Posts Tagged ‘online multimedia marketing’

08 Sep 2010

Marketing Baby Carrots as Junk Food

Marketing campaign for Baby Carrots as Junk Food

I just read a post on Marketing Daily about a new marketing campaign the carrot farmers are getting ready to launch (read the post here). The campaign promotes baby carrots with the tag line “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” and a theme of mocking the chip ads from the major snack companies. Whereas chip companies market their snacks as extreme – you know, extreme cheese, extreme hot and spicy and extreme red and orange- baby carrots have extreme crunch and extreme orange. I mean, how much more orange can you get than a carrot?

I think this is a great marketing strategy, and the irony of positioning baby carrots as competition for junk food at the same time snack companies add “no trans fat” badges to their packaging is pure genius. The campaign includes TV spots, outdoor advertising and online and social media.

According to the post, the campaign launches September 13th in Syracuse and Cincinnati. We won’t see it in Atlanta until after that, but I look forward to when we see it. Who knows, maybe the orange juice people will follow suit? It’s pretty orange too, you know.

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Posted in Multimedia marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »
31 Aug 2010

Lead Follow-up: The Challenge of Online Lead Generation

In many companies, Sales complains that they don’t get enough leads from Marketing, and Marketing complains that Sales doesn’t follow up on the leads they are given. It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke. Unfortunately, many lead generation campaigns fail because no one follows up on the good leads that are generated.

Lead Follow-up: the link between Sales and Marketing

Lead Follow-up: the link between Sales and Marketing

In my fantasy, Marketing hands Sales all the leads they can handle and Sales follows up on every single lead, closing every opportunity. Everyone is happy, and everyone makes lots of money. The problems begin when you have expectations like mine.

Because of performance pressure, Marketing tends to send weak leads to Sales. Sales often doesn’t follow up because the leads are weak, saying it’s a waste of time. However, when a well planned and executed lead generation campaign is conducted by Marketing, quality leads will be the result. The leads must be segmented as quickly as possible by Marketing so that they can be passed on to Sales while they are still “hot”. Sales must be prepared to follow up on with these leads within 24 hours to reap the full benefits of the campaign. There is nothing worse than wasting a good lead. Sales must follow up on the leads promptly, before they get cold. That means they need to trust that they will get good leads, and that they will take the time to act on them. Marketing must communicate to Sales about the current campaigns and give guidance on how to follow up on the leads.

It’s important to think of lead generation as a funnel (see Understanding the Online Lead Generation Funnel). In a typical marketing funnel, the best 5% of marketing contacts are strong enough sales prospects to passed to Sales. The next 10% are close, but not quite fully baked. Marketing should monitor those 10% and pass contacts that are from marquis customers to Sales, and continue to cultivate the others. For example, if your company produces drink production equipment a lead from Coca Cola should be passed to sales.

Lastly, Marketing should track the follow-up. Marketing needs to track leads through the marketing funnel, then through the sales funnel and then through the lifetime of the customer. The lifetime value of a lead is the true measure of the success of marketing campaigns the marketing organization.

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Posted in Email Marketing, Multimedia marketing, Online Lead Generation, Uncategorized | No Comments »
23 Jul 2010

Multimedia Marketing Lessons from a Domino’s Web Video Ad

Ever wonder why, in commercials, the pizza looks so good? Online Lead Generation

I’ve never had a pizza delivered that looks as good as the ones in the ads. We thought you’d enjoy this video on how they do it, and at the same time offer some lessons on online multimedia marketing. So, here’s an online video ad for Domino’s that accomplishes all the things you should strive for in a multimedia marketing campaign. This video is entertaining and informative, and the quality is excellent.

Let me warn you, that there’s a pre-roll ad before the actual video, which is pathetic. One day, old school broadcasters are going to figure it out. I hate pre-roll ads, and so does everybody else. And the whole thebubble.msn.com is an awful web site chock full of lessons of what not to do on a video content site. But go ahead and tolerate it just this once.  And don’t close your browser until you’re done, or you’ll have to watch another stupid pre-roll ad.

Watch the Ad:  http://thebubble.msn.com/dominos-pizza-ad

What makes this a good video ad?

Length: 3:07 – The video is a little long, but still short enough so you want to watch the whole thing. We recommend an online video ad duration of 1-2 minutes, but strongly recommend keeping the video ad time under 2:30. If you’re thinking of going longer, your production quality needs to be very high or it will get boring or annoying.

Production quality: very high – This is a big budget video with clips from an actual 30-second spot embedded within it. The things to notice are the audio quality – very clean and consistent, and the video quality- no distracting camera movement, crisp transitions and good lighting.

Informative – a behind-the-scenes look at advertisement production is interesting because while you see ads all the time, you don’t really know how it’s done. It feels like your being let in on a secret.

Entertaining – there’s some light and self-deprecating humor throughout. They don’t seem to be taking themselves too seriously.

General – it doesn’t appear like an ad until the very end when there’s a little plug telling you they should just go to a real store. A shameless plug would ruin the whole thing.

Good content starts with a good subject and ends with good production. I hope this helps you with creating your own online videos.

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Posted in Multimedia marketing | No Comments »