FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, what is Data-Brand Marketing?

The FunMarketer Answer: The future!

For too many years, marketers were siloed into different divisions. “I’m a Brand Image marketer”; “My specialty is DataBase marketing“; “I’m a Direct Response expert”.

While marketers always will have varying strengths and expertise, the traditional walls that separated various disciplines are coming down fast. Anybody that buys Google AdWords knows what I mean.

AdWords at first glance may seem to be direct marketing – and it is. However, now that we are several years into Pay Per Click marketing we are starting to see an interesting phenomena: The power of a company’s brand can have immense impact on the AdWords campaigns you run.

If you have a well-known, well-respected brand in a category, then your brand’s name may actually convert at less than 1/2 the cost per conversion of a generic description. Here’s an example using that greatest of companies, Acme Widgets. Let’s imagine we are running an AdWords campaign for Acme’s ball bearing division.

Keyword: Ball Bearing
Keyword: Acme Bearing

If Acme is a strong brand, people searching for “Acme Bearing” may convert at up to 1/2 the cost and 2X the frequency of people searching for “Ball Bearing”. Why?

1) They already have an awareness – and often an affinity – for your brand.
2) They are probably closer to making a buying decision. Their search is more refined, as indicated by the more closely refined search term.

So now the smallest of companies can affordably combine Data and Brand in new ways to effectively market their products.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

Most photos are fairly strongly skewed toward a Consumer or Business audience. If you’ve spent enough hours putting iStock lightboxes together you know what I mean. Here’s one I like that is versatile enough for either audience. And, if you are marketing to both, then you can use this to pull some good “double-duty” for your compmany. I wrote the headline below with a clothing store in mind, but it could just as easily be switched to a B-B use:

Photo: iStock #6289860

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=6289860

Headline: Time For a Wardrobe Checkup?

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Google Chrome was just launched and here’s how I use it so far. I often work with both Firefox and Explorer open at the same time, and jump back and forth between the two, depending on the task. I have different toolbars loaded onto my Firefox browser than I do on the Explorer browser. I tend to use the Explorer browser a bit more when I’m deep in AdWords, and the Mozilla browser when I’m writing in Google Docs or in my Yahoo or Google emails.

With Chrome, since most toolbars aren’t ready for it (yet) the top 1/4 of the screen is very clean. I’ve taken advantage of this larger screen space and have been using Chrome to watch video and look at photos and project proofs – tasks where the larger screenspace on the browser is a plus. One of Chrome’s biggest strengths is its simplicity and lack of clutter; so for now it remains my third-place browser for the most basic web tasks.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert