Know What Works Blog

RED equals power.  When used together, the objectives: Reputation, Excite, and Drive equal major marketing power.  Think about every marketing effort that you spend time or money on.  These could range from creating business cards, to multi-million dollar television campaigns.  They could be writing thank you notes, or making a follow up call.  Let’s explore these four marketing efforts that I just mentioned to explain how powerful RED can be. 

Reputation - the objective to build and enhance the sender’s reputation

Excite - Provide an incentive, either direct or implied for a receiver to act.

Drive - Provide the means for the recipient to contact the sender, or to take action.

Assume that our objective is have more people contact us. 

Business Cards are primarily used to provide contact information, which enables the recipient to call or email the name on the card.  So this means that the business card is driving the result.  If the card is an extension of the company’s branding, it will communicate the company’s reputation.  Most business cards don’t excite the recipient, unless there is a compelling reason for the recipient to act quicker with a phone call or contact. 

A television campaign can provide all three, but some don’t always provide the Drive.  Meaning, they don’t always provide the means for the viewer to act.  The design and the content work together to communicate the reputation of the advertiser whether it is intentional or not.  Most television campaigns want to Excite their audience about their brand.  

Writing thank you notes is a great way to build a reputation that is thoughtful, caring, and appreciative.  Thank you notes aren’t usually meant to excite a prospect although they can remind the recipient to call or contact the sender, so they can certainly drive the recipient to act.

Making a follow up call is another great way to build a reputation that is thoughtful, as well as organized, and thorough.  These can be used to excite a prospect, and are primarily used to drive the recipient to act.

It is important to know which objectives are attached to which marketing efforts so you know how to track each one.  Hint:  they aren’t all tracked the same way.

Next post:  Tracking the Drive Marketing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under RED Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.