There’s a lot to be said for marketing to one of our closest neighbors, Canada – especially when their economy (and dollar) is strong, and ours remains weaker.
There is plenty of opportunity for B-to-B marketers targeting Canada. I discovered this opportunity while doing research for a special report on marketing to Canadians.
The Internet is changing everything – even pillars of American culture such as political campaigns.
Just look at what’s happened to presidential politics. Sen. Barack Obama has all but seized the Democratic presidential nomination – a feat he might not have accomplished without online fund-raising, social networking and Google ads.
“I’m Twittered out,” one of my favorite bloggers posted last week. Like many early adopters, he got caught up on the Twitter craze, tweeting night and day for months.
And, then, the whole thing got old. Was it the inevitable cool-thing-cooled-off? Or was it just too much communication about oneself already? I’m thinking the latter.
Twitter has been around since 2006 and gained huge use among the cognoscenti in 2007. Rave reviews in The New York Times, Wired, etc., made everyone wonder if Twitter was the next big thing. Would tweets supplant email marketing? How about blogs? Or perhaps mass IMs?
To me, Twitter felt a lot like blogging in 2001 and email publishing in the mid-1990s. A text-only, uniquely personal way of publishing your thoughts and ideas to that special section of the universe that actually cared about them.
Will Twitter evolve to become a significant marketing medium just as email and blogging did? Currently the marketers I see testing it most are personality-driven gurus, the folks who use the Internet to build and maintain a fervent fan base who will buy anything with their name on it.
I suppose a few CPGs will jump in next, perhaps with celebrity tie-ins (“Sign up for Jessica Simpson’s Twitter feed sponsored by blah, blah, blah.”) And, it’s a natural for entertainment properties.
However, my advice for most marketers is to hold off from adding Twitter to your list of “must-do” tests for the time being. Don’t feel stressed out by yet another Internet marketing tactic you have to figure out on the run.
Nothing’s proven yet, and you can do a lot better with your budget and time (the latter the more important resource) by testing and optimizing any current marketing campaign online or off that’s responsible for 20% or more of your current responses or eyeballs.
Put your energy toward what’s working and what could work better before you launch tests into yet another newer Internet marketing idea. Especially in recessionary times when every response really matters.
But, before you do that, just take two minutes right now and surf over to Twitter to make sure that all your brand names (including company name and names of any celebrity execs) are signed up. You need to make that preemptive strike — take your names before some outsider decides to take them for a ride.
Also, if you haven’t already, do the same for YouTube, Flickr, Facebook product pages, etc., etc. It’s just like in 1996-7 when I used to advice companies to go get their own branded “dot-coms” before someone else bought their names out from under them.
Lastly, if you work for the type of company or boss who likes to be seen as cutting edge, consider signing up for your own personal Twitter (it’s free) and start tweeting a few friends. That way in the committee meeting or quarterly presentation when someone asks, “Hey, what are we doing with that Twitter thing?”, you can look like a humble hero, “Oh, I’ve been testing it out for a while now …”
Shifting alliances and partnerships in the credit card industry create big headaches for sites that use recurring billing. And it’s time to break out the aspirin again.
I just finished helping to select the winners of the 2008 MarketingShera Viral Marketing Hall of Fame, and I learned viral campaigns are strange beasts.
They’re not as straight-forward as AdWords accounts or press releases. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time and money you invest–you must appeal to the fickle whims of the Internet.
Higher cart abandonment and bounce rates may be a sign of the gloomier economic times for eretailers. Both rates are up, according to a new report from MarketLive, Inc., which compiled data from almost 100 eretailers.
When the economy starts slumping, many marketers start sending specials to their email lists more frequently. After all, zapping out a special offer to your house list is about the cheapest and easiest way to drum up some fast responses. It’s also a pretty big mistake.
Why? Because if you send too many specials, too frequently, to the same exact people, they become tone deaf and they stop adoring your brand name and wanting to buy from it.
Compounding this problem is the fact that the people on your house list are usually Your Biggest Fans. They are on the 80-side of the 80/20 rule about profitable accounts. They are your evangelists and word-of-mouth spreaders. They are the email audience who, if treated right, will have an astounding lifetime customer value.
Example: I’ve been pounded no fewer than 10 times with different ‘special offers’ from a particular home decor brand in the last three weeks. I’m a multiple-time past purchaser. Although I eagerly clicked on the first couple of email specials, now when I see an email from them in my inbox, I snort with boredom and hit ‘Delete.’
What can you do to keep both the bottom line and the house list happy?
Try giving your biggest fans a big reason to open your email. As a fan, I don’t just care about specials. I care about YOU. I would love a behind-the-scenes story, perhaps some photos and bios of craftspeople making the products. Or maybe a story about what the purchasing directors are seeing trend-wise for the coming year (things I can look forward to buying from you.) Or perhaps a funny, home-made music video made by the guys in shipping …
The more I know about your brand — the people’s faces, voices, stories, etc. — the deeper my personal connection is likely to grow. As a member of the house list, I begin to feel like an insider. And the next time I get an email from you, I open eagerly.
The good news is, this “infotainment” email tactic raises short-term sales as well as customer lifetime value.
Want a real-life example of how this can work? Check out Sherpa’s classic Case Study of how Land’s End’s weekly email newsletter was partly responsible for lifting the brand’s online sales from $138 million to 218 million in 2001, during the worst of the last economic downturn.
Their highest-response newsletter of all time was about a local tractor auction … but it sold a lot of chinos! Includes 10 useful creative samples. Open access until June 5th.
Lands’ End Discovers Stories Work Better Than Sales Pitches in Its Weekly Email Newsletter
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=22943
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No one has yet discovered how to turn video-on-demand into a mass market, but that isn’t for a lack of trying.
A spate of recent announcements, rumors and transactions in the VOD market indicate that interest is growing among would-be service providers — particularly DVD rental services planning ahead for a post-DVD world.
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