Derrick Borte, who we have had the pleasure of working with, has just released his first feature film The Joneses. He produced and directed the movie with major stars – David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Lauren Hutton – and a script he wrote himself. Derrick has worked with us at Meridian Group for clients including Hall Automotive, Cox Communications and Chartway Federal Credit Union. We are proud of Derrick’s accomplishment – this is BIG TIME!

THE GOOD

Email is fast: Not only does it get to your prospect immediately, production time is limited. We produce most within a 24 hour period.

Email is great for testing an offer: There is no better trackable medium out there and if you are a company doing transactions online you can track your ROI day-by-day and hour-by-hour.

Downloadable components are easily accessible: Online videos, interactive games, interactive brochures. But don’t get lazy and do simple PDFs.

THE BAD:

Email environment is bursting at the seams: Thanks to all the spam, sorting through all the BS to get something of value is a pain.

Keep it short: Write the novel on weekends from your cottage but keep marketing messages short and to the point.

Don’t do it yourself: And don’t let Jimmy or Jane in accounting develop what you believe is a graphically pleasing email and for God’s sake don’t use a smiley face or I will personally hunt you down and give you a wedgie.

Great email lists are hard to get: If you must purchase a list make sure it’s a valid one that is relevant to your prospect. You are better off taking the time to grow your database from your website and blog.

Follow best practices: I’m not going to list them for you but if you don’t you will be blackballed by the inventor of the internet, Al Gore. Google them, they are easy to find.

So, how many unwanted email solicitations do you get every day? I’m not talking about the larger, stronger and longer type that your spam filter picks up. I’m taking about the online gourmet shop, restaurant, hotel, airline or business newsletter you opted into when you thought getting an email was as much fun as finding your name in the new telephone book (why do they still print these?). I estimate I get 50-75 per day plus the 20-30 that get caught by my filter. I admit that I signed up to the majority of these at one time, but being pummeled day after day by hideously designed emails that offer nothing to me as a customer is getting very old fast. I guess I could spend an entire weekend opting out of most of these but I really don’t mind receiving communication from companies I have done business with in the past, I just want a little respect and more importantly good taste.

Now, when was the last time you received a personalized letter from the US Postal Service from a company updating you on new offerings, or this season’s specials or just to invite you to do business again? Probably one per month at the most? Long before email became the norm and faxes became annoying, direct mail was going down the wrong path. I can here it in the sales department “Let’s send a postcard!” No envelope, no tabs to seal, no sweat. And guess what – no results. Have Jimmy’s the computer wiz down in shipping could design something that screamed desperation on a Friday night before bed then take that baby down to Kinko’s and you had a powerful direct mail program.  Not!

Any form of marketing communication requires some level of marketing expertise and just because you are a good salesperson does not mean you have marketing expertise.

I think there is a true opportunity right now to take advantage of a good traditional direct mail strategy right now – if you do it well. I’m not saying don’t use email as a marketing tool, but do it professionally and respect to the person receiving it.

Tomorrow, I’ll provide a few tips on doing both direct mail and email more effectively.

Most are addicted to the daily jolt of a 5 hr Energy, Redbull, Dew, or pharmaceutical of choice to get them revved for the work day. Creatives on the other hand exist/survive on their own secret stash. (No, not alcohol.)

You could easily be one of those people pacing in front of the office coffee maker or in line at the local *$s (that’s starbucks for you out-of-touch-virgin texters.) or you could walk up to a creative and ask what they’re working on. If you don’t get an instant spark from the ipod, macintosh, iphone, crackberry or even static electricity, you’re either asking the wrong creative, or interrupting a heated ping-pong/brainstorm session. (Yes, we can play pp and work at the same time.)

Creatives are the gems that create, imagine, discover, inspire, achieve, unveil, reason, and collectively drive the enthusiasm of the group. Sometimes while doing other activities. (Just ask our significant others.) And since everybody’s talking about moral these days…Nothing can cheer up a mad client, down co-worker or screaming boss like great creative.

Instead of going out and buying what you think will get your heart racing again. Embrace the mash-up skills, creativity, and craziness that comes from your local creative department.

Posted by: Shane Webb, Creative Director, Meridian Group

For decades, the flip-calendar giveaway ruled the arena of corporate sponsored swag, decorating our walls with glossy murals of power-tools, sportscars and bikini-wearing supermodels.

Yet somewhere along the way, the allure of 30 blank boxes and an NFL cheerleader turned into nature shots and terrible stock photography. What’s the deal? Where’s the effort? Heck, where’s the usefulness?
Every free calendar I get now is full of meaningless trivia and obscure holidays. The whole point is that I have a place to jot down my wife’s birthday.

I’ve received two calendars so far this year and neither of them are worth hanging. I honestly can’t stand to look at them.

One is from a local real estate agent and it is full of “seasonal landscapes”, none of which are local. Why not take photos of the 12 oldest houses in the area or the 12 best places to get a beer? Or at the very least seasonal landscapes of the town we live in.

The second is an obnoxious calendar from a local printer full of generic corporate photography and 15 shades of blue. There’s even a photo of a guy in a suit with a briefcase pointing out into the horizon. Wow. And this is coming from a printer. Nothing about inks, papers or the craft of printing. No personality, just a generic giveaway with the company logo “playing it safe”.

Aside from the Chic-Fil-A calendar (which you have to buy), the 12 month flipper is a dying breed, and that’s a shame. Because what other marketing tool offers you someone’s full attention, in the comfort of their home or office, every day of the year?

Posted by: Matt Schneider, Production Manager, Meridian Group

1. Grow Your Marketshare: No better time than now to grow your share of the pie. Yes, the pie may be somewhat smaller during an economic downturn but you want to be prepared for growing revenues when things return to some level of normalcy. Weak competitors are opening themselves for attack; consumers are looking for brand value and are more open minded to changing brand preferences. This is also a very good time to develop new media relationships with outlets that are hungry to grow their own share.
2. Adjust Your Media-Mix: So, we all know consumer habits are changing rapidly but how much are you adjusting your media spend? I’m not going to attempt to quantify all the statistics that are flying around these days, but we all know that newspaper readership is getting hammered, online usage is sky-rocketing  and that broadcast viewership is more fragmented than ever before. I am not recommending that you drop all print and put 80% of your budget online but you should be shifting your budgets somewhat to take advantage of the shifting landscape.
3. Go Social, But Carefully: Everyone is jumping on the social networking bandwagon so quickly that few have taken the time to look at the entire realm of opportunities and potential land mines. Others are slashing traditional budgets and going totally online. I actually had a client tell me last year they were eliminating everything from their budget in 2010 except interactive and was planning on slashing 80% of their budget. Developing a social marketing plan is not about throwing thirty grand at your secretary’s nephew “who lives online”, it’s about developing a sound strategic plan that is flexible enough to accommodate ever-changing trends.
4. Beware Of The Blue Box: At our agency, we define a “blue box”, as a young, college educated person that has been out in the real world for less than five or six years. They have earned a certain level of respect from management and claim to know everything on earth about marketing. They wake up one day and all of a sudden they are provided the title of marketing director even though most do not have any formal marketing education. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being put in these people hands without thinking about it. The next thing you know is, this young mad scientist is firing marketing firms, reallocating budgets and putting new spins on brands that have taken decades to build. Whose hands are you going to put the future of your company in?
5. Shout From The Valley And Whisper From The Mountaintop: Never underestimate the power or the value of a well designed public relations plan. If your company is somewhere down towards the bottom of your category’s totem pole, then shout as loud as you can if you truly have worthy story. If you stand firmly at the top of the totem pole than be humble because everyone is looking for to knock you off, especially the news media. That doesn’t mean you should be quiet by any means, just very calculating in your messaging.
6. Don’t Look Desperate: Sales might be down to where they were a few years ago and your lenders are getting itchy but by no means should you ever show desperation in your marketing efforts. You can market value without throwing years of brand equity out the window. If you drop give it away today, or evgen appear to be, it will take you years to regain consumer confidence.
7. Print Is Not Dead. Yet: There are still millions of people who begin each day with the morning newspaper especially within older demographics and more affluent. Most consumer magazines are holding their own because people have a personal relationship with publications that are connected to through a passion for a typical hobby, lifestyle or interest. Use print to your advantage to target consumers who have a strong likelihood to use your product or service and don’t be afraid to use shrinking ad pages as leverage in your negotiations.
8. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate: There are still way too many silos within corporate marketing departments around the globe. We have seen many fortune 500 companies where the marketing message is so fragmented between traditional, interactive and public relations it would make your head spin. Tell everyone to leave the egos at the door and appoint a brand “czar” that you can hold responsible for all marketing communications…and tell the IT department that the internet is not their domain.
9. Trust Your Agency Or Find Another One: You hired an agency or integrated marketing firm to look after your best interest, let them do their job. Don’t play budget games and please disclose all short- and long-term company initiatives to the agency early in the game, not after they hear it from another source. If your agency is not doing the job you expect, tell them about it immediately and honestly. You might be surprised at the attention you receive.
10. Zag: Take a step back and look at your category with fresh eyes. Are all your competitors saying the same thing in a similar manner? If so, the opportunities are there to make a name for yourself and stand out in the eyes of your customers and prospects. If you are not receiving comments about your marketing efforts from your contacts then you are probably just blending in with everyone else. Claim your position and stick with it across all tactics.

Have a prosperous New Year!

Posted by: Joe Takach, CEO, Meridian Group

The use of social media continues to grow. In the past year alone, Facebook membership has grown over 700%. Some companies are blocking the site so that employees can not access it during work hours. But are companies just getting defensive? On the other side of the coin, does the use of Facebook & other similar sites actually make employees more productive?

Basically, what it boils down to is that responsible employees will utilize the site appropriately. Employees that are motivated and appropriately challenged, with defined goals and targets will self-regulate the use of Facebook & other sites. They will use the site as a slight diversion from a busy workday. Human beings love to feel connected. We love to keep up with friends and family. Studies show that being able to do so in the midst of our busy day in the office, leaves an employee more satisfied and therefore more productive in the long run.

After all, a lot of our clients are advertising on Facebook nowadays and asking for recommendations, so shouldn’t we be experienced users of the site as well?

Posted by: Diana Medley, Account Coordinator, Consumer Team

Are newspapers dead is the question. We all know circulation is down, ad revenue is down and to save money, staff have been cut and the size of the pages, sections and content reduced. But is it still a viable source for advertising content and news gathering? The answer is yes. Nowhere else can you find the details on products, prices and news. Walter Cronkite used to say that television news is like reading the front page of the paper, only the main points and not the details. Without the investigative reporting on the local front, many would be able to do as they wish at City Hall and even at the State level. Citizens would not be able to have input into community decisions. The news gather of the local newspaper needs to be there.

The question becomes how can a manufactured product such as a newspaper with increasingly high resource costs (including paper, equipment and manpower) continue? Each day a new product is composed, manufactured and delivered to your door. Then it is read and you are done with it, either trash or recycled. Can the product be produced differently and delivered differently while still creating revenue for the newspaper? Will people pay to read it on-line and more importantly will advertisers pay to have the eyes of the consumer see their messages on-line?

One thing is for sure, newspapers cannot continue to operate as they are now.

Posted by: Dave Sterns, Vice President, Meridian Group

Many of you have watched the “Did You Know” viral videos on YouTube. Recently, the creators of those earthshaking social media pieces have released a new one related to the growth of Social Networking in comparison to the Industrial Revolution. The information in the attached piece will rattle your brain. Enjoy!

Posted by: Terry Kelley, Vice President of Public Relations and Corporate Communications, Meridian Group

Recently,we built a Google AdWords campaign for a small (fewer than 50 pages) advertising client website with a B2B focus. Let me tell you what was discovered about the relationship between key phrases and site or landing page content.

For most consumers, and businesses, Google is The One, because it was first to figure out how to return the best, most relevant search results, including those attached to pay per click text ads and sponsored links. Google’s algorithms have become incredibly precise in their assessment of web content to the benefit of consumers – and of course, to Google itself.

So, back to the campaign built for the small site. In terms of SEO, the site does some things very well:
- customized page titles and meta descriptions were written specifically for each page
- the site has over 300 legitimately created inbound links from clients and partners
- the site has a Google page rank of 4 (on a scale of 1 to 10 – high for a site of this size)

However, the site’s SEO weaknesses were exposed by the Google AdWords campaign created for it. This was a reminder that Google rewards quality content – and quality is based on relevance.

The key phrases created for the campaign’s six Ad Groups were highly relevant to the page title, meta description and meta keywords. The text ads that were written for each ad group included as many key phrases as possible.

But the page content itself did not include many of these key phrases.

The page text was full of happy talk and beauty text. There was not a bulleted list of company products or services to be seen. Neither was there repetitive use of terms. Images did not have alt text containing those key phrases.

As an experiment,  the campaign was activated and monitored the Google Campaign Management tool’s reaction.

For the first day or so, there were no red flags raised by the key phrases. After the campaign was live for a few days, CTR data started to flow in. Key phrases that I had assumed were good displayed an error message – “Rarely shown due to low quality score.”

When the icon beside this error message was moused over, a pop up window revealed a low quality score, detailing two separate components of its failure.

Your keyword isn’t triggering ads to appear because your bid is likely below the first page bid estimate. The first page bid estimate approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results, based on your keyword’s Quality Score and recent advertiser competition.

The second component of the error message addressed key word quality, and assigned a quality score and reasons for low quality score. This is an actual result from the campaign:

Quality score – (a link to a Google.com help page to learn more about the topic)

2/10 (on a scale of 1 to 10)

Keyword relevance: Poor

Landing page quality: No problems

Landing page load time: No problems

So, the most important criterion for this key phrase is relevance.

A second “reaction” to the key phrases started to flow in after 10 days of testing the campaign. The overall rank for key phrases was dropping – the average page display was pushing down. None of these key phrases in trouble were displaying on page 1 search results. According to Google,

If your average ad position has dropped, it’s probably a sign that users are finding competing ads more relevant to their needs, or that other advertisers have raised their cost-per-click (CPC) bids for those keywords.

The bids were adjsuted upwards for some of the key phrases, with poor results.

Beware, if you don’t adjust the content on your pages, even bidding up towards a top position won’t help. You’ll pay more for each click through, but your text ad will still display on a page other than the first, and eventually, the poor position simply means fewer impressions.

Make pages whose content supports use of key phrases. If the page is already made and doesn’t relate, then go back and re-work the page text, image alt text and metas.

If you can’t adjust the page, create a landing page that IS relevant.

Google Adwords explains quality evaluations:

…we built the AdWords system to reward and promote the most effective and well-targeted ads within our system. This helps maintain, or even increase, the value of an AdWords ad to both advertisers and users.

We’ve found that the best way to maintain our goal is to build quality evaluations into AdWords pricing. One of our primary tools is quality-based pricing, which means we charge lower cost-per-clicks (CPCs) for more relevant ads and higher CPCs for less relevant ads.

Google’s focus on quality can keep costs low for advertisers, and satisfaction high for consumers, who know that clicking through on a Google text ad will take them to a page that answers their search for information, service, or product.