Marketing and Advertising Archives - Page 4 of 5

The 5 things that will derail your marketing in 2012

February 8, 2012

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but the truth is — most organizations’ marketing efforts stink. And they stink for reasons well within the marketing department’s control.

If you’re worried that your own efforts might fall short — beware of these five danger zones that can derail you in a blink!

Inconsistency: Does your monthly newsletter go out 5 times a year? Does your copy tone/style fluctuate between somber and casual? Are your weekly sales calls happening every week?

Inconsistency not only waters down your results but it also waters down your brand. If you can’t get your newsletter out on time — why in the world would I, a prospective customer, think you can deliver what you want to sell me on time?

Not having a plan: One contributing factor to inconsistency is the wishy washiness that comes from winging it. Without a document that maps out where you are going…in the rush of the day, you end up on detours you never intended. Or worse, you end up on the sidelines trying to figure out your next move, rather than moving forward.

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be a leather bound edition, but it does need to be in writing and it needs to be something you reference at your weekly/regular marketing meetings.

Trying to do too much: I want to hear a collective sigh of relief as you read this. You simply cannot do it all. So stop trying. You are far better off to do a few things consistently and well, than try to manage too many marketing tactics.

The average sized organization can only successfully produce and monitor a handful of initiatives at once. So plan it out carefully so you can deliver consistency and quality. Every time. That will be far more impressive than doing more every once in awhile.

Not matching your budget with your appetite: I see this happen all the time. A big company is stingy with their marketing dollars and does so little, they don’t even show up on the radar screen. Or the flip side — a small company saves up all their pennies and launches a huge splash but can only sustain it for 60 days and then goes quiet.

Marketing is for the long haul. You need to know you can sustain your efforts or their effect will be fleeting.

You. Yup, I said it. You’re actually the biggest risk to the marketing efforts. Why? Because you know when you’re doing something that isn’t going to work. You know what you can and can’t pull off. You know that you talk about yourself too and don’t talk with the audience about the stuff they care about enough. You know you should spend/do more and be more consistent. Maybe you even know you can’t do it by yourself but you’re too cheap to hire some help (either staff or an agency).

So what are you going to do to get out of your own way?

What do you think? Would you have a different set of obstacles? Want to add any to my list?

Stock photograph courtesy of Big Stock Photo

What you don’t know about your sales funnel

January 30, 2012

We all think and talk about our sales funnel a lot. We’re always saying things like:

We need to keep it full.
We need to stay active with the prospects that have been in it for awhile.
On average, it takes a prospect X months to move through it.
And so on….

But consider the statistic to the right. 60% of your sales efforts are what happens before you have actively put someone into the funnel. In other words — it’s not you who is doing the selling.

Who is?

Your existing customers
The customer who left and is working with your competitors
Your vendors
Your website
Review sites
Your social presence (or lack thereof)

How much do you know about your pre-funnel sales machine? Do you know what’s being said? Maybe the bigger question — how should you be influencing those conscious and accidental sales efforts?

Think about how you shop — whether it’s for work or something for home. Do you beeline for a salesperson or sales collateral? Or do you do a little bit of investigating first?

Get out a piece of paper and do this exercise. Write down the bullet points I have above (starting with your existing customers) and next to each bullet point — describe what you would ideally like a prospect to hear/see/experience from each source.

Then — go to each source and see what’s actually being said/experienced. I’m guessing you’ll identify some areas that require your attention.

After all — your prospects are paying attention to these sources — shouldn’t you?

5 questions to define your 2012 game plan

December 30, 2011

Define your 2012 game plan

Over the past month, I’ve been posing what I hope have been some head scratching, thought provoking questions to help you get ready for 2012.

If you can answer these five questions — I think you’re going to have a solid foundation for your marketing efforts moving forward.

In case you missed one, here are the five questions (with links to the whole post):

So — have the questions changed your plans or focus? Narrowed things a bit? Or were these all a slam dunk?

Happy New Year and here’s to a very prosperous, joyful 2012 to you and yours!

Stock photo courtesy of www.BigStockPhoto.com

Marketing Insights Question: How are you building your marketing foundation?

December 20, 2011

How are you building your marketing’s foundation?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way. I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization. If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

How are you building your marketing foundation? We’ve talked a lot about the know • like • trust model. If you remember, the final leg of that equation is that consistency creates trust and trust leads to sales.

How do you generate that trust? By building a marketing foundation. And here’s how you go about that.

You do one thing on a regular (daily, weekly or monthly) basis that will add incredible value for your prospects and customers. This is something that, if you stopped doing it or skipped a week — they’d not only notice the absence but they’d actually miss it.

What is the one thing? It’s going to be different for every one of us — depending on our industry, our clientele, our position in the market place, our bandwidth and our organization’s culture.

It could be as simple as an enewsletter or as complex as a podcast where you interview leading experts in your field every week. It might be a cartoon or an ongoing video series.

No matter what form it takes, it must meet these criteria to qualify:

It’s scaleable so as your audience grows, you can include many more people
You are 110% committed to honoring your consistency pledge
It is not a sales piece — this is you creating incredible value
It is shareable (people can pass it along to colleagues somehow, even if that means tacking it up on a bulletin board)
It should be unique to you. Either no one else in your competitive set does something like it or you do it so differently that it stands out

This is going to require some creativity on your part. And some discipline. As soon as an idea starts to sound at all like a sales tool or gimmick, smack yourself. That’s the kiss of death. And it is the mistake 90% of all organizations make. They just can’t resist hinting at or outright asking for the sale.

If you truly adopt this effort — you will create long lasting relationships with clients and prospects. You’ll also create a word of mouth marketing machine, as your audience shares your offerings far and wide.

Start with that first building block…and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ve built something worthwhile.

Marketing insights question: Who is your ideal customer?

December 6, 2011

Do you really know your ideal customer?

Who is your ideal customer? One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is that they cast too wide a net, when it comes to prospecting. Not all money on the table is good money. We’ve all had a bad customer. But if we’re really honest, we’ll admit that they weren’t a bad customer. They were just bad for us.

Assuming you have a finite marketing budget or that you still haven’t figured out how to extend the day past 24 hours — you have to make some choices. So why not target the very best possible customers?

Your intentional marketing efforts should be laser focused on those people/companies who are ideally suited to benefit the most from your offerings AND bring you the best benefit (profits, repeat business, referrals, longevity etc.) back to your organization.

Are you running around like Chicken Little, trying to make sure that everyone and anyone knows about your business? Do you spend marketing dollars on long shots and Hail Mary passes? If you are — stop it. Now.

Instead, invest that energy into discovering who your best customer is. Describe them. Be able to tell me what matters to them and how they get their kicks. Know what they drive and why they chose it. When they go to a restaurant, do they pay attention to the fat content of the offerings, the prices or if there’s a 16 z steak on the menu?

Once you really know who they are — you’ll know how you can help them. Talk to them about it. Help them a little so they get to know you before you ask them to buy. Tell them stories of how you’ve helped other people. In other words — market to your best customers in a way that creates trust and familiarity. have you noticed how your best customers end up being your friends?

That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?

Unless you have an unlimited marketing budget and time on your hands – you can’t afford to waste one minute or one dollar on anyone who isn’t ideal. So figure out who that is…. and stay focused on the people/companies you can help the most.

Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

Don’t have the time to do marketing

November 2, 2011

I don’t have time to do marketing

If there’s a common theme in the conversations I have with business owners, it’s that they don’t have the time to consistently market their business.

We might be talking about sending out a customer e-newsletter, participating in social media, attending an important trade show or updating their website. The specifics don’t matter. They just simply don’t have the time.

I get it. The whole 24 hour in a day thing.

I ask them if they have time to serve their clients. And they say, “of course… I have to do that to stay in business.”

I ask them if they have time to send out bills to their customers. And they say, “of course… I have to do that to stay in business.”

You find time to do what’s necessary. If it has to get done, it gets done.

Ahhh. So it’s not that you don’t have time. It’s that you don’t consider marketing a necessity to stay in business. Now that’s a very different conversation.

How much should you spend on marketing?

September 15, 2011

How much should you spend on marketing?

I know I need to do some marketing but how much should I spend? How much do other companies my size spend?

This is probably one of the most asked questions of marketing agencies and consultants. If you google the phrase, there are 17+ million results. And yet, we keep asking. So let me see if I can drill down to the heart of it.

One of the reasons why it’s on everyone’s mind is because there is no magic answer. No one solution.

Before we get into the methods of determining a right answer, let’s be very clear about these two points:

1) The exact amount matters less than having an amount. In other words, having and tracking a marketing budget, even if your initial number is off, is much more important than getting the number exactly right.

2) You can have the right budget and spend it on the wrong things. A marketing plan should always be tied to a strategic marketing budget.

Now, let’s tackle the question. Here are some of the more effective ways to set a marketing budget:

Percentage of gross sales/revenue:

This is probably the simplest method. Most experts recommend somewhere in the range of 2-8% of gross sales. McKinsey & Company is often quoted at 5%.

Most small businesses (less than $5 million gross revenue) should shoot for at least 7-8%.

Industry-specific:

Many industries have their own standard. For example:

Consumer package goods: Up to 50% of projected net sales to launch a new product
Industrial B-to-B: 1% of gross sales
Retail: 4-10% of net revenues
Banks/Credit Unions: 2-5% of assets
Law firms: 1-4% of gross revenues
Pharmaceuticals: Up to 20% of net sales
Hospitals: 1% of net revenues

Lifetime value of customer:

The idea is simple. You identify how much profit (on average) you make during the lifetime of that customer relationship and determine how much you are willing to invest per customer acquisition. If you choose this method be very careful that your numbers are accurate.

Goals/Plan driven:

The thinking behind this method is really a blend of some of the others. Identify measurable goals (# of new clients, % of revenue increase, etc) and then determine your sales equation.

For example: For every 100 prospects approached, you get 25 initial meetings. From those 25 meetings, you can expect to get 12 invitations to present a proposal. From 12 proposals, you will score 4 new clients. If your goal is 20 new clients, you now know that you need to approach 500 qualified prospects. You build your marketing plan to accomplish that and assign the costs accordingly.

Again, this method requires very accurate numbers to make the equations viable.

So what do you think? Which method do you currently use? If you don’t have a marketing budget, which method do you think would serve you best?

Is social media right for your business?

September 10, 2011

…is social media right for your business?

There are a lot of social media “experts” out there who will tell you that every single organization on the globe should be participating in social media. They will point to the cool Facebook fan pages they’ve made or the funny videos their clients have on YouTube and say “see, you can do this too.” And they’re right. You can.

The question is: Should you?

The real answer to that question is “it depends.” It depends on whether or not it can do one of two things.

Save you money
Make you money

If it isn’t going to accomplish one of those two goals, then you have no business engaging in it. Why?

Participating in social media is expensive. I know everyone talks about how cheap it is…but that’s because they are not thinking like a business owner. They’re thinking like someone who knows how to open a YouTube channel account or sign you up on Twitter. It’s true, creating an account on many of the tools and networks is free. But that’s where free ends.

To integrate social media into the rest of your marketing, which is an absolute if you want to consider it a business tool, you are going to have to expend some resources. Social media requires care and feeding. It requires brand integration. And it requires a well-conceived strategy. All of those are going to cost time and money.

Don’t misunderstand. I believe in the power and reach of social media and most of our agency’s clients are using social media tools as part of their overall marketing strategy, but I am not bullish on the belief du jour that everyone must do it and it’s free. Neither is true.

Here are twenty questions to ask yourself as you consider melding social media into your existing marketing strategy.

How will it save us money?

Will it allow us to stop doing something we’re currently doing?
Will it allow us to extend/expand something we are currently doing?
Will it lower our customer acquisition costs?
Will it connect us to existing customers in an efficient way?
Will we be able to use social media to create a community specifically for our customers?
Will it be easier for our customers to rave about us/create positive word of mouth?
Do we look behind the times to our customers if we aren’t there?
Will it introduce us to new potential customers at a low lead generation cost?
Will it make us more findable (either within the social network or on search engines)?
Will it impact our search engine results? (so we don’t have to buy results)

How will it make us money?

Will it shorten our sales cycle?
Will it create credibility/trust faster among prospects?
Can we establish ourselves as the expert?
Will it shorten customer service response time?
Will it create a sense of accessibility for our customers?
Will it increase trial of our product/service?
Will it allow us to connect with more prospects at once?
Will it increase repeat buying?
Will it increase up sells?
Can we collect/use testimonials?

If the answers to those questions indicates that social media would be a smart investment for your company to make, then you should be there. But now you will enter into it knowing that there’s a return for that investment.

Now we’re talking smart marketing, not marketing hype.

Where does your brand live?

August 30, 2011

…How does your brand come alive?

When we talk about a company’s brand, in most cases people’s minds jump immediately to their logo. No argument – a logo is a vital element of how you communicate it. It is the visual representation of who and what you are. But your logo is just the beginning of it.

Others might point to your tagline and suggest that’s where your brand lives. Again, it’s an important communication tool for telling people what your company is all about. But where both your logo and your tagline fall short is that they’re one-way communications. You are showing or telling, but your audience is not actually experiencing your brand.

Brands really come to life when an experience confirms or amplifies the promise that your logo and/or tagline might offer. Here are some key spots that you might not think about from a brand point of view. But, they’re places where you can truly bring it to life for your employees, customers and vendors.

Your office/work space: You know what they say about first impressions. One spot where many first impressions are created is when someone comes to see you for the first time. Whether you have a retail space, office space or work virtually through an extranet — how it first appears to your audience will stick for a long time.

Does it feel very corporate and official?
Is it welcoming and kind of funky?
Could it be called cluttered or filled with interesting items?
How about neat, with everything in its place?

All of that speaks to your brand and what matters to you.

Your “first day at work” experience: Never forget, your most active and important advocates are your employees. And for them, there are few days more memorable than their first day at work. What is that day like for them?

Are they assigned a buddy who helps them get oriented to your workplace, the people and the procedures?
Is there a small gift (maybe a hat with your company logo on it) waiting for them at their new desk?
Do some of their teammates take them out to lunch?
Are they given training or is it a baptism by fire?
Is everything ready for their arrival or are you scrambling to get paperwork and supplies to them?

Think how many people are going to ask them “how was your first day?” From a brand perspective, what do you want their answer to be?

Your “return” policy: Even if you are a corporate lawyer, you have your own version of a return policy. How do you handle an unhappy client? What do you have in place to avoid making them unhappy in the first place?

Do you have a guarantee tied to your pricing or billing?
Do you have a confidential way for them to register a complaint?
Do you offer refunds without restrictions, boundaries or tiny type?
Do you have an apology gift or letter that is ready to go in the case of a hiccup?

Remember that an unhappy customer is likely to tell more than twenty people why they’re unhappy. Do you have policies and procedures in place so that your brand comes out smelling like a rose when those stories get told?

Just like everything in else in life – we can talk all we want, but it is our actions that really tell the story. How you wrap your brand around key experiences like those first impressions, the first day of work and when things go wrong will go much further in terms of creating a lasting brand.

So where do you think your brand is most alive and vibrant?

What should you buy from a social media savvy agency?

August 5, 2011

…buy the right help from the right agency

Okay…the other day I blew a fuse about social media consultants selling smoke screens and mirrors. (read my rant here)

Which of course begs the question — what SHOULD you buy from someone who actually has an expertise in melding social media into the rest of your marketing efforts? (And yes…at MMG we do all of this but so do many other qualified and competent consultants)

Strategy: Whether you’re pretty familiar with all things social or you don’t know your Facebook page from your Facebook status — it helps to have an outsider help you think through your strategy.

They’ll ask questions to get you really thinking about WHY you’re investing resources into social media and WHAT goals/results matter to your organization.

Measurements: A good social media strategist will help you determine WHAT to measure and HOW to measure what matters.

While social media serves up things to count, they don’t always count, if you know what I mean. That you have 1,348 Twitter followers may be important or it may just be a meaningless number.

A good strategist will help you determine not only what to measure but help you set up a comparative reporting system (we call ours The MMG Digital Footprint) that monitors your progress.

Mechanics: You don’t need to know how to code a blog or customize a Facebook fan page to build one into your marketing activities. Let your social media consultant either do the heavy lifting or supervise someone else doing it for you.

The great thing about most social media is that it’s plug and play but the truth is — it should all look and feel like your brand. Which means some customization is needed.

Content Massaging: Odds are you already have plenty of raw material for content creation. But it’s probably not written in the style, length or format best suited for social media.

Need a white paper turned into an ebook? Or a research report converted into an infographic? Let your social media agency take your existing material and get it ready for your friends and followers.

Coaching: Understanding that a touchdown is worth 6 points is very different from knowing the nuances of how to actually get into the end zone. Many companies fumble the ball (sorry — the last football analogy) by applying old school marketing behaviors to these new marketing tools.

Having someone at your side, teaching you how to navigate the new waters without making any faux pas. Remember…Google never forgets.

Systems: There are plenty of tools out there to help make your social media activities more efficient and easier to manage. Whether it’s setting up your listening post (it’s not just about creating content — you need to know what people are saying about your company, your industry, your competitors etc.) or scheduling your content’s publication (so you can time fresh content to appear when your audience is online) — your social media partner can help you do more with less effort.

Integration: Social media (like all marketing tactics) should not exist in a vacuum. It should fold into the rest of your marketing strategy and efforts. Otherwise, you are not stacking up your impressions and maximizing every dollar and every effort.

Of course, that’s just hitting the highlights but you get the idea. There’s plenty for an agency to help you with. But they should be behind the scenes…not front and center.

There’s no substitute for your smarts, years of experience or personality. That’s how your prospects meet your brand.

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