Variable Data Printing

Integrated marketing plans are employing content marketing as a means to motivate your target audience of customers and prospects to buy and build their brand. Not so long ago you would see an ad, a TV spot, hear a radio spot or get a mailing with a “special offer” and that was the marketing plan and strategy rolled into one. Strategy has since changed and the new tactics have been implemented and clearly defined as separate from the marketing strategy.

Marketers have learned to effectively communicate with their target audience of customers and prospects in the way their audience is most comfortable receiving a message… Social media, print, email and more often an integrated approach of marketing channels. Changes in sharing personal information, selling and frankly courting customers have continued. Now the content of the message and the way it is delivered has changed. Sales pitches have dramatically softened and valuable, relevant content is appearing in its place in integrated marketing plans.

This has indicated a large scale shift, a trend, in the market place to create and distribute relevant information to attract a highly defined target audience. With the adoption of market segmentation, the more this highly targeted audience is informed without an obvious sales pitch, it seems the more profitably the customer responds to the marketers approach. Good content grabs your attention; makes you think about what you have just seen heard or read and then act.

In a recent Roper Public Affairs study 80% of business-to-business decision makers polled said that they preferred content marketing to ads. 9 out of 10 marketers currently use content marketing and are already spending 25% of their marketing budget on it. Many tactics are used to disseminate this valuable content to a target audience: social media, case studies, white papers, personal appearances as a speaker, webinars, informational videos and more – again utilizing an integrated approach.

You still need to drive your target audience of prospects and customers to this valuable content or deliver it to them in some manner. SEO, direct mail, outdoor advertising, and QR codes are just a few integrated marketing tactics that people have found effective. Once a relationship has been established it often is continued even sought out by the information’s recipient. Think about blogs, Twitter, and Google Plus – there are people who follow them religiously. Consider adding content marketing to your integrated marketing plan for a segmented audience. You might just see your sales jump.

How will you start creating engaging content to add to your integrated marketing mix? What will be your content marketing priority?

It’s sweltering hot out there, and it’s swarming with buzzwords! There’s several ways to beat the heat, so check out this list of buzzwords to find out what all of the buzz is about this summer:

1. pURLS (personalized URL) : Use a pURLS to create a one-to-one conversation
2. VDP (Variable data printing) : Personalize the direct mail piece by adding pURLs, variable images and/or variable data based on segments
3. Email Blasts : Embed pURLs into your email blasts
4. Go mobile : (and by that I mean, with smartphones) Connect the direct mail piece with QR codes
5. Landing Pages : Direct your audience to a mobile-optimized landing page
6. Capture Results : Integrate all of this cross-media (pURLs, QR codes, landing pages, direct mail, etc.) cohesively to drive response, conversion and retention!

In today’s sultry business climate, it is more important than ever to examine the way you market to your customers and prospects. How do you communicate with the people and organizations you want, and need, to be in business with? Do you rely on salepeople to reach out via phone and email, or perhaps through a social network or referral? Do you send out one-way informational documents and literature?

In most cases, if you’re doing this, it’s to gain entry to your customer or prospect for a face-to-face meeting or telephone conversation. The reason we want this is so that we can form a dialog with Penelope Prospect or the Carl Client.

But nowadays, it’s very difficult for people to set aside time for these meetings because our responsibilities and job descriptions are ever-increasing. Imagine being able to start this dialog at the earliest of stages of the sales cycle. Imagine having access to invaluable data in regard to your customers and prospects value points. Imagine being able to use this data to segment your messaging, making each communication relevant and targeted to your audience. Imagine creating this messaging across the multiple marketing channels. This is called integrated cross-media marketing, one of the many buzzwords used throughout the marketing industry.

This integrated cross-media marketing world is the world we live in now, so if you are a marketer, business development professional or business owner. The days of traditional mass advertising are over. With shrinking budgets, and the demand for high-value ROI marketing campaigns, it’s more important than ever to implement a strategy that will get you the most bang for your buck. It’s called BUZZWORDS!