Two proven strategies to generate leads from your Web site.

SurfControl is a global provider of corporate security software. The marketing goal they presented was to increase both awareness and sales of one of their premiere products, an Internet filtering software.

The Creative Solution:

While SurfControl was focused on the constraints of their budget, Craig Huey showed them how they could get the same or even better sales than their competitors without increasing budget.

Unable to equal that level of spending, SurfControl must get a higher response per dollar spent. That means watching for unique opportunities that the larger companies fail to see and creating strategies that the others don’t think of.

Healthcare providers become compliant with stricter standards of patient privacy protection. SurfControl had joined forces with an expert in this area to produce a report on how to achieve e-mail compliance. Craig saw this as a brilliant opportunity to become the number one e-mail filter provider to the huge healthcare market.

With only a limited marketing budget, the problem was in how to maximize exposure and capture leads. Craig recommended a cost-effective strategy he had used successfully before: use the Internet to generate leads, and use direct mail to drive prospects to the Web site.

The campaign included one postcard driving prospects to a Special Report on the SurfControl Web site. A second postcard highlighted a webcast.

The first postcard, promoting the Special Report, detailed the important information that respondents would receive in the Report. Again, easy-to-read bullet points told readers why they should read the Report, and that they could download it for free by logging on to a special Web address.

Craig suggested bypassing the MIS and IT managers and going directly to the purchase influencers and ultimate decision makers. Strategically, he realized, that would require both education and finesse.

Though these corporate directors were the decision makers, they did not necessarily know the potential problems their own companies were facing in internet security.

The Results:

A magalog. This direct mail strategy is a tool that is used successfully to get to a more sophisticated target audience that often has one or more mail screeners filtering out “junk” mail.

   By replicating the importance and slickness of a magazine, the magalog is much more likely to make it to its ultimate target audience — and to get read!