It’s Friday, we’re allowed to look at amusing blog posts and funnies on a Friday!

Last week I had a meeting and the campaign was deemed successful due to the increase in ‘touch points’, the moment when a potential customer encounters the brand.

These days lower bounce rates and higher page views bring a huge grin to the clients face. Increases in Klout scores or page ‘likes’ are met with high fives and a tweet going viral has them dancing on the boardroom table.

So why is it no longer about the sales?

Well, let’s just have a moment of quite contemplation and ask ourselves the following question…

“Do I enjoy being sold to?”

What was that? You don’t? The idea of salesman in a shiny suit with his foot jammed in your door breaks you out in a cold sweat? Me too. And I think that is probably true of everyone.

Now before any sales people reading this start posting nasty comments at the bottom of the article, I’d like to qualify that last statement by saying…

‘no one likes to be sold to, but we do like to be kept informed’.

…and that is why it is no longer about the sales. The internet has changed the way we shop forever. People can recommend, learn and criticise like never before. In the good old days there was an adage along the lines of ‘if you have a good experience, you may tell one person, if you have a bad experience, you’ll probably tell ten’. Not anymore, a particularly bad shopping experience can go viral in a matter of days. You don’t tell ten people, it’s more like ten million!

And this is why we marketeers are less concerned with the sales. We’ve grown up a little. We got a bit more mature and began to realise that marketing is about engagement and nurturing a good reputation. It’s about getting noticed, but for great products or service, not for epic fails.

So if we can increase our page likes and reduce our bounce rates, and if people spend longer on our sites and if we can just get that one tweet to go viral then the sales will always take care of themselves.

If nothing else, it makes for very heart-warming viewing.

Many thanks to Alan Ladd for producing and sharing the video.

The findings are contained in the report below and they make for fascinating reading for anyone who is serious about their Social Media marketing.

The report contains the thoughts and real world experience of a broad range of industry experts and covers areas such as…

• Corporate Investment in Social Media
• Assigning Resources
• Biggest challenges in Social Media for 2012
• Monitoring and managing Social Media
• Measuring Social Media ROI (return on investment)
• Preferred Platforms
• Linked In and it’s place in Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Marketing Resources

Clearly, Social Media has now reached a far higher level of maturity and as the report details, is now a serious Board Level consideration for many companies.

If you are wondering what we’re up to over the xmas period..

Lee brings over 18 years of design and branding experience with him, working with brands such as Argos, GUS and Matalan on a wide variety of projects ranging from point of sale to catalogues and direct mail.

Lee has been responsible for making these big brand names look fantastic in print and strengthens our resources to allow The Factory to continue to be one of the premier marketing agencies in Leeds supporting companies to deliver a consistent brand and marketing message both on and off-line.

We worked with Chocolate PR to produce invites and raise awareness of the launch event.

We were asked to consider how we would attract key decision makers to the event, and as ever, on a tight budget.

You can read about or solution in more detail in our marketing case study but the edited highlights are…

• Design and production of a 100% recycled or recyclable invites
• The 200 invites sent received 500 RSVP’s
• Online viral campaign boosted take-up on the event
• Sales directly related to the launch event reached nearly £4million

If you haven’t yet visited the Greenhouse, here is a link to the website. They regularly do tours of the building which are absolutely fascinating. The project was an absolute pleasure to have been involved with.

‘Ah yes, but they are a marketing company who sell _____ (insert product or service here)’.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. The traditional business model is similar to the diagram below…

You need systems and procedures to allow for expansion and continuity. You need sales and marketing to raise awareness and generate revenue and you need a healthy cash flow to fund it all.

This business model is recognised the world over and has been for centuries, with one slight exception. Marketing.

The first marketing course was only offered in 1905. The University of Pennsylvania offer a course called “The Marketing of Products”.

Prior to that, the recognised business model would feature Sales and Advertising, or possibly just Sales.

Marketing has only really come to maturation over the past 30 years or so. The ‘break-away’ moment from marketing being ‘something to do with advertising’ and starting to be considered as more of a discipline in it’s own right is arguably the advent of ‘relationship marketing’ and Kotler’s observation that customers cost considerably more to acquire than retain.

So with banks insisting on a marketing plan to be part of a companies business plan, and with Marketing Directors taking their place on the board along side the FD and MD, are we beginning to see a need to revisit the traditional business model to make our own companies successful?

The new business model in companies such as Wetherspoons, Starbucks, ASDA, EasyJet, Google et al is starting to look more like this…

I have lost track of the amount of time I have heard Wetherspoons described as a ‘marketing company who sell beer’, but people are right when they say that.

Wetherspoons, like all the other companies listed above, have realised the massive potential of marketing to not only forge external opinion and create awareness but to drive the very internal cultures and practices of their organisations.

As social media now allows consumers to have a two way dialogue with giant companies and makes ‘shopping around’ easier than ever in the history of commerce, then doesn’t it make sense that the role of marketing needs to permeate even deeper into the running of our companies to survive.

What do we want from our local pub? Affordable beer, good quality food, a seat, friendly bar staff and to be able to hear ourselves talk. Not everyone wants this, but clearly the largest common denominator do, and Wetherspoons gives it to us in bucket loads.

Marketing has influenced staff training, pricing policy and ultimately cash flow to end up with arguably the most successful pub chain in the UK today. And the same can be said for all the other major competitors in the global market today.

I believe that the current business model needs to change in the current economic environment to enable you to compete effectively.

I’ve recently bought a pen. A lovely fountain pen. I bought my first one about a year ago and it’s renewed my love for writing again. My pen lives at work all the time but it still do a lot of writing at home or when I’m out and about, so I decided to treat myself to a second pen.

Now here is where the ‘wasting your money on Google’ comes in.

The first time I bought a pen, I did the typical ‘customer journey’ and after a bit of research, I found the kind of pen I wanted and made a purchase online.

Fountain pens use a lot of ink, so as the 5 cartridges that came with the pen ran out, I went back online and bought about 50, from a second supplier.

Today I bought my pen from a third supplier.

Now, because fountain pens aren’t a regular purchase for me, I had forgotten the name of the first company I bought from so when I came to buy the consumables, I had to find a second company, and because I forgot who I bought the refills from, I had to go and find a third.

For each purchase, Google was racking up pay-per-click billings and the pen retailers where having to fund my forgetfulness.

Now, had the first company kept in touch, perhaps an email right after I bought the pen offering me a discount on consumables, and then maybe kept in touch every month or so, they would have gained a far higher return on the initial investment with Google to gain my trade in the first place.

So much time, effort and money is spent on gaining customers it always astounds me how few companies put their efforts into making that ‘one time purchase’ customer a loyal customer. Instead, they seem happy to keep spending with Google not investing in their customer base.

Where does your business put it’s marketing budget, in getting new customers or selling to existing customers? Which spend is most effective?

Forest of Bradford in association with BEAT are giving you the chance to plant a tree for your loved one. It’s a great gesture and will certainly last a lot longer than a bunch of roses. You can even go and help plant it.

www.beat.org.uk

The Factory have been behind schemes like this for quite some time now; last year we helped plant 50,000 trees as part of Printing.com’s Tree Appeal and this year the goal is to plant 100,000 trees.

With every job we print on FSC managed paper stocks or post-consumer waste stocks, we plant a tree. We also have a full range of 100% recycled products that we have sourced, should you be interested in making your marketing campaigns environmentally friendly.

The Factory, saving the planet one tree at a time!