Most every time I listen to a radio spot in my car, see a TV spot on cable or fan through the pages of a magazine (trade or consumer), I find myself wincing. Ad after ad tells the same sad story: money spent leading to no results. In fact, I’d venture to say that better than 85% – 90% of the ads lay the same leaden egg. Oh, the humanity!
If you’re questioning whether your advertising is doing what you paid it to do, odds are it’s not. And although there are master classes you might take in advertising creativity, marketing strategy and media planning, it’s very likely the problem falls within four main areas. Checking off each point, you can estimate your ad’s effectiveness even before you place it. I mean it.
Here then are the four fundamental concepts that can make a meaningful difference in how successful your next advertising effort is.
1) Have a something compelling to say. And by that, I mean not just compelling to you and your staff, but to a completely disinterested audience. If you’ve followed my posts for any length of time, you know that I frequently observe that people don’t like advertising, and completely ignore the boring or hard-to-figure-out kind. So whatever you have to say must go the distance to alter their indifference. Don’t just tell your audience you’re “a leader in the industry” or that you’ve been around for three generations. They’ve heard that so many times before from you and your competitors that it means nothing to them. Instead tell them something they don’t know, something that might even surprise them. You can tell when someone’s ad is truly compelling when you think, “Gee, I didn’t know that!” We sometimes call that a “sticky” message, one that has staying power after the reader has turned the page or flipped the channel.
2) Sell, don’t just tell. One of the most egregious mistakes advertisers make is simply laying out all the features of their product or service and expect the audience to figure out why that’s important to them. Often that’s done in the form of five or seven bullet points, such as:
or in Business-to-Business ads (snatched from the pages of a recent trade pub):
Yikes! There’s no emotion in that. There’s no selling. There’s no story or connection. Instead of praying that maybe one or two bullets might hit home with some member of the audience – or worse, trying to be all things to all people – why not focus on one point at a time and spell out why that point really matters. People don’t buy bullets. They don’t buy features. But they do buy benefits and ideas that add value to their lives. Always be thinking, from their point of view, “what’s in it for me?”
3) Be your own brand and not a clone of others. All too often, within any given industry, I see ads in which the logos and contact information are interchangeable, one company’s with another’s. None stand out, all look alike, and thus all the players are perceived as a commodity. Here’s a question for you: If your logo was blocked out of your ad or commercial, would the audience still know it’s yours? Take, for instance, Jack-In-The-Box. Their commercials are radically different from McDonalds’. BMW’s ads are unmistakably theirs and not Mercedes’. It’s a matter of message but also a matter of style, personality and consistency. The more striking and distinctive your ads are, the stronger competitive impact they’ll make, while your competitions’ ads could be just anybody’s. Dare to be Different!
4) Tell the same story across all your platforms. With all the buzz about Social Media, it strikes me as odd that most business Facebook pages and outbound Tweets have little in common with their owners’ main marketing messages. In part that’s because the marketing messages themselves aren’t that well-defined. But it’s also because the marketers don’t appreciate the importance of speaking with the same voice at any touchpoint. Good marketing is a collective enterprise and an erosive processes. For instance, if your main story is about how your company has been around for over 100 years, use your Facebook pages to talk about the early days of your firm, the companies you’ve served, etc. Make sure your phone hold-message tells the same story. Make sure you hold special events or promotions that support the theme. If you don’t keep hammering away at the same selling proposition at every touchpoint, then each effort conflicts with every other.
While hardly a full compendium of marketing knowledge, if you make the effort to assure your advertising and marketing is consistent with these four points, you’ll be far out in front of 85% of your competition. And that’s the goal, to create ads your customers will react to and that your competition will hate.
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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.
“What do you mean they’re no longer a client? Are you kidding me? When did that happen? Why did they leave? I can’t believe it!” Have you heard (or said) these words in the past few months or so?
Well, as we all know, clients come and clients go but the sad part about it is that more times than not it’s because we’ve lost track of them or taken them for granted.
Which brings me to the question that begs to be asked: “Why do customers leave?” Curiously, most business owners and managers have the exact wrong idea about why customers leave. Most people believe that customers leave because:
(Drum roll please)…Wrong!
According to an in-depth study by the research firm CRMGuru, the reasons customers give for taking their “business down the road” are:
As you can see, when it comes to keeping your existing customers, customer service is three times more important than price–and five times more important than functionality. Which obviously means that if you want to keep the customers you’ve got, you should think about reversing priorities and pay more attention to customer service and quality – and, consequently, less attention to functionality and price. I fully realize that this runs contrary to 90% of what most people think is important, probably because price and functionality can play a large role in new customer acquisition.
Yet, many marketing plans are so focused on customer acquisition that they largely ignore customer retention. Even a tiny change in customer retention can have a large effect on long-term profitability and growth. This shouldn’t be underestimated. The easiest way to grow your customers is not to lose them. In fact, I recently read that 96 percent of dissatisfied customers don’t complain. They just take their business to one of your competitors, and the unfortunate thing is that you’ll never know why. And what’s worse, while they may not tell you what’s wrong, they will certainly tell plenty of others!
Want to get an edge over your competitors? With a little attention, your business can be one of those which can negate customer churn and improve profitability. Here’s a list of the five strategies (only limited by space) you can use to improve customer retention.
Keep them on your radar screen
So many companies do an excellent job of making the initial sale, then start chasing other prospects and in the process forget about their current customer…ignore may be the case as well…or they just get complacent. Gaining a new customer only begins when someone makes that initial purchase decision because there’s this thing called “buyer’s remorse.” To make sure that future referrals and repeat business materialize from this customer, it’s important to make sure that your customers’ fears are put to rest, and that you demonstrate by your actions that you really care and that they’ve made the right decision to deal with you. This can be accomplished by putting a plan in place to communicate with them, and sell to them again and again, constantly proving that your company was the right choice.
Build engaging relationships
With CRM programs all the rage, coupled with Big Data and predictive analytics providing marketers with in depth customer insights, the key to engagement is through personalization. In fact, as consumers ourselves, we expect and demand that companies personalize messaging and offers so they’re relevant to our wants and needs. You can do this by providing clients with offers that are personalized to them. Send them offers and information/content that they’ll like at the right time based on when they might need the product. Do some A/B testing in order to see what catches the attention of your customers. And, even recommend products to them. Offers, timing and product recommendations all show that you know and care about your clients.
Share useful content/information
Customers buy from people. They buy based on trust. Building trust with new customers is the key to getting them to buy in the first place. And maintaining and strengthening that trust is the key to keeping your customer over the long term, improving customer retention. In today’s marketplace, it’s not enough to have a wonderful product or service, you also have to help educate your customers on how they can use your product or service better. Content must abide by three criteria: it must be expected, valuable and relevant.
Give Back
Going back to your own personal experience for a minute, what is your impression of a company that, out-of-blue, gives you something you could use….for no cost. Not as an incentive or ulterior motive to purchase or do something else, but rather “just because.” It probably left you feeling good about the company, maybe even made you happy. Using the element of surprise to your advantage is a good thing because people naturally remember when something surprised them in a good way. You see, winning customers over starts with winning their thanks on individual terms. And while technology allows you to offer up this surprise to whatever scale you want, the fact is people remember acts of kindness when it feels personal.
Provide Exemplary Customer Service
When it comes to retaining customers, nothing’s more important than hands-on customer service. So let’s address a few different ways that customer service plays itself out. Critical to this is making sure that interactions that you have with the customer are quality interactions. Think about it: when you’re the customer, you expect the company that you’re dealing with to be courteous, willing and helpful, right? Also, make sure you’re dealing in the communications mode that your customer prefers. Although the majority of people prefer email, some like receiving calls or connections through social media channels. On that note, being proactive, or anticipating what the customer might need or addressing problems before they happen is always better than the alternative. This could be as simple as calling and asking if everything is OK before the client calls you to say something is not. Or letting them know that the product they recently bought is being redesigned and will look different or is going to be sold in bulk versus single-product purchases. And lastly, there’s nothing like hearing from the customers themselves. Some sort of a feedback system, such as a survey or speaking directly with your loyal customers, shows them that you really care about their recent experience with your company and will help identify any issues to address.
Regardless of what you’re selling, your long-term profitability is largely dependent upon your ability to keep current customers, compared to acquiring new ones. While you must always try things to attract new customers to your business, don’t take for granted those who are already in your camp and are supporting your business. Don’t forget, every now and then, to “dance with dem dat brung ya.”
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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.
Over the years, whether within an advertising/marketing agency or in the corporate environment, I’ve worked with people who have a distorted view of what marketing can do. Mostly these people think that all it takes is slapping together a few concepts to create an ad coupled with little bit of social media and some PR for good measure and the marketing is complete. The thought being that sales will be pouring in the door and big bonuses are just around the corner. After all, most anyone can do this “marketing stuff,“ right?
Alternatively, when a company is not realizing their business or sales goals, we as marketers hear things like: “We’re just not getting the sales that we should because our marketing just isn’t working.” Or “It’s Marketing’s fault that sales are down!” while, in fact, there are other business issues that are at the root cause. There’s no question a solid marketing program can increase your business, but realistically, it can’t fix everything (although ineffective marketing activities might very well make matters worse). Below are 5 things marketing can’t do for you:
Marketing cannot overcome leads that are not being followed up. I did some consulting at company and upon seeing a couple of boxes marked “Tradeshow forms,” I asked them what that meant. They told me it was customer inquiry cards that they had received during the past 3 months of tradeshows they had attended. These customer inquiries had yet to be entered into the system which meant these prospects hadn’t yet been contacted. Which meant potential sales were not happening. And yet, this company had hired me to help them find ways to generate more sales from …wait for it… new prospects. When opportunities like the aforementioned happen, you’ve got to act on them and quickly. If you were interested or wanting to hear from a company regarding a product or service they offered, especially after having given them your contact info, how soon would you expect to hear from them? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Marketing can’t make people buy things they either don’t want or can’t afford. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is, if you’re selling to people who either don’t have the interest or the means to buy it, then your marketing is going to fail no matter how brilliant it may be. Yes, marketing can create messaging that ignores the problems with a product or service but with 24/7 access to information and customer comments on the web, problems or issues get exposed quickly. Bottom line: is your product or service delivering on the promises you’ve made? Have you provided the value that the customer is looking for? Basically it all boils down to this: before you decide you need more marketing, take a few moments and make sure the marketing you’re doing is really the right solution for your business.
Marketing can’t be done without a realistic budget. The fact is, if your company is spending a good deal less than the competition, you’re probably not making any significant gains in market share. Yes, there might be a competitor that’s overspending, but my experience working with companies from the Fortune 100 to small mom-and-pops is that you don’t pose a serious competitive threat unless your marketing budget is in the same ballpark with your competition….it’s just one of those “marketing truths.” Developing and then executing the marketing activities takes skill, experience and money and it doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they’re doing. You get what you pay for.
Marketing can’t fix bad service or a bad customer experience. Again, in your own personal life, how often do you keep doing business with a company who doesn’t really value you as a customer as evidenced by their poor customer service? While marketing activities can bring prospects to the door, it can’t ensure that they’ll have an experience that they’ll want to repeat. Unfortunately, despite all this talk or lip service within organizations about being customer centric and “engaging” with their buyers, far too many companies see customer service as something other than what it is…a marketing opportunity that allows the customer to feel valued and appreciated. At the end of the day, when customers continue to have a lousy experience with your products or services or with your customer service reps or sales people, you and I know that’s a bad, bad place to be. Not only have you lost a customer for good, but they’ll probably go and tell others, which means you have to potential to lose future prospects as well.
Marketing can’t make you successful by tomorrow morning. Just because you start a marketing program doesn’t mean you’re immediately going to see your business explode. Marketing is about getting your name in front of your target market on a regular basis until they finally decide to give you a try. Investment in marketing communication for some brands should therefore be seen for what it is: reinforcing/strengthening favorable brand perceptions and insuring your brand’s strength and status for the future. Just as one or two workouts at the gym won’t immediately make you more muscular or leaner, you know that it’s improving your health for the long-term. Think of marketing in the same way…it takes time. That said, if pressed for new sales or new business clients right now, launching into a new marketing program may not be enough to get you where you want to be and you may want to start looking at other options.
And, we haven’t even addressed other issues such as the company not closing leads or not invoicing or collecting on unpaid accounts or it has too many expenses, etc., all issues that marketing can’t solve. At the end of the day, while it’s easy to immediately blame marketing for lack of business, we need to remind people that marketing is intertwined with many other aspects of the organization aimed at getting and keeping customers. Yes, it’s important to judge and course-correct marketing activities if business is lagging, but we need to look at the whole organizational picture to understand why business is slipping off. Otherwise, Marketing will continue to have the finger pointed at them.
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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.
I think we can pretty much all agree that most everyone, be it on the job or in our personal lives, is stretched thin on time. And this crunch for time has shortened our attention spans and concentration levels to the point that we’re lucky if we even remember some bits and pieces of phone conversations, face-to-face discussions, emails, etc., let alone those marketing messages that other companies put out in the marketplace in hopes we’ll act on them. Who has time for them?
With that scenario playing itself out in most everyone’s lives, marketers have a hard nut to crack when it comes to creating marketing messaging that sticks in order to counterbalance people’s shrinking attention span. Every marketer faces this reality daily. As most of us have heard, the average attention span does not exceed eight seconds (ten years ago it was 12 seconds). Comparatively, the attention span of the average goldfish is nine seconds. Capturing attention within eight seconds is a formidable challenge. As marketers, we have enough trouble with summarizing a message into a small packaging label, a web banner, a half page magazine ad, an outdoor board, or other media channels where the time or space allows for only something along the lines of a “quick bite.” Remember when the 60-second TV commercial was the norm? Then it went to 30 seconds and now we’re seeing more and more 15’s. And Vine built a platform around 6-second video posts and YouTube incorporated a “skip ad” option on their commercial videos after five seconds. Any more than that, and viewers lose interest and get really ticked off .
Oh, and let’s not forget about how the shrinking attention span has also led to people fidgeting between multiple screens (their TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets) at a rate of up to 21 times per hour, according to a recent study. Guess the average minutes a day that a person spends on their smartphone? 147 minutes. Now compare that to just under 120 minutes per day watching TV. Boy, we are distracted!
Growing evidence blames Internet, TV and computer games for creating shorter attention spans. Bombarded daily with mind-boggling amounts of things to read, watch and respond to, most of us have real difficulty paying attention on one subject for longer than a couple of seconds. How to fight against this rapidly decreasing attention span of an average consumer? How do you market to a group of people who don’t have enough time to listen to everything you have to say? It’s hard, and it’s getting harder to get and keep anyone’s attention.
Well, some marketers are trying to get people’s attention by going where more people seem to be…on social media, the “Land Of A Million Tweets, Comments And Posts” that repopulates itself every few days, or hours…or even minutes. And then there’s special offers, sales, email blasts and just about anything else that has a slight chance of possibly working. In doing so, I’d argue that for many companies, they’re not breaking through the clutter but instead adding to it.
It’s more important than ever to hold the attention of customers and prospects quickly and interactively in ways that weren’t possible or necessary in years past. So here are 5 messaging tips that will go a long way to having your audience stay tuned rather than drift away:
Now, at a time when attention spans are shorter and less focused than ever, you need to be more focused on making sure your marketing messaging doesn’t fall on deaf ears. There is too much noise because too many people want to be noticed without having to say anything worth hearing. The genuine voice sounds different and therefore it can be more easily discerned. The problem is, because of so much noise, people are hardly listening any more – expecting to hear nothing of worth anyway. Make every effort to be the voice that gets heard.
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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.
As a marketing firm that’s always looking to engage in new business relationships with interesting companies, we continue to have more than our share of new business meetings. These companies run the gamut from small to “you’ve heard of this company before” and while they’re sometimes far removed from one another in terms of sales and recognition, a surprising number of times there’s not that much of a difference in their approach to their marketing initiatives which, as my business partner puts it, “borders on marketing malpractice.”
How am I defining “marketing malpractice?” Well, while it might take form in a few different ways, it’s primarily about a breach of duty that does harm when another course of action, as performed by a reasonable person, should have been taken. In short, it’s about negligence. While malpractice is commonly associated with the medical, financial and legal world, it could also be readily applied to the marketing world as well.
With that in mind, let’s look at 5 ways that companies and marketing leaders could become guilty of marketing malpractice:
Not having a full grasp of the marketplace
Too many companies assume that there is absolutely no need to substantiate their beliefs about the marketplace, about what their prospects want, about why their customers are buying, about what people think of their brand, about most anything having to do with those whom they want to purchase their products or services. Generally the thinking is that no one can know the marketplace as well as the company and the market will accept whatever you offer. Are you pretty darn confident on how your specific industry is changing and what is needed to get out in front of the competition? Understanding the marketplace as a whole will create the opportunities that bring with it the sales, visibility, prominence, trust, etc., that you might be looking for. And you get there by doing some research…the right way.
A lack of focus
The “We have to be here, there and everywhere” thinking is a sure way to squander the limited budget that you have. And who said that you need to be all over social media platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest? Heck, you’ve got your product literature online, and your Web site has a blog and videos. Not to mention all the offline activities ranging from tradeshow activities to advertising to PR, etc. Why did you believe you need to be in ALL of these media locations in the first place, and, just as importantly, who is making sure that all of these activities work together?
Inconsistency or mixing of marketing messaging
When different aspects of your marketing messages don’t reinforce each other, the inconsistencies alienate prospects and current customers. Inconsistent marketing distorts clear expectations, makes potential customers unsure of the characteristics of your products and creates unhappy customers who don’t get what they expect. These inconsistencies affect businesses by reducing both initial sales to consumers as well as repeat sales from dissatisfied customers. Throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks is a clear path to wasting resources and confusing people/organizations that you want as customers.
Being just like the other guy
How many times have you read or seen something from one company that looked just like what one of their competitors has or is currently saying? For an example, go online and look at professional services firms and tell me why one is different from the other. The fact is that there is no relevancy to what you’re saying if you just keep repeating what others have said already. Your company/products/services only has value if you’re different and if you can find a way that you can take who you are, what you make, and what you offer and create a relationship with prospects and current customers that is instantly captivating. Striving for differentiation rather than being a “me-too” allows for the organization to seize on new sales-producing and revenue-generating opportunities. Otherwise, you’re just a lazy copycat…two words that don’t leave the minds of the customers and competitors anytime soon.
Confusing strategy with tactics
Maybe, just maybe, the most common marketing malpractice occurrence is not having one over-arching marketing strategy – and ensuring its implementation through all your tactics. Executing marketing tactics without having a well-developed integrated strategy is a recipe for disaster. It’s easy to start with the “how” but if you haven’t identified the “what,” you may find yourself spending a lot of time executing tactics that don’t take you where you want to go and in so doing, you’ll be wasting time, resources and losing out on sales-producing opportunities. What is needed is one single integrated strategy that looks across all delivery platforms whether online or offline, print, broadcast, or mobile. Your customers don’t have an online self and offline self and neither should you. Think holistically about all your marketing initiatives.
At the end of the day, both the short-term and quite possibly the long-term prospects of the company could be affected as a result of marketing malpractice. Whether done because one doesn’t know better or because of expediency, it happens and the organization will have to live with the results. So, while you won’t be brought into court (unless you did something very egregious), one question that a marketer has to ask oneself and answer honestly, is: “Have I breached my duty as the marketing leader for the organization so much so that it has caused harm to both short and long term sales, visibility, prominence, market share, and trust for the company?” Hopefully, the answer today and in the future will remain a resounding NO.
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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.
Over this past weekend, I went into a store that’s part of a 15-20 location chain, and upon entering, this place made sure that I understood that for them “It’s all About Exceeding Expectations!” Now as a line, it’s pretty pedestrian but it set the tone for what I was going to experience. And they were true to their word. But you see, it wasn’t just 5 words strung together. Instead this was, after speaking with the staff, their rallying cry for the first quarter of the year.
That got me thinking that not enough companies use rallying cries (or sometimes referred to as “battle cries”). After all, these rallying cries have been used for thousands of years to unite individuals into a collective identity and to emotionally charge them up before rushing forward to accomplish their mission. So let me ask, has your company instituted a rallying cry? And I don’t mean for a second a “mission statement,” which most companies have; because of group think, these mission statements lack originality, they’re as uninspiring as possible, and which 99.99% of employees couldn’t recite it to win a million dollars. Instead, what I mean is a short and catchy phrase that can inspire a company and fascinate your marketplace. A rallying cry will tell employees how to act and consumers what to expect.
When you institute a rallying cry, everyone knows what it means. Rallying cries are huge. They’re single themes that everyone connects to and rallies around. That theme ends up creating this “mini-vision” for individuals to focus on… a clear direction for the entire organization for a specified period of time which speaks to “this is what’s important to our organization right now!” And so this doesn’t come across as a theme line or slogan but rather an understandable call-to-action to employees and customers, one needs to define what the goals to be met will be. It can be your big goal for the year or your most important annual metric. Regardless, the rallying cry should be specific and measurable. This could take the form of something like “3x in 2y” (Tripling business in 2 years) or “500 in 2015” (500 new accounts in 2015) or “Quick Start 50” (making contact and setting presentation appointments with your Top 50 dream clients). You get the idea.
For some clients I’ve worked with, this rallying cry provides a reason for the organization to start working as a team rather than in siloed departments. There’s a tremendous power in this kind of focus as it helps the company achieve better results faster and gets them ready for the next team effort. It also keeps the people in the organization engaged because they know what their company’s goals are and how they fit in. Some companies have annual and quarterly and monthly rallying cries. I’m more of an annual/semi-annual guy.
To get started, here are a five elements to creating your own rallying cry:
Once the rallying cry is chosen, pledge eternal allegiance to it. The new rallying cry should be continually infused into sales meetings, customer presentations, press releases, collateral, the company website and all other marketing communications. And if appropriate and possible, its spirit, if not the actual words, should be communicated in your advertising activities. And then if or when the goal is achieved, it should be celebrated with the same enthusiasm as it was when first initiated as it’s important to show people that their hard work is much appreciated.
Think about this: If everyone in your company were to rally around a single inspiring theme, what kind of wonderful magic would be achieved? What kind of game-changing results could be achieved? A rallying cry is an amazing way to get people aligned. Whether your company’s goal is one that applies to all departments or relates to one specific department, a strong rallying cry can serve to unite the entire company to eagerly move toward the new destination created by that vision.
So, as the marketing champion within your organization, what better way to have people unite under an inspiring marketing message and create excitement throughout the ranks rather than with a rallying cry? “Onward and Upward!”…oh, I think that one has been used before.
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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.