The latest CMO Counsel survey (Jan. 2012) is good news for firms, like Arketi, which believe the right marketing strategies link to and build business value – you know Where Marketing Generates Revenue.

The research finds multi-national client marketers are seeking strategic contributions (57 percent) and business value created (56 percent) from their marketing agencies. Other key considerations include:

• Agency efficiency and effectiveness (50 percent)
• Market impact and success of campaigns (42 percent), and
• Creative excellence (42 percent).

Another finding of note included that the top technique for improving client-agency collaboration, output and performance is the religious work to keep all teams fully aligned and in-sync with objectives and deliverables.

In addition, marketers said fresh ideas, analytics and perspectives were what they value the most from outside agencies.  For more on this study check out the great blog post from Marketing Charts or download the entire report from the CMO Counsel.

In 2011, Arketi has was able to help families, individuals and companies from Greater Atlanta to Uganda and Afghanistan.

As a firm, Arketians collected with boxed and canned goods for the Atlanta Community Food Bank during its annual Arketi Turkey Day Food Drive. Employees filled up bags and the donation barrel to the rim during October and November. The food bank then distributed the groceries to low-income families in Metro Atlanta and throughout North Georgia.

Arketi also gathered snacks, toiletries, baby wipes and other items to send to troops at FOB Shank located in the Loghar Province of Afghanistan.

Another way employees helped out is by contributing to Hands of Love – an organization that improves the lives of children and their families affected by the humanitarian crisis in Uganda. Arketi “adopted” three children there and provided each of them with school supplies, clothes and a Christmas gift.

In 2011, Arketi gave “in-kind” offerings to several non-profit organizations, such as High Tech Ministries and HealthMPowers. Arketi provided public relations, event coordination support, design services and more.

Arketians supported clients with their community service programs, as well. For instance, Arketi staffers joined Knowlagent at the MUST Toy Shop, operated by MUST Ministries – a local non-profit organization that provides shelter and services to persons in crisis.

MUST’s store gave parents an opportunity to “shop” for items for their children with a volunteer personal shopper. Thanks to the MUST Toy Shop and volunteers, approximately 4,500 children delighted in opening presents on Christmas morning.

Arketi has been able to give back to the community in these several ways to help make the past year brighter for so many deserving people. Visit Arketi’s Community page to read more about its outreach programs.

The growth of various forms of one and two-way communication, including text messaging and social media, is causing some to question the viability of email as an effective vehicle for marketing campaigns.

But reports of the death of email may have been greatly exaggerated – at least in the BtoB marketing arena. A recent article in BtoB Magazine states that email marketing is alive and well with open rates trending upwards. The article, which includes survey results from a study conducted by a marketing company and the Direct Marketing Association, states that email open rates increased by nearly 8 percent in Q3 2011 – a fairly significant jump in a mature market space.

The article also includes information from a second survey in which 60 percent of respondents stated they plan to increase email marketing budgets. In the same survey only 55 percent of respondents stated that they planned to boost social media marketing budgets.

Even with the increased popularity of email marketing campaigns, communications professionals need to know and exercise best practices to ensure campaigns are effective and successfully engaging with customers and prospects. To start, know your audience (preferably with specific industry data) and, moreover, the audience’s collective tolerance level for email. The mass move to mobile means many recipients are viewing emails on tablets and other devices and marketers need to keep this in mind when developing content and determining offers.

To see the complete BtoB article, headlined Email Trends: Spotlight on Strengths, Challenges, click here.

Recently, the folks at the Content Marketing Institute published a survey entitled “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends”—a survey which further validates Arketi’s own findings at our fourth Annual High Tech CMO Roundtable event .

According to the survey, content marketing, which is viewed as one of the hottest trends in publishing in 2011, is poised to continue its market dominance in the upcoming year. In fact, 60 percent of surveyed business-to-business marketing personnel plan to increase content market spending in 2012. On average, the surveyed marketing personnel allocate 26 percent of their total budget to content marketing initiatives.

According to CMI’s findings, BtoB marketers use an average of 8 content marketing tactics to achieve their goals. Article posting ranks the highest with 79 percent usage; social media (other than blogs) is used by 74 percent of survey respondents. Blogs, enewsletters and case studies rounded out the top 5 with 65 percent, 63 percent and 58 percent of the vote.  See below for full ranking.

In the social media sector, Twitter reigns supreme. Twitter use increased by 35 percent to 74 percent in 2011, with Facebook use up 30 percent from 2010 numbers to 70 percent. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI, noted that, “Twitter, from a listing standpoint and niche content standpoint, is easier to use in a niche business rather than a large consumer. You’re focused on hashtags and different searches that are focused on content sets. Twitter is our most effective broadcasting tool: less social media, more broadcasting.”

“Twitter is closer to what they [marketers] are doing now, as opposed to Facebook, where you really have to interact,” he stated.

YouTube and LinkedIn shared double digit jumps with increased usage of 47% and 39% respectively, while blog and video use leaped 27 percent in 2011 from 2010.

In 2011, we posted a B2B Marketing Minute that summarized our own content marketing tend findings from our Annual CMO Roundtable. We learned that 90% of BtoB organizations are now engaged in content marketing. In addition, more than a quarter of BtoB organizations’ marketing budgets would be used on content marketing alone in 2011.

Stay tuned to find out the latest findings and predictions for 2012, as we’ll reveal our 5th Annual Roundtable findings for both the Atlanta office and our new North Carolina branch.

As another year draws to a close, many of us are looking back at the past 12 months with an eye toward 2012. In the spirit of continual improvement, this is also the time when we begin setting New Year’s Resolutions. As we all know, most of these well-meaning resolutions typically fall by the wayside mid-February. Setting aside the personal, what are your professional resolutions for 2012? I have proposed a few below which we could all benefit from:

1.  Leveraging social media
You recognize the importance of social media and may even have a LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter account. But are you actively mining your social media channels for opportunities and leads? According to a recent study by Pardot Marketing Automation, 52.5 percent of marketers are spending 10 percent of their marketing budgets on social media activities, with nearly as many stating that 10 percent of their leads come from social media channels. Connecting and engaging in the conversation is key in truly maximizing this channel.

2.  Doing the little things

Want to set yourself apart from your peers and impress others? It really is the little things that make a difference here. Do more than is expected of you internally and externally to set a great example. Show up to your meetings on time or even a few minutes early. Send your business partners an email after hours to let them know you are always thinking about their business. Practice the art of listening, both online and offline and practice repeating what you heard.

3.  Employ the KISS method
In an era of information deluge, it is increasingly difficult to follow the maxim, Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS). Do not call meetings unless you have defined an express purpose and outcome. Following the KISS method means streamlining your interactions and ultimately, giving yourself time to focus.

A recent article from BtoB Magazine on Marketing Automation sparked a somewhat interesting debate among members of the Marketing Automation Association LinkedIn Group, and I thought it worth revisiting. The article’s main point was to imply, somewhat strongly, that the marketing automation and business intelligence tools available to today’s BtoB marketers have essentially changed marketing from a right brain to a left brain profession. (Slight detour for those, like me, who sometimes have trouble telling our right brain from our left – right brain dominant individuals tend to be more creative while their left brain dominant counterparts tend toward the analytic.)

It’s true that today’s automation and analytic engines are offering marketers tools and capabilities that we could only wish for a decade or two ago. However, I think it would be a mistake, and would set BtoB marketing back significantly, if these new tools resulted in anything less than a strong and equally deployed mix of right brain and left brain skills.

I would say that most successful marketers realize that, to be effective, marketing requires both creative and analytic thinking. Certainly, killer creative can at times overcome flaws in mix or deployment strategy. And ending up on the right side of a killer opt-in list built from relentless analysis of personas and prospect actions can make up for a bit of pedestrian creative. But when a strong, relevant creative message is paired with a well thought out campaign strategy built on solid analytic models, true magic can occur.

As point of fact, two of the more successful and creative campaigns I’ve been associated with recently had to do with an Indiana Jones type multimedia campaign and a zombie-based video and trade show support plan. Both leveraged analytic tools to validate results and both required a lot of left brain thinking. But I’d say it was the combination of both the pre and post campaign analysis and strong creative that made the efforts a success.

It is true that today’s comprehensive business intelligence and marketing automation solutions have made delivery against performance metrics a regular part of a marketers success criteria. And this goes well beyond the time-worn ROI numbers we’ve all used for decades.  Today, lifetime value, lead to revenue and pipeline conversion results rule. And marketers are more than ever held accountable for their decisions.

In addition to post-campaign analytics, today’s BtoB marketers can take advantage of a myriad of testing tools that enable A/B and multivariate testing of every conceivable campaign element before hitting a “Go” button. But I still believe that the best marketers are leveraging those tests to find the best of a series of strong creative elements pulled from the deep resources of their right brain.

Hopefully we don’t ever lose that.

Over the weekend, the Arketi team celebrated the holidays together at Ray’s on the River with delicious food, drinks and company. Celebrating their first winter holiday with Arketi were several new team members along with Arketi veterans, family and friends.

As tradition, Arketians brought a wrapped gift and participated in “bad santa”  by opening and/or stealing a present.

After all the stealing, we then confess to which funny, useful, or pampering present we brought.

Check out more holiday photos on Arketi’s Picasa album. From our team to yours, have a wonderful holiday season and an exciting new year!

We’ve come to that time of year again when budgeting is in full season, and it made me think about how organizations approach budgeting differently, particularly as it relates to marketing.
I was talking with a CMO recently, and he said, “I have the ‘CFO cut’ built into my budget, so we should be good.” You see, this CMO has figured out that come the mid-Q3 timeframe, the CFO is going to get nervous and ask for money back from the budget. So, he has learned to put that money in ahead of time, so he could ‘give it back.’ Sounds like a game, doesn’t it?

Oftentimes, we are asked by our clients to think outside the budget, to plan as if there was no budget in place. Rather, they want us to build a plan that will execute at a level that ensures the goal is reached. Having gone through this exercise a number of times, the outcomes tend to fall into one of two scenarios:

1.  The budget is truly fixed, and the thinking and strategy to determine what was really necessary to make the objective happen was a theoretical exercise and a waste of time, or
2. The exercise was strategic and sincere. The CEO takes the feedback and goes to the board for approval to expand the marketing budget and take the market by force.

It might not surprise you to know that scenario #1 plays out much more often than scenario #2… maybe this is why so many marketers look upon the budgeting process with disdain, thinking it is “fixed” or a game in of itself.

Maybe it is time that marketers challenged the process and asked the strategic question, “What are we truly trying to achieve this year, and will we invest appropriately to make it happen?” For example, if we want to double sales, but will only increase the marketing budget by 5%, is that truly realistic?

Perhaps marketers should worry less about following the budgeting process and more about leading the strategic discussion.  Maybe then, the budgeting process will become strategic.

This post was also featured on TAG Think.

Are you looking for the most innovative, ground-breaking tips that will be key to revolutionizing your writing in today’s fast paced environment right now?

At first glance, a line like that seems ridiculous and unbelievable. So why do we, as PR professionals, continue to try to sell both journalists and audiences with the same clichés over and over?

I recently attended a writing workshop for PR and marketing professionals moderated by industry expert Janet Reed, who offered fundamental tips to avoid the repetitive, overinflated writing traps that, as much as we try to avoid, we tend to fall into. According to Reed, writers get in trouble by adding too many details when selling a reporter on a pitch or a consumer on a product and lose the message in the process. Most times, short, sweet and to the point does much better than an abundance of detail.

In honor of the holiday season, here are a few basic practices to ensure your next press release or byline is sharp, concise and captivating. In other words, make sure your write plate is not “stuffed.”

Cut Your Calories
When sitting with your loved ones at the Thanksgiving table, would you ever say, “Can you please circulate the tryptophan-laced, bi-colored poultry that is adhered to its porcelain mechanism?” when “Pass the turkey” will get the message across with less effort?

We’re all guilty of adding inflated, convoluted terms to sentences, convinced that some fancy words will give our writing more conviction and pop. In reality, this expansion gets confusing and buries the message rather than highlighting it.

Reed mentioned that sentences grow dangerous when longer than 14-16 words. Using this practice can help us reach the message faster. Try to write your release or pitch as if you are selling a 10-year old, or your grandmother. Avoiding highly technical speak can get your message across faster, too.

Also, keep the smartphone culture in mind when writing. A reporter or reader is not going to scroll through lengthy, seemingly endless paragraphs when checking email on a mobile phone. Get your most important details across early and use bullets and subheads as support rather than additional lines.

Try a New Recipe…
Every Thanksgiving dinner has its staples – turkey, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and “whatever’s in that bowl over there.” While we all love the traditional items, how many times has the most memorable dish on the table been something new that your family has never had before? Maybe a fresh marinade for the turkey? Or spice for the potatoes?

Along those same lines, we should challenge ourselves to add some seasoning to our writing. According to Reed, there’s a fine line between “killer words” and “words that kill” – while “killer words” can make your audiences want to read more, “words that kill” (like the ones in the opening line of this blog) will do just that to any possible interest.

Maintaining an active voice and relying on strong, exciting verbs add refreshing flavor to your writing. Choose your words wisely, but don’t be afraid to add in a phrase or term you have never used before. Every so often, I’ll hear a term or phrase on a television show and think, “I like that. I’m going to use that in my next case study.” If it was memorable once, it may be equally memorable to your readers.

…But Don’t Forget the Basics
The growth in social media and text messages made “the casual” acceptable in most PR circles. And, with surmounting deadlines across several clients, we don’t have as much time as we would like to check the AP style guide for every single word in our writing. As a result, we tend to stray from the basic principles.

Being lazy can weaken any attempt at strong writing. For starters, make sure your subjects, verbs and pronouns all agree (hint: someone, each and everybody are all singular!) If you would use it in a text message, even though your audience will understand it, it should not go in your press release. And while we are all scrapped for time, even 15 minutes of proofreading can make the difference between an effective piece and a mistake that could harm the reputations of both your client and yourself.

Enjoy the Leftovers
While the amount of effort that goes into preparing the perfect Thanksgiving meal can be troublesome, we do it because we want to provide something memorable for our guests. Much in that way, PR professionals put a great deal of effort into writing in hopes of not only generating “delicious” results for their clients, but also to challenge themselves to make every authored piece better than the one before.

Returning to basics can add that memorable zing to your writing. Removing a few of the “excess ingredients” will better highlight what’s really at the core of your message in a clear, concise and complete fashion – and make your audience want to go back for seconds!

After several years of zero, and even negative, growth, it appears as though some companies, including a couple of our clients, are taking advantage of the down economy to add revenue — through acquisition.

As a PR agency, we’ve been part of numerous market events over the years where we’ve played a variety of roles — from strategizing market messaging and positioning to getting the word out to the press. If you are a marketer who has found yourself going through such an activity for the first time, you should be prepared for a fast pace and long days because once the ink on the deal is dry, you must be ready to pull the trigger on your go-to-market strategy.

Whether you are the company doing the acquiring or the company being acquired, here are a few tips to keep in mind as your company starts down the acquisition path.

• Time is of the essence. Completing an acquisition is like riding a roller coaster. You should expect some ups and downs, as well as a few curves. Sometimes you’ll be moving really, really fast, and other times you’ll be waiting, and waiting and waiting. Then there are those times you feel like you are going to fall right out of your seat. Despite all this, one thing is certain: the ride will eventually come to an end. Once this happens, you need to be prepared for how you are going to communicate to anyone who will be affected by this acquisition news. This includes your customers, prospects, partners, the press, industry analysts and employees.

• Stand up and take the lead. The process of acquiring a company usually involves a lot of people, especially if each company has a PR firm. For this reason, the senior marketer at the acquiring company should be at the center of all activities, directing all marketing strategy and tactics for the acquisition. By having one point person at the center of all activities, it will ensure things continue to move and balls are not dropped.

• Develop a plan. There are a lot of moving parts to an acquisition, and the tiniest details must be planned — everything from updating the company websites and contacting current and prospective customers to developing spokesperson talking points and preparing to onboard new employees. Therefore, it is critical you immediately map out (1) how you want to communicate with each key audience and (2) what tools will need to be developed and/or updated. From there, you can develop a more detailed production schedule that assigns a deadline to every activity you need completed before the deal is official.

• Understand your new strategy and story. There’s a reason why this acquisition is taking place, and now’s the time to sketch out the value proposition so that all audiences understand why they should care about your news. As part of the process, make sure you develop customized messaging for each audience, if necessary, and weave it into your communications.

• Stay in the loop. As the company doing the acquiring, you need to make sure you know where each team stands with their assignments. At a minimum, setup weekly calls where everyone comes together to provide status updates on their activities. Be sure to include key players from the company you are acquiring too. That way, everyone knows what’s going on and can be held accountable to the same expectations.

• Conduct a post mortem. Feedback is key to ensuring you grow as a marketer. Once the buzz surrounding the acquisition has died down, hold a team post mortem to understand areas of success and improvement for the future. Whether you go through another acquisition or not, you can always apply any lessons learned to future marketing activities.

Keep in mind that these tips just scratch the surface in everything you need to do to prepare for a market event. If you need more assistance in preparing for a market event, we are always happy to help.