Happy Holidays From BTZ Brand

Top 5 Tips for a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign

Whether you’re new to digital marketing or you're a seasoned veteran, you know that the keys to a successful digital campaign are good strategy and creative. But that certainly isn’t all there is to it.

Here are some other important things that you should do in order for your digital marketing campaign to perform well.

1. Before you begin your campaign, set objectives so you can measure your results. If you can’t measure your digital marketing, you can’t manage it. With resources like Google Analytics, the data is there for the taking, and it’s information that can help you make fast decisions about your campaign and turn it on a dime.
2. Allocate a sufficient budget for marketing. Remember, your project is one of tens of thousands that will hit the Internet every day, and it’s not going to market itself - it probably won’t go viral either.
3. Make sure that you have a strong offer; it can influence as much as 50% of the success or failure of your digital campaign. Offers such as guarantees, premiums or introductory discounts can work in your digital campaign as well as in offline campaigns. But by all means, test, test, test to see what offers work best for your target audiences.
4. Avoid overly complicated processes in your campaign. If your customers have to read a manual to interact with you or take advantage of your offer, they’ll click on something else. While it's fine to want to use new technology and techniques, always keep your target audience in mind and plan accordingly.
5. Be clear and direct about what you want your customer to do. The whole purpose of your marketing is to elicit a desired response from the person viewing it, like a phone call or a purchase.

If you can keep these things in mind while putting together your next digital marketing strategy, you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.

#digital marketing #brand

How to Create A Great Customer Experience

The other day, we ordered pizza from a local place. The first time we called, we were on hold for a while and then were disconnected. We called back and were put on hold again for a long time before someone took our order. In the end, the pizza was delivered promptly and tasted pretty good – but our overall perceptions were negatively influenced by the lapse in service.

This experience demonstrates how important it is for businesses to consistently satisfy their customers at every point where they interact with and make impressions on them. This includes before, during and after a customer makes a purchase.

Here are a few tips about how to identify these customer interaction points – also called brand touch points – to create a great customer experience.

• Think about all the things that influence whether customers and/or prospects will consider buying from you. Pre-purchase touch points can include your website, advertising, direct mail, sampling, coupons, incentives, word-of-mouth, social media conversations and public relations, to name a few. Ask yourself: will each of these interactions build awareness, communicate our uniqueness and create a connection that will make customers and prospects choose us?
• Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and consider every interaction that occurs during the purchasing process – from order placement through delivery and set up. Will they be placing an online order or dealing with a salesperson, telephone representative and/or delivery person? If there is a store involved, consider your location, signage, packaging, displays, signage, interior architecture and shelf placement. The objective is to make sure that every aspect of buying from your business is a positive experience that a customer will want to repeat.
• A customer’s experience with your brand doesn’t stop after they’ve purchased something from you. You have an opportunity to increase brand loyalty and advocacy through post-purchase touch points like newsletters, loyalty programs, product and package performance, instruction manuals, billing, customer service and word-of-mouth and social media endorsements. Make sure that they make the customer feel confident enough to buy your brand again – or recommend it to others.

Every pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase touch point contributes to a customer’s entire experience with your brand. When the experience is good, it builds and reinforces your brand’s positive perception. But, unfortunately, when one part of the experience isn’t good, the positive connection with the customer may be broken – as it was with our office and the pizza place.

The point is that if you want to stand out from your competition, you have to consider every touch point and be sure that each delivers on your business’s brand promise every day. Not an easy task but definitely worth it.

#brand #touch points #customer experience #brand promise

Integrating Product Sampling and Social Media

We’ve done product sampling for a number of clients, and it’s a very effective way to influence buying behavior for a brand. An Arbitron* study indicates that 2/3 of people will take a free sample when it’s offered – and of those, more than 1/3 will buy that product the same day. More importantly, over 50% of the people who took a product sample plan to buy the product in the future.

But we’ve found that product sampling can be even more effective when we also leverage social media. How can you do the same? Here are a few of the ways we’ve used social media with product sampling to increase trial of the product and ultimately sales.

1. Use social media to notify target audiences about the upcoming sampling event and to create excitement around the event. By using social media before the event, you can increase the number of people who participate in the sampling and increase conversations about the product.

2. When products are being distributed as samples in-store or by street teams, be sure to have the people who are distributing the samples encourage samplers to follow the brand on Facebook, watch its YouTube videos, etc. Having real people suggest becoming a follower of your brand is far more compelling than a sign or symbol on your website.

3. In addition to offering followers free product samples through social media, give followers the opportunity to have free samples sent to their friends and family. Kleenex did this with its “Softness Worth Sharing campaign” with great results. Over a million Kleenex packs were sent on behalf of Kleenex consumers.

4. Ask social media fans if they enjoyed their samples after they’ve received them. This is a good opportunity to make a connection with consumers and learn what they think of the product.

By integrating product sampling with social media before, during and after the sampling event, you can make your product sampling more personal and relevant to consumers. Not only will this give you more opportunities to gather important information about what consumers want and need and how your product fits into that equation but also to create advocates for your brand.
#product sampling #brand #social media

*Arbitron Product Sampling Study, 2008.

Non-Profit Marketing in Tough Economic Times

Because we’ve done everything from brand development and event planning to fully integrated marketing communications plans for non-profits, we’ve been asked to do a number of seminar presentations dealing specifically with how non-profits should market their brands. With the economy still struggling and money tight among consumers and corporations, non-profits need extra help maximizing their fundraising and positioning themselves in a very competitive non-profit environment.

So here are a few tips that have proved helpful for a number of non-profit organizations.

1. Make a CLEAR COMPELLING CASE when appealing to donors, potential donors and stakeholders. Historical data shows that donors will continue to give during tough times, and nonprofit organizations can continue to raise funds and attract volunteers when they talk about their programs and goals in this way.

2. Be sure you can answer these questions about your brand before creating your marketing strategy:

• Who are you as an organization?
• What do you do?
• What makes your organization different than similar organizations?
• Who cares about all this? Who are your key markets?
• Is your difference compelling enough to motivate action?
• What do you promise your target markets?
• Can you deliver it?
• Can you deliver it consistently?

3. Develop a message that’s clear, easy to understand, grabs attention and is substantiated. People don’t give just because there’s a need… they give when there’s a connection and when the message matters.

4. Develop great creative that:

• Cuts through the clutter and gets noticed
• Speaks for your organization with one voice
• Delivers consistency and constancy for your brand

5. Avoid negativity… dire straights and catastrophes drive donors away.

6. Tell your story and talk about the people you help in a way that differentiates your organization from the other non-profits. Donors and volunteers want to know who you are before they become involved.

For non-profits, the most important thing to remember is that marketing the organization is more than fund development. It’s about building an organization that’s well-developed, well-defined and well-communicated. That’s the key to successful fundraising and recruiting as well as competitive growth.

#non-profit marketing #brand

Key Brand Architecture Questions

One of our clients was interested in developing a brand strategy for each of its product lines. There had been a number of acquisitions and a need to successfully integrate the acquired companies’ products. Our client’s company ultimately wanted a brand strategy for each of its product lines and wanted to establish a connection to the company name throughout the channels that would better position them in the marketplace.

The solution? A strong brand strategy founded on the uniqueness of each product and a well-defined brand architecture that provided clarity, leveraged brand equity and made a meaningful connection with customers and stakeholders.

How do you get there? It’s a complicated process, but you can get started by asking yourself these questions.
1. What differentiates each of your products – what are its unique value propositions and the evidence to support your claims?
2. Are the different brands and sub-brands in your portfolio sufficiently differentiated from one another?
3. Do your customers understand the differentiation?
4. How does each of your products relate to and support each other?
5. How does each product relate to the corporate brand?
6. How does each product support the company’s goals?
7. How well do the existing brands support the corporate positioning and company name?
8. Is your brand portfolio greater than the sum of its parts?

Since brands and their strategies can’t be developed in a vacuum, use consumer research and insights, competitive analyses, market insights and your understanding of your company’s business goals when you think about your responses. Remember, it all starts with discovering your differentiation. That’s the foundation for all of your brand strategies and architecture – and the messaging and creative tactics that follow.

#brand #brand architecture #positioning #differentiation

Best Times To Use Social Media and Email

There’s a lot of research out there and plenty of experience involving when the best days and times are to tweet, post on Facebook, blog and email for maximum effectiveness. Combine that with what we’ve learned and here are some best practices to help you decide your best days and times to use Twitter, Facebook and email and to post your blogs so that you get the results you want for your brand and your business.

Times that are mentioned will be Eastern Standard Time, so please adjust if you and/or your target audiences are in a different time zone. Keep in mind, though, that the majority of the population of the U.S. is either in the Eastern Time zone or within one hour of it.

• With Twitter, the best time to tweet (and gain the most re-tweets) is later in the day and late in the week. From the standpoint of a typical workday, that means between 2 – 5 p.m. and on Thursday or Friday.
• When you’re using Facebook, publish your articles as early in the morning as you can. Articles published early are read more than those published in the afternoon. But for Facebook sharing, whether your audience is B to B or B to C, weekends work well. Why? Perhaps because 51% of companies block Facebook at work.
• Post your blog on weekday mornings around 10 or 11 a.m. That’s when the most blogs are read. The best day is Monday – the views are usually highest then. If your objective is to get comments on your blog, post earlier – around 7 or 8 a.m.
• When you’re sending email, schedule your email marketing campaigns for early morning – 6, 7 or 8 a.m. Most people read their email in the morning – and this is the time when they’re the most receptive. Mondays or Tuesdays are the best days to send e-mail – bounce rates also tend to be lowest on those days.
• When it comes to first-time email subscribers, be sure to send them more email – anytime ranging from the first couple of days after they’ve subscribed to around two weeks after. This is when they’re most interested in what you have to say – so send them your best offers that will be the most valuable to them.

Remember – these are best practices, which means they’re guidelines. Consider them in light of your target audiences. Test different times and days to see whether they work better for your brand and business. But whatever you do, measure, measure, measure. It’s the only way you’ll know whether your timing is helping you meet your objectives.

#brand #tweet #blog #social media #Facebook #email