Some of the most successful marketing campaigns employed in the corporate world feature integrated, multi-channel initiatives that entail digital and traditional touch points wrapped around a common theme and a call to action. From recruiting college prospects to raising money for non-profit organizations, the most effective multi-channel campaigns appeal to end-users on multiple levels, but have the common denominator of getting (and keeping) the message in front of mind.
From an office technology dealer standpoint, the messaging and objective are fairly universal. The aim is to cast your company as a subject-matter expert in any number of disciplines, capable of assessing the client’s needs and delivering a solution that is tailored to fit their business. How you go about doing that, it stands to reason, will go a long way toward converting leads into business.
We’ll wrap up this month’s state of the industry report on digital marketing initiatives by examining how dealers have leveraged that knowledge base into bottom-line revenue.
One of the greatest success stories enjoyed by Impact Networking was the campaign it launched in advance of Impact Optimize 2019, the company’s annual business and technology summit held annually in Chicago. According to Marketing Manager Karlee Ricks, the campaign’s elements included billboards, Metra advertising, radio ads, email marketing, newsletter affiliation, podcast, social media and advertising via Google Ads, LinkedIn and Facebook.
The results were fairly dramatic—attendance swelled from 100 in 2018 to 1,000 this year. Nearly 70% of registrants required more than one touchpoint before registering. Plus, 43% of all registrants engaged with an email campaign before signing up.
“I think the campaign was successful because we continued to provide valuable content, encouraging prospects to attend and learn more,” Ricks said. “We were able to track our success through data and analytics, and now we are getting started on planning and marketing Optimize 2020.”
Trackable Results
The knock against the more traditional marketing methods has always been the inability to track their success. This was the case for Blue Technologies of Cleveland when it mobilized marketing channels to drum up interest in its annual technology showcase. Previously, the dealer advertised its showcase through individual and Mailchimp email campaigns, social activity and face-to-face interactions. Mailchimp supplied analytics, but the other methods weren’t trackable. Also, there was no activity that drove to the website past the registration.
In an effort to increase and manage its technology showcase push, each registrant is tracked and assigned by rep. Blue Technologies can see clients are engaged enough to visit various pages within its website and register for the event.
“With our initial Save the Date email blast, we had 60 registrations within a couple of days,” noted Cyndi Konold, marketing director. “We have a full campaign in place to add content such as speakers/topics, parking/logistics, and friendly reminders that we’ll ‘see you soon.’ In the past, we have not had a push this large, this quickly. Keeping our audience enticed, engaged and active are our goals. This result exceeded our expectations, proving that we are headed in the right direction.”
Educational Content
While Loffler Companies hasn’t embarked upon any campaigns recently, Marketing Manager Mary Steffl notes its greatest success has come in the form of generating leads from unique, educational content written for SEO. The dealer makes this content easily accessible on social media and its website, and account representatives proliferate the content among clients and prospects. The content acts as kindling for customers to generate questions and request additional information.
Benchmark Business Solutions of Lubbock, Texas, finds that supporting local organizations is critical to its marketing endeavors, particularly through social media, according to Constance Barbian, director of marketing and communications.
“Our audience has proven to be more interactive with campaigns promoting local charities and cheering on local college sports teams,” Barbian said. “Supporting small businesses and shopping local is important to our customer base; they like to see that we share that interest.”
