Marketing Converts Operations to a New Way of Thinking
Dave Zamorski will tell you that he’s NOT a marketing guy; he’s operations. In fact, he mostly doesn’t believe that the marketing programs his staff recommends will work.
What he will tell you is that the programs that Associates Graphics Services (AGS) has implemented are extremely successful and he’s quite happy to be proven wrong. Dave is COO for ASC and has seen his company’s sales jump almost 29% from 2007 to 2008; he credits it all to good marketing!
At OnDemand Expo (Philadelphia, March 31-April2), I met with Dave to find out more about the marketing campaigns AGS has in place, and it turns out the most successful campaigns are actually part of the sales cycle.
The AGS initial sales call takes 3 weeks – no more, no less – from the time the prospect agrees to the first visit. Dave and his team carefully target an account and use the Internet to learn as much as they can about the company. Then marketing staff validates the names and titles of the people who should be part of the first meeting.
Case studies and direct mail pieces are sent in waves to the prospect. For example, a direct mail piece with a personal URL directs the prospects to a landing page that asks a simple question:
If you could have this meeting anywhere; where would it be?
- The beach
- The mountains
- Somewhere in Europe
Here’s where it gets interesting! When Dave and his sales team – the sales person, a marketing person who specializes in data-driven marketing, and a technical person who presents the ecommerce element – make that appointment, they take a whole kit with them for the meeting.
The day of the meeting, the team bundles up three banners to display in the prospect’s conference room: a beach scene, a mountain scene, and a view of a small town in Europe. That’s just to set the stage.
Each prospect also gets a personalized box printed with the appropriate scene and that contains a personalized postcard and an appropriate tschotchke.
As an operations guy, Dave no longer questions the practicality of such an approach. The first time the AGS sales and marketing team followed this procedure, a member of the prospect’s marketing team ordered 500 boxes for their own campaign!
Now that’s powerful marketing!
