Monday Morning Quickie – Change Is The Only Constant

Greetings, my lovely and loyal readers! I’m now into Year Two of the No Biz Like Horsebiz blog, and Year Seven of writing about equine industry marketing…and while the subject matter is consistent, my how things have changed!

• Social media was hardly a blip on the radar screen back then
• What’s this gizmo called an iPhone?!
• Decent quality video (and photography) required costly equipment

And so on. So much has changed since I started sharing my marketing and PR knowledge and expertise with the horse world that I love, even my own methods of delivering information have changed dramatically. Who’d have thought I’d ever be called a ‘Twitter Badass?’

Way back then, I started writing about horsebiz marketing because I saw all the talented, knowledgeable horsemen & woman who weren’t succeeding because they were spending all their time and energy on the horse end, and not enough on the marketing end. I had the hope and the dream of inspiring horsebiz owners to improve their marketing, and the plan to teach them about tools they could cost-effectively use to do so.

I’m now seeing a lot more marketing folk travel down this same path, of helping horsebiz owners improve their marketing, which I love! A rising tide floats all boats, and when we’re all succeeding, the industry is succeeding and getting stronger as a result, with more people experiencing the joy of horses.

So, as I review my own work, and consider how to reach bigger audiences and have a bigger voice, I’d like to make a few changes to the Monday Morning Quickie. But first I want to learn about how YOU read and absorb the information, so I hope you’ll help me out by filling out the quick survey below.

The one thing that will change is the name – instead of ‘Monday Morning Quickie,’ going forward you’ll be greeted with the ‘Monday Morning Quick-Tip’ – too many people were finding this blog from a Google search on ‘quickies’ and I thought better to nip that in the bud. Not something I fully thought through when I named it, but lesson learned!

Many, many thanks to each of you that reads this blog, shares your thoughts and comments as part of the conversation, connects with me by Twitter or email, and joins me at events where I’ve been a speaker. I truly appreciate your support, and it helps me to hear how this blog serves you now, and can do so better in the future.

All the best,

Lisa Kemp

Please note: You can check all the boxes that apply. Thanks in advance for completing the survey!

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Email, Internet Search Most Effective in 2009, Per Survey

The marketing trade publication Brandweek highlighted a recent survey of media and advertising agencies, publishing companies, and Fortune 500 companies that indicated email and Internet search were the marketing tools yielding the strongest results last year.

As reported by Mark Dolliver from Adweek, the December 2009 survey by Datran Media questioned executives on the ‘marketing channels’ that performed the strongest:

• Email – 39%
• Internet search – 24%
• Offline – 9%
• Affiliate marketing – 9%
• Display – 7%
• Direct mail – 6%
• Social media – 5%
• Mobile – 1%

What I find interesting is that some fairly youthful tools in social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) performed only slightly lower than long-established direct mail (that’s cause they’re more fun & interactive than junk mail in my mailbox). Half of respondents (50%) also said they think social media will generate quantifiable results in 2010, so according to them all my Twitter time will be paying off!

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Any marketing and promotion media still has to be tied to

your own business’ overall marketing goals and your budget.

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My question would be, do these results simply indicate where the larger percentage of marketing dollars are being spent (e.g., companies simply spent more on ’email’ than on ‘display’ last year), or does it actually indicate what’s more effective in reaching customers? I think this is a good guideline to go by, but any marketing and promotion media still has to be tied to your own business’ overall marketing goals and your budget.

As for why they’re using digital media, the respondents have many of the same objectives as the average horse business owner or manager:

• Reaching a target audience – 84%
• Generating high-quality leads – 74%
• Converting leads into sales – 63%
• Measuring and understanding our audience – 60%
• Retaining existing customers – 57%
• Digitally transacting with customers – 54%

According to Dolliver, survey respondents said ‘targeting’ will be their primary online marketing tactic this year, which shows that larger companies and ad agencies also find it a challenge to get in front of their ideal customers, the same as equine businesses.

The good news is that in terms of digital marketing, these are tools well within the horse business owner’s reach. But as anyone who’s used a muckrake before knows, good results depend on how you use the tools!

I’m Glad You’re Here….

Thanks for stopping by! With any new endeavor, it takes a while to get rolling. Since this is a new blog, there’s not a lot of content…yet! I hope you’ll check in often and see what new and interesting things I’ve come across. You can sign up for alerts by email in the box to the right – that way you’ll get an alert when there’s something new.

In the meantime, here’s some stuff to get us started on a long and hopefully productive and satisfying relationship:

• There’s a survey on ‘what’s your biggest marketing challenge’ (below)
• My first blog post – ‘Welcome to No Biz Like Horse Biz’ – has some stats from a recent survey from American Horse Publications of horse owners and the state of the industry. What could this information mean to future marketing efforts? We’ll explore that over the next few weeks.
• I’ve posted some links to my equine magazine online articles under the ‘Articles’ tab – lots of reading there, on a variety of topics. More articles and links will come over the next few weeks.

And, as always, please send your comments, I’d love to hear how your own marketing efforts are progressing!

What’s Your Biggest Marketing Challenge?

Be sure to read my ‘Welcome’ post, below the survey.

Here’s a survey on several different common marketing challenges – vote and you can see what others are experiencing, too!

If you have a specific problem that’s not listed, please include it…there’s a good chance it could become a future blog post. This will also help me understand what types of issues my readers are facing, so I can give you worthwhile information.

You can also leave a comment if you need more room.

Survey closes March 31st, 2010.