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Are you minding your packaging?

June 21, 2015

The smartest brands know that having an awesome product/service is important but how you present that awesome product or service matters too.  Yes, it probably costs more. And yes, it means you have to keep upping your game. So there’s risk and cost in making that choice. But it’s what separates the premium brands from their competitors.

Here are two of the world’s best brands and example of how seriously they take the simple presentation of their product.  Check out how Disney presents their MagicBands and Apple is sending out its new Apple Watch.

 

 

 

 

In every case — the anticipation of actually getting to the product (and keep in mind with the Disney MagicBands — the bands are simply the access point to getting into Disney) heightens the experience of getting the actual item.

They don’t have to go to the extra lengths — but they do. Which triggers even more buzz and loyalty for their brand.

So — how can you, no matter what you sell, use anticipation and packaging to elevate your brand and create more buzz?

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If they don’t care, are you even there?

June 18, 2015

Your creative needs to be creative.  No doubt about that.  But sadly, many people think that’s enough.

I received an email from a college student, asking if he could interview me. Two of his questions in particular caught my attention because they put the spotlight on a dangerous mistake that many seasoned marketers make.

It all revolves around the idea that marketing needs to be wacky or groundbreaking with the end goal being that it’s memorable. I can think of a lot of crazy, funny and touching marketing tactics that I’ve remembered for years that never prompted me to buy the product.

Should your creative be fresh, interesting and different from what everyone else in your category is doing? Sure.

But you can’t stop there. And you can’t start there.

You start with understanding your own product or service as objectively as you can (how does it rock, where is it weak, etc.) and who the ideal consumer for that product or service happens to be.

And you end by telling those ideal customers enough about your product or service that they understand why it’s the perfect fit for them.

You have to match your sweet spot customer with the benefits that make them the right buyer for what you sell.

I thought at it might be useful to you to see what he asked and my replies.

Q: When developing a concept do you try to go with something new and groundbreaking or do you have a more straightforward, proven approach to getting the message out to the target audience.

The truth is – what sells is the truth. We begin by understanding our audience and what they care about. We learn as much about them as possible. Every product/service has a “perfect fit” customer. It’s our job to figure out who that is and then craft our message to appeal to that person.

What is new today will be old hat tomorrow. So gimmicks and shock value and crazy aren’t good marketing strategies. Look at the Kmart “Ship My Pants” ads. Are they funny? Are they memorable? The answer to both those questions is yes.

But will it sell more stuff? I don’t think so. And THAT is our job. We help clients sell stuff. If we don’t do that – no matter how funny or memorable our work is – we got it wrong.

So the creative approach depends on the audience and what will connect with them and help them see why what we sell is what they need or want most.

Q: I believe that promoting brand recall is the most important objective in a message strategy. What is your favorite way to do this?

First – I respectfully disagree.   I believe the most important objective in a message strategy is to help the audience understand how this product or service is uniquely positioned to benefit THEM. The most important objective is brand relevance. Again, it doesn’t matter if you are memorable if you aren’t relevant.

The best way to develop brand relevance is to understand your sweet spot customer and why they would care and then figure out how to deliver value towards that for them. A brand’s job is to be important to the consumer. Harley does this brilliantly. For Harley riders and prospects – no other bike will do. Anything else is a poor substitute. Harley is about living the dream of a biker – freedom, independence, camaraderie etc. No brand captures and sells that like Harley. Harley could run a bunch of ads that promote the name so we’d never forget it. But instead they promote the dream/fantasy of owning a motorcycle and tie their name to delivering on that dream.

I’d much rather have 100 sweet spot customers reach for their wallet than 10,000 people remember the ad. Remember that and you’ll enjoy a long career in this crazy business that I love. Good luck!

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No one likes you

June 9, 2015

Like millions of businesses around the world, at some point in time, you decided to hop on the Facebook train.  You created a presence with either enthusiasm or distain (seems everyone starts at one end of the spectrum or the other) and posted your first update.

Since then, things have been a little stagnant.  The fans didn’t come pouring in the way you hoped (or expected) and as a result, your enthusiasm and activity level have waned.

Ready to fire back up?  First, let’s diagnose why your Facebook fans have been a bit lackadaisical.  Or worse.

You set up the wrong kind of presence:  Many businesses mistakenly create an account rather than a page.  An account is owned by an individual and has friends.  A page is created by an account holder and has likes.

No only is it the wrong kind of presence but if Facebook realizes you’ve given a business entity a personal account, they can force you to shut it down.  Which means you’d lose all your friends/fans and have to start over.  Be sure you have the right set up.

You infrequently and inconsistently post:  It’s a little like knowing someone who rarely speaks to you.  Or speaks to you a ton for one hour and then ignores you for the next five days.  Pretty soon, you find someone else to talk to.

You can’t expect people to pay attention if they can’t count on you.  Hopefully your plan is to use your Facebook presence to create a relationship with people who either are already fans of your work or could be. Silence is not a great relationship enhancer.

You’re all about you:  This is one of the biggest marketing mistakes that most organizations consistently make.  All they do is talk about themselves.  This usually comes from one of two places.  First, you don’t have a good idea of who you are talking to, so you aren’t sure how to talk about what they’d care about.   So you default to talking about yourself.

Or, you aren’t thinking about your Facebook presence as a relationship conduit in the same way you’d think about a face-to-face conversation.   If you were sitting across from someone, you wouldn’t be rude enough to blather on about yourself non-stop.  Don’t do it on Facebook either.

You use Facebook as a sales tool:  It’s okay to share a great deal or special pricing now and then on your Facebook page.  But, it’s not a sales flier – it’s a place to connect.  The Facebook pages that I spend time on are the ones that make me smarter, make my life easier/better, make me laugh, connect me to a memory or to a community of people with whom I share a common interest.

I never mind when they occasionally pitch me, because the rest of the time they give me so much value, I’m grateful.  Would your Facebook fans say the same thing?

You never use Facebook as a sales tool:  I know, people are fickle.  Especially if you are a retail location or sell a product, one of the reasons people are willing to like your page is because they think it will get them something special or at a discount.  Don’t disappoint them.  Just do it sparingly.

You tell and sell: One of the best and easiest ways to generate activity on your Facebook page (which will generate new likes) is to ask questions.   By getting your fans involved, you can actually have a conversation and even better, their friends will see the interaction and hopefully decide to join in as well.

Remember that like all social media, Facebook is permission based.  Your audience can disconnect from you any time they want.  So provide value every day and watch your likes spike.

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Becoming a marketing master

June 2, 2015

You don’t have to be a good writer or have a mind for marketing to set a goal of becoming a marketing master. You just have to be willing to do the hard work of learning how to do it and practicing it regularly.

There’s a huge body of research that has studied how people who are at the top of their game got there. Many people assume these superstars had a wealth of natural talent that gave them a huge advantage over the others in their field.

But even when you look at remarkable performers like Tiger Woods or Warren Buffet, it’s not true. We’ve all heard the story of how Tiger started playing golf at 18 months and had over 15 years of regular practice before he began competing at a national level. Warren Buffet admits that he knew very little but invested significant time studying business and financial statements to learn how to spot patterns and trends.

In fact, the research is so consistent it has evolved into what is commonly called the ten-year rule. It states that the most accomplished professionals, no matter what field they’re in; need about ten years of intense study to get to the top of their game. The ten years isn’t an average, it’s a minimum.

And there’s one more element that matters. It can’t be casual or haphazard practice. It needs to be what is called deliberate practice. It’s you doing things with the explicit goal of improving your performance that will push you past competent to a level of excellence.

Why does all of this matter to you, in terms of marketing?

• It means for you to develop and execute effective marketing, you need to be deliberately practicing on a regular basis.
• It erases the excuse “I’m just not wired to be good at this” when it comes to marketing your business.

Like most other aspects of running or owning a business, it boils down to doing the hard work and committing to it for the long haul.

And there’s one other benefit to taking this sort of approach. In the case of marketing – unlike a golf game or investing, you have a potential audience and that audience requires many marketing touches before they start paying attention. The fact that marketing is a marathon not a sprint works well with this “practice every day” philosophy.

Very few marketing tactics deliver instant results and when that happens, it’s more dumb luck than anything else. Marketing is a cumulative effort. Your efforts stack up and create that consistent drip drip drip marketing that we’ve talked about before.

In many ways, marketing is the perfect skill to develop, given the ten-year rule. You have to do it consistently and intentionally to get better at it and your audience needs you to do it consistently to notice you. So the more you practice, the better you get and the better results you’ll experience.

Now the question is – what do you need to do to put this idea into play?

Daily Practice: What marketing tactics can you commit to doing on a daily basis? Is it a Facebook page update? A customer thank you call?

Weekly Practice: What can you do every single week? An insightful blog post? Sending out targeted direct mail pieces and then following up with a call?

Monthly Practice: What, come rain or shine, will you do every month? Writing a helpful newsletter that establishes your expertise? Running an ad in a niche publication aimed at your primary audience?

Be sure you build your skills by practicing every single day and before you know it, you’ll be on your way to becoming a marketing master. Not only will you get better every day but you’ll get also more customers as you practice!

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Who shouldn’t you serve?

May 18, 2015

Who shouldn’t you serve? I have often said that the power of a good brand is not only does it attract your sweet spot customers but it repels the wrong customers.

Too many businesses adopt the “every dollar is a good dollar” philosophy which inevitably brings them misery, unhappy customers and financial losses.

When you try to serve people who are a bad fit — they almost always leave, disgruntled.  And that’s after you have chased your tail, trying to make them happy, even if it means you lose your shirt.

You’re far better off to dramatically narrow your focus.  Only serve the people/companies who can be your very best customers or as Steve Farber says in Radical Leap — “Doing What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do.”

The picture with this post is a window at a Tattoo Parlor in Asheville, NC.  Clearly they know exactly who they do and don’t want to serve.  And while they have taken a rather aggressive way of communicating that — it’s highly unlikely that they get a lot of walk ins who turn out to be bad customers.

I’m not suggesting you post a sign. But I am suggesting that there’s value in knowing exactly who you should and who you shouldn’t serve and going out of your way to be equally clear on both sides of the equation.

By the way — this isn’t rocket science.  Make a list of your best customers.  The people you’d clone if you could.  What do they have in common?

Next, make a list of the people who you’d pay to stop serving.  What do they have in common?

Now — look at your marketing messages.  How can you tweak them so they attract your best customers and communicate to your worst clients that they’d be better off going somewhere else?

You cannot have a love affair with your worst customers.  You simply can’t woo them and win their hearts.  So it’s better to let someone else have them so you can concentrate on the people who truly will love you and what you do for them.

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Show your customers that you care

May 5, 2015

In previous posts, we’ve explored the idea that a potential buyer has to know, like and trust you before they’re going to buy anything from you.   In this one, I want to dig into the trust part of the equation a little deeper and how important it is to show your customers that you care.

I think that the trust goes far beyond trusting your brand promise or trusting that your product will perform.   No doubt that’s part of the equation but I think it’s more than that. The trust level they’re really looking for is the reassurance that they can trust you to take care of them if things go badly.

When you think about it – when we buy something and it all goes according to plan, there isn’t the need for all that much trust. It’s when there’s a problem that we suddenly feel vulnerable.   Now we’re exposed – and need to count on the company. That’s the moment that you need to prove to your customers that you care.

There’s a quote flying around the Internet that says, “Yes, you can show me what you do, but first, show me that you care.” That sums up the essence of what a prospect really wants to know with confidence, before they buy.

Check out this great story about taking care of our customers.

How do you create that sense of confidence before they actually do business with you?

Put your guarantees and promises in writing: State your intentions and policies clearly and in a very visible place. Use common language (no legalese or weasel words) to explain how you handle problems and how you advocate for your customers. Then, take away any concerns by backing their purchase with a money back guarantee. The fewer restrictions or complications you have, the more believable and reassuring it will be.

Use testimonials to tout how you care: Use real examples, told from real customers’ points of view, to tell the story of how you handled problems. Prospects know that things sometimes go wrong. What they need to know is how you actually handle those situations. Let your happy customers tell them they have nothing to worry about.

Put your problems on stage: One of the benefits of social media is that customers use it to complain. Yes, I called it a benefit. There’s nothing more convincing than actually watching a problem being addressed. Encourage your customers to connect with you on social networks and if one of them raises an issue – deal with it right there, out in public.

Train your people: It’s awesome that you, the business owner, have a spirit for customer care. But odds are – you aren’t the one who interacts with the customers most of the time. Your employees needs to understand your company’s policies and beliefs around how you handle customer problems, complaints etc. They also need to be given both the authority and the responsibility to deal with issues as they come up.

Celebrate your screw-ups: I know…we don’t want people to know we’ve made a mistake or had an issue with our products. But in today’s word of social sharing – believe me, they know. Both as a training aid and a testament to the fact that you actually walk your talk – hold up your mistakes proudly. Talk to your team about them and in particular – celebrate how an employee turned a bad situation around. Make how they handled the problem the star of the story.

If you’ve noticed, several of these suggestions will take place online. The reason for that is simple. Today’s consumer (both B2B and B2C) is doing 60-70% of their shopping and or homework online before they ever contact the company.

So you want them to discover how trustworthy you are and how quickly you help a customer in distress long before they walk in your office, pick up their phone or shoot you an email.

This would be a great conversation for your next team meeting.  Make a list of the ways that you show your customers that you care. If the list isn’t very impressive — you know what you should work on next.

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Where has your planning taken you so far?

April 22, 2015

As the first quarter of 2015 whizzes past us, it’s time to take stock of your planning abilities. 25% of the year is now done. How are you doing on your goals for 2015?

I suspect the answer to that question fall into one of two camps.

Camp One (also known as the Camp of the Seat of My Pants): Goals? We’re doing pretty well. I think.

Translation: We didn’t set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound) goals so we know we want to make more money than we did last year, but other than that – we’re not sure what success in 2013 looks like.

Camp Two (also known as the Camp of the Strategic Planners): We’re at 32% of goal one, 17% of goal two and we’re doing a customer survey in June to see how we’re doing on goal three.

Translation: We took the time to set SMART goals and then built a plan for accomplishing those goals. We’re tracking our progress and adjusting the plan as we go.

Now you might argue that there’s a third camp. The Camp of Lucky Breaks. No argument there. Every once in awhile a business hits one out of the park through no particular fault or planned effort of their own. They’re just in the right place at the right time. Everyone deserves a break like that every now and then. But that’s the problem – it’s unpredictable and at best, sporadic.

Since we can’t count on falling into the third camp, the truth is – as business owners and leaders, we make a conscious decision to plan or not. Make whatever excuses you want – it’s either a priority or not.   And you get to reap the benefits or not. It’s really that simple.

Whenever I think about the true value of planning, I remember my experience with our office move a few years ago.  It was a sight to see. The team at MMG is filled with native planners. They like to be organized and anticipate as many details as possible. It’s how they work with our clients and it’s just how they’re wired.

We had several meetings in the months leading up to the move, trying to anticipate anything and everything we’d need. There were plenty of checklists and task assignments.

I watched in amazement at how smoothly the move went. Each area of the office was assigned a different color of duct tape and everything that belonged in that area was marked with the appropriate colored tape (including me by the end of the day!)

This allowed the moving crew to load the truck by area, knowing they’d unload in the same way. When we got to the new office, there were color-coded charts on the walls, and large colored signs by each area in the office. The unloading was incredibly fast and efficient.  Even on move day, – we were back on track and taking care of clients. Within two work days, we were completely settled into the new space and everyone was working at full speed.

That’s the thing – while planning does require an investment, it almost always pays dividends. Here’s the short list of planning perks.

You get where you want to be – by starting with the end in mind, you can plan the path to get there.

Resource conservation – you’ll burn fewer resources (time, money, good will) to accomplish your goals, which means you’re that much further ahead.

You can track your course – when you are actively monitoring a goal’s progress, you can make course corrections faster and minimize your losses.

You’ve lost the first quarter. Will you lose the second too or is it time to get planning?

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What do you know about our YouthNation?

April 14, 2015

I just finished a new book, YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture, (click to buy on Amazon – affiliate link) by Matt Britton and found myself nodding, sighing and scribbling notes throughout the read.

You know me…. I like books that give me tangible actionable insights and this book is packed with them.

If you’d like to win a copy — read down to the final paragraph.

Our nation’s youth has collectively transformed from a fringe counter-culture to THE culture of our nation. In doing so youth has become the preeminent driver of all markets, trends, and disruptions, which are rapidly evolving the American business landscape.

This is the new status quo, and youth marketing expert Matt Britton calls it YouthNation.

In YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture, Britton explains how we got here, where we are headed, and why youth has now become a commodity that’s available to everyone. This commodity transcends industries and demographics, and is the new and unstoppable force behind all innovation and global competitive advantage.

Businesses that want to compete in YouthNation need to understand the technologies and movements sweeping our land. Traditional models no longer apply amidst a new world where revolutions can ignite and enterprises can be created by anyone with an iPhone.

YouthNation provides readers with a playbook that will enable them to survive and thrive in these ever-changing times. Covering all the essential topics of 21st century brand building, this book introduces readers to the power of big data, consumer advocacy, crowdsourcing, the experience economy, content marketing, the peer-to-peer economy, and more. By ommanding these change agents, readers will be able to navigate the complex roadmap of YouthNation to success.

I’m nor sure how you can be involved in marketing today without understanding this phenomenon. The book is a great start.

Matt has graciously given me 3 copies of his new book to give away.  To qualify for my randomizer drawing, just leave a comment below.

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