A Campaign that Created an ROI of 1,100%, the Story Behind the Name Marketing Cupcakes

Marketing Cupcakes

Summary

In our first episode, we're going to share with you the story behind the name Marketing Cupcakes. It's pretty unique, right?

Well, it's about one of our marketing campaigns that created an ROI of 1,100% consistently for several years. And believe it or not, it all started with a cupcake...

Tune in to find out 3 specific approaches we used to achieve these results and learn how you can do the same in your marketing campaigns.

Highlights

00:39 - The name behind Marketing Cupcakes
01:22 - The secrets of a marketing campaign that brought in a return of 1100% consistently for several years
02:09 - Secret #1: The power of adding that personal touch
03:12 - Dropping off cupcakes
03:40 - Secret #2: Following up with your prospects
04:33 - Secret #3: Testing and scaling your approach: automating cupcake delivery
05:45 - How we won our first client
06:23 - The power of the soft approach over a hard sell

Links / Resources

Georgetown Cupcakes https://www.georgetowncupcake.com/

Transcript

Intro: Chances are your company's marketing efforts could be producing better results. We're here to help make your marketing smarter. Welcome to Marketing Cupcakes bringing you the latest in marketing analytics, data science techniques, integration challenges, guerrilla marketing techniques and more. Here are your hosts of Marketing Cupcakes, Dave and James Gilbert.

Dave: Hey guys. Welcome to the first ever episode of Marketing Cupcakes. I'm your host, Dave Gilbert and this is James Gilbert.

James: Hey guys.

Dave: So we thought today what we do to start things off is talk about the name behind Marketing Cupcakes. We know it's unique and no, we're not bakers. But it does have a really cool story behind it and we wanted to tell you guys about that story to give you guys ideas about your marketing campaigns.

Because it was a guerrilla marketing campaign or a growth hacking marketing campaign however you want to define it that brought in a return of about 1100%. And we continually did this for a couple of years and they worked really, really well. And so I want to talk about some of the methodologies behind this campaign and how it came to be and kind of our thought process behind the whole thing.

So starting off a few years back we were doing a lot of traditional marketing, a lot of digital marketing. We were doing Facebook ads and pay per click and email campaigns and going to trade shows and doing a lot of things in the B2B space that you typically would do. And we were looking at ways to grow our marketing and make it even more efficient and more effective.

And so the first thing that we did and I think this is an important point is we looked at who we were selling to and what things that they were really interested in doing. You know, what were the things that were most important to them and what were the ways that they liked to be approached by companies that they were interested in buying from? And in our space what we came to find out as we researched was that our buyers really liked that personal touch. They really liked the traditional approach of a handshake, of meeting you in person.

And so we thought okay, well, how can we adjust our marketing to fit that persona. And so we said okay, well, let's do a marketing technique, you know, kind of a technique that we would adapt it at Enduur which is just a scientific technique where you have a hypothesis and you test it and then you scale it and tweak it and you make sure that it's working. And once it's working then you scale up really big.

And so we did the same thing with Marketing Cupcakes. And so we had this theory that if we just visited some of our prospects that they would actually just meet with us in person. And so I took some time and I flew down to an area, you know, outside where headquarters to a different state and I didn't make any appointments but I just started driving to these companies' headquarters and I didn't want to come empty-handed of course so what I did is I just drove to some bakeries and grabbed some cupcakes and grab some cookies and I had about 30 places that I was visiting and I just started dropping off cupcakes and cookies with brochures and my business card. And you know, I didn't get into every door, I got into one or two while I was visiting them.

And so this is the second key point that I want to make and this is the human touch. So not only was it important to me to visit them or give them something that was different but it was also important to me to follow up. So in addition to just the people that I was visiting and talking to them in person I would say the next key piece here was following up with them after the visit was over. And that was so key because a lot of them weren't available to talk right then but they were so appreciative that I had stopped by and that we delivered something that they were willing to talk with us after. So I think we can't overlook that human touch point.

So if we keep going and fast forward a little bit in time so we kept doing this for a few months. We would fly to different places and deliver cupcakes. And this is the other point I want to make is about testing and scaling our approach. So this was working great, we were getting a great return but it was still time consuming and it took a lot of money to fly to these places and stay in hotels etc.

So what we did is we looked for a place that would actually deliver cupcakes for us through the mail. And we found a really cool bakery based out of DC that we'll link to the show notes but this bakery was actually able to freeze our cupcakes and we would mail them a brochure and business card in hand and they would mail these to our prospects. And it worked just as well as if we had visited them in person.

And so I think that the key point here is testing and scaling your approach and refining it to be more efficient overtime because as time goes on you find different ways of communicating and different ways of approaching your marketing that is different than what you originally set out to do.

And so we did that for a year or so. So we would mail cupcakes out to people and what's cool is the cupcakes weren't just random cupcakes but it actually tied back into our founding story of our first prospect that we ever closed as a client and then we actually took their logo and we made a cake and we celebrated winning that client. And so we told that story when we sent the cupcakes out to people.

And I just think it was so cool that they felt like - and this is a third point I wanted to make in this is that we were helping them, we were doing something different and we weren't hard selling them. We wouldn't call them and try to convince them that our product was the best thing for them. It was more of a "Hey, this is what we're doing. We really want to introduce ourselves. There's a really cool story behind us." And it was just a soft approach versus a hard sell. And I think that's why it was such an effective strategy. And I don't really think I have anything else. James, do you have anything?

James: Sometimes we get so caught up into all the marketing tactics and strategy that we forget that there are people behind it. We can automate, we can do all these things to analyze the data behind it, but when push comes to shove, it's always about the customer and it's always about that human touch come the end. So this is a great story, something that you can implement across all channels in marketing.

Dave: Great. Thank you. So guys I guess before we end it and we're going to keep this podcasts short. And when I say short what I mean is some are going to be short like today, like 7 to 8 minutes and some of them would be 10-20 minutes but we're going to try to stay in that time frame. So that it's something that you can listen to either on your drive to work or just while you're at your house but something that you can easily get to on a weekly basis which is how often we'll be releasing podcasts. Something that is not going to be another thing on your plate to do but just something that you can enjoy and actually get value out of.

And hopefully today's story was a good incentive to think differently about your campaigns and just remember that human touch. You know, no matter how much you automate your systems, your marketing automation, your paid advertising, whatever it is that you're doing to automate because we all want to automate as much as possible, just don't forget that human touch is so important and just putting someone in your workflows that reaches out to the customer or to your prospect, is just such a key element. And thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time on Marketing Cupcakes. Thanks guys.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marketing Cupcakes, an Enduur podcast with your hosts David and James Gilbert. For more great content and to stay up-to-date, visit http://marketingcupcakes.com/ If you enjoyed the show please subscribe and rate the podcast. We'll catch you next time on Marketing Cupcakes.