Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Multi-channel marketing communications - all in one!
Breakfast for Dinner
Posted by 
on Friday, May 14, 2010 
at 9:53 AM 
in 
One of my favorite childhood memories involves “backwards dinner” nights. They did not happen often enough. But every once in a while, my grandparents would treat us by serving something such as blueberry pancakes for dinner. For a child that hated things such as lasagna and turkey, I was in my glory as I dived into whip cream and syrup at 6PM on a Sunday night.
When it comes to marketing, having a plan and working via a process certainly provides benefits. If we have some sort of structure, we may be able to increase our efficiency in building, managing, and executing marketing campaigns.
However, we do need to be careful in regards to how strict we stay in the lines. If things become too repetitive, we may become bored and lose interest in the items that we are creating. As our excitement goes downhill, the quality of our work will suffer.
Also, while we may be walking along in what we assume is the correct path, the world of marketing may be changing. Thus, we need to give ourselves the freedom to realize that our path needs to change, and that we must take steps to readjust.
Yes, we need to be willing to admit that the marketing plan we loved on January 1st is no longer going to lead us to success for the year. We need to be willing loosen up our tie, dance around a bit, and find out how to move forward again.
In the end, a dinner consisting of meat, pasta, vegetables, grains and fruit certainly will be our best bet towards leading a healthy life. However, we must not be afraid to shake things up in a while. Could you add a serving of blueberry pancakes to your marketing strategy?
Tags Head-Scratcher
If you are a business owner, a chief marketing officer, or in anyway responsible for the marketing efforts of your company, I am sure you have the best intentions when it comes to your marketing efforts.
If your company is doing good, bad, or simply staying alive, you know that it’s important to keep marketing… to keep promoting your company, product, or services.
Well, despite these great intentions, we often still fall short when it comes to meeting our own expectations. Our marketing plan may have called for sending a newsletter once a month…. Or we may have planned on updating our website once a week. Or we may have created a blog 3 months ago – and it we are currently still thinking of our second article idea.
How do you react to this situation? Where you seem to have simply run out of ideas on the content for your your next marketing effort?
The following advice may sound simple… But I promise, it can help when your “creative” bucket seems to be running low.
Check the calendar: Yes, the calendar can provide inspiration for marketing topics. Look at the holidays — is there something that you can provide related to a specific holiday to your customers? Earth Day comes around once a year. Could you generate a postcard, a webpage, or an email that provides information on your company’s green initiatives? Or perhaps on how your product or service can help another company “go green” with their marketing efforts?
Share what makes your life easier: The internet is full of tools that can help us with our daily routine. Perhaps we read about a tool or a service somewhere, and have been enjoying its benefits. Sometimes we assume that if a tool is so great, everyone else must know about it, and be using it. Well, that’s not always the case.
I am a huge fan of Google Alerts. It allows me to enter a variety of terms that I’m interested in. Perhaps “multi-channel marketing”, “personalized URLs”, and “Print ‘09″. Well, Google sends me an email once a day with links to new pages that mention those terms. It helps keep me updated on a lot of things that I would have missed otherwise. Well, if you haven’t already tried it, Google Alerts is certainly a tool that could possibly help you in your business.
Ask yourself: What can I help someone accomplish: Keep it as simple as possible! Sometimes we worry so much about finding the magic words to sell oursleves. Well, try to break it down – what is one simple way that I (or my company, product, or service) could help a customer today? Then, write a little story about that.
Check the Recycle Bin: Okay, you certainly want to produce fresh content for your audience, as much as possible. But don’t be afraid to look in your archives. Open up the cabinet that contains your old mailers, the printed version of your old website, etc… There will most likely be a topic that catches your attention. Simply review and update the article, and then push it out again.
