Consumers are increasingly tuning out traditional, interruption based marketing methods and deciding on their terms when and where they will interact with brands. Today it’s essential to connect actions to outcomes. Let’s look at two approaches:
Hope-And-Pray Approach
Let’s assume for a moment that the customer, a B2C automobile dealership, wants to generate 100 new leads next month. The dealership has a solid brand awareness, but has hit a plateau in gaining more market share. Historically, the dealership has invested heavily in industry publications, billboards, TV and some radio, spending well north of $10,000 per month on advertisements. Although the ads are somewhat creative and is believed to play a role in building brand awareness, there is no direct way to measure the impact on sales. This is what we call the hope-and-pray approach, also known as outbound or interruption-based marketing. Let’s consider this Option A.
A Different Approach
For the same $10,000 per month, we will propose Option B, which we will call the inbound marketing approach. This approach will help differentiate the customer away from the bland corporate messaging that permeates their website and marketing campaigns, by creating value, and parlaying its personal brand into thought-leadership initiatives.
This plan will include:
- A daily social media strategy that expands the dealerships network and reach
- A weekly content marketing strategy designed around what customers are searching for
- Newsletters
- A search marketing strategy
- Marketing automation providing content customers are searching for 24/7
- Online contests with calls to action
- Custom professional landing pages
- Lead nurturing tailored to customer interests
- Monthly Scorecard to measure effectiveness
- Analytics for determining number of sales generated
- Weekly Summary Report to provide a snapshot and track what’s working or not working
- Dedicated and talented online media team
The newsletter and contests will initially be promoted through the customer’s database of 10,000 contacts.
As a marketing strategist, I am going to put my money on Option B.
Why Option B?
Experience tells me Option B has a far better chance of producing 100 leads of people who are interested in buying in the near future. Option B also afford me the opportunity to measure every single element of the program: specific information requests, contest registrations, newsletter registrations, landing page conversions, email click-through rates, referring sources, blog page views, new subscribers, social media reach and sharing, and inbound links. I’ve also positioned the customer to be known as the thought leader rather than just another dealership. I will also be able to monitor performance in real time, and have actionable data to better spend next months $10,000 and grow more sales leads.
How measurable are your results?
[…] can be stated – 100 new sales, 90% customer satisfaction, 99% uptime – then ensure the agreement captures something measurable.Create a system for tracking. Create expectations for how the expectations and goals will be […]