THINKing

More Marketing Tools

July 10, 2008 on 8:17 am | In Tools, Research, widget, Resources, Online, Web 2.0, Widgets, Marketing | 2 Comments

Here’s another round-up of marketing tools and resources found on the web:

SpotMixer offers self-service tools to small- and midsized-advertisers for creating TV commercials online. Its customers now are able to distribute their ads through Google AdWords.

I’m now using Quantcast to get deeper demographic information about my website traffic. Quantcast is a media measurement service that lets advertisers view audience reports on millions of websites and services. It combines directly measured audience data with panel-based estimates to deliver accurate third-party metrics and easy-to-read profiles on digital media properties.

Widgipedia is a search engine and directory for - you guessed it - widgets.

Have the need to poll your visitors? PollDaddy is your application. The free version is very powerful.

Get Your Filtr On

July 2, 2008 on 7:10 am | In Newspapers, News, Search, Research, Twitter, Resources, Online, Public Relations, Journalism, Media, Media Relations, PR | 2 Comments

PR Pros have been paying tons of money for media clips for eons, and some still need to have a paid service to keep up with everything said about them, their organization or their clients. But, there is a new service that the smaller company can set up for free, called FiltrBox that offers many of the same features of the higher priced services. The service now is out of beta, according to the FiltrBox blog,

Information Overload and overpriced media monitoring are now a thing of the past! We are thrilled to announce that the Filtrbox media monitoring service is now available to the public. The service emerges from private beta today with an entirely new user interface and a number of new features.

Here’s what you get for free:

Up to five separate filters and 15 days of article history
Entirely new Flex user interface
Additional sources, including Twitter and FriendFeed monitoring
Search, Sort, and Preferences
iPhone formatted Daily Briefing emails
Flagging of important articles
Google Alerts import
Drag and Drop Filtr management
Content widgets based on custom RSS feeds

Is The Media’s Liberal Slip Showing?

June 20, 2008 on 9:26 am | In Research, Newspapers, News, Media, Journalism | No Comments

I ran across an interesting poll from Rasmussen Reports concerning how Americans view media objectivity. According to the poll,

Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many—68%–believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.

As you would expect, Republicans have the least favorable view of media objectivity. 82 percent of Republicans believe the media are advocates rather than observers. Even Democrats (56 percent) and independents (69 percent) agreed with that view.

One of the most interesting findings, in my mind was this:

Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting from the media coverage this year—Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment. At the other extreme, 43% say Clinton received the worst treatment from the media. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the media was roughest on McCain and only 15% thought the media coverage was most unfair to Obama.

I have been looking for more recent figures on how journalists actually vote and with which party they are affiliated, but the latest I can find is from a 2004 study by the Media Research Center. That study found:

More than half of the journalists surveyed (52%) said they voted for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, while fewer than one-fifth (19%) said they voted for Republican George W. Bush. The public chose Bush, 51 to 48 percent.

When asked “generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, an Independent, or something else?” more than three times as many journalists (33%) said they were Democrats than said they were Republicans (10%).

While about half of the journalists said they were “moderate,” 28 percent said they thought of themselves as liberals, compared to just 10 percent who said they were conservative.

One out of eight journalists (13%) said they considered themselves “strongly liberal,” compared to just three percent who reported being “strongly conservative,” a four-to-one disparity.

What do you think? Is this view partially responsible for the loss of circulation by newspapers, and TV News drop in viewership?

How Not To Get A Job

June 18, 2008 on 1:57 pm | In Media Relations, Research, Journalism, Public Relations, PR, Marketing | 7 Comments

The resumes keep flowing in here and they shouldn’t. My Creative Team is a network of freelancers. Someone with an IQ approaching that of a stalk of broccoli should be able to figure out that means we don’t have employees. So, below is a piece I wrote a few years back to help out those little darlings who are looking for jobs. Apparently, no one else is helping them. Enjoy.

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If the resumes and emails I receive are any indication, neither your parents nor your teachers taught you how to properly look for a job. I frequently receive notes to my email address that are addressed “To Whom It May Concern”, or “Hiring Manager”, or even “Please pass this along to the appropropriate person.” I guess since YOU are the one looking for a job, that I am supposed to help YOU find it. Because YOU are special. Your Baby Boomer parents have been telling YOU this all of your life, so it must be true.

It’s not. Welcome to the real world.

If you are looking for a PR job, it’s YOUR JOB to find it. You should have had intro to journalism at some point in your college career. Unless, of course, liberal educators have removed all job-related courses from the curriculum. But that is another posting.

From your journalism courses, you should know how to do a modicum of research to find out the proper person responsible for hiring. In 20 seconds on my website, my eight-year-old grandson could discover the name of a real person and also determine that My Creative Team doesn’t have employees, only freelancers.

And if you are going to be working with journalists, you need to know how to customize your story pitches. “To Whom It May Concern” sure gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I’m sure a reporter would love to receive that in an email pitch.

When I got out of college about 100 years ago now, I sent out 200 letters and resumes, each addressed to a real person. Not “Hiring Manager.” I got two responses, which I thought was pretty rude. I swore then that I would always respond if I ever got into a position where I could do the hiring. Even if the response was “Not hiring. Good luck to you.” No longer.

If you don’t do the research to find out who I am, then I don’t care about who you are or your feelings. Sorry.

Now, here’s a little more unsolicited advice. If you want to stand out from the crowd of job seekers, it is not hard. Send a letter and resume via snail mail. Address it to a real person that you have done a little research on. Include some references about the person’s history or career in your letter. If you really want a job, show why you should have it. Trust me, it is easy to separate yourself from the crowd. At least, based on my experience.

Research Your Way To Awareness

June 17, 2008 on 9:56 am | In Research, Buzz, Public Relations, Marketing | 3 Comments

Companies in the health sector have been using research in their PR efforts for years to help build awareness of their products. My Creative Team member, Mark Harrison, has written about using research to build customer loyalty. Both good uses of research. But I wanted to get you thinking about other ways to use research.

We just rolled out a survey for our client, The Carolinas’ Thanksgiving Day Parade. Here are the results if you’d like to take a peek.

We had several reasons we wanted to do the research. First, we really did want to find out what people think about the 61-year-old holiday parade. Second, we used the research as an excuse to get in front of partner organizations to ask them to help poll their constituents. Additionally, we wanted to get people - consumers, possible sponsors and partner organizations - thinking about the parade now, instead of just on Thanksgiving Day. You see, we are trying to get partner organizations to help us spread the word, businesses to sign up to sponsor floats, and people to sign up as volunteers. So, we’d like to have a little buzz now.

Finally, we are trying to affect change. We need transit involved to help us move people on the day of the parade. We want uptown restaurants to remain open to feed parade-goers. And, we want participants from businesses to high school marching bands - to upgrade their parade offerings. If we get those items accomplished, we’ll have bigger crowds on the street for the parade.

How have you used research?

Big Boy Marketing - Part 2

April 20, 2008 on 7:25 am | In Positioning, demographics, Big Boy Marketing, Research, Consumer Behavior, Marketing, Branding, Advertising | 3 Comments

Another marketing lesson from the Big Boys, that is Fortune 1000 size companies.

Ask Your Customers. Big Boys do the necessary research. Customers will provide you with invaluable data, if you let them. From defining your positioning to advice on new products, every business has customers willing to wade into the discussion.

Now the Big Boys have the budgets to do every kind of research imaginable. No matter what your budget, there are a number of inexpensive things you can do to get actionable data.

Surveys. These are easy to mount with the advent of online applications like SurveyMonkey, and plug-in polling applications for blogs and websites. Or, just do simple survey cards that can be handed out at your location and dropped into customer mailings.

Focus groups. You do not have to be a research specialist to run a focus group. You just need to understand that whatever you get from the focus group is directional, not projectable.

Get Well Defined

April 7, 2008 on 6:38 am | In demographics, psychographics, Research, Consumer Behavior, Branding, Marketing | 4 Comments

Body builders do it, marketers should too. OK, all body builders have to do is lift and take steroids to get well defined, so their job is a little simpler. Let’s take a moment to see how marketers can better define their audiences.

Organizations typically have a primary audience with which they must communicate. In order to know how best to reach this audience and what to say to it, we need to define it in a number of different ways. Demographics and psychographics are the scientific methods we employ to get a clear understanding of our audiences.

Demography, says Webster, is “the statistical study of human population, especially with reference to size and density, distribution, and vital statistics.” Webster has no definition yet for psychographics. I say, “demographics studies which people buy, psychographics studies why people buy.”

Let’s take a look at how we use these tools to our best marketing advantage.

Demographic attributes we use to understand our audience might include age, gender, culture, employment status, industry, income level, marital status, job title, sales cycle, and geographic location.

These attributes help us determine specifically who buys from you. Do the work to uncover your best buyers. Don’t attempt to market to all carbon-based life forms. You don’t have enough money to reach them all through communications. Even if you have a diverse market, find out who buys the most or most often from you and focus on them. Determining this core demographic will improve your marketing efforts drastically.

If you want to put your marketing on steroids, add psychographics, the emotional and behavioral qualities of your target market. These attributes may include the emotion, reasoning, psychology, logic, and thought processes behind buying decisions. Here, you’ll want to delve into your buyer’s interests, hobbies, professional associations, previous purchases, and related products purchased.

The Survey Says…
Your current customers hold the key to both the demographic and psychographic attributes of your key audience. Survey them to find out:

Why did your clients buy your product?
Why did they buy from you and not a competitor?
What made them buy from you at a specific point in time?
Was it an impulse decision or did they ponder it?
What do they like the most/least about your product?
What is the benefit of the product?
Are they willing to refer others to your product?

Once you have a clear understanding of both the demographics and psychographics of your audience, you can craft better messages and place them in the most effective venues.

Who is your primary audience? Tell us about their demographics and psychographics.

Are You Incredible?

March 6, 2008 on 8:49 am | In Consumer Behavior, Buzz, Research, Media Relations, Media, PR, Public Relations, Marketing | No Comments

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Public relations is all about credibility and trustworthiness. If you don’t practice PR, then you are likely to be incredible.

Some of the elements of a PR program include research, media relations, publicity, special events, employee relations, client relationship management, crisis communication, trade shows/conferences, community and government relations, and corporate identity. PR helps you shape internal and external opinion about your organization with an eye toward building support among your key “publics.”

What can you expect from PR if it is done correctly?

- Boost Credibility. Media coverage or word-of-mouth from the right people heightens your credibility much more than an ad ever could.

- Build Trust. People trust what they are familiar with. A proactive PR program that gets and keeps your name in front of people can be the first step in building that trust.

- Generate Leads. Positive publicity for your products and services can generate sales leads for you to follow up.

- Word-of-Mouth. By increasing awareness of your company, people and products, media coverage provides fodder for the word-of-mouth machine.

- Shape Attitudes. From employee communication to publicity, PR tactics can be used to tell your story convincingly to key publics.

- Refine Customer Service. Those who believe PR is about one-way, top-down spin doctoring - I hope - are relics of the past. Two-way PR, in which the company actually solicits and listens to customer feedback, can provide the kind of edge companies need today in this age of commoditization.

So, don’t be incredible. Make PR an integral part of your business strategy.