Demand Generation Marketing

As the holiday season approaches, more marketers are getting prepared to capture orders through effective customer acquisition processes.   Santa is no exception.

As more savvy business people use multi-channel marketing to communicate their message, more unique ways to touch the customer are generated.  By creating community through subscribers (email), fans (Facebook) and Followers (Twitter), businesses can reach out to prospects they had never thought of and encourage them to interact through a "Call to Action", CTA.   A CTA is an effective lead generation tool.  It may be in the form of a coupon offer, a subscription to a newsletter or a download of a white paper. 

In the webstory of "Santa Claus and the Lost Dog", Santa uses a post card as his CTA.   This is no ordinary post card as it includes a magic ticket with a personalized URL (PURL) and a QR (quick response) code to get immediate action from a child with the help of a grown up that may have a grown up toy like a smartphone equipped with a camera. 

Yes, Santa has gone hi-touch and hi-tech and has joined the social media world.  The days of traditional Santa calls over the phone are going to be replaced by tweets, likes, comments and good little girls and boys will get badges.  Will Santa's updates on FourSquare take the place of NORAD's tracking of jolly old St. Nick on Christmas Eve?

You can visit http://www.mychristmasbook.com to order the webstory book.   It makes a great stocking stuffer and can play on mobile devices on your way to Grandma's house.





 

• Make sure you’ve set up a series of informational emails or a website for support staff and presenters. They should know what is expected of them; where to be at what time on the day of event, deadline for submitting, tech requirements for laptops and presentations, etc.
• If it is a large event like a conference, let attendees set their schedules early to establish presentation expectations and to cut down on people asking questions.
• Delegate the compartmentalized or smaller tasks, like catering and registration, to someone with fewer things to worry about on the DOE.
• Delegate the updates of social network applications during the event such as Twitter, blogging and Facebook updates.

• To ensure attendees walk away with the information/material they came looking for.
• Make sure messages, observations and news from the event are captured for post-event newsletter/follow-up or to share with those who could not attend.
• Facilitate smooth running presentations to ensure everyone gets to present and/or learn.
• Help make networking as easy as possible for attendees and vendors alike. Assign a QR code to every attendee so they can simply scan to exchange information. Or, offer team with a local print shop to offer discounts on business cards so they have something exchange.

• Use SMS to send attendees a link to their event schedule on the morning of the event.
• Consider a live webcast or recorded podcast to share the event with those who weren’t able to attend. Webinar replays can be used as a review for those who attended as well as a customer acquisition process in your grand lead generation conference strategy.
• Place QR codes or Microsoft tags on presentations, collateral or exhibition displays to enhance attendee’s interaction with content.

• Why have an event, what are your goals? What do you want to get for your efforts? Develop objectives that are SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Based) and align with the current or future needs of the organization.
• Having an educational event provides a reason to talk to customers and prospects. It gives you something to buzz about beyond your capabilities and need for business. It could give your customers reasons to invest in new ideas and new products and services to help them grow.

• Content: strategic, operational, sales, business processes? The content is what will be advertised and why people will attend. Theming your event and tying it to actionable outcomes changes an informative event to a results event. Types of businesses and the role of the attendee will be influenced by the content you choose.
• Type of Event: Face to Face or Webinar. Each presents its own benefits and shortcomings. Consider your content and audience along with your budget and resources as part of your thought process.
• Timing: Early in the quarter? At the beginning, middle or late in the week? Morning, afternoon or all day? What time works best for those you are looking to reach?
• Location: If face to face do you host it at your company, at a local hotel, a customers business? To feed or not to feed? Is the location part of your message? If you choose to have a web conference what are the needs of the solution? Browser, OS, phone, voice over IP, Presentation technology, presentation style, ability to interact with attendees.

The elves at Webinar Resources are busting their buttons as the MyChristmasBook Trailer on MyBrainshark is now the most viewed and most popular Brainshark presentation.  Says Santa, who just read this latest update in the Webinar Newsletter from Webinar Resources, "We are very proud that this on demand presentation has received such wide appeal.   Rudolph told me that "rich media" was the way to reach the masses so I thought I would give it a try."


The MyChristmasBook Trailer has been viewed across the country and across the world.  Webinar Resources launched this campaign to drive lead generation for North Pole IndustryCo.   Every MyChristmasBook online Christmas Photo Story Book contains personalized text, images and audio using a good little boy or girl's name and is delivered on a unique personalized North Pole web page.   Says Jack Frost, CMO in charge of North Pole's lead generation and personalized marketing campaigns, "We hired Webinar Resources to produce the story of Santa Claus and the Lost Dog as they are the experts in demand generation marketing and the theme song has the reindeer tapping their hoofs."

The success of the campaign can be summed up by Mrs. Claus, "Things have gotten a lot more jolly around here now that the old man is coming home from the shop at a decent hour. Thanks to Webinar Resources launching MyChristmasBook.com with their partners ExactTarget, Brainshark, Vontoo and Compendium, Santa is much more productive and best of all, there are no more cold calls which is important in the frozen North.

During this time of year, people have a lot on their mind and buying that unique gift is always a challenge.   The elves at Webinar Resources teamed up with Santa to create a unique and personalized online offering for this holiday season for young children - MyChristmasBook.com.

MyChristmasBook.com brings to life the story of "Santa Claus and the Lost Dog".   It is unique as it provides personalized images, text and audio using the child's name.   The Christmas Story Photo Book is delivered through a personalized, North Pole web address with an embedded Brainshark presentation.

Deliveries started over the weekend and one satisfied customer has posted her son's personalized North Pole web address on her Facebook site.    It seems our mascot, Bella, is becoming a celebrity very quickly. 

This is the most unique demand generation marketing activity that Webinar Resources has ever engaged in and we are pleased to have our customers boast and post about their satisfied experiences.

Go to MyChristmasBook.com to order that unique gift today.

 

If you read one of our more recent blogs on re-purposing content of a Brainshark presentation, then you will understand how we can drive additional lead generation by reusing existing content.

Webinar Resources recently launched the MyChristmasBook campaign and deliveries are about to begin.   We repurposed content from a Brainshark presentation and created a MyChristmasBook Trailer on the MyBrainshark site.  MyBrainshark provides tools to create simple Brainshark presentations and it is free.  

We have been watching the popularity of the MyChristmasBook Trailer on the MyBrainshark site and are delighted to report that we are holding the number two position of the most viewed and most popular Brainshark presentation.   MyBrainshark provides social media tools for sharing presentations and a reporting dashboard that displays a world map indicating viewing activity    The MyChristmasBook trailer  has been viewed across the U.S. and in China, Austrailia, and in South America.

It is exciting to watch the popularity of the trailer grow.   Re-puposing existing content pays off.

The elves at Webinar Resources spent time last night blogging about our holiday offering, MyChristmasBook.com.   We included a lot of information about re-purposing Brainshark presentations and creating an effective lead generation campaign using ExactTarget, Vontoo, Brainshark and Compendium Blogware.

We did an organic search this evening and were very pleased to see that MyChristmasBook.com is at the top of the organic search.  We were also delighted to see the tracking results of our email campaign where many of our subscribers visited their own personal North Pole webpage to see a 2 minute demonstration.  Over 25% of the recipients selected the personalized link that included their email address.   Here is a sample personalized URL (PURL), that we call the North Pole web address - http://helper.mychristmasbook.com/NorthPole/personalizemybook@gmail.com.

We also spent time tweeting, posting content on Facebook sites and updating a Brainshark presentation.  Of all the lead generation activities we engaged in, blogging received the fastest and most desired results.   

We don't have a long-tail keyword for this campaign, but MyChristmasBook.com is unique enough that it can be found in an organic search in Google.  We know as we blog about this subject this evening, we will keep our rating up and more customers will find us as they hear more about us.  So blogs are faster than Santa's reindeer Virginia and they rate high on Google's naughty and nice list.