E-marketing is quick and immediate. From business-to-business marketing applications to consumer packaged goods, the point of your e-marketing is to move your customer from Point A to Point B with the goal of making a sale.
The most important step in preparing a strategic marketing plan is to aggressively define who your targets are and what are the target cues that will cause them to buy. Print analysts know that an average print ad gets three to five seconds of attention. Today’s e-marketing messaging has been reduced to seconds, so the need to focus on what’s essential has increased exponentially.
In our market development business, we use tools such as affinity testing, sentiment marketing and related focused tools that crystallize the Who, What, Where, When and Why issues that make up a target market. With this data, we have the ability to provide some foundational building blocks that you can use to build your e-marketing program regardless of your particular market concentration.
1) Focus your message.
Clutter is a top reason why e-marketing messaging is moved to the trash. Too much content is the enemy of focused e-marketing—throwing in everything and the kitchen sink says to the reader, “I don’t have a plan and, as you can see, I have included our entire catalog of products and services. Hope you find something you like!”
2) Use drip asking.
Drip asking goes hand in hand with focusing your message. The drip concept is just how it sounds. You send your reader with a series of planned “mini-communications” that provides rich content and answers his/her questions that you have anticipated the recipient would want to know. Slow-but-sure gets results faster than all-at-once messaging.
3) Timing is everything.
Know your potential customers’ preferences and match your e-marketing to relevant aspects of their businesses or particular situations. Of course, a key here is to know their preferences before you start, but by considering things such as time zone, season of the year, consumer vs. commercial business, you can construct what the best time of day your e-marketing should arrive and related considerations.
4) Yell and sell rarely works.
Don’t scream at your intended reader. No one likes that in-person, and the same holds true for e-marketing. Having three solid points to make and making them with solid logic and facts will do much more than pushing messages using pop-up ads and animations that start without the viewer’s permission. These gimmicks usually produce the opposite impact of what was intended.
5) Use bold headings.
Grab your reader’s attention with a strong first statement and follow through with three to five main supporting points to create a cohesive experience. A subject heading that is relevant to a prospect’s specific needs will do much more than a long list of products and services.
6) Have a strong close.
Once someone has spent time reading your e-marketing, you need to tell him or her what to do next. This relates to your micro-messaging that you have mapped out. What do you want them to do next? Call? E-mail? Click? Offering too many options creates the same type of confusion that including too many offers produces.
7) Know where the gold is.
You should spend an equal amount of time analyzing the results of your e-marketing as you do in preparing it. Look at the stats your Internet Provider can provide you, or whatever service you use. Metrics such as number of opens, time spent reading, etc. will tell you what is being read and what is being trashed. Such insights are very useful when preparing your next e-marketing program.
The primary purpose of most e-marketing programs is to generate a qualified list of leads or to develop them. Knowing what your most important objective is can guide all of the necessary steps for launching your next program. Do you want to build a strong brand image or grow immediate sales? Knowing your true objective and focusing your efforts on it will produce greatly improved results.
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Tom Marin is the Founder and President of MarketCues, Inc., a national consulting firm. He has worked for some of the world’s largest corporations and middle-market firms. Tom’s focus is to help CEOs drive their strategy shifts and strategic growth programs. Follow MarketCues on Twitter. Tom also welcomes emails new LinkedIn connections or calls to (919) 908-6145.