Outdoor advertising is very very catchy, and sometimes critical for the local communities, as advertisers can promote their brands in the most relevant areas of the city. Outdoor advertising and billboards are part of outbound marketing and very often are included in the so-called “classic” advertising media. However, given the new digital formats used by media companies, it’s hard to say that all outdoor advertising is classic.

Why is outdoor advertising important?

Billboards can be a very strong way to build awareness in traffic for a brand or for an outlet, as it is very compelling in attracting customers.  There are many companies that are relying on billboards as an advertising medium, especially the ones that can find easily their target groups in receptive (buying) mode or the ones that sell products that can be used outside, such as cars and umbrellas.

Outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising is a marketing activity that uses large print or digital advertisements, such as billboards, messages, and mobile signage. It is used to promote a brand, a service, or an entire company, in a given period of time. Outdoor advertising is the same as billboard advertising in the United States, the difference being just of terminology.

Outdoor advertising is usually placed in high traffic areas, such as public squares, tall buildings, highways but also at pedestrian level in areas such as shopping centers and bus stations. The biggest advantage of using outdoor advertising by marketers is that it is able to build fast brand awareness and to promote commercial messages to a large number of people in a short period of time.

The cost of outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising has gained the reputation as one of the best CPM (or a cost per thousand) views among current advertising formats.

The individual cost of a billboard or mesh depends on several factors, but most especially the level of demand for that specific location. Of course, the demand for an outdoor advertising location depends further on the traffic in the respective area (which can be translated into an estimated audience size), the visibility of the billboard (how it’s placed vs. the traffic flows), but also the level of spectacularity (some formats are better lit, some are digital, or some are placed in the vicinity of important tourist or commercial attractions).

Cost structure

The cost structure of a billboard is usually split into five categories:

• Rental cost
• Printing cost
• Printing cost
• Decoration and neutralization cost
• Special project construction

The printing cost usually ranges between €100 to €500, decoration and neutralization between €100 to €300, while special project constructions (such as 3D special structures, LED structures) can go as high as €1,000.

Billboard cost structure exemplification

For example, if a company decides to rent a certain billboard for a year, but changes the layout every 4 weeks, the decoration and neutralization cost will be added more frequently than the monthly rental cost (every 28 days vs. monthly).

The cost of renting a billboard in a small village can be as low as €300, but in Times Square it can reach $25.000.

Outdoor vs. Out of Home  vs. Billboard advertising

Billboard advertising, out-of-home (OOH) advertising, and outdoor advertising are similar terms, as all three aim to reach potential consumers when they’re not at home.

In Europe, the most popular term is “Outdoor Advertising”, while in the US is more used the term “billboard advertising”. In media and advertising agencies, the most used version is OOH (or Out of Home) advertising.

For example, big advertising and media creativity festivals such as Cannes Lions use the term OOH (out of home) for awarding creativity in this category of advertising.

Top 5 outdoor advertising companies in the world

According to movia.media website, the largest outdoor advertising companies were:

1. JCDecaux
   • JCDecaux is a French media company established in 1964. The name comes from its founder, Jean-Claude Decaux, and they are present in over 80 countries over the globe. Their success relies on investing in street furniture, transport, and billboard advertising.
2. Clear Channel Outdoor
   • Clear Channel Outdoor is credited to be the first outdoor advertising company in the United States, in 1901. The original company went through several M&A processes, the last being acquired by the iHeartMedia group from San Antonio, Texas. They are present only on the U.S. market in 44 States.
3. Focus Media
   • It is the largest Chinese outdoor advertising company, which gets a high share of the revenue from online advertising. Founded in 2003 in Shangai, China it operates only in China.
4. Ströer
   • Founded in 1990, Ströer is the largest German outdoor media company and has its HQ in Cologne, Germany. Besides billboard advertising, they are very strong in digital marketing, too.
5. Lamar
   • Lamar is the second-largest American outdoor media company, and it is also present also in Canada. Founded over 100 years ago in 1902, it features today the largest digital billboards network in the United States

What factors determine the cost of outdoor advertising?

1. Traffic – It represents the total number of people who pass by the outdoor in a given period of time, usually a month. We can call it also Estimated Audience and has a direct contribution to the overall Reach of the billboard.
2. Socio-demographic profile – It refers to data that includes age, income level, and the traffic that passes by. This information is gathered from travel surveys and local transportation authorities.
3. Estimated Views – Represents how many impressions can a billboard deliver in a month. This data is estimated with special cameras that monitor how many people look towards it in a given month

How can you make your Outdoor Advertising successful?

There are a few rules of thumb that you should consider for making a billboard ad successful. Some of the rules apply to all the billboards in your campaign, but some only to them, so be flexible with your creative approach.

Rule #1: Be concise.

The hardest challenge for a creative person is to translate a marketing message in an outdoor ad, where you should limit yourself to having a 5 to 7 words headline that is compelling enough. For this reason, make sure you include in your creative brief the need to have this type of medium exemplified in the campaign proposals.

Understanding the Client Brief for a pitch

For this, every decision-maker involved in creating the final ad needs to apply a “reduction” creative technique that allows ditching all unnecessary copy or visual elements.

Rule #2: Break the visual clutter.

The most striking billboard ads are the ones that allow car drivers to get it without getting too much distracted from the steering wheel. In order to achieve breaking this clutter, a bold short headline and a magnetic visual background or image are mandatory.

You could say that a billboard that is part of a 360 campaign should be the “emulation” of the big idea behind the brand, its shortest version so be very demanding when approving it.

Rule #3: Blend with the surroundings.

If you have a premium location, research what is around that location, including other billboards. Take into account the neighborhood, which could boost the relevance of the ad multi-fold.

Rule #4: Take advantage of modern technology

Some billboards or meshes allow advertisers custom designs and structures that make it more dynamic or allow them to interact with the audience or the surroundings.

You won’t manage to have an outdoor campaign only with customized billboards, but try to break the noise and grab people’s attention. Your brand will stick out and be more memorable than the others.

References:

• 9 Largest Outdoor Advertising Companies in The World – movia.media

The ultimate goal

I remember Seth Godin saying in a video last year, that first you need to earn people’s trust you need to ask yourself a key question: “What story can I tell the people who trust me?”.

This is a tough, critical question (and your ultimate goal in addressing your audience) to which you can answer only by knowing those people (the social media target group) better than any other company.

Is it a real or a virtual concept?

When you work in social media you deal with target groups in every single client brief that you receive. One of the primary steps that you have to perform is selecting and understanding that cluster of people (the social media target group) both from a commercial point of view and human-wise.

Although a target group seems to be tangible (we tend to see them as a well-defined group), in fact, we deal with virtual clusters of people whom we analyze via social media analytics and other first-hand investigations.

In social media, the target audience appears to be more fluid than the audience of a brick and mortar store, especially because online a customer can be won or lost with a single click or tap.

What is the social media target group?

It is defined as a cluster of individuals that are relevant for the commercial or non-commercial objective the lies in a marketeers plan.

How to determine it

The social media target group is determined by using multiple factors such as demographic data (age, gender), social (personal income, household income, social status), education, profession, but also behavioral traits.

Take you into account when defining it’s that you need to focus on those potential customers who have the highest probability to be interested and to be able to buy your service or product.

How can a buyer persona help?

As I mentioned above, the target group is virtual and for creative purposes, you need to be very specific in order to inspire your team in creating engaging ideas.

Here your company’s buyer persona makes the group more tangible and easier to understand by the members of the team who cannot analyze the data like you.

Questions to ask yourself

You need to answer questions like “What type of content do they resonate with?” or “What is the right approach in interrupting their social media activity with your branded content?”.

So basically, just like when dealing with a creative brief you have to put yourself into the buyer persona’s shoes, Think like her, and anticipate what would make her be interested in social media message.

You can read more about the buyer persona in my previous marketing article.

Discover and validate your social media target group in 6 steps

There are various ways you can perform this task, from simple-low budget-fast to complex-costly-time-consuming. Let’s see now one of my methods to define actually a social media target group:

1. Draw a basic profile

It should include standard data like gender, age, social status, geographic areas, but also past experience of using the category of products/services that you are selling.

You can get this information by analyzing your current customers in your social media channels, but also by paying a subscription to social media analytics or social media insights platforms.

You should use tables, data filters, pivot tables, and other tools that can help you filter the right profile out of the heterogeneous customer profiles stored in your databases or social media analytics.

2. Determine the main attitudes and behavior

This second step should give you enough insights to answer important questions related to purchasing barriers, dissatisfactions, buying patterns, but also how people interact with social media channels (yours and competitors).

You may find this data by interrogating your e-commerce platforms, taking into account also the referring social media platforms, and connecting them with the analytics that you identified in the first step.

When it comes to the behavior you need to see where your audience is mostly active because your brand and your channel managers would not only have to think like potential consumers, but also use social media channels just like them.

3. Anticipate the trends

You do know that the consumer that you are analyzing now is actually yesterdays’ consumer, right?

That’s why you need to pay attention to the social media trends of your target groups, in what way and how often they tend to use the social media channels, how much they tend to trust them.

Keep in mind that social media platforms are in some cases public enemies, being accused by various groups and governments that they mislead and antagonize people’s attitudes.

So basically you need to look at the big picture, comparing the dynamics of how your target groups are using the social media platforms your brand uses.

For example, you may discover that Twitter users aged 35 to 45 years old tend to leave the platform and switch to Quora and Reddit. If these customers are the most profitable ones for your brands, you have to take into account this trend and translated it into numbers (audience, clicks, orders, revenue and estimated ROI).

4. Get inspiration from other brands

You may find yourself in two different scenarios Kulin

Scenario A: If the market that you’re trying to enter is new, your inspiration lies within other product or service categories.

This research activity is more qualitative, so you have to identify the successful social media posting recipes that those brands are using to get the attention of their audiences and how they address them.

Analyze thoroughly their social media posts, but also the comments. The first will give you ideas and a sense of how we should approach your social media target group, while the second will set your expectations on what feedback you will receive once you start.

Write down formulations, keywords, icebreakers that you found do have generated the highest engagement rate. Be wherever, that the engagement volume may be biased, as you cannot assess how much the respective social media posts have been boosted/promoted.

Scenario B: The market that you are targeting with your brand is already well developed.

In this case, you need to turn your focus on the existing players and their social media target groups, including:

• the market leader;
• the challengers, especially the ones that have aggressive pricing strategies, and those that are very creative and positively reviewed in social media.

5. Validate your findings with real consumers

You should discuss your buying persona and consumer archetype with people that have experience with the category of products that you’re trying to sell.

Strip down your questions of any technical terms and ask those consumers and simple words and with visual aid how much they relate to those profiles.

You may discuss with them by using online surveys, but also online in-depth interviews or online focus groups if meeting them face-to-face is costly or will delay your project.

At the same time, you can dissect these topics in social media groups like Facebook Groups, if your brand uses this platform.

6. Summarize the social media target group in a catchy way

The last step is about summarizing your findings and presenting them in a visual way, avoiding discussing the social media group and buying persona too synthetically.

I recommend this because your internal stakeholders (managers, creatives) need not only to understand the target group but also to feel and resonate with them.

The first choice is of course to build a nice PowerPoint, but you could spend a few days more and create a video or a Prezi presentation which will add more engagement.

By doing this, your social media ads team and content writers will be able to understand the social media group beyond numbers and validate their hypothesis on what are the right clusters.

Biography and resources:

• Reddit – How to create a buyer prsona? (useful topic for social media target group)
• Video – Seth Godin – To find your audience, ask yourself this question
• LinkedIn Course on Social Media Ads (free)

A quick history on the strategist job

This advertising strategic planner job exists for only 55 years, as before the planner was a researcher disconnected from the creative process.

The first role of a planner in an agency happened in the mid-60s in Australia when Unilever researcher David Brent put into practice his experience inside an agency.

A couple of years later, in 1968, the famous ad man Stanley Pollitt proposed to his peers that an advertising researcher could be trained and work side by side with the account management team.

He put his idea into practice in 1968 in his own agency, Boase Massimi Pollitt, rebranded in 2004 as DDB London. Funny fact though, the same idea was independently applied during the same year by Stephen King at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, where the new department was called “account planning” (as we know it today).

What is the purpose of a strategic planner?

The focus of the strategic planner is to study thoroughly consumers and for this reason, it has been associated with “the voice of the consumer” in the ad agencies.

Just like in many other marketing jobs, there are great responsibilities when performing the tasks of a strategic planner as it may lead the team either on a fertile creative route, or (seldom) in a void.

How should a strategic planner find an idea?

In order to find a fresh strategic idea, the strategic conclusions of a strategic planning process must be based on reliable marketing research but also on a variable amount of inspiration.

To whom does the planner report?

In medium-sized and big agencies this position reports to a senior strategic planner, while in smaller ad agencies it directly reports to the strategic planning director or head of planning.

There are also cases where there is only one position in planning in a small agency and without a head of planning, the respective strategic planner would report to the Client Service lead.

You might find out more details about the creative brief in 3 previous articles:

The definition of Creative Brief

The Creative Brief: 11 questions answered

Creative Brief template #1 (how to solve a Big Issue)

Job duties

The typical tasks performed by a strategist in an advertising agency are very diverse:

• Needs to research for clues, insights, and arguments that can solve the marketing brief;
• Prepare, write and present the Creative Brief;
• Prepare presentation for the clients;
• Inform the team about new insights discovered related to the brand, the client, the market, the consumer;
• Assist the Client Service team to debrief a brief received from the client;
• Plan and hold creative brainstormings the agency;
• Provide support to the creative team during their work;
• Keep an eye on agency’s and brands’ competitors;
• Write case studies for competitions such as Effie Awards.

What makes a strategic planner great?

It needs to have a great contribution to creating successful advertising campaigns. The planner must be not only a skillful consumer researcher but also a reliable and inspiring team player.

There are quite a few qualities that make a strategist great:

• Discovering fresh consumer insights;
• To be a fantastic listener;
• To be seen as a source of inspiration for the whole team, including by the creatives;
• Being a ferocious reader;
• Showing on above the average curiosity;
• Demonstrating great presentation skills;
• Magnetism or convincingness;
• Great intuition;
• Cross-domain experience;
• last but not least, patience in dealing with the unknown and the unexpected.

Who are the best strategists?

There are many role models in strategic planning, and some of them are still active today. I would mention here John Steel, Seth Godin, Rory Sutherland, but we shouldn’t forget about the founders of advertising research, Stanley Pollit and Stephen King (mentioned above).

Resources:

• Wikipedia – Account planners (or planners)

How many times did you buy a product after seeing an email offer? How long did it take you to accept an email marketing campaign offer?

This article is a guide on how you should plan your next emailing CRM campaigns.

Emailing campaign typologies

Depending on the type of customer it addresses, emails have different objectives and are written in the form of newsletters, news, remarketing, catalog sales.

Nevertheless, the most common type of content sent via email is the promotional offer of a product or service.

Who and when created the first SPAM?

It was Gary Thuerk in 1978, working as a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp who sent the first promotional email to a list of email addresses.

Obviously, many of the addresses did not request computer advertising, so later Thuerk was to be proclaimed “the Father of Spam.”

According to his Linkedin profile, he is the “Father of e-Marketing” and fancies a custom URL called “fatherespam”. You can see a timeline of his notorious SPAM campaign and other emailing efforst in this Timetoast article.

How do I plan my email marketing strategy?

To start an email marketing campaign you need to assemble a few pieces that will help you in the results brought to the brand.

The first step and I think one of the most important is designing your database for the FUTURE, not for your current needs.

It must contain not only data fields valid for the people who have interacted with your brand or who were directly interested in it, but also future prospects of products that you haven’t launched yet.

The main goal of an email marketing strategy

Your goal is to capture leads and grow your emailing database through various methods designed to convince people to offer you some of their personal data in exchange for offers or quality content.

My advice is to plan your email marketing strategy you will work with, taking into account three factors:

• the position in the market;
• your team’s understanding of CRM and email marketing.
• the marketing calendar of activities.

Choose your best email marketing platform

Opt for an email service, through which you can segment your audience, to mass distribute email campaigns to certain segments of people. There are various options you can test, including automating these emails.

CRM statistics (2021 update)

What are the benefits of email marketing automation?

On average, 51% of companies currently use automation (source: Emailmonday.com). Among them, the most important benefits of automation are:

1. Time-saving – 30%
2. Higher income – 17%
3. Lead generation – 22%
4. Customer retention – 11%
5. Monitoring marketing campaigns – 8%
6. Reduction of sales cycle – 2%

The most successful tactics for email automation

The most successful tactics for automation are the use of personalized messages (51%) and mapping the consumer experience (53%).

eCRM Automation: Your next best marketing tool

How do you build a legally compliant database?

As you may know, in European Union GDPR regulations have given marketers a hard time, but strategies to bring great results for the brand are not that hard to obtain.

Check one or all of these tactics and write in the comments what results you got:

a) Create a subscribe / subscription / subscription form on the website.

When people like what they read, what they see on the website, they will want more and to be as close as possible to the brand, to be the first to know the news. You can even install a pop-up to capture email addresses.

b) Send visitors with the help of social media platforms chosen according to B2B, B2C, niche, and obviously budget address.

Displays the form for subscribing to page debates in paid campaigns. Keep in mind, emails that have personalized the recipient’s name have 50% more openings.

c) Obviously you can capture the database offline, in an event, in a meeting, and offer them added value by accessing online resources.

How to grow your Email Marketing database in 3 steps

If you struggle with building your contacts list, the  want to multiply the existing database you can:

1. Create a landing page, where you present the sale offer or the options within the brand, in order to determine your email marketing recipients to sign in. Keep in mind the benchmark, the average open rate for a welcome email is 82%.
2. Design campaigns that can be shared further by the recipients, aiming to increase your chances of exposure.
3. Launch a contest or discount to get people to sign up to your email list.

How can I keep my email marketing compliant?

Here is a list of rules for you to follow in order to keep your emailing activities white-listed:

• Be careful that the emails you send comply with GDPR law (for European Union) and CAN-SPAM regulation (US);
• Set up email campaigns correctly and avoid buying databases;
• Let people know when they subscribe to email, how they can log out and what they will receive;
• Timing is critical. Make sure you send emails at the most receptive moment of the day, on the best day of the week or of the month;
• Design simple emails so that it is easy for people to unsubscribe.

How often should you send emails to your customers?

A GetResponse study showed that marketers get in touch with customers 2-3 times per month (32%), 4-6 times (19%), once per month (17%), 6 + times monthly (16%).

When is the best time to send an emailing campaign?

The best acclaimed time to send emails is 11 AM (the best time to send emails) but also 12AM (you will receive the best CTR).

When is the worst time to send emails?

According to Optinmonster, the lowest open and click-through rates appear on weekends.

Tip for benchmarking: Have in mind that 81% of companies rely on email marketing as a top method for customer acquisition and 80% for retention (2018 Emarsys study).

Should an email marketing campaign be creative?

You will definitely make a difference by being creative, but don’t try to find the pure original concept.

Aim instead to communicate with a fresh message and approach, so do your research prior to launching a new emailing campaign.

and if you give people valuable and useful information, they will surely keep an eye on what you tell them.

It all starts with that eye and heart catchy welcoming message, where you tell them what great thing can happen next.

What should you use in your campaign?

In order to reach the maximum potential (or ROI) of your emailing campaign it is necessary for you to include:

1. Evaluation and tracking

Evaluation is both the first and last stage in your email marketing activities.

You need to measure the success of every emailing campaign, and usually, succesful CRM marketers  track continuosly:

• Email openings and clicks;
• Mid-funnel outcomes (leads generated by filled in forms and other eCommerce widgets).

2. Build an extensive segmentation criteria

It’s more efficient and smart to have more criteria from the start than adding them once in a while to an existing database because it will generate a huge effort of enriching existing data.

Moreover, you have to apply a target segmentation for each email based on a minimum of 2 to 5 criteria. The most popular email database segmentation types of variables are:

• Socio-demographics;
• Usage;
• Recency;
• Behavioral traits.

Tip: Don’t be shy with contacting your fans, as 49% of consumers prefer to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands.

3. Communication strategy, sending frequency

What type of messages you use, knowing when to send the message is essential, if you send too few you can lose sales or lead nurturing opportunities.

Find the “goldilock” of your category: you don’t want to bore your audience, or you be reported for spam.

Tip: Email videos increase your clickthrough rate by 300%.

4. Testing and optimization

Take testing to your heart. Benchmark continuously your initial campaign coordinates.

Statistics show that 60% of specialists do not test the email marketing campaign, 20% test the offers, copy, layouts, creative, while 16% only test the subject line (Get Response study).

Read more about A/B testing for eCommerce in my previous article.

Emailing is the most effective marketing sales channel

More research shows that 47% of marketers say that email marketing is the most effective channel (vs. 39% for social media, 33% for SEO, and 33% for content marketing)

Email efficiency for B2B marketers

40% of B2B companies questioned declared that email newsletters are the most important tactic in the content marketing strategy (Content Marketing Institute)

Tip on benchmarking: Email marketing generated in average 4200% ROI ($ 42 for every dollar spent (Source: 2019 study in Campaign Monitor)

Biography:

• Neil Patel – https://neilpatel.com/blog/beginners-guide-email-marketing/
• Optinmonster – https://optinmonster.com/beginners-guide-to-email-marketing/
• MailChimp – https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/

In this article, you will find out the latest and most important customer relationship management statistics in today’s world of big data marketing.

Bit first, let’s check on the big elephant overlooked in many meeting rooms:

Why do CRM automation projects fail?

Probably each one of you has witnessed an automation project in her or his company they did not deliver or failed miserably.

Usually, these projects are very complex and they consume a high volume of resources, creativity, and drive.

The main reason for being unsuccessful is using an old-style project management planning for a modern tool: 360 degrees analysis of the projects, complex decision process, but also exaggerated internal alignment and feedback.

The second reason is the lack of experience of the project team in developing automation software platforms. For this reason, many companies abandon their own CRM project due to the complexity generating by development, security, and tech staff turnover.

SaaS CRM automation: A convenient alternative

The companies that failed to build a custom CRM platform, choose software as a service (SaaS) solutions.

The big advantage of a SaaS CRM is that allows you to customize much easier a ready-to-use tool for your team.

At the same time you externalize the development and tech support teams, managing to manage projects and tasks much easier.

Last but not least, this alternative solution allows you to manage all your team’s work in a single place and improve their work accountability.

Now let’s go together through some recent statistics about CRM automation, from which you can gather insights on how to increase the success of your next customer relationship management automation project.

Forrester Research: Digital CRM improves team productivity

Let’s start with Forrester research, a global market research organization that is focused on customer demand research for companies of all sizes.

One of the recent studies showed that 50% of teams improved their productivity with the use of mobile CRM.

Revenues from CRM (Customer Relationship Management) outperformed database management systems. CRM is the software with the largest expansion in its niche in the world and experiences continuous growth.

I’m a financial point of you, CRM is expected to deliver yearly revenues of over $ 80 billion by 2025.

How popular is CRM among small businesses?

A recent US survey showed that 91% of organizations with more than 11 employees now use CRM, compared to 50% of those with 10 employees or less.

This means that the smaller the organization the lower the chances are that CRM to be used.

CRM statistics on automation: Top objectives

Another study performed by INVESP which surveyed marketing specialists concluded that when it comes to automation, lead generation is the top objective for 61% of them. 

Also, CRM statistics showed that other top objectives when using automation were:

• lead nurturing: 57%
• sales revenue: 47%
• increasing customer engagement rates: 36%
• increase marketing productivity: 29%
• improving campaign CRM statistics: 28%

Companies’ intention to adopt marketing automation

A study performed by the global emailing and automation company Liana Technologies discovered that 40% of companies that do not use marketing automation declared they will start adopting this type of software.

Meanwhile, about 50% of marketers are assessing it, while only 10% do not intend to invest in marketing automation tools.

eCRM Automation: Your next best marketing tool

CRM ROI: How successful is it?

First, a 2021 study from Liana Technologies concluded that only 11% of marketers measure the ROI of email marketing, a very low number given the analytics potential of this channel.

Combining the different study results we see that even if one of the most important objectives for CRM is to increase sales revenue, very few companies are interested in the relationship between CRM and ROI.

Among marketers that measure ROI, another research showed that only 75% of them declared they have achieved ROI targets within a year after implementing a customer relationship management solution.

Two stats about Marketing Automation profitability

About 76% of the companies that implemented marketing automation enjoyed an ROI in the first year, while 44% recorded profitability in just six months.

What is the greatest barrier in Marketing Automation?

The automation industry has started marketing statistics to find that one of the real challenges is adopting the right tools or software to automate processes. This impediment was by 20% of marketing agencies to be the number one barrier to success.

One last research from Automizy showed that only 6% of marketers openly stated that they also face other challenges such as segmentation, optimization, and data management.

Why companies fail to implement automation

A recent McKinsey study for the retail market showed that 70% of large-scale automation projects deliver results below expectations.

What is the reason automation projects fail?

Many digital marketing firms have been early adopters towards automation technologies, while others have delayed this step for various reasons.

Nevertheless, the lack of expertise in automation and CRM statistics seems to be the culprit: 55.6% of businesses give up automation.

The same Liana Technologies study showed that 48% of respondents admitted that the lack of human resources is the main reason, while 32% said it was due to lack of finances.

Sources:

• Liana Technologies – Press releases – https://www.lianapress.ae/press-rooms/liana-technologies.html
• Forrester Research studies – https://go.forrester.com/research/
• McKinsey Research study – https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-how-of-transformation
• Invesp – https://www.invespcro.com

How much do you know about eCRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management) and marketing automation? How do you know if your company needs it now? Let’s discover the answers to these questions in this new article.

Every company customizes its eCRM marketing automation depending on the type of customers and industry (choosing B2B vs. B2C eCRM or using both), needs, organization size, and objectives.

What is Marketing Automation?

It is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technology through which you can manage marketing processes from the same place, as well as complex campaigns, in as many channels as possible automatically.

Messages are automatically sent to the user database, following a set of rules called workflows.

You can use marketing automation to build a strategy for a lead generation program, nurturing a database, scoring your customers, measuring ROI in your campaigns, and more.

What does eCRM automation include?

Once implemented correctly, electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) becomes a deeply integrated system into your business or enterprise structure.

The technology and data science built within an eCRM or CRM solution is a source of deep knowledge of your customer, transcending the classic department structure.

Here are the five activities included in eCRM automation by customer marketing:

1. Customer management – Access to stored customer information depending on its level in the funnel.
2. Account management – Consumer historical data that the marketing department and the sales department can use to make decisions in real-time.
3. Case management – Requests, complaints, and suggestions from customers and prioritize files so that managers can receive notifications when problems occur.
4. Back-end integration – Information from the logistics system, inventory, and payments using contact points accessed by customers – website, call center, eCommerce, etc.
5. Reports and analyzes – Reports that allow companies to analyze customer behavior and allow make faster marketing and business decisions.

eCRM vs. Marketing Automation software

In comparison to eCRM automation mentioned above, a marketing automation software can contain all or some of:

• Collects data about consumers via social media, emails, website visits, or apps;
• It is compatible with big data marketing projects;
• Audience segmentation and targeting;
• Customize each message according to customers;
• Hub for creating campaigns;
• Integrates mobile messages with email and social media campaigns via SMS, group messages, and push notifications;

Benefits of eCRM automation

CRM was first developed to help sales teams be more efficient in centralizing and tracking customers. It helps you uncover hidden purchasing patterns, determine customer activities, and draw conclusions based on data for your strategic customer marketing automation decisions.

The top 3 benefits of eCRM automation are:

1. Increases your team’s productivity – According to a recent study, eCRM automation brings a 14.5% increase in the productivity of the sales department (Source: Nucleus Research)
2. Connects your company’s departments – CRM automation software allows you to synapses between sales, marketing, customer service to communicate effectively.
3. Blend different sources of customer data – Measure and manage all your company’s B2B or B2C interactions and make customers get the same “look and feel” of your brand or services while interacting with your brands, covering all stages of the sales funnel.

What types of marketing automation are used?

CRM is focused on generating relevant, personalized customer interactions. Each platform includes different tools that increase your brand’s value by augmenting your services’ personalization.

• Design process visualizations via diagrams, to make marketing or sales decisions across the organization;
• Defines and justifies the decision to use automation software for employees;
• Tracks and analyzes online and offline data in real-time;
• Allows you to design different marketing strategies for each customer cycle;
• Helps you plan gradual revenue growth.

MVP launch for your eCRM automation

In case you decide to go for a CRM solution, keep in mind that the most successful automation brands have launched their first tool with many tests and optimizations.

My advice to you is to avoid finding the perfect solution, but with the best deployment plan. Choose an MVP launch (Minimum Viable Product launch) for your customer reporting and management software.

This way your development will be more agile, the company will optimize costs, the HR team can plan better the CRM talent search, and your software development project will not disturb the existing marketing and sales data systems.

Sources:

• Elearningindustry.com – eCRM
• Salesforce – Power your marketing

This article is a quick guide on how to approach and tune your lead generation campaign, how to get quality leads, set a landing page, and reach your goals through automation.

The definition of lead generation marketing

Lead generation is a marketing process that aims to raise consumers’ interest high enough for them to inquire about a product or service provided by an entity (company, private person, NGO etcetera). They are mostly used in building consumer databases for short or medium-term sales.

What is a “lead” per se?

A lead is a person who already identified its need (read more about the AIDA model here), looks for answers or solutions to it on the internet, and ends up finding you as the best one.

At the same time, she/he should be a relevant customer that follows the description of a buyer persona that you target strategically with your brand.

Does it cost to generate leads?

Yes, eCommerce or marketing leads consume time, financial and human resources. In order to obtain a qualified lead, you need to put in place both an efficient lead generation strategy and subsequent tactics suited for the digital environments where ads or (call to action messages) CTAs are placed.

A common mistake for a rookie in lead generation marketing is to put all the eggs in one basket: target a large number of potential leads with the same message or offer (usually in social media or email marketing), without prioritizing preferences or other behavioral criteria that can cluster that audience.

Factors that influence lead generation campaigns

Lead generation success depends on many factors. In my projects I have encountered most often the following:

• the local market’s development;
• how active the competitors are;
• the sophistication of consumer demand;
• legislation and regulations (see GDPR);
• e-commerce’s importance in the overall sales plan;
• the marketing department structure;
• the team’s experience.

Important: some of the factors above can be addressed internally but others are pure threats to your lead generation strategies as they reside outside your company.

My advice here is that you should take the latter into account as a constant in the overall lead generation equation as they affect marketing and sales but also all types of quality leads.

Types of leads used in lead generation marketing

There are four main categories of leads in use today that are popular not only in paid search but also in social media, email marketing, content marketing, and free trial campaigns.

All four categories of leads are relevant for both B2B and B2C marketing in successful lead generation.

1. Qualified Marketing Lead (MQL) – Contacts who have completed a form on the website but have not reached the stage where they can receive a phone call from the sales team.
2. Product Qualified Lead (PQL) – People who have used the product or service before and are ready to pay for a new one. We can meet them where there are product or service tests, a trial, a demo and they can go for an upgrade.
3. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – Potential customers who have followed actions towards the lead generation marketing campaign, asked questions, visited the website several times, and are ready to buy. This is a very important lead for sales teams and B2B marketers as they shorten the conversion funnel.
4. Service Qualified Lead (SvQL)- Customers that come to you with a request to upgrade, to learn more of the company’s offer.

Lead generation strategies and GDPR

These leads are also of several types, but we will focus on the qualitative and quantitative online leads. Before 2018 in the European Union there were popular the purchased leads, but now it is not the case, since GDPR data protection is in force.

In the E.U. it is necessary now for every person to give their consent legally, by checking a box that they have read your Privacy Policy, which guarantees to them, to your company and the authorities that collected personal data will be processed and stored securely.

Although a bit complicated, GDPR is highly beneficial for all parties, because before its existence competitors could sell databases to each other, passing along personal data without the owner’s consent.

Additional info: You can read more about GDP are on the European Union’s official website dedicated to this law GDPR.eu

How do you capture a lead?

First of all, you need to design an effective sales funnel that maximizes the conversion rate of your prospects. Practically you need to guide the prospects through this funnel, like small kids in a hedge maze.

Although it sounds a little strange at first, you need to make sure that you direct prospects from social communication channels (Clubhouse, LinkedIn page, Facebook page, Instagram profile, Twitter channel, etc.) to your landing page.

The arguments of the landing page in lead generation marketing

The role of the landing page in lead generation is to show your prospect, in a nutshell, the convincing arguments so that she/he will share her/his personal data voluntarily with your company.

It’s easier said than done because except for simple products like confectionery, brands have a lot of arguments to present. So these arguments should not be only concise but also trustworthy and creative in your lead gen campaign.

The best way to build your arguments in order to generate leads is through social media listening, customer inquiry, and similar types of market research that focus on finding those conversational “soft spots” of your customers.

When does the conversion of a lead occur?

It happens when the visitor interacts with your contact points, sends you a message, fills out a form, or calls you. When this happens, you have the chance to perform lead scoring but also to present your product or service in a more efficient way to generate sales.

The Sales Funnel in online lead generation can take the following form:

• Clickable Ad
• Lead gen Landing Page
• Content
• CTA or Offer
• Registration Form
• Legal consent
• Confirmation Button
• Follow-up
• eCRM communication
• Direct call

What are the most popular lead generation activities?

Online lead gen professionals usually focus on the following online activities (not necessarily in descending order):

• Paid ads
• Online events
• Social Media marketing
• Email marketing
• Blog posts

Take into account the external factors mentioned before, as lead generation marketing strategies are chosen according to industry, country, products or services.

Types of potential customers in lead generation

Beyond capturing some email addresses or phone numbers through landing pages, it is important that you acquire additional data that guarantees that you are addressing the right person.

Lead generation software and marketing automation

If you want to start a lead gen campaign but also integrate automation in your marketing processes, then you need to acquire a license for specific eCRM automation software. The most popular solutions are the following:

• HubSpot – which aggregates data from over 103.000 companies to provide marketing benchmarks. The price for the Marketing Hub tool starts at €41/month.
• Salesforce – The global leading SME and Corporate CRM solution;
• Mailchimp – The most popular freemium emailing platform used by 11 million active customers and which reaches over 4 billion customers.

How does automation improve a lead generation strategy?

Marketing automation is a multi-channel marketing tool. As consumer targeting can take place on the web, social media, email, text with this type of advanced online marketing software you can follow easier and in detail how those campaigns perform and how they impact your revenue and effectiveness.

In any lead generation marketing campaign automation will simplify not only channel management (so you can be more attentive to the way each channel performs where you place ads, emails, a free trial) but also the omnichannel campaign assessment.

How do nurtured leads impact lead generation effectiveness?

Nurtured leads are very important in B2B marketing. A report created by DemandGen lead gen company stated that “Nurtured leads to produce an average of 20% increase in sales opportunities versus leads that do not receive this treatment.”

What is a nurtured lead?

A nurtured lead receives above the average attention from the marketing team, completing a primary lead record with high-quality information that aims to delight the customer journey to grow a fan base.

For example, after an automated campaign on Facebook, you can use Instagram to display ads that will point towards your Landing Page.

This will enable your lead gen campaign to grow the customer database with more insightful preferences that you can use to send later more relevant recommendations on new products and offers.

What are the best practices in lead generation campaign automation?

Both you as the leading marketer and the sales team will need to be aligned on how automation tools generate quality leads. When set properly, automation should generate more qualified leads for each target audience and maximize the call to action and lead capture goals.

1. Segment the database. Always analyze your consumer data and try to create clusters that you can address with more relevance.

2. Don’t be a source of stress for the leads. Lead generation has no value of the following contact actions with your prospects are annoying

3. Build a live analytics dashboard as you grow your campaigns. Besides statistics also take notes on what works and what doesn’t. Include CRM analytics in your executive analytics dashboard and change your lead gen strategy accordingly.

4. Define the purpose of marketing. Design your content strategy and reach every stage of your consumers.

5. Test on the go. It has been shown that the most successful marketing automation companies in the world are gradually launching. For this, you should test your tactics on the go (read my previous article about A/B testing) and optimize the next block of programs to be successful.

New lead generation statistics (2021 global studies)

Benchmarking your performance against relevant competitors in your market and regional markets is always a piece of valuable strategic information for yearly marketing planning.

Let’s see a list of statistics from top lead gen trustful sources:

2021 Salesforce study

• over 60% of customer interactions happen online (up from 42% in 2019);
• 67% of people are preferring to work only remotely in the future;
• Artificial Intelligence used in digital transformation increased almost double fold;
• 31% of marketers use SMS & push notifications;
• 61% of people believe they cannot control anymore their personal data.

2021 Hubspot State of Marketing

• In 2020 40% of companies missed their sales targets;
• 91% of users expect interactive content, but only 17% of companies are able to produce it;
• The global number of email users is expected to get to 4.48 billion by 2024.
• YouTube gathers 35% of global consumers of video content;

On almost every corner of our planet, by using digital technology health professionals generate high amounts of data during their interactions with patients, business partners, or via their own research activities.

The importance of this topic, in this article I’m going to share new insights regarding health statistics based on the experience I had together working in this field.

When was the term “Big Data” invented?

According to digitalauthority.com, the Wird tech magazine introduced the new term in the vocabulary in 2007. The reality of big data was already in use but without a name, so only 2 years later, McKinsey consultancy company estimated that the big US companies were generating on average over 200 TB of data.

What companies use the most Big Data?

According to specialists in the field, big data is used most frequently in the following fields: healthcare, financial & banking, and production.

The first two sectors generate high amounts of personal (patient) data, the second generates synthetic (financial) records, while production needs to correlate various operational data (production, distribution) across the supply chain.

In each of these top 3 sectors, big data analysis and predictive analytics are providing critical insights used in forecasting, diagnosing, and improving core activities.

Doctors always try to understand everything regarding their profession and their patients’ health. However, today’s health sector generates new information more in the form of statistics than academic papers or medical books, so doctors rely more on more for discoveries and insights on big data analytics.

It all starts with the electronic health records or EHRs, which include several fields of personal data such as age, gender, medical history, blood test results, genetic information, and other sensitive details.

Big Data Marketing: Definition, typologies and usage

The biggest hurdle for healthcare integrating big data analytics

For healthcare companies, the no.1 challenge is that despite the fact they have digital instruments through which they collect personal data, they are not prepared for a big data healthcare integration.

How can big data help healthcare businesses?

The ultimate goal regarding big data for a healthcare provider is the full digitalization of health analytics collected from patients, doctors, partners, and suppliers which should generate real-time valuable big data analytics.

By applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to top-class big data storage, a healthcare company will not only gain a competitive edge and increase its revenue, but it would also be able to identify and address critical health issues within certain patient groups. That being said, at the end of the day, big data will save lives and help doctors improve the patients’ quality of life.

How big data will transform the healthcare sector

The applicability of big data solutions in healthcare is very diverse. For this article I have identified over 20 areas in which healthcare big data plays or will play this century a major role:

1. Disease management
2. Disease seasonality and patterns
3. Improve diagnostics
4. Medical imaging investigations
5. Prevention
6. Vaccines development
7. Oncology treatment
8. Telemedicine
9. Health alerts
10. Patient profile in emergency services
11. Correlations between treatments
12. Education
13. Health studies
14. New therapies
15. New genetic tests
16. Managing side effects
17. Staff management
18. Reducing costs
19. Marketing activities
20. Healthcare customer segmentation
21. Patient satisfaction
22. Optimized route to market

Which non-healthcare companies are championing big data analytics?

Besides high-scale digitalization, a secret in the success stories of every big data analytics is Data Consolidation, which refers to the range of digital activities that standardize and structure the vast amounts of collected information. Companies that are highly disciplined with every third-party interaction and how data collection is performing, generally manage easily any high amount of data.

Additionally, these companies also invest in machine learning for their large scale use of big data. So currently if you deal with big data you’ll be more likely to benefit I’m using it by standardizing and consolidating high quantities of data.

Case study 1: IBM Slam Tracker impact on Sports Big Data

IBM introduced the famous tool used to measure the popularity of tennis players during major events, gives those watching the match a real-time projection of how a player is seen by those on the Internet at that time.

Case study 2: UPS approach on Big Data

UPS began using Big Data in 1990 when it developed a series of ideas for solutions based on descriptive analysis. It collected all data from known sources, which were related to the performance of its business, from laptops, which collects information about packages, telematics devices installed on trucks, GPS and GIS systems used, and information on alternative routes. After an in-depth analysis, a better transport solution was found than the one used.

The new system combines all the elements, including portable devices, even the smartest worn by drivers. Jack Levis, deputy process director at UPS, the new tools that use big data used have led to a reduction in the number of km traveled by cars per year, have been reduced by $85 million, saving 22 million liters of fuel per year, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 85,000 tonnes (m3).

Currently, UPS uses Big Data at an advanced level and implements the ORION system to automate the process to know if a package arrives where it needs to, at the right time. According to the company’s calculations, ORION should save UPS from spending about $300 million a year (estimated in 2016).

New statistics and facts regarding big data healthcare

• By 2024 the global big data analytics sector’s worth will reach $68 billion;
• In the US, big data healthcare will register a compound annual growth rate of 36% until 2025;
• Experts estimate that big data could reduce healthcare expenditure by 8% in the US and generate over $300 billion in value yearly;
• US case study: in Michigan, the post-surgical death rate was reduced by 67% through big data analytics.

Big data platforms used by healthcare companies

Healthcare companies manage highly sensitive patient data and medical data such as electronic health records, genomic data, medical records, notes about high-risk diseases and conditions, and more. For this reason, however, in general, they rely on keeping the raw data on their own premises (server hosting).

Reports show that the top five platforms popular amongst healthcare marketing and IT professionals are:

1. 1010Data – market intelligence and business analytics solution that helps you track consumer insights and market trends

2. Cloudera – multi-environment analytics platform developed through integrated open source technology to help users extract insights from data present in any environment.

3. Pivotal Big Data Suite – an integrated solution that offers big data management and analytics

4. Microsoft Azure HDInsight – With it you can go from raw data to new insights. It stores all data, structured, unstructured, and flows inside and outside the organization. It gives the business the chance to gain deep insights with the help of familiar tools such as Excel, Office 365, but also to make complex decisions, faster.

5. SAP HANA – in-memory database for SAP’s Business Technology platform with powerful data processing and analysis capabilities that reduce data redundancy and data footprint, while optimizing hardware and IT operational needs to support business in real-time.

If you are interested more in this topic, I recommend you to read the article Big Data in Marketing.

Sources:

• Select hub – Big data
• Journalofbigdata
• Arbormetrix
• Globalnewswire

The harsh reality of Big Data Marketing

Marketing lives in the customer data era. Because of accelerated digitalization, data is more accurate and timely than ever before. The truth is that most marketers fail to dedicate enough time to gather, analyze and use Big Data sets in their marketing activities as they are tight to old procedures of monthly reports prepared the traditional way by analysts or juniors.

In marketing, big data is not just customer analytics gathered in the same data dashboard, but pure business intelligence which must be managed by experienced, digital-savvy marketers.

How Big Data in Marketing became so important

As people and companies all over the world embraced the digital media frenzy, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Clubhouse, and other big tech companies with millions of users had the objective to monetize their traffic.

The smartest way for big tech companies was to invest in big data marketing analytics systems that would support both their revenue growth plans but also showing to every marketer interested in advertising on their platform that big data can help them make overcome their competitors.

As a consequence, now many business decisions are based on big data marketing tools. This reality also helped sales and marketing experts to gather big data marketing experience, generate great case studies, and master user data statistics.

As the world’s greatest tech giants are increasingly attracted to big data analytics technologies that provide them with structured data and complex insights, we have the chance to learn from them and apply data science techniques to the customer data that we own.

What generates the highest volumes of Big Data in marketing?

The act of accessing and storing information in huge quantities is most familiar to the specialists working in the digital marketing field. Specialists say that a mid-sized company with 3 active social media channels used for posting and advertising generates every year at least 1 million data items.

How do companies process large databases, what are the selection criteria, and especially how do they use them in the company differs very much based on how important the digital customer is for the company (usually dictated by the revenue share generated through digital channels).

Big Data in Healthcare: New facts and statistics

The characteristics of Big Data

The new concept began to be developed as early as the 2000s when analyst Doug Laney (Data & Analytics Innovation Fellow at West Monroe | Author of “Infonomics”) synthesized the definition of big data, which is based on 3 Vs: Volume, Variety, and Speed.

The Speed

Speed is the first important trait of Big Data in Marketing, as the Internet of Things has developed at a fast pace, creating an avalanche of data entering a company quickly and requiring real-time management. RFID tags, smart meters, and sensors develop the need to face these data torrents in real-time.

The Volume

Companies collect data from a multitude of sources, some of which can be smart devices (loT), videos, social media, industrial equipment, and other more creative sources. If in the past there was the problem of storage for the high volume of data as it was limited and very expensive, now we have plenty of cloud storage platforms that solve the issue of high information volumes.

The Variety

Data is produced in different forms, from structured, numerical information stored in traditional databases, to data from text, video, email, audio, customer private data, and transactions stored in more complex and secure databases.

To these 3 main dimensions could be added two more: variability and veracity.

Big data analytics in action

Managing big data in marketing is like having a newborn. You can never rest and the team responsible has to put data (customer) listening as a Level 0 alert.

For example, if the speed and variety of big data sets increase, data flows may become unpredictable, showing frequent changes and variations.

In order to overcome this risk, the marketing team needs to be connected to the trending big data insights (e.g. email marketing, eCRM automation) and be able to manage any daily, seasonal data peak triggered by event algorithms.

The main problem with using big data in marketing

A major challenge for marketers with importing first-hand data to a single platform like Power BI or Google Data Studio is to ensure the big data is correct and complete.

Faults in big data collection algorithms

There are situations when a big data check collecting procedure is faulty, causing a chain reaction in altering several dashboards and big data marketing alerts.

Big data inconsistency issues

The most common problem with integrating big data sources is data inconsistency, as information is imported from different big data sources makes it very difficult to match data fields, segment correctly big data sets, clean data tables and translate customer content into a language comprehensible by the whole team.

Missing or incorrect correlation algorithms

Econometry gives us plenty of insights on what dependent and independent customer variables are and how relevant they are in sales and marketing.

Besides collecting separate data sets and red/green flagging big data events, a big data project is supposed to connect and correlate relationships, but also to perform hierarchies between data sets.

By using “beta” or unverified correlation algorithms that are shared with top management may increase the risk of setting the strategy on the wrong foot or of missing important data events related to customer acquisition, customer loyalty, customer churn, and user base growth.

How to apply big data in digital marketing

Big data opens a new era in creating more accurate than ever user targeting and marketing campaigns can benefit from using advanced tools that consumer behavior data.

By using advanced data analytics for customer acquisition we eliminate almost completely any “guesstimation” from real-time market segmentation.

Through this method, marketers can create buyer persona by using various data collected from customers:

• user preferences;
• consumer behavior;
• shopper marketing insights;
• lifestyle data.

What digital marketing techniques can be used in big data collection?

Cookies

They are small data files that gather information about customer activity while browsing the Internet and generate personalized data in the process. As you may have read already, the digital industry shifts now towards first-party cookies only, which does not affect big data eCommerce and marketing projects.

Social Media

It is a source for big data projects for markers, which includes critical KPIs such as user engagement, ad investment efficiency, reach, and conversions.

Transactions

By tracking the transactions for your web stores or digital ordering platforms, you can find insights about how customers act and what their buying preferences are which you can use by importing certain KPIs in your central cloud data storage.

Web mining

It is an automatic process by which data is extracted from the web using specific IT tools in order to understand the structure of data (source: Wikipedia).

Market research firm Gartner created a report on July 1, claiming that by 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform, mostly for databases used as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

What are the types of big data for marketers?

If we are to classify big data marketing based on the source we generally look at three categories: customer, financial, and operational. These three types of data however can be further split into unstructured, semi-structured, and structured.

Let’s see in detail these three types of big data that are used in real life by companies that are data-driven:

• Structured data – It is user information classified via consistent criteria throughout all databases. The best way to have your data structured is to prepare the sources of origin before integrating them into the single database. For example, eCRM can deal only with structured data collected from their customers or imported from market or business research tools. Of course, the marketing efforts to ensure accurate data analysis and use sales big data to identify growth insights is a big challenge for any marketer, but preparing well is crucial.
• Unstructured data – Customer information available in large amounts of data, that is using no criteria to differentiate between data sets, except maybe for the source of origin. Usually, this type isn’t often encountered in today’s marketing world especially if you import primary data from structured databases such as Google Analytics, Hubspot, or your web store.
• Semi-structured data – Represents user information and insights that a business possesses and which is a mix of structured and unstructured data. In real life, it takes a lot of marketing efforts to perform data analysis and drive customer engagement through semi-structured information.

Sources:

• What is Big Data – Characteristics, Types, Benefits & Examples
• Wikipedia – Big data

10 reguli pentru a selecta o agenție de PR potrivită

Here are the most important rules to organize a PR agency pitch, in chronological order:

1. Pregătește un brief de pitch pentru agenția de PR fără lacune. În calitate de client, ești principalul responsabil pentru rezultatul pitchului, deci asigură-te că ai un brief de pitch de PR clar și cuprinzător Această primă regulă te obligă să aliniezi brieful de PR cu alte activități de marketing, deci este mai bine să îl împărtășești colegilor din departamentul marketing (digital, eCommerce) și să aduni feedback-ul lor.
2. Actualizează brieful inițial pentru selectarea agenției PR cu feedbackul oportun primit de la colegi. Nu există un pitch ideal pentru a selecta o agenție de PR, așa că fii cu adevărat deschis(ă) și proactiv(ă) pentru a primi feedback.
3. Pregătește Grila de evaluare a pitch-ului de PR pe care să o comunici fiecărui participant înainte de prima întâlnire.
4. Alcătuiește o listă lungă de agenții de PR, furnizori de relații publice sau freelanceri pe care îi găsești calificați să participe la pitch. Pe baza dimensiunii bugetului și a complexității campaniilor pe care ar trebui să le asigure agenția de PR, selectează o listă lungă de furnizori.
5. Contactează toate agențiile direct la telefon și confirmă lista scurtă a agențiilor de PR. Relațiile publice sunt un serviciu sensibil, deci este mai bine să nu trimiți invitații prin e-mail înainte de a apelul telefonic sau de videoconferință. Încearcă să păstrezi acest proces de selecție cât mai uman posibil și vei vedea că în schimb vei obține un angajament mai mare din partea agențiilor.
6. Trimite invitațiile, rezumatul și grila de evaluare către fiecare agenție de PR. Sfatul meu este să incluzi în buget o taxă de participare pentru fiecare agenție participantă, așa cum am recomandat în articolul meu anterior despre brieful de Client pentru pitch.
7. Programează atent prezentările agențiilor de PR. Am participat deseori la pitch-uri în care agențiile au fost programate una după alta pentru a avea prezentările lor. În PR nu trebuie să te grăbești decât dacă există o criză de PR, dar într-un astfel de caz, un pitch nu este fezabil. Programează până la 2 prezentări pe zi și acordă cel puțin două ore între fiecare întâlnire, astfel încât să ai suficient timp pentru un debriefing cu colegii tăi, dar și pentru a evita ca diferite echipe de agenție să se întălnească la recepție.
8. Organizează întâlnirile. Începe cu o introducere standard mulțumind participanților pentru acceptarea invitației, oferind apoi coordonatele esențiale pentru procesul de selecție al agenției PR. Fii pregătit(ă) pentru întrebări și încearcă să oferi același răspuns fiecărei agenții.
9. Completează grila de evaluare a pitch-ului agenției PR pe care ai comunicat-o fiecărui participant înainte de întâlnire. Nota de evaluare pentru pitch ar trebui să includă numai indicatori de performanță cantitativi și scoruri care sunt foarte clare pentru toată lumea.
10. Selectează agenția de PR câștigătoare și contactează toate agențiile participante, explicând de ce au câștigat sau respectiv au pierdut pitch-ul de PR. La scurt timp, trimite prin e-mail grila de evaluare și un mesaj de mulțumire.

Elementul cheie în prezentarea agenției de PR este munca sa, nu renumele

De la început până la sfârșit, pitch-ul agenției de PR trebuie să se concentreze pe stimularea celor mai bune idei, strategii, a celor mai rezultatelor și a creativității în Relații Publice. Dacă lucrezi într-o companie mare, departamentul de marketing va tinde în general să lucreze cu agenții mari de PR, dar pentru briefuri mai mici, agențiile mici sau freelanceri ar putea rezolva problemele mai creativ și / sau mai eficient.

Criteriile calitative într-un pitch de PR vs. grila de evaluare obiectivă

Am menționat mai devreme că în acest proces de selecție ai nevoie de o grilă de evaluare obiectivă. Cu toate acestea, energia, entuziasmul și creativitatea echipelor sunt toate trăsături subiective, astfel încât s-ar putea să întâmpini probleme în evaluarea justă a acestora, mai ales dacă nu ești singurul evaluator.

Asigură-te că în Grila de evaluare există o secțiune generoasă de „Comentarii”, unde poți nota orice observație interesantă. În cazul în care va fi o competiție strânsă, aceste comentarii îți vor oferi argumente importante pentru a alege agenția de PR câștigătoare.

Descarcă exemplul PDF de pitch brief pentru a selecta o agenție de PR

Am pregătit o versiune PDF descărcabilă a briefului pitch de pe site-ul meu web, din articolul de mai jos:

https://stefanstroe.com/ro/brief-pentru-pitch-de-pr/

Biografie:

• Public relations – Wikipedia
• AdAge – 6 essential steps for a PR pitch