THINKing

Forgotten Gems

Through no fault of their own, sometimes really good posts just get overlooked. Here are a few forgotten gems you may have missed.

Grandma Says -  Southern grandmothers have often said, “there are only three times a respectable person’s name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die.” This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers.

Brand Euthanasia -  Some brands should be allowed to die, or if that fails, then we owe it to them to kill them.

New Business Tip: Do Great Work For Current Clients -My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

The Value Of Connections – As we have discussed before, the value of connections in business cannot be underestimated. I’m talking primarily about tight connections that you use ruthlessly to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.

To Market, To Market… -  What does buying a fat pig have to do with your business? Stick with me and all will be revealed.

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Advertising’s Not Dead, But Advertisers Are Trying To Kill It

Advertising is on life support but it is not dead. Although it seems that advertisers and their agencies are trying to kill it.

When done correctly, it still has its place in the marketing mix. The problem with advertising, as in so many marketing tactics, is that companies launch ads before they really think their program through.

First, let’s think about what we want our advertising to achieve. You should tie your advertising objectives to the objectives you have for your business. Ask yourself what benefits advertising can help bring to the business.

Are you looking for new customers who don’t know you? Are you trying to get a share of your competitors’ customers who know a little about you? Or, are you trying to get your own customers to buy more from you? The answers to these questions will help you establish what type message is needed because one ad cannot address all carbon-based life forms.

Ads need to be aimed at specific audiences. And media dollars, if you’re fortunate enough to have them, are precious, so let’s target the ad message as we’ll need to target that media spending.

Prospects need to have their interest aroused, while you might need a “make a change” message aimed at competitors’ customers, and your own customers may respond best to a loyalty message.

Now, you should determine how best to get your message out. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising says that advertising is “the means of providing the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects at the lowest possible cost.”

This means that there are lots of ways to deliver your advertising message. You are not limited to the big three: radio, TV and newspapers.

Direct mail might be a better answer for you if you have a narrowly defined audience. Going after a mass audience may mean you need mass media.

Remember: it’s the most persuasive message to the right prospects at the lowest cost. And with corporate advertising spending, remember the old adage, “Nothing happens until the cash register rings,” and adjust your message and media decisions accordingly.

Marketers tend to overestimate the power of advertising. They want to hit the market with a big campaign and receive a flood of new business. Here’s the dirty little secret: most people ignore most advertising. It can’t make people do what they don’t want to do, nor interest them in what they are not interested in. Advertising is a crutch – a strong, efficacious one when done right, but additive to the rest of your communications programming.

Your job as a marketer is to do the heavy lifting up front to develop a compelling message, and deliver it effectively to a specific audience using the right medium. Otherwise you are wasting your time because your ad campaign will be dead on arrival.

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5 Essential Big Boy Marketing Links

The big boys of marketing, those elite companies in the Fortune 500, know some things the rest of us don’t. Here are a few posts that deal with Big Boy Marketing.

Big Boy Marketing – Part 1 – In working with our Fortune 1000 clients I have come to see that we all can learn a few things from these Big Boys. They may miss the boat on some things, but they get a lot right.

Big Boy Marketing – Part 2 – Ask Your Customers. Big Boys do the necessary research.

Big Boy Marketing – Part 3 – Choose Partners Strategically. The Big Boys know how to find a partner who fits their needs. 

Aligning Metrics – Years ago, I worked with a Fortune 500 company on an integrated marketing communications program. It was integrated everywhere except with sales. And therein lies the rub. 

Take Market Share Now – Bold marketers know this: an economic downturn is the perfect time to gain market share. Spending marketing money during tough times seems counterintuitive, but time and again it has paid off for some of the best known brands.

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My New Business Secret Formula

We’ve talked here often about the fact that there is no marketing magic bullet. But there is a new business magic bullet, and I’m going to tell you the secret formula. Only a handful of those who read this will successfully implement within their business because it is not shiny and new.

Like most businesses, you are probably spending up to 80% of your marketing budget on bringing in new business because that’s exciting. It’s not as much fun implementing my new business secret: do great work for current customers.

But Harry, you are saying, I’d rather go out and bring home the new business buffalo than focus on my current customers. Where’s the benefit?

Let me disabuse you of the notion that there is no benefit in this hyperfocus on current customers.  Doing great work for current clients spawns so many good things for your business.

Even if you have the best salesforce in the world and they can sell anyone anything once, if your company doesn’t wow them with your service they aren’t going to buy from those superb sales folk again. Some estimates show that if you cut customer churn by just 5%, you can increase profits by at least 25%.

If that’s not reason enough, then consider these stats relating to customer retention:

• 91% of dissatisfied customers won’t return
• 96% of dissatisfied customers won’t tell you the real reason why they won’t be back
• it costs 10 times more to replace a customer than it does to keep him
• repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers

But how is doing great work for current customers the secret to my new business program, Harry?

I’m glad you asked. Here’s the key statistic that you need to internalize: referrals from repeat customers are 107% higher than from non-customers. Loyal customers talk you up to others who are like themselves. In other words, they are targeting the right customers for you and you don’t have to spend a dime.

Are you doing great work for your customers? Maybe it is time to reevaluate.

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7 Ways To Kickstart Your 2010 Marketing

It’s 2010, now what? Have you completed your marketing planning or did you leave it to the last minute? No matter. We have 7 ideas of things you can do to kickstart your marketing.

Define Your Customers.  I had a client one time who told me that “all carbon-based lifeforms” were the targets of his advertising. Needless to say, I quickly disabused him of that notion. If you want to spend your money wisely, this is the#1 thing you can do right now for your marketing effort.

Focus On Current Customers. I know that you want to go out and take down that new business buffalo, but you’ll get a greater return by getting more business from current customers.

Get Referrals. If you have done a good job for existing customers, they will tell their friends about you. But you need a strategy to make this happen.

Activate Your Customers.  It is no secret that I believe email is still one of the best ways to generate goodwill, referrals and business.  Plan your email attack to activate customers now.

Open Your Wallet. I’ve been accused of being against paid advertising. I am not. I’m just against unplanned, poorly focused advertising. Some of your competitors are still weak from the recent economic strife. You still have an opportunity to kill the weak, if you’ll spend some money smartly to take market share.

Be Sociable.  Humans – being human – love social interaction, particularly of the face-to-face variety. Always have, always will. So, look for ways to add human interaction to your marketing. Also, reexamine your approach to social media.  

Be Tactical. First off, let me say that I’m a strategy kind of guy. But sometimes you just need to do something to get your marketing off dead center.

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Top Content 2009 Edition

In case you missed some of our most read content this year, below is a sample of the top posts of 2009. Is your favorite here?

Twittering Journalists

Customer Retention Strategies

When Billboards Go Bad

Twitter: Time Waster Or Cool Tool?

Branding Lessons From Santa

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Top Content

In case you missed some of our posts, here are the top five read of all time:

Twittering Journalists

Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

Newspapers: Dig The Grave 

When Billboards Go Bad

It’s The Relationship, Stupid

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Face Time

Some social media proponents would have you believe that the digital world is the new Nirvana. Guess what? Humans – the users of social media – haven’t really changed their behavior in 75,000 years. Although, we do dress better now, and we’re not all cavorting naked on the plains of the Serengeti.

Humans – being human – love social interaction, particularly of the face-to-face variety. Always have, always will. In fact, a recent survey by Forbes indicates that executives favor face-to-face meetings over the virtual kind.

A majority of executives say the recession has cut back their travel and face-to-face meetings, and they don’t like that very much. A full 84% of those surveyed say they prefer real-life interaction over digital.

Although you can’t meet with every one of your online shoppers, you can provide them some human interaction, too  They are craving this. According to an August 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for human-assisted shopping site IMshopping,

77% of US Internet users who made an online purchase in the past six months would be interested in help from a real person before buying certain things on the Web. Though a majority of online shoppers reported a desire for help at least some of the time, 82% of respondents said they had not been able to get that assistance in the past. And more than one-half of that group said it had affected their purchase decision negatively—at least some of the time.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for virtual meetings and online interaction. I’m just saying that you need to understand the genetic need humans have for the tangible. It’s harder to read people during digital interactions, and you can’t build deep, meaningful relationships solely using ones and zeroes.

The same holds true for tangible marketing material. There is a time and place for everything, and now is the time for you to stand out by being more tangible to your customers and allies.

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A Fresh Wind Is Blowing

The business winds are changing direction, but there are some organizations that don’t get it and never will. The news media and big ad agencies are two industries doomed to be swept overboard if they don’t keep a weather eye out. Today, it’s about transparency and a new focus on customer service, doing what’s right for the customer. I’ve found if you do what’s right for the customer, you, too, will ride under full sail.

Let’s review a recent example of what I’m talking about in the marketing arena.  We have a client leaving another agency to come to us for a number of services, including SEO, email marketing and Google Adwords.

Old school companies try to lock clients down by tying them to agency accounts for Google Analytics, Adwords, or email marketing, or  by hooking them into proprietary content management systems and the like.  An agency which manages all of its Adwords or Analytics in a master account is not going to want to give another agency administrative access. Guess what? You can’t transfer Google Analytics accounts and you lose all the historical data. Adwords account can be transferred, but it takes an act of Congress.

When we set up client accounts – although it is less convenient for us – we set them up in the client’s name. That way, if the client ever decides to move on, we can hand over the accounts and wish them well. That’s the new, transparent, customer-oriented way to do business.

Are you old school, or are you harnessing the fresh wind?

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Links 7/20/2009

A detached retina has kept me sidelined for about a week, but the eyesight is getting better. So, here are a few things I’m trying to read with fuzzy vision:

10 Fundamentals of Good Writing -  Why have companies lost their voice? The biggest reason is fear. Good communication can’t thrive where every word is second-guessed and scrubbed of all meaning. We’ve got to get back to good writing, and it’s up to communication executives like you to make it happen.

Twitter Generates $48 Million Monthly In Media Coverage -  What are  Twitter mentions worth? According to news-monitoring service VMS, a cool $48 million over the past 30 days. (That’s half of what Microsoft plans to spend marketing its biggest product launch of the year, Bing.)

Cinnabon Direct Mail. Mmmmmm. – (You have to register to read this).  Bakery chain Cinnabon is one company embracing direct mail over more tech-savvy channels and seeing customer acquisition rise as a result. The days of direct mail’s marketing dominance may be over, but don’t call it dead yet.

Customer Loyalty: How To Earn It. -  THINKing has written about the topic of customer retention often. There’s a saying in the business world: Customer acquisition is an investment, but profitability is built on customer retention. And with the economy in its current state, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have.

MasterCard Launches “Priceless” iPhone App – The Purchase, N.Y.-based company is introducing the “Priceless Picks” app, which gives consumers a location-based utility to find and share their favorite picks with others. Via the iPhone’s GPS technology, users can find shopping deals, entertainment options and dining venues based on the users’ current location or where they are going.  MasterCard is extending its “Priceless” catchphrase to a new iPhone application.

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