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(Here's a warning to those of you who got a heavy dose of politics out of last week's YourVoices. That was that. I'm back to marketing guy. If you're not into marketing or advertising, you may find this post as exciting as sticking your tongue onto a cold metal pole.)
I follow an incredible amount of news from the advertising industry. From online subscriptions to AdAge to a multitude of bloggers and Twitterers, I find myself immersed in the world of doom and gloom from the current economy. Without a doubt these are hard times. Maybe the worst in ages. And when times are tough, it's often advertising that's the first to go. There's an old phrase from ad man and department store icon John Wanamaker that always gets rolled out during these times: "I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted ... I just don't know which half." During tough times, sometimes both halves get cut.
So, what's a company to do? Has the sky fallen?
I think not. In fact, a simple plan exists to make hay during these times, and yet the elements of the plan don't smell much like advertising. I like to call this plan "The Handraiser Plan." You see, each and every day consumers go online armed with several missions: to find something, be entertained, learn, and spend money. In each of their online activities they are essentially raising their hands to indicate that they are interested in engaging with you and, better yet, ready to buy.
Let's take possibly the least sexy of all online behaviors: email. Email continues to be the #1 online activity. I asked my ol' pal Chip House, VP of Relationship Marketing for ExactTarget, to give me some stats on email. Here's what their current research study indicated: "From a commerce standpoint, our Channel Preference Survey showed that a full 95% of consumers have opted in to receive promotional messages via email, versus 85% for direct mail and 37% for telephone. Also, perhaps the most compelling statistic of 2008 was the DMA's numbers on the effectiveness of marketing channels. In its 2008 Survey, the DMA found that email generated $45.06 for every dollar spent. That's an ROI [return on investment] of over two times that of other online marketing tactics surveyed and over six times that of catalog direct marketing."
Boring old email just got its sexy back, didn't it?
Let's go one more roll down the boring hill: search. Nearly 70% of all Internet traffic originates at a search engine. Let's think about that for a moment. What is a search engine? Essentially search -- and let's not kid ourselves, we're really talking about Google -- is the most efficient conduit between a person's desire and the content which will fulfill that desire. In the world of commerce, the search engine is the most breathtaking destination on the planet -- a fairy-tale land where customers voluntarily reach out and say, "Sell to me." To those companies that make search visibility a key priority go these handraisers.
I could go on. I could talk about the intoxicating world of analytics which anchors all of these efforts. Analytics provides you quite literally with a direct roadmap for how to reach out to the handraisers. But I'm sure this has been about enough excitement for one day.
I'll leave you with this. In my world of marketing, the most exciting thing is to watch customers come in the doors -- physically or virtually. The means to acheiving sales have costs associated with them. In this market, going after those handraisers using some of the least sexy tools we have also have the very best return on investment.
Call me boring, but I find that exhilarating.