A recent BtoB Magazine has a sidebar article featuring Oracle CMO Judith Sim title “Oracle CMO opens the books on marketing spending, ROI”. There, she revealed that over the last 10 years, the company has reduced marketing and advertising spending as a percentage of revenue from 5% to less than 2%. They are doing this chiefly by reducing print ad buys. Last year print represented 55% of their budget, next year it will only consume 9%. So what are they doing instead? Similar to what Trekk has recommended for a very long time, they are increasing online advertising, personalized communications and social media.
We have seen many indications of a major shift in ad dollars from traditional broadcast to online and interactive. Oracle is an excellent example of this. It is nice to see a CMO open up with real dollar values to confirm this strategic shift. So, how do they execute the tactics?
Sim’s mentioned a decrease in events, but an increase in attendees. In 2008, events are linked with 56% of deals won. Most likely, they are better targeting potential attendees and using more relevant, personalized communications to get their attention. Trekk often designs campaigns in this way and produces a combination of personalized direct mail and email with online banner ads and adwords. Trekk uses technology to integrate these channels and to measure response. We produce Personalized URL and Generalized URLs or landing pages to measure the response to each channel. The landing pages can also be used to RSVP, register or collect survey responses for the event. Online and offline channels can be integrated and to test different messages and tactics.
Sim’s also talked about the importance of more personal and physical interaction with the business. This is what non-traditional, non-broadcast tactics bring to the table. She mentions Web 2.0 tools such as podcasts, user forums and other interactive social media. She specifically credits social news releases for allowing their PR budget to be cut on half over the past year. The idea of social news release is becoming increasingly popular. By adding features to the traditional release such as multimedia, related content, discussion lists and easy linkages to popular social web properties, you can help start a conversation. The idea is to let other people help tell your story.
The way we help our clients get content ready for social media channels is with web Content Management Systems (CMS). If designed appropriately, Web content can store textual, image and multimedia content in a way that is easily repurposed. Content can be associated to other internal and external content as well as keywords and tagging phrases. The content can be reformatted for different channels and be structure to support social media channels for engaging viral message activities. Content can also easily be structure to support Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. The important thing here is to ensure that content is created with the end in mind to include things like descriptions, keywords and appropriate associations which support the proliferation of content in alternative channels.
A look at the Trekk web site helps to demonstrate these concepts. Currently the two most popular ways people find our content is via RSS feeds and search engines. Few people start their visit at our home page. They are much more likely to start at some specific landing page of interest. Tactics such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) via adwords or banner ads, as well as links from social networking sites such as Del.icio.us.com, Digg.com or LinkedIn.com drive people to content of interest.
Sims provided some figures from Oracle to support this trend. She notes that the Oracle home page visits have declined 4% over the last few months, while overall traffic has increased. Specifically, the number of users participating in Oracle discussion forum has increased 22% and has had 94% more postings.
It is great to see a high-profile CMO provide some numbers to back up the trends in the marketplace. Perhaps Trekk can evangelize less and consult more on how your organization can benefit. Remember, we don’t promote technology in marketing just because it is different. We do it because it works – lowering costs and increasing return on investment.
Posted by JA Stewart at 07/28/2008 10:30:57 AM |
