clemans on marketing: confessions and misdemeanors

Elements of Direct Marketing: Creative

Creative choices are intimately connected to the Target and the Offer:

1. Type of communication: 3-D, letter package, html email, etc.
2. Look and feel: Sophisticated, humorous, technical, big picture, educational, promotional
3. Tone of the content

Creative should be personalized by individual title and function, and customized by level and industry

Creative shouldn't be timid. Surprise equals buzz equals action equals market share

Creative should convince your prospects that they matter

Creative should build your brand

Elements of Direct Marketing: Lists

Where oh where can I find my perfect customer?

Commercial lists are used to find the defined target

    Response Lists

    Compiled Lists

    One-Time Rentals

Commercial databases are better for locating high-level decision makers

    Longer-term lease arrangements

    More information per record

    Less list cleaning

    Use for sales and marketing

Direct Marketing by the Pie

Sometimes we forget that results depend on these principles. 

B2B Demand Generation is Hard Work.

Abbreviated Steps:

1. Analyze and synthesize critical information with regard to current marketing efforts, goals, targets by level, industry, key markets, objectives, competition strengths, weaknesses, and positioning, etc. 

2. Develop key marketing strategies. Develop direct marketing and trade advertising programs with benchmarks and metrics for critical industries, by continent, by target (including customer or prospect), by country, etc. Analyze results, based on access to lead management and capture data. Work in tandem with media buying firms. 

3. Prepare messaging platforms developed for key verticals, by level, continent, by target (versioned customer or prospect), by country, etc. – In depth messaging matrixes and marketing content for primary and secondary target audiences, with key benefits and proof points for key benefits, key differentiators, pain points, company overview, value propositions, etc. 

4. Develop tactical media, direct marketing and advertising plan for key verticals, by continent, by target (versioned customer or prospect), by country, etc. Create milestone schedule, detail schedule, and budget. 

5. Search for, build relationships and collaborate with top list buyers, data base services, and media buyers in the U.S. and worldwide. 

6. Produce marketing and creative briefs with content/copy boilerplates for three industries, by continent, by target (versioned customer or prospect), by country, etc. 

7. Develop offer strategies and creative. 

8. Etc! Barely scratching the surface. 

Landing the big dogs takes time, timing, effort, creativity, smarts, experience, money, patience, collaboration, and a viable product or service.

How to Avoid Becoming Spam.

It's not how many emails you send, but whether your email marketing campaign is perceived as spam. Therefore, before you blast: build a good list of qualified prospects and customers, ask for permission, provide targeted, versioned content, compose titles for subject lines that are smart and snappy, follow the CAN-SPAM laws, write copy that is precise, compelling, useful, and actionable. Bulk email lists are stale and get blocked.

Targeting business: mail campaigns or email blasts?

Over the past 8 years, we've rented scores of rental lists and data bases targeting an extensive array of verticals, functions, and levels (manager, director, and top-tier decision makers) , and found that integrated, branded, versioned, cleaned mail campaigns, with multi-touch components produce better response rates than email-only campaigns. Our approach: strategic and creative mail campaigns to cleaned lists, personalized landing pages and opt-in follow-up email, compelling, targeted offers, and mail chased with phone calls.

The Sales Cycle + the Buying Cycle.

Sales people are always talking about the length of their Sales Cycles. ATTENTION. INTEREST. CONVICTION. DESIRE. CLOSE.

Marketing people need to help their clients understand the value of the Buying Cycle, about how making the right offer with the right message at the right stage maximizes response and conversion rates. Because not every prospect or customer is ready to buy all the time. NOT AWARE. AWARE. CONSIDER. BUY. REPEAT. BINGO: CUSTOMER :-).

It's kind of like dating. Start with text messaging, coffee, flowers, chocolate and champaign, take in a movie, more dates, concluding with sex, more and more togetherness, exchanging keys, meeting mom and dad, and/or the ring.

Businesses and marketers must decipher where their targets are in the Buying Cycle and develop marketing campaigns accordingly. The less aware the prospect is of your business or product, the more knowledge-building the approach and offers should be. When your targets are further along in the decision making process, either well aware of your company, product or service, or already customers, your marketing campaigns should focus on calls to action like buying, registering, calling, and subscribing. The example below illustrates marketing solutions at each stage of a B2B Buying Cycle.

Lead Gen Primer to Maximize Response.

Before embarking on a personalized direct marketing and lead generation campaign, get your ducks in the correct rows.

The goal, as always: building and maintaining your customer relationships.

Easy Mark Brings in Good Data.

Hummers, Jaguars, Lamborghini Gallardo Spyders, Bentley Continental GTCs, BMW 325i Coupes, Dodge Nitros, concept cars and after market products.

I just got back from the San Francisco International Auto Show. There were lots of marketing gimmicks. I liked Chevy's. Show attendees, including me, couldn't resist queuing up to get photographed in the driver's seat of a 2007 Corvette convertible.

Once photographed, I was given a Chevy "American Revolution" branded laminated card with my photo ID# and told to wait 24 hours before visiting my personal landing page to retrieve the picture. You guessed it. 24 hours later, I got online and downloaded the picture you see above. Sent it to a couple of friends too. Even clicked on the yellow Corvette just for fun. The whole process reintroduced me to Chevy and got me thinking about buying American next time.

Chevy's lead gen program accomplished some valuable heavy lifting. The marketing team came up with a fun low obligation offer, drove us to personalized urls, built a targeted prospect list, captured information, introduced new vehicles and increased brand awareness.

Increase Response Creatively.

One of our clients dumped JWT and hired us. We felt pretty good about that. JWT's direct marketing efforts had failed miserably, getting next to zero response for the company. The ad agency found out the hard way that turning magazine ads into direct marketing just doesn't work.

There are an enormous number of factors that contribute to a direct marketing or lead generation program's success or failure, including: offer strategy, list work, target, media placement, personalization, versioning and timing. Creative (concept, messaging, design, content) also plays a significant role.

Results classically depend on the 40/40/20 rule:
40% Target, 40% Offer and 20% Creative.