Scott Design

Last week, I attended BtoB magazine’s most recent “Netmarketing” breakfast, at which marketing representatives from Brocade Communications, Intel, and Cisco each presented a recent online integrated marketing campaign. They discussed the successes of each campaign, but were also very honest about what worked and what didn’t.

Each of the campaigns featured a concept (Brocade’s “DCX Man,” for example) that appeared in online advertisements (placed on targeted sites and often featuring videos), as well as in tradeshow handouts and presentations, Facebook pages, and other online venues, such as live chat sessions.

The most important take away from the three reps is that a clever, unique online marketing can be created and tested without a huge time or budget commitment – a strategy not possible with the expensive commitments of a traditional print ad campaign. Start small with the online campaign by posting banners on a few targeted sites or e-mailing out to a selective audience (most likely a core group of customers and contacts). Then, see what the response is in terms of click thrus to an interesting landing page or views of a video.

If your idea catches on, there will possibly be a viral effect, with viewers sharing your message with colleagues. And if you are witnessing success, then you know it’s worth the time and budget to expand the campaign and start targeting additional sites and audiences. If you’re not getting a great response initially, then you can revise the concept and test some more—again, without a huge investment of your valuable marketing dollars.

I also liked that two of the three reps presented successful campaigns that incorporated a bit of humor and levity in marketing technology solutions. Most people in technology are smart and funny – why not use some humor? And, the increased use of video ads in the campaigns didn’t surprise me. Users are now so used to viewing videos, there’s little reluctance to click and view. Just keep the videos short (20 to 30 seconds).

Tags: integrated marketing, online marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Marketing . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.