Agency Life Archives - Page 6 of 8 - McLellan Marketing Group

Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Make a good first impression

June 2, 2007

It would only stand to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Make a Good First Impression

Retail brands like Apple and Barnes & Noble get this. Just by walking into their space — you are enveloped into an experience. They begin their brand story at the front door. But B2B companies and service providers have been much slower at recognizing the power of maximizing that first impression.

At MMG, we don’t even let them get into the front door before we begin our brand story. I’ve enhanced this night time shot, so you can get a sense of what our building looks like — day or night. The upper panel shows our tagline (where strategy and passion collide) and logo in a can’t be missed size. Then, the display window below is filled with our work. Often times, people show up late to meetings at our place, because they’ve stood and perused our display and lost track of time.

And clients love to see their work in the display case.

Using your exterior or lobby to create a brand impression can really set your company apart. It’s not uncommon for prospects to scout a few companies before they choose a new partner.

John Roberson the president of LobbyMakeover.com, a division of Advent based in Nashville offers these 7 elements to consider for your lobby makeover.

A high-impact logo—Reflect your brand with a tastefully fabricated logo that is appropriate to the space.
A clear key message—Differentiate your company with a positioning statement that lets folks know what you do and how you do it differently.
An effective color palette—Use colors that are evocative of the brand and show contrast, but are not a literal application of your brochure.
An engaging group of images—Choose images that reflect your company and the way you do business.
Success stories and awards—Artistically include customer testimonials and accomplishments.
Mission/value statement—Share where you are going and what you value because it is meaningful to customers, employees and vendors.
A user-friendly information and media center—Offer presentations, information, brochures and business cards to guests in a purposeful and attractive manner.

Be honest — what does your exterior/lobby say to your visitors? What do you suppose that first impression costs or earns you?

Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick 2.

May 31, 2007

Here’s the reality of working with clients, no matter what your business does.

Your client wants it good, fast and cheap.

Guess what — long term, there is no such thing. Can you pull an all-nighter or scramble your entire team into overtime? Sure. Once in awhile. But in general, our clients get to pick two of the three.

Michael Libbie, an Iowa advertising guy, tells a similar story over at his blog. And sadly, the option clients most often want to scrimp on — good.

Fortunately, in the end, most good clients get it. A microwaved dinner now and then is okay. But after awhile, you realize you’re not really being nourished. You want real food. Food with substance. And you’re willing to let it cook in the oven for 30 minutes and pay a little extra for the good cut of meat.

But how do you as a business person combat this challenge?

Respect your value. This is the toughest one of all. Your work , product and service is worth what you charge. Don’t apologize for it. Don’t be bashful about asking for it. And don’t be guilted into compromising it.

Have options for your clients. Be reasonable. Maybe they don’t need to Lexus version. Suggest ways they can still accomplish their goals but perhaps in a different way.

Be okay with walking away. I know it’s hard to walk away from business. And scruples don’t feed the kids. But, if you and a client (or prospect) can’t come to an agreement on the money, I assure you — it is not going to be the only thing you disagree on. You are not the right fit for every client. Say it with me….you are not the right fit for every client.

This isn’t about gouging your clients or over-charging. Try that a few times and watch it bite you in the rear end! This is about being fairly compensated for your work. This is about doing good work that yields results for the client and this is also about being nimble enough to turn things around quickly when your client is really in a jam.

Ultimately, it is about balance. For you and the client.

Your future customers are behaving very oddly

May 21, 2007

Many in the B2B world are dismissing social media as something "kids" are doing. Or are nodding at their B2C brethren and saying it’s their problem.

Maybe today that’s sort of true. But guess what your future customers are doing. Yup — building a new habit of using social media. Do you suppose that’s going to just go away?

Social networks have changed the way that people interact with each other and with media, according to an April research report released by Fox Interactive Media. The research found that the 70% of Americans aged 15-34 who engage in social networking activity are doing so during the primetime hours. According to the research data, these social networkers aren’t just dabbling; they tend to use social networks more than they use other forms of communication and entertainment. According to the report, a majority of social networkers choose interacting on sites such as MySpace as their favorite activity online or offline ahead of television viewing.

Other findings:

40% of social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products, and 28% say a friend has recommended a brand or product to them.
69% of users say they use social networking sites to connect with existing friends and 41% say they use the sites to connect with family members.
More than 31% of social networkers say they spend more time online in general after starting to use a social network.

Here is the question for marketers. If the 17-34 year olds are already engaged in social media, do you suppose they’re going to unplug when they hit 35,40 or 50?

Imagine how differently we will talk to the next generation as they approach retirement. Are you already seeing this in your work? If your product or service targets the mature market — how does or will this affect you?

Source: Word of Mouth Marketing Association

So how good are you when you have no budget?

May 19, 2007

I need you to put on your thinking cap with me.

Sure, it’s sexy to work on a project for Coke, Best Buy or NBC. But let’s be honest, that gets old.

I have something even sweeter on my desk and I’ve decided to let you in on the project. (I know…give, give, give!)

And don’t think I’m not going to share the wealth. I’m doing this pro bono, so I can promise you that you’re going to make just as much as I do!

What is this once in a lifetime project? Wait for it…

We’re going to create a marketing plan for a middle school! No, not one of those swank private schools. This is your run of the mill public middle school. With 30 year old auditorium seats. Having sat in them many a time, I can assure you — this is a need, not a want.

Let me give you the facts and then I would love to let you contribute some brilliant ideas to add to the plan.

The campaign: Not a Bad Seat in the House (they love the pun of it!)
The goal: "Sell" 400 seats at $200 each. Each buyer will get a plaque they can personalize that will go on the seat itself.
The budget: Come on, it’s the public school system. We can print some fliers or simple one color brochures and they would probably spring for some postage.
The work force: A few teachers, the principal and a handful of parents, including moi — who somehow became in charge of this little project.

Oh yeah…and school is out the first week in June. So our most immediate access to the most likely buyer is 2 weeks and counting.

So come on you brilliant marketers — toss some great ideas my way. Let’s build the plan together so there’s "not a bad seat in the house!" (It sings, doesn’t it?)

Helping college grads get a job – FREE e-book

May 18, 2007

About 6 weeks ago, I asked my readers to take pity on all the college students who were about to start their first real job hunt. I suggested that the greatest graduation gift we could collectively offer was tough lessons learned, insights and practical tips. "Let’s give them a fighting chance," I said.

Boy, did they bring it on!

50 pages of sage advice. All for grads. All for free. Get it while the getting’s good! You have two download options. With and without photos. (In neither case is this going to win any design awards. Let’s remember that I am a writer.)

3+ mg e-book with photos Download collegegradsadvice.pdf

Tiny little 300K text only e-book Download collegegradsnophoto.pdf

Please take a minute to say thanks to the many professionals who took the time to offer a word of encouragement, a war story or an idea. Without them, this would have been a very short book!

As always, I’m honored by their generosity.

I apologize in advance if there are any errors. Also, if someone posted their answer on their own blog — I tried to catch them all, but if I missed you, I’m very sorry. And without further ado — the wisdom collective:

Aaron Potts
Andy Brudtkuhl
Andy Nulman
Andy Wibbels
Ann Handley
Ann Michael
Anne Simons
Becky Carroll
Bob Glaza
C.B. Whittemore
Carolyn Manning
Chris Cree
Christine Brown
CK
Darren Barefoot
David Reich
Delaney Kirk
Derek Tutschulte
Designer Mike
Doug Karr
Doug Mitchell
Drew McLellan
Joan Schramm
Kevin Hillstrom
Lewis Green
Liz Strauss
Mario Sundar
Mark Goren
Mark True
Mary Schmidt
Nick Rice
Patrick Schaber
Paul McEnany
Phil Gerbyshak
Roberta Rosenberg
Roger von Oech
Rosa Say
Seth Godin
Sharon Sarmiento
Stephanie Weaver
Steve Miller
Steve Sisler
Terry Starbucker
Toby Bloomberg
Tony D. Clark
Valeria Maltoni

Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Express your brand simply and visually

May 8, 2007

It would only stand to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Express your brand simply and visually

At MMG, we help clients discover their brand so they can create love affairs with their clients.

That’s our brand in a sentence.

We understand that a powerful brand begets love affairs. For our clients. For the agency. For MMG team members. We call it a love affair in the round.

or….we can express our brand this way: This is what we do and how we do it.

Which one is more memorable for you? How could you do the same thing for your brand?

Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Celebrate your work as fine art

April 29, 2007

It would only stand to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Celebrate your work as fine art

It’s easy to take the work we do for granted. A successful campaign. No biggie. We do it every day. A delighted client. Great but no time to slow down to celebrate — we’ve got work to do. Lands End calls and asks if they can use on of our logos in the catalog because they like it so much. A quick "wow, that’s cool" and its back to the next project.

We take it for granted because we do it every day. But our work is the magic of what we do. It’s what creates the oohs and ahhhs. It’s one of the reasons prospects are drawn to us. And we should celebrate that.

What’s in your lobby? A Grant Wood painting? An abstract sculpture? What do you have laying around for your clients and vendors to look at while they wait? Could you make those opportunities for a subtle sales message?

At MMG, you’ll find our walls covered with art. Our art. Our clients’ art. We celebrate our work, our clients’ faith in us and our creativity. (the photography doesn’t do it justice) A side benefit of our work hanging around the office is that clients, guests and vendors ask questions. Which lets us tell the story of the project — challenges, ideas, execution and results. It’s a beautiful thing.

No matter what you do — there are elements of your work that are fascinating to other people. You probably don’t notice it anymore because you take it for granted.

When was the last time your client asked you to tell them about one of your successes? What could you do to inspire that sort of opportunity?

Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Be a drip

April 25, 2007

It would only stands to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Be A Drip

The natural urge it seems is to deluge our potential consumers with information. How often have you seen one of these:

A brochure with no white space and so much copy that your eyes blur
A company who explodes onto the marketplace and you see them everywhere – TV, radio, print for about 2 months…and then you never hear of them again
An e-mail campaign that floods your in box with multiple messages in a short period of time
A 12-page newsletter (white space or no)
A corporate website’s homepage that is packed with copy, starbursts and news items galore

Some marketers are compelled to shove as much information at their consumers as possible. Perhaps it’s a concern that they’ll only get one shot at them. Or the misconception that if they don’t explain every nuance of their product/service, the audience won’t get it.

I think in most cases, it’s a mix of insecurity and not really understanding the audience. It’s as though they’re saying "I’m not confident in knowing what my audience needs/wants to know and I don’t trust my own instincts…so I am going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at them."

Bad marketing strategy.

Here’s the analogy we use to help clients understand this concept. When there’s a hard, driving rain, the ground can only absorb so much of it before the water just runs off. Consumers are the same way. They can only absorb so much information before our well-crafted words just run off, falling on deaf ears.

But a gentle all-day rain has a different result. Because of its slow and steady pace, the ground can easily, over time, absorb all the water that comes.

We need to be a drip, not a downpour when it comes to our marketing efforts. Want an example?

Since 1999 at MMG we’ve been producing a weekly marketing e-newsletter called (wait for it…) the Marketing Minute. Never more than 300 words and a few links. Drip, drip.

Every week. We’ve never let anything keep us from getting it out. Not kidney stones, internet connection problems, or client deadlines. Drip, drip.

People have said we should charge for it or discourage people forwarding it along. Never going to happen. Drip, drip.

We’ve had some readers for over 8 years. We get new additions every week. Drip, drip.

We’ve gotten RFPs and business from subscribers 2, 3 and 4 years after they started reading it. They hadn’t needed us or been in a position to hire us until then. Drip, drip.

How can you be a drip when it comes to marketing your company?

What to do when your client is in crisis

April 9, 2007

In most cases, our clients/customers come to us in a relatively calm state and we can react to them in our usual business manner. But what needs to shift if your client is in crisis mode?

I pondered this question this weekend, as I was a client in crisis mode. The perfect time for some marketing observation!

As many of you know, I was struck down by a kidney stone (actually 2) this weekend. If you haven’t ever had one – it is the most excruciating pain imaginable. They call it a writhing pain, because when you have one, you are in such pain, you can’t hold still. You literally writhe in agony.

I’ll give you my prognosis at the tail end of the post but for now, let’s look at what needs to shift when a client is in crisis. And yes, that’s how small a kidney stone is. Humbling to say the least.

They need you to acknowledge that they are in crisis. They want to know that you know. This is not the time for "can you hang on second" or "do you want some coffee." When I staggered into the ER hunched over, clammy and in pain, they didn’t wait to take my insurance information. They whisked me back to a room immediately.

They need to be your only priority until the crisis has passed. This isn’t the time to take another call or put them off until the next morning. They need you now. Tammy, my ER nurse, didn’t leave my side until she had the IV started and she’d administered the first dose of morphine.

They need reassurance. They want you to tell them you’re going to be at their side until it’s over. This isn’t the time to sugar coat things or say it’s going to be okay if it isn’t. But they want to know they won’t be going it alone.

They need empathy. If a client is in crisis, they’re most likely angry, scared, worried, sad or in pain. They want you to recognize that emotion in them and help them get it under control. Sheila, the attending nurse practitioner made sure I knew that she was going to be aggressive with the pain meds until I was comfortable. She wanted me out of pain as much as I did. (Well, maybe not quite as much!)

They want to see action. That’s the most reassuring element of all. They want to know you are doing something to get them out of their crisis. The whole ER team hustled me in and out of the CAT scan and got me the meds I needed quickly. When the morphine wasn’t stopping the pain, they rapidly moved up the pain meds food chain until they found one that did.

Dealing with a client who is in crisis mode is usually not pretty. They’re in full panic mode. But, if you can stay with them and get them through the crisis – you’ve earned a loyal client who will come to you in confidence, knowing you’ve seen them at their worst.

How have you dealt with clients in this frame of mind?

As for the stone saga – I’ve still got the two stones. They haven’t passed yet. Right now, they’re causing a tolerable amount of pain, so I am temporarily sprung from the hospital. The bummer about kidney stones is their unpredictability. These could pass without causing me much more pain and I could get by with the prescription meds. Or in a blink, they could send me back to the hospital. But…I know which hospital I’d go back to. Thanks to their understanding of how to deal with a client in crisis!

Bloggers sharing for profit — the next wave?

April 6, 2007

After only two months of blogging, one of the best things I’ve noticed is how sharing and supportive most bloggers are. They’re eager to help others get noticed and read through tipping, links and kind references. There seems to be very little ego in the marketing blogosphere.

So it doesn’t surprise me that Drew, on getting his 1,000th comment at Drew’s Marketing Minute, would invite the author of that comment to write a guest post. What a wonderful and generous way to mark a milestone. And how fortunate for me that the 1,000th comment happened to be mine.

Drew’s invitation is typical of the sharing mindset that is pervasive throughout the marketing blogosphere. I think it’s a major reason so many of us become active bloggers.

But what do you do when someone asks you to share information when it’s for their commercial gain?

As blogs are becoming recognized by marketers as an important form of social media that can influence and motivate, public relations and advertising agencies are starting to pitch bloggers, in hopes of gaining write-ups about their clients’ products and services. Since blogs are such personal forms of mass communications, marketers realize they can be powerful persuaders.

In the past several days, I received my first two pitches from PR people. Each represents a different end of the spectrum of professionalism.

My first pitch came from Harley Jebens at Click Here, a Dallas interactive marketing agency where our blogging friend Cam Beck works. Harley’s email to me was simple, straightforward and professional – he identified himself and his agency and said he was attaching information on a campaign my readers might find of interest. No hype – no obnoxious push. A news release and website were attached, if I wanted more info, along with a promise to answer any questions if I gave him a call or email.

Although I have no interest in talking about The MySpace page for the Travelocity Roaming Gnome it was a professional pitch and my compliments to Harley for a good try.

The second pitch came from a book publisher’s PR department. It was an email full of hyperbole about a book unrelated to anything I write about. In the email, the publicist tells me (not asks) that it’s something my readers will want to know about. How could she know that if, obviously, she hadn’t done her homework by looking at my blog. It wasn’t even addressed to me by name; it said Dear Blogger. The pitch told me where to buy the book. (You want me to write about your product and you won’t send or offer to send me a review copy? Thanks a lot.)

In the 30 years I’ve been doing public relations at agencies large and small, including my own firm for the past 15, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. The second pitch method does not work. It wouldn’t work if I were pitching a writer at a newspaper or magazine, and it won’t work to get into a blog.

I approached several bloggers on a client’s behalf for the first time back in January. After researching to find blogs on parenting, I viewed as many as I could, to get an idea of what they write about. I emailed the authors, with an approach similar to what Harley did when he pitched me – honest, transparent, not pushy.

The response was encouraging. Most responded by asking questions and/or asking to talk with my client before they told their readers about the product. Some took me up on my offer to send a product sample. One blogger asked me to have my client post a comment on her blog, talking about the product. A few didn’t respond and probably chose not to talk about the item. Overall, the client got some positive reviews and spirited discussion of the product’s merits in comments.

Key is that the approach was done gently and professionally, with full disclosure and no deception or trickery. No attempt to sneak onto a blog by posting a "sell" as a comment, as I saw tried just this week on two blogs. (One of the bloggers was annoyed and quickly deleted the comment. Lucky for the offending PR person that he didn’t choose instead to blast the product being pitched.)

You may have already been pitched by a PR person. If not, I bet you will in the coming year as the PR profession discovers the blogosphere. How bloggers are treated by marketers and their public relations representatives seeking to use their channels of communication will make a difference, since, ultimately, the decision will be yours as to what you care to share with your readers.

How would you prefer to be pitched?

~ David Reich, My 2 Cents

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