When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going “Green”
March 30th, 2009
We don’t need to hear more about the gloomy economy and how marketers have to work with shoe string budgets during rough times, aggravated by the immense pressure to deliver more results with less dollars. So amidst all of the craziness, social media/ Web 2.0 and other smart marketing tools like permission-based email marketing and virtual roadshows take center stage, offering marketers the promise of survival during this rough-and-tumble time.
How about adding one more item to your survival list? Eco-marketing.
Chad Horenfeldt’s post on The recession is here – Time to become an eco-marketer explains his definition of eco-marketing: “…it’s not about adding some corny green recycle image to your website…”, but rather, working with the concept of 3 Rs in demand creation terms- Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. Not from an environmental standpoint, but from a marketing perspective.
As marketers, we’re constantly chasing new technologies, churning out new campaigns, new landing pages, new communications, new leads, etc. While it’s good we challenge ourselves with new ideas and new methods, we often leave behind some old hidden treasures. We forget about the successful past campaigns we ran or that popular white paper we’ve created months ago, which could be reused, recycled and repurposed for current use.
So back to Chad’s really intriguing eco-marketing concepts. It could possibly save you significant marketing dollars, deliver good results, and help you weather the storm. Chad’s eco-marketing concepts as summarised, with my take on it:
- Reuse your recorded webinars, email newsletters and recorded live presentations by making them readily available on your website. Use social media tools such as Twitter and Youtube to publish these content and maximise your reach.
- Reuse your marketing materials. You don’t need to just focus on pushing out new content, reuse the content you already have such as blog posts, newsletter articles, industry white papers, demos. Good materials are worth reusing. If you find some info out-dated, update it with statistics or testimonials to make it current.
One example on how to publish reused materials: If you’re planning an upcoming enewsletter, considering including a “In the previous issue” or “Articles you may have missed” or “Most popular white paper / blog post” section.
- Reuse your marketing campaigns. Your old campaigns don’t have to be a one hit wonder. Reuse high performing campaigns and make them work harder for you.
To start off, look back at your campaign ROI reports and identify your top performing campaigns in 2008 or even previous years. Then identify new leads or new verticals you wish to target. Tweak your message and/or call to action, and re-run these campaigns. You should also consider combining various standalone campaigns and mediums you’ve used previously, marry them together and created a campaign that is integrated.
Also, standardise email and landing page templates that can be reused, and tweak them when necessary.
- Reduce communications. Reduce the amount of communication that you’re sending. (Even though Jack Welsh says you should over communicate during tough economic times)
Let me paraphrase this. Reduce any irrelevant or sales pitch types of communications. Because in a downturn, marketers turn to low costs, highly measurable communication channels such as email marketing. You will desperately be fighting the inbox clutter war, and standing out among hundreds and thousands of emails becomes daunting. If you over communicate, you are also at risk of being labeled a spammer. So look to segmenting your database, and send communications that are targeted, relevant and provide real VALUE to your target audience.
- Reduce complexities. Reduce the amount of time it takes for qualified leads to be followed up with by eliminating clumsy processes. According to B2B lead generation guru Brian Carroll a qualified sales lead should be followed up by the assigned sales person within 24-hours.
- Reduce friction. Removing any unnecessary fields from your landing pages, and ask for more information only if it makes sense to the potential lead.
If you want to know more about optimising landing pages by reducing friction, I’ll recommend Marketing Experiments. Listen to their recorded webinars on landing pages, try Live optimization + lead generation = better B2B landing pages in one hour. This is just one of the many great webinars from Marketing Experiments.
- Recycle “inactive” leads. Look back at all marketing and sales qualified leads you’ve generated from past activities that were not closed or have not responded to your marketing communications.
Consolidate these leads and re-engage them by designing in a separate “we miss hearing from you” programme, such as an email with a survey asking them what they would like to receive from your company or a request to opt back in with a targeted offer. Then place them back into your marketing funnels and continue to keep in touch with them through your newsletters, white papers and webinars.
- Remove barriers between the sales and marketing team. Remove campaigns or tactics that are not working. Remove crappy data and automate the process if possible.
If you work for a global company, remove communication barriers with other offices and start communicating regularly. Get to know your counterparts overseas, find out what they are doing, exchange ideas that work in each region, and look to reuse/recycle/repurpose good content. Don’t forget to tweak it with a touch of local flavour.
So start digging those old archive folders and find your hidden treasures.
Old is back. Old is new again.
