Better Marketing Results

In my marketing newsletter for November 2012 I answered the question "How can You Achieve Effective Online Marketing?"

While many in the business world perceive that online marketing is difficult and complex to achieve the desired results, I view the situation as really a lack of understanding marketing principles.

Let us list these challenges for achieving better marketing results for your business whether using online marketing and/or traditional print based-marketing.

We have three key business marketing challenges, these are:

1. Focused targeting of your potential customers
2. Compelling relevancy of your offer
3. Call to action for your interested customers

What is your prospective of these three key points in online marketing versus marketing as a whole?

Clearly the same principles apply and once you understand and master the concepts it will work for your online marketing too!

Let us hear your views.

We have implemented Akismet (www.akismet.com) the de facto SPAM protection solution for blogs - easy to manage and use, smart (it learns quickly which comments are SPAM and which are not) and reliable (55 billion SPAM messages is impressive). We've extended Akismet for all types of comments on your online web business presence (web pages, products, catalogues, web apps, etc).

Advantages

• Easy to configure and to understand (give me a ring on 0403 436 889 or Contact Us for clarification)
• Easy to manage SPAM and it can be correlated with manual SPAM moderation as well
• Better for the visitors to enjoy and interact with your blog

How it impacts business owners

• All site owners will have to manually enable Akismet on their websites as we haven't enabled it by default
• In the beginning, Akismet may not be 100% accurate - a few SPAM comments may leak through as valid comments. Don't worry; all you need to do is train Akismet. That is, you should mark all these comments as SPAM manually. Once Akismet becomes experienced enough (this shouldn't take more than a few days, if any), you will have a strong SPAM engine in place.
• Any site owner can have enabled both Akismet and manual moderation enabled (in case there's a desire not to display specific comments from a specific user)

View Instructions to Manage New Anti-Spam & Comment Rules

We’re excited to announce the details of our feature-packed September release, due to go live 25th September 2012.

Please take the time to read through the new features, enhancements and relevant documentation below, so you are prepared and able to take advantage of these new improvements for your business.

New email marketing feature highlights

A fresh set of email newsletter templates

We all know the time it takes to build beautiful email newsletters that look great. That’s why in this release, we’ve put together a brand new set of email campaign templates for you to use for your business.

 

There are 10 new email templates in total, spanning a range of themes, and a great starting point for your next email newsletter or promotional email. We’ve thoroughly tested this new set of templates across a full-range of desktop and web-based email clients, so you can rest assured they’ll look just as stunning, whatever the recipient is using.

You’ll also notice that we’ve refreshed the template selection screen, making it much easier to get an idea of the template you’re selecting before you apply it.

Additional email marketing enhancements

Enhanced workflows and interface for choosing recipient lists

We’ve made it far easier to search through and select your email recipient lists when creating new campaigns, simply start typing and we’ll automatically filter the through your existing lists.

The ability to “exclude” lists or custom reports from final recipients

Easily include and or exclude a certain list of recipients from your total pool of recipients. For instance, this is especially handy if you’re sending to a large list, but would like to exclude all customers who haven’t made a purchase in the 6 months.

New campaign performance report for email clients recipients are using

A brand new report for monitoring which email clients your recipients are opening newsletters with. Keep an eye on this metric, and make sure you optimize your campaign content to look great in the most popular clients.

Updated “sending” status for campaigns so you can easily monitor it’s sending progress

Keep an eye on the sending progress of your campaign as it sends to recipients.

Improved import .csv template for mailing lists

Streamlined import template, to speed up your day-to-day imports.

Unlimited, specifiable module templates

You can now specify your own HTML module templates when rendering modules, by simply adding the template’s file path as a parameter. >> Contact PMZ Marketing for details.

Embed dynamic modules inside email campaigns

We’re enabling you and to insert dynamic modules such as news items and blog posts inside email marketing campaigns, using our completely revamped Module Manager. These modules are then dynamically rendered when the campaign is sent, so the recipient sees the latest content.

There are a range of useful cases where this would come in handy – for instance, including the latest new announcement in your campaign, or embedding an up-to-date list of upcoming events customers can book in to. The goal here is to enable you to predefine templates for your clients with these dynamic modules built-in, or set up an on-going email series with the modules baked in. >> Contact PMZ Marketing for details.

Modules inside email newsletters

Using the new specifiable module templates feature detailed above, you can easily create and render these modules in a way that’s email newsletter friendly, opposed to simply inserting the web-version of the module. >> Contact PMZ Marketing for details.

Other great feature improvements

Refreshed Toolbox (previously Module Manager) for Admin v3

A completely revamped module manager (aka Toolbox) that neatly docks to the right of the WYSIWYG editor.

The three of the most common and difficult small business and medium enterprises marketing challenges are:

• Finding new clients and customers
• Using engaging marketing messages that generate results
• Implementing business oriented marketing systems

I have published an article on the Marketing Challenges of Small Business & Medium Enterprises (SME) that provides useful information and tips on how these challenges can be handled.

Many of you that have been in business a number of years will have encountered these challenges and have survived the experience to grow their businesses.  For those of you that have kindly share with us your successes in managing these small business and medium enterprises marketing challenges.

Did you know that more often it is the things that you may not be doing that will have a much greater impact on your business growth than those that you do? These are areas that I have found as a business consultant as the most prevalent in holding back the growth of small companies:

• Understanding your Customer Market
• Adequate Planning
• Managing Cash Flow
• Operating a Marketing and Sales Development Process
• Targeted Marketing Campaigns and Programs

What do you think? In your own business situation have you faced these issues or other more significant challenges? Share with us your views and expereinces.

[Read the complete article]

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective communications mediums when used properly to add value and build relationships with your recipients. Here are the five steps to follow in building an effective email marketing program:

One: Define your business objective

You need to be absolutely clear about what you want to achieve.

Two: Build your email list

Put a plan in place to start growing your list.

Three: Prepare your message

Plan ahead and spend most of your effort on the message you want to get to the recipient and what action will result from it.  Follow the AIDA guide; attract the Attention of the reader, generate their Interest, create a Desire for the reader to act and provide them with a call to Action.

Four: Test and test again

Test for open rates with different email subject lines and test click thru rates for different call to actions.  Once you have the email that best performs send it to your target list.

Five: Measure and track your results

Use your email marketing analysis tools to measure the results of your effort versus the objectives you have set for the email marketing campaign.

Share with us your views on how you have used email marketing to promote your business - what works and what does not work.

[Read the complete article]

Some of our readers will note that in landscape mode tablets and smart phones can accommodate websites designed for desktop computers as these devices are fully capable of the screen resolutions that match the desktop.  However, I don't think these are the same! Web content will appear so much smaller and will almost be unreadable without zooming with your two fingers to expand the view.

With desktop computers we use mouse clicks and keyboards while for tablets and smart phones we use “finger sweeps” and on-screen touch keyboards.

It is a completely different user experience for the web visitor that I am sure you will all agree.

What do you think? If your business has implemented optimised web templates for tablets and smart phones, what were the drivers that were considered to making this a priority for your online web business presence?

QR codes can be used to increase the response rate of your marketing campaigns exponentially.

They are quick and very easy quick to use.  Use your smart phone to simply point and scan.  

What are some of the benefits for using QR codes with your marketing?

• Extremely quick responses and conversions for traditional offline marketing
• You are able to track responses easily
• Leverage on social networks to reach out to new customers
• Use premium advertising and marketing space effectively
• QR codes are so easy to share

What is your own experience with QR Codes?  Have you been a recipient of a direct response piece using QR Codes for the 'Call to Action? Did you use it? What was your impression?

Or perhaps, you have used QR Codes with your own marketing campaign? How did it go? Were the results to your satisfaction?

What makes direct mail campaigns successful? 

• Addresses a specific group of people or targeted audience
• Uses creative to cut-thru the clatter of the mail box
• Offers a personalised message that communicates a compelling benefit
• Creates a sense of urgency and excitement with the mail piece
• Provides a your clear and visible ‘call to action’

Using this structure approach will achieve superior response rates from direct mail campaigns.

How can we  use integrated multimedia to dramatically improve the results from direct mail campaigns? Consider the following factors:

• Personalise all communications with the recipient across the different media
• Using several multimedia channels in the promotional campaign
  • Letter, postcard or mailing piece
  • Mobile phones and other smart mobile devices
  • Web landing pages with personalised URL (PURL – define)
  • Email marketing and auto-responders
• Using a QR image (QR Code define) image to support the ‘call to action’

Essentially, an integrated multimedia direct mail campaign allows a one to one personalised engagement with the recipient.  It has the ability for the recipient to immediately accept the offer or secure additional information with readily available technology such as their mobile phone or access to the Internet.

What is your own experience with integrated multimedia direct mail campaigns? Let's hear from you.

At a recent small networking business group (SBNG) breakfast meeting, we discussed the challenges in marketing and what were their successful experiences in reach out to their target markets.  Here is the list complied from the meeting:

• Face to Face meetings (Personal Networking & Selling)
• Understanding exactly who is your target market/customer (targeting potential customers)
• Using a system to generate a prospecting funnel and manage the conversion process
• Testing marketing first before bulk roll-out of the campaign
• Having the right attitude toward communications with your prospective customers - helping instead of selling
• Target your own customer database using RFM segmentation (define)
• Market & sell your benefits not features (how) or use an Objectives-Benefits-Features (define) chart
• Use marketing mediums that your customers use not what you are comfortable with.

What did you think? What is your own experiences with successful marketing?