Integrate Your Marketing Programs and Get a Bigger Bang

By John Gumas

Integrating online media into your current conventional marketing strategy can significantly enhance your return on marketing investment. Adding online components gives your customers and prospects the benefit of immediate gratification by allowing them to access important information on a 24/7 basis. And it puts them in charge of how much and when they want to "drill down" for additional information. These elements are designed to get your prospects more deeply involved with your marketing programs.

Here are some specific examples that we have found to work well within the building industry.

DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE WITH AN OFFER

One of the first imperatives of marketing is to establish and develop a one-on-one relationship with your prospects. The idea is that the more you know about them, and the more familiar they are with you, the closer you are to a sale.

One thing online media can do very inexpensively is capture information. Offer your prospects an incentive to come to your website to sign up for a special offer. This offer needs to correspond with your messaging or theme and should provide enough incentive for your prospect to sign up. For example, if you are promoting a new-home community using an Italian theme, try offering an "enter to win" promotion where they could win a free dinner at a local Italian restaurant, an Italian cooking class or something else along these lines. You can really get creative here.

Once at your site, you can capture some key information about them. Most people are willing to give up a limited amount of information in order to qualify for something they deem valuable.

Not only will you be establishing a relationship with your prospects and providing value, you will be building a database that can be built into all your future marketing efforts.

USE A MICRO-SITE TO CUSTOMIZE EACH CAMPAIGN

You don't want to completely overhaul your website every time you launch a new campaign, but you do want to have some consistency between the look of your campaign materials and the look you have online. How can you have both? With a micro-site.

A micro-site is a mini website that typically has a short life span (several weeks to several months) and a limited number of pages. Think of a micro-site as an interim landing pad that provides the connection between the current campaign and the corporate website. Once at the microsite, visitors can get the information they need on that specific project without having to surf through the corporate website. They could then choose from several options to get more information by clicking on links that would take them into the corporate website.

Another benefit to micro-sites is that you can precisely measure the response to each individual marketing campaign by tracking who hits the micro-site, where they've come from and how many of them visit the corporate site for more details. It's a great way to test the response rates and effectiveness of different campaigns.

PERSONALIZED PASSWORD- ONLY ENTRY BOOSTS RESPONSE

It has been proven that the more you can personalize your marketing activity, the better your response. If you can offer a personalized Web experience, you can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you use direct mail, offer a personalized password or code on each direct-mail piece. The password can be used online to enter a contest, complete a survey or qualify for other premium offers. Most people can't resist checking to see what their very own personal code will get them. One builder saw response rates go from 3% using traditional direct-mail response mechanisms to 20% using a personalized password response mechanism. That's a 666% increase in response rate!

In today's competitive world of marketing, you have to test any strategy that could make a difference to your bottom line. If you are already integrating your online and conventional marketing activity, you already understand the benefits and rewards. If you're not, put some of these suggestions into your marketing arsenal. The results will impress you.

June 2008 Builder Architect Edition Issue

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