Yesterday, we talked about a candy-based marketing lesson that taught a group of students the adoption model. Today, the only kind of candy we’ve got to offer are virtual sweets – how search marketing, social media, and email marketing fit into a very similar model.
Here’s how these techniques can help you through this cycle – which, I should add, is still a work in progress:
- Search engine marketing can be effective at any stage of the sales cycle. Natural search (SEO) is effective at all stages, supporting branding, lead generation, acquisition, referral, and more. Paid search is supportive in the same ways, but pay-per-click is particularly effective for acquisition. I used to think that paid search was only truly effective for generating leads and sales, but I was wrong about that. Let’s say, for example, you’re a major electronics provider – we’ll call you Acme for this example (yes, I’m a big “Road Runner” fan). You’ll certainly buy all your branded terms in search, like “Acme Electronics”, “Acme televisions”, etc. for awareness and interest. You’ll probably also buy product-related terms, such as “3-D flat screen television” and “10 megapixel digital camera” for acquisition. But would consider buying terms like “Acme digital camera driver for Windows 7” or “Acme HDTV 174S output cable”? You should. These are terms that will help drive your retention and referral efforts, and keep your customers from calling the Geek Squad instead of your customer service desk.
- Social media is most effective at the awareness phase, adding “air cover” and supporting both search and public relations. It’s also very effective at the retention and referral phases. However – and feel free to state your arguments here – it’s my belief that social media is not yet effective in the acquisition phase. Your social media friends do NOT want to be sold to. Sure, you can share your products with them, your branded games, your tips and advice – but if you try to sell to your fans on Facebook and Twitter (or other social networks), you’re just going to irritate people. Social media is most effective at raising awareness and interest and engaging contacts. It is not a channel amenable to the strong call to action.
- Email marketing is strongest at the acquisition, retention, and referral phases of the sales and marketing cycle. As stated in our recent blog post, reports of the death of email are greatly exaggerated. Email is still a highly effective channel, and it still drives among the highest ROI of all marketing channels. According the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email’s return on investment last year was $43.52 for every dollar invested, and Epsilon reported that open rates in 2009 remained a strong 22%. That’s a jump of 5% from the previous year. And click-through rates averaged nearly 6% in ‘09.
So just to dive a little deeper with email, think of it this way: You can use email newsletters at pretty much any stage of the cycle. They’re great for pretty much anything, including acquisition. Fitness Magazine’s “Fit List” emails are a great example of this – the drive interest with sexy subject lines, they contain links to relevant (to me!) content that drives the reader to the site, and every email contains a discount on subscriptions to their print magazine. Once you’ve converted and subscribed to the magazine, the emails keep you engaged with that great content.
Another great example of effective email marketing is the strategy used by Edible Arrangements. Not a week goes by when I haven’t received an email reminding me about how I need to send a gift for Administrative Professional’s Day or some other forgotten occasion. And look, in this email, they just happen to have the perfect, most appropriate gift available at three affordable price points, easily ordered online… That’s leveraging email for acquisition.
We left out mobile on our chart, which is still a work in progress. Mobile, in my opinion, is also effective at every stage of the cycle…but it’s more complicated. Mobile is a universe unto itself, offering so many channels – SMS, mobile web sites, mobile apps, in-app advertising, mobile web advertising. You can almost build a sales cycle chart *just* for mobile!
Maybe that should be our next post.
