The From Line

Is your brand in desperate need of a strategy to engage its customers, cultivate a stronger brand-to-customer relationship, create a more talked about social buzz, and drive repeat sales and returning customers?

Acquisition marketing can help significantly in each of these areas, and can improve upon your overall online marketing efforts.

But if you're like the majority of sales-based companies trying to navigate their way through the sometimes intimidating waters of digital marketing, you've probably missed valuable opportunities to acquire new email and mobile subscribers. It's important to keep in mind that each one of these missed opportunities leads to one less conversation, and one less purchase.

To determine how effective your brands acquisition marketing is, ask yourself the following:

• Are you asking for the customers email address at the exact point of sale, as soon as they land on your website, or not at all?
• Does your website have an email opt-in form that is easy to locate and simple to fill out?
• Most importantly, what are you doing with the analytical data you're collecting? 

Knowing exactly what you are doing with the data your brand is collecting allows you to push forward a more personalized, relevant customer experience. Choose to ignore data in your acquisition marketing efforts and you miss the biggest opportunity of all.

Permission marketing is all about getting your hands on a targeted marketing list that will give your content a competitive edge. You're striving to reach the email inboxes of people who could soon become some of your most valuable customers, if they're not already. However, a problem that continues to plague many businesses is how to move beyond permission marketing in a way that will reach out to those who might not ever get the chance to hear about your business otherwise.

Social media has answered that call for many businesses. The answer lies in being able to produce excellent content for your blog or your website that your visitors will deem as shareable. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about whether or not you have created a website that prompts your visitors to share your content with their network of friends and family members.

Social Sharing Buttons
Of course, if you have worked with a professional website developer, you probably have social sharing buttons on your website now. However, many business owners are taking advantage of the multiple free website options that are available to them, which don't always include social sharing features. Being able to share your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter gets your content out into the world. You never know who you might reach, and social media has helped take many businesses far ahead of their competitors.

Create Visual Content
One look at the expansion and popularity growth of sites like Pinterest will tell you that social media is taking a swift curve toward visual content choices. The saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words" holds a lot of weight in social media these days, and if your business produces a product or a service that is deemed to be valuable to the public, you'll do well to include graphics and pictures in your content.

Consider Using SlideShares
The SlideShares website has increased in popularity tremendously over the past few months. SlideShares will help you take advantage of your customers' partiality to visual content by generating a slideshow presentation out of a blog post. These can then be used to grow your business even more.
 

The era of the smart phone is fully ascendant in 2013. This year Deloitte estimates that the billionth such device will be activated. However, mobile marketing success going forward will be about much more than just numbers. Anticipating how user behavior will evolve will be absolutely crucial to a well-managed mobile marketing budget.

Linear No More

For example, consider the 'second screen' phenomenon. The old paradigm, first on laptops and then on mobile devices, was linear. That is, users would move through channels in succession. Linear consumer behavior is relatively easy to track as one moves from point A to point B to point C.

Now, a new behavior pattern is emerging. For example, more and more smartphone users are active while simultaneously watching TV. Key questions arise. To what degree will smartphone usage relate to the 'second screen,' the TV? Will TV viewing and smartphone activities be related or not?

Smartphones may become popular as a means for further interaction with a television program. Should such consumer behavior proliferate, mobile marketing can respond with a more cross-channel, holistic approach. In fact, in ideal scenarios, the impact on advertising may almost be counter-intuitive. That is, the successful advertisers that truly engage such cross-channel users may gain their attention in very relevant ways.

Any savvy businessperson knows that email has become an essential method of delivering marketing messages. Permission marketing, however, is a specific type of marketing aimed at communicating with customers who have already indicated an interest in your product by opting in via your website, Facebook page, or another vehicle.

Even though you may have “permission” to send marketing messages, there are some specific steps you should take to make your marketing strategy as productive as possible.

Pinpoint “WIIFM”

One of the first things that your customers will want to know is ‘what’s in it for me?’

Nearly 15 years ago, internet marketing pioneer Seth Godin said in Fast Company , "Consumers will grant a company permission to communicate only if they know what's in it for them.” So essentially it all comes down to rewarding consumers for paying attention to your message. Whether you offer industry tips, links to helpful information, discounts on products or services, or something else, consumers are all about getting something for letting you develop a relationship with them.

Build Your Target List

Building relationships with customers requires you to both hone in on who will bring you the most profit, as well as define those who are most likely to influence other customers. You want and NEED these people on your permission marketing target list.

Consumers now demand a greater sense of control over their relationship with a brand. Email marketers specifically have had great success creating this relationship via explicit and documented permission-based marketing. A recent eMarketer article noted that as a result of permission,“consumers are more open to email messaging than most other digital marketing.” In fact, it is the trust and ease of control that comes with this approach that has made consumers more open to further communication.

The permission-based marketing trend has proven effective and fruitful in the email community and will soon make its way into the structure of all other digital marketing. Marketers, having seen emails’ success, will tackle this change by providing their customers with detailed, open and explicit permission programs.

Takeaway: Prepare for a permission-based culture.

There is no question that permission in email marketing is essential. However, ALL digital marketers must be aware that permission-based advertising will eventually affect their brand. There has been a shift in technology that now gives the consumer greater power to demand permission from brands. Now is the time to prepare your strategy for this shift.