Marion sends our best wishes to those affected by Hurricane Ike. Thankfully, we were quickly able to return to work and are fully operational.
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The Marion Group
Wins the Hermes Platinum Creative Award
for the 2008 Sierra Pacific Catalog
The Hermes Creative Awards is an international competition for highly respected professionals for their outstanding achievements in creative advertising and marketing projects.
The Marion Group would like to congratulate Sierra Pacific and our team for a job well done.
Click here to view
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Disciplining Your Dime
The importance of measuring your ROI
Cutting budgets is easier said than done, but it seems that some of the biggest marketing heavyweights in the country are not necessarily cutting back on their marketing budgets but disciplining their dime.
Trends are showing that budgets are being spent wisely on investments that have a proven return on investment (ROI). According to the July issue of Advertising Age, marketers across the nation have moved to “slash marketing spending, or at least apply tougher financial discipline to what they do spend1.” Furthermore, there has been an increase in, not only the development of, but the amount of dollars spent on digital marketing and advertising.
While the giant corporations might serve as the indicators, what does that mean for businesses that do not have marketing budgets in the billions? The same applies, just not on quite such a large scale.
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Determine where your company’s money is going and make sure that there is proven ROI. As with any marketing and advertising effort, the ROI may not be immediate. Branding efforts, for example, will take longer to determine the value of the investment.
At Marion, we realize the need to determine your company’s ROI. Therefore, we have recently introduced a service that will help your company in determining a campaign's ROI. The Marion Total Lead Capture (TLC) for Your ROI™ Program is the latest technology in business intelligence tools that captures all website leads and all calls resulting from your marketing efforts. Read the article below or visit our website to find out how we can customize Marion's TLC for Your ROI™ Program to help you evaluate and maximize your campaign's ROI and discipline your dime.
1. Neff, Jack. “Welcome to the Age of Austerity.” Advertising Age. July 21, 2008 |
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Marion's TLC for your ROI Program™ is the latest technology in business intelligence tools. This technology will provide details that will enable your company to measure the impact of its advertising and marketing investments. It will allow you to track and capture all leads generated from your campaigns in any type of media, like print, website, broadcast, email, and direct mail.
Inbound Call Capture
- Create a dedicated phone number for each campaign
- Record every inbound call, even when you can’t answer it
- Track the results of individual marketing efforts from website, print or broadcast campaigns
- Run reports by geographic location, campaign, and client forwarding
Online Lead Capture
- Capture warm leads from completed contact request forms on your website
- Manage information on requested services and products
- Run reports with custom information
- Evaluate demographic information
Contact us or visit our TLC for your ROI™ Page for more information on our latest service that captures all leads generated from your campaigns.
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Forrester Research has reported that the number of blogs by corporations fell nearly half from 2006 to 2007. But with the promise of social media being the next generation for advertising and marketing, why would the number of corporate blogs and blog launches decline and at such a steep rate?
According to the July issue of BtoB Magazine, “marketers are running into the reality that blogging isn’t a cure for uninspired communications2.” While social media can be extremely beneficial for marketing and advertising, it is a whole new breed of communication for your brand, your image, your message. The point of this type of media, that bloggers and the like need to remember, is that they need to “get away from institutional messages2,” and literally talk to your audience like they are human beings.
Forrester suggests that bloggers “'build conversations and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers2.’” In order to utilize tools such as blogs and social networking sites, you need to be honest and open when communicating with your audience. In fact, try not to think of them as an “audience” at all, but as individual people.
The Marion Group utilizes our blog to post information regarding trends in the industry, services we offer to help adjust to the trends, and other useful information to serve our clients and our peers in the industry.
2. Gillin, Paul. “The B-to-B Blog Backlash Has Begun.” BtoB Magazine. July 14, 2008. |
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A recent study by Silverpop has produced interesting results regarding email campaigns for business-to-business (B-to-B) and business-to-consumer (B-to-C) markets. The study found that the differing markets should have differing campaigns as well.
The results of the study are as follows:
B-to-B
- More likely to respond to an all-text email
- All-text emails pulled a 5.4% click rate
- Equal text and images received a 3.5% click rate
- The offer needed to be in the top half or “above the fold”
- Postcard style emails received the highest click rate with 7.9%
- Newsletter style emails pulled a 5.4% click rate
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B-to-C
- More likely to respond to an image-rich email
- All-text emails pulled a 4.7% click rate
- Image-rich emails resulted in a 7.1% click rate
- The location of the offer had no effect
- Postcard style emails pulled a 6.2% click rate
- Newsletter style email received a 7.1% click rate
Silverpop CEO, Bill Nussey, finds it interesting that “companies will spend millions of dollars figuring out how to optimize their Web sites’ layouts, but a comparatively miniscule amount to optimize their emails’ usability3.”
In fact, Nussey feels that the email’s usability is even more important than the website because if a person visits your site, they are “going to give you a minute or two. In an email, you’d better get them in three or four seconds3.”
Email campaigns are a very inexpensive and effective way to reach your audience, but still needs just as much thought and just as much direction as a much larger campaign like a billboard or commercial. Furthermore, an email campaign is a great way to target a specific audience in a really personalized way.
The Marion Group can help your company with any concerns regarding email campaigns or other marketing or advertising services. We specialize in various types of media like the Internet, broadcast, and print.
3. Magill, Ken. “Creative Differences.” Direct Magazine. July 28, 2008 |
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Is your website Blackberry friendly?
At Marion, we are constantly seeking the latest and greatest methods for increasing your options to reach your audience. One service that Marion provides is the ability to adapt your company’s website for handheld devices like BlackBerries.
By adjusting your website to meet the certain specifications of the BlackBerry, the user can view your website to scale making it much easier to read and navigate. This type of technology gives your company one more outlet to market to your client.
Contact us or call 713.623.6444 for more information on different outlets to use when targeting your client.
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In the Spot Light
The Marion Group spotlights our customer McKenzie Equipment Company, the leading provider of compressed air products and services, available to customers 24-7. McKenzie Equipment is a family-owned business that truly strives for an excellent customer experience. Whether the customer is a large drilling contractor or a small machine shop, McKenzie Equipment feels that it is the customer who drives the business.
In 1995, Mary Ann Goode suddenly inherited her father and grandfather’s company. While she was a bit unprepared for the sudden acquisition, she knew that technology could improve and grow the business. McKenzie has evolved from a company that took orders on “hand tickets” to one where almost every aspect of the business is computerized.
McKenzie Equipment is currently working on the third edition of its website with The Marion Group. Also with the re-design of the website, The Marion Group will focus on enhancements to the current search engine optimization (SEO). The SEO was implemented four years ago, and, since then, the business has almost tripled and become global in its reach.
The Marion Group would like to thank Mary Ann Goode and the dedicated employees of McKenzie Equipment for the opportunity to be a part of their success.
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Coming Soon to Marion: W.O.W. - the latest interactive web technology...
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