David Cummings on Startups

Marketing in a Web World

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David Cummings

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I spent time today talking with the marketing team of a successful financial-related technology company in town. It was a good opportunity to dig into their online marketing strategy — something they are in the progress of moving from primarily off-line to almost all online. Here are the categories they broke things into:

  • Buying leads (e.g. BuyerZone, VendorSeek, etc)
  • SEO/natural search
  • Paid search
  • Email
  • Webinars
  • Display ads
  • Original content sites
  • Affiliates

I think online marketers often get focused on the most obvious categories — like paid search, SEO, and email — and don’t allocate enough dollars to experiment with other areas like buying leads or sponsoring webinars. My recommendation is to carve out a piece of the annual budget, say 5- 10%, and allocate it to experimenting with different options.

Comments

3 responses to “Marketing in a Web World”

  1. Pete Santora Avatar
    Pete Santora

    Love the webinar. nothing like generating leads and establishing cred as a market leader in one shot.

    no social media huh? I guess they think that b/c they are b2b (maybe even white label) that there is nothing for them?

    Sometimes companies need to think like big pharma and go to the customers of your customers to drive business.

    Seems like 5% would be more than enough to figure out the answer to that question. There has got to be some low hanging fruit to prove the investment.

    Reply
    1. davidcummings Avatar
      davidcummings

      Thanks Pete. I agree that social media should definitely be added.

      Reply
  2. brianhodgson Avatar
    brianhodgson

    Agreed – also integrate multiple of the above channels and re-use/recycle content appropriate for the channel. A whitepaper might be promoted via Display adds, a side bar from it could be packaged as tweet or pod-cast, etc. Overall measuring the success and various channels allows you to focus on the most attractive/successful combination.

    http://fivepond.com/2010/04/10/marketing-campaign-scoring/

    Reply

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