Marketing Agility

"Your company, no matter how large, should be able to maneuver like a jet-ski rather than a barge"

My career thus far has consisted of working on small projects, short run accounts, or with complete autonomy, which allows for quick changes and exploration into new areas. Work at small marketing agencies allows you to do pretty much anything; with your only hindrance being budget. Now that I am a part of an organization that employs well over 10,000 people, with a brand that is known across the world, I am rapidly becoming acquainted with the red tape, politics and overall bureaucracy of large businesses.

Marketing should be a dynamic environment. It should ebb and flow. An internal marketing department, with a staff large enough to accomplish any task, should be able to maneuver with ease between campaigns, initiatives and progressive ideas. Having nearly unlimited budget and resources should allow a department to create truly innovative and ground-breaking marketing.

This piece is not meant to be an indictment of my workplace- a place with this much prestige and tradition has to be cautious- but instead is meant as a cautionary tale. Marketing is a creative endeavor. The goal of it is to reach people, and I don't mean just to shoot a message at them, but rather to REACH people: speak to them. The best marketing and advertising cuts through the noise and affects people. It evolves and grows with a demanding audience and exists across platforms and media. There is no way to accomplish this when moving your marketing department is comparable to turning a barge. Your marketing should exist in the present and redirection should be something that is able to be done, and done regularly.

Think about it: how many of the marketing technologies that you use today were around a year ago? What about five years ago? If it takes you six months to set up a Facebook page, or a few years to set up a website, how far will behind will you be?

What a Christmas Parade Can Teach You About Running an Online Contest

It’s the holiday season again. The temperature is dropping, the decorations are going up, and the family is piling into the car for the local holiday parade. This is also the time of year where parents are on high alert looking for great shopping deals. This might make the holidays a perfect time for your business to have an online contest. Strangely enough, your local parade can teach you a lot of important lessons about how to run your contest online.

Choose the right setting.

Have you ever been to a parade in the middle of a corn field? I didn’t think so. Parades are held in the epicenter of the town for a reason… because it is the center. That location will draw the most people as it is located near everyone. Keep that in mind when you are running a contest online. Unless your goal is to attract people to your new Twitter or Facebook page, the best bet is to host the contest wherever you have the most traffic, or most potential traffic.

Spread out the good stuff.

If you notice while watching your parade, they don’t put all the exciting stuff at the front (bands, fire trucks, cartoon characters throwing candy, etc.). Instead, they mix in the Girl Scout troops and VFW halls in order to make the whole experience enjoyable. The same can be said for your contest online. Don’t simply say, “Hey, we’re having a contest! Here are the rules, and here are the prizes”, and then just leave them be. Spread it out. Announce your contest with the rules, then drop a hint on the prize, follow that up with the unveiling of the prize and finally, pick the winner. Keep people excited for the whole time.

Make sure people know what is going on.

While mostly overlooked, the Emcee of your local parade is important to the overall experience. It is valuable to know what/who you are looking at while they are coming down the street. I enjoy knowing that that the young lady sitting on the back of the convertible is our local beauty pageant winner. Without that piece of information, she is just an uncomfortable looking girl waving at everyone.
The same can be said about your contest. Keep people informed. Let them know who is in the lead (if it is a voting contest), or let them know what to do at each stage of the contest. Letting your audience become detached will lower contest participation and excitement.

Pay attention to length.

For any of you that have sat through an hour long Christmas parade, you know that more isn’t always better. When it is 7 degrees outside and the only thing keeping you from a slow death at the hands of hypothermia is the largest coffee you could carry, your attention span struggles mightily. As a result, there is an optimum length for Christmas parades; somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. After that you begin to shake violently, and pray for the end to be near.

While not as dramatic, the same concept applies to your online contest. Having a contest that lasts three months will be REALLY difficult to keep exciting and relevant. Unless you’re giving away an island, or a plane, you will struggle to keep people interested. Most people will see your big contest unveiling, enter to win, and then forget about it. To keep them interested, and interacting with your page, you want to space it out for a shorter, more manageable, timeframe. There is no hard-and-fast rule of thumb here, but it generally correlates to how much content you have queued up for the promotion. If you have 3 things, you might want to give it a week. If you have 35 posts ready to go, then you could probably spread that out. Just keep in mind that the longer you want people to stay involved, the bigger the prize needs to be.

Give them what they want.

For the most part, people go to the Christmas parade with their kids to see Santa Claus. That is the reason he is the last float through. Once they have seen Santa, they can go home happy and fulfilled. The same should apply to your contest. Make sure the grand finale is exactly what they are expecting and anticipating. So many times I’ve seen contests where, once they get to the big ending, they mess up all the work they’ve done by having a weak announcement, or throwing something in at the last minute that changes/affects the result. Give away the prize you say you are going to give away and announce it like you say you are going to announce it. It really is that simple. The people came to your parade to see Santa, so give them Santa.