Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

I was a few blocks away from the Twin Towers, just starting to send that week’s edition of this newsletter, when the planes hit. I didn’t know until about a year later that I knew someone who perished that day. Her name was Carol LaPlante.

Carol was the assistant creative business manager at DDB Needham when I was there in the ’80s. In contrast to many of the larger-than-life characters in that department, she was very quiet. But, man, I knew she was a presence. She was previously a nun and was one of the most intense listeners I ever met.

Carol sat in my office a number of times and listened to me go on about my dad, who had just passed away. She was a healer.

I speak little of 9/11. I don’t want it to turn into a series of rote stories. But I can pay homage to a deep soul I knew whom we lost that day.

I listen for her name when they call out the list of those who died during the memorial service each year. Writing this is the best way I can memorialize her. Thank you, Carol. LC

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Many marketers believe that B2B products and services require no emotional appeal. After all, they’re not buying a BMW or life insurance for themselves or their families. But, there is emotion involved in the B2B sale.

Gord Hotchkiss, founder of Enquiro and now SVP of Mediative, points out that the B2B buyer seeks to avoid risk. Remember the saying, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM?” That speaks directly to the B2B buyer’s risk-avoidance instinct.

Furthermore, there is the all-important chemistry between prospective vendor and client. What runs through the client’s mind very often is, “Am I comfortable with this person? Can I work with him/her on a day-to-day basis, especially when something goes wrong?”

Online, you can set a tone with your site and marketing campaigns that anticipates what your prospective client will want next. Call this intuitive design and marketing.

There are a lot of dollars on the line with each B2B conversion, a lot more than a low-involvement B2C sale like package goods. The more homework you do in making your campaigns, sites, and F2F contact relevant and timely, the better your chances of converting B2B leads to prospects, and onto conversions thereafter. LC

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That’s a question that isn’t easily answered. Some will say it depends on the number of followers you have. Some point out it depends on how many influencers you have on your list (an argument for quality over quantity). Still others will ask how often you are retweeted.

A classic direct marketer would look for conversions of some sort. How many people ultimately subscribe to your newsletter from your list of followers? Of course, the quicker you can connect followers to sales, the better.

But this is where things get dicey. It’s often hard to tell if a Twitter follower bought something from you because of your last Tweet, or a mounting positive impression over weeks, months or years, or because of social proof by his or her peers.

In other words, this is a very inexact science. But, despite the murky numbers, it is in your best interest to allocate budget to SocMed and watch for patterns sooner than later. LC

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In my interview with Conversion Guru Jay Baer, he said today’s creative is in the media buy. It’s no longer good enough to have clever copy and graphics. You want to be able to get your message in front of a finely and artfully tuned audience.

For example, on FB, you can select not only geography, you can also designate interests, age, sex, birthday, profession, etc. FB can zone in on keywords that are on your wall or in your messages. So, an FB user can express interest in something and get an ad shortly or immediately thereafter. Timing is everything, as they say. Talk about relevance.

How long will it be until web marketing companies market specific audiences to advertisers that otherwise would go unused? That may be the next frontier of Internet marketing, namely Audience Marketing. Here’s an audience; who’s the advertiser most likely to pay the most for that opportunity? LC

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As Gord Hotchkiss (author of The BuyerSphere Project) says, you are not in the best position to get a sale if you’re not the “wired vendor.” So, if you’re No. 2 or No. 3 on the short list, you’ll need to introduce an element of doubt about how the buyer is framing the purchase.

A cheaper price isn’t necessarily going to seal the deal. In fact, if the price is really low ball, it can raise doubts about quality. You have to raise concerns or make buyers aware of risks that they might not be considering.

Gord Hotchkiss points out a B2B sale is more about risk avoidance than about reward. In a B2C sale, the prospect weighs the risk/reward ratio. But with B2B, companies generally don’t hold parties when they purchase more rack space. It’s typically more about keeping operations running smoothly and protecting your job. LC

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Why is it every time a new media channel comes into its own, all marketing types want to stick an ad in there somewhere? In these early days of SocMed, many of the success stories are about loyalty programs or CRM. Dell, Comcast, and Zappos are popular examples.

While Twitter itself hasn’t figured out its own ad model at the time of this writing, there are some firms that are good at lead gen, conversions, and sales now. For example, F-Commerce is taking off big time. Groupon and LivingSocial are all about the offer and making the cash register ring.

Ads that employ tighter Facebook targeting will most likely drive actions due to their increased relevance and timeliness. Display or brand ads are dirt cheap in Social Media, as in less than $10/cpm typically when not targeted.

Bottom line: In the long run, look for purposeful ads that drive offers in Social Media and for loyalty programs to gain momentum. But, I don’t think warm-and-fuzzy, general branding ads are ever going to be welcomed in the midst of social interactions taking place in the context of Social Media. LC

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Getting a direct response doesn’t only happen in advertising copy. There’s f2f direct response like a positive reaction to a sales pitch.

You can also look for a direct response in a job interview. One way to get a positive response is to do something unexpected. Most candidates in a job interview want a job.

I know someone who offers to freelance in the position the employer is looking to fill. She gets very high response rates. She tells me the interviewer often is relieved at not having to make a long-term commitment to hire someone right off the bat. In short, it takes the pressure off.

You may or may not want to freelance ongoingly. Either way, offering to freelance first allows both potential employer and candidate to “date” first. It makes sense. Both parties aren’t going to be able to predict if the chemistry is going to work out because they both have their game face on. But, over time, during the course of a freelance stint, both parties can see how well or poorly such a long-term commitment would work. LC

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Face it; this is the age of distraction where it is rare you have someone’s undivided attention. If you are too subtle in your offer or meaning, it can and probably does fly right by your target audience, even if they are highly intelligent.

My experience shows people are typically comfortable with and maybe even appreciate brevity and obviousness. In other words, give it to me quick. LC

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You want your advertising to be so good that people actually sign up to receive it. That’s what Groupon is, after all: targeted loss-leader offers from retailers.

You can imagine that these offer feeds have a pretty good response rate. After all, recipients of those offers have already taken one action by signing up in the first place; so, it’s likely they’ll take another action thereafter.

“Do Not Track” browsers filter away unwanted ad feeds. More and more users will be able to opt out of receiving ads which are targeted via surreptitious means.

Marketers will have to come up with a way to make the target audience actually want to allow tracking, receiving ads that compensate them for sharing their identities and usage data.

In the end, it will be a mutually advantageous system for user and marketer alike. The marketer has a no-waste channel to reach target audiences while the user gets obviously valuable offers and content from the marketer. Not a bad proposition. LC

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Now those are three words you never see together . But, the truth is, staying humble is the secret of successful Internet Marketing.

If you think you know it all, you can’t learn anything more. What works in one period of Internet Marketing isn’t guaranteed to work in another time frame. People’s relationships to this medium and how they use it change rapidly and in unexpected ways.

Results aren’t written in stone. So, repeat after me, “I could be wrong.” Taking this approach is healthy because it keeps you open to identifying new outcomes sooner than your grandiose competitors. What you see as obvious changes they will dismiss as mere outliers or exceptions that prove the rule.

Live with some doubt. It’s hard, and it’s only human to seek certainty. But humility can become your competitive edge. LC

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