SugarBush Media Solutions Blog

If I told you the secret to boosting response rates by 200%, would you believe it? What if I wrote you a letter and put your name on the top in place of "To Whom it May Concern" would you feel like I was speaking to you, would you respond? Does this sound like your personalization plan?

Students want to know that what they are receiving is worth their precious time. To make it into their hands and not the trash you'll have to be as personal and relevant as possible. Whether you are emailing, tweeting, blogging or shipping following these 5 important components will drastically improve your success.

Could this be a competitive advantage? I am seldom asked, what is Cloud Marketing? Seldom because not many organizations have heard of it, or know the value it can deliver. Yes this can most certainly be a competitive advantage.

Forward thinking companies are using ideas from Cloud Marketing processes to deliver some amazing results in their marketing and sale initiatives. The majority of innovative marketing will be done this way in the very near future.

Lets start by saying I am not aware there is an official defination of the term Cloud Marketing, and multiple prespectives could all be correct in some way, depending on how they base their meaning.

Cloud Marketing Defined:

If you look at the trends you will find hugh increases in interactive spend.

Forrester’s estimate of 2009 spending for the interactive marketing channels is as follows:

• Search marketing – $15.4 billion
  
• Display advertising – $7.8 billion
  
• E-mail marketing – $1.2 billion
  
• Social media – $0.7 billion
  
• Mobile marketing – $0.4 billion 

Although many organizations are increasing their spend in this area, many do not have the proper web base, or web 2.0 solutions. Web 2.0 solutions are the hub of all marketing tools. These tools allow you to leverage all your digital media channels, do the proper measuring and align all your marketing efforts.

Here is the forecast for the same interactive channels from 2009-2014

We just launched our newest Marketing Management Solution, Activate OnDemand. Why is this so important in the world of Marketing Automation? It replaces a lot of traditional static marketing materials that are not effective and costly. Times have changed and thanks to technology and new strategies there are new ways that replace old legacy marketing communications.

The future of marketing is becoming OnDemand. If content can be kept in a digital form, it can be current, or fresh. Digital content can be delivered on the web, or in print with relevant content.

Traditional methods produce static brochures, catalogs, flyers, marketing collateral and more. The problem is, in many cases, true costs to produce are not often understood. Not only do you have the cost of the print, studies have proved their is waste up to 40% on average as outdated material os  discarded. Inventory and labor has a cost as well. 

Activate OnDemand works like this. Clients and prospects fill out a request or short form on the web indicating their preference. This could be their business problem, or specific need. Additional  relevant content is collected regarding fit, company, job title etc. The Activate OnDemand engine matches up content stored in a database and relevant is queued up for the request.

Many organizations relay on sales to generate and qualify leads. The problem is, sales is sifting through leads and looking for best opportunities to close this month, or quarterly quotas. 

As time passes sales has far to many leads to do the proper follow up and nurturing. Many of these nurturing opportunities are lost due to the fact that sales does not know when the lead is ready to buy.

Lead nurturing programs assist the marketing and sales functions  to do the following:

• Reduce sales time spent on dead end leads
  
• Significantly increase the quantity of A-B leads
  
• Predict monthly and quarterly sales quota
  
• Gain visibility into their sales pipeline
  
• Free up sales from lead generation and cold calls
  
• Deliver predictable return on the marketing spend 

Typically 25% of all incoming leads are not qualified, nurturing systems are designed to automate this process. Additionally 25% of leads are ready to buy and should be passed to sales. Nurturing programs can help sales in this process as well, feeding relevant content to move the prospect through the buying cycle.

If you ask a group of executives if the consultative sales person is obsolete you will be surprised of the answer. How would you answer that question? The answer for them was absolutely not, and you may be thinking the same. So think again and read on.

When I first heard that statement frankly I was shocked myself and had to really give that some thought. I had heard that statement from a wise person who wrote the book Prosultative Sales (which by the way is a great book and a must for sales and marketing for the 21st century).

At that time I myself had been focused on a new marketing model Relevant Marketing, Process Automation across Multiple Media. Since my focus was on process it never occurred to me that in fact I was leveraging automation to bring the sales process to the cart. A big light went on as I realized what in fact I was doing.

Here is the theory, if you can streamline your sales processes where you can bring the client to the shopping cart (the buy) you have eliminated all the friction in  the buying process. You would be hard pressed to find companies less that the fortune 500 companies actually doing this. We are in the early stages of innovation here.

I found this article below on selling power (which by the way if you are in sales or marketing you should be a subscriber), and this reiterates my view that marketing must step up and take the lead.

In my presentation series that I give around the Detroit metro market we  speak about how sales get the short end of the stick and companies lose in the end. The fact is if sales is expected to generate monthly and quarterly results how can they also prospect?

To accomplish revenue objectives for sales, marketing must deliver sales ready leads to sales. This efficient method lets marketing do what is does best, market. And sales get face to face time to meet quota.

How can marketing meet these sales ready objectives? Marketing Management Solutions.

Why web 2.0 is the hub of all marketing management solutions.

Five years ago we gave away our website development business (building company websites) because frankly there was no revenue to be made. All or most of the web developers went out of business, underground or merged to be a bigger player. Ask anyone you know and they will tell you its common place to have a developer that works out of their home.

Finally in 2008, Web 2.0 arrived (actually born in 2004 but not so refined as now) and its a whole new ball game. I would consider this one of the marketing management solutions that should be a part of every marketers toolbox.

 Web 2.0 is poised to make the biggest impact on organizations in the 21 st century. The hub of all marketing initiatives really begins with implementation of a Web 2.0 platform.

There are a lot of fantastic things going on in the world of marketing these days, most of which are evolving from the innovative use of technology. In addition to the Web 2.0 and social media avenues we’ve all heard so much about, these new tools include integrated software that manages and scores customer leads, tracks responses to various campaign elements, and automates marketing by sending follow-up messages based on a target group’s response to earlier materials.

With products like these available, savvy marketers are visioning creative ways to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns while lowering costs --- good news for both their professional reputation and their company’s bottom line. But while these new technologies are generating a lot of excitement in marketing circles, figuring out how to best implement them back in the office can be overwhelming.