Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

WSJ: Ad Cuts Can Cause More Pain Than Gain

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

In an August 25th Wall Street Journal online article Renee Schultes reminds readers that “cutting advertising and promotion spending to protect margins is a natural reaction in tough times. But consumer-staples groups should think twice: Regaining sales momentum can take many years to correct” and that “sales momentum is costly to rebuild.”

Schultes also refers to “Deutsche Bank’s analysis of 30 large U.S. and European groups over 15 years” and how it “suggests consumer-staples companies that increase advertising spending deliver sales growth 30% faster than peers.”

She concludes noting that “in a weak consumer environment, where the fight for market share will be intense, companies should resist the temptation of going for the easy option of sharp cuts to advertising budgets.”

Read the entire article here.

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Your Customers: “I Didn’t Know You Did That!”

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Have any of your customers ever seemed surprised to hear that you offer a certain service? After their mouths fall open a little bit they may ask “When did you start doing that?” 

“1978,” you reply.  

Because we’re so involved in our own businesses on a daily basis, it’s easy to assume that our customers – especially our best customers – know all about everything we do and sell too. But, of course, that’s not the case.

Your customers are living in their own worlds, not yours.  So, even if they’ve been buying from you since you first opened for business, you still need to:

  1. Inform them in meaningful ways about your new products and services.
  2. Remind them about the “classics” – all the things you’ve been doing for years. Those services may have slipped their minds over time; or maybe they never had a need for them until now!

On Hold Marketing is an excellent tool for keeping valuable callers “in the loop” and encouraging them to ask questions about the other products and services you offer.  (Read how promoting their new capabilites paid off for a printing company.) 

Here’s another take on the subject. It’s from the July 21, 2010 e-newsletter by author / marketer Marcia Yudkin.

Yesterday at the copy shop I’ve patronized for seven years, I read a poster about the shop’s publishing program.

I read it again, more carefully.

“Adam, you’re printing books now?” I called to the man who was binding manuals for me.  “In house?”

“Since last year.  On that.”  He pointed to a machine behind him.

“Would you quote me on a book order?” 

“Sure thing.”

Driving home, I marveled at how hard it had been for me to make the connections needed to realize they could get the business I was about to give to a company in Tennessee.

I knew the local shop was publishing books.  I had paged through some on previous visits.  It never occurred to me that they would own the expensive machinery needed for digital book printing.  Their poster talked about publishing, not printing.

I practically had to be hit on the head to get it.

They should have told me – explicitly – either personally (they know I’m an author) or through a newsletter (they don’t have one). 

Don’t let loyal customers wander around oblivious to your capabilities!

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Marketing During Oil Spills

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

When the economy took a dive a few years back we used blog posts such as this one and this one to encourage our readers to stick with their marketing efforts.

We believe that continuing to actively reach out to your audience during difficult economic times makes sense for maintaining top-of-mind awareness and brand consistency. It can also leave companies positioned well once the tough times subside. In fact, a struggling economy can present quite an opportunity for you as a marketer, allowing you to take advantage of lower media costs and stand out from the others in your category who aren’t actively marketing.

Now, BP and the oil industry in general are facing serious P.R. problems as a result of the oil leak in the Gulf. But Shell Oil isn’t hiding, waiting for it all to blow over. Shell has recognized that this situation is an opportunity to differentiate itself from the rest of its industry. Read about their new marketing campaign here.

The point is simply this: As marketers we can’t cut and run whenever the odds are against us or when immediate rewards aren’t apparent. It’s important to learn to see the possibilities in even the worst situations because the next economic dip or your industry’s “oil spill” might be just around the corner.

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Fun In-Store Video Grabs Attention

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

We’ve been using humor to draw customer eyeballs to in-store video screens at HVAC Supply in Denver. (We call the service LobbyVision.)

This particular video segment mimics a live report from the imaginary KHVC-TV to promote our client’s monthly special.

Call us at 866/473-9000 if you’d like to talk about a LobbyVision program. It’s a great marketing tool for retail applications, medical offices, airports, convention centers, and any environment where your prospects and customers gather.

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To-Do or Not To-Do

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

I love to-do lists.  They help me get things done efficiently, and I derive great satisfaction from crossing off those tasks.

Sometimes though, I get done only what I’ve written down to do. This isn’t a problem when it comes to household chores, but professionally, if I’m just getting done what needs to get done, I’m not thinking about what I could do above and beyond to make my client’s experience even more special.

Then I see an example of a company going out of its way to create a memorable event and an extraordinary customer experience, like Coca-Cola did in this video, and I can’t wait to rip up my confining to-do list and start thinking bigger picture.

Even when those college kids hear negative press or frightening facts about Coca-Cola, I’m betting they’ll always think back to that cafeteria encounter with the brand and say, “Yeah, but remember that one time…”

Yes, to-do lists are great, but now I ask myself, “Are you simply going to provide the Coke the client paid for, or are you going to overwhelm her with free flowers and a pizza, too?”

What will you choose to do for your customers?

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How “Better” Can Be The Enemy Of “Good”

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Here’s an anatomy of a marketing nightmare. The folks at Sprint.com were ready to roll out a new and improved website last weekend, planning to flip the switch early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t take and the customer portal for the nation’s third largest cellphone company disappeared from the Internet.

Fast forward three days later and there’s still no Sprint.com. Customers are flaming Sprint in online forums for leaving them unable to manage their accounts online.  Other than numerous apologies, the most Sprint has done to deflect all this anger is to launch a Twitter feed with updates on the outage that can be summarized in four words — “we’re working on it.”

The saddest part of this story is that the new website does look pretty cool, but all that coolness will be washed away in the sea of bile that’s being spilled with all the spleen venting over this botched rollout.

But there are lessons to be learned in The School of Hard Knocks.  First is the favorite adage of my boss — always under-promise and over-deliver. That’s true for marketing campaigns the same as it is for launching new websites.  And let’s crib another one — as they say in the Hippocratic Oath, “first, do no harm.”   Your new marketing concept may not be a smashing success, but be sure it doesn’t sink your image either. Due diligence in planning and rollout goes a long way to prevent the kind of serious, self-inflicted wound that Sprint is trying to recover from now.

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Marketing Your Website

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Building a website is only the first step toward online success. Attracting your target audience and staying relevant so they come back again and again is an ongoing process. Watch our quick Marketing Minute video below for a few tips.

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A Prime(time) Example of How Vague Communication Can Lead to Disaster

Monday, March 29th, 2010

The TV show Modern Family is fun and witty, and occasionally there are moments that leave me thinking about life in a new light.  In the episode, Truth Be Told husband and wife Phil and Claire, and Phil’s old girlfriend Denise, learn that vague communication can lead to disaster.

Claire tells Phil that Denise is trying to seduce him. In Denise’s defense, Phil lets his wife read the innocent comments his old fling left on his Facebook page.  In an exaggeratedly sexy voice, Claire reads aloud: “Hey, Phil, how’s it goin’,” and “So glad to hear your neck’s better…”   To disprove his wife, Phil invites Denise to the house, introduces her to the family, and Claire is soon convinced she was wrong.  But when Claire leaves the room, Denise is all over Phil.

“Why are you wussing out?” she asks, chasing him.
“I never wussed IN!” Phil whispers, frantically fighting her off.
“What about all those things you left on Facebook?” and in her over-the-top sexy voice, “How was your day?  My neck is soooo sore…”

Then, Phil asks the pivotal question: “Why do people keep adding voices to these things? I didn’t mean anything by it!”  He’s stumbled into a pitfall of modern communication.

Updates, tweets, texts and emails are sent for people to read and interpret without any way to monitor whether your message came across as you intended.  Depending on your reader’s mood – and what they WANT to hear – you could be talking about apples while they’re hearing oranges.

In fact, a study conducted by Associate Professor of Marketing Justin Kruger and  psychologist Nicholas Epley showed that only 50% of emails are interpreted correctly.

So, the three points to take away:  1) When marketing with the written word – especially in “casual” environments such as Twitter and Facebook – take extra care to be clear with your information, offers, and promises. 2) Since you can’t be there to add a wink, nod or shrug, ask yourself “how could this be read differently?”  And 3) Don’t invite any old flames home to meet your “modern” family.

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Content Is King (Even If It’s Been Cribbed)

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

If you deal with business-to-business marketing and worry about having the time to generate lots of original content, here’s some good news — readers don’t care. Give them useful information with your own touch and it’ll do just fine.

BTW, I’m demonstrating the point right now; this topic was first covered by marketing writer Bob Schier in his What Works, What Doesn’t blog.  Schier recounts a survey that he conducted of B2B readers in which he asked whether they preferred staff-written content to articles picked up somewhere else and summarized. The answer:

Nobody even knew what we were talking about. They don’t care where a story comes from, or even if they’ve seen the basic facts elsewhere. If your take on it tells them something useful, they like it.

This is not simply “cut-and-paste” writing; you need to provide context and value along with your own style. Think of it this way — if you found the information useful, your audience probably will too.

Now feel free to take this topic and re-write it for your blog.

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Be Like Ikea

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I love Ikea. I’ve been looking at their printed catalog and websites for a while now, but I just had my first Ikea store experience.

Wow.

I didn’t realize how huge it would be. It’s immense, intimidating even, and I had no idea where to start. Then I saw the map. Upstairs to the showroom. Downstairs to the warehouse.

So I jumped on the escalator and headed upstairs to see all the Ikea furniture, textiles and accessories doing what they do best—making good design look effortless. Think of any room in your house, and they have at least 5 examples of each. Home office? You got it. Living room? Naturally. Bathroom? You betcha’. There are even a few “small living” spaces that showcase design solutions for apartments with 250-400 square feet of room.

They’ve done a great job cultivating the customer experience. Arrows on the floor and informative signage keep you from getting lost, and if you forget your tape measure and pencil, don’t worry. Every hundred feet or so, there’s a note station featuring disposable measuring tapes, graph paper, maps of the showroom and pencils, so you can take notes about what you like, figure out if the Ektorp sofa will fit in your living room, pick out an entertainment cabinet to go with it, and find it all easily in the warehouse. There’s even a full service restaurant because you’re going to spend so much time there you will eventually get hungry.

Ikea has planned for your entire shopping adventure and made it easy for you to find a solution that works for your lifestyle within your limitations. How can we be more like Ikea? How can we offer great products and services that give our clients and customers the best solution for their dollar?

Be creative. Ikea has attractive solutions that maximize the functionality of even the smallest spaces. Even if our customers have tiny budgets, we can deliver solutions that maximize their dollar.

Be helpful. Ikea paints arrows on the floor and provides measuring tapes, pencils and maps. We can provide advice, tips and insights that our customers can benefit from.

Be flexible. Ikea’s Ektorp Sofa is a standard 3 seat sofa with a removable cover, so when you’re tired of the Byvik multicolor flora print, you can switch to the Blekinge white. And when that gets dirty, you can put it in the wash and slip on the Klinto Blue print. We can bend our return policy, make a special order, or schedule an after-hours appointment.

Their strategy works. Ikea has enjoyed steady growth over the last ten years and now has more than 300 stores in more than 35 countries and annual sales of more than 21.5 billion Euros.

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