How Your Fellow Marketers Do It Right

Winning sales & marketing best practices developed and deployed by installing security contractors across North America highlight the 17th Annual SAMMY Awards. Which companies took home the trophy hardware and what set them apart is detailed here. Takeaway tips and advice abound.

It does not take a leap of faith to suggest that a great many businesses — large and small, and certainly not excluding installing security contractors — struggle to market their brands efficiently and effectively. Note, for example, the results on page four for SSI’s latest Web poll, which asked readers to justly rate their firm’s marketing competence. The marks were grimmer than you might otherwise have predicted. Only 15% of respondents rate their company’s marketing as good or outstanding, while 67% say it’s nonexistent to severely lacking.

Help is on the way in the form of SSI’s Sales & Marketing (SAMMY) Awards. More than an occasion to honor sales and marketing excellence, an underlying intent of the program is to spotlight best practices so that other firms may learn and benefit from successful techniques used by industry peers.

Is your organization lacking promotional prowess and needing to improve its marketing collateral? Well, then read on! You could very well find helpful nuggets in the following mini profiles that highlight winners of the 10 marketing categories from this year’s 17th Annual SAMMY awards.

What comprises a cost-effective integrated marketing campaign? How can you craft a newsletter your customers will actually look forward to reading? Which online features do your customers want to see and use on your Web site? These answers and many more insights follow. We hope you’ll be motivated to incorporate some of these ideas and concepts into your own branding efforts and enter the SAMMY program next year to prove your marketing mettle.

SSI would like to thank program sponsors ADI, Fire-Lite, Honeywell, Tri-Ed/Northern Video Distribution, Visonic, ISC Expo, Electronic Security Association (ESA) and PSA Security Network for helping make the 2012 SAMMYs program possible.   


<p>SAMMY judges lauded Protection 1’s integrated marketing campaign entry for the use of a consistent brand image throughout its marketing collateral. The various  materials, such as this sales brochure for the education market, incorporate customized messaging for the targeted audience.</p>Protection 1
Best Overall Integrated Marketing Campaign
Sponsored by ADI

Hitting All the Right Marks With ‘Multiple Vehicles’

Creating an integrated marketing campaign often entails leveraging numerous online and traditional media, resources, and customer touch points to accomplish specific marketing objectives. Be it lead generation, building brand awareness or customer upselling, the intent of an integrated campaign is to create a whole that’s greater and more effective than the sum of its parts. It is in this regard, despite stiff competition from competing entries, Protection 1 earned the nod from SAMMY judges in this category.

Regardless of company size or budget, all security firms can create a successful integrated campaign to help achieve marketing objectives faster and more efficiently, says Jamie Haenggi, chief marketing & customer experience officer, for Romeoville, Ill.-based P1.

“One of the things I look for when determining what will work is if it ‘has legs,’ meaning, can it be used in multiple vehicles, can it have multiple messages tied to an overarching theme?” she says. “Then, use that campaign throughout all of your marketing vehicles — your Web site, E-mails, advertising, collateral.”

Haenggi explains a valuable tip she learned early on her career was that as a marketer you will get tired of your message long before your targeted prospects will. Hence, don’t be too quick to change it out if it’s working.

“While you see your message day in and day out, your prospects have not.  Marketing departments can often make this mistake of constantly changing their campaigns — which can be costly — before they have actually taken hold,” she says.

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