Another great speaking gig under my belt. This time at the Mashable Social Media Day South Florida the end of June.
The first ever “viewing” of my new presentation: “The Last Immutable Law of Social Media: The Law of REALationships“. My audience loved it. Many told me it was the best presentation of the day!
Here’s a pic of me doing my thing. I love speaking to big and small groups!
Here is an interview with our President Jim Gilbert from a local internet TV station BRITV
In the interview Jim stresses the importance of doing your research before endeavoring on any new marketing campaign. He talks about the 40/40/20 direct and digital marketing rule and how to create persona’s from your customers that allow you to find new customer “clones” that will purchase just like your present customers do.
Interviewing Jim is Jonathan “JDOGG” Lederman.
Note: Not the best interview Jim has ever done, but not the worst either. Enjoy for some good marketing, direct marketing and digital marketing takeaways. Also mentioned is Jim’s affiliation (he is current president) with the Florida Direct Marketing Association
This is a few weeks old, but it still makes me angry.
The goal of marketers, and direct marketers in general is to use data to provide relevant offers to the right people at the right time. Data and databases are the tools us marketers use to ensure relevance!
Marketers have taken a big hit as the media picks up on big data and list/data brokers as the culprits in selling our information. Totally inflammatory in my opinion. And totally deflecting the subject from governmental use of data. Check out this piece from CBS 60 Minutes on “Data Brokers selling your personal information”.
Discuss…
This just in. I will be presenting The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing in Deerfield Beach Florida April 17th. This event is a must see for all who practice social media marketing. For more details click here
Do you want Jim Gilbert to present The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing to your marketing team? Use the contact form below…
Wrap yourself around an issue and become a social media marketing guru.
You don’t have to be a great writer to get social media attention. Just “own” another issue and you can make some hay for yourself. Its simple to do:
Step 1: Find an issue or topic you believe in, or are well versed in, and have an opinion you would like to share about the topic.
Step 2: Seek out articles about that topic. Find them on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, etc. Twitter is the perfect channel for this!
Step 3: Share the article, with your comments. Simple right?
More: There are two ways to share on your topic, “for” or “against”. Sometimes disagreeing with the article can get you even more notoriety. I don’t shy away from being controversial. For example, when the U.S. Post Office starts in with their annual postage rates increases, my rants railing against the stupidity of the USPS get lots of attention. As a marketing consultant who goes against the grain and uses direct mail often for clients (Note: Direct mail is NOT dead! Its still as viable as ever if practiced correctly), being known as champion of direct mail marketers against the post office, shows people a lot about how I could help them if hired for a direct mail campaign.
Give it a try and let me know how you did. Post a comment below.
Want a free marketing evaluation? Gilbert Direct Marketing’s chief expertise is finding you new marketing revenue streams you can take to the bank. Don’t leave revenue unrealized. Let GDM help you take that revenue off the table!
Note from Jim Gilbert: Two weeks ago I did a webinar, “The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing”, for Target Marketing Magazine for a “packed house”. We had over 85 questions submitted during the webinar so we decided to turn the responses into a Target Marketing Article. Here are a few of the questions, the answers can be found here.
1. How do you measure social media ROI?
2. We’re just launching a blog; what’s the best way to solicit feedback/interaction?
3. On social networks, we have a few really engaged customers who respond to posts, but overall most people are not engaged. How can we fix that?
View the additional 9 questions and their answers on the Target Marketing Website here.
BTW, you can still see a replay of the webinar here.
Not an official “rehearsed” promo video. This was the opening intro from last months FDMA event talking a bit about our 2013 goals, value proposition and socially driven website….
The Florida Direct Marketing Association is Florida’s premier education and networking trade organization; helping marketers enhance their careers since 1978.
More info, www.fdma.org
Despite my love/hate relationship with the US Post Office I still get quoted from time to time. Check out this quote about how I built The Fresh Diet’s direct mail program.
Some years ago I worked for a clothing cataloger that offered a no strings attached, lifetime money back guarantee. Occasionally we received a tattered well used article of clothing back 2-3 years later, but mostly the guarantee worked for us. We were pioneering organic fiber fashion and as a company wanted to do everything we could in order to reduce the risk that could have a negative effect on a purchasing decision.
A good solid guarantee is an important part of the selling process. It tells the consumer that you stand behind your products and you are truly focused on your customers needs. Showing your guarantee prominently on your website and your catalogs makes good sense, and in my opinion should be heavily promoted as part of your offer.
Also in my opinion, and I cannot stress this enough in the age of social media, is for management to offer the best possible guarantee they can, and then back it unconditionally.
Take a look at your company’s warrantee. Is it clear, simple and to the point? If not then simplify it. Make it so easy even a child can understand it. Why? The internet and social media are the great equalizers and simple things like upsetting a customer with a hard to understand guarantee, will wind up being tweeted, Yelped and status updated.
By Melissa Campanelli, from eMarketing and Commerce Magazine
Integrating social media into its marketing mix has helped drive revenue for The Fresh Diet, a gourmet diet delivery service established in 2005 that delivers freshly prepared meals and two snacks directly to its clients’ doors each day.
The Fresh Diet’s newly redesigned website makes it easy for visitors to engage in social media, which creates excitement for prospects coming to the site. “There are all kinds of chicklets on our homepage where we drive people to our social media sites and blog,” says Jim Gilbert , The Fresh Diet’s chief marketing officer and frequent eM+C contributor. “Then they can see what’s happening on our social media sites to get a sense of what their peers are saying about the company.”
What’s more, Gilbert says, “we know that once we have them on a social media site, we’re pretty good at drawing them out. We do a lot of contests and we have a lot of people who are very vocal. So we’re always doing fun and crazy contests there.”
A recent video contest The Fresh Diet launched on Facebook received 15 videos from customers that ranged from heartfelt to funny, Gilbert says. “One person who loves our cheesecake did a takeoff on ‘The Terminator,’ calling himself ‘The Cheesecakeator,’ and did a four-minute video on that.”
While social media creates excitement for The Fresh Diet, it also helps drive sales. “We know for a fact that every time we run a special on Facebook, people come out in droves and order,” Gilbert says.
Social media mix
To drive people to multiple channels, The Fresh Diet sometimes introduces a contest on Facebook designed to drive people to its blog. Or, it may use Twitter to promote its contests.
“Oftenimes, we use a combination of the three,” Gilbert says. “We drive people from the blog to Facebook, from Facebook to the blog, and Twitter to both places. We really believe that the more channels people are engaged in, the more likely they’ll be our better customers.”
The Fresh Diet also uses Facebook Ads, a tool that enables it to post display ads on targeted Facebook pages. In addition to Facebook Ads, The Fresh Diet has used paid celebrities (Lindsay Lohan, to name one) to tweet about its brand and drive people to its Facebook page. But that type of campaign can be expensive, Gilbert notes.
Groupon
, the deal-of-the-day website, is also part of The Fresh Diet’s marketing mix. The Fresh Diet is able to strategically select the areas that it wants to promote in — e.g., new cities where it will be offering its delivery service — via Groupon.
The Fresh Diet is in the process of creating a social media app that will allow it to push its members’ meal choices to their Facebook or Twitter streams at the appropriate times, enabling its customers’ friends and followers to get an idea of what the customers are eating.
“It will be a clickable link, so if a customer’s Facebook friends click on it, they’ll see a beautiful, full-color, professionally photographed image of the meal,” Gilbert says. “Taking it a step further, when The Fresh Diet customer’s friends or followers click on that link, the customer would get points or a reward.”
Marketing beyond social media
But The Fresh Diet doesn’t only use social media for marketing. It also sends monthly direct mailers to prospects, for example.
“We work with a top-notch list broker, RMI Direct Marketing, and look for lists of people that have a certain amount of income, have proven that they’ve bought big and tall or plus-size items in the past, and are all direct mail responsive buyers,” Gilbert says.
The Fresh Diet has increased its direct mail circulation this year. “We started out mailing 50,00 to 100,000 pieces, but now we’re up to 500,000 at a clip,” Gilbert notes.
Email is also a big part of The Fresh Diet’s marketing mix. To help it acquire new customers, The Fresh Diet relies on two opt-in email lists: a referral list through Catalogs.com and a list of people who are highly targeted, such as those who have gone to a specific diet company’s website and registered.
As for frequency, The Fresh Diet sends out an e-newsletter to customers and prospects at least once a month, and supplements that with an email campaign regularly. “I’d say we’re touching our customers via email on average about twice a month,” Gilbert says.
The Fresh Diet is currently in the process of creating tell-a-friend and upsell-type emails to go out once people come onboard as clients, Gilbert adds.
All of this activity has helped The Fresh Diet get more visitors to its website, social media sites and blogs. In fact, every single metric that the company measures is increasing, according to Gilbert.
“Our direct mail response rates have been going up, as are our customer retention rates,” Gilbert says. “We noticed early on this year that when we do a direct mail campaign, in a matter of days after their initial order, people literally come back and buy more. Everything seems to be firing on all cylinders.”
Gilbert Direct Marketing Worldwide, Inc. 