Hi, I am working for a company which gives training on Health, Safety & Wellness in India to corporate's. We have been following traditional method to sell our training, like making cold calls or references. Our company has decided to go for Brand Placement through Online marketing o in corporate. Few methods I am aware of is Linkedin mails as our main targets are HR's or admin's, apart from this Google CPC or CPM, Mail blasts or facebook advertising and contests. Do let me know what else I can use Before applying all that my company is asking for budget I would like to spend and what would be the expected ROI on that. Frankly speaking we don't have a separate budget for outsourcing surveys. Now we have not done anything like this before so I am not able to figure out what budget I should ask initially to get better returns. I don't want to go for hit n try method. Thanks AD83
Well, you have asked two questions that I am having trouble answering and I have been a corporate sales and marketing executive for 25+ years. Here is where I am having problems with your post: 1. What is "linkedin mails"? I am aware of linkedin ads and other methods of promotion on linkedin (e.g., posting of various forums) but I am not sure what you are asking about. 2. You are asking for specific budget and ROI information, yet we have zero information to base such advice. To even begin to provide such advice, I would have to know the size of your company (revenues), the average price of your solutions, historical closing rates from other (offline) promotions, current presence in the market, etc., etc. Anyone that provides you advice on budgeting for a marketing campaign without this information would be providing useless information.
Linked mails I mean to say is - InMail Messages which you can send with a paid account. I will not be able to disclose above info but I would surely give you sample amount for each category. Lets say it has 100,000 USD is revenue, Average price for solution is 500 USD. We do not do much of promotions as of now. But in past we were doing google ads which gave us the good result, like if we decide spend 100 USD for running ads we are able to get 100% results on that. Currently we are serving our solution all across country mainly in major cities. Do let me know if this info helps you.
I would avoid sending unsolicited Inmails to linkedin people on first contact. I have been on and using linkedin since 1999 and have 800+ connections. I have not really received many spams like that but I did not view favorably the ones that did me. On the other hand, what has been happening to me lately is being contacted by 2nd/3rd connections or people who are in one of the linkedin groups that I subscribe to. They start by sending me a connection invite and I accept many of them. I note that many of these folks are clear that they are marketing consultants, etc., and ask to link because of our related interests. Once I do accept their invitation to connect, they follow up with an Inmail thanking me for connecting and then offering their services. Once this year, I replied to one of these and agreed to a phone call about their services. The most recent development in this lead generation approach is that I am getting most of these invites from "marketing people" with an absolutely gorgeous young lady showing on their profile picture. I suspect that this is the latest effort to differentiate and get a positive response from an old marketing guy like me. My next piece of advice is go with what works! If you have previous success with AdWords, you need to get them started as your first marketing campaign on this next launch. Test it and if it shows promise, go into full throttle. If you got an 100% ROI from it before, there is a VERY good chance that you will get a strong ROI this time. You should also consider a national PR campaign to your industry media. With a $500 price point, I am assuming that your market is quite broad and the industry-specific media is a great way to reach a large volume of people. Since it sounds like you will have real budgets, hire an industry-specific PR agency for 6 months (probably $10K per month in the U.S.) Have them set up an editorial roadshow with the relevant media (that, by definition, they must have relationships with already) and also put out press releases and story pitches on a monthly basis. If you do not know how to find such an agency, just research the press releases put out by small to medium-sized companies in your space (not direct competitors as an agency will generally only work with one layer in any competitive space) and many of them will list the agency person as the point of contact.