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Tag: Marketing

  • What Is The Worst Marketing Campaign Ever?

    What Is The Worst Marketing Campaign Ever?

    5/11/2012 | blur Group, Expertsourcing, Featured | Dorothy | No Comments

    We’re all guilty of the occasional bout of marketing Schadenfreude – but we’ve also probably had the odd campaign or two of our own when things didn’t go quite to plan. blur Experts talk about those well-known marketing moments when things don’t quite go to plan.

    David Poulos

    The worst marketing effort I can recall is a legendary story from quite a while ago, and was really a lack of research and local cultural awareness. When General Motors’ Chevrolet division launched a new mid-sized model called the Nova, after a superfast shooting star, hoping it would resonate with consumers seeking something fast and futuristic. The formulated print ads, mailers, TV commercials and worst of all, bill boards. The car sold very well in the US, but when they wanted to penetrate the Latin American market, no one in the marketing department did their homework. A quick rebadging would have saved the company many heartaches and a boatload of cash. They went ahead and launched the car as the Nova in Spanish speaking countries throughout Latin America, and after six weeks recognized that there might be a problem reflected in their dismal sales reports. It didn’t dawn on anyone at the company that NoVa in Spanish means “doesn’t go!”

    Huge billboards lining the roads in Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador promoting a car that doesn’t run! Finally someone pointed out their error, and they pulled the car and killed the campaign locally. It pays to do your homework.

    We had one fairly significant snafu, but it wasn’t a strategy error, it was a relatively simple technical glitch that cost an awful lot of money. We were launching a new financial publication, aimed at investors, and using a series of direct mail pieces, multi-piece packages mailed in the millions. As you might imagine, a large chunk of the addresses on the target list were linked to the financial industry, centered in Manhattan, NY. One of the largest buildings in New York City at the time was the World Trade Center, which leased office space to hundreds of financial firms, and was so large that there had to be an additional line of address added for a mail stop number, so that the building’s mailroom could deliver efficiently. Someone in the data processing department was tasked with printing off a set of labels for this list, which numbered over a million records. The technician had a tough time fitting the addresses using our standard font, labels and software due to the extra address line – so he took it upon himself to eliminate the third address line – the mail stop. In five days our lobby was filled with commercial laundry carts full of undelivered mail, nearly 50% undeliverable! The entire World Trade Center had denied the mailing as ‘inadequately addressed’ without the mail stop line, and the post office, having a standing order on the account to return ‘undeliverables’ for address correction, returned all the mail to us!  We made the technician open all 500,000 packages, salvage the guts, and re-run all the letters and new labels.

    The devil is in the details when executing marketing tactics, and it doesn’t take much to reduce your plans to rubble. The best marketers are detail people that stay on top of the small stuff to make the big stuff flourish!

    For hundreds of tips on how NOT to make marketing mistakes, pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Guide”

     

  • Is Your Branding Team Thinking Strategically?

    Is Your Branding Team Thinking Strategically?

    Graham Robertson provides us with this week’s opus – brilliantly done, a really good grasp on strategic brand thinking. Gotta love Graham. If so, spread the love . . . graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com
     

     

    Slide1

     

    In our marketing careers, we start off in a doing-role and get completely swamped in execution.   We think “if only I had a higher level job, I’d actually have time to think, rather than just do”.   The problem for many of us, is not only do we get good at the doing, we get so good that we can’t get past it and we never end getting to the real strategic thinking.  We just become a do-er at a higher level and drive everyone crazy beneath us.

    When I talk to many of the senior Brand Leaders, at the VP and Director level, I hear 3 common things:

    1. “I am too busy and I have no time for strategic thinking”
    2. “My team lacks the experience so I have to jump in resolve issues myself”
    3. “If I didn’t jump in, it just wouldn’t get done right”
    Are you really Strategic?

    Everyone out there claims to be a strategic thinker, but I would guess that really only half of us really are strategic.

    • Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions.  They map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out.  They reflect and plan before they act.   They are thinkers and planning who can see connections.   This is PLANNING!
    • Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions.   They get to answers quickly, and will get frustrated in the delays of thinking.   They think doing something is better  then doing nothing.   They opt for action over thinking.    They are impulsive and doers who see tasks.  They are frustrated by strategic thinkers.  This is EXECUTING!

    As a senior Brand Leader, it is easy to get so wrapped up in the details of the execution that you’re making the non-strategic decisions on behalf of the team.   You have just really become the “senior” Senior Brand Manager that really annoys your team.   Instead of providing the team with a vision, challenging on strategy or teaching the team, you’re telling them to make the flash bigger and change the sell sheet to purple.

    If you speak in a telling voice, you leave your team with one answer:  YES.   If you speak in an asking voice you leave your team with 3 answers:  YES, NO or let me dig in a bit more and find out.  

    Instead of telling people what to do, why not challenge yourself to sit back slightly and ask the really tough challenging questions.  You’ll know you’ve asked a really tough question when you don’t even know the answer.   There’s nothing wrong with stumping the team, because you’re even stumping yourself in the process.

    So What are the Tough Questions to Ask?  

    As your team might be at the beginning stage of digging in on analysis, here’s are 10 great questions to ask your team:

    1. How do we make money?                                                                                                                                                                                                               This focuses them on figuring out the pathway from the activities on the brand to the results in the market and the profitability on the balance sheets.   The most beloved brands use the consumer connection to create a source of power that they can use on various areas of the market and then use that power to drive the brand’s profitability.   Your team should be able to map this out and use it as a roadmap for the brand’s future.   If you’re not focused on power and profit, then you’re not strategic.  
    2. What is it that makes us different?  USP 2.0                                                                                           The best of brands are either better, different or cheaper.   Or not around for very long.   If you can’t answer this question, then how do you expect your consumer to be able to answer.   You’re likely just a me-too brand and once that’s discovered, you’ll be on a downward spiral.   
    3. Why are we here?  How did we get here?  Where could we be?                                     It’s great for getting to the vision, without writing the word “vision” up on the board and saying to everyone “ok go”.  That gets you no-where.   Pick a magical date of 5-10 years from now and say “if you got everything you wanted, what would the brand look like in 5 years?”  Push them hard on the where to, because that’s when the brand starts to transform itself.  
    4. What’s holding us back from being where we want to be?                                            Once you get the team focused on the vision of 5 to 10 years from now.  This allows you to start attacking your brand, to find the inhibitors that you can try to unleash or course correct.  
    5. Which would be easier:   getting our most loyal users to use more, moving up those who have already bought into the brand to start using regularly or getting a new user?                                                                                                                                                                          This is pushing them towards a strategic choice, whether to focus on base users or new users–penetration or usage frequency.  It also should start to force you to look at your brand funnel to see where you have strength and where you have gaps.   Every brand should be utilizing a brand funnel.   It’s almost negligent to not use one.   Slide1 
    6. That’s like working out at the gym and not knowing your blood pressure or cholesterol scores.  When you layer in What would make us more Money, you might start to see the ROI impact of the same decision.  
    7. What would our consumer say about our brand?                                                            This shifts the focus of the discussion from a myopic brand focus into thinking about the consumer first.   Everything you do should be start and end with the consumer in mind.  After all, if you figure out how to win over the consumer, you become more powerfully connected and can drive greater growth and profits through that power.
    8. For Strategy, what choices are on the table that helps you gain a foothold into the market but also helps to drive the long-term win?                                                                 A test for any great strategy is whether it has all 4 key elements.   FOCUS:  all your energy to a particular strategic point or purpose.  Match up your brand assets to pressure points you can break through, maximizing your limited resources—either financial resources or effort.   Pick a tight target market of those who can love you, and pick a unique position that you can stand behind and win.   You want that EARLY WIN, to kick-start of some momentum. Early Wins are about slicing off parts of the business or population where you can build further. Find that connection with your consumer—moving them along the love curve.  LEVERAGE everything to gain positional advantage or power that helps exert even greater pressure and gains the tipping point of the business that helps lead to something bigger.  Your brand finds a way to turn the consumer connectivity into a source of power the brand can leverage.Seeing beyond the early win, there has to be a GATEWAY point, which is the entrance or a means of access to something even bigger.   It could be getting to the masses, changing opinions or behaviours.  Return on Investment or Effort, where you can translate all the power you’ve earned into profits and brand value.
    9. For any choice related to brand positioning and go-to-market, whether it’s target market, main message, media choices or activities, force their hand by asking a few questions to ask:  1) which one gets us on our way to vision faster?    2) which one helps us grow faster  3) which one makes us more money?                                                                                                                                       Always push your team to focus by making them use the word “or” instead of “and”. If you think you are a strategic decision maker, then whenever you choose both, you’ve failed.   When you go into a casino, and put one chip on each of the 38 choices on the roulette wheel, it might be fun, but you’ll never win.    By targeting everyone then you’re not making the choice, you’re just depleting your resources.   And you run the risk that no consumer ever says “wow, that brand is really speaking to me.”
    10. When seeing new creative execution of anything, ask “DO YOU LOVE IT?” and then watch their eyes.  Do you think our costumer will love it?                                                                                                                                                                                                         Is this connected to personal pride or are they just passing the buck filling in forms.  not okGetting something to market, big or small takes a herculean effort to overcome obstacles.   I want to know on day 1, will they fight for it?   A great idea that falls on the vine is worth less than an OK idea executed with passion.  If we don’t love the work we do, then how do we expect the consumer to love the brand?    OK is the enemy of greatness.  
    11. Why do you want to spend this money?                                                                                                                                             If you are about to spend millions of dollars, I want to hear the reason why you think it’s crucial, why it will pay back even greater than the resources we put forward.   Understanding and aligning to one key objective allows everyone to focus on the outcome.   

    And finally, the most important question of all:   

    What do your instincts think we should do?    

    And then listen.  You might be surprised by the good thinking on your team and you might be surprised that their answer is better than the one that is in your head.  

    This might be most obvious of questions, but how many times per week do you ask this?   Imagine the responses you might get from that.  Imagine how motivated your team would be.  As a leader, I want you to start exhibiting more patience.  You have to learn the art of questioning that sets up the listening.  If you learn this skill you’ll start to realize that you can still control the direction of the brand through questions, even more than through direction.  On the plus side, you’ll have a fully engaged, motivated team that’s ready to deliver.

    As a Brand Leader at the executive level, you should walk into every meeting telling yourself “I know less about this than anyone in the room” and that puts you in the most powerful position to ask the right strategic questions and listen for the right strategic answers.

     About Graham Robertson: I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands.  My background includes 20 years of CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke. The reason why I started Beloved Brands Inc. is to help brands realize their full potential value by generating more love for the brand.   I only do two things:  1) Make Brands Better or 2) Make Brand Leaders Better.

    If you found this valuable, there’s more information like this available in one neat volume of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” – pick up your copy today!

  • Empowered Customers: A Direct Result of Technology Adoption?

    Empowered Customers: A Direct Result of Technology Adoption?

    This was so good I couldn’t resist re-posting it, courtesy of Sourcelink

    Rich Brown, Oct 02, 2012

    Enlightened marketers are now referencing the “Age of The Customer”, which is defined by consumers holding all the advantages as they have real-time information about pricing, product features and competitors.  The “Age of The Customer” has promoted the everyday consumer to the role of an empowered customer where not only consumer shopping behavior has changed, but also the way we market to these consumers.  Empowerment, as a direct result of technology adoption, has given a single individual, your customer, the power to choose how, when, and what they desire in terms of marketing.

    • How – In which channels does the empowered customer choose to be reached? Email, Social Media, Telephone, Direct Mail, or all of the above?
    • When – How often does the empowered customer choose to be reached specifically related to the cadence and frequency of marketing messages?  One email per day vs. one per week or one SMS text message per day vs. one per week?
    • What – What type of marketing content does the empowered customer choose to receive? Plain text vs. HTML emails, a printed catalog vs. a dynamic online catalog, printed coupons vs. electronic coupons vs. emailed coupons vs. location-based coupons?

    While customers have always had choices, it’s never been a more powerful time for the average consumer.  The Internet has been around for many years now and personal computers have long been a common household staple for most families.  Avenues for customer empowerment have existed for decades since the first online bulletin boards and online chat started to take a grip on our modern computing society.  What has specifically evolved us into to the “Age of The Customer” is hands down widespread technology adoption.  Without the proliferation of both the Internet and advanced hand-held, always-connected, technology devices such as smartphones and tablets into the hands of nearly every consumer, there would never have been this massive shift of empowerment toward the consumer.

    Today we take it for granted that we’re able to sit in front of a computer or better yet, pick up our latest and greatest smartphone or tablet and quickly do just about anything we need.  All in the palm of our hands, the empowered consumer can search for a specific product, find retailers who carry that product, research those retailers and their reputation, conduct a price comparison, read product reviews from other consumers and ask specific questions about that product, and finally buy that product. Customers are no longer blinded by false or improper product claims and misleading marketing because they have a global community in which to converse. They can research and determine if a company is not only reputable but also if their product claims are true and if they do right by their customers in the event of a problem.

    Additionally, as a direct result of technology adoption, a single consumer, with the power of a mobile device paired with the Internet and the long reach of various social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube or Google+ for example, now has the ability to create a collective opinion or voice, which rivals even the reach and voice of most commercial organizations and governments.

    Customers are indeed empowered and learning to use this power to not only buy exactly what they want, but to force companies, who want their business, to become “customer obsessed” and create an engagement strategy to help build relevant, timely and valuable customer interactions. Continued technology adoption will continue to make the empowered customer the new ‘norm’ and drive marketers to find new and innovative ways of customer interaction.

    If you found this insightful or helpful, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog today! Don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Effective Research Critical To Assess Member Perceptions, Boost Enrollment

    Effective Research Critical To Assess Member Perceptions, Boost Enrollment

    There are many areas of common interest among member-based organizations, especially now, but the largest and longest running area of concern is certainly finding and keeping members for the long term. Its the bread and butter, the engine of any organization, forming the reason for being, driving strategic direction, drawing stable revenue, and creating the nucleus of the organization that gives it its ideological center. But how do you present that value proposition to both new and existing members in a way that keeps them engaged and involved, year after year?

    It is a question that is raised constantly in roundtable discussions among non-profit executives, and one we see in our practice perennially, as new budgets are set, statistics from the prior year are examined and goals are derived. Unfortunately, there is no single easy answer, as each organization has its own unique value proposition, its own character based on the membership in aggregate, and each should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Fortunately, there are some common areas that can be reviewed and measured, and some relatively easy fixes that can be put in place at minimal cost that will yield results both short and long term.

    The most obvious area in which to start your retention effort is an investigation into what you really know about your members. Almost to a man, if you interview senior executives at a non-profit, they will tell you know they “know” their members well, know what they want and what they need, what will attract them to the organization. Yet if you delve a little deeper, ask when they last surveyed their members about the organization itself, about how their individual lives and businesses have changed, how their needs have shifted, how they’d like to receive information, you’ll almost invariably find that the executives view and the reality do not connect completely. There’s general agreement, surely, for any good Executive Director knows the basics of their members and their respective businesses. However, the speed with which things change, not only in the members’ lives and business circumstances, but in the media and communications arena, regarding content delivery and outreach methods, make it necessary to accelerate your rate of member surveys and research by nearly double the typical rate, in order to stay current. Flexibility and adaptation are the keys to survival, and to make the right moves, you have to have good recent data.

    Once you’ve decided to craft an updated survey, creating the most revealing questions, limiting them in number and complexity to reduce abandonment and boost response, and deciding the most reasonable and appropriate delivery method are some issues that must be dealt with. There is a balance that must be struck between gathering a comprehensive data set, and gathering enough responses to make the resulting data statistically significant. Too few questions and too little data and its a wasted effort. Too long a survey to get the most data yields too few responses and the reliability of the data suffers.

    Most surveys on a single issue or two are kept to ten questions to boost response. More indepth total member surveys can be double or triple that, but at that length, delivery methods must be considered, as does the question of incentives. A short survey can be delivered in an e-mail, posted on a website, or set up via an independent web-based services, like Zoomerang. Longer, multi page surveys don’t pull as well using online methods, and the incentives typically delivered through online surveys, including coupons and links to other sites etc, are typically not powerful enough to drive the response levels you’ll need to make good decisions. The abandonment rate is too high on a long online survey, and you might burn a bridge to your members or customers if you insist on delivering such a document in this manner. More lengthy surveys are often best delivered by old-fashioned snail mail, and include a more valuable incentive to spur response.

    Your list of recipients is also important. It may seem obvious that you include a large chunk of your current members on such a survey, to get a sufficient number of responses, but there are other constituents that should also receive a survey, and in some cases the questions should be tailored to their status. Expired members who didn’t renew, those in arrears, a sampling of prospects, those with no participation in a committee, project or who haven’t  purchased anything from the organization in over two years, each could have a slightly different coded survey, one that collects information about the value to the organization, their current business situation, and their needs and preferences.

    Once these issues are worked out, the survey delivered and the data collected, the results should be analyzed in a number of different ways. With no baseline data to work from if this is the first comprehensive survey in more than two years, this data constitutes the best information you have, but won’t be useful in spotting trends or sensing shifts in perception or preferences. It can still be used to craft strategy and policy, and to present enticing value to current and future members.

    One of the more important questions is one regarding communications preferences. If you are trying to communicate value to your members, you have to have a good idea how they’d like to receive that information. This question will also give you a secondary reading on the technology adoption curve location of your members. If a majority of members would prefer e-mail or other web-based vehicles, your members are moving toward the center of the electronic media adoption curve, and is a good indication that they will continue to develop at a pace commensurate with the national average. This metric may correlate well to the average age of your member. Older members are typically behind the curve, both due to lack comfort and educational opportunity, and to the expense associated with high-speed internet access.

    Any way you conduct the research, the best policy is to BELIEVE THE DATA. If you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of polling your members and associated constituents as to their needs and preferences, you should at least have faith in the data. If the data goes against your “gut” feeling about members, or trends away from the direction you suspected through anecdotal evidence, it may have been too long since these impressions were formed.

    Now that you have some baseline data, you can begin to formulate a strategy to address the needs your membership has expressed, and how to effectively market your approach to meeting those needs as a value statement that will resonate with members and prospects alike.

    For more like this, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

  • E-Mail Drives Sales – Duh! HBR Tells The RIGHT Story of E-mail Marketing

    E-Mail Drives Sales – Duh! HBR Tells The RIGHT Story of E-mail Marketing

    Thought you’d find this of interest, so I reposted it in it’s entirety – sums up what I’ve been saying for several years!

    by Arthur Middleton Hughes  |   9:00 AM August 21, 2012

    In a business world obsessed with gaining more customer intelligence, you would think that email marketing would get more respect. But just look at media spending. According to eMarketer, this year U.S. companies are spending about $64 billion per year on TV, $34 billion on print ads, and $39 billion on Internet advertising. And how much are they are spending on email? For that, we have Forrester data: only about $1.5 billion.

    Of course, compared to other media, email messages are dirt cheap to send. With TV you are spending on ad agencies, creative studios, and cable channels. With print ads, you are helping to keep newspapers and magazines alive. Direct mail costs more than $600 per thousand pieces. With email, there are almost no costs at all. But its low cost only makes the argument stronger that email marketing is the most cost-effective advertising method available today.

    Certainly email beats the competition from a measurability standpoint. With TV you do not know who is watching your ads. Ditto with print. Even with direct mail, you cannot be sure that your mail has been delivered, or that anyone reads it when it gets there. With email, you know within 24 hours exactly which messages have been opened, by whom, what links the openers clicked on, and what part of your message was working.

    A properly structured email message provides this benefit to the marketer because it provides benefits to consumers. A TV, print, or direct mail ad is what it is. On email the ad is much more. Because of electronic links, those who open your emails can do their own research: they can explore and see any of the thousands of products that you sell. They can see the colors and sizes. They can, and they do, read ratings and reviews. They can put products in their shopping carts and buy them.

    “Fine,” say the TV folks, “but shopping cart sales through emails are seldom more than 5% of total sales. Nothing to write home about.”

    What these detractors seem to willfully ignore is that emails create impressions that lead to sales through other routes. Some of these routes can be tracked. The recipient can open it or delete it. If she opens it, she can click on it, perhaps buy something or print out a coupon and take it to a store. Finally, if she puts things in her cart but does not buy, you can send her an abandoned shopping cart email that usually yields 29% of lost sales.

    But note that, in many cases, she also does things that are hard to track. She can get in her car and drive to a mall to buy the product. She can pick up her phone and order it. She may be prompted to do research on Google for better prices of similar products, or discuss the offer with her spouse or a friend, leading to a possible purchase later. These are all the behaviors that provide the rationale for TV or print advertising. My point is that emails prompt the same kinds of behaviors. Thus, there is an off-email multiplier. For every purchase in an email shopping cart, we can fairly assume that there are some number of other non-tracked profitable purchases that occur because of the arrival of the email — a number that quantifies all the non-tracked behaviors that email recipients engage in.

    If you are going to make a case for investing more heavily in email marketing, you have to determine this off-email multiplier to account for all the sales your emails can be expected to generate. How can that be done? A retailer I’ve worked with which has 900 stores and is very active with email campaigns recently did a great study. It took a group of 105,000 customers in its loyalty club database, divided them into three groups of 35,000, and marketed to the three groups differently, as shown in the chart below (click to see a larger version). Thanks to the loyalty program, it was able to see all subsequent purchases by these customers.

    Direct mail has a higher response rate than email. But note that direct mail costs about 100 times as much. Meanwhile, the data collected by the retailer allowed it to calculate its off-email multiplier (a simple matter of dividing the percentage of online sales by the percentage of in-store sales generated by email-only marketing). It is 3.76. In other words, for every email shopping cart sale, this retailer gets 3.76 other, typically non-tracked sales due to the email.

    What might your off-email multiplier be? Zero is of course possible, but studies to date suggest that a number between two and three is typical.

    Once you factor in your off-email multiplier, it’s a very safe bet that email will beat all your other marketing methods in terms of return on investment. As email marketing gains more respect, marketing intelligence will meet customer intelligence. Don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” to read more about e-mail Marketing effectiveness.

  • Integration Is Key To Marketing Campaign Effectiveness

    Integration Is Key To Marketing Campaign Effectiveness

    The phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is never more appropriate than as part of a discussion of integrated marketing campaigns. No matter how you slice it, by media type, by audience, by offer type or any other way, multiple approaches working together with common offers, common brand and common goal will be much more effective than any of those single efforts, and even more than all of them working independently. At the risk of using an overused term, there is “synergy” to be gained by driving all efforts under the same flag.

    Integration offers several key benefits, which as marketers we can scarcely afford to ignore.

    1. Cost-effectiveness. If a greater return (be it registrations, hits, impressions, memberships, sales, etc.) is gained by fewer outgoing exposures (mail pieces, ads, radio spots, e-mails, phone calls) because they work together and support each other, then the results have been obtained for less expense. More for less is the goal, and this hits it squarely.

    2. Breadth of Coverage. If point one is true (and we stipulate that it is) then the corollary is that for the same cost, you can reach out to even broader audience. This spreads the brand and the offer further, which can be beneficial to the next effort beyond this initial one, preconditioning the new audience to respond the next time they are touched.

    3. Brand Strength. Based on point two, if you are reaching more people with an integrated campaign, the pieces supporting each other, the brand impression is strengthened with each hit – overlap is more likely, and the impression is stronger with each hit as a result – there’s no disconnect between impressions depending upon the piece to which the audience is exposed.

     

    Some of the strength of campaign integration comes down to brand control. Harley Davidson has one of the strongest brands on earth, and its customers and fans are among the most loyal purchasers around. One reason for that effect is that the brand itself is so highly protected. All licensing is strictly enforced, and that HD moniker in all its various forms can ONLY appear on products that fit the brand profile. That kind of control creates a strong continuity. That brand on any product means that you can expect a certain level of quality, a certain outward attitude, a certain value and an appeal that competing products don’t have. An integrated campaign uses that same power of continuity and of meeting expectation as part of its effectiveness.

    Another big strength of integrating a campaign is to drive more response from the fringes of the target at no additional cost. If each segment of a campaign is independent, some slivers of the audience may slip through the resulting cracks in coverage between segments. If one medium fails to reach and motivate a member of the target population, if another does hit at a later time, the recognition level will be lower because the look, feel, fit, offer or appearance are not the same. No gain for that second piece. On the other hand if that first effort hits but fails to motivate, when the second, but integrated hit comes along, it has higher chance of being effective and motivating a usable response, because the recognition level is higher.

     

    It’s All About Levels

    Integration can be achieved on a number of levels. Ideally, a tight effective campaign should be tied together on all of them to maximize return on investment.

     

    Level 1 – Appearance

    All pieces in all mediums (except radio) should have a similar look and feel to them, including type face, imagery, color palette, theme, copy voice, and should offer the same product at the same terms, should share contact information (same phone number, e-mail address, website address etc.) for response, and include the same expression of the product and company logotype. First glance continuity will go along way toward boosting that recognition and beefing up response numbers.

     

    Level 2 – Functionality

    Each piece should not only function on its own to drive response, but cross-promotes to drive response from the other approaches as well. Fast food advertising is often good at this technique. You see the spot on television, which drives you to the website for more details, which drives you to the restaurant to use the coupon from the web, which is emailed after a registration process. These three media are functionally tied together in this campaign. The TV spot, the website, the e-mail and the point of purchase materials all have the same offer, the same appearance and you are engaged by all 4 to drive a purchase. The added bonus is that along the way you’re also exposed to a full range of other related products, thus priming the pump for an extended purchasing relationship.

     

    Level 3 – Emotionality

    This is the toughest to achieve, but if the campaign is truly integrated it becomes extremely effective. Emotionality describes the emotion, the feeling elicited by the campaign. Each piece, each media contact, each touch-point with the customer should elicit that same emotional response. And at its peak, not only should the same emotion be activated, but the customer should feel it at the same level of intensity as the initial contact.

    Say for example you receive a direct mail piece from a company selling fitness equipment. You’re interested in losing weight and getting fit. The next day you see a TV spot for the same piece of equipment with even more information and a fuller set of benefits, shown to you in living color, and you’re pumped up all over again. That afternoon on the radio driving to the grocery store you hear a radio spot for that equipment. When you get excited, and when you get to the organic foods aisle of the grocery, you see a dispenser with coupons for $10 off organic foods for owners of that equipment, just by sending in the coupon or going online and registering with your equipment’s serial number. You’ve gotten that same level of excitement in all five cases, and it’s driven you to seek out the equipment and make the change in your life, for purely emotional reasons – there are probably lots of different pieces of equipment that would provide the exercise you need, but that one got you excited in a repeated, intensive way at a very deep emotional level, and kept up that intensity throughout all the different media and offer sets. That’s a truly effective integrated campaign, and it provides maximum return for your marketing dollar.

    All three levels offer advantages over the traditional, less coordinated campaign. The higher a level of engagement you can achieve, the higher the level of effectiveness you’re going to experience. There is a direct correlation between the degree of integration you can achieve compared to response levels among the target audience.

    Level I offers significant gains over any single medium alone, and is the most cost effective, in terms of the number of different media used and the level of effort required compared to cost to execute.

    Level II requires a bit more in terms of resources, but can provide a strong boost in response, especially for existing programs that have some brand awareness among the target audience but that need some refreshing to re-engage the audience.

    Level III requires a very strong effort to coordinate all the various elements, to time them to launch together, and requires more media exposure initially to drive traffic toward the goal, but the ultimate response level can be incredibly high. Double-digit responses from the selected target are not unusual, and on higher-ticket offers that can represent significant revenue.

    Of course, all of this coordination and integration cannot happen without the

    technological infrastructure in place to support it. The databases involved in handing off the leads from one medium to another, the online backbone and processing software that allows prospects to see exactly what they are supposed to see when visiting the target site, to be able to take advantage of offers referred by other medium, to be able to print custom coupons with matching response codes and list numbers, and all the rest of the necessary back end that provides the intelligence for all the activity behind the scenes cannot be overlooked.

    Overall, integration is a valuable key to attaining pushdown marketing response levels that are unrivaled by singular media levels. The extra expense and effort at the outset provides significant payback in the long-term, and sets the stage to expand your efforts to new products, new approaches and the creation of an extremely loyal purchasing audience for a long time to come.

    If you found these insights valuable and helpful, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog today! Don’t forget to pic up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Do’s and Don’ts for Your Trade Show

    Do’s and Don’ts for Your Trade Show

    Revisited due to popular demand – FOX news on Tradeshows, with some input from me . . .

    By Cindy Vanegas Published April 23, 2012 FOXBusiness

    Many business owners who eagerly pay big bucks to exhibit at industry trade shows often end up disappointed when it comes down to calculating the return on investment. Small business owners can minimize their investment or maximize their exposure through some simple marketing and partnership techniques that will help them get the most bang for their buck.

    Position Position Position: On the trade show floor, booth placement is king. “Know where the prime spots for booths are when you make selections,” advised Eddie Lange, vice president of Exhibit Experts. Lange advised business owners to look for the direction of the traffic flow, the location of the main doors and the area where there will be food and drinks. He also warned entrepreneurs: avoid “dead-end aisles and large columns where people will have to go out of their way to find you.”

    Partner-Up: If a business owner can’t afford a whole booth, try sharing. Some trade show organizers allow businesses to split space, allowing entrepreneurs to derive the benefits without incurring all of the costs. A careful read through of the contract will alert entrepreneurs to ‘subletting’ restrictions. Dave Poulos, founder of marketing company Granite Partners and former marketing director at a trade show production company, recommended business owners look for exhibitors whose product is complementary to theirs. “For example, a printer manufacturer could partner with a paper manufacturer. For every printer sold, the paper manufacturer could throw in some paper, and both business owners could share booth space and leads,” said Poulos.

    Establish an Expertise: Often times, trade shows not only offer entrepreneurs booth space to promote their wares, but they also provide on-site educational opportunities. Business owners who develop a good relationship with show and seminar organizers should consider suggesting topics where they can serve as speakers and promote their expertise. This year Green Festival, showing in NYC, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles, invited people to apply to speak at the events by submitting a topic proposal.

    SPONSOR SOMETHING: From a cocktail hour to chair massages or a popcorn station, giving attendees a treat for free is a sure fire way for business owners to ensure they will be remembered. Some trade shows restrict sponsorships, offering them only to exhibitors. Others are more flexible, especially if it is coming down to show time and they are strapped for cash. Poulos of Granite Partners recommended entrepreneurs work with vendors and trade show organizer to see where sponsorship opportunities lie, since often these deals can be worked out individually.

    Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2012/04/23/do-and-donts-for-your-trade-show/#ixzz1t4vzblSL

  • Just Like Rodney, Marketers Get No Respect . . .

    Just Like Rodney, Marketers Get No Respect . . .

    I’ve been reading and absorbing a lot of chatter about the level of respect marketing professionals get (or don’t get) in companies across the nation. There is some debate as to how to justify and validate the need for such positions as CMO, Marketing Director and Marketing Manager – debates that tend to ignore the elephant in the room. The bottom line in most of these discussions is that if nothing is bought or sold, then there really is no “business”, and that without the skill of folks internally in a marketing capacity, regardless of title, no one would be aware that the potential for commerce with your business exists, and therefore no transactions could occur. So based on that logic, without marketing, there is no business. Yet, there is an ongoing debate as to why such people are needed, and what their value to the organization might be.

    Why is this?

    Is it because the rank and file are jealous that the marketing people seem to have all the fun – planning and attending big events, creating collateral, going on photo shoots, speaking with media editors and television stations, creating commercials, and the like?

    Is it because other employees think they could do the marketers job, it doesn’t look too hard and they have fun, so why can’t I contribute to that?

    Is it because with so many marketers out there, there must be a reason everybody picks that, it must be easy?

    Is it because they have a larger budget to work with, and sometimes a larger staff over which to divide the work?

    I’ve heard all of these postulated in one form or another, and many others as well. I’ve sat in meetings where senior executives questioned the efficacy of the entire marketing department’s efforts in the face of 10-20% business growth directly tied to specific campaigns! When the economy slows, such complaints often rise in volume and stridency. Apparently a rising tide floats all boats, but when the waters recede, the marketers that made the boat and kept it afloat are no longer effective . . .

    As marketers, it is our job to facilitate contact and commerce from without the company by working from within the company. There needs to be a belief that an investment in marketing activity drives commerce far in excess of it’s cost, and that beyond that, criticism of the mechanisms employed and the means brought to bear are so much sturm and drang from naysayers. If a culture of marketing is formed and supported at the top of the organization, and communication of those efforts within the organization is fast, accurate and appropriate, that culture will flourish and all members of the company will prosper.

    So, how do we spread the word of such simplicity, and earn the respect we deserve as facilitators of transactional commerce?

    1) Do the job well, and get results that can be measured and proven.

    2) Stop worrying about who gets credit, or blame, and focus on results.

    3) Closely tie effort to results, and promote those results in reasonable, detached fashion – leave the ego out, and just state the facts without the superlatives.

    4) Drive the volume of effort upward – not all ideas are good ones, and not all executions are perfect. But the more you attempt, the more likely one will be a success.

    5) Innovate new ways of thinking and doing that drive success. Open your mind to input from unusual quarters, and give it it’s due diligence. You never know where the next great idea will come from.

    6) Show that the work you perform every day has value to the entire company, that everybody wins when marketing is effective.

    When sales slow down and the economy contracts, many companies go into “emergency” mode, cutting costs, laying off workers, creating an environment of fear and uncertainty, and delaying or outright removing opportunities for innovation – exactly the wrong reaction in a crisis. Many companies have been operating this way since mid-2008, and after six years the fear has turned to something else, killing creativity, halting innovation, and limiting possibilities for success.

    This presents an excellent opportunity for the marketing department to shine! Teach the others how to do more with less – we do it every day! Show others how to think and work your way out of a problem – we do it hourly! Tell others how to prime your thinking to view situations rationally with an eye toward exploitable opportunity – we do that constantly!

    Give away the benefits of your talents as a marketer, and the respect you deserve will return to you ten-fold – that’s a heck of an ROI in anyone’s book.

  • E-Mail: B-to-B Marketing’s Secret Weapon

    E-Mail: B-to-B Marketing’s Secret Weapon

    We use e-mail for a number of purposes, both for our own marketing efforts and on behalf of clients or as part of their plans for growth and retention. I’ve always thought it was a very flexible, very effective medium when used properly. Unfortunately, some among the marketing community have overused, abused and hijacked this wondrously inexpensive way of reaching out to customers, prospects and others in a personal, accountable way, and given it a bad rap, not to mention fatiguing the general public somewhat, and cutting open rates.

    A good copywriter, with a good list and reasonable data skills can make tremendous in-roads using e-mail in several ways.

    Outreach

    Creating a small community of purchasers or converting good warm leads into sales is what makes e-mail shine. It’s personal, it’s flexible, it can carry text, graphics, imagery, color palette, brand, everything you need to reach out to your audience, qualify the top responders, and keep providing them reasons to buy. It’s also fast, and fairly innocuous – if you receive one and it’s not for you, simply delete it – no waste, no environmental impact, no anger necessary. It’s also fast! You can get an e-mail campaign planned out, written, tested, set up, and sent out in a matter of a few hours at fastest, maybe a day or two if you have more elements to put together.

    Customer Relationship Building

    Now that you’ve created your own little “community” of customers, extending, building and broadening that relationship is a task that e-mail does very well, and most of it can be automated. Small shops, service-sellers and sole proprietors can keep in touch, spread the good word and keep customers up to date on changes, new offerings, schedule changes and availability changes, discounts, and a host of other semi-transactional communications with customers, keeping your brand top-of-mind, upselling, cross-selling, incentivising referrals and keeping your relationship alive and active, which directly contributes to the top-line, and moves the bottom line in a positive direction. What’s not to like? These types of activities used to take hundreds of hours a year, and the scope and frequency was limited. Now, not only can these messages be automated to be triggered in response to a contact, a purchase, a query, whatever, but they can also be tracked, quantified, monitored, measured, and the data can be sliced and diced any number of ways, letting you constantly test, tighten and improve your outreach and customer contact far above and beyond what used to be possible.

     

    Prospecting

    For those folks who’ve never heard of you, imagine their surprise when they hear from you not once, not twice, but weekly for a couple of months, each time refining and improving the relevance of the message until curiosity gets the better of them and they open and read your mail – score! Cost? No more than a phone call with a bad script, and more effective then you can imagine. According to Marketing Sherpa, 85% of CEOs have an expectation that e-mail will increase lead conversion/sales revenue, when only 65% of them put those goals as a high priority. In nearly every category, and there were 10 in total, e-mail beat expectation of CEO’s in terms of meeting business goals for which it was used. I can’t think of any other medium that can boast that kind of success rate and still stay under the radar!

    Used thoughtfully, correctly, and politely, e-mail can carry the day for marketers, both b-to-b and consumer, at a lower cost per customer acquisition than almost anything else other than social media, and is more accountable and more directed that even the most powerful platform out there. Let’s hope the mis-users have moved on to something else and e-mail can return to business of business as we move forward in the new economy. Now, if we could just find a better launch pad than Outlook . . .

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