Web events are great for building brand awareness, positioning your company as an expert in the industry and generating sales leads. From Webcasts, Web Conferences and Webinars, these content driven techniques work very well in B2B environments, where you can adapt them for product demos, market research presentations and/or educational sessions in exchange for contact information. 

With that said, don’t poison the effort with overt sales pitches and marketing messaging.  In the beginning, it’s all about the audience; if they respond with interest, you can then start communicating your specific value proposition. 

Depending on the audience and purpose, you can promote a Web event like any other online offering.  Your goal is to capture a targeted and captive audience and to deliver quality content, allowing 15-45 minutes of uninterrupted user contact.  Make sure you segment leads via the signup form about registrants’ levels of interest, so you can easily follow-up on the most profitable leads first.  

Webcasts: Generally refers to a live, video-only, Internet broadcast.  Inherently passive, it’s delivered from one speaker to many listeners, often 50 or more.  Mostly, works best in B2C environments for performance events, entertainment and/or educational content.   

Web Conferences:  Primarily used for small group presentations that are data or document driven.  Web conferences support two-way interaction and are generally used near the close of the sales cycle.  Conferences mostly involve some combination of teleconferencing, PowerPoint presentations, live desktop-based whiteboards, and chat software. 

Webinars: Webinars are the most complex format, mixing multimedia components such as one-way audio conference, PowerPoint presentations, (sometimes video), whiteboarding, live polls or surveys and one way instant messaging for participants to submit questions. 

Making Webinars Work

Designed to reach a large number of participants over a widespread geographic region, Webinars generally require a sequence of activities to be successful: promotion, registration, confirmation and reminder emails, thank you messages, access to presentation materials, usually recorded Webinars for those who couldn’t attend, and feedback via surveys.   

Expect fall-off from registration to attendance; perhaps only 30-40% of pre-registrants actually show up.  Of those, you’ll probably find only 5-10% of your registrants are close to sales ready.  Move carefully in these environments.  Use these opportunities to build credibility and trust.  Establish a relationship and answer questions objectively.  Timing is everything. 

Here are some tips for planning Webinars: 

1. Focus on high quality, relevant content to attract a strong attendance.
2. Your promotion should clearly answer, “What’s in if for me (WIIFM)?” 
3. Consider paid ADV or newsletter sponsorships to promote your Web event.
4. Record and post your Web event on your web site to provide ongoing value.
5. Obtain feedback via online surveys – maybe even share the feedback as part of your follow-up “thank you” email.
6. Always include contact information for future contact.

Consider Web events as premium branding and lead generation opportunities.  Various web-based solutions are available from Gotowebinar, Microsoft Live Meeting, or WebEx, just to name a few.  Have ideas to share, please do in comments below.

Marketing is critical to business growth.  Unless a business focuses on and aligns their offerings with specific needs targeted towards a specific market segment, a business will not succeed. 

With that, marketing is the process of “maneuvering” an organization towards the success of selling a product or service that people need or want and are willing to pay for.  From anticipating customers’ future needs and wants (market research), to providing a product roadmap (product marketing) to then communicating, promoting, distributing and selling – marketing spans many areas of business.

In an attempt to guide customers towards a specific offering, effective marketing must be entirely clear on defining and communicating its’ value proposition (or set of benefits) to a set of targeted end users – then actually delivering on that value through the offerings presented.  In creating awareness, it’s essential those top value points are communicated through the various marketing channels of communication.

What is Direct Marketing? 

Direct marketing is a channel of marketing primarily focused on “lead generation” and emphasizes trackable and measurable results per campaign.  There are two main characteristics that distinguish it from other types of marketing.  

1. Direct marketing attempts to send its messages directly to a highly targeted group of consumers, without the use of intervening “mass media” such as radio or TV.  This always involves direct communication with consumers or businesses (many times unsolicited) including; email marketing, direct mail, telemarketing, fax campaigns, door hangers, and more.  

2. Direct marketing is focused on driving sales directly attributed to a specific “call-to-action.”  Whatever medium is used, “direct response advertising” asks the prospect to take a specific action usually within a specified timeframe (i.e. call by end of week and receive 25% discount). 

In turn, direct marketing usually offers a clearer picture on ROI then other marketing channels thus providing marketers a much needed tactical approach which can provide results both sales and management teams can easily relate to and understand - so that in your next meeting when they ask “what have you done for me lately” your reports will justify all activities and expenses. And what a thrill that is.

Email is a great tool and can be used effectively for direct marketing programs if done properly; however, there can be low rates of return, you can risk annoying would-be customers, and have to understand spam guidelines to avoid a negative impact. 

With that said, email marketing is a powerful medium if you carefully craft an effective campaign.  Here are 9 ideas to help you succeed: 

1.     Don’t rent email lists.  Don’t learn the hard way.  At first, it may seem like a good idea – paying a low price for thousands of names and emails.   However, most of the time the quality isn’t there (i.e. the demographics aren’t highly targeted, many emails are outdated, etc…) and there’s the risk of being accused of spamming, which quickly diminishes credibility.  You never really know what you’re getting.  So don’t do it! 

2.     Build your own list.  There are many good ways to build an email marketing list.  On your web site have visitors opt-in (whether for a newsletter, at check-out or when completing an online form).  In your retail establishment, ask customers whether they’d like to receive email communications from your business when they are paying for their purchase.  With that, don’t make it a simple request - be specific about what’s in it for them (i.e. get a bonus, receive discounts, learn about special sales and events, and more).  Sell them on the value of the communications and guide them into signing up. 

3.     Be clear about your value.  Make sure your emails are exciting and full of substance.  The communications should be informative and useful.  Offer tips, ideas, suggestions… things of value to your customer.  Use the email’s subject line to announce the offer upfront. 

4.     Be consistent.  You should view your email marketing communications as ongoing dialogue between you and your customers and prospects.  Consistency is key.  Schedule your emails weekly or monthly based on the communication needs of your business.  Also, be consistent with formatting and type of content you provide.  Work towards having customers anticipate your next communication. 

5.     Keep it simple.  From layout and design to the amount of content you include, make sure your communications are easy to read and pleasing to the eye.  Limit the content to only “pure value”.  Bring in a marketing writer to at least review your content.  The best way to fine tune this creation cycle is to collect samples of emails that work and emulate their structure, design and basic content blocks.  Always proof your work many times over. 

6.     Be aware of spam triggers.  Many people use spam filters.  While they are helpful for the end consumer, they make your job more challenging.  They keep you from reaching your customers and prospects.  Arm yourself by understanding what types of words are likely to set off spam filters (i.e. FREE, Special Offer, etc…).  Many email marketing tools have “spam checkers” built in as part of their service.  If not, you can easily find one.  It’s important to educate yourself to be effective. 

7.     Effective campaign management.  Another challenge to email marketing is actually managing your campaigns.  Once you have the customer data, you need to be able to segment and target them, manage the data sets, the campaigns and the communications within those campaigns.   There are many great companies offering effective and affordable services – from the basic (www.icontact.com) to the more elaborate and more expensive (www.Eloqua.com).   These are just 2 of many, so do your research to be sure you find the right one. 

8.     Make it easy.  Make sure it’s easy to sign-up; from a quick form in retail to 1-click opt-in on web sites - make it painless to join. Also, make it easy for readers to pass along your communications.  By nature, email is viral – so encourage people to pass it on.  Lastly, make it easy to opt-out.  The ability to unsubscribe is key to following spam guidelines and keep your would-be customers happy. 

9.     Test for effectiveness.  From testing your campaigns before you send them to reviewing metrics of specific campaigns after sending them, make sure you understand what’s working and what’s not.  Take corrective action based on those results.    

Summary:  Email marketing is an effective marketing tool once you understand the limitations and empower yourself with the knowledge on how to create, optimize and deliver successful campaigns.  Do your research to ensure success.

Please post your ideas and suggestions below for further dialogue. 

In a post at The Lonely Marketer, Patrick Schaber, talks about his criteria for choosing the blogs he reads. With so much engaging content available, he’s frequently tempted to expand his reading list. To help him stay focused and decide what to read, Schaber developed a list of blog must-haves.  Here’s some of his advice:

• Provide unique, actionable content. “To be honest,” writes Schaber, “I don’t care if you’ve been blogging for five years or five minutes, if I feel I’m going to leave a site having learned something new, count me in.” He gives extra points for highlighting recent content in a sidebar.
• Post frequently. This doesn’t mean that you have to blog every day—a few each week will do the trick—but if multiple weeks pass between each post, readers will stop checking in.
• Maintain focus. Nothing says you have to restrict yourself to a single topic, but you’ll confuse readers if you hop randomly from subject to subject without explaining why.
• Add visual interest. You’ll notice that many bloggers include an image with each post. Follow their lead. “So much of social media is visual perception!” says Schaber.

Summary: Good content is good content. Even the busiest people make time for their favorite blogs.

Source: The Lonely Marketer. Read the entire post here.

Do you know what a Blog is?  If not, here’s an excellent 3 minute video tutorial that gives you a quick lesson on blogging -provided by CommonCraft.com.  Turn up your volume and check it out >> 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

When you advertise, you need to “place your lures where the fish hang out”.  With that, we recommend compiling a marketing notebook with ideas, articles and web sites and create marketing folders on your hard drive to store online research.  Over time, you’ll gather enough information to assist with solid ideas on completing a Web Marketing Game Plan.  Below is a good overview to get you started.

• Offline Promotion:  Community and industry events, direct mail, marketing collateral, print ads, offline PR, packaging, product placement, promo items, site launch activities, corporate image (stationary, logo, etc) 

• FREE Email Techniques: Autoresponders, FAQs and Packaged Blurbs, Group or Bulk email, Signature Blocks 

• Web Site Promotion:  Affiliate programs, automatic updates, award posting, blog, bookmark reminders, calls to action, chat room, content updates, contests/drawing/games, coupons and discounts, downloads (postcards, sound effects, animation), endorsements, trusted logos (BBB OnLine, Trustee, VeriSign), favicons, free offers/giveaways, guest books, make this your home page tool, internal banners, live events onsite, logo loyalty program, message boards, nonprofit donation marketing, onsite auction, onsite newsletter registration, onsite search; other interactive or rich media, product reviews/onsite, RSS feeds, samples, social networks (onsite), surveys ad polls, tell a friend (send a link), testimonials, viral marketing, vlog/video blog, what’s new page, wiki 

• Online Promo / Buzz Campaigns: Award site submissions, blogging, hot sites submissions, inbound link campaign, online link campaign, online PR (www.Prweb.com), podcasting, posting to chat rooms, message boards and social network sites, posting to review and opinion sites, reciprocal inks, text messaging, viral techniques, webinars / webcasting, what’s new announcements, wireless marketing and cell phones 

• Opt-in Email Newsletter: Specify audience, frequency, and method; your own email lists, paid subscription newsletters or e-zines, public mailing lists, rental email lists, viral email 

• Search Engine Submissions:  basic 4, directory submissions, industry engine submissions, international search engines, local and map submissions, shopping search engines (free), specialty search engines (for blogs, videos, images and so on) paid submission service, search engine optimization onsite, XML feeds 

• Paid Online Advertising:  Banners Ads, banner exchange, classifieds online, Google ad-words PPC and other options, newsletter sponsorships, nonprofit sponsorships, other PPC engines and directories, overture PPC, shopping PPC, site sponsorships, Yahoo Search Marketing PPC and other options 

As you can see, there are lot’s of options when it comes to promoting your business, so plan your “fishing expedition” carefully, follow-thru consistantly and track campaigns vigilently to ensure ROI.