• §  Data is King:  OK, I know this isn’t a revelation, but I am continued to be amazed at how few marketers have really thought through how this impacts their marketing efforts.
• §  A recent IDC study found that digital information is doubling every two years.   This is not only true about the data you keep on your customers, it is also true on prospects we are looking for.   No longer can we assume that the best and most relevant prospecting sources are from brand name compiled lists.   Often, the best prospecting sources are from new internet-based sources that may not have even been around a few years ago.  

How has increased data insight changed your marketing strategies?  2012 Action Item:   Develop performance-based data source testing plans for your recruitment efforts.   

Marketing Technology – Increasing capabilities while decreasing costs:   Today’s marketing technology brings capability to the small and medium-sized companies that could only be afforded by the big companies 5 years ago.   Significant advances have been made in key areas:

• §  Marketing Automation / Triggered Email:  New toolsdrive industry-best performance in multi-channel lead management … and is “always on”. 
• §  Real Time Metrics:  You don’t have to wait to evaluate marketing performance.   Know now!
• §  Multi-channel Marketing Data Warehouses:  Increase your marketing success through increased customer Intelligence.   Good news; Today’s technology doesn’t make this a multi-million dollar effort.  

Where does your company stand in leveraging today’s capabilities?  2012 Action Item:   Audit where you are at with your technology position.   Dedicate time to explore options in weak areas.

Multi-channel Integration increases your marketing performance:   However, smart approaches in this area have to be thought through and “performance-based”.

How are you using Integrated Marketing in your marketing plans for customer and prospect lead generation?   2012 Action Item:   Evaluate how your marketing plans leverage Integrated Marketing.   Develop testing strategies in this area and compare results to your current marketing efforts.

If you Google the term, you find different results ranging from company names, book titles to people who attempt to define it… including Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter, who says what it means to him in more than 140 characters.

At this year’s DMA Conference in Boston, Stone was one of the Keynote Speakers. His presentation, titled: Open, Informed & Engaged: A Changing Communication Landscape, covered what he believes is the “Meaningful Market.”

In a time when consumers’ expectations are higher than ever before, it is important for brands and companies to be human. 

This means “Dropping the PR shield,” as Stone noted, and using social media to interact with consumers. The Meaningful Market happens when you invite consumers to be a part of a conversation by asking them what they want to see or hear, creating calls-to-action and deepening the relationship that a consumer has with a brand or company online.

This also involves listening in social media networks.  Find out who is talking about your brand, or just as importantly your brand’s competitors, and reach out to them.

Create two-way communication. Social media isn’t just a way to reach out to more consumers.  It’s also a way for more consumers to reach you. In the Meaningful Market, the terms B2B or B2C Marketing are irrelevant.

We are entering the age of B↔B and B↔C Marketing. Because in the end, the Meaningful Market is all about being thoughtful, meaningful and creating a unique experience for your consumer.

Check out Stone’s entire speech and the Q&A afterwards, or jump to the 10:30 mark to hear Stone talk about the Meaningful Market.

What an inspiration to reinvigorate our own blog and our LinkedIn page!  Please share your thoughts with us, so we can make our conversation more meaningful to you and your business.

Tell us what’s important to you and what challenges you’re facing.  Tell us what you need to know to make your marketing job easier and more profitable. 

We can even give you examples – via the blog and INTouch, our quarterly newsletter – of how to integrate and apply traditional and digital marketing tools. 

When we hit on something meaningful to you, share it with a friend.  No matter how experienced, every marketer could use a little help in growing their business!

I’m back from my West Coast trip spent visiting clients in LA and, of course, attending the DMA 2010 in San Francisco.  

For me, the biggest take-away from this year’s conference was a big affirmation that ICS is on the right track with our product/service mix and integration of online and offline marketing tools… and that we’re probably leading the crowd when it comes to integration. 

It seems to me everyone agreed that integrating your online marketing and traditional marketing is critical to growing your business.  But, not everyone had a clear understanding of HOW to do it – especially when it came to social media. 

The most insightful thing I heard presented on social media was this:  “Think of social media as a friend.  If you can’t communicate back and forth as you would with a friend, then social media is not for you.” 

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think social media has its place in our marketing toolkits, but the successful marketer will be selective on where and how to use this latest, shiny new tool. 

In fact, we’ve had great results in integrating social media as one online element (in conjunction with paid search that is driven by keywords and is geo-targeted and targeted online advertising).  We’ve combined these online tools with offline tools to target qualified prospects and motivate them to register online for automotive ride and drive events.  Results have been excellent. 

So, I’m just saying that social media makes sense in some situations, but not in all… and maybe all of this attention to the new shiny tool is a bit out of proportion with the real-world.

My advice:  Stay on the forefront.  Know the latest, cutting-edge tools available to you.  Clearly understand your customers, potential customers and your business challenges.  Then, decide which online and offline tools within an integrated strategy make sense for you.

We’re even growing within the automotive sector.  In fact, I’m on my way to an auto OEM client meeting right now relating to large-scale, nationwide event marketing programs. 

Toward the end of the news release, Ken talks about how we’re integrating various marketing tools to create our new approach to event marketing which increases sales while reducing cost and complexity of these programs .  (More details to come in the future, so stay tuned to my blog.)

This news release will go out this week to select media, plus seperate big “thank you” to our team.  So, if you see any coverage on ICS in the news in coming weeks, let me know!  And if you’re a client or team member reading this post, thanks for getting us on the list yet again.  We could not have done this without you!

Inc. Magazine Names ICS as One of the Fastest-Growing Companies – 4 Years Running

Lansing, MI – September 30, 2010 – Inc. magazine named ICS Marketing Support Services on its 5000 Growth Companies List of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies for the fourth year-in-a-row.    

 “Fast growth at any time is a big achievement; fast growth during the past few years is just short of miraculous,” said Inc. editor Jane Berentson.

 Out of the 139 Michigan companies to make the list, Inc. ranked ICS as 129^th and published the company’s three-year growth rate at 6%.  Nine of the Michigan companies were listed in the advertising and marketing sector, among which ICS ranked eighth. 

 To qualify, companies must be U.S.-based, privately held and independent – not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies – as of December 31, 2009, and have had at least $80,000 in revenue in 2006 and $2 million in 2009.

 Ken Orr, President of ICS Marketing Support Services, gives four reasons why ICS has consistently grown during a down economy – and especially in Michigan, one of the hardest-hit states.  

 A Diversified Product and Service Offering – Several Eggs in Several Baskets
“Our clients are marketing agencies, as well as marketers from many industries.  ICS saw changes coming in the marketing world, such as the need for integrating data, direct marketing, email, paid search, mobile messaging and other marketing tools.  We successfully capitalized on this trend because of the range and type of products and services we offer.”
 

Clients Changed The Way They Do Business – And ICS Was Ready
“Clients have streamlined their operations – including marketing – and want streamlined solutions to their business challenges.  They also want direct relationships with those creating the solution and making it happen in the real world.  Consequently, we’re included earlier in the process – even as a partner to large agencies – to develop the up-front strategy.  This new approach drives down costs, time and complexity while making sure that every marketing dollar that the client spends truly impacts the bottom line.”        

The Marketing World Keeps Changing, But Data Remains King
“While the Internet and mobile devices are giving marketers new, exciting ways to reach prospects, data is still at the heart of all great marketing.  So, it’s not just our integrated approach and diverse offerings.  It’s also our access to the best data and our expertise in analytics that keeps ICS on Inc. magazine’s list.”   

Future Growth:  Internet Marketing, Mobile Messaging and Bundling the Right Pieces Together
“We see SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Mobile Messaging, Paid Search and so on as evolving tools in our offering mix.  We’re also careful about how we apply new marketing tools.  For example, Mobile Messaging is fraught with privacy issues just by the intrusive nature of it.  But, we’ve found select situations where it’s an effective tool to build customer loyalty for our clients. 

“So while we work hard to keep our products and services cutting-edge, we’re also smart about how we bundle them to meet each client’s needs.  For example, Event Marketing is a perfect scenario where we’re bundling our services in data, paid search, online registration portals, email, direct mail and Web analytics.  It’s the way we’re bundling these services that makes it a total game changer.”

We’ll show you how easy it is to set-up behaviorally triggered email messages that deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the exact moment he or she is most engaged and likely to respond using Listrak’s automated event triggered messaging solution.

You will learn how to:

- Add a powerful, automated email responder system to your integrated marketing mix

- Trigger specific email responses according to your customer’s behaviors or targeted events

- Have one-on-one conversations with each of your customers and prospects

- Increase your email’s relevancy, open rates and your sales

Participation in this webinar is free, but space is limited. So, reserve your seat today.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on our webinar, here are five tips from Target Marketing Magazine for Triggered Communications success.

• Thoughtfully defining your triggers – this is the heart of your program
• Prepare your sales team to handle these leads – without making customers feel like “they’re being stalked.”  You want to your customer to be loyal to your brand and feel, “Hey, this company really gets me and understands my needs.”  That’s a big difference from a creepy, “I’m-being-watched feeling!”
• Put contact frequency in your process so you don’t bug your best customer and burn-out your sales team
• Continually improve your triggered-based program using feedback from your best sales people

I’m excited about what Triggered Communications can do to grow our clients’ businesses and I’m looking forward to meeting you online on April 15 for the Webinar!  I hope you can join us!

I like Target Marketing Magazine’s research summary overviewing the growth factors in SEM, SEO, online advertising (a.k.a., Pay-Per-Click) and Email Marketing which are among the listed 16 online marketing trends.

More than 80% of marketers are using paid search and SEO and plan to expand search into more segments. As consumers search more online, Google’s AdWord inventory continues to grow.  All music to marketers’ ears as you expand your paid search and SEO efforts. 

Online advertising, “performance-based” media buys and integrated email marketing are also slated for substantial growth through 2014.

What’s the Difference? As marketers, we can get into a rut with our buzz words and even use some words interchangeably. This can inadvertently affect our strategies.

For example, you’re going to tackle your Web site very differently if you’re thinking about attracting qualified leads and how to manage those leads versus trying to get the most possible “hits” to your site.

More Leads, Better Qualified, Now What? Well, if you were opening a storefront, you would make sure that everything was organized and setup properly before flipping-on the “open” sign. The same is true for your Web site. You need to make sure that you’re ready to handle those online leads once they’re in your “door.” Make sure your sales funnel structure is ready to handle the leads properly – or you can loose that prospect forever.

Also, I can’t say it enough – INTEGRATION. To get the most out of your Web site and online marketing, you need to integrate across all of the channels that touch your customer – both online and offline.

These four trends are what ICS is all about and what we’ve been preaching for increased sales lift, better Marketing ROI and overall business growth.  Now, direct marketers across the country are finally starting to see these four tenets as "hot trends for 2010" according to Deliver Magazine.   

Targeting — With our advanced analytics, data management tools and direct marketing experience, you can target on a one-to-one level with specific customers and prospects using a tailored offer at the right time in the customer’s preferred channel.  Plus, you can focus your marketing dollars on targeting your most valuable prospects. 

Measurement/Analysis – Data not only gives you the clearest view of your customers for targeted marketing, but collecting and analyzing data is critical in matching-back sales to specific marketing efforts.  Now more than ever, marketers are on the hook to prove that every dollar you spend is growing the business. 

Integration –  Marketers who execute cross channel campaigns experience a 50 – 400% better response rate than singularly focused campaigns.  To learn about integration trends and what leading companies are doing in multichannel integration, view our on-demand webinar:  "Transforming Practices in Integrated Marketing Communications."

Prospecting — I like the quote in this article, "Today, everybody at every stage of life is open to marketing."  However, you can’t have great sales lead generation without well-honed targeting AND channel integration.  Lead generation is where it all comes together… in my opinion, this is where this article misses the 2010 mark BIG TIME.  Plus, online lead generation didn’t even get a mention!   SEO, SEM and paid search (where customers are actively searching your product/service) are only getting hotter in 2010 and beyond.