Strategy means many things to many people. For some, its about the activities that are engineered for the audience to participate in. For others, its bringing the brand to life online. For others still, its about the right events or digital activities to participate in. I submit it’s all of these things and more.

Creating or adopting a strategic framework for the needs of your experience or program is a good place to start. From there, taking time to think about how you will approach each component lays the foundation for success. Here are some tips for creating a strategic framework that will help you rally the troops and march onward toward victory.

1. Clearly articulate and prioritize all objectives. What are you trying to accomplish with the event / experience / program? If you accomplish only one thing, what must it be? Because there are many lieutenants in the work we do, there are also many opinions on what the objectives should be. Try to foster agreement on as few objectives as possible. Honing the list down to no more than 1-3 objectives will ensure your squad focuses on the right things.

2. Think about measurement first. Now that you’ve established your objectives, it’s important to understand if, when and how you’ve accomplished them. Create a measurement strategy that reports on how these objectives are being met. no more, no less. Make sure all officers and troops alike are in agreement on success imperative and the measurement plan before the event / experience / program is launched.

3. Know how your battle contributes to the war effort. Always understand the input and outputs of what you’re doing. What other programs might influence your work? What contribution does your event make to the campaign? Understanding will also help ensure your are focused on the most important things.

4. Take time to get to know the target. Think beyond the demographics and psychographics of audiences. What are their interests? What are their triggers and inhibitors? What emotional and rational needs do they have that your brand can fulfill? This will lay the foundation for relevent experiences and build meaningful relationships.

5. Play to your strengths. Know thyself. Stay on brand and execute those tactics which are most likely to succeed. Apply the 80 / 20 rule for experimental activities and focus on tried and true methods first. Also know your weaknesses and be prepared to overcom them.

6. Survey the battlefield. What else is happening in the marketplace? What are your competitors up to? What socio-economic factors, marketing trends, business challenges, online and offline influencers need to be considered? Knowing the environment in which you are operating can help determine the types of activities executed at right time and place to maximize success.

7. Draft a comprehensive plan of attack. How will you attract an audience? What experiences will motivate them to act on your objectives? How are you representing your brand? What’s the sales strategy? What about follow-up? Promotions? Ensure there are sub strategies to your overarching strategy.

8. Develop contingencies for defeat and victory. Flexibility is key. Know what you will do if all or part of your program begins to fail before the event / experience / program is executed. Alternatively, know what you will do if the work is wildly successful. Sometimes an inability to support success can be more damaging than an outright failure. Make sure you have immediate, quick-strike plans in place as well as intermediate and longer-term ideas in your arsenal.

9. Remember measurement. Measure and diagnose your event / experience / program. Understand success, the degrees to whiich you were successful, and the reasons behind success or failure. Consider what successful tactics can be replicated elsewhere or improved apon. What were the reasons for failure? How can this be prevented next time? Create a plan for continuous improvement so each battle is won with fewer casualties.

Sun Tzu also wrote, “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” By creating a strategy and calculating the outcomes before you launch your plan, you’ll be able to mitigate failure and drive overwhelming success.

The Art of Experiential Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

According to Quantcast, as of November 2009, MySpace has just under 60 million regular users per month, making it the second largest social network in the US. 57% of users are female and 43% are male. As far as age is concerned, 46% of MySpace visitors are 18-34, followed by 13-17 at 26% and 35-49 at 17%. MySpace also boasts a large Hispanic and African American population.

Like all marketing, the trick for brands is to fish where the fish are. In other words, make sure the digital properties included in any social media strategy attract your target audience. Its also a good idea to align your brand appropriately with the content of the property to ensure relevance for the community.

MySpace attracts a younger audience than Facebook, and the content is more entertainment focused, including, celebrity, fashion, video, sports and most importantly, MySpace is building their business largely through music. With recent acquisitions of imeem, and iLike, as well as the build out of MySpace Music, News Corporation appears to be focused on billing MySpace as the premier social destination for all things music.

So how can event marketers leverage MySpace for events? Here are 8 ideas to get you started.

1. Its not about the event, its about the community. This may sound familiar from my earlier posts, but it bears repeating. As marketers, its important we change our thinking from using MySpace or any other social media platform for an event, to understanding how we can incorporate our event into the community. Changing our state of mind will help ensure we are focused on the right things and enable long-term success. What’s most important is approaching social communities comprised of the right audiences for our products or services. In some cases, there will not be an organic fit between branded content and community interests. Content should be carefully crafted to align, or alternate channels should be explored if content alignment is not possible.

2. Create a profile for your event. Although designed for people, a profile can be built for an event. This is really easy to do on MySpace. Make sure your presence is branded appropriately and community centric. Myspace is completely customizable. You can change the layout and background or create a custom look and feel using CSS tools. From here you can add different modules that display exactly the kind of information you want to display on your profile. Take advantage of appropriate modules for your presence like:

• Blurbs – Shows the “About” Section of your profile
• Details – Miscellaneous details about your event
• Interests – Here you can include the subject matter of the event
• Companies – Here you can list participating companies
• Friend Space – Friends or fans listed (think attendees or other interested parties)
• Events – Create and manage all your events or curriculum / agendas
• Calendar – Displays important dates about your event

3. Add multimedia content to your profile. Keep it updated to educate, inform and excite your audiences.

• Music Player – If your event is entertainment focused, this is the place to keep and showcase it (under MySpace Music)
• Video Player – Record or upload your own videos (under MySpace Video)

4. Keep the information fresh, interesting and engaging. Other modules can be used to better communicate and engage with your community. Use them daily.

• Status and Mood – Keep your audience apprised on event activities
• Activity Stream – Publishes everything you do on MySpace
• Comments – Allows you or others to post comments to your profile

5. Create additional value for attendees. Still other modules can be used to help attendees navigate the locale around your event

• Local Reviews – Helpful for destination events where attendees may be looking for hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc.
• MySpace Local – Can be used for attendees during regional events to find restaurants, hotels, and attractions

6. Identify, attract and befriend the right audience. You don’t need to boil the ocean here. Start by searching MySpace for people who you know who are already part of the community and “friending” them. You can also invite people you email or IM via your contact list to join MySpace. The next step is to use MySpace search functions to conduct searches of Profiles, Groups and Forums to identify folks who might be interested in your content and your event and “friend” them. Finally, you can promote your MySpace presence off site to attract others to become your friend.

7. Engage your community. If you build it, they might come. In order to be truly successful, you must engage and interact with others. Reach out to other MySpace profiles with related content (industry, fan, speaker, exhibitor, etc.). Post photos, videos, music, stories, links and updates that will keep your audiences interested and engaged. Also take full advantage of MySpace:

• Blogs – Allows you to create your own blog or view others blogs – update your blog regularly. For more guidance on using blogs effectively at events, please check out my earlier post, The Importance of Blogs in Experiential Marketing.
• Groups – Join relevant groups or create your own group based on the event – make sure you participate actively.
• Forums – Start new discussions or participate in other revelvent discussions actively to foster your community and drive interest in the subject matter of your event.

Here are some thoughts on the kind of content you should post regularly.

• News about event content (again, think community interest first) and  event operations
• Links to outside blogs (speakers, exhibitors, industry sites, subject matter experts, etc.)
• Links to other MySpace pages (speakers, exhibitors, industry / subject matter groups, etc.)
• Photos and videos (speakers, experiences, exhibits, demonstrations, previous events, subject matter relevant, audience and fan provided)

Remember, the beauty of social media, is you don’t need to create everything, you can leverage and share what others have done, provided it is on brand, relevant to your audience and appropriate for your presence.

Think long-term. This is not just about awareness and audience generation for your event, but an engagement strategy that will make your event a vital component of the community and an important accentuation point in the relationship with your audiences, whether they be attendees, speakers, exhibitors, press, analysts or otherwise.

8. Leverage appropriate applications. There are hundreds of applications in MySpace. Browse application categories or search apps based on keywords. You can also create your own applications to be included in the MySpace universe. Here are some I’ve found useful:

• Custom Countdown: Allows you to create customized countdowns for your events
• iTwitter: Syncs your tweets to your MySpace profile
• RSS Reader: Include RSS feeds from your blog, news sites, subject matter experts, etc. on your MySpace profile
• Create Free Polls: Survey your MySpace audience and report the results
• YouTube Post: Post your YouTube videos directly into your MySpace profile
• Business 3.0: Integrate your business information, products, services, etc. into many social media platforms

Building a MySpace engagement strategy (or any other community engagement strategy)  is easier said than done. Participating in communities takes time and diligence, but with the right focus, your event can become a prominent fixture both within the MySpace community and beyond. Remember to observe, create, share and engage and long-term success will be yours.

These are just some of the things you can do with MySpace. There are many other uses and applications for events. If you have other ideas or ways in which you’ve used MySpace for events please share!

8 Ways To Use MySpace For Events is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

The most significant takeaway: The definition of a lead varies by company, business model, industry, approach and audience.

All said, here are some thoughts to help you ensure your definition, data collection and pipeline management process are aligned for maximum effectiveness.

1. Determine the minimum information required. Typically we need a name and some contact information:

• Name
• Address
• City
• State
• Postal Code
• Country
• Telephone
• Mobile Phone
• Email
• Social Media

Minimum is important. You want to make sure it is as easy as possible for your target audiences to provide information. Also think in terms of communications platforms. How does your audience prefer to be communicated to? Email? Direct Mail? Telephone? SMS? What about connecting via Social Media? (Now there’s an idea! However, I’m not sure if we will get to the point of: “Please check here if we can ‘friend’ you on Facebook.” By the way, does a Twitter ‘follow’ constitute as an Opt-In?) Think about how your organization typically communicates as well, within the current marketing campaign, by your sales teams, customer service and beyond. There are also advantages and disadvantages to each communications channel. Think about the differences between interactivity, engagement, interruptive vs. collaborative, one-way vs. two way, static vs. dynamic, etc. The platform you choose determines the contact information you need, and says something about your brand and customers as well.

2. “Opt-In” is not just the law, it is a strategic weapon. Think carefully about how you want your audiences to participate. There are several types of Opt-Ins:

• Specific Marketing Campaign
• General Company
• Specific Product or Service
• Partner Offers

Interestingly, how you present Opt-In questions is just as important as what types of Opt-In questions you choose. Studies have shown this is a balance between quantity and quality of leads. Negatively-framed questions (Opt-Outs) receive higher participation rates than positively-framed questions (Opt-Ins). Pre-selected choices also receive higher Opt-In rates, however the quality of these leads tends to be lower than those where participants are required to select the option. Copy treatments and page positioning have also been shown to effect participation quantity and quality.

3. BANT Qualification has two inherent strengths. BANT Qualification, or understanding a prospects Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe (hence the BANT acronym) assists you in understanding whether or not a prospect is a viable customer. For example, a prospect’s budget is too low for your product or service, or they don’t have the authority to make the purchase decision. It can also help your sales teams in prioritizing leads. Should a prospect be looking to purchase a product or service in the near-term (Timeframe) of have more than enough Budget to purchase your offering(s), they could be considered a ‘hot’ lead.

So how do you get BANT information? Here, you have some choices. You can either address BANT with your marketing approach, leave it to your sales teams or adopt a hybrid model. Here are some examples:

• Budget: (formulaic) “What is your annual household income?”, (direct) “What is your company’s annual budget for X?”
• Authority: “Are you Head of Household?”, “Are you the final decision maker or do you recommend or influence purchase decisions for your company?”
• Need: “Do you own a home?”, “Does your company outsource your IT?’
• Timeframe: “When are you looking to purchase a new car?”, “When does your company’s fiscal calendar end?”

As you can see, these types of questions can be asked through a marketing campaign, as part of an initial sales or outreach (telemarketing) campaign, or across both.

4. Conditioning leads is good or you and good for them. Conditioning leads is the art and science of collecting additional demographic, psychographic and technographic information from your audience, while educating them about your brand and products. Conditioning allows brands to learn more about their audiences, and their audiences to learn more about them. It’s a courtship of sorts that will (hopefully) lead to a long-term relationship. Think about what additional information you’d like to collect about your audiences over time. This can inform your current pipeline, futures sales and marketing efforts, and provide some incredible opportunities for your customer service organization to drive retention, expansion, loyalty and advocacy.

Think of conditioning questions as the “nice-to-know” information about your audiences. This information, while not required for the sales process might help hone your future marketing efforts or give your sales teams an edge in establishing and building relationships with prospects. Some examples: “Do they participate in social media?” “What publications do they read?” “How many people are in their family?”

Similarly, understanding what additional pieces of information your audiences would like to, and need to know about your products or brand can help optimize your marketing, sales and service efforts. Here we include what audiences “need-to-know” about our brands and products in order to make a purchase decision, as well as the “nice-to-know” information that may drive audiences from the consideration to preference stages of the pipeline. “Does your organization align to your audiences moral and ethical compass?”, “Is your brand fun and playful, or more serious and straightforward?”, “How engaging and personal is your company?” Every communication with your audiences should tell a part of the story. People do business with brands they know, like and trust. Frequency and cadence of communications is important here. Understanding the balance between too much, too often and just right takes time and practice.

You can also use the conditioning process as a strategic tool to control the speed at which prospects move through the sales cycle. For example: for complex products or solutions, more conditioning may lower return rates and increase overall customer satisfaction. Or, if you have a smaller sales staff and a marketing campaign is wildly successful, conditioning can be used to keep prospects in a holding pattern until your sales teams can address them.

All said, capturing and qualifying leads can be a far more complex process than “name, address and phone number”. If you adopt a strategic approach to your lead process that is aligned to your sales, marketing and service efforts, you can manage your pipeline with great effectiveness and efficiency, build stronger and deeper relationships with your customers and drive long-term business success. Think beyond the lead.

Do you have any thoughts on defining a lead or managing the process? Please share!

Demand Generation: The Anatomy Of A Lead is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0