These days, launching a marketing campaign is getting easier and harder to do successfully...millions of radio stations, millions of tv stations, millions of websites...

It tough getting your message into the hands and minds of your markets...really tough if you decide to forget print or choose one channel.

The effort you make on strategy makes all the difference. Its pretty easy to:
produce a banner ad - get a traffic report - slap a PPT together for the Boss.

• Drop a brochure in the mail and wait for a response.
• Have an event and invite the people you know will show up and you knew were in buying mode already.
• Execute the safe.

Doing the same thing repeatedly is what a robot does really well, if this sounds like you...its time to be a little more organic.

Robots have yet to replace the left brain and right brain working together - information and creativity. Understanding how to be effective is crucial. Having a team that can execute your vision is, of course, beneficial. Multi-touch marketing campaigns are effective and help make your brand stand out in a crowd.

P

You are a marketer living in a world with print technology we could only dream about 10 years ago and couldn't even imagine 20 years ago. Why would you throw this opportunity away? Because everything is online? Don't believe everything u read on the Internet, (except this blog), most of them are still learning what a fact checker is. Print is highly effective, if you take the time to develop a strategy.

Today we have photo quality, variable data, short run printing with a host of options including, Kodak dimensional ink , 60+ megapixel digital camera backs and printers connected across the globe. If your message is targeted and relevant, print will get their undivided attention.

No one reads an email or listens to a voice ad the same way they read your printed, personalized message - its in their hands and for the moment - has their undivided attention. Add Kodak dimensional ink and they can feel the difference your product could make. No one gets an error 401 when they turn a page in your book and no one gets a virus from viewing your product photos. If you are trying to build relationships, print can add trust to your message.

Statements to be mailed? Don't forget to include transpromo in your campaign, it's a low cost method to add personalisation and exclusivity to the project - ask @patmcgrew on twitter.

When I get a piece of mail from a company...and they get it right - it leaves a stamp.

O

Getting a response online that counts for something is tough. Do the million hits pay the rent? ...or are you selling lots of Viagra.

How many people go to a shopping cart on a website, but leave before they check out? Does that actually happen at a real store? I don't see too many shopping carts half-full piling up in front of the checkout - but it happens allot online. These kind of statistics are more important than the usual hits and views report - make sure you get this information from your web master and make changes to the process to improve your checkout totals.

Ask your marketing department or ask a printer about pURLs....- 'personalized URLs'. For pennies per name in your database you can have a unique domain name printed on each piece. Its been proven the world over that it drives response rates into double digit territory.

E

Salespeople love events - the people that visit are usually in research or buying mode and are open to discuss plans. For a sales person, its easier to have a prospect come to them, then to face rejection over the phone or in person.

There aren't too many experiences that top an in-person meeting. But a video testimonial? This can potentially trump an event or site visit - especially if it goes VIRAL. Viral become the holy grail of aspiring marketing rockstars. But 'going viral' is rare - do something that you can manage a good response from - try keeping track of all the people that visit your event or booth and mail a printed variable data booklet for them after the show - with their photo on the cover. Most marketers hope to do something that catches on and goes viral, but fail to include a follow-up plan to handle the volume of response. In the end your brand suffers.

If you are maintaining your database and supporting your 'creative engine', you could leverage this opportunity online with a little help from a Pocket video camera (Kodak makes really good ones) and a social media site like Twitter or Facebook .

Call it 'word of mouse', if you cannot meet and greet all those prospects and valued customers at an event, get them to sign up to twitter or facebook and keep in touch with them online. A couple hours of effective use of social media each week is probably better than a week of internal email strife. Mailing a brochure or sending a monthly enewsletter is ok, but they dont build relationships like social media.

M

Your graphic designer and marketing guru(s) have written sparkling copy and created jaw dropping imagery and you convinced a key customer to provide a video testimonial at your event. Finally, you managed to get 100 prospects to follow your every movement on twitter. You just might have the ingredients for a multimedia stew you can deliver online with a campaign microsite. Targeted sites get high search rankings for free because they answer the google question correctly. Do not take the site down when the campaign is over - the internet is not very forgiving. Leave the site up and make note on the site that your offer has expired. If it's a subdomain it costs you nothing, but you retain the search potential.

With so many possibilities, its good to find a way to remember things...

Print, Online, Event and Multimedia = POEM.

If you mis-spell it, you will regret it.

Most marketing campaigns fail due to bad data bases, channel driven obsessions and forgetting who we are trying to replicate when planning a marketing campaign.

Data bases represent information and it is not a mystery to anyone that with bad information we can not identify the right target audience neither can we tell them what they want to hear so that they buy our products.

Channel obsession is a trend that is spreading very rapidly. When you start a campaign with a channel in mind often you will fail. Every time you show me that one communication channel is the best for something, I will show you that it is not the best channel for something else. In most cases the channel should be at the end of the process. I believe being market/product/value focused is more important than being channel focused.

Most channels in the market today will increase productivity in terms of contacting/impacting more individuals in a given period of time. Also, they will allow more contacts per individual in a given period of time. But, in most cases they will not reduce the amount of contacts needed to make a sale to one individual. Sometimes we are so convinced that one channel is the greatest that we obsess with that channel and limit the opportunity to see the bigger picture and build the best campaign possible.

Last but not least, we often forget who we are copying when advertising. We should be copying a sales person on a marketing/sale cycle. How come often do we say things that we would never say face to face? It is very easy to understand the fundamentals of Marketing and Selling. It is about saying the right thing to the right person at the right time in the right way. So, when you put your next campaign together think what a good sales person would say to whom, when and how. The What, to Whom and When to say relate to the information that you have. The How relates to how that information is used (sensitivity), presented (creativity) and delivered (channel).

"Advertising is what you do when you can't be there in person." - Fairfax Cone

Henry Stewart held it's annual Digital Asset Management Symposium on June 1 & 2nd  in New York City at the NY Hilton.  There were over 300 attendees at this years event to learn about solutions, best practices and network with peers in the corporate marketing, publishing  & broadcast markets.  Kodak's Marketing Workflow Solutions team was there with our partner Aprimo to talk to corporate clients about Marketing Asset Management, Digital Workflow, Brand Content Management and Enterprise Marketing Management Solutions.