Kevin Kemp – WSI Digital Marketing Consultant

Consumers have access to infinite amounts of information, whether it is about competitors, your brand, or consumer’s thoughts or experiences.  With all of this data flowing to potential clients, it is important that your strategy be ensuring consistent messaging across all marketing channels.  By ensuring your messaging is consistent across marketing channels, then you will be able to ensure the right message is being received.

A strong cross-channel marketing plan starts with ensuring that you are using various tools.  Email marketing, mobile, social, and website management are important to ensure that you have a strong cross-channel marketing plan.  Starting with email marketing, you will want to use lead nurturing and drip campaign emails to deliver additional information – whether it is for education or service information.  This should be based on targeting specific subscriber lists and communications should be based on time intervals or subscriber action.  Do not spam or over communicate as this will have a negative impact.

Mobile marketing is the next step in an effective cross-channel marketing strategy.  Text alerts are convenient account updates sent to clients’ mobile phones.  You can use text alerts to provide special offers, notify users of urgent information, upcoming changes to account, or other sensitive information.  You should drive text recipients to a mobile landing page where they can opt in to your other programs.

Social Media is another key pillar to the cross-channel marketing strategy.  You will want to allow email marketing and mobile marketing to be directed to your social media.  You will want to have a direct link to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, or other key online communities with the click of a button.  Another key step in the process, ensure that you allow subscribers to share it through their social media and ability to forward to a friend.  Make it easier for them to share your content by embedding social network icons or a “Forward to a Friend” button within your emails or other communications.

One of the most important pillars is landing pages on your site.  It is a quick and efficient way to capture customer information without relying on having to make the initial “cold call”.  By building your prospect database, you are able to find more qualified prospects.

It is obvious to most marketers that traditional campaign management no longer works.  Ensuring that you are balancing traditional marketing strategies with strong cross-channel marketing will allow you the opportunity to grow the effectiveness of your campaign.  Contact us to arrange for a complementary Internet Business Assessment today.

A report showed that mobile shopping, including travel, grew by 91% to reach over $6 billion dollars in the US alone. As more and more consumers are using Smartphones and other mobile devices, this trend is expected to continue. Some estimates have it as high as $31 billion by 2015. This excludes purchases made on tablets, which is definitely on the rise as well. A few factors such as increased confidence, increase usage, and the growing demographic that is using the technology is continuing to push this trend higher. Retailers are moving towards this technology and launching applications to improve the experience and will only lead to further growth.

Read more at http://bit.ly/wLLUWm

The first key to any marketing strategy is to understand your target market. Many companies enter into Social Media but do not think about who they are targeting. It is clear that different demographics will require different needs from their social media. Research showed that more affluent customers tend to have a pre-existing affinity for the brand and have a desire to keep informed. Affluent Collaborative conducted a survey that showed most people want to be entertained, but also want Social Media to provide value even if it is not directly tied to a coupon. L2 Think Tank survey showed that Gen Y wanted more promotions, while women tended to want to receive offers as well.

Another key finding by Affluence Collaborative was that Facebook was the #1 social network by all users, regardless of demographic. However, more affluent people tended to lean towards LinkedIn and Twitter at nearly double the rate of the general population.

Any marketing plan must first start with understanding your target market demographics. Knowing what your customer is looking for in regards to perceived value, but also what social networks they are using is key to determining your most effective strategy.

It is always a company’s objective to grow their followers and fans on Facebook, but the challenge is to keep them engaged. Some use special offers, exclusive content, or providing information that is pertinent to their followers. Like any group, the more members creates less of bond and results in isolation of some members. Brands tend to have a challenge maintaining their followers over time, especially once the group becomes large. Buddy Media recommends to focus on the adjusting the length, timing, and wording to raise engagement. It is also recommended that the posts be spaced out, as 50% of the “likes” will be received in the first hour and twenty minutes. Most of the likes will be received in the first 22 hours, but if a new post arrives it is very unlikely that the older post will be recognized. It is important for brands to focus on length and ensure that they are spaced out allowing for the first one to get its full “likes”. It is important to build the right strategy that will allow for this to be spaced out effectively, targeted, and changing enough to keep interest. A similar offer being sent to followers will most likely result in them stopping from following. A Digital Marketing Consultant will lay out your tactical plan and help you determine your strategy.

The American Marketing Association surveyed 400 marketers for the February 2011 CMO Survey and found that social media spending will increase to 9.8% from 5.6% of current marketing budgets.  While these increases are signs of organizations moving to social media, the challenge remains on how the media will be leveraged.  The growth in social media is going to continue, it will be the balance between traditional strategies and the new marketing strategies that will keep CMO’s up at night.  Read more at the following article in Emarketer.

Now telling you to slow down seems counterproductive to efficiency.  Well, I am not talking about moving slowly, I am referring to your response times.  A good time manager actually responds to some things more slowly then a bad time manager.  For example, when completing a high priority task an efficient time manager is not answering emails or allowing calls to go to voice mail.  It is obvious to all of us when we sit back and think about it – there are more important tasks than processing email.  The problem is that once we are deep into our work day we allow distractions to pull us from our priorities.  Be aware that it is okay to not respond immediately to every inquiry, pick the priorities effectively.  Remember what we need to do is recognize that processing and planning our work is mission-critical tasks.

Looking at how to manage your time is a discipline and it must be followed daily.  Many people take the time on Friday afternoon to review the following week, review key tasks, then plan accordingly.  While that is a key first step, the challenge is that you cannot control the outside environment including internal customers, external customers, employees, peers, the boss, and your personal life.  With all these changes occurring daily, if not hourly, how can you manage your time if you are not reviewing it?  The key for success is to manage your time effectively by reviewing it daily.  Build time in your schedule, whether at the end of the day or at the beginning of the following day to review your schedule and key tasks to be completed.  First step is to take the time to review your accomplishments from that day.  Determine what went well, what interference occurred, and what could you do better to make sure you accomplish all your tasks.  Next review the major tasks that must be accomplished for the week.  Are they still on track? Do you need to re-prioritize? What has changed in your schedule?  Now you can review the rest of your week and plan the following day accordingly.  That is the key – be flexible and make the necessary changes.  Sometimes your priorities will change, so being flexible and reviewing daily will allow you to feel a sense of accomplishment, maintain a feeling of control, and ensure success on getting the key priorities completed.

Today’s topic will focus on the time we spend on our computer every day.  Email, websites, files, and keystrokes are all drains on your time.  The first step is to manage your email on a schedule.  Do not have the email notification on or your email open so you can instanteously respond to every email that comes in.  As long as people know how long to expect an answer to take and they can reach you in an emergency, then you can answer most emails a few times at scheduled intervals throughout the day.  Do not let email distraction pull you away from your primary focus.

Another key challenge is keeping website addresses organized.  Key book marking services to keep track of your frequently used web sites help manage your time.  Instead of having random notes, save them all in one place.  It will save you significant time to complete research.

File management on your computer is another challenge for most people.  You will need to organize your files into subject matters.  The categories are dependant on your role or the functions you are accountable for, but keeping them by common themes allows you to organize your desktop.  Use layers of files, for example having a file titled “Sales” may have sub-folders titled Email Marketing, cold calls, sales tracking, presentations, etc.  Another level of folders under these could be more accurate or direct to a customer, region,etc.  The idea is that as you drill down it is easy to find the file you are searching for, rather then opening the desktop to see 100 files and have to spend significant time looking through it.  Lastly, if you have a file or files that you use frequently it would be more efficient to have a shortcut put on your desktop.  Quick access to the file will save you a significant amount of time after you add it up over a full year.

Tomorrow, I will focus on setting your day for success.

Multitasking will decrease everyone’s productivity, no matter who they are.  Focusing on various task will pull your focus in too many directions, not allowing you to be efficient or effective.  Checking emails, typing messages, reviewing projects, and dealing with other minor distractions will reduce your ability to be efficient.  It is important to focus on the most important things first, ensuring you accomplish the “must do’s” early in the day.  Focus on these as soon as you start your day, it will ensure that you at least get a good start on them.  If you cannot get it completed in the first hour, you are very likely to come back and complete it later in the day.  Also, if you can get it done earlier you will also have a great sense of accomplishment and a very confident feeling for the balance of the day. Stayed tuned for another tip tomorrow.

While my passion is helping companies grow through online media, I am also hoping to help people manage effectively.  This week I will be providing tips on how to manage your time, a key component to help you succeed.  The first tip is using your calendar effectively.  Managing your time effectively starts with the proper planning.  Using your online calendar correctly will help you save time, manage effectively, and understand if you are balancing and prioritizing to maximize results.  First you must put all of your tasks in your calendar and allot them with the appropriate amount of time.  This will allow you to see all the areas of focus you have to cover this week.  Secondly, colour code them to help them differentiate optically when looking at the calendar.  Assign different colours for client meetings, administration, cold calling, training, exercise, personal events, and any other category you might require.  There can be numerous categories or a few, but it is recommended that you at least have your revenue generators differentiated from non-revenue generating activities.  You should also ensure your personal activities are differentiated as well, the balance being work and life is key to your mental and emotional success.

Okay, so now you have all these colours in your calendar.  Take the time to sit back and look at it.  Is the administration and other non-generating activities more than the revenue generating activities.  If yes, then you might want to re-balance them accordingly.  By having the colours it is easy for you to identify if there is a significant balance issue and thus allowing you to re-prioritize your focus. By ensuring the proper focus, it will allow you a greater opportunity for success.

Read my blog tomorrow for another tip on effective time management.