The Web has helped level the playing field for small and medium businesses to market and compete, especially as these companies continue to shift their spend and efforts to digital marketing. While targeted, automated e-mail marketing may have been out-of-reach for SMBs five years ago, it is one of the most-used marketing tactics by companies with fewer than 500 employees today. Mobile might have not made sense for most SMBs a few years ago, but it is now a growing part of the SMB marketing mix. Further, while a social media presence was experimental just two three years ago, it is now a necessary part of small and medium businesses’ marketing strategy, just as it is for enterprise marketers. Also like enterprise marketers, SMBs face challenges managing these different channels in an effective way, as well as keeping up with the lightning-fast face of evolution in digital marketing.

While these challenges persist, technology and service providers are devising solutions specifically targeted at SMBs to help them get a hold of their marketing efforts. With virtually limitless storage, widespread broadband availability, and robust capabilities delivered via a browser, similar tools that big brands use to manage and optimize their marketing efforts are available for SMBs at a fraction of the cost, enabling these companies to more effectively meet their marketing goals. InfoTrends recognized this trend when it first studied small and medium businesses’ marketing approaches in 2009. At the end of 2011, we conducted a follow-up study entitled Capturing the SMB Marketing Automation Opportunity to understand how SMBs’ marketing spend, strategy, and tactics are evolving by surveying over 2,000 small and medium businesses across 13 vertical industries.

One of the most striking developments over the past two years is the growth in the use of social media for marketing. Overall use has increased dramatically: in 2009, over half of respondents did not have any social media presence, but in 2011, just 3% reported not having a social media presence. Facebook was the most popular social network for marketing according to SMBs from our 2009 study, with 32% of use. In 2011, Facebook is table-stakes for SMBs: 90% of respondents reported having a Facebook presence in our most recent study. The use of LinkedIn and Twitter also grew substantially, from 19% and 17% in 2009 to 46% and 43% in 2011, respectively. As use has grown, so has budget allocation for social media initiatives; social media comprised almost 9% of SMBs’ marketing spend in 2011.

While social media is proliferating among small and medium businesses, they continue to face the same challenges they did two years ago: constrained resources related to cost, time, and skills. In fact, these issues were more pronounced in our 2011 study than they were in 2009, especially as it relates to understanding new marketing channels and having the skills to address them. SMBs report having a preference for managing all marketing channels through a centralized technology solution or centralized service provider. Whatever the choice, agility is key; as new channels or networks emerge, solutions or providers need to quickly adapt by providing capabilities and education to help their users be successful.

The SMB user is an important audience for a number of prominent companies today:

• Intuit has a long legacy of delivering products and services to small and medium businesses through its QuickBooks accounting software, website services, and payment services. Last month, it acquired vertically-focused SMB technology provider Demandforce for over $400 million. Demandforce gives Intuit robust technology that helps small and medium businesses manage their social media presence and automate marketing across multiple channels, addressing some of the key challenges SMBs face.
• Recently, Yahoo! launched its Marketing Dashboard toolset for small local businesses with features that help companies monitor and manage their online reputation and analyze traffic from websites and campaigns. Yahoo! has built a fairly successful offering for SMBs with its website hosting and eCommerce offerings, and its Marketing Dashboard makes its existing package a much more attractive offering for SMBs looking for a one-stop-shop.
• With Adobe’s recent release of Creative Suite 6 and the Creative Cloud, the company also launched subscription-based pricing plans starting at $50 per month to access the entire collection of applications instead of paying a large upgrade fee every 6 to 12 months. While it is yet to be proven in the market, this low-cost pricing model could open up Adobe’s tools to a much broader audience, including many SMBs. While almost 40% of SMBs in our 2011 study reported owning Photoshop, only 21% owned Illustrator and 17% owned InDesign. It will be interesting to see if this new plan spurs adoption among SMBs.

The SMB marketing mix is diversifying, exacerbating the challenges that already face  resource-strained businesses. In response, technology and service providers are empowering small and medium businesses with solutions that can help them become more efficient and effective with their marketing and communication efforts. As marketing dollars continue to flow to digital channels from organizations of all sizes, SMBs can harness the same tools their larger counterparts can, allowing them to engage with audiences they would have never been able to reach just a few years ago.

“Personalization” continues to be a prominent topic in a number of different circles: marketing, publishing, eCommerce, social networking, and search. It’s no wonder why: personalization helps boost response rates and profitability in cross-media campaigns, helps marketers drive conversion on their Websites & landing pages, and much more.

Wikipedia provides a very broad definition of personalization, which I do like: “using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals.” Specific to the groups that I am referring to, I believe that personalization can be more precisely defined as leveraging data to deliver relevant content to specific individuals.

That’s still pretty broad; what kind of data? what kind of content? what channels are being used? With this many constituencies looking to use personalization in their own ways to meet specific goals, those answers can range extensively. Furthermore, when these groups end up talking to each other about personalization, it can cause confusion and miscommunication. To clear the air, so-to-speak, I wanted to shed some light on the different ways personalization is being employed by these different groups.

• Cross-media Direct Marketing: You’re likely familiar with the personalization model for cross-media campaigns: a digitally-printed direct mail piece (or e-mail) with variable text and graphic elements and a personalized URL, which links to a personalized microsite with variable text and graphic elements, often highlighting the recipient’s name in some way. Personal and demographic data is primarily used to drive the personalization in these applications. Depending on the client/campaign, additional data may be used for more granular, relevant content.
• Digital Marketing: Personalization is popular with digital marketers. E-mail is a popular spot for personalization: according to a 2011 study by marketing technology provider Alterian, 72% of marketing professionals surveyed reported using personalization for their e-mail campaigns. E-mail marketing complexity ranges from mass blasts to segmentation to real-time individualization, typically using customer data and purchase history data to make recommendations. Another prominent personalization tactic for marketers is retargeting, which involves serving ads to a specific user after they have left a Website in efforts to raise brand awareness, recapture their attention, and drive people back to their Website.
• eCommerce: Business-to-consumer eCommerce was and still is a center of innovation in Web personalization, driven by Amazon.com and other eTailers looking to provide a custom-tailored experience for each individual user in hopes of getting them to buy more. For these sites, personalization often comes in the form of a recommendation engine, which tracks your browsing habits, shopping cart, wish list, reviews, purchase history, and other facets to deliver personalized recommendations on what the system thinks you would like. It should be noted that digital marketing goes hand-in-hand with eCommerce; real-time individualized e-mail marketing is common for eCommerce companies, and retargeting helps bring back shoppers that left the conversion funnel.
• Publishing: For print publishing, personalization often means mass customization, specifically in the print-on-demand model for books, where eCommerce orders trigger specific books to be printed, often in one-off fashion. Services like MagCloud and Time Inc’s Mine Magazine endeavor represent personalization efforts for magazines. On the Web and in digital media, personalization is geared more toward delivering relevant content based on an individual’s specific interests or preferences. Sometimes meeting this objective requires readers to input specific information about their tastes; other times, information like a Twitter, Facebook, or Google Reader account may be analyzed to assess your interests and deliver content based on who you’re friends with, who you follow, or what news you already read. A great example of this method is exhibited through Zite, a “personalized digital magazine” mobile app.
• Social Networking: Social networks are rife with different types of individuals’ data, making them ideal for personalization. Social networks typically employ personalization to deliver relevant content feeds from a user’s friends or connections on a network, as well as to deliver highly-targeted display advertising. For content delivery, networks may use algorithms to interpret connections, interactions, and profile information among users and deliver content based on what it believes is most relevant to each user. For advertising, networks typically act a facilitator between advertisers and users, presenting key profile characteristics of users that advertisers can choose to target.  Facebook generated over $3.5 billion in revenue through this type of advertising.
• Search: Search engines have always utilized algorithms to determine the display results of a user’s query, but these algorithms have recently started to take user information, such as profile or location data, into consideration before displaying results. Just recently, Google stepped up its game in this area, launching “Search, plus Your World“, which integrates a user’s Google+ data into everyday search queries. Advertising is a critical component to search, and generated over $35 billion in revenue worldwide for Google in 2011. Up until now, most search ads have been delivered based on the content of users’ search queries, but location information and even personal information are starting to be used to deliver more targeted search ads to users.

At its core, all that is needed to enable personalization is data, content, and a mechanism to have one drive the other. As has been covered, applying personalization for different use cases has a substantial impact on the type of data being used, the content that is being tied to that data, and the types of delivery mechanisms that enable that personalization. Understanding these differences and requirements for each application can help different stakeholders communicate more effectively when pursuing personalization, as well as open the door to new opportunities

When Google+ was first released in 2011, there certainly was a lot of buzz in the marketing world.  However, for many of us, the reaction was this: “Oh no; do we really have another social network to worry about?”

Well, if you have been neglecting adding Google+ to your marketing activities up until now, you may want to re-think that approach! Here’s why.

Search Plus Social

Last week, Google announced that they were going to make some fairly significant changes to their search engine. They labeled these changes “Search, plus Your World”. These enhancements would dramatically change the search results that were presented to logged-in users. The results presented to people would now greatly incorporate the social networking data that a person is connected to — at least the social networking data that Google had access to.

Users would notice this difference throughout the links, images, and videos that were presented by Google’s search engine. Yes, what a person saw two weeks ago as the #1 result when they searched for “printing services” could now be radically different, based on their social network connections.

Since Google only has access to the data within so many social networks, Google+ is playing a major role in the changes that they’ve made to their search engine.

This has caused a number of debates to arise as to whether their actions are fair and justified. But for people like us — those that are looking to do whatever we can to grow our business — we must react to the reality.

And the reality is this: If we want people to find our business online, we need to be on Google+!

How to Get Started with Google+

Google started rolling out these changes to users last week. Thus, chances are very good that you have access to them.

Below are a few things that you can do now to take take advantage of these enhancements:

• If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
• Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
• Get on Google+! It’s free to create an account.
• Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
• Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
• Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.

It certainly will be interesting to see how companies adapt and benefit from these changes.

Once you’re logged in to your Google profile, start running a few searches. It can be quite fascinating to see how the “Personal Results” change what is presented to you.

If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality below. I think it does a great job of demonstrating the importance of using Google+ in one’s marketing efforts.

P.S. These changes have absolutely motivated me to increase my personal Google+ usage. Feel free to “Circle” me there!

I recently read an article from Visible Technologies about six social media threats to be aware of when implementing a social media strategy. It struck me as interesting because social media is so buzz worthy now – it seems to be integral to any marketing plan as more businesses adopt a social media strategy. Social media is great for building brand awareness and interacting directly with customers. However, I’ve rarely thought about the dangers of social media and I found this article to be an appropriate reminder of things too avoid. Below are the six risks from the article:

1.  Lack of social media policy – Every company should have some guidelines in place to outline how employees can and should us social media. Failure to do so could result in poor brand representation or even legal repercussions.
2. Internet security – Employees must always be aware of potential hackers hoping to obtain corporate information, especially when downloading software.
3. Network security – Similar to above, social media users should have up-to-date antivirus protection to prevent unnecessary headaches.
4. Mobile phone apps – These apps can make using social media easier and more convenient. Stick to trustworthy apps or brands as some apps contain malware that could reveal private information or destroy data… scary!
5. Lack of presence to address a crisis – Social media creates a world for people to talk about your brand whether you are promoting that discussion or not. A company needs to be ready to address issues quickly and effectively before a (potential) crisis escalates.
6. Employees – Employees can be your best brand promoters on social media sites. However, they can also represent a risk if they do not fully think through posts and/or if they are not well versed in the company social media policy. Be sure that your employees are educated on this policy and remind them to always post with the well-being of the brand in mind.

While I love social media and think it can be a powerful brand tool, it’s nice to be reminded of the associated risks. It reaffirms the fact that social media needs to follow a developed strategy just like any other marketing tactic a company might implement. You can read the full article here. There is even a link at the bottom for more specific tips on how to minimize each risk. Happy social networking!

When people talk about how they are using social media in the marketing efforts, Facebook and Twitter are often the first answers given.

Sure, they might be on LinkedIn. But they may currently only view it as a way for them to “collect people” – i.e. to amass connections.

If that sounds similar to how LinkedIn is utilized in your business, here is one idea for converting that connection data into a way to build relationships and generate sales.

Connections and Job Status

When someone experiences a change in their employment status, LinkedIn is often the very first social network that they update. Depending on our relationship with that person, taking action on that information can be valuable to them… and us.

I recently talked to a service provider that told me how he acts on that type of data. Here’s his story:

His company helps clients reach their marketing goals with design, print, direct mail, email, mobile, landing pages, and more.

While they have had success launching campaigns for a number of companies, they sometimes run into trouble because of high-turnover among the marketing departments that they work with. Lately, this has often occurred because of budget constraints, rather than performance.  But either way, the path to creating long-term, recurring business with those companies is not always easy when the employees change frequently.

In order to capitalize on the successes that they have helped marketers achieve, this company actively seeks to connect with those folks on social networks. Primarily, they try to do this on LinkedIn.

How LinkedIn Helps Deepen the Relationship

If a once-happy customer experiences a job change, the company still has a connection with them. For example, the company may:

• Use LinkedIn to send a personal note when the job change does occur.
• Offer up a recommendation for the person.
• Refer the person’s profile to companies where there may be a fit.

Along with those one-time actions, they will make an effort to stay in touch with them in the weeks and/or months that follow.

By staying connected and engaged to these folks, they create opportunities to receive future sales and jobs once that person is in place at a new business.

How so? Well, they were already a fan of the services provided by that company. And their appreciation of them will no doubt be deeper because of the conversations and actions that took place during the process of changing jobs. Thus, they may be apt to highly recommend that company’s services to their new employer.

Can it Help You?

Certainly, this effort takes a bit of time and determination on behalf of that service provider! But in their words, “it’s helping me grow my business!”

If you are looking for ways to use social media to create and deepen relationships, paying attention to your LinkedIn connections might be a perfect place to start.

P.S. If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, here I am!

From the day Google+ was released a few months ago, it has made quite an impact on the world of social networking. Many reports indicate that 50 million users signed up for the service within the first three months.

Yes, it’s true that there is still quite a gap between Google+ and Facebook and Twitter. However, Google helped to solidify the relevance of its social networking by releasing its Pages functionality this week.

If you are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts through social media, you should certainly take a look at whether a Google+ Page could benefit you.

Here are few things that we have learned so far that may help you in that process:

What You Might Like About the Page Setup Process

It is quite easy to do! You should be able to create a Page in a matter of minutes. Here are the main steps:

• Log-in to Google+
• Go to https://plus.google.com/pages/create
• Choose which category you would like to assign your Page to. Options include “Company”, “Product/Brand”, “Local Place”, and others.
• From there, you will simply need to enter in values for a few basic fields, including Page Name and Website URL.

Once your page has been created, take the time to fill out your profile. This may include:

• Using the “Recommended Links” section to share other URLs that are relevant to your business. This may include other social networks, a Newsletter Sign-Up form, and even a way for people to access an online storefront for products that you may sell.
• Take advantage of the content that can be entered into the “Introduction” field. Google+ provides plenty of space for you to share a compelling story about your company. You can also add links to relevant sites here as well.
• Utilize the “5 Photos” Area on the Home Page! This space does give companies a chance to be creative. When done properly, you can provide a great image of your company through the photos that you share there.

What You Might Not Like About the Page Setup Process

Google might certainly make changes to the items mentioned below sooner than later, but we just want you to be aware of them right now:

• There can only be one Page Administrator right now.
• It’s not exactly Facebook. This can be a good thing! We are all excited to see what opportunities Google+ may open create for businesses. However, since many of us are very familiar and comfortable with managing a Facebook Page, we may struggle a bit as we look around for similar capabilities within Google+.

Moving Forward

One of the best, but yet, most challenging items of being in the world of social networking today is that things change very quickly. Many companies are still trying to figure out how to grow their business through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Thus, some might look at the process of adding Google+ to their marketing mix as a burden.

However, we must keep in mind that success in marketing truly comes down to being where our customers and prospects are. In the case of the print industry, many of us are trying to reach marketing departments so that we can offer solutions to them. Google+ is already the home of a lot of forward-thinking marketing professionals!

Creating a Page now while the Feature is relatively new might give us a tremendous opportunity to increase awareness of our brand and attract some well-deserved attention!

If you have been to any marketing-related conferences over the past year, I’m sure you’d agree that mobile has been a very popular topic.

Companies of all sizes are looking for information on QR Codes, mobile websites, mobile apps, and more. In addition to those items, there inevitably is a speaker at these conferences that will say this: “Don’t ignore SMS/Text! More people use that than they do the mobile web”.

It certainly can be motivating to hear those quotes and to read articles like this one. But how can you actually implement SMS/Text into your business?

Here are three ideas on how a printer could incorporate SMS/Text into their marketing, sales, and customer support activities.

Notification When A Job is Ready

Most of the printers that I work with send notification via email when a job is ready. In addition to that email, it may be worth considering sending a text-message to the customer at that time as well.

Of course, this may not make sense for all jobs. But here are a few scenarios where SMS may prove to be helpful:

• When the job was flagged as Rush/Urgent
• When the job will be picked up by a customer
• When the job will be delivered by the printer & sign-off is required

Yes, email or a phone call could certainly be used in those situations too. But as more and more people turn to SMS to communicate about all sorts of activities, this may be a way for a printer to also share information with their customer in a channel that they may prefer using.

To Share Information About Specials

Certainly, a business does not want every marketing initiative to be related to pricing specials and discounts. However, those can still be used from time-to-time to create buzz, garner attention, and increase sales.

Many printers are using email and social media to promote their specials. Another way to do that would be through SMS/Text. Since most pricing deals only have a short-window of time, SMS/Text can prove to be an effective way to get your customer’s attention very quickly.

Of course, the message we send out should do more than just provide details of the discount… Make sure that you include a way for them to redeem it!

To Gain Feedback After A Job/Project is Complete

We all want to generate repeat business. To do this, we often have to reach out to customers after a job has been done, seek to get their feedback, and then offer/recommend other activities that we could help them with.

One challenge in accomplishing that is finding the time — both for us (in this case, the printer) and the customer. Using SMS to initiate that conversation could prove to be an effective option for us.

For one, the text message most likely will get noticed by the customer. Also, it may provide the customer with a very quick way to provide feedback. (Many post-job follow-ups that I have seen come in the form of an email that often link to a survey that ask 10 questions!)

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These are just a few ideas on how SMS/Text could be used to help improve marketing, sales, and customer support initiatives.

Have you found anything else that works? If so, please let me know in the comments below!

While many companies compete to do business with large companies that can deliver sizeable long-term contracts for print and marketing services, a trend has emerged over the past few years related to targeting small and medium sized businesses across a wide range vertical markets. Many point to providers like Vistaprint on the print marketing side and Constant Contact on the digital marketing side to paving the way for the so-called Long Tail of services for SMBs.

Indeed, by offering self-service tools and a broad array of vertically-focused templates, these companies have grown tremendously and their services are used by millions of businesses worldwide to do everything from buy business cards and manage e-mail newsletters to launching full-blown direct marketing campaigns. While we often talk in terms of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumers (B2C) models, these types of services have blurred these lines by making businesses buy more like consumers, while keeping the systems open enough to even attract consumer users.

Why are these services popularized and still growing? According to the Small Business Administration, there are over 27 million small and medium businesses in the United States, accounting for between 60% and 80% of all U.S. jobs. SMBs are typically characterized as establishments with fewer than 500 full-time employees. Thus, the market opportunity is tremendous, even if you are only able to reach a fraction of SMBs in the country. The power and flexibility of the Web, and in the case of Vistaprint and other online print businesses, the power of a highly-automated production environment, have enabled companies to service large volumes of small orders, something which is becoming more common even in larger organizations.

InfoTrends saw this trend becoming prominent and in 2009, conducted an in-depth study on the topic entitled Capturing the SMB Business Communication Services Opportunity, which surveyed over 2,000 small and medium business across 13 major vertical markets to understand how these companies were utilizing some of the very services just mentioned. We found that just like larger companies, SMBs were diversifying their marketing mix, with traditional media still being an important component but also heavily emphasizing the use of the Web and e-mail to reach their target audiences. Social media was also increasing in importance. At the time, 32.1% of SMBs indicated using Facebook to promote their businesses, while 16.9% indicated using Twitter to do the same. We hypothesize that these numbers have increased substantially in just the last few years.

Furthermore, we found that SMBs had a preference for a “one stop shop” type of experience for printing needs, and we feel that also translates into marketing services, as well. There are a number of vertically-focused services and service providers on the market that cater to a specific set of small and medium businesses. For instance, GuestEngine and Fishbowl provide turnkey marketing services and tools to restaurant owners. Demandforce originally focused on automotive services and dentists, but has expanded its marketing platform to personal services and other healthcare specialists. SharperAgent provides self-service, cross-media marketing campaigns to independent real estate agents, and was recently acquired by real estate software developer Market Leader.

These types of vertical-focused platforms are the next step in the evolution of SMB marketing services. InfoTrends is referring to them as SMB marketing automation services, as many of them aim to automate various aspects of the marketing process for companies while tailoring the services to meet the intricate needs of a particular market. Focusing on one or a particular set of vertical markets also equals more replicable applications. We are currently conducting a follow-up study to our 2009 research on this topic with a study entitled Capturing the SMB Marketing Automation Opportunity, which will be sure to glean valuable insight into how this market continues to evolve.

As it is often said, small and medium businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, and they want to succeed and be effective in their marketing just as much as a large enterprise corporation does. Through the power of the Web, many SMBs now have the tools to market smarter. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement and plenty of opportunity exists for service providers that want to take on the task of making print and marketing services more effective for a particular market.

Does it seem like these days everyone’s “liking,” “tweeting,” “following,” “tagging,” “streaming,” “sharing,” or joining the blogosphere? Are you feeling the pressure to jump on the social media bandwagon … but concerned that you don’t have enough information or expertise to do it properly? For any print provider or small business owner, social media seems to be a necessary tool to tackle the future. But it can be confusing to figure out where to start or how social media tools best fit into your business plan.

Luckily Bob Boucher of Cole Creative was nice enough to give us some insight. In this webinar, he gives an introduction on how businesses can easily implement a social media strategy with a focus on search engine marketing, social networks, and video sharing sites.

Happy socializing!

If you are interested in more webinars like these, visit MyPressGo! and catch up with the latest webinars shown on the first Tuesday of every month. Don’t worry if you miss the first Tuesday because all webinars are archived online!

Two weeks ago on The Digital Nirvana, I covered the DMA2011 conference & exhibition, highlighting how DMA is making a clear shift to embrace more digital, real-time forms of media and marketing. It’s clear that these areas are where marketers are gravitating toward. While print is still an important component in a more diverse marketing mix, it is becoming a much more targeted touchpoint in a broader, more complex marketing lifecycle.

According to a recently released study by IBM, complexity is a top challenge for the world’s CMOs, largely driven by the explosion of data,  social media platforms, the proliferation of channels & devices available, and the shifting nature of consumer demographics. For this study, IBM conducted face-to-face interviews with over 1,700 marketing executives from around the world as part of series on understanding C-level challenges and opportunities. The resulting report, entitled “From Stretched to Strengthened”, paints a picture of chief marketers that need to do more with less, deal with technology on a more intimate level, and ensure that the marketing strategies and tactics they use are effective and measurable.

Regarding the topic of complexity, IBM found that CMOs face a a “complexity gap”; almost 80% of CMOs believe that the world will become more complex over the next five years, but only 48% feel that they are prepared to handle this increase in complexity. Other important insights from the study include:

• CMOs and their marketing organizations are making strategic decisions based on broad market information versus information from individual customers. For instance, 74% of CMOs reported using customer analytics to understand their individual customers, but other sources like consumer-generated reviews, third-party reviews/ratings, and online communications fell below the 50% mark. Marketers need to be more customer-focused, and leveraging these types of data sources can help them do that.
• Technology is a much more important factor in marketing organizations these days, but there are two primary barriers to leveraging technology more effectively: cost and lack of ROI certainty. Furthermore, end-user skill sets and marketing’s alignment with IT are key concerns for CMOs looking to make greater use of technology.

IBM, of course, has made significant investments in acquiring data and marketing technology providers over the last few years, including Cognos, Coremetrics, and Unica, so this research fits quite nicely into the company’s narrative of helping marketers conquer some of these challenges through IBM’s technology. That being said, this also means that there is a substantial opportunity for service providers to help marketers solve some of these problems by utilizing data, making marketing more measurable, and ultimately simplifying the complex nature of this new world of marketing and communications. What are you doing to help your clients simplify the complex while driving strong return on marketing investment?

Recently, I had the chance to spend some time at the DMA 2011 conference in Boston. While I absolutely enjoyed my time at Graph Expo, I was excited to attend a show that primarily consisted of marketing agencies and in-house marketers. I was looking forward to seeing what topics were trending, what challenges were being hotly discussed, and what technologies and channels were being debated.

It’s certainly very important for all of us that are associated to the printing industry to understand what marketers are thinking and talking about. Thus, I’d like to share some of my observations from DMA 2011. I hope that you find them helpful!

1. Marketers are absolutely in need of integrated solutions:

One theme that seemed to exist in many of the conference sessions was the need to break down silos and to integrate marketing efforts. As more and more marketers move to reach their customers and prospects through multiple channels, many of them have fallen into the trouble of storing and managing multiple databases. Those databases might store conflicting or simply varying bits of information about their contacts. This harms a marketer’s need to try to communicate with their audience in real-time. It also prevents a marketer from truly delivering one-to-one and relevant messages.

Thus, service providers (especially those that are committed to offering marketing services through multiple channels as opposed to only print, mail, or fulfillment) have a tremendous opportunity to promote and offer solutions of that nature to their customers to help them solve those challenges.

2. The Primary Discussion was Digital — But Print Still Has a Place in the Marketing Mix!:

I won’t lie – many of the discussions at DMA 2011 centered around online marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. But there were still a number of great case studies shared that involved print and direct mail components. Some of the main reasons why I heard marketers share why they still chose print as a channel included:

• It is tangible.
• It can be personalized.
• It can create a deeper emotional impact.
• It can be a very effective way to drive people to online content.

3. When it comes to social networks, businesses have a lot to learn:

Judging by the attendance of various sessions, many companies are still striving to learn how to effectively use social networks in the B-to-B space. Here were a few of the tips that I heard that I’d like to share:

• Twitter’s search features can be one of the most powerful websites for companies to utilize. It enables us to really listen to what’s on the minds of customers and prospects.
• Facebook’s dominance in the social networking space is truly astounding — thus, we most likely all need to invest more resources there. They have 800 million users! Nearly half of them log in each day.  30 billion pieces of content are shared there each month! Those numbers clearly dwarf the activity that other social networks can share. With that much volume, it’s certain that some of the content being shared and discussed has to do with companies and products. In order to capitalize on the opportunities there, business of all shapes and sizes must be on Facebook too.
• People love video. It’s true. Video is being used more and more by marketing agencies and other companies to tell their stories. I truly think that many service providers can utilize video to do the same thing

4. Mobile and QR Codes Were Huge… and Growing:

There were a ton of QR Codes at the conference. They were on posters, signs, collateral, and clothes. While that is a good sign to me when it comes to printing, I also noticed that most of the QR Codes were not used 100% properly.

• Primarily, most of them seemed to point to non-mobile websites. I truly think that there is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to grow their business by doing more than just providing or printing the QR Code; but rather, to also offer the building and hosting of the mobile website or mobile landing page.

This past Monday, I had the opportunity to attend the Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference & exhibition, DMA2011, being held October 1-6 in Boston. Its tagline, “the global event for real-time marketers” is a slight tweak on last year’s tagline of “the global ROI marketing event” signals a continued transformation of both the organization and the event. Lawrence Kimmel, who took over as CEO of DMA just over a year ago, has been working to strengthen the organization and provide more benefits to members, while also changing the face of DMA to be more visible to the digital marketing world. Kimmel opened up the show with a keynote extolling the progress that DMA has made under his leadership, and he makes a pretty good sell. Looking at the sessions being offered and the mix of exhibitors on the show floor, it’s clear that digital and cross-media marketing are instrumental to the success of the DMA and its members.

The major keynotes at DMA reflect its transformation. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, spoke directly after Kimmel’s opener via Skype, which seemed to throw attendees off quite a bit as the perception was that Stone would be there live (his wife is expecting a child soon, which is why he couldn’t make it). Nevertheless, the entrepreneur gave a good, thoughtful talk about the founding of Twitter, its adoption by marketers, and the “a-ha” moment that marketers had about listening and engaging with people (in real-time, of course).

After Biz’s talk, his floating video presence was joined by Scott Kirsner, technology columnist and blogger for the Boston Globe, and Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of WineLibrary and consultant to brands about using social media. The crew discussed the finer points of how to leverage social media in smart ways to deliver a great customer experience. That afternoon, Facebook’s VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Grady Burnett, talked about similar concepts in how the social Web transforms business.

The session tracks more than hinted at an increased focus in digital marketing. These tracks included topics like “Acquisition & Lead Generation,” “Real-Time & Trigger Marketing,” “Mobile Strategies,” and “Data, Measurement, & Attribution.” Each track also had courses broken out by knowledge/skill level to help guide people to the most relevant ones. DMA had a pretty stringent submission and review process for sessions this year, resulting in higher quality content that provided real value to attendees.

The show floor also represented the continued shift to digital and cross-media marketing. More and more print service providers are coming to DMA, pitching their marketing-centric services to attendees. Quad/Graphics was showcasing its new Interactive Print Solution, which combines multiple mobile response technologies, including mobile barcodes, image recognition, augmented reality, and near-field communication, into one integrated solution. Many vendors in the digital print space were in attendance, presenting their solutions for direct marketers. There is also an influx of digital marketing solution providers large and small. On the large side is IBM, which has made many acquisitions in the digital marketing space including Unica and Coremetrics, which were on display. There were more niche vendors, as well, especially related to mobile marketing.

There was a sizable, enthusiastic crowd in attendance at DMA2011, and while I was only able to attend the show Monday, one thing remained crystal clear: those that want to continue to be successful with direct marketing, whether it be from the service provider or the marketer side, need to embrace digital and cross-media marketing. These areas are the fastest growing in the industry, and will be the future of direct marketing.

Google+ has only been with us for a short time. But within its first month, most reports state that more than 25 million people joined the service. What makes that fairly impressive is that the service was still only in invitational-only mode. However, Google has recently announced that the social network is now open to everyone. Thus, the question is this – should printers care about Google +?

At Graph Expo, a lot of people said this to me: “I’m already overwhelmed with Facebook and Twitter. I just can’t deal with another social network now.” And trust me, I understand what you’re saying. Personally, I have not yet Google+ as much as I should. But fortunately, I have some employees that have been fairly regular users.

Should printers care about this social network? I think so. Here are five reasons why I think they should take action on it now:

1. It has Staying Power

While Google may have fallen short of their goals with their previous ventures into the social networking space, all indicators are pointing to the fact that Google+ is here to stay.

It has some tremendous features that users are already fawning over — whether it’s the ability to drag-and-drop people into your Circles, the easy way to share a variety of content, or the search options for finding people who you’re interested in connecting with, Google+ appears to have the necessary tools to steal some attention and web-browsing time from Facebook.

2. Marketers Are There!

As with many “new” things in the world of marketing, the first group of folks to rush there are (ta-da!) marketers. And guess what? Marketers need to buy print. Okay, maybe they don’t know they need to buy print. But they need ROI. And often, ROI comes from direct mail pieces, newsletters, business cards, flyers, and other materials that will help them drive awareness and leads to their company.

By hopping onto Google+ sooner than everyone else, printers have a great opportunity to meet and develop relationships with marketers that could potentially become customers.

3. SEO

Everyone cares about their search engine rankings. And while Bing may be growing, Google is still the number one search engine in the world.

If you are wondering whether Google includes public content and profiles from Google+ within their search rankings, the answer is absolutely yes. Thus, printers can find ways to increase the effectiveness of their SEO efforts by creating profile pages for staff (and soon their business) and by sharing compelling content for public consumption.

4. Walk the Walk

Many printers are now looking to grow their business by offering marketing services and solutions that go beyond producing print. This might include QR Codes, personalized URLs, email, landing pages, web design, SMS/Text, and more.

It’s one thing to talk about other marketing channels. But it’s certainly more important to be using them yourself. By getting acquainted with Google+ now, it will open up additional conversations between printers and the marketing departments that they are trying to sell to.

5. Online Community Features

From everything I’ve seen, the majority of printers out there love helping each other. Whether it’s a trade show or conference, an email Listserv, or a LinkedIn group, many printers are willing to share information to help each other.

Google+ contains a number of features that will help people to engage with others both via video and text chat. I absolutely think that those features will bring benefits to businesses that find ways to put them to use. Along with peer discussions, I think that Google+ tools such as Huddle and Hangout might be great for project collaboration and customer service.

Moving Forward

I know that there will absolutely be some skeptics on Google+ being just “another social network”.

But from everything I’ve seen so far, I truly think that printers (and many other types of companies) will find business opportunities by utilizing Google+ sooner than later.

Websites are the corporate/institutional face. Websites tell our story as we wish it to be told. The content, the presentation, the story, the wording — on a website all these are the creation of the creator.

Blogs take a small step away, but these mini-articles still tell the corporate story, in the corporate words. The point of view, the topics chosen, the spin, the selection of imagery — like websites, all these speak in the institutional voice — except for the comments, of course: occasionally, the comments argue or contend. And yet, we can moderate comments, so we retain the final say.

Twitter is pretty much in our institutional control, too. We tweet and the world’s only real option is to repeat what we’ve said, or ignore us.

But Facebook. Ah… now that’s a bit different.

With Facebook, we put our face “up there” and they “come” (or not). On our Facebook page, “they” comment (or not). They complain, provoke, endorse, applaud and “like” (or not). Our primary responsibility in the Facebook world is to be present. We’re not the coach and we’re not the referee either. We’re more like the fans in the stand, believing in our team and hoping for the outcome we want. But the game can go either way.

That’s why recent research suggests that our customers — the public, in general, if you will — are beginning to enjoy Facebook above all other corporate/institutional presentations.

Our customers are allowed to chime in, if they care enough, taking conversations in any direction they choose. This is fun for visitors. This “platform we give them” is empowering. At last, they can circumvent the telephone experience (which is increasingly impossible) and publish their disgruntled or laudatory stories right there for all the *other* “fans” to see.

Obviously, this Facebook proposition is a risky business for us. (Have you ever wondered what would happen if Facebook had a “hate” button? Because — for every ardent fan — there’s probably a hater out there?) Despite the hazards, most companies seem to think — so far — that the benefits outweigh the risks. They like us, they like us!

But it’s tenuous.

Let just one explosion shatter our corporate walls on Facebook — with genuine marketplace consequences — and then we’ll see how much corporate America really, truly wants “them” to be part of “our” conversation.

Are we ready to face that?

Note: This is Part 7 of a 9-Part series based on the book “Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry”

Transforming from a printing company printer into a marketing service provider certainly may require a lot of internal work. But once those steps have been completed, a crucial step in the process is to let the world know about the new services that you can offer.

How will you promote your new business? It is important that you don’t abandon the tried and true marketing methods that you have always fallen back on. However, it is just as important that you are willing to embrace new technologies and strategies that you may not have utilized in the past.

In chapter 6 of my book Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry, I constructed a list of questions related to key marketing efforts that may help.

# 1 – Your Website

Do you have a website? Many of you will say “yes” to this question… but it doesn’t end there. Does your website represent your marketing services provider business in the best way possible? Is it interactive, engaging, and frequently updated? Heck, is it ugly?

It may be worth investing in resources to ensure that “working on the company website” is high on your company’s priority list. Don’t run the risk of your website being lost in the shuffle.

#2 – Your Blog

Are you wondering why company would want a blog? Here are a few reasons: A blog drives traffic to your site, encourages visitors to keep coming back, and it also increases Search Engine Optimization.

#3 -  Sales Collateral and Lead-Generation Forms

When transforming into a marketing services provider, it’s important to update your sales collateral to reflect the appropriate messaging and branding. Once this is done, incorporate downloadable versions of that information on your website. People are always researching and looking for tips and facts when looking at businesses. Studies have shown that about 70% of people use a company website to research a product or service before they make a decision. Thus, do not be shy about re-purposing information from your brochures and slicks onto your website.

Of course, you don’t need to give it all away for a free! Put up lead generation forms that require interested parties to give you some bits of data (perhaps their email address) before they can download certain pieces of collateral.

# 4 – Online Video

Do you have any video or audio on your site? If not, you absolutely should. Quick videos are great ways to disseminate important information, and it is a nice change up from the written word.

Speaking of video, do you have a YouTube channel? Keep all of your videos in one place, and embed them on your website.

We all want people to find us on Google, right? Well do not forget that Google owns YouTube… and YouTube videos often rank high in search engine results. So, get the camera rolling!

#5 – Social Networks

Now that we’ve mentioned YouTube, we have to discuss the rest other social networks; namely Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. All of these are very important to keep in mind when you are crafting your online marketing plan. Build your networks, connect with professionals and potential clients, and involve your company in pertinent conversations about your industry. You can do all of these things in social media. Just like your website, make sure you have a strategy in place when you are setting these networks up. Do not let them fall by the wayside. Consistency is the key to a successful social media campaign.

What else can you do?

There are other ways to promote your news services as well. You should use email marketing to reach your audience.. You should aggressively create and launch direct marketing campaigns, including direct mail (of course!), print advertisements, radio ads or television ads. Don’t forget to create personalized URLs or QR codes to get the attention of your audience when appropriate.

And there is also mobile marketing. Create a mobile website for your company that can be viewed by the rapidly expanding audience of people carrying smartphones everywhere they go .

I hope that these ideas help you to promote the many services that you can now offer customers and prospect.

Next week, I will give you a guide to help your sales team sell marketing services.

To learn more about my book, “Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry”, visit  my book’s website.