Campbell, Harrington & Brear

August 9th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Now we are down to the final chapter … if “advertising” in the phone directories is not the way to go what should you do?

Here are the steps to a better advertising approach while spending your companies money more effectively and efficiently.

1. Drop all of your phonebook directory advertising.  All of it.
2. Do not enter into the phone directory company’s new on-line services.
3. Take your existing directory commitment budget and put it all on red in Vegas.  Just kidding.
4. Take your existing directory commitment budget and develop a strategic new media plan of your own that includes a well thought out website, a social media component, e-blast marketing, and support it with a strong SEO program and possibly an SEM program.
5. It must start with a strategic plan first.
6. It must be supported by a strong SEO commitment.
7. Everything must be executed by well qualified, new media experts with at least five solid years of experience.  Find a good company, they are out there.  Try 717-846-2947.
8. If you can’t do it all in one year, build it over a number of years.  Website with SEO first.
9. Embrace your program and commit time to it.  It will pay off with business results much better than your yellow page advertising ever did.

The good news is by reassigning your phone directory dollars you can move into the new interactive media world without additional expense.

THE END.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For the record.  Over the past thirty-four years or so, none of the companies who followed our recommendation to drop yellow page advertising ever went out of business.  Nor did they lose business.  They all survived and in many cases flourished because they put those phone directory promotional dollars into alternate media that really did advance their business.

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August 1st, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

The York Builders Insurance Trust needed some marketing jiu-jitsu.

The Trust has been serving the insurance needs of York Builders Association members for nearly half a century. It seemed as if their marketing plan had been around about that long, too.

“Association members had been seeing and hearing the same message over several years,” says CH&B’s Director New Business Development Angela Wenner, herself an active member of the York Builders Association. “Members were either becoming bored with it or ignoring it altogether. We thought it was time they updated their look and message and joined the electronic age.”

At the center of our recommendation was our plan to rebuild an existing website on a new content-managed, SEO-friendly platform, allowing better search engine visibility. The content was also revised to more effectively sell the Trust and provide SEO advantages.

To drive traffic to the site, we crafted a 12-month advertising schedule around three fresh print ads and three new digital ads that are rotating throughout the year in various York Builders Association vehicles.

We also provided an email marketing package that includes a custom email sending tool, as well as an email template design that carries the new brand look. Combined with a user friendly list management component, the Trust can now create and send regular targeted messages that inform existing customers and/or prospects.

“What we have done for them is create discipline and consistency within an easy-to-use platform that allows them to manage their own marketing on a very small budget,” says Angela. “And they’ve embraced it whole-heartedly.”

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July 19th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Over a year ago, I wrote an article called Beware The Digital Age.  I felt there was so much material written about the good news side of new media – and there is a good side – that people needed to be made aware of the negative side and all the many hidden traps that accompany this new advertising medium.

The major warning I wrote was, “… they are dying industries.  Industries who have felt it coming for years but are now at the Pearly Gates.  For newspapers, the Yellow Pages, many printers, and some publishers, it’s over.  The big danger to you is they are quickly reinventing themselves and now marketing themselves as experts in fields they know nothing about.  Newspapers are web developers, web advertisers, your digital expert source.  Yellow Pages is selling SEO and SEM services.   Even printers are entering the SEO, SEM business.  Desperate industries do desperate things.  They know nothing about these things.  Avoid being a victim in their decline.” Continue reading “Part IV: Resist! Don’t Be Assimilated into the NEW On-line Directory Companies’ Programs.” »

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July 18th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

When New York Wire Company spun off its consumer insect screening line last year, it also sold the New York Wire brand name and its unicorn logo.

The company was now free to specialize in its true competencies: the design and production of engineered industrial open mesh and light wire material for a strong group of core customers – as well as for a yet-unknown, untapped universe of potential customers.

Continue reading “Making Marketing Mesh for a Re-Wired Company” »

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June 27th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

In today’s sales marketing and promotion world, your company’s website is your brand’s mothership, the living, pulsating heart of what is, hopefully, a contemporary media strategy.

Your blog; email blasts; social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In; phone apps; PURLs; QR codes; whatever … are just a few of the many new media tools that when working together will shape your brand, while directing traffic to your website.  It is the interaction and linkage of these multimedia components that creates the SEO octane that lifts your company closer to the top of Page One on search engines, which strengthens your brand, enhances your image, increases sales, grows revenue …

That’s just a tiny slice of the new media market today.  In many ways, the market is so brand new and so difficult to understand due to its constant evolution that few people have any real knowledge about it, much less a real understanding of how these new tools can help build their business. Continue reading “CH&B Interactive Media Seminars: Simplifying and Clarifying New Media” »

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June 9th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

For 34 years we have counseled our clients on whether they should be in the two phone directories – Yellow Pages and Yellow Book – and, if so, to what extent: i.e., how big an ad, how many pages of ads, and how many books they should be in.

Sometimes, we have advised clients to increase their stake in the directories. Many more times we have advised them to reduce their exposure, or eliminate it all together from their “advertising” mix.

Some clients accepted our advice, many more agreed with our assumptions but didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to step away from the phone directory punchbowl.

Continue reading “Part I: In Yellow Pages? You Shouldn’t Be.” »

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July 21st, 2010
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

It all starts with a strategic marketing plan.

{Fact #12  … None of these new digital  media tools means a thing without a strategic marketing plan.}

What’s new?  Everything should start with a plan.  But what’s new with digital media is this: A plan is not only fundamental, it is essential.  Internet media is unique in the sense that all components have to be interconnected or it won’t work.  Because the main purpose for doing any of these things – social networking, blogging, Tweeting, etc. – is to generate Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Plopping down a new website and scuffling some social networking around won’t get you anywhere.  They must dovetail together.  And they must dovetail together with whatever else your company is doing in advertising and marketing.

Continue reading “Beware the New Digital Age…Part 4: “Good Luck”” »

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July 6th, 2010
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Let’s face it, if you are the slightest tech savvy you were barely grasping the many new and exciting features of websites … RSS feeds, blogs, galleries, forums, analytics, microsites.  Then, no sooner did you hear about a PURL when e-blasts popped up and someone mentioned SEO.  Then SEM.  Then, wow, social networking became the rage with Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, when bam, Twitter hit the vernacular. Well guess what, mobile marketing is now exploding here in the states and QR code is coming on strong.  QR code?

Oh, and let’s not forget digital media hybrids.  The real “workhorses” like online print ordering for all internal forms, reports and documents; databases; FTP sites; direct-to-print, digital archiving, and e-commerce.

How does someone keep up with all of it?  The answer?  No one person can.

{Fact #8  … No single person knows and understands everything about the new digital world. No one.}

Continue reading “Beware The New Digital Age…Part 3: “The Truth”” »

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June 21st, 2010
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Welcome to the new digital age of communication, or “New Media” as it is called (presently transitioning to Interactive Media, Digital Media or Internet Media). You know, websites, digital archiving, e-commerce, jumpdrive marketing, FTP sites, social media advertising, whatever.

As a business person, you have a gut feeling that you need to enter this new world of electronic digital media sooner than later.  That is a correct assumption.

But, on the other hand, you don’t know enough about this new world to make an informed decision on how to be a part of it.  That too is correct.

{Fact #5 … If you are waiting for all the information before you make your move it will never happen!}

Continue reading “Beware the New Digital Age…Part 2: “The Playing Field”” »

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