Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Google and Personalized Search Results
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on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 
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Over the past couple of years, Google has made changes to its search engine to personalize the results that it presents. For instance, Google rolled out changes in 2009 to start integrating a user’s social media data on the Results page.
Today, they have announced that they are making more changes to integrate search and social.
What Do The Changes Entail
A huge part of today’s announcement (which Google is labeling “Search, plus Your World”) involves utilizing capabilities of Google+. A person’s search results may now be affected by the Google+ data that they are connected with. This could include:
- People: Users may now see people that they may want to follow based on what they are searching for
- Pages: Search results may now display pages (or profiles) that are related to a specific topic or area of interest that someone may have searched on
- Photos and Posts: Google may now display photos and information from Google+ posts that you have access to within search results
How Can You Prepare for these Changes?
Google has announced that they will start rolling out these changes in the next few days.
Thus, there are things that you can do now to take advantage of them. Here are a few:
- If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
- Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
- Get on Google+!
- Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
- Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
- Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.
It certainly will be interesting to see how users adapt and benefit from these changes. If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality:
Tags Identifying and Causing Issues
The Kern Organization recently released the results of a study that was designed to report on 2011 mid-year marketing trends.
While you may find that some of the results are less than surprising, I thought some of the trend feedback was important.
When asked about current trends, the two that ranked the highest in terms of importance were:
- 90% say better integration of online and offline data collection and analytics is essential.
- 84% indicate that aligning sales and marketing is important.
Yes, it’s obvious that marketers know that those are important items to solve. But is it possible that we as marketers also contribute to make those on-going issues?
The Sexiness of Doing it Now
When it comes to technology and marketing channels, marketers are (often wisely) early adopters. When we find success, we may push to implement further utilization of that solution in our business efforts. But sometimes we are so eager to hit “Go” that we fail to analyze how to effectively integrate its capabilities with our other marketing efforts.
This may come in the form of buying multiple software solutions that do not talk to each other; thus, resulting in us having multiple databases that store variations of customer and prospect information.
Also, Without proper integration, we may start harming our company with inconsistent branding and messaging rather than helping it by being an early adopter.
Alignment with Sales
When it comes to sales & marketing alignment, we may find that we are constantly focused on and caught up in creating and launching our next campaign.
In that scenario, we may fail to devote the proper time to ensuring that the Sales staff understands what data and follow-up actions are available to them from current or previous campaigns.
Thus, we limit the potential success of the marketing campaigns that we are executing.
Finding the Fix
Yes, it’s one thing to take the time to respond to a survey and prove that we understand what our issues are and where our priorities should be. But in regards to actually putting in the work to focus on creating solutions, that does not happen easily.
Is the solution to slow down? Is the solution to create more strategy and planning documents?
Most likely, the proper solution might vary across different companies. But this much is true – to increase productivity and success, we must find a way to solve those items.
Graph Expo News: Speaking on Print & Social Media
I’m excited to announce a couple of speaking engagements that interlinkONE and Grow Socially we’ll be participating in at Graph Expo 2011. If you’ll be attending the show, I’d love to see you there. Here are the details of the presentations:
Tips On How To Integrate Print With Other Channels
This presentation will be delivered on Sunday, September 11th, at 1:00-1:30.
During this session, we will provide tips, best practices, and inspiration on how print can be integrated with channels such as:
- Mobile
- Social Networks
- Your Website
How to Use Social Networks to Help Grow Your Business
This presentation will be delivered on Monday, September 12th, 11:00am – 11:30.
John Foley, Jr., CEO of Grow Socially and interlinkONE will be delivering this session.
He will provide key strategies and takeaways for companies that are looking to use social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, and more to better serve their customers and reach new prospects.
We hope to see you at Graph Expo soon!
Utilize Data to Improve Direct Mail
Well, it has happened. The price of postage has gone up once again (for some mail categories), as of April 17th. Yes, this could be an additional challenge that print and mail service providers may have to overcome to convince their clients to launch a new direct mail effort.
However, one of the best ways to overcome a cost objection from a client or prospect is to demonstrate how you can save them money. To accomplish that, you may need to spend more time than ever before on managing their data.
The biggest thing that you can do to reduce their costs (but also increase their ROI!) is to segment their mailing list. Once you do that, you can then use the following techniques to improve the success of their effort:
- Present targeted text and graphics: While segmenting their mailing list, you should be able to identify key attributes of each group. Those attributes might be based on demographics or previous purchasing history. Use that data to tailor the creative and messaging on the direct mail piece specifically to each group. If you want someone to respond to your mailer, you must reach their heart. The right graphics and words may help you accomplish just that.
- Tailor the call-to-action: While considering the attributes of each group in the mailing list, we must identify what triggers will appeal to them. Are they more apt to respond to messages about discounts and limited-time offers? Or, would they be more excited to respond to offers that will give them special treatment or status? Appeal to them properly in the call-to-action, and you should increase the response rate of the effort.
- Provide multiple response mechanisms: Whether it’s a personalized URL, a QR Code, an SMS short-code, or a Facebook “Like” icon, marketers may become excited by offering a response mechanism that utilizes more recent technology and channels. However, we must be willing to guide our customers through the reality that not everyone on their mailing list is on Facebook, has a smartphone, or wants to see their name in the URL. Thus, increase their chances of success by providing multiple response mechanisms on the mailer.
Three Tips for those Starting to Use QR Codes
Today, I have the wonderful opportunity of speaking at an event that is hosted by the Printing and Imaging Industry of Georgia (PIAG). Throughout the day, Jerry Scher and myself will be discussing how printers can grow their business so that they can offer additional marketing services to their clients.
We will absolutely be spending time discussing mobile marketing and how it can be integrated with printed materials. Of course, QR Codes can help to make that happen. A lot of print service providers and marketers that have already incorporated QR Codes into their services offering. However, there are still many that are just hearing or thinking about them now.
If you are in the printing business and are thinking about getting started with QR Codes, here are three tips that might help:
- If you don’t have one, get a smartphone!!! Not only will it allow you to scan QR Codes and demonstrate how they work to your clients, but it will also help you get more done overall for your business. I mean it.
- Start putting QR Codes on YOUR printed materials. Put them on your business cards, brochures, mailers, advertisements, signs, banners, and more. This will help you to learn more about them, especially in regards to identifying best practices. Most importantly, it will help to educate your customers and prospects.
- Look at the big picture — QR Codes are exciting, but they must be integrated into a larger marketing campaign. Their must be a strategy behind how you are going to use them. If you keep in mind marketing fundamentals (who is the audience? what is my call-to-action), changes of finding success with your QR Code efforts will increase.
