What are you doing tomorrow at 1pm PST?
I already know what I’m doing—joining my colleagues Richard Dannenberg and Spencer Powell for another awesome episode of the 21/20 Marketing series! Last month Richard and Spencer asked me to sit in on the all SEO broadcast. The 3 of us discussed inbound marketing for printing and mailing companies. If you missed the live broadcast, watch the video below to learn how search engine optimization and social media work together to help grow your business:
Where does print fit into your integrated marketing mix?
The March show went so well, Richard and Spencer invited yours truly to participate on the regular. I’m super stoked at the opportunity to share my online marketing knowledge with the printing community! Tomorrow’s topic will be “Where does print fit in?” Got a question about this subject? Submit your question on this form or tweet us your query with the hashtag #2120marketing!
We plan to tackle these tough topics and more:
Is print strictly an outbound communication channel or are there some inbound values?
What unique benefits does print deliver for new businesses and start-ups?
Does print complement content marketing and social media?
What strategies get the highest response rates and conversions/sales?
It might sound strange to talk about direct mail in a broadcast made for the CMYK crowd, but it seems many printing companies neglect to promote their own businesses with ink! That’s just craziness considering the tools at your disposal. After all, you have access to the pro press equipment, paper/cardstock, a customer database for mailing lists, and likely have an in house design team to produce your artwork. All these assets mean you’re able to spread the word at a much lower cost than your clients. You’re still dealing with overhead costs, yet the reduced markup means substantially higher ROI. Plus you’ll learn how to fine tune your own campaigns so you can offer better advice and consultations to your clients.
The key to inbound and direct marketing success
While we gear up for tomorrow, I want to touch on an important point from the SEO Hangout session. In the video, Spencer and I explained that inbound marketing is an ongoing process. You don’t just tweak a couple of elements on your website and call it a day, at least not if you’re serious about achieving long term goals. The same can be said for every other form of advertising.
Whether you’re using social media channels to maintain relationships or targeting hot prospects with postcards, you need to be consistent in your communications and brand messaging. Be forewarned that consistency requires a healthy dose of patience. Take this blog for example. I started posting on here in February of 2013. Since then I’ve written about 164 articles on top of the guest posts I’ve written on other sites, press releases, and countless social media updates. Point being that no one read or shared our first post. Seriously. And I didn’t expect them to, not until I’d been typing away for several months.
Your first direct mail campaign might be a lot like my first blog post in that you probably won’t get the kind of response you’re hoping for. Well, you may get at least a couple of solid leads off your initial round of mailers, which already puts you ahead of my pathetic post traffic. Anyway, don’t get discouraged because your next couple of campaigns will definitely pay off. Your customers need to get used to seeing your postcards in their mailboxes and come to expect discounts and personalized promotions weekly, monthly, etc. And with each campaign, you’ll get your hands on data to test variables and improve your results.
Repetition keeps your brand fresh in their minds, which explains why integrated strategies work best. In fact, search and direct marketing are the top 2 channels for lead generation, and direct beats search in terms of sales from the first point of contact.
How to attend the 21/20 Marketing Google Plus Hangout event
Last time several of you guys got confused about where to go and what to do to watch this live broadcast. We apologize for not having our wire crossed—your feedback always helps, and we think we’ve figured out a way to simplify things. For starters, we got rid of the sign up form. There’s still a form on the TMR Direct site, but it’s only for folks who want to submit an integrated marketing question beforehand. Everyone else, please click the link below to visit the official event page on Google Plus tomorrow at 1pm PST/4pm EST:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/ccru5v2kuf3t1im1b9fjmgk6cr4
Note: for Google Plus newbies, here’s what you’ll need to do in order to participate in real time. If you’re unable to watch live, you can always catch the replay video!
#1) Google Plus account – yes, you need to have a Google + account to attend. Don’t have an account? Create a Gmail account or login to your existing Gmail account to get started.
#2) Download the Hangouts Plugin
#3) Webcam & microphone- You can tune in without this equipment, but Google highly recommends this equipment to improve your viewing experience.
See you tomorrow!!!