The Simon Group

TSG Updates Fab Fall BBQ

So, it has happened…online BtoB advertising has recently surpassed print advertising in overall revenue dollars. Even in the high-tech and industrial markets, where there is an older engineering demographic that prefers print, online advertising still makes up a significant percentage of media spending.

But this shift isn’t necessarily bad news.  As media data has shown, most BtoB pubs have two sets of readers: those that go online and those that still like to flip pages, and the overlap is very minimal.  Online advertising not only provides the exposure to the segments of our target markets that tend not to read print magazines, but also can generate pretty heavy-duty leads, depending on the publication…an integral feature we use in our comprehensive media analysis.

So, just like in the good old days of bingo cards (any of you youngsters know what they are?), we can measure our return on investment for a given advertisement based on how many readers respond for information.

And the news keeps getting better – more publishers are taking advantage of advancing tracking technology to capture more detailed prospect information.

When banner ads started popping up on the Internet, measuring results was limited to the number of times an ad was viewed on a website (impressions), and the number of times someone clicked on the ad and went to the advertiser’s site (click-throughs).

When e-letters started making their appearance, we received similar information – how many recipients opened the e-letter, how many bounce backs occurred and how many recipients clicked through to the advertiser’s website.

There’s nothing wrong with these measurements. We all realize that the primary goal of advertising is branding, and we want to make sure that we get what we pay for – and impressions on a webpage or the number of recipients that open an e-mail gives us this, similar to total circulation numbers for print advertising.

And there has always been a certain “leap of faith” taken in BtoB advertising when linking the impact of branding to sales results, since results tend not to be as measurable as in BtoC programs.  We accept this leap as part of our BtoB advertising program and take it into account when determining a campaign’s effectiveness.

But the bottom line always comes back to the return on our advertising dollar…and impressions, open rates and click-through statistics really don’t show the payoff by linking advertising to sales.

Of course, we can (and do) compare competitive e-letter demographics and circulation to maximize our exposure, and look at content to see which e-letter has the best editorial match, but we need to take additional steps to determine advertising effectiveness. Ideally, customer service and sales support teams will ask the right questions to find out the source of a lead for an order from a new customer – but as we know, this is not always possible and information isn’t always accurate.

Recently, publishers have started to help the cause by providing full contact lead information for e-letters, especially those that focus on new products. So make sure to ask your agency or media representative what results you will get – just click-through and open rates, or actual leads (and don’t be surprised if you get some blank stares or questionable e-mails – our experience is that the knowledge base still varies greatly from publication to publication!).

A couple of other words of warning: you do get what you pay for, and e-letters that generate leads (and hence more value) tend to cost more than those that don’t provide leads.  But even for niche products, the cost per lead received is surprisingly low.  In fact, one recent e-letter yielded over 75 qualified leads for under $2,000 in a highly targeted market, which quickly resulted in numerous RFPs. Not a bad return.

Also, the quality of the lead from e-letters are not as high as one would expect from those that are proactively seeking information, such as registrants for a Webinar. But Webinars are more expensive, so again you are paying for the quality.

So, whether the lead is someone “just looking” or those ready to pursue a deep relationship, the results will give you a much better idea of which target markets are most interested in your product…and, just as in those good old days of print, sometimes those leads really do pan out!

Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, leads, Marketing, Measuring ROI, Web

The Simon Group has been appointed agency of record for Elsys Instruments to implement a new public relations campaign in the U.S. to help continue the global expansion of the 30-year-old company. Elsys Instruments is the U.S. headquarters of Switzerland-based Elsys AG, a leading manufacturer of custom and standard fast, high-precision data acquisition systems.

“When we decided to look for an agency to coordinate our PR campaign, my first thought was The Simon Group,” said Klaas Vogel, Sales Manager of Elsys Instruments. “Having successfully worked with them while with a different company, I knew The Simon Group would deliver a comprehensive, well-managed program with consistently high results. The proven PR methods at The Simon Group are sure to get our company where we want, and need, to be.”

Read the full press release here.

TSG Updates Branding, Marketing, PR, Social Media

The proliferation of social media has finally infiltrated the world of B2B and you know what, it’s not as bad as we thought it would be. I used to think social media and B2B were like the sun and the moon…never the two shall meet.

But, leave it to the web to once again alter the landscape and shake the tree of traditional marketing.  Just as the proliferation of email and websites started to fragment the way in which we could talk to an audience, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook and even the blogosphere are providing new ways to talk with those people who are interested in our clients’ products and technologies, and actually engage them in the process.

Isn’t social media for business really just customer relationship management (CRM) on steroids? It does have applicability and gives companies direct feedback from the audience they most want to reach—people looking to buy a product or service. Imagine the impact of harnessing that firsthand input and applying it to product development to meet market needs!

The good news is that even though the pie keeps getting sliced into more pieces, there’s still enough pie to go around.  The bad news is keeping up with it all can be mindboggling.  An easy way to start is to apply these new social media tactics to one aspect of your campaign and grow it from there.  We tend to get our clients’ feet wet by first integrating social media with our PR program.  From there, once you’re familiar with the lay of the land, the process just snowballs and pretty soon, social media has become an integrated, and valuable, part of your marcom program.

So, next time you get friended or someone asks for your Twitter name, remember this is the environment your customers are operating in.  Like it or not (but we’ve come to like it), social media is enhancing B2B communications.

For more tips on how to implement social media programs, visit our blog post “Mixing in Social Media”.

Articles, Integrated Marketing, Public Relations Facebook, Marketing, PR, Social Media, Twitter

One thing’s for sure in the marketing communications business: nothing is forever. Not even the very best accounts. Here at The Simon Group, we’ve been privileged to work with dozens of great and near-great companies in our first 24 years of business. And, before that, I had the pleasure of working with a bunch more for 19 years at my previous agency. A lot of those clients came with me when I started The Simon Group. One of them was with me for almost 40 years…not a bad run…we helped each other grow and prosper for sure before we shook hands and moved on.

This story is about the accounts we’ve lost over the years because we simply did too good a job for them. Well, that’s not quite true…we did the job they asked us to do: we made them very profitable and very famous in their markets and they went and got bought out by much bigger companies! Not that we begrudge them that…after all, that’s kind of what they hired us to do.

So, while it is painful to lose a successful and profitable account, it’s not always a losing proposition. First, there’s the extreme satisfaction from knowing that you just helped some of your colleagues score the biggest sale they may ever see in their careers. We’ve had lots of thanks and praise and “you guys have made my career!!” kind of responses from our now-sold clients.

And it doesn’t even always end there. Sometimes, our primary contacts, for one reason or another, move on to a new company and they don’t forget the job we did for them at their previous company. Frequently, The Simon Group has been transferred from one great client to another because our key contact moved on and insisted on our moving with him. As long as there’s no conflict of interest, we’re delighted to do just that!   It’s quite a compliment and certainly an acknowledgement of the success we had for that client.

We have one client, for example, who, through mergers, acquisitions or his own desire to move on and up, has changed companies five times in a 27-year period…and has taken us with him each and every time he’s moved on! Best of all, each new client has proven to be an extremely successful one…once The Simon Group, and this particular sales and marketing wizard, got onto their team.

And just a few weeks ago, we got a call from an ex-client contact, for whom we did an outstanding job, and who was able to retire very comfortably when his company was bought. Within a year after his retirement, he got a little itchy to get back in the business so he hooked up with another small technology company….and guess whom he called to do their marketing communications….

So, while we always hate to lose a client through an acquisition, we know that good things may come of it for us, as well as for our colleague.

If you’d like to get bought out…or just get rich and famous with your existing company, call us! We may be able to help make it happen!!

- Marty Simon
CEO

Articles, Business Marketing

Thought online advertising meant just web versions of print ads? Think again!

Although print advertising is still effective, it’s important to tap into the new world of online advertising, since this is the prime source of information for some market segments.  And, research from various sources (Nielson, MRI, eMedia Strategist, and our own analysis of media kits and publication data over the years) repeatedly shows there’s minimal overlap between people that get their information from the web and those that obtain it from print, so if you want to reach your entire target audience, you need to use both advertising channels.

Online advertising takes many forms – e-newsletters, banner ads, webinars, white papers, virtual trade shows, videos, podcasts, social media, pay per click…the list goes on.  With all the technology available, an advertisement can be much more than just words or an image.  Online ads can incorporate motion and sound—something a print magazine ad is incapable of doing.

Online Advantages
A major advantage to online advertising is accessibility.  Unlike print, where the ad reaches only a certain amount of people, online ads have virtually no limit and can reach anyone in the world around the clock. Long after the advertisement is posted it can continue to brand your product or company.

Online advertising also provides something print advertising could rarely deliver: information about the people who are actually responding…clicking on your ads, downloading your whitepapers and tuning in to your webinars. While print advertising can provide you with circulation data and readership details, it can’t provide the names and contact information for the last 10 people who really, actually viewed your information (though the amount of data provided varies by publication).

Website Ads
Web ads are what people tend to picture when thinking about online advertising. They are the equivalent of a print ad and are typically one of the first online ventures a company makes. Just like a high frequency print ad campaign, web ads have great branding power. Advertising on a publication’s website can bring more than just branding though; it can provide traceable leads to your website, while costing less than a traditional print campaign. And remember: web ads don’t have to be strictly text ads.
“Lead Management: The Weak Link between Marketing and Sales” on effectively managing lead data is available on our blog.

Eletter Ads and Eblasts
Targeted emails, be it through a publication’s e-newsletter or your own email blast, have the potential to reach a great amount of interested people. One of the most popular avenues to get to a website is by clicking a link in an email, especially if the email comes from a source the reader already knows, loves and trusts. Email lists can be customized to your target audience and are typically less expensive than a direct mail campaign that requires additional funds for printing and mailing resources. Email blasts also don’t need to be just text. Flash and video ads provide more content in the same amount of space as a text ad.

Article Postings
One thing that is sometimes forgotten when talking about online advertising is posting articles, such as whitepapers, case histories, application notes or any other style. While these items are clearly not ads, they work as such and are invaluable lead generation tools. People searching publication websites are hungry for articles that are of actual significance to them. Article posts provide the reader with valuable content, while providing the advertiser with valuable information at the same time. Data gathered from article postings can tell you the specific products or applications in which readers are interested.

Webinars, Pod Casts, Tech Casts and more
Like article postings, webinars and other types of web videos provide valuable content to a reader while supplying data to the advertiser. In addition to providing leads, this type of online advertising can help the person or company stand out as an expert in the subject area not only with potential clients, but also with the publications. When publications see you as an expert, they might seek you out for input on feature articles, additional webinars or other publicity opportunities that will strengthen your expert status.

Social Media
A little newer to the online marketing repertoire, social media is quickly gaining ground. Social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and blogs continue to blur the line between the socializing or networking world and the B2B marketing world. It’s no longer uncommon to find a company business page on Facebook or follow company news through Twitter or a blog. Social media sites are user-friendly, highly accessible and easily updated… things that made them popular as the social sites they started out as a few years ago.

In addition to the business pages on Twitter and fan pages on Facebook, companies can run ads on social media websites to generate greater attention (…think affinity groups on LinkedIn!).  As these venues become acceptable forms of business communication, the sites will provide a new outlet for advertisers looking to target a specific group of people.
To learn more about using social media in a B2B marketing campaign, read “Mixing in Social Media”.

Paid Search Marketing
Paid search marketing, or pay-per-click (PPC), works in a similar way to how social media sites target specific audiences. By paying for your ad to appear only when specified keywords are typed into the search field on Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines, advertisements are now highly targeted to exact customers interested in what you have to offer. The content of the ads and the keywords in a paid search campaigns can be easily updated as needed (like social media sites, these settings are in the control of the advertiser).

Perhaps the best asset of PPC marketing is that it is one of the few marketing options where you have complete control over the monthly, weekly, and even daily, amount of money spent on your campaign, versus other advertising options where the publication or website determines the price for an ad placement or a whitepaper posting. There is no minimum budget requirement—you can set your limit for just $5 a day if you want—nor is there a restriction against changing the budget during any stage of the campaign.

Paid search also has the ability to generate an expansive amount of impressions and clicks that can be tracked to conversions (if your campaign is set up for it). Using Google Analytics (which is free!) to link to your Adwords campaign, for example, will provide you with the increased ability to track the true success of your marketing efforts.
Read “Analyzing Google Analytics” on our blog to learn more about the metrics available with Analytics.

Customization and results analysis are key to any campaign. Different marketing objectives – branding, lead generation or clickthroughs, for example – require different combinations of available tactics. Online and print opportunities have varied, and valid, purposes.

The constant adaptation of ideas to new online venues has given advertisers more options and ultimately more customizability. And it’s all continuing to expand. When starting a new campaign, be sure to research all the available avenues to make sure you’re employing the best technique for your marketing objectives.

If you’re not sure, give us a call…we can help!

Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, Analytics, Facebook, leads, Marketing, Paid Search, Social Media, Twitter, Web

It’s never too early to start planning… The Simon Group’s Fabulous Fall BBQ will be held on Saturday, September 25, 2010 in honor of the first weekend of autumn. Mark you calendars now to join us for a great day of food, friends, fun and rock & roll!

Look for the official invitation in the upcoming months. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more announcements as the day approaches. And don’t forget to check out pictures from last year’s BBQ on Facebook as well!

See you all on September 25!!

TSG Updates Fab Fall BBQ, Facebook, Twitter

If you are not using Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on your website, you should be. It’s free and easy to use. It’s all transparent to those viewing your site, but provides you with a great deal of good information. After spending the money and resources to send potential customers to your website with various marcom tactics, measuring the effectiveness of those efforts is the next step in a strong campaign.

So, what information can you glean from Google Analytics?

Average Page Depth
There is a Content Optimization>Content Performance>Depth of Visit report that tells you the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. This report lets you see if your site architecture is working properly as well as if people are finding what they need and taking actions suggested by your content.

Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave from that page without going to any other page. Seeing bounce rates on home pages of around 50% are typical in our experience. This can be (most likely) that the visitor is not looking for what you have (perhaps a wrong click or misinterpretation of a search engine listing) or the visitor found what he or she was looking for, like a phone number or address (you always put your phone number and address on each page of your website, don’t you?).

Hits
Many people misinterpret a hit as being a visitor. It’s not. A hit is a request by the visitor’s browser for a file – a file of any kind. If you have an older site that was built in “slices,” opening a single page could deliver dozens of hits. These files can be an HTML page, an image, a video, a script or many other file types. This is important information for those analyzing traffic data, but other reports, including page views, new visitors and unique visitors, might be more useful for general business purposes.

Keywords
Keywords are some of the most important elements of Google Analytics. Keywords (and key phrases) are the words people are typing into the search box on Google.

Even if you are not successfully getting into your prospects’ heads (we can help you with that!) and guessing what keywords they’re using to search for you or your product, Google Analytics will show you what keywords people are using to find your site. With that knowledge in hand, you can better “search engine optimize” the site by strategically inserting those keywords into your website pages so customers will find you on their terms (we can help you with that, too!).

Meta Tags
These are part of the “head” of an html document…you don’t see them on the page. There are two types significant to search, though not as significant as they were, as Google claims that they don’t index sites based on this data anymore:  Meta Keywords (see above) and Meta Descriptions. Meta keywords are single words and phrases on which people may search. A Meta Description is a description of a site or the business of the site’s owner. Other search engines still use Meta Tags to index sites, so we still place them in the “head” of the document.

New visitors
Google places a small string of code called a cookie on your computer when you first visit a tracked site. That way, Google can distinguish between new traffic and returning visitors. Running a banner ad on a different website with a distinctive market or getting a press release picked up by a popular news source will drive up the new visitors traffic, by exposing your site to different audiences who might have an interest in you product or service.

Page Views
This, rather than a Hit, is what we want to count. A page view is what it sounds like. Somebody viewed your page. This is typically the basic unit of measurement; did the new web ad or blog post result in increased traffic? After determining page views in a specific time period, other information, such as session data, page depth data and referrals, will come into context.

Referrals
A referral report tells you the site from where your incoming visitor came. That site is called a referrer. Most of the time it’s Google, but if you’re running a good banner ad campaign, have a link in a buyers’ guide or post links on social media sites, for instance, you’ll be able to see where the traffic comes from in this report.

Session
A session is the amount of time a single visitor spends on your site. A session ends when the visitor leaves or is inactive for 30 minutes (you can change this setting). As with average page depth, this is a good indicator of how people use your site (which will vary greatly from business to business) compared to page views, referrals and new/unique visitors that are good indicators of who is viewing your site.

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors)
Using cookies, Google is able to determine unique visitors as well as new visitors. With this data and the sessions data, you can get a feel for what’s really going on with your website. Are people coming back for multiple sessions? Or do you have a “once and done” website. Again, depending on your business, either could be desirable.

These metrics offer so much data if you know what to do with them. For marcom tactics that have few good measurement tools to determine ROI (like social media outlets), these metrics can provide tangible proof a campaign is working. They can help guide the crafting of your message and help you select the appropriate media and methods of marcom as well as validate the success of a program or even show one’s shortcomings.

Articles, Online Marketing Analytics, Marketing, Measuring ROI, Paid Search, terms, Web

The Groupies have been busy keeping in touch with our many friends (clients, reps, editors, vendors) from our infamous BBQ, to client dinners and our holiday card video shoot. To see some of our recent activities, including the Fabulous Fall BBQ 2009 edition, cross-country meetings, our new logo and more, go to Facebook.com and search for “The Simon Group.” Just click “Become A Fan” under our logo on the left.

Now you can also follow us on Twitter @TheSimonGroup86.

And don’t forget to check back after The Simon Group’s 24th Anniversary party on March 17th for more photos and updates!

TSG Updates Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

Joanna Puglisi-Barley: PR Manager

Joanna Puglisi-Barley has recently been appointed Public Relations Manager for The Simon Group to help service the agency’s growing client base. With nearly 20 years of marketing and public relations experience, Joanna is no stranger to The Simon Group, having freelanced for the company since 2002. She will be working closely with the agency’s diverse clientele, implementing various PR programs and strategies in an effort to increase market exposure and product awareness throughout the industrial, high-tech and electronics sectors.

Read the full press release.

Press Releases, TSG Updates PR, press release