NEW! Content to Cash: Drive Revenue Growth with Original Writing Your organization can create a content-driven closed loop that attracts, holds and repeatedly touches interested readers (a.k.a. "customers") -- real revenue growth will follow! The Econiverse TXSystem Our complete original content solution is designed to strengthen your brand and spur significant growth in both 'mind share' and market share. The TXS approach offers website visitors the one thing they want most from any media source: relevant original content. Achieve "Critical Mass" in Marketing Campaigns by John Woodbury, CEO, Econiverse The greatest release of energy known to our science comes as the result of nuclear materials reaching critical mass—and exploding with an extraordinary burst of heat, light and kinetic force. At Econiverse, we've come to believe there's a state of "critical mass" in marketing as well, one which (pardon the bellicose military analogy) can change outcomes in competitive struggles through the overpowering application of persuasive power. In marketing, critical mass is achieved when all marcom channels are fully synergized in terms of ideas, imagery and timing, and operate with the Web as their nexus. Imagine a marketing campaign in which ***all*** of the following 13 elements operated in total coordination, presenting the same concepts and proof points, employing the same color schemes and imagery, and launching simultaneously. Public websites Extranet websites Intranet websites HTML e-mail Snail mail Radio Television Newspaper ads Magazine ads Telemarketing Executive appearances and interviews Brochures and flyers Sales and support materials How often have I seen this happen, in practice? Maybe half a dozen times in the past decade. But when an organization overcomes its own internal political resistance and forces such a complex synergy to occur, the results can be dazzling. Inventing the Integrated Web Campaign In 1997—at a time when we were still inventing the basics of "Web marketing"—I coordinated a series of software launch campaigns for IBM Data Management Solutions (makers of IBM's DB2 database software products, long a favorite of banks and credit card companies). DB2 was a fourth-place product behind Oracle, Sybase and Informix, at that time (today's leader, MS SQL Server, was a distant fifth). IBM had correctly concluded, "He who rules the data rules the world," and of course, that required a dominant presence in the database server market. A mandate came down from New York: make DB2 number one for database license and services market share. Previous DB2 marketing campaigns had had little impact on sales. But we realized these campaigns had been "fragmented"—and none had even come close to fully leveraging the Web. This last point was key, because resource$, though significant, were not infinite. We needed to accomplish global tasks with a marcom budget that was more correctly sized to a national campaign. But the inherently global reach of the Web would allow us, for the first time, to make our blue bucks go further. We made another resolution early on: everything would operate in a coordinated fashion—the same messages, the same proof points, the same colors and logos and imagery, and timing would be as tightly controlled as a military assault. We also added a new component, not included in the 13-item list, above: free software downloads or CD-ROMs, with 60-day trial versions of the latest version of the core DB2 database server product, on several different platforms (Windows, AS-400, OS-390, etc.). And we captured the "registration" data for all potential customers who downloaded or requested the code, for further sales contacts. Within hours, in September, 1997, we launched newspaper and magazine ads, dropped hundreds of thousands of print mailers, blasted more than million HTML and text-based e-mails, and IBM execs hit the conference stages with carefully coordinated presentations. Our website offered a ten-part series of articles, "The Top Ten Reasons to Switch to DB2," with a new article appearing each day, Monday through Friday, two weeks in a row. Telemarketers quickly called all prospects who downloaded or ordered the CD-ROM-based trial code; hot leads were passed to sales for rapid response. The results? 55,000 leads in one quarter, and 141 major engagements involving enterprise-level installation of DB2, typically with seven-to-eight figures of services revenue "packaged" with the deal. And, the first profitable quarter for IBM Data Management Solutions in more than five years. In 1998, the unit was named Database Vendor of the Year by one of the major industry magazines, and (more important) took over from Oracle as the #1 vendor for total revenues of database license and services. Climbing Mount Everest The greatest challenge in achieving critical mass is internal politics, not external competition. The core of the problem is that most organizations run their Web marketing efforts out of one department, print advertising from another, sales has its own ideas on what to say (and to whom), and the execs say whatever the #^$@! they feel like to the trade press . . . never mind conference audiences . . . without asking anyone from either sales or marketing what's up! That won't get it done. Organizations that want to dominate their market need to coordinate their own operations first. Common ideas. Common imagery. Synchronized schedules for all marcom activities. Tough? You betcha! But not as tough as being a fourth or fifth place finisher. One recommendation: outsourcing overall campaign planning to an experienced firm can impose (from outside) the messaging and scheduling discipline that so rarely materializes from within, in the face of multiple departmental fiefdoms with individual agendas. Call us to learn more! Read another Econiverse article on Web marketing: Content to Cash: Drive Revenue Growth with Original Writing Contact econiverse at 800-795-7144 or jwoodbury@econiverse.com for complete details. To Top