Be a Marketing Fashionista: Reconsider Direct Mail

Email vs. direct mail vs. print vs. interactive.  There has been a shift of how marketers reach their clients and prospects.  In today’s digital age, your clients and prospects are bombarded with email, web advertisements, mobile ads, texts, TV and radio advertisements all day long. So, how do you stand out in the clutter? 

To me, it all gets down to targeting and an integrated approach to reach those targets.  There is a time and place for “mass” marketing, but with marketing budgets under more tight constrain, targeting your efforts can lead to measurable ROI that can be used more efficiently (rolled out in more mass as the model is validated). 

So, what integrated approach works best?  It really does depend on what you are trying to achieve.  For a long time, direct mail was the only way to consistently reach prospects, so it was used extensively, and customers became turned off by all of the “junk mail." Over the last few years email marketing has taken a more front row to traditional direct mail.  Over the last 18 months interactive, such as web and social media, has been growing in importance.   

As marketers look at their mix, I want them to resurface the importance of direct mail. New studies have found that direct mail is taking a new importance in the marketing campaigns.  People have moved past their initial apathy to direct mail and are tending to respond again to receiving a piece of physical mail. Research by Mail Print1 found that “85% of consumers sort through and read selected pieces of mail every day. 75% of consumers are saying that they are examining their mail more closely in the recent months to search for coupons and discounts. 40% of consumers say that they have tried a new business after receiving direct mail, and 70% have renewed relationships with companies/products that they had previously ceased using.” 

Direct mail is not the end-all, but marketers who use direct mail are capitalizing on a venue that can drive increased brand exposure that can surface warm leads.  Direct mail is changing through the use of unique direct mail formats that include color, oversized formats and the use of interactive efforts such as QR codes and frontflip. Try an oversized envelope that stands out from the standard #10 envelopes that dominate a pile of mail. Try using a QR code that drives to a specific offer or even creating an app that is rewards based.  The new trend is “triggering” marketing – where a response from a marketing effort triggers another specific direct marketing effort.  This could be something like a birthday, where you can send a personalized email and special offer, or a follow up message a certain number of days after a quote has been delivered. Trigger messages are nearly always based on a customer action, whether it’s inquiring about your product or service, or providing a company with demographic information or preferences, so it is far more likely to be opened, read, and acted upon than a general, unsolicited email.

So, as you build your marketing campaigns, think like a fashion designer.  In fashion, layering clothing adds interest, texture, and style. In marketing layering messages adds reach, penetration, engagement, and conversion.

Resonate with Prospects by Staring with Why not What

What messages are you using when you are “selling” your services?

·         We get great results;  you provide your clients/prospects a tally of your results

·         We have the best resources and executives; you provide their bios to demonstrate credentials

·         We are a full-service business law firm – seamless services for all your needs; you provide a firm overview and demonstrate the depth/breadth of services

·         We build relationships that drive results; you highlight your clients via client testimonials

The Golden Circle by Simon Sinek

Are these key messages differentiating?  Not likely.  We all know that if we can better communicate how your executives/associates are superior to the competitors we will have a leg up at winning more business from clients or prospects.

The issue is that the market is cluttered with messages and few standout.  There is a concept called “The Golden Circle,” created by Simon Sinek, that really is golden.  The concept demonstrates that a small change in how you think, act and communicate can make all the difference in how your clients/prospects will perceive you – and it will make an impression that stands out.

The Golden Circle is about the process of differentiation.  It is the difference in approaching your business from the perspective of What/How/Why versus Why/How/What.  Think about it: everyone knows” what” they do and this is the easiest to communicate – thus most of what lawyers use in their key messages (more rational, but hard to differentiate).  Some people know how they do it.  However, very few communicate “why” they do what they do and this is the key to make a connection that more readily leverages trust and loyalty (the part of the brain that controls decision making).

Can you define your "why"?

·         WHY does your organization exist?

·         WHY does it do the things it does?

·         WHY do customers really buy from one company or another?

·         WHY are people loyal to some companies, but not others?

If you don't know why you do what you do, odds are your customers won't either. Any company can compete on price, quality, service and features ... and we see them as commodities.  I encourage you to learn more about how to market using why versus What - video a video:  TheGolden Circle.

Enjoy!

Another Way to Think About Influencing Buyers

 I recently was featured as a guest blogger on Legal Sonar. Wanted to share with you! Enjoy.

Do you know why your customers are buying from you?

·         Is it your legal “expertise?”

·         Your track record? 

·         The opinions of your referrals? 

·         The price you offer?

·         Your ability to provide them seamless service for all their needs?

·         You understand their business and can speak to them about appropriate ways to help them?

There are many factors that can affect the purchasing decision and understanding the KEY influences impacting buying can put you in a position to better tailor your approach – and have a better opportunity to resonate with clients/targets..

As you think about these influencers, whether psychological, demographic, personal or social, also think about how impacting a customer’s attitudes and behaviors can assist with your marketing and business development efforts. It’s no secret that emotions are powerful factors that move people into action and cause them to make a purchase. To influence your buyers, you must understand and appeal to them emotionally.

·     Impacting Attitudes – How do you get customers to prefer your product/services, believe in your cause, trust/respect you, drop an objective they have about your product/services or recommend/endorse you? Impacting attitudes is about how you communicate and what you communicate (key messages).

·     Impacting Behavior – How do you get customers to respond, attend an event, call you/accept a call, respond to a promotion/targeting campaign, actively consider your product/service or accept a meeting? Impacting behaviors is the result of understanding your target. If you can change a customer’s behavior, you are more apt to convert them to your product/service.

Taking a step back, the only way that understanding influencers matters is if you are properly identifying your targets. Without identifying your targets, you will not be able to accurately position yourself in the market and use influencers to drive marketing efforts. Targeting allows you to understand what venue you need to focus your marketing in that can generate leads that produce customers. The use of targeting, customer influencers and a multi channel strategy is a successful formula for success in marketing.

More than the Eye Can See

Marketing is all about understanding our customers and creating messages that resonate with them.   We know that finding that trigger point and helping potential clients understand how you can help them is a winning recipe.

Marketing is also about visually connecting with your clients.  I was recently sent some logos that help put into perspective the visual identity and the lengths marketers go through to help communicate messages with clients.

Enjoy these "hidden" but powerful messages.

Note:  All logos in this communication are property of the company and used here for educational purposes only

What can be seen in a corporate logo...

Do you see the white arrow between the "E" and "x" ?? I had never noticed this before. 

2nd and 3rd "t's are two people sharing a tortilla over a bowl of salsa


Probably the world's most famous bike race. The "R" in "Tour" is a cyclist - yellow circle front wheel of bicycle. 


Arrow probably means Amazon has everything from A to Z ?? 


There is a sideways chocolate kiss between "K" and "I" 

There is a bear if you look closely at the image of Matterhorn.

Toblerone chocolate bars originated in Berne, Switzerland, whose symbol is the bear. 

Northwest Airlines. Circle is a compass. Guess which direction the arrow in upper left corner (or beginning of "W") is pointing ??? (north west)


See the gorilla and lioness ?? 

See "31" embedded in the " B R" ?? Thirty one-derful flavors !!! 

Used to be the emblem for the Milwaukee Brewers. Baseball glove forms an "M" and a "B".  Logo was designed by a college art student.

Think Outside the Box: Help Drive the Next Big Idea

As marketers, we know there are many things that we need to work on to assist our companies with meeting their objectives: traditional marketing, interactive, public relations and business development activities. Marketing injects the customer insight and creative thinking that gives business its edge.  We combine these with analytical data to drive strategy, innovation and profitable/sustainable growth.  With this, it is our job to help our firms keep on-top of the next big idea that resonates with our clients/targets. This can be both from a pure marketing standpoint or helping our leaders with the next area for growth (development of new or enhanced products/services).

Photo from Jannoon028

Tips for brainstorming:  In a series of interviews with highly successful creative people, Peter Sims, author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, writes that most innovators don’t begin with brilliant ideas – they discover them through experimentation. Here are lessons learned from some of those top doers:

• Get Out of the Office – One of the best ways to identify creative insights and develop ideas is to get out into the world, like an anthropologist might. Steve Blank, a retired Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is also a professor at Stanford, routinely challenges students to defy their assumptions by immersing themselves in the world. “No facts exist inside the building,” he says. “Only opinions.”
• Unleash Your Imagination – Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t set out to revolutionize the way we search for information. Their goal, as collaborators on the Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project, was to prioritize online library searches. But their small discoveries led to the famous “PageRank” algorithm. Amazon.com also embraces the experimental discovery approach. “Many efforts turn out to be dead ends,” says founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. “But every once in a while, you go down an alley and it opens up into this huge, broad avenue.”
• Change Your Course – Acclaimed architect Frank Gehry designed conventional buildings like tract housing and shopping malls for much of his career. Inspired by how artists manipulate materials, he performed a series of experiments on his own house in Santa Monica in the late ‘70s. Soon after, he closed his firm and started a new, using his own style and voice. He was 50 years old. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t broken free from the realm of what he was used to.
• Take An Experimental Approach – Chris Rock, the Google founders and Jeff Bezos are examples of what University of Chicago economist David Galenson has dubbed “experimental innovators” – those who use iterative, trial-and-error approaches to gradually reach breakthroughs. They don’t try to hit narrow targets on unknown horizons, analyze new ideas too much too soon, or put their hopes into one big bet. They’ve all reached extraordinary success by making a series of “small bets.”

Now with all of this, we have to keep in mind what our business objectives are, where we want to grow our business and always keep on top of demo/psychographics of our customers.  Thinking outside the box, while we may not get to execute there all the time, is how we can help our companies stay competitive and innovative.

Here's to helping our companies anticipate the next idea that resonates with their clients/targets!

kathryn_anastasio@yahoo.com

Targeting: Don't Forget Generational Impacts

Photo from Sheelamohan

As we know, the key to successful marketing is understanding how we can help achieve a firms business objective.  As marketers, we must identify who we are marketing to and what channels/messages resonates with them.  Part of this analysis takes into consideration how generational differences impact our marketing efforts.

Each generation has their own characteristics and understanding these can be of value in our execution of marketing tactics that lead to an increase in successful outcomes.  Generational marketing involves identifying and understanding how the beliefs, attitudes, emotions, needs, and interests of each generation influence their decisions and behavior. And effective implementation of generational marketing practices is key for targeting member segments of all ages.

• Traditionalists/Silent Generation (born before 1946) survived the Great Depression, WW2, Korea, Gandhi’s assassination and the rise of labor unions.  They are loyal, desire to leave a legacy, value personal relationships, follow rules and have faith in institutions.  Values of company are important.
• Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are just beginning to move out of midlife and into the early stages of elderhood. The broad generational personality that Boomers experience orients toward vision, values and spiritual discovery.  They are hard working, competitive and desire to put their own stamp on institutions (are free thinkers).  Image is important and they also put weight in value (not price sensitivity).
• GenXers (born between 1965 and 1981) are just beginning to move out of young adulthood and into midlife. The broad generational personality that GenXers experience orients toward liberty, survival and honor. They are resourceful, highly adaptive, self-reliant, skeptical of institutions and independent.
• GenY/Millenials (born between 1982 and 2000) are just beginning to arrive as young adults in the American landscape. The broad generational personality that Millennials experience orients toward community, affluence and technology. They are globally concerned and aware, cyber-literate, collaborative/group oriented, and vocal.
• Homeland Gen (born after 2000) are just arriving as a new generation. They share the same broad traits with the elders, currently 67-84 years old. This generational personality orients toward pluralism, expertise and due process.  They are tech-native, media-smart, artistically inclined, integrated and pan-cultural.

In order to market effectively to a generation you must find a way to grab their attention in channels that they use and with key messages that hit their core values.  Generational determined lifestyles and social values exercise as much influence on buying and purchasing as more commonly understood demographic factors like income, education, and gender do--perhaps even more.

Marketers that take generational impacts into consideration are more successful in their channel marketing efforts and contributing to more bottom line results.

Read more at:

• General Article on Generational Marketing
• Business News Daily - Bridging the gap between Gen X and Y
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek - Generation Y
• Tips on Generational Marketing (video)

Kathryn_anastasio@yahoo.com

True Value: Measure Your Marketing Effectiveness (Part I)

Photo from Renjith Krishnan

Marketing is not just an expense to an organization – it is an investment.

(Part I of a two-part post)

Over the last 20 years, the range of marketing options and opportunities for marketers has expanded dramatically.  Once there was only a limited choice - print and TV.  Now there is a whole range of media from direct mail to video to new technologies (social media, QR codes, etc.). As marketers, we know that executives are asking us to justify the effectiveness of our efforts - demonstrate the ROO (return on objective) or ROI (return on investment) of how we spend a company’s marketing dollars.  With the proliferation of new marketing mediums to invest in, marketers struggle to understand which options deliver the greatest returns. So, how do marketers approach measurement?

As a marketer, my success with measurement is in defining relevant metrics and measurement criteria to demonstrate the value of my efforts to help advance business objectives.  The metrics must correlate the marketing activities (cause) with the marketing performance, financial results, and customer impact (effect). 

The Foundation

A successful metrics framework is used to understand the correlation of marketing campaigns to defined corporate goals and objectives. For any measurement to be meaningful, you first must define goals and objectives of the business and determine how marketing can build strategies and tactics to help advance the businesses objectives.  Prior to embarking on new marketing initiatives, develop a plan with specific, quantifiable objectives, e.g., achieve $5 million incremental sales, 10,000 inquiries, 10 percent of coupon redemption, receive 15 percent increase in web traffic, sell-in displays at XYZ account, etc.

Second, ensure you have a way to “measure” your efforts.  Develop and utilize a customer database that captures promotional responses, website registrations, advertising and trade show inquiries, etc.. Ideally, the database should integrate with your corporate information systems to report sales transactions, purchase history, new customer gains and losses (acquisition and retention), and other detailed information.  Consider testing your metrics to ensure you can gather the information that will be beneficial to driving business.

Third, to improve the effectiveness of marketing you need to not only improve the measurability of your marketing programs, but also ensure you are measuring the right things. Don’t simply look at how much is spent.  Look at how the activity has helped you reach a goal that leads to bottom line revenue. Remember to figure out how to value a customer and how much to invest in acquiring and maintaining that customer.

Finally, ensure that you are reporting back on the effectiveness of your efforts - in aggregate and at a campaign/initiative level. Includes lessons learned and quantify, as you can, revenue that is connected to the efforts. Remember, it's not always a straight line between marketing and revenue, but measuring your efforts can help determine efficiencies of your efforts to help drive business. Marketers can't always draw a line between content creation and financial return. An investment in words, visuals and online media that drive site visits, Facebook fans, retweets, video views and positive ratings is not reflected on the balance sheet. But, that doesn't mean these activities are without measurable value. Instead, they are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value, and that can drive financial results in the future.

As there is a lot of meat to this topic, I plan to continue my thoughts in Part II (next week) - examples of what can be measured.

Here's to planning and analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Other Resources

• Measurement Cheat Sheet - great overview of B2B marketing measurements. 
• For a great “toolkit” for measuring marketing, visit  marketo .com  
• Marketing ROI Calculator for measuring the marketing ROI for direct mail or e-mail campaigns 

 kathryn_anastasio@yahoo.com

First Impressions: More than just Human Interactions

We have all heard this warning: "You never get a second chance to make a good first impression."  In business, a positive first impression is crucial for forging sustainable, long-term partnerships with buyers to keep it thriving. Businesses spend a great deal of time and resources on keeping their existing clients. Consistently, making a strong first impression is essential for gaining new customers and clients.

Photo from renjith krishnan

There are many aspects to marketing, but one of the most important is in being able to quickly capture the attention of potential customers and clients. The field of marketing relies on good first impressions. 

It is one thing to grab the attention of a potential client or customer and another completely to grab their attention for all the wrong reasons. The art of attention seeking, without being overly persistent or irritating, is an important art to learn- really capturing the interest of the consumer.

It is almost important that, after grabbing the attention of your audience, you don’t lose sight of what the product or service that you’re offering really is. This has been a common problem for marketers, and has given rise to the common customer complaint that while they were entertained by an advertisement or a gimmick they were left without a real understanding of what the advertisement was trying to sell.

Keep in mind your marketing first impressions:

• Brand – Do your key messages convey how your product/service will help your buyers (not just support your firm)?
• E-mail Marketing – Many firms deal with lackluster open rates of e-mail communications.  Are you subject lines engaging to your target?  The right message at the right time does little to benefit the brand if it is never opened.
• Website – Is your website easily navigated from a customer’s/buyers point of view? Is it easy for people to contact you if they have questions? Do you have a mobile viewable website for easy of today's technology savvy buyers?  Should you invest in a mobile application to ease the buying process?  What web/technology channels are important to your targets?
• Social Media - Do you need to utilize social media?  If so, are you posting consistenty?  Are your messages important to your targets?  Do your messages engage your targets or get them interested in a product/service?  As marketers, we need to determine what our strategy is for using social media and ensure that our first impressions are not hurting our overall brand and positioning.
• Collateral – Firms spent time and money writing, designing, and printing various pieces of collateral to communicate your firms products/services.  Does your collateral grab your viewers’ attention and encourages them to read the information you've worked so hard to put together? Or keep your business card in their files, bookmark your website, consider your proposal, or whatever the goal for the marketing piece may be? Are your "sales" material focused on benefits and ways your product/services help your potential buyers?
• Phone messages/Receptionist Greetings – Part of making first impressions include voice messages of the firm and how the receptionist answers the phone.  Are these consistent and professional?
• Store Layout/Displays – Is the design of your store or your display logically attuned to your buyers (not just appeasing to your design preferences)?  For displays, does it grab the attention of your buyer?
• Product Packaging/Signage –  This is critical for B2C.  Enough said. For B2B, are you bundling services to make the buying process easier for your buyers?

First impressions are important for your employees and your marketing efforts.  Here’s to making positive first impressions with your marketing efforts. 

kathryn_anastasio@yahoo.com

Budgets: What do you Spend on Marketing?



Photo from Stuart Miles

 The age-old question is how much your marketing budget should run in comparison to firm budgets or revenues. Should you set them top down?  Bottom up?  In alignment with what your competitors spend?  Should they be a percentage of revenue or profits? As marketers, we know the key to establishing a successful marketing budget is to have an actual plan (in writing) so we can establish specific dollar amounts to spend each month to support our business.  We know that creating an effective marketing program means investing in it on an ongoing basis regardless of how good or bad business is.  

 Go-to-Market Strategies recently published a study that released normative levels for marketing budgets.  According to their research 30% of companies spend between 3-5% of revenue on marketing, with 45% spending over 6% (most of those between 6-10%). They indicated that if a company is launching a new product, or are expecting to launch into a new market or territory, budgets jumped to approximately 20% of revenue.

As marketers, we can take these percentages as a base.  What percentage you use is determined by a number of factors such as, industry (some industries trend higher), how mature is your market (how much education do you have to do), how well known is your company to your targets (are you a new or established business, how much brand awareness do you have to do), and how fast do you intend to grow.   

• When building your marketing budgets, here are things that I take into consideration:
• Activities to support the overall brand and the initiatives to support channel activity. These include logos, Web sites, blogs, e-mail campaigns, sales presentations, brochures, ads, etc.
• Activities to support Business Development.  These include targeting, RFP, events/webinars, proposal efforts, newsletters/e-communications, etc.
• New developments.  Take into consideration new market expansion, new product/service launches, M&A, downsizing, rebranding, significant announcements, etc.

Note: For those firms that do not have a marketing budget, I recommend that you take a bottom up approach (to gauge what is needed - don't just assign an industry percentage.  Many firms starting out will have smaller budgets as they build their efforts.

Remember to build in some flexibility.  Many marketers include a 10‐15% contingency in marketing plans because you can never predict 100% what will happen over the coming year(opportunities and challenges). 

Happy Budgeting!

Kathryn_anastasio@yahoo.com

Another Way to Think About Influencing Buyers

Do you know why your customers are buying from you? There are many factors that can affect this process as a person works through the purchase decision. The number of potential influences on consumer behavior is limitless. However, marketers are well served to understand the KEY influences impacting buying.  By doing so they may be in a position to tailor their marketing efforts to take advantage of these influences in a way that will satisfy the consumer and the marketer (The premise of marketing is identifying the people most likely to buy your produce/service, develop rapport or a close relationship with them and help them achieve their purchase goals).

As you think about these influencers, whether psychological, demographic, personal or social, also think about how impacting a customer’s attitudes and behaviors can assist with your marketing and business development efforts. It’s no secret that emotions are powerful factors that move people into action and cause them to make a purchase. To influence your buyers, you must understand and appeal to them emotionally.

•      Impacting Attitudes – How do you get customers to prefer your product/services, believe in your cause, trust/respect you, drop an objective they have about your product/services or recommend/endorse you?  Impacting attitudes is about how you communicate and what you communicate (key messages).
•      Impacting Behavior – How do you get customers to respond, attend an event, call you/accept a call, respond to a promotion/targeting campaign, actively consider your product/service or accept a meeting?  Impacting behaviors is the result of understanding your target.  If you can change a customer’s behavior, you are more apt to convert them to your product/service.

Taking a step back, the only way that understanding influencers matters is if you are properly identifying your targets. Without identifying your targets, you will not be able to accurately position yourself in the market and use influencers to drive marketing efforts. Targeting allows you to understand what venue you need to focus your marketing in that can generate leads that produce customers.  The use of targeting, customer influencers and a multi channel strategy is a successful formula for success in marketing.