I was listening to a No B.S. Inner Circle “What’s Working Now” interview with Bruce and Josh Hudson recently. The Hudsons run a photography business that they describe as primarily “creating and selling large family wall decor”.

I was intrigued when they talked about how Groupon and Living Social had proved highly successful for them.  As one example, with their first campaign, the first three vouchers that were redeemed ($67 each) ended up resulting in $12,000 worth of sales.

A few years back, as the great cartoon at the top of this post from Tom Fishburne shows (full post at “social coupon bandwagon”), Groupon and similar companies were seen as the “Next Big Thing”…

“Many marketers asked Santa for a social coupon campaign for 2011. The explosive growth of Groupon and Groupon clones (BuyWithMe, LivingSocial, SocialBuy, and Tippr), offering “ridiculously huge” coupons (50-90% off), is taking marketing plans by storm.”

Now, a number of my clients have used Groupon and similar sites quite successfully, but unlike a few years back the company seems to have dropped off the radar a little. Back in 2011/2012 the company was often in the news and not always for good reasons.  There were a number of reports of businesses who had almost gone bust because of the cost of fulfilling deals that had proved to be priced way too low.  Marketers were split between those promoting Groupon and similar companies as the “Next Big Thing” and those advising businesses to keep well clear.

I wrote a number of posts about Groupon at the time and “More Thoughts on Marketing Via Groupon” provided a pretty good summary of the advantages and disadvantages of this particular channel… [Read more…]

Here’s the look ahead at the month of October 2018 and some of the events, anniversaries and occasions that savvy marketers can use as the basis and reason for an event-driven promotion…

…to create your own marketing calendar for October 2018.

Of course, the stand out occasion, beloved by many marketers, is “Halloween” on October 31.

The origins of Halloween seem to be a mixture of pagan festivals marking the end of summer…

…combined with the idea that at this time of the year the spirit-world comes close to our world…

…adopted by the Christian religion as the eve of “All Souls Day”.

Whatever, it’s the traditional occasion to acknowledge the after-life and the supernatural.

So, an opportunity to use themes in your promotions like…

“It’s Scary What You Are Missing!”

“Now a spooktacular, very limited time, opportunity”

“Terrifyingly scary profits coming your way…”

…and so on.

The theme of FEAR (of loss, for example) can also be used…

…but don’t get too scary about it!

Apart from Halloween October has plenty of different events and occasions… [Read more…]

A warm welcome to the “Looking Ahead” feature where we consider the coming month…

…and the events, occasions, anniversaries and holidays that smart direct response marketers can use as the foundation for event-driven marketing promotions in a marketing calendar for September 2018.

After the lull of the last month or so…

…it’s a time of a change of seasons. The September Equinox falls on September 23 at 01.54 UT (that’s 02.54 UK time…check for your particular location).

It’s Autumn in the north and Spring in the south…

…and these can be used as broad themes for a promotion.

Tied in with these, in the northern hemisphere it’s “Back to School” or “Back to Work” and the start of the run-in to the end of the year.

In the southern hemisphere, “Spring Time” or “Spring Cleaning” can be used as a theme.

Looking at some specific occasions… [Read more…]

NOTE: For readers not familiar with corporate jargon…

ROI stands for “Return on Investment”

CMO stands for “Chief Marketing Officer”

CFO stands for “Chief Financial Officer”

EBITDA stands for “Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization”

*****

The great Tom Fishburne has produced another great cartoon that draws attention to an issue in the world of mainstream marketing.

CMOs and CFOs often speak completely different languages. This can create a lack of understanding and appreciation for the role and impact of marketing on the business.

Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar calls this the “existential crisis of the CMO.” He says it’s essential for marketers to think and talk more like business managers than communications experts. As Raja says,

“Because many CMOs have risen through the creative route, much more than the financial route, they are like a rabbit caught in the headlights. They talk about jargon and marketing KPIs, which the CFO and CEO could care less about – they are looking for financial results. Is customer growth happening, is my profitability increasing, what is marketing doing to my EBITDA?

“In that scenario, some companies are losing patience and replacing CMOs with a chief revenue or chief growth officer. Some are not even from a marketing background. When that happens at several companies, that is an existential crisis.”

Original post at “the roi of marketing”.

My goodness…management at some companies are demanding to know if advertising and marketing is actually making money!

Of course, direct response marketers will either be scratching their heads wondering what the fuss is about OR… [Read more…]

Welcome to this month’s “Looking Ahead” feature. Here we’ll review events, occasions, holidays and anniversaries that you can use to build your event-driven marketing calendar August 2018.

There are no major holidays this month. In the northern hemisphere it’s the dog days of summer. In the south it’s the last blast of winter. These “seasonal” themes are available to you if there’s nothing else that’s suitable.

August is also a “Back To School” month for many northern hemisphere countries…

…and remember major sporting events such as the US Open Tennis (starts 27 August) and the start of the football (soccer) season in the UK (Premier League starts the weekend of August 10-12).

It’s also “Elvis Week”, August 9-18. Elvis Presley moved on to the “great gig in the sky” 41 years ago on 16 August, 1977.

Other events… [Read more…]