Well hello there!
Today I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at Cleveland State University for an MBA class on Integrated Marketing.
My good friend (and soon to be ‘Board Advisor’), Elad Granot, invited me to his MBA Marketing Class.
Over the past few years of teaching, I’ve only had the chance to work with college students or grad students. Usually I’m working community colleges, so the demographics of the group , so I was concerned the students were going to already know everything I wanted to talk about.
Fortunately, I got to show them a bunch of sites they had never heard of, and explain how Web 2.0 and eMarketing Techniques work.
One of the main things I focused on with them was the need to establish a marketing system in which new prospects come in the know about your product/service, and then are connected to your ongoing marketing efforts.
I feel a strong marketing system always starts with a strong website or microsite. An email campaign cannot be successful unless it is forwarding interested parties to a landing page and website that is conversion centric.
We covered some of the ways to make websites more conversion centric:
- Add in rich media from websites such as www.youtube.com or www.slideshare.net
- Capture the users email address with a value-based monthly newsletter
- Use your most important real estate (top area of your site) to drive home one major thing you want your customer to do
Basically, make it easy for them to want to join your community.
We discussed all the other components of the system above that make a successful marketing strategy work:
- Websites
- Email marketing
- Online video
- Customer relationship management
- Search engine marketing
- Social media optimization
- Traditional collateral
I only had an hour, so the main ‘takeaway’ I wanted the class to have was that this was just the tip of the iceberg!
There is so much stuff out there, you have to dive in because the water is in fact warm. I hope they enjoyed my session, and I’ve offered any of the students in Elad’s class (or others) to contact me in the future if they have any questions!
Happy eMarketing,
-Brad
