|
October 2005 A Marketing Cocktail by Cassie Woolley There are a multitude of marketing channels available, and you should carefully consider which combination of channels will work for you. My three year old daughter has an unusual eating habit. Her Royal Highness, the Princess Megan, rises each morning to greet the day with what I like to call her Breakfast Cocktail. The Breakfast Cocktail is a combination of ALL breakfast cereals that happen to be in the pantry on any given morning. OT’s®, Honey-O’s® and Nutri-Grain® are the most frequent ingredients. Often she’ll ask for a pinch of muesli, and on occasion she also like a "smashed" Weet-Bix®. If we happen to be missing any of her favourite cereals, I receive a serious admonition to add it to my shopping list. While this is a rather strange habit, we can draw an important marketing parallel: "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket". There are a multitude of marketing channels available, and you should carefully consider which combination of channels will work for you. Today I'd like to consider a few ways in which email marketing could be combined with other marketing channels. Use your print marketing to grow your email list In your next print campaign, prominently feature your eNewsletter and encourage your customers to sign up. Transferring customers from print mailing lists to email mailing lists will save you money and ideally give the customer access to faster, more relevant information. I even have one client that offers incentives to sales people if a high proportion of their mailing list switches to the email list. Use competitions effectively You can’t watch five minutes of TV these days without being asked to enter a competition via SMS. To me this is a blatant revenue raising exercise. Every entry into an SMS competition gives the promoter a portion of the higher than usual call costs. If you are considering a competition, why not offer online entries instead? Give up the few cents you would make from each SMS entry for the opportunity to gather more detailed information about the entrants and invite them to join your email list. Try e-vouchers Some consumers are voucher-mad. Try emailing a voucher that the customer must bring to your store or website to redeem. Utilise statements and invoices Every communication that you have with your customers can be used to either provide or request information. Promote your email newsletter on your customer statements or invoices. You could even offer electronic statements and invoices. Keep it fresh The exact combination of cereals in the Breakfast Cocktail changes every day. Likewise, the marketing channels that you choose this month may need adjustment next month. Use all of the tools available to you to gather information about the success of each channel and readjust your marketing mix accordingly. Keep your message clear After all of the hard work that goes into the Breakfast Cocktail, Megan usually doesn’t eat much of it. On reflection, the chances of her eating more could be improved by turning off ABC Kids. Giving her chocolate for breakfast would probably also improve my statistics, but this would turn her into Megan, the extremely hyperactive Princess. Consumers can also be easily distracted from your marketing messages. Your challenge is to make your marketing as compelling as possible while still delivering accurate and honest content. Choose marketing channels that will give you the greatest chance of delivering your message without distractions. Consider what the customer wants Sometimes Megan will decide that she doesn’t want her Breakfast Cocktail. She wants what I’m having. But not just the same type of cereal I am having. She wants pieces of the cereal out of my bowl. Have you ever considered whether the product you are marketing is actually what your customers want? I read an article recently about a company that actually starts the product development process by creating the marketing campaign. After they come up with a fabulous marketing idea, they then create a product to match the campaign. This idea is completely alien to me. Call me naïve, but surely we are in business to create useful products, not just to manipulate customers using clever marketing? Nutri-Grain® is just a cereal While Kelloggs® might like you to believe that you’ll become an Iron Man just by eating Nutri-Grain®, the reality is that this will just not happen. Don’t expect eMarketing to instantly solve all of your marketing issues. While it has distinct advantages over traditional marketing, it is still just one channel and should be used in conjunction with an overall marketing plan. This month I would encourage you to get creative and find ways to mix it up with your marketing. Consider the advantages of each marketing channel and use each one appropriately. And keep an eye out for the Breakfast Cocktail on your supermarket shelves; I think I’m onto something big!
|