The Importance of Media Mix and Multiple Touch Strategy with Digital Marketing

Yesterday I got a letter like the dozens I receive monthly offering me a small business loan. Like the others it didn’t get my attention and got tossed. Then today I received an email and I recognized the brand from the letter yesterday. This was a well timed tactic and use of different marketing channels to get prospects’ attention. This reminded me of a past job when I was selling IT services full time – daily prospecting, lead generation, just trying to get meetings and hit my sales activity numbers and eventually sales numbers. I hated cold calling, but it never felt truly cold if I started with a letter and/or email, or both. I would scour the business journal for good news and follow up with the business owners and managers to congratulate them in a letter – hand addressed and signed often – and then follow up, or once in a while I’d get a call back to thank me or get more information.

We’re taught in marketing about the importance of the media mix, and the same is true in sales. It takes 8+ touches before the prospect will remember you or begin to have some sort of interest and understanding about what you do and offer, or your value proposition. Obviously in marketing part of our goal is to reduce the number of touches, get through the clutter, get interest/understanding; and in sales that is similar in that we want to shorten the sales cycle and get to the face-to-face meeting and close faster. “Because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.”

With digital marketing today – and our long time partner, traditional media – there are many ways to spend your marketing budget and resources and one of the keys is allocating it most cost effectively. Obviously I preach the strength, power and efficiency of digital marketing with SEO (people are searching for you, will they find you on the first page, that is most important), a strong website (it needs to compel them to take action, contact you or sign up, at the very least go beyond the homepage and stay longer than 30 seconds), and then other forms like pay per click, display networking and re-targeting. Re-targeting is a powerful tool made possible by our friend the cookie: the consumer looked at your site and left, continued researching or delayed action, and now they see an ad for you pop up on another site at another time. Now they remember you and their interest is rekindled or they’re ready to take a second look and take action.

Traditional media and direct mail are still important but they can be expensive so small businesses have to rely on digital and guerilla marketing, and the owners have to always be selling (or ABC, always be closing). For B2B, a good salesperson or team who can dedicate time to lead generation and prospecting is also tremendously powerful. Combined – a good sales program and a strong marketing program that is consistent, with branding, a media mix, a strong message – marketing and sales can propel a business to new heights, creating a engine for sustained growth.