Never Ending Thoughts…

In the article “Smarketing – The Perfect Blend Of Sales And Marketing“, I briefly touched upon the concept of smarketing and took it further in the article “Top Three Things To Watch Out When Combining Your Sales And Marketing Efforts“. Lately the term Marketing Automation has started picking up some steam. Many marketing companies have started using this term extensively in their product and service offerings. And there’s a very valid reason why. Besides many benefits of marketing automation, one key reason that I can think of is that it’s one of the ways to solve the challenges posed in implementing an effective and an efficient Smarketing Solution. In this article, I’ll explain how.

There is a ton of material available on the Internet that explains what Marketing Automation is; If you’d like a simple, unbiased and a quick 5 minutes overview of Marketing Automation, I strongly suggest looking at these two videos posted by Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of Annuitas Group and Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute.

What’s the Difference Between Demand Generation and Lead Management?

How Marketing Automation Support Demand Generation & Lead Management

Thanks Lauren for sharing these great videos! Now let’s see how Marketing Automation can help in making your Smarketing Solution more efficient and effective.

Better Integration Between Marketing Campaigns and Sales CRM Systems

One of the main advantages of a good Marketing Automation Implementation is that it bridges the gap between marketing and sales. For instance, good Marketing Automation can help you seamlessly push leads generated via a marketing campaign into your sales CRM system. It can help you set up more targeted campaigns by picking up data from your sales CRM and see which leads are at which step on the sales cycle and push relevant targeted marketing content to them.

Better And Holistic Monitoring of Marketing & Sales Efforts

Another big advantage of implementing Marketing Automation in your company would be that it will help you get a better and a holistic snapshot of your marketing and sales efforts. This means you’ll not only know exactly how much you are spending on each of your campaign, but also which campaign is generating how much sales, and how your campaigns are helping up-sell your products.

Better Marketing & Sales Process Change Management

Making any Marketing & Sales Process effective is a continuous activity that often involves making changes to existing processes, business rules and sometimes even the technology and core infrastructure of the company. Marketing Automation will help you streamline your marketing and sales processes so that they can be easily changed and made more in line with the the changing needs of both the marketing and the sales teams. For instance, imagine asking your sales team to run a campaign where-in you’d like to offer a deal to your existing customers if they gave you some referrals. Many times such campaigns are hard to implement and even harder to track without making significant changes in existing marketing and sales processes. Marketing Automation can help in aligning your existing marketing and sales processes so that such marketing, sales, and lead generation efforts would be easily implementable, track-able, and easily changed as needed.

And so, as you can see, marketing automation helps bringing marketing and sales team closer to each other in a much more efficient and scalable manner; something that’s one of the key goals of smarketing.

It’s not new to see Sex and Nudity in Marketing Campaigns. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works very well! But sometimes it just terribly fails because the audience felt that the company “crossed the line”. In this article I will share with you some practical scenarios that have worked in the the past in favor of companies and the ones that have terribly failed. In the end we will draw conclusion and try to find where to draw the line when it comes to using Sex and Nudity in Marketing.

Zappos – More Than Shoes!

Around six months back, Zappos, one of the leading online shoe retailers (now owned by Amazon), started this campaign that really turned every-body’s heads and eyebrows. They had their models wear tiny bikinis and thongs and took their pictures at various key locations in Manhattan. Later on the bikinis and thongs were digitally edited to be replaced by censor bars with the text “More Than Shoes!”.

Source: http://blogs.zappos.com

The pictures caught attention and went viral on the Internet. But the story doesn’t end there. The Ad was run both in print media and online. In the online version, when the viewer clicked on the picture (perhaps in the hope to see its larger version or read more about the Ad), he/she was taken to Zappos where the “actual picture” was shown in which the models were wearing bikinis and thongs. The print media also tried to give similar experience by using QR Codes. When the visitor liked the Ad and wanted to learn more, he/she could simply scan the QR Code using their smart phone and was instantly taken to Zappos’s mobile website where the actual picture with relevant deals and promotion message was shown.

Source: http://blogs.zappos.com

I believe Zappos did a great job by identifying how far they should go with sex and nudity in advertising. Their Ad Campaign caught instant attention, it didn’t spoil the company’s image, and helped change their overall image as just an online shoe retailer.

Calvin Klein – Secret Obsession Perfume Ad

Around two years back Calvin Klein launched a new steamy Ad showing actress Eva Mendes writhing topless in bed. While Calvin Klein’s aim was to promote their perfume, the Ad nearly killed their product as many viewers found the Ad too sexual and vulgar for the most audience. What did Calvin Klein do wrong? I think the biggest mistake that Calvin Klein did in that campaign is not being able to focus on their real goal – that is conveying to the audience why they should buy the Secret Obsession Perfume.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The Conclusion

1. It’s OK to use Sex and Nudity in Marketing as long as you keep your focus on the message, not the model.
2. Understand your target audience before using Sex and Nudity when marketing your product.
3. Remember that many people would just know you by your advertisements. They might not ever buy anything from you, but they’ll create an image of your company based on the kind of Ads they see. That’s called “building a brand”. If you choose to use Sex and Nudity in your Marketing, make it absolutely sure that it wouldn’t in any way impact your brand.

Where to draw the line when using Sex and Nudity in Marketing

Before I start this section, let me be frank. If it were that easy, then there wouldn’t have been any marketing blunders related to usage of Sex and Nudity in Marketing. The reason this happens is because it’s really hard to find that fine line. Your best bet would be to focus on your audience and your brand; start with a small focus group and get feedback from your close customers before you run the campaign. That will give you and idea where to draw the line. What do you think?

Source: http://www.loc.gov/

Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday is the first holiday of the year in United States. It’s observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King’s birthday, January 15. You can read more about it here. Being first holiday of the year, for many businesses it brings the chance to once again entice customers and keep their sales going on. In this article I will cover how small businesses can leverage Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday to generate more sales. This is just an introduction to a topic that can be discussed in much more detail and can be covered by taking lot of examples. So feel free to shoot me a mail or reply to this post and keep the conversation live!

Choose the Right Campaign on Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Weekend

Source: http://bargainbabe.com

Since this is not a major holiday, don’t expect people exchanging gifts. So you can leave the gift items out from your Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Promotion. You should rather focus on items that people would have missed buying during the holiday season.

This holiday comes after most people receive their first paycheck of the year. So many people would want to spend that money in things that are important or things they couldn’t buy during the holidays. So your best bet would be to run promotions on house hold items, perhaps giving away discounts on yearly maintenance subscriptions and so forth.

Choose the Right Time of the Day or Weekend

best-of-web.com

Keep in mind that Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday is mostly observed by US Federal employees. It’s not a mandatory holiday, so many businesses are actually open on that day! This means that many people would be actually working on that day and will only be able to come in the evening.

To get maximum results, start the sale on the day before the holiday (that is Sunday) and continue throughout the holiday.

Take logistics Very Seriously!

Source: http://openclipart.org

Why am I being so direct about it? That’s because as the well known saying goes “First Impression is the Last Impression”. This is probably going to be your first promotion of the year. If you fail to make your customers happy in this first promotion, perhaps due to delivery delays, misleading promotion message, or any other reason, this might become your last chance to promote anything successfully in the whole year! On the other hand, if you do a good job, you can pretty much consider yourself winning a jackpot! Now that the customer is happy he/she is definitely going to check back in on almost all (if not every) weekend/holiday promotion in the coming year. This is your chance to put your best foot in front of new customers, so take all the time to plan it right and make sure your logistics are in place.

By keeping these simple but very important points in mind, you can rest assured your Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Sale Campaign is going to be successful. But as they say “The Devil is in the Details.”; So feel free to share your thoughts!