I recently came across an article discussing the reality of companies spending tremendous amounts of resources on personal communication and custom marketing/branding campaigns.

I believe this is very important in establishing good relationships with current clients and possible prospects. I believe we should also keep in mind not to take “custom marketing” too far that it just becomes another form of mass marketing to a large audience. This ironically becomes non-personal in irrelevant to your audience. Its sort of a catch twenty-two. I have certainly been enlightened by our friends at Brandswag about making sure to provide valuable to relevant content and to foster strong relationships with personal interaction and dialog. Certainly a lot of this can be done with social media, but I also feel other avenues such as printed collateral… i.e. hand written notes, personalized letters or eBlasts – or even a good old phone call; can help bring personal touches to our relationships in business.

We so many times, myself included, get caught up in “telling” our audience what we are doing and/or can do – instead of spending some time “giving” valuable information, resources or ideas to help make their business more successful. I believe these relationships will help encourage loyalty, commitment and just plain excitement in collaborating and networking together in similar areas of business and interest.

Here is an excerpt from the article I read on pubexec.com

Marketers poured more money into branded content in 2009 than ever before, according to a study released by the Custom Publishing Council (CPC). The annual study showed that spending on branded content totaled $1.8 million per company, with 51 percent of that total being spent on print publications, 27 percent on Internet media and 22 percent on categories such as video or audio, which were measured for the first time this year. 2009 spending was double that of 2008 and the highest amount since the CPC began conducting the survey in 2003. Read More...