer in marketing. In the same way that the first PCs and desktop publishing gave us a greater level of control over communication, the web was going to be an even bigger leap.

At the same time that the web was being developed we also witnessed the evolution of database technology and its application towards customer data. CRM systems allow us to collect data about our customers in addition to managing and tracking our communication and interactions with them. Each customer touch point could be analyzed and trends identified to help marketing professionals determine the best method of communication and engagement to the customer.

Both of these technologies were perfectly suited to work with each other in today’s business environment. As a business culture we wanted some of the basic marketing and customer support functions to be more self-service. Marketing departments were able to get more valuable feedback as well as respond in a timelier manner. By integrating database information our web sites went from billboards to dynamic information resources.

The marketing geek in me embraced these technologies as they were eliminating some of the most painful and challenging aspects of my job. Now if there was a change in any part of the marketing message, I could do it easily and with fewer costs. Of course there would be an entire set of new business rules, best practices and technology challenges to follow.

For today’s marketing professionals the corporate web site has become the main focus of marketing communication. It’s the first place business people and consumers turn to for information, points of contact, contests, locations, store hours, warranty info, etc. These sites have powerful backend databases that allow us to search, sort and filter information in the form the receiver desires.

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Posted in Marketing, Strategy

Five Blogging Lessons Learned

No Comments » Written on July 25th, 2009 by
Categories: Marketing, Social Media
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Today is day 10 of my 30 Day Blogger Challenge and so I decided to write about five lessons learned so far:
  1. Blogging every single day is a challenge to find the time and creative drive to publish a complete article. Also daily frequency may be too much for any single person to sustain without writing ahead of time or working with other writers to some degree. Also I did not think about weekends but decided to post 30 continuous days versus 30 business days.
  2. I wrote a list of 20 topics that I was interested in writing about before I started. This has been a lifesaver on hectic days or when I just don’t have a driving idea to write about.
  3. I need an editor or better edit my work. Some days I wanted to get the post out and the writing should have been revised.
  4. Getting comments is challenging and I have started to ask questions at the end of each post to engage reader more. Also I’m interested in what others think.
  5. Keeping a focus on marketing or any specific subject matter can be difficult. At times I have been challenge to ask myself, “is this post of interest to marketing professionals or am I just writing about what interest me outside of work?”
Writing everyday does spark your creativity to some degree. I have discovered that some ideas that have been hard to find a good creative message are popping up more frequently. Of course I have the terrible habit of getting the creative idea when I’m driving or doing something that makes documenting it difficult at the time.
I am glad that I did this challenge in that it has given me the opportunity to really learn what blogging is all about. No better way to learn than to just do it!
What blogging and writing challenges do you have and what lessons have you learned?*
*See there’s that comment probing question I mentioned!

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

Internet Squatters in a Web 2.0 World

No Comments » Written on July 24th, 2009 by
Categories: Marketing, Social Media
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The original fight over internet squatting started with domain names. With just InterNIC assigning domains in the 1990s, savvy entrepreneurs went out and registered big name brands like McDonalds and others in order to hold the domain “hostage” and get a big buyout. Eventually copyright lawyers stepped in and changed the game but for a short time it was like the wild west.

Today we have the same challenge but it’s in the fight for usernames on social networks or people claiming that they may work for your company but do not. At times it may just be the case of coincidence of naming.

For instance I worked for a small company called Huffman Corporation in Clover, SC. LinkedIn will find other “fellow” employees but in this case it’s another Huffman Corporation. With companies named after people and the name is common, this can occur. Lately I’ve noticed that LinkedIn has created company profiles in order to distinguish commonly named organizations. Now I’m able to select Huffman Corporation in Clover, SC in my profile to accurately identify it.

At the same time I’ve found people listed in LinkedIn claiming they work for my current company, Zencos and they do not. The first time it happened I emailed LinkedIn and told them this person did not work for us and their claim on our company name was invalid. LinkedIn wrote me back and said they would look into it. Eventually I could not find that person listed with our company name anymore so I figured LinkedIn took care of it.

The second time it happened there was some different circumstances. The first being the person and company was listed outside the US. Does my company’s trademark hold for Mexico? Secondly it appeared that this was a case like Huffman, someone with similar name that created a consulting firm named after them. They don’t compete with us and are outside our main geographic boundaries so do I need to worry about it?

In the case of usernames I was able to get my desired username on Twitter and LinkedIn but someone took Zencos at YouTube. I looked at the account and it had not been used at all, no videos, no favorites, nothing. So I took same approach as I did with LinkedIn, asking YouTube if they would ask person to release username or if they had policy on inactivity. Well I never heard from them and ended up creating a username of zencostv. Not what I wanted but I had to get the channel up and running.

Have you ever had to deal with someone squatting on your brand name? Have you had any success with social networks to get it changed?

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

Tracking With URL Shorteners

2 comments Written on July 22nd, 2009 by
Categories: Marketing, Social Media
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One of the challenges of Twitter’s 140 character limit is how to get your message across and include a link to a web page with additional information. When I first got on Twitter a year ago I was puzzled seeing the tinyurl links and wondered what in the world was a Tiny URL? After doing some reading I realized that these tools were an integral part of communicating on Twitter. URL shortening or redirection is a technique where a providere makes a web page available under a very short URRL in addition to the original address.

I started using tinyurl since they had a tool that would allow me to click on toolbar while on web page and create the short link. After cutting and pasting into Twitter and sending the tweet I was done. With the release of TweetDeck, the URL redirection was included in the tool to allow you to cut and paste URL from the browser and then paste and shorten into the message.

A few months later I was working with Jennifer Griffin, @jennafleur on promoting her blog post on a recent event. I was tracking on Google Analytics and told her that the article was viewed over 50 times. She responded that her tracking was showing over 120 clicks. I was puzzled as to how she could track this and why we were seeing different numbers.

This led me to idek.net, a URL redirection tool that was developed by Bronto’s Adam Covati @covati. I had an opportunity to meet Adam at the recent Web Analytics Wednesday hosted at Bronto in Durham. Adam explained to me how Google Analytics does not quantify all hits equally in terms of clicks from a computer versus a mobile device. Idek however will count all clicks on the short link as it processes it and delivers the user to the longer URL destination.

The only drawback is that idek is not integrated into TweetDeck at this time so I’m testing out tr.im in the meantime. Both idek and tr.im allow you to create an account so you can track all your shortened URLs. Tr.im also gives user stats and breaks clicks down into two categories, humans and bots. Humans are defined as a person that clicked on your URL and went to its destination, based on the click being from a known, human-used browser. A bot is defined as an automated program that only wants to know the destination of the tr.im URL you shared. Not a human.

At the end of my 30-day Blogger challenge I will post a review of the statistics from both tr.im and Google Analytics to compare and contrast the numbers as well as analyze any trends.

What URL redirection tools and sites are you using? What do you like and dislike about the tool?

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

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