Newsletters part of Marketing Tactics for 2009

In December 2008, Datran Media conducted its third annual marketing and media survey by reaching out to over 3,000 industry executives from Fortune 1000 brands and leading interactive agencies.

Marketers were asked to address their toughest challenges in this increasingly difficult economy.

Marketers were also tasked with choosing the campaign strategies and marketing channels they feel will help them prosper in 2009 and beyond

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44% of small businesses don’t have a website

Despite a continued preference among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) for receiving marketing information via direct mail and in other traditional ways, major marketers to SMBs are cutting back on these tactics and switching to lower-cost, online marketing to save money, according to a study by Bredin Business Information (BBI).

Marketers are most interested in using online tactics such as microsites/resource centers, webinars and webcasts, and social networking. Offline, tactics such as PR and telemarketing are most appealing to marketers, while interest in direct mail, print advertising and trade shows all declined.

Though many marketers are cutting back on offline tactics and making efforts to join the “buzz bandwagon” with social networking, the survey results indicate that “business owners are not nearly as enthusiastic about social networking as the marketers are. Recent research from WebVisible found that 44% of small businesses do not even have websites.

SMBs’ top business challenges include:
• finding new customers (76.5%)
• managing costs (71.2%)
• retaining their current customers (51.7%).
Ranked lowest are avoiding layoffs (2.9%) and keeping employees productive (3.3%), the survey found.

Additional findings among SMBs:
• The most important purchase criterion in this economy is high value (61.3%) followed by low price (52.4%) and reliability (35.3%). Least important is buying from a leading brand (1.9%) and having a personal relationship with the vendor (6%).

• Among the social networks, SMBs rated Facebook highest (19.7%), followed by LinkedIn (15.6%), MeetUp (11.3%) and Twitter (11.2%).

Marketers say their biggest challenges in 2009 are funding new projects (24%), growing business with limited resources (15%) and increasing awareness (15%), the survey found.

To do this, many are attempting to capitalize on competitive weaknesses to gain market share, rather than on retention efforts. Nearly half (48%) say they are balancing their efforts, while 32% are concentrating more on acquisition and only 20% on retention, the survey found.

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8 Powerful Email Marketing Techniques

Strategies For Improving Your Email Marketing

With the cost of postage increasing again this May, it’s little wonder that businesses are turning toward email as a means of customer communication.  It’s a cost effective option but like anything else, it has its own downsides too.

1. Longer Isn’t Always Better: The trick is to give readers actionable content – information they can use right away to solve a problem.

2. Add Value: Focusing in on how to add value to your email newsletter or email marketing material is imperative.

3. Seperation is Key: Do you subscribe to your competitor’s newsletters and email marketing materials?

4. Welcome Letter Bliss: When someone signs up for your newsletter, orders a product, or requests more information, this is really your opportunity to “wow” them with nice gestures…without being pushy. Coupons, useful content, free offerings, special clubs,  contests and other promotions are great for inclusion in a welcome letter

5. Aim to make your title catchy, realistic, but fun… all at once: A great title instantly tells the user or reader what you, your product, or your service is going to do for them.

6. Create Community: Creating a sense of community around your email marketing. Including simple elements like reader feedback, Q&A, or even a customer spotlight section gives the instant feeling of community around not only your overall brand, but your mailings as well.

7. Brand it Baby!: A well-branded email marketing campaign is one of the most important factors in creating not only a useful newsletter, but also a memorable one.

8. Watch the Pros, and Learn: Set aside at least an hour, and skim through your old email marketing newsletters from other companies in your email inbox.

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Top Performers Use Five Battle-Ready Marketing Tools

The dismal state of the economy is causing companies everywhere to reassess their marketing budgets to ensure that they’re allocating their limited marketing funds in the most productive ways possible. In many cases, this means curtailing, postponing or even eliminating previously planned marketing expenditures.

#1: Email marketing software: When it comes to delivering relevant and cost-effectiveness marketing messages, no vehicle can beat email.

#2: Lead management software: Automated lead management and qualification technology use lead quality definitions to automatically prioritize leads, improving conversion rates and allocating resources more efficiently.

#3: Asset management system: Digital asset management solutions integrate with collateral customization and marketing automation technologies to provide seamless asset management through content distribution workflow.

#4: Marketing dashboard: Marketing dashboards, which provide a single digital display for tracking and measuring marketing performance, have become a necessary tool for optimizing marketing spend.

5: Marketing automation software: Marketing automation software, which includes campaign and channel management tools.

In the end, companies have no choice but to strive for higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness across all aspects of their marketing operations in the face of persistently weak spending by consumers and businesses

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88% of marketers are using social media to market their business

Nearly 900 of your peers provided the kind of insight that previously has not existed. In this report you’ll find:

• The top social media marketing questions marketers want answered
• How much time marketers are investing in social media
• The benefits of social media
• How time invested impacts results
• The top social media tools
• And much more!

If you’re pondering starting social media marketing, these findings will help push you over the edge.  If you’re already onboard, feel free to examine what the really experienced marketers are doing (and use this study to persuade others).

Download full report >

Twitter & Facebook power proactive customer service

Microblogging sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, provide a steam valve for poor customer service. When a company doesn’t work the valve, marketers must be prepared to take the heat! Microblogging is the hottest form of online communication. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Facebook and Twitter as the first and third largest social networks, respectively.

Why are microblogging sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, so hot? Because it’s so easy.

Users can easily share aspects of their daily life, current events, news highlights, and random thoughts without the pressures, expectations or commitments of all-out blogging. This makes microblogs uniquely valuable to marketers.

They can be used to gauge brand sentiment and quality of customer service. Companies need to watch how information about their products, services and brands are shared online. Recommendations (good and bad) drive microblogging.

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Social Media Marketing Budgets on the Rise

Social Media Marketing Budgets on the Rise

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Getting Customer Information Out of the Virtual Shoebox

Successfully leveraging an organization’s collective knowledge has been
an aspirational goal for decades, but many companies have deemed the
effort as a “mission impossible” after investing time and money into
these projects. Companies have fallen short in helping a distributed
workforce apply knowledge to improve their business execution.

Converting Data Into Knowledge
The effort required to attain higher levels of business value may be easier than many organizations realize. Regardless of a company’s size or industry focus, there are four main steps to take:

Minimize Information Overload
The business problem to overcome is to provide relevant information that is in context and meaningful for each staffer, sales rep, customer service agent, and reseller — in effect, anyone in a company’s value chain.

Fill the Information Gaps
Capture information and get it into physical knowledge bases

Deliver Knowledge Wherever It Can Be Leveraged
Breaking out of the CRM shoebox is to offer the expert knowledge to end users in any system they work from.

Encourage a Collaborative Culture
Organizations have the component capabilities at their disposal; they just need to create an incentive structure to facilitate the behavior.’

By putting these recommendations into action, organizations transform their data and repositories into actionable knowledge for their staff. The value of the knowledgebase grows exponentially with each use.

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20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

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5 Reasons companies should do social media marketing

If you’re not sure whether social media marketing fits in your company’s overall marketing plan, or you’re not really sure about the tangible benefits of marketing your brand or solutions on social media sites, take a look at the list of some reasons to become involved in social media marketing.

1. Social media marketing is now considered a best practice.
No longer a fringe marketing activity, social media marketing is often an integral part of a state-of-the-art marketing campaign, providing highly efficient and effective ways of reaching your customers.

2. Social media marketing drives traffic to your website.
Social media can be more effective at driving people to your website.

3. Social media marketing improves your search engine rankings.
Large groups of organic (non-paid) links to your site improve your ranking in most search engines.

4. Social media marketing lets you join the conversation.
Your customers are probably already talking about you online, and if they’re not, you should make a place for them to do so.

5. Social media marketing amplifies your marketing messages.
When customers rebroadcast your message, they amplify it.

If you don’t have any social media marketing initiatives, get started with a blog, a Twitter account, and a Facebook company page.

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