Electronic Marketing: A Cost-Efficient and Green Strategy for Building Business

If you’ve held off on printing brochures and sales sheets due to budget constraints or because your sales strategy is evolving so rapidly, you’re not alone. There’s an alternative to printed material that is smarter, faster, “greener” and cheaper: electronic marketing.

Whether your business is in start-up mode, building demand or working toward an exit strategy, electronic marketing can play a central role in educating your target market about your services, establishing brand awareness, driving qualified leads, creating customer loyalty and increasing company valuation. Plus, the electronic approach allows you to quickly and cost-efficiently respond to changing market demands.

Building your marketing materials in an electronic format is a solid investment that’s fast to develop and easy to maintain and update. Unlike old-fashioned printed marketing collateral (not so affectionately coined the “dead-tree medium”), an electronic infrastructure lends itself to any highly-competitive industry.

A study by InfoTrends reported printing costs alone can consume up to three percent of a company’s gross revenue. In addition to the high cost of offset printing, most brochures are obsolete as soon as they’re printed or sit in closets awaiting the next tradeshow or special event – leaving the majority discarded without ever reaching your prospects.

By decreasing the volume of print collateral produced, your company could reduce its marketing spend by 30 percent or more, according to Direct Marketing News, and you could redirect those savings into strategic marketing initiatives. And in today’s “green” society, printing can be a waste of precious resources and create the perception of corporate irresponsibility.

How to Develop an Electronic Marketing Infrastructure
The return on marketing investments will always be a budgetary concern. Try a new approach that will enable you to market aggressively, reach a broader target base and track the results – while improving cost efficiencies.

Here are several ideas for developing an electronic marketing infrastructure for your company:

• Digital library: Build a corporate Intranet to store and distribute current sales kits and marketing materials to your sales team. Rather than printing and shipping documents to your team – locally or globally – provide them with access to an online library of up-to-date resources they can print from their desktop. This approach also will enable you to track which documents are being used most frequently. For example, are case studies and testimonials proving more effective and valuable than product sheets and brochures?
• One-to-one marketing: Take your digital library to the next level by designing flexible materials that your sales and marketing team can customize with a prospect’s or customer’s name and logo. This co-branding supports one-to-one marketing in competitive sectors, personalizes the sales process and helps build customer loyalty.
• Electronic templates: Protect the investment you’ve made in your brand by providing standardized electronic templates. This can include business cards and letterhead, sales sheets, presentations, proposals or even advertisements. By simply downloading the templates when needed, your team can customize the documents according to their location or customer and then print only what they need while preserving and protecting the brand identity.
• Website: Rather than printing brochures, invest in your Website. A Website is the ultimate “virtual brochure” because it actively engages your prospects. It also reaches a global audience, can address a variety of stakeholders’ needs – and it can be updated on-the-fly, easily and cost-effectively. Unlike a print brochure, you can create immediate calls-to-action on your site to generate qualified leads. You can also track and profile who visited your Website and what information they sought.
• e-Mail Marketing: Replace targeted direct mail with targeted e-mail campaigns. This allows you to eliminate printing and postage costs – not to mention reach your audience more quickly and immediately gain valuable market intelligence. You can track exactly who read your e-mails and what they read, and then follow up appropriately with a relevant offer they can act upon immediately (e.g., receive a discount, download a white paper, view a demo, schedule a consultation, request a quote, etc). If used strategically, this valuable tool can help to quickly move your prospects through the sales cycle at minimal expense.

Electronic marketing is a cost-efficient, effective and “green” way to build your company’s brand, drive qualified leads and stay connected to your customers and prospects. It also allows you to collect valuable data and quantify the return on your marketing investment. To learn more about our strategic marketing services or about how you can transform your traditional sales and marketing materials into interactive revenue-generating tools, contact Synergy Marketing Group at 317.205.9690 ext. 221.

About the Author:
Amy Zucker is president and founder of Synergy Marketing Group. A marketing, branding and public relations veteran with 15 years of industry expertise, she started the company in 2002 to exclusively serve the business-to-business community. Today Synergy is one of the top 20 Indianapolis marketing agencies with an impressive roster of both B2B and B2C clients. The firm offers its clients expertise in building memorable brands, generating awareness in the global marketplace, establishing credibility, creating demand and quantifying marketing investments. In 2007 Synergy became a certified Woman-owned Business Enterprise (WBE) to bring added value to clients and vendor partners who want to meet corporate supplier diversity program goals and qualify for new business opportunities in government and regulated industries. Amy can be reached at 317.205.9690 ext. 223 or at amy@synergy-mg.com. To learn more about Synergy Marketing Group, please visit www.synergy-mg.com.