Participating in the Aug. 17 panel discussion of sports marketing were, from left, Steve Ryan of the Cardinals, Cullen Maxey of the Diamondbacks, David Burke of the Coyotes and Lynn Agnello of the Suns.

In marketing to the masses, much of traditional media’s reach has been carved up – cable and DVRs vs. the networks; iPods and satellite radio vs. over-the-air stations; blogs and social websites vs. newspapers.

What’s left? Billboards and sports marketing.

The latter is also evolving, as teams and leagues realize they need to innovate and compete off the field just as their teams do on the field.

Their efforts to work with businesses on new game and stadium promotions were the focus of the Aug. 17 meeting of the Phoenix chapter of the Business Marketing Association. The two-hour event was held in a locker room at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

About 40 members listened to comments from Cullen Maxey, executive vice president of business operations for the Diamondbacks; Steve Ryan, vice president of business development for the Arizona Cardinals; Lynn Agnello, senior vice president of marketing partnerships for the Phoenix Suns and Mercury; and David Burke, vice president of ticket sales and service for the Phoenix Coyotes.

Each noted that their organizations have gone from simply selling packages to needing to employ consultative approaches to boost business.

Burke, who worked for the New Orleans Hornets and Dallas Stars before coming to the Valley last year, commented that sports teams have needed to become better marketers.

“In 2001 to 2003, teams could pretty much say something would cost $150,000 and shove it down throats,” he said. “Now it’s about ‘What does the customer need?’ and here’s how we’ll over-deliver.”

Fans of sports teams now see specific times or scores or activities regularly brought to them by a corporate sponsor. The scramble is to do a needs analysis and then customize a sales package, Agnello said.

“You have to ask, ‘What’s the return on the objective?’” she said. “How can we create a personalized branding message with ‘stickiness’ (to be memorable).”

The Diamondbacks used this approach to develop a promotion this season with Henkel Consumer Goods, a Scottsdale subsidiary of Henkel International.

Laundry detergents, shampoos and sealants aren’t exactly compelling or memorable, so Henkel now gets out its message at D-Backs games during the “Racing Legends” competition.

Modeled after the Milwaukee Brewers’ sausage race, the local version features 10-foot-tall “legend” mascots Luis Gonzalez, Matt Williams, Randy Johnson and Mark Grace sprinting to the dugout between halves of the fifth inning.

“We started with a blank canvas,” Maxey said. “Now they can promote a brand each night.”

Ryan said the arrangement between the Cardinals and a business partner is now more relationship-based, not transactional.

“You really have to be creative with packaging,” he said. “You need to customize programs for each company.”

He noted that sponsors have hopped on board for new events like a kickoff luncheon and an off-season bowling competition.

With the state of the economy and consolidations, Burke explained that teams are now getting creative with smaller companies.

“We want to make sure they’re not priced out,” he said.

The new approach also means a change in how teams handle sales.

Most have replaced “sales” people with “service” people, staff members who will massage sponsors and trouble-shoot problems. Value propositions have changed.

“We’ve gone from ‘hunters’ getting a sale to ‘farmers’ cultivating a relationship,” Burke said. “You have to invest in sales training.”

Added Agnello, “It’s almost like we’re becoming brand managers, acting as extensions to the partner’s marketing team.”

There is a surprising amount of communication and cooperation between the teams. They realize they are promoting sports marketing instead of other marketing, and if successful, all teams will succeed, regardless of record or place in the standings.

It’s a competitive market in Phoenix, with additional participants like Arizona State sports, PGA golf, NASCAR and spring training baseball fighting for ad dollars.

“Brand affinity will be what separates us,” Maxey said.

While the teams generate revenues through advertising and ticket sales, they are also building the brand through social media. Each organization is dedicating a team of employees to maintaining websites, overseeing Facebook and Twitter feeds, and listening to fans.

“We monitor it a ton,” Maxey said. “We’ll call on negative ones and try to build the relationship with information.”

“If you had $10 million extra in your marketing budget to spend – but could only spend it in one area – where would you use it?

• Search-engine marketing
• Social media engagement
• Website development
• Email marketing

The response of the first panelist, Frederick Vallaeys, product evangelist for Google Adwords, surprised no one: Search.

Then it was Lauren Vaccarello’s turn. The senior search-engine marketing manager for Salesforce.com also selected search.

Next was David Hibbs, customer lifecycle director for Off Madison Ave, a Tempe public-relations firm: Search.

Finally, Al Maag, chief communications officer for Avnet, weighed in: Community relations.

“I’m a trouble-maker,” he joked.

The “Back to the Basics” panel at the conclusion of OMS Phoenix: from left, organizer Aaron Kahlow, Frederick Vallaeys of Google, Lauren Vaccarello of Salesforce.com, David Hibbs of Off Madison Ave, and Al Maag of Avnet.

The panel culminated a day of keynotes and breakout sessions on different facets of online marketing: B2B, B2C and social media integration.

Kahlow asked some questions and then opened the floor for more.

On serving the customer:

Vaccarello: Really consider custom pages. If you have a customer looking for a sneaker, don’t send him to a generic main page of products.

“Send them to a special sneaker page,” she said.

On prioritization:

Maag: Have a structure in place for information-sharing. He described Avnet’s use of annual meetings of employees, weekly meetings of teams and monthly meetings with global teams.

“We have 30 divisions and 13,000 employees,” he said. “We try to expose but not impose, in the sense of seeing what one group is doing and then showing it to others to consider.”

On immediate impact:

Hibbs: Look at your email list. Market to your current customers right away.

On change:

Vallaeys: Traditional marketing looked at wide markets. Search is more specific and more focused on behavioral characteristics, not demographics or segments.

On innovation:

Maag: Avnet has admittedly not been at the forefront of social media but it was committed to getting involved, even when the budget wasn’t there to do so.

The company envisioned differentiating itself as an industry thought leader. The solution, Maag said, was to create a video channel, Avnet OnDemand.

“We wanted to create an educational portal where we could aggregate our videos and the videos and products of our 300 suppliers,” he said.

On books to read:

Kahlow: “Social Media Metrics” by Jim Sterne and David Meerman Scott; “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug; and “One Hour a Day” by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin.

But marketing today has so many facets that a professional must be adept at many to implement a successful campaign.

“There are many roads to Rome,” the CEO of Apogee Results said. “And once you figure it out, it will probably change.”

Bill Leake

His aim was to share 10 takeaways that audience members could implement in the next week.

1. Define the objective
   

   Companies need to align their sales and marketing efforts and invest in a strategic plan.

2. Implement end-to-end tracking
   

   Manage lead generation and measure results. Consider a program like salesforce.com to tie web analytics to the company’s CRM system.

3. Offer compelling content
   

   The trick to better placement on Google is to mix new content with old links. So have a plan for producing new content. Some companies use social media (comment boards, photos) to create their content, which Leake sees as a form of recycling. Companies also need to know the likes and dislikes of the customer in order to provide the information he or she seeks. Finally, companies have more success when they teach, not sell.

4. Mine your existing assets
   

   Don’t be afraid to re-use what you have. The old content can spur new discussions and seed new content. One “white paper” on a current topic can be used as a blog post, a radio or web interview, a video, a conference presentation or as part of an e-newsletter. If you are a Twitterer, tweet at least three times a day and then pick out the most interesting tweets to expand into blog posts.

5. Give your Search Engine Marketing a facelift
   

   Is your company on auto-pilot? Is your search performance flat? Don’t just sit there!

   1. Do Google searches on your targeted query
   2. Improve your Google score by testing various ad-copy words and page designs
   3. Add negative keywords – words that don’t apply to your products (like “free” or “open source”) – to draw attention and comparisons
   4. Make your ads more specific; in this way prospects will be of a higher quality for conversion
   5. Consider new tactics, like changing the day of the week or time of day for activitiy

   Leake then offered some advanced SEM strategies:

   1. Integrate paid search and earned media (like online articles, press release mentions and third-party blogs)
   2. If you have a “channel” of content use it – and reach out to partners to fill it. (Think of a cooperative.)
   3. Partner with others to create a “learning” website
   4. Employ event-driven results with customized landing pages for special promotions
   5. Use SEM traffic with web analytics to create customer lists

6. Increase, start (but don’t stop) investment in SEO
   

   Maintaining an email list of your best prospects is probably the most effective retention tool. But SEO is valuable and is often the best at measuring the return on a marketing investment. He noted that Google is getting more sophisticated with its search results, offering SEO for videos, books, maps, news, and images. Companies like jigsaw and hoovers offer analytics tools.

7. Assess your website’s effectiveness
   

   Qualitative: What are the industry’s best practices? Which customer personas do you want to chase (and which ones are comfortable letting go)?

   Quantitative: What are your analytics for page views? Consider using a test of two web-page designs – A and B – to determine which attracts better prospects. Assess multivariants – but not a lot of them – to determine what elements work well together.

   Customer personas fall in four categories:

   Logical
   

Emotional

Quick decisions Slow decisions

Know which is your best prospect and how to serve him or her.

8. Move past online conversions

A lot happens beyond the web. Conversions initiated by the website may result in phone calls, chats, and in-store visits. See the big picture.

9. Nurture non-sales-ready leads

In a world with many leads, 20 percent are usually followed up on. Of those, 70 percent are usually disqualified. Of those disqualified leads, 50 percent tend to buy a product anyway. The advice: Keep your hook in the water.

10. In most cases, don’t focus on “lead” scoring (yet), Leake said.

“Everyone knows the 80-20 rule,” he said. “This is an advanced tactic to filter leads.” But don’t make impulsive decisions. Leake cited a case in which a financial firm was deciding which search-engine to use for marketing, Google or Yahoo. The marketing chief’s hunch was Google; the actual data of results showed that, while Yahoo generated fewer leads, the ones that it did provide were worth more to the firm than the Google leads.

In the end, Leake advisers companies to know their customers. Some customers may be coupon clippers, with no loyalty to the product.

Use specific codes or keywords for website specials to identify customers and their decisions.

Build your email list of customers with incentives to sign up.

And make the phone number on the website bigger! “It offers a better chance for upsells,” he said.

]]> http://www.johnswolfe.com/socialmedia/oms-10-integrated-marketing-takeaways//feed 1 http://www.johnswolfe.com/socialmedia/oms-use-relevancy-to-boost-search-results/ http://www.johnswolfe.com/socialmedia/oms-use-relevancy-to-boost-search-results/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 19:21:00 +0000 admin http://www.johnswolfe.com/?p=218 In determining how to improve their company’s position in search results, many marketers follow a similar process: Audit, Analyze and Create a Strategic Plan.

But Mike Corak, vice president of strategy for Tallwave, believes a crucial step needs to be added after auditing: Listen.

“What is in demand?” Corak told the audience at the May 20 Online Marketing Summit in downtown Phoenix. “If you listen, people will tell you what they want.”

Mike Corak of Tallwave

First, you need to know the language of your customer, the vernacular.

He told the story of a major dental brand that decided to emphasize “oral health.” But consumers viewed the subject as “dental health” – a term that was used five times more often in web searches, he said.

Second, understand the context of the customer’s inquiry. Is it an enthusiast who wants the “latest and greatest,” or a typical customer with a typical problem?

Third, categorize and prioritize the interest exhibited by customers.

He cited a recent case involving the Arizona Office of Tourism.

“What did they find the searchers wanted? Information among the Grand Canyon and Sedona,” he said. “Be relevant.”

Fourth, create packages of content according to the demand. Does the customer want to see videos? Read a blog? Engage a microsite? You’ll know if you listen to their needs.

Last, once your strategy is in place, create a plan to update it, as circumstances and tastes change.

Sorak also challenged the audience with this homework:

1. Perform search-based keyword research. Where does your brand show up? Your competitors’ brands? Your product or service?
2. Use social media to understand where conversations about your brand are occurring and what is the context of inquiries.
3. Categorize the interest in your product or service by comparing your keywords with the relevant demand.
4. Audit your current content.
5. Is there a difference between Nos. 3 and 4?
6. If there is, do something about it!

Corak noted that there are a variety of free – Google AdWords, technorati, and Twitter search – and paid – Radian6, Spiral16 – tools available to give insights into customer behavior.

That was the message of Katie Van Domelen, social media manager for Off Madison Ave, a Tempe adverting firm, at the May 20 Online Marketing Summit in Phoenix.

“Most companies think their customers start at their website,” she said. “But brand interactions are messy.”

The traditional funnel looks like this: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase Intent, Purchase and Loyalty.

The 2010 funnel has this form: Engagement, Awareness, Discover Product, Search for Additional Information, and Purchase.

She noted the differences in understanding the campaigns of two automakers.

For one, a friend alerted her to a funny video: the Swagger Wagon featuring rapping parents.

Then she was watching TV and saw a Toyota commercial for the Siena minivan with the same parents. Intrigued, she went to the Toyota website and clicked to the Sienna. The key message was “Daddy Like,” the humorous close of the commercial.

The web page had a button with a link to a YouTube channel with more videos featuring the family and an interactive feature for Facebook – minivanimals. Nice, the social media expert thought.

She then saw a Ford commercial with “Dirty Jobs” star Mike Rowe. A fan, she went to the Ford “channel” on YouTube but … no Mike.

There were other videos but no links to other Mike Rowe videos, she noted. No links to a Facebook page or a website. She did go to the Ford page on Facebook but there was no mention of Mike Rowe.

“They employed Mike Rowe but it could have been much more,” Van Domelen said.

She eventually found a Ford microsite featuring “Super Duty” trucks with Rowe but it didn’t have a way to easily share the content with friends via Facebook or YouTube or Twitter.

“To me, this reflected that Ford had different people in different ‘silos,’” she said. “Different people were in charge of each segment of media.

She said a brand has many touchpoints.

“Companies see different segments,” she said. “The consumer sees it all together.”

Each touchpoint needs to be able to “stand alone, but stand together.”

She added that this “real life” includes mobile. If you’re going to have a website, you need to know how it works on a smart phone.

She recounted an experience during a recent visit to Dallas.

She and a friend wanted to go out for dinner. The concierge gave her the names of some nearby restaurants.

On her phone Van Domelen called up Yelp and found a review, which was positive. But she wanted to see a menu. The website wasn’t set up for mobile. It didn’t work.

She found a different restaurant on Yelp. At its website, she saw she was eligible for a special if she signed up for an email list. She did, she got an immediate email, which was easy to read on her phone, and got a free pita.

She also checked into the bistro with Foursquare and there’s a tip with a coupon, she said.

She urges companies to follow a two-step approach:

1. Map your customers’ usual journey
   

   Ask them through surveys how they found you and listen. Track them through web analytics to know where they came from. Test your approaches with site-specific discounts and special codes.

2. Shape your customers’ journey
   

   Organize links in order of importance. Cross-link your networks. Leverage promotions across all media and offline, in in-store promotions.

It’s also important to know your customers. If they are comfortable sharing photos or videos, you can engage them with a fun feature like the “Mad Hatter Yourself” tool on the “Alice in Wonderland” Facebook page.

If they like trivia, consider a game like the one Southwest Airlines introduced on Facebook to promote travel to California.

“Guess what?” Van Domelen said. “If you’re playing, you’re being marketed to.”

She said companies can take different approaches to web marketing: promoting the company, promoting a product or service, or promoting an individual or personality. She believes creating a “character” for a product or service through social media is the most effective.

Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask explains the difference between Email Marketing 1.0 and 2.0 to about 100 members of the Arizona Internet Marketing Association April 13 at the Tempe Mission Palms hotel.

For some small businesses, email marketing is essentially a special-sale “blast” sent to all of its accumulated customers once a week or once a month.

The problem is, that type of marketing isn’t efficient, can annoy recipients and doesn’t take advantage of available technologies to “build” and cultivate relationships.

There is a better way, according to Clate Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft.

In an April 13 talk titled “Email Marketing 2.0″ to the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association, Mask described how his firm helps small businesses market themselves like larger corporations, even if they have only a handful of employees.

There are three key elements to remember:

1. Email and CRM: Feeding the right message at the right time to your customer. A small business can learn how to do this by tracking its customers’ behavior – what the customer clicks on at the website, what motivates the customer to click on a link, what purchases the customer makes. There is a lot of information that a small business can use to enhance its customer relationships.
2. It’s more than just email: Think of all of the other communication tools at a small business’s disposal — direct mail, text, voice messages, faxes, Twitter. You need to use an array and “vary the message,” Mask said.
3. Smart automation: Today’s technology allows even small businesses to personalize its contacts with a customer. Instead of using one “auto response” for all inquiries, for example, a company now can use specific responses based on the type of inquiry and the customer’s characteristics. A business can then develop a flow chart for follow-up contacts so that a customer never falls through the cracks.

Infusionsoft, based in Gilbert, was launched in 2001. It now has more than 5,000 customers and 135 employees. It has grown 800 percent over the last three years.

One success story is All About Spelling, a husband-and-wife business in Eagle River, Wisc. Mask said Infusionsoft worked with the new e-publisher to launch the business and manage its customer contacts. The automated system worked so well that the business didn’t miss a beat, even after the wife was hospitalized for three weeks.

Mask said small businesses can use a “segmentation” approach that in the past would have been too labor- and time-intensive.

He told a story of how the Toledo Mud Hens, a Triple-A baseball team, used such an approach with great effectiveness.

The team’s marketers realized that it had three available suites for an upcoming game. It also had a database of 25,000 emails.

Did they send out a blast advertising the special? No, Mask said.

“How do you sell higher-priced stuff, like suites?” he asked the audience. “By having target audience sets.”

The marketers used a grouping of 25 businesses that had purchased suites in the past. They sent out an email to those 25 with a special deal.

Within 15 minutes the suites were sold – and the Mud Hens had a waiting list for future suites.

“They received more revenue, they built relationships and, perhaps most importantly, they didn’t tick off 24,975 customers with a stupid email they wouldn’t respond to,” Mask said.

Just firing off an email blast doesn’t build relationships, he said.

Instead, consider asking your customers how often they would like to hear from you.

By customizing the choice of responses, a business can learn which customers want to be contacted every day, every week or once a month. Regardless of which field the customer clicks on in the query, the preference falls into a database – and the small business has three groups of customers to target with appropriate messages.

“Emails can be conversational,” Mask said. “People would rather hear from people, not companies.”