Author: Kimberly Cronk

A “touch,” in marketing terms, refers to any time a message is received by an audience. Back in the day, touches were largely in the form of TV commercials, radio spots, newspaper ads, and direct mail.

Today’s technology, however, opens up a world of opportunity to touch our customers and prospects anytime and anywhere. It’s a blessing and a curse, considering Americans are bombarded –upwards of 5,000 times a day–with messages.

It takes time to build trust and confidence with audiences and move them to make a decision–whether it’s to sign up for email communications, visit a website, make a donation, attend an event, or make a purchase. Savvy marketers rely on multi-touch marketing campaigns to drive results.

What is a multi-touch marketing campaign?

A “multi-touch” campaign delivers multiple messages to targeted audiences, often using a variety of communication channels. Examples of channels include:

• Email
• Direct mail
• Social media
• SMS (Text messages)
• Phone calls
• Events
• Webinars
• Sales calls

Used in combination, your audience is given the option to engage and respond in the channel most comfortable to them at any given time.

Why are they so effective?

Multi-touch campaigns, whether it’s the same message delivered multiple times in similar formats or different messages delivered via multiple channels, are more successful than single-touch campaigns. A well-planned and orchestrated campaign can:

• Build your message over time
• Build brand awareness
• Increase sales and conversions
• Reach audiences with a consistent message in a variety of formats
• Identify which methods work best with which audiences

Realize a greater return on your marketing dollars with multi-touch marketing campaign strategies.

By: Amy Soper

Many of us were marketing leaders at 5-years-old. We just didn’t know it yet.

If you’ve recently spent time around a persistent child asking an endless string of “why” questions, or remember your own curiosity at that age, you’re already familiar with a core marketing principle. To build a strong brand message, you need to first start with your “why.”

Your answer helps your customers—whether they’re 5 or 85—understand what you do and why you do it. If it’s a strong message, it drives staunch brand loyalty and robust sales. You might also refer to it as your unique value proposition, but no matter what you call it, it’s the one thing your business does better or differently than any other business in your industry.

Answer your “why”

• Speak to hearts and minds. People are driven by both, something the strongest brands tap in to.
• Make it relevant. Your message needs to be applicable to your customers’ lives. What does your brand offer that’s something they want and need?
• Keep it simple. Once you have a few messages in mind, test them out. Ask yourself if people can understand, remember, and repeat them with ease. If not, they’re too complicated. If so, you may have found your brand’s answer.

If you’re still not sure how to answer your why, Apple’s “Think different” campaign may inspire you. It’s a brand message that implies a promise to create products based on seeing the world a little different and to inspire customers to do the same. It’s a balance between heart and mind, it’s relevant, and it’s simple.

So, you have a blog (or maybe you don’t), but you’re not sure you truly need it as part of your marketing strategy. You’re posting content, but you also have a website, social media, advertising, brochures, and other materials. You may be asking yourself if it’s worth devoting resources to yet another channel.

It can be—if you do it well.

A blog is a powerful tool in a robust search strategy, a forum to position your company as a thought leader, and a distribution channel for other content you’re already producing.

Three elements of a powerful blog strategy

Consistency. Make no mistake, running a blog is a commitment. You can’t post whenever you feel like it—readers expect regular content and will quickly forget about you if you don’t post on a consistent schedule. It’s better to post once a week, for example, than at random intervals.

Keywords. Topics covered in your blog should tie into your keyword strategy. Why? Because if a potential customer types keywords from your blog into a search engine and your blog is listed, you’ve created an instant connection and a potential inbound prospect.

Distribution. One of the worst things you can do is create a blog and forget about it. Post regularly to make it work for you, and make sure people know about it. You already know customers can find your blog through search engines, but you also can lead them there by promoting your content through social media channels. And, if you’re struggling with content creation, take a look at materials you’ve already produced. A blog is a great place to repurpose relevant content you’ve already created.

Get posting now! Share a video, infographic, or white paper, and see what blogging can do for your brand.

√  A magazine produced by your trade or professional association.

√  A wellness and health education magazine in your mailbox from your health care insurer.

√  A children’s charity organization sharing stories about how your contributions have made a difference in the kids’ lives.

Everybody’s familiar with and enjoys reading custom pubs. The readers just may not make the connection that the magazine they have in their hands is, indeed, a custom publication.

Why are they so popular?

Because readers connect to brands through the stories. Here are three reasons B2B and B2C businesses and organizations from all industry sectors use custom pubs, also called private-label magazines, as a key component of their marketing strategy.

1. Uninterrupted you-and-me time with customers and prospects. The average engagement time with a custom magazine is 25 minutes.^* Within the pages of custom published-magazines and through online content, readers find the information they want, when they want it, and from a source they trust. This trust builds long-term relationships with customers (whether you call them clients, donors, members, or something else) and establishes you as an industry leader.

2. Your story, told your way. Custom publications—aligned with leveraged content for digital channels—seamlessly stitch together the topics and issues that matter to customers with a company’s brand narrative. Storytelling, in other words, is a way to engage with your readers and for them to develop deeper connections with your brand.

3. Content, multiplied. Custom pub content is a versatile tool. A substantive article in a B2B print magazine can be repurposed as a content blog posted to the company’s website, which can then be shaped into social media posts. Expand upon the article content—or use excerpts from it—to produce business case studies or special reports available for download by your association’s members. Even visuals from the publication can be optimized on Pinterest and Instagram to draw in additional readers.

A custom publication is an effective way to develop long-term, valuable relationships with customers, prospects, partners and vendors. For examples, visit www.fphorak.com.

Source: *http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2009/11/custom-print-magazines-why-cant-mastercard-produce-inc-magazine/

Click on the graphic for a closer look!

A brand can no longer survive on a logo and a unique selling proposition. Not even good products or superior service are enough to translate to loyal customers.

Companies today need to engage customers and prospects like never before. Thanks to the introduction of social media and other digital marketing channels, consumers are able to interact with, review, and research a business whenever they want—leaving companies little choice but to deliver that sense of community on all fronts.

A Harvard Business Review article by Susan Fournier and Lara Lee says companies need to realize two major things in order to achieve success in building brand communities. First, brand communities do not exist solely in the marketing realm, and, second, brand communities do not exist to serve the business.

“A community-based brand builds loyalty not by driving sales transactions but by helping people meet their needs,” Fournier and Lee write. “Contrary to marketers’ assumptions, however, the needs that brand communities can satisfy are not just about gaining status or trying on a new identity through brand affiliation.”

Companies can brand themselves and create these communities in a number of ways, but none are more touted than community outreach and charitable giving.

Patagonia—and the reaction of its customers—solidified this sentiment when it announced it would donate every penny of its Black Friday sales to grassroots environmental groups. While the outdoor clothing company had only projected to bring in about $2 million that day, sales topped $10 million.

The strategy of turning the consumerist-driven pseudo holiday into a “fundraiser for the Earth” spoke directly to the heart of Patagonia’s community.

“The enormous love our customers showed to the planet on Black Friday enables us to give every penny to hundreds of grassroots environmental organizations working around the world,” the company said in a media release.

The Facebook post announcing the Black Friday donation promotion garnered 13,000 likes and more than 3,600 shares.

“Brands that ‘share the harvest’ of their success—with their audience—are the ones that sustain the best momentum,” Glenn Llopis writes in the Forbes piece, “6 Brand Strategies most CMOs Fail to Execute.”

Llopis writes that even if a business doesn’t have the resources to give, saying “thank you” and showing gratitude are good places to start.

“Brands today have a much deeper responsibility to society, and the more your brand touches the needs of the world and helps to make it a better place,” according to Llopis, “the more abundant you will find the opportunities before you.”