Here’s an interesting question that you don’t ask yourself every day: If you left your present organization and went to work for a competitor, knowing what you know about your present firm, what would you then do from a marketing standpoint to grow market share at your old company’s expense?

As marketers, the tendency is to look at what your competitors are doing and saying and, if important enough, figure out how to mitigate it so it does no harm to your firm. BUT, when you take a look at your own organization through the lens of someone who has inside knowledge about your firm’s “Achilles heel,” as well as the plans you have in place for the future, an entirely different set of issues present themselves. And, that’s a good thing if you do it as part of a healthy review of your business and its marketing activities.

I’ve had business dealings with lots of marketing folks who have left one company to join another whose insights on their past employer have played an important part in the growth of their new firm. Now I know you’re saying, “Well, that isn’t right. People should keep what they know to themselves and not share that at the expense of their past firm.” I hear you, but I have a different view on that. If my job performance and my family and career prospects depend on my being successful, then knowing what I know is going to come into play either consciously or on some other level. And that, my friends, happens all-day every-day in this “new normal” business environment. Putting a company’s marketing efforts on auto-pilot and then playing the “Woe is me” card isn’t going to cut it as an excuse.  (NOTE: I’m NOT talking about a former employee illegally or immorally appropriating a company’s passwords or passing along genuine trade secrets or violating terms of an NDA, just to be clear.)

Maybe the best example of what I’m talking about takes place in competitive team sports.  Coaches, managers and players are always looking to fine tune areas that they feel the other team could exploit for their benefit.  Teams watch films of games and their own practices to identify things that they could be doing better before the other team can identify those problem areas. They talk to players who have come from another team to get some inside intelligence on what other teams see as limitations or flaws. Only taking this knowledge into account and addressing it can the team feel confident that they’re prepared for what lies ahead. It shouldn’t be any different for your company. Taking an introspective look at how or whether your marketing initiatives and business approach is susceptible to a counter attack is something that should be done before current and future plans are placed in jeopardy.

So now the question is, “how do we as an organization start the process?” I’d suggest the first place to start is the good-old, time-tested SWOT analysis, something that can be implemented almost immediately.  To begin the process, have those associated with your firm’s marketing functions put together their own SWOT analysis on the specific marketing activities that the company is engaged with, i.e., PR, Tradeshow/Events, Advertising, Social Media, Pricing, Promotion, etc. Then, assemble the team to discuss, review and make decisions on the input with an eye towards creating a next-steps plan to shore up marketing functions and activities that are critical to the success of the company’s integrated marketing program.

Remember, the idea of performing a SWOT analysis is to accomplish two primary things:

One:  Reduce Risk.  Improve the viability of your company by pairing up external threats with internal weaknesses to highlight the most serious issues faced by your company.

Two: Improve Performance. What actions you should consider to improve the performance of your business by pairing up internal strengths with the external opportunities.

With everything on Marketing’s plate today and the urgency in which it needs to get done, there’s a real danger of losing sight of the basics. Who has the time, right? Well, if we lose sight of the need to regularly and carefully look at what we think our company is (warts and all), particularly in light of all the resources we use or spend in the ever-evolving marketplace – not just our guesses about it – we risk losing all that we work so hard to achieve: increasing revenues and market share.

The time-tested marketing adage has never been more true: If you don’t really know where you are, it is much more difficult to get where you want to be.  And knowing what your company’s particular “Achilles Heel” is and taking moves to protect it will go a long way toward your winning the race.

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Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com.  You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.

This is not a post about what headlines work better than others, or what power words you need to use, or how many syllables in the subject line of an email creates more interest. Rather this post has to do with something that every company needs to revisit since there will LOTS of marketing dollars put into play for 2016.  Specifically, this is about the need to change the words that your company may be using, in some cases for far, far too long, in order to change how the company wants to be seen by their customers.

You’re probably saying “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard that before. What else do you have?”  Well here’s the deal: so many marketing folks are hung up on using words and saying things that are either “ways we describe our product” or are industry-speak that they sound un-interesting, un-inviting and more times than not, just like their competitors…which isn’t a good place to be.  In turn, you’re valuable marketing dollars are wasted.

Over the course of my business career, I’ve been really fortunate to have worked with a number of really good copywriters. If you’ve ever spent any time in a marketing or advertising agency, you know just how critically important it is to have fantastic copywriters who know how to craft messaging so that in addition to being imaginative, original and fresh, the copy is so interesting that people want to buy the product. Unfortunately, and we all know this to be the case, many companies waste budgetary dollars on trying to convey an idea, a value proposition, or a reason for buying, with below par messaging that the prospective customer won’t even give second thought to.  I can’t tell you how many times my wife and I have seen an ad or commercial where we’ve looked an one another and said “What the heck was that?” You have as well…I know you have.

And let’s not forget about online…like websites for example. Visiting websites with bad copywriting can be cringe-worthy as well as just plain boring!  Product stories without a conclusion, meaningless purpose statements and yawning lists of statistics are a few other reasons prospects will click out of a poorly-written website. What a waste of money from the creation of the idea to the production to the media cost, right?

Well here’s something I learned over my 30+ years helping companies…from Fortune 100 to mom-pop’s alike… copy is not valued, and I mean really good copy, as it should be.  It’s primarily because of two reasons: First, people are becoming more and more visual in today’s world and second, Mar-com folks have done so much writing that they’ve devalued copy in favor of other advertising or marketing messaging components such as accompanying visuals, click-throughs, QR-codes, etc.

So as you take another look at your marketing materials, and I would suggest all of your marketing materials, here are 5 simple things to have your messaging be acted upon:

1. The human brain is wired to react to words that inspire action and conjure up positive images or emotions. Three things happen when you do this:  You stand out.  You attract the right audience. You create stronger connections.
2. Don’t use jargon — language that just dresses up the message with self-importance. In fact, you should use jargon in your copy less often than swear words, i.e. pretty much never. I saw a story online not too long ago about a tax recovery firm that referred to their service as “sales tax recovery,” which all the firms in their industry did as well.  They were told to change that to “sales tax refund.” Monthly searches for each of the two terms: 170 for “sales tax recovery” and 5400 for “sales tax refund”…all by changing ONE word.
3. Take notes from the companies that know how to do it. They’re not hard to recognize.  Look at companies that are in similar businesses and take particular notice of how their getting their message across. The successful companies are probably saying it differently in tone and style which is something you can learn from.
4. You may need to contact an outside advertising or marketing firm to help. They do this day-in and day-out, capturing people’s attention so that they want to find out more about what you can do for them. In short, they speak to people in ways that people want to be spoken to. And while we all think we can write scintillating copy, the fact is that professional copywriters are just like a plumber, electrician, or brain surgeon, in that they’re more of an expert at what they do than you are.
5. Choose the biggest problem that you’re solving for your target audience and stick with it. Now take this one step deeper and determine the deeper benefit of your product or service. In other words, how does your product or service solve their biggest problem? And, why would they want that? This all goes toward keeping your message focused on your product without muddying up the waters with lots of other things you want to stuff into copy.

The big finish: You may have already seen this video. It’s been recreated in a number of different languages around the world and speaks to the connecting point between a blind beggar and those who pass him by. I find inspiration every time I see the video and think you may find the same as it serves to illustrate the power that your choice of words can have in marketing your products, your services and your business.

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Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com.  You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.

AVIA Athletic Shoes – Putting Ourselves in Women’s Shoes

The Challenge: Re-introduce a previously well-known athletic shoe brand and its new product line to retailers and consumers after many years of marketing inactivity.

The Approach: While AVIA makes both men’s and women’s styles, the women’s line accounted for the vast majority of sales. The primary strategy was to address women with “life truths” messaging that was both inspirational and aspirational.

The launch of this integrated campaign was initiated with the sponsorship of high profile women events (i.e., Race for a Cure) and aerobics competitions. Product literature highlighting AVIA’s history as well as its advanced technology and features coupled with on-site demonstrations helped the customers feel confident knowing that they were purchasing a very high quality product. A promotional campaign around the idea of “Take AVIA out for a test drive”was developed and activated shortly after the official launch.

The Change: This promotion proved so successful that 2-month sales at targeted retailers exceeded sales figure forecast for 6 months! This promotion also helped secure highly visible in-store product positioning and provided the foundation for the successful brand sold in athletic shoe retailers today.

Bet Tzedek – Justice For All

The Challenge:  Develop a full-scale branding and marketing program to bring this 35-year-old pro-bono legal services network into the 21st Century.

The Approach: Over two months of in-depth research helped us identify what the Bet Tzedek brand meant to its various stakeholders, from program clients to service volunteers to major donors. Out of this we created the umbrella theme “Justice for All” that perfectly encapsulated Bet Tzedek’s unique mission.  Branding included logo and tagline, branding guide, website and literature formats, and a new ad campaign that demonstrated its ability to enact powerful change for its clients, many of whom are society’s unforgotten.

The Change: Within 6 months, donations significantly increased as did the number of law firms interested in providing their pro-bono support to Bet Tzedek clients.

Papa Cantella’s Italian Sausages – Phoenix Comes to Papa

The Challenge: Grow grocery sales for Papa Cantella’s Italian Sausages within the Southern Arizona marketplace on a limited budget.

The Approach: When money IS an object, guerilla and street-level marketing become a necessity. To increase Papa Cantella’s sales at the stores, we created sampling events at high traffic venues in addition to sampling at selected stores. Grilling up sausages under a custom designed tent featuring key brand  messages, we allowed consumers to try freshly grilled sausages while handing out recipe booklets with cents-off coupons to encourage repeat purchases. This was supported synergistically with on-pack coupons, a limited campaign of ads and free-standing inserts in local publications and a new web page to download even more recipes (while capturing names for future marketing).

The Change: During the 2-month introduction, over 20,000 people sampled Papa Cantella’s. Over the course of the program, product sales tripled in the meat case. The success of the program has led it to become a road map for introducing new products on a market-by-market basis as the brand grows in sales and awareness.