Have you ever ordered something from a company and received a gift you didn’t expect? If it made you feel like the company was really grateful for your business, then you understand the power of freebies.

Offering gifts can be a very good marketing tactic—if done right. The type of freebie definitely makes a difference. If you can offer something that has a genuinely high perceived value—not just another throwaway—it can attract people and help to promote your business.

If you are able to choose a freebie that acts as a sample, it can help your business grow. In fact, some products simply sell better when people know what it is they are getting. If your samples are poor, however, you risk hurting sales. For help choosing a freebie item that prospects will value, contact us. We have access to thousands of promotional gifts.

Opportunities for small- to medium-sized businesses to fuel rapid growth via social media marketing are huge, but it doesn’t have to be hard. John Hayes, business development executive for iContact, offers the following six simple ideas for integrating social media into your marketing mix:

1. Socialize your email marketing activity. Add Social Media tools, such as a Facebook “like” button or a Twitter “tweet” button to your emails to encourage email marketing subscribers to share your email content.
2. Schedule your social media output. You don’t need to be sitting in front of a computer to post messages to Facebook and Twitter. Use scheduling software to upload posts over the course of days or weeks, or outsource the task to a marketing services provider.
3. Learn to listen. Monitor feedback using the search facility on Twitter, regularly checking your Facebook pages, and setting up Google Alerts.
4. Don’t be afraid to engage. Thank people for kind words or recommendations, assist people who might have problems, and never ignore an angry comment.
5. Add value with your own content. Rather than reusing other people’s content, create your own blog post, competition or contest.
6. Maintain momentum. Once you’ve started, don’t stop. An ill-tended social network gives the impression of a slack organization or one that’s now out of business.

If you’re thinking email marketing is a thing of the past, think again. Email still plays a vital role in the marketing mix. However, marketers need to more closely consider specific customer needs and wants to keep their email marketing effective.

One of those “needs and wants” pertains to the fact that many more subscribers are reading emails on the go using smartphones and tablets. Accordingly, marketers need to ensure that their messages are readable and mobile-friendly. For instance, since most smartphones only display four to six words in the subject line, placing key messages upfront is vital. In addition, content itself must be clear and easy to navigate with fingers and not just with a mouse. By checking the message on both a PC and a smartphone, marketers can ensure that there isn’t a need for viewers to toggle back and forth or shrink/enlarge the message.

As mobile device use continues to increase, marketers must keep their messaging fingertip-friendly as well as relevant for consumers on-the-go.

Another way to address specific customer needs and wants is to give subscribers more control over what information they want to receive. This means always including an unsubscribe option as well as contact information. Not only does this give readers the choice to opt out, it can help avoid the message being marked as SPAM or placed on blacklists.

Think outside the box when it comes to email marketing tactics. For example, personalizing the messaging can help build stronger relationships, and targeting offers and promotions to your customers’ needs and wants are both excellent ways to keep your email relevant.

Digital marketing allows you to send very personalized and highly targeted messages to your prospects and customers, but sometimes it’s hard to beat a truly personal touch. Diana Lillicrap and Wendy Ruyle of 5 by 5 Design, Inc. offer three pieces of advice for implementing a more personal touch:

• Look for opportunities to communicate something authentic and of value to your customer. It could be a thank you note, special gift, personalized letter, or just something fun or new.
• Determine the best way to be memorable. From hand-made elements, unique sizes, tactile papers and textures, interesting printing techniques, or even hand-applied stamps, business communications can communicate a level of intimacy and special attention your customers crave.
• Consider the best option for delivery of the communication. How you communicate can be just as important as what you communicate.

Most sales and marketing professionals involved in lead generation are familiar with “BANT”—Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe—which are commonly used criteria for qualifying leads. When all four criteria are confirmed, the lead is considered qualified and enters the sales pipeline.

While BANT can be valuable to an extent, many companies find that holding to all four criteria means not qualifying enough leads, and removing any one criterion qualifies too many leads. Michael Hanna, formerly of Sales Ops Solutions, suggests using the following “weighted BANT” lead qualification methodology:

Step 1: Apply a weighting to each of the BANT criteria (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4) and define each weighting. Below is a sample set of definitions for Authority:

0 = Has no authority and has no access to the decision maker(s).

1 = Has no authority, but has direct access to the decision maker(s).

2 = Has influence and has access to the decision maker(s).

3 = Is one of several decision makers.

4 = Has complete authority as the sole decision maker.

Step 2: Define a similar scale for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe.

Step 3: Qualify leads based on the sum of all four scores. For example:

0-4 = Unqualified (Don’t waste your time)

5-8 = Slightly Qualified (Nurture it)

9-12 = Qualified (Follow up)

13-16 = Highly Qualified (Follow up immediately)

Hanna believes that this methodology provides enough flexibility for any sales organization to be able to use it, as well as enough simplicity to train and deploy it quickly.

Business owners get a ton of direct mail each day. While direct sales letters and postcards are a cost-effective way to reach your prospects—and can often get someone’s attention—nothing has a better open rate than a high-impact dimensional mail campaign.

Dimensional mail (also known as lumpy mail) is a type of direct mail that is any shape other than flat. It could consist of a box containing sales literature and product samples, a large envelope that clearly has some premium item in it, or a large box with a teaser message on it. People love surprises and are usually very willing to open a package and pay attention to what’s inside.

Obviously, a dimensional mail campaign will cost more to create and send as compared to a standard letter or postcard. However, according to the 2010 DMA Response Rate Report, dimensional mail campaigns average response rates of 8.51%. So while your upfront investment is often higher, your return is much higher and should more than justify the cost of the campaign.

That being said, you’ll want to carefully choose “A-list” prospects that offer a good chance of generating a lot of revenue for your company. Additionally,

your campaign will need to have the complete buy-in of the sales department. If these are not the prospects they are after, they might not be willing to follow up with phone calls, which can be a key part of a dimensional mail campaign. If you’d like to learn more about the merits of dimensional mail campaigns, call us at PIP Printing.

Because email subject lines are a form of headline, headline-writing fundamentals definitely apply. Brian Clark, CEO of Copyblogger Media, suggests running your next subject line through the following checklist, which is based on the “Four U” approach to headline writing:

• Useful: Is the promised message valuable to the reader?
• Ultra-specific: Does the reader know what’s being promised?
• Unique: Is the promised message compelling and remarkable?
• Urgent: Does the reader feel the need to read now?

Subject line real estate is valuable, so the more compact your subject line, the better. Try to compress the fundamentals into the most powerful promise possible, but don’t forget to be useful and ultra-specific. Also, use urgency when it’s actually useful, such as when there’s a real deadline or compelling reason to act now. If you’re running your email marketing based on value and great offers, people won’t want to miss out—they’ll need to know how much time they have.

Do you know why Google is changing its entire platform from desktop websites to mobile websites? Because there are currently 4.8 billion Smartphone users compared to 1.7 billion desktop users.

A mobile website is built just like any other website and is hosted on a web server. The difference is that a mobile website is optimized for a small screen. According to the Small Business Authority, if your business already has a “regular” web site, you already have a mobile website, too. On most next-generation Smartphones, the included web browser can render a website in nearly the same fashion and quality as the web browser on a PC. The main difference between a Smartphone and a computer screen, of course, is the screen size.

Mobile website programming requirements vary depending on the functionality and complexity of the primary website. Highly complex sites with hundreds of pages or e-commerce, such as Amazon, require a greater degree of design and programming than a typical website, which is a more straightforward translation from one format to the other.

A mobile website is generally a good idea, since even a very simple “regular” website can appear too small to read or navigate for smartphone users who are increasingly “spoiled” by the predominance of mobile adaptations. This can lead to frustration and cause the user to abandon your site for one that is easier to use. Building a mobile website doesn’t have to be expensive—when allocating your budget dollars, remember that your web presence is increasingly the face of your company.

Despite all the buzz about the declining revenue of print media, the reality is that traditional channels are not being replaced by social channels. According to Paul Greenberg, author of the best-seller CRM at the Speed of Light, traditional channels aren’t given the importance they deserve because they are harder to measure and don’t scale the same way as online channels.

Greenberg cites a recent study by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, which revealed that 70 percent of all the participants in social channels do it strictly for personal reasons, and only 23 percent interact with a company’s brand. In other words, social customers don’t care about a brand as much as they care about communicating with their friends

Marketers must maintain a good mix of traditional and contemporary media channels in order to fully enhance consumer interaction with their brands.

Greenberg believes that offline, traditional channels still represent a substantial way to influence buying decisions and solve problems, and that smart marketers are those who work with both offline and online media, and who treat social channels as nothing more or less than a new set of communications options for interacting with social customers.

Traditional and social channels for marketing and customer service in particular are just elements in how you can engage customers. Sometimes you need social channels; other times, they are less important. Either way, Greenberg says, “the solution is never the channel itself but how you use it. What you do in it, how you interact, and what problems you solve in a reasonable time frame far outweigh the channel itself.”

Persistence often pays, especially when it comes to lead generation and sales. Jenny Vance, president of LeadJen, offers the following advice for sending a second email to a prospect after an initial email and follow-up phone calls haven’t worked:

• Personalize the content. A simple opening, such as, “I hope your week is going well so far,” makes the email more personal and conversational.
• Politely reference previous contact attempts. Mention that you’ve tried to contact the prospect via both email and voice mail.
• Remind the prospect about your company. Give a short description of your company or product and describe how you’ve helped other clients.
• Get to the point right away. Ask to schedule a brief phone conversation, product demo, etc.
• Suggest a date. Suggesting a date for a follow-up conversation or demo often will get a response even if the date doesn’t work for the prospect.