Tag Archives: Social Media


De Niro, Taxi Driver and Marketing

Taxi1It’s one of the more iconic moments in film over the last three decades.  Robert De Niro plays taxi driver Travis Bickle, who in one chilling scene looks at himself in the mirror, a pistol up his sleeve, and says to an imaginary adversary, “Are you talkin’ to me?  You talkin’ to me?”

What’s this have to do with marketing?  Well, as consumers we’re actually all asking this question whether we think about it or not.  Because the only marketing that breaks through the clutter is that in which the message undeniably speaks directly to the reader/viewer/listener/user from his or her own perspective.  The reader/viewer/listener/user knows for certain, “You’re talkin’ to me!”

Here’s what I mean:

Recently, we saw an ad for mortgage company with a photo of a man dressed in a business suit leaning backwards like an acrobat.  The headline said “Can your mortgage broker do this?”  On the surface, you might say that’s a humorous, attention-getting ad.   But really, it’s just showing a visual pun without telling any compelling story about what flexibility means to the reader. It’s just saying so and nothing more.  Compare that to another mortgage company’s ad that showed one of those toy labyrinths where the steel ball might drop through one of a dozen holes in the maze at any turn, and the headline says “We know just how you feel about refinancing your house.”   The first ad speaks from the company’s point of view, the second speaks from the reader’s.  There’s no question that in the second ad, the reader knows “You’re talkin’ to me!”

If you want your audience to connect with your message, it has to be based on their real experiences and what’s in it for them, instead of all the features you have to offer.

It’s ridiculous that I have to say this but the memo has not reached the desk of many marketers, so here goes: “It’s not about what your company wants to say but rather about what the customer wants to hear.” (I feel better having said it.) Look, if you want to market based on your personal preferences without regard for what works best with your prospects, that’s your prerogative.  But I’d suggest that your company’s marketing not be so self-absorbed. Remember, you don’t buy from you, others buy from you and they don’t care about your business and your troubles nearly as much as you do. Most people are tuned into Radio Station W.I.I.F.M. —“What’s In It For Me!” If your marketing message is all about you, then your customers won’t notice what you’re saying.  Please begin to “tune” into your customers, find out what they really want and focus your message on them.

We recently conducted a webinar about exhibiting at a major trade show that one of our client’s exhibits at.  It’s tragic how many booths fail to attract traffic simply because they don’t design their exhibits from the audience’s perspective.  They’re loaded with too much feature-based content and lack a simple benefits-oriented message.  No one passing by would stop and say “You’re talking to me!”

A shift in perspective from speaking about yourself to speaking from the audience’s point of view can be remarkably effective.  Witness a beautiful commercial for a British online content company featuring a blind man whose original cardboard sign talks about himself,
“I’m blind.  Please help.”   But when a caring passer-by changes the words to be more audience-focused, something powerful happens. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq3Dgy3Wx_0&w=560&h=315] As marketers, the symbolism of what you or your firm can offer the organization, is front and center.

No matter what you sell, manufacture or service, it’s critical that you change your marketing message’s perspective from talking at your audience to talking to them, causing them subconsciously to acknowledge, yes, “You’re talkin’ to me!”

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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.

Dead Veep Walking – the Marketing Director

VP TombThe life of a hummingbird rarely exceeds four years.  The life expectancy of a Marketing Director (or CMO or VP of Sales & Marketing) at any given company is even less than that. The typical tenure these days is a little more than 3 years and this is up from about 26 months in 2004.  In fact, as you stroll through the offices at many companies, it’s an easy bet which executive is a dead man (or woman) walking: the Marketing Director.

What are some of the reasons causing such a short tenure? What are some things a Marketing Director can do to be successful? How much of that is on the company and how much is brought on by the individual?

  • It starts before the hire is made. It’s been said that over 60% of companies don’t know what they’re looking for when they recruit a Marketing Director.  In many cases, these companies can’t spell out coherently what the person would be accountable for.  Are you and the President/CEO on the same page? I’ve heard it more than once: “I was brought in to drive change, but the organization wasn’t aligned behind the change agenda.” Whose fault is that?!?
  • There are sky-high expectations surrounding what a Marketing Director can and should do.  The best Marketing Director can’t turn poorly made or poorly priced products into marketplace winners every time, nor by themselves create a culture of innovation to make sure new, exciting products are always being developed.
  • As I written about previously, everyone in the organization thinks that they know how to do that “marketing thing,” so they have no compunction in second-guessing the marketing strategy or the creative. Everyone’s an expert even though they’re not.
  • There is an impatience in the effectiveness of marketing. People want results right away and it is probably because the economy has been in the toilet for a few years.  So there is a pressure on reporting how marketing is working for a brand and the CEO/President is looking for a more immediate payoff.  It doesn’t help that chief executives and chief marketers often have very different imperatives.
  • Some companies are finally realizing it is time to ramp things up and yet there are too many Marketing Directors ‘hiding under the table,’ relying on the same old people…internally as well as their external marketing “partners”. Think: Different horses for different courses.
  • As more is written about different ways to seize on new business revenue, you have a Marketing Director who is being forced by a company President/CEO to incorporate these “must haves” into the organization’s marketing activities.  As important as social media platforms are, for example, they are not necessarily of equal worth or equally effective for all businesses and all products.  But it is a brave and daring CMO who can resist CEO pressure to devote scarce resources in chasing what “everyone knows” is today’s “marketing must.”
  • There is more confusion than there should be between sales and marketing roles, what they can do, and how they must work together.

Ok, so how much of this is do you see or experience in the world that you live in? If you’re like the vast majority of Marketing Directors in this country, you see any of these issues popping up on a fairly regular basis. Here are a few things to consider in order to make sure you’re not having to call your executive recruiter anytime soon.

  • Do not become stale in the way that you market, from the strategy to the creative to the channels to your thinking. The status quo is a communicable disease that will infect everything you touch if you let it.
  • Become the voice of the customer. And what’s important is not just understanding the customer ….but the end user.
  • Be personally inquisitive about new technology and new markets and the social implications of new technology.
  • Be responsible and accountable for nurturing, growing and protecting the brand. Successful marketers truly must understand the convergence of product, brand promise and experience and get the company to understand that convergence as well.
  • Listen to align the rest of the organization around the need to build “our change agenda” not “my change agenda.”
  • Continue to make an investment in your own education to keep yourself exposed to things out of your comfort zone. From books and seminars to online webinars and articles you find on your LinkedIn groups. There are so many invaluable resources!
  • I would suggest, too little effort is made to educate and promote the marketing role within the organization.  It is the Marketing Director’s job (another one) not merely to develop and define strategy but to explain it – not only to customers and prospects but to employees and other senior level executives.
  • And, the need for a strategic marketing partner is imperative. Now and in the coming years, it will be more important than ever to partner with an agency that doesn’t simply fulfill projects for you, but one that offers you the advantage of broad strategic experience in the trenches. One thing is certain about the years to come: companies will have to stay nimble and adjust strategies on the fly.  Who you choose to have on your team is going to mean everything.

While the marketing landscape changes so quickly, the good news is that a Marketing Director can succeed in the face of headwinds no matter which way he/she faces. It may be more challenging than it should be, but stand true to your brand, be current and always in the know, and be bold enough to make a difference….otherwise, chances are, you might be dusting off that resume.

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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.

Blueprints for Building Your Own Crystal Ball

businessman Hand holding a crystal BallA couple of weeks ago, I was at a trade show and after walking up and down the aisles, it occurred to me just how much of the same-old, same-old I was seeing. Nothing really new (unless you consider irrelevant modifications like changing the color from blue to orange and different shaped bottles as new).  There was nothing that I can say showed me that companies were spending any amount of time and energy in looking at the marketplace with an eye toward identifying the opportunities that trends in customer purchasing or behavior would present.

With that as that backdrop, on my flight home I started thinking about the ways that the marketing department within an organization can start the process of getting out in front of their competitors in order to seize on untapped business opportunities and identify trends before their competitors do.  It’s really not as difficult as a lot of people think, but it does require that one to think more about the future by asking questions around the idea of “so what does that mean?” As an example of this, watch the video clip that stars Kevin Spacey for E*Trade.

In short, imagine if you could get a 12-18 month head-start on everyone else in your industry. Wouldn’t even 6 months be nice? Wouldn’t that make a huge difference in how your business runs? Maybe you could get the jump on your competitors every single time you make a move. Heck, this would even apply not only to products and services but also to channels, processes and even personnel hires.

Before we get into the ways that one might start spotting new trends, it’s important to understand a few things. So here goes:

  1. Don’t try to predict the future. Instead understand the longer-term trends and today’s new approaches and develop products and services that will succeed moving forward.
  2. Fads come and go. Trends emerge and evolve.
  3. Be careful about the market research you use as lots of it is backward-looking. Trends are about the future.
  4. What’s important is identifying the opportunities that trends produce.
  5. Don’t just look at trends within your industry. Look outside for possible implications to what your company produces.

OK, with that as the backdrop to trend watching, let’s walk through the process of how and where to find possible trends:

  1. Social Media – It’s a great place to track discussions on your products and those of your competitors. It also provides insight that you get from customer feedback and engage customers and prospects in a conversation. Use Facebook and Twitter to identify key influencers and trendsetters among your customers or markets. Reach out to these individuals to see if they’ll be part of a “customer advisory board” or if they’ll be open to providing you thoughts or ideas on new products or things they’d like to see in the market.
  2. Sales Department – Spend time having conversations with the sales team to see what they’re hearing and seeing. They’re out in the marketplace meeting with all sorts of people and could provide some insight into new developments regarding what customers or prospects are doing.
  3. Online Resources – There are a variety of online websites that deal with spotting trends from TED (series) to Google Trends to Trend Hunter and others.
  4. Look Outward – One way to get ahead of the competition is to see what companies outside your industry are doing; understand how that idea or model might apply in your industry and then be the first to apply it to your marketplace. Look internationally as well. How many times have you read about an interesting product that was launched in another country…lots of times, right? In short, be curious and ask yourself why certain companies are now doing what they’re doing. Maybe they’re seeing something that you can use for your own business. And let’s not forget about just keeping your ears and eyes open as you go about your daily business. Don’t wear blinders as you live your life.
  5. Be Open to Collaborations – Look at organizations that might have a similar customer base to identify how what you do might work with way they do in order to identify opportunities for both. Check out their websites and what they might be saying about the future as they see it.

Now that you’ve identified some trends, where do you go from there? First, think about the consequences if a trend continues to spread. How will the trend change what people buy? What will happen if the trend grows in strength? Here’s where you have to ask yourself a lot of questions about “what does that mean?” In short, imagine the future (and your future) if the trend plays out. After you have in your head what the trend might look like, identify what need is currently being unmet that, if created, will help customers take advantage of the future scenario. And then lastly, define what the product or service opportunity is— that being the space between what is currently available and what people who would be effected by the future trends will want.

Here’s the choice you have:  As a company, you can sit around and talk about strategies year after year. You can even hire consultancy firms to tell you what’s hot…last year. You can scratch your heads at all that new stuff that you’re seeing but end up sticking to known quantity. Or, you could wrap your mind around the potential that a new product or service has to offer.  You create your own crystal ball!

Maybe the people who are good in spotting trends and anticipating what people want are able to imagine what others can’t. These trend spotters collect relevant data from what they read and hear and can read between the lines.  Hopefully you’re one of those people.

Just remember, the sooner you spot an opportunity, the more time you have to leverage the tar out of it.  And the faster you can move on an opportunity, the more likely it is that you will score a win.   Keep your eyes open.

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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.

Four concepts that can make a big difference in your advertising

newspaper-clutterMost 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:

  • 85 years of experience
  • XXXXX number of customers
  • Available day or night
  • Proven technology
  • Best warranty available
  • Multi-lingual staff

or in Business-to-Business ads (snatched from the pages of a recent trade pub):

  • Proven Products
  • Superior Service
  • Implementation
  • Dedicated Staff
  • Customizable by end-user

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.

Pointing the finger at Marketing

Blaming_someonepointingOver 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.

May I have your attention Pu-leeeze! 

Megaphone stockI 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:

  • Simplify. Less is more. Don’t just push out content or tweets or posts like something coming off an assembly line. Have something meaningful to say and make sure that it’s different than what others are saying. Otherwise it’s not a voice people want to listen to but just white noise.
  • Don’t waste their time. Unless you want visitors to click the “back” button and switch to one of your competitors, don’t make them wait for the information they need. Include key information up front and begin with the end in mind. It’s critical that your message be on-point, easy to understand and interesting from the audience’s perspective and do it in 10-15 seconds. Which will earn you more time…if you’ve done it right.
  • Be consistent. Be around. Patience is absolutely necessary because it takes time and effort to get the audience’s attention, while consistency is essential to keep it. Wherever your messaging is appearing, online or offline, make sure your audience gets information that they can use and make sure that there’s a cadence and schedule in place for this messaging. Being present for a while and then disappearing for a while does not keep your audience interested.
  • Get Emotional. Prospects are prospects whether you’re trying to market bars of soap for their homes or selling soap dispensers on the B2B side. Market research has shown that most people buy on emotion first and intellect afterwards. Give them content that makes them feel something and they’ll stay tuned in.
  • Variety is the spice of life. Change things up. Don’t keep going out with the same ad or mailing the same brochure, etc., Once people think they’ve seen it, they’re off somewhere else. In our own lives, we don’t keep rereading the same thing so why for a moment do we think that if you keep rerunning the same material over and over again to your audience, things will get better. I’m here to tell you …it won’t. Better to change things before people get bored.

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.

Dare you look in the Mirror?

Magic-MirrorI don’t know too many people who really like pictures of themselves.  “Oh, I look too fat, too old, too…whatever!” Personally, I hate hearing my own voice on radio or in recordings.  I think I sound goofy and inarticulate.  And anyone who’s ever seen themselves on television (not including actors, of course) gets it from all sides.  We simply don’t like seeing ourselves as we suspect other people really see us.

Oddly enough, we’re the same way when it comes to our businesses.  We’d just as soon not think about what we really “look like” to outsiders.  The truth might be just too upsetting.  But the truth always wins out.  So what is the truth we must all face as professionals?  What’s the best mirror we can hold up to see ourselves most clearly?

A couple of years ago, our agency was asked by an industry association to provide consulting services to their members.  We found that we could do that most effectively by sending anyone who sought our consultation a 12-point questionnaire about their business.  It was surprising how challenging it was for many to answer the most necessary questions about their own business’ strengths and weaknesses.  We quickly realized that this was that mirror!  This questionnaire, if taken seriously, forces company marketing officers to look inward honestly and be willing not to like the answers.

I herewith offer these same questions to you to ponder with respect to your own enterprise.  But to do it properly, you cannot be superficial in your answers.  You have to dig as deep as you can.  And if you can only come up with the “obvious answer” or draw a complete blank, take that as a sign that there’s work to be done.

Ready?  No cheating…

  1. What business do you see yourself in?  (It sounds obvious, but think about Domino’s Pizza.  They don’t say they’re in the pizza business; they’re in the business of feeding hungry people fast.  Or Nike, who isn’t in the athletic clothing business; they’re in the business of encouraging athleticism in everyone.  That paradigm shift is critical.  So what business are you really in?)
  2. What or who is your major source of business? Do you want to change this?
  3. What type of customer are you looking to attract?  Is that different from who you’re attracting now?
  4. What are your current marketing/business goals? (i.e. increase sales/customers; attract business partners; grow visibility in a different business segment)
  5. How realistic are those goals? Why?
  6. What is going to stop you from getting there? (i.e. competitors, financial condition of firm; change in industry; etc)
  7. Who is your major competition?
  8. What differentiates your business from the competition?  (I mean, what really differentiates you?  What is it that ONLY you can say. Not something that with a switch of a logo or name your competitors. Once you strip away everything that you and your competitors all do, what is it that makes you different…and relevant.”)
  9. List all the ways non-customers can find out about you right now?  Is that sufficient for your growth plans?
  10. Where do you feel you fall short in your marketing efforts?  Message?  Creative?  Media expenditures?  Media selection?
  11. What has worked best for you?  What has worked least?
  12. What do you want people to remember or say about your company after “you’re no longer in the room”? (1 or 2 things)

On your first read-through of these questions, I’ll bet you say, “Oh, I can answer all that, no problem!”  OK, tough guy, then give it a go.  Build up the sweat and answer these 12 questions to the very best of your abilities.  However you answer it, whatever holes are left unfilled, whatever questions it brings up as you sit there stumped, you’ll have developed the most important document you need to move your company forward.  Because getting to your destination of choice depends fundamentally on knowing where to start and taking your first step.

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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.

Looking Back to the Future

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  – Soren Kierkegaard

looking backThe last quarter of 2014 is almost history and as we stand poised to welcome 2015 in just a matter of days, we hope for a future that is successful, rewarding and where your dreams will be realized. Having seen the start of more than a few “new business years” during my career, I’ve learned that you can do one of two things in preparation for the coming year. You can yet again try to create a brand new marketing strategy for the coming year or you can pause, look back and do some serious reflecting, resolving to change, or improve some aspect about how you will initiate your future marketing campaigns. For some people, looking back over the past year may be something better left in the rearview mirror; on the other hand, burying your head in the sand can be seen as the primary ingredient in a recipe for another disappointing year…and you know how much the CEO/President/Owner/Founder loves that kind of thinking. So before one celebrates the dawn of a new year…take time to ask yourself what are you going to do to change? What does success in 2015 look like to you and your executive management team?

Speaking for myself and our firm, the end of each year is met with a healthy dose of optimism for the coming year. We see 2015 through a lens of hopefulness, that things will continue to get better. Is that just us or will you and your organization also view the coming year with a level of anticipation that you haven’t had for a few years? Hey, it’s been tough for most everyone out there but let’s remember that at least a few organizations — perhaps some of your own competitors — have fared better than most despite these trying times. So what have they done to plot a course for a more optimistic and profitable path for success in 2015?

Depending on marketplace factors coupled with how well you were able to strategically position and market your company, the past year was either seen as a success or another year of same-old, or even a disappointment.  The question that begs to be asked here is, how much of last year’s growth or lack thereof was because of something you had no control over, such as good or bad luck, and how much was because of something you specifically chose to do or not do?  I’ve found through personal experience this is the time to be totally honest with yourself.  As Sigmund Freud said, “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

Hey, I’m all for a bit of luck but you probably don’t want to continue betting future success on lucky things happening in the coming year.  With this in mind, here are a few questions to ask yourself as thought starters as you begin the process of looking in the rearview mirror to last year and through your windshield to the next:

  • What marketing activities worked for you and which ones didn’t in 2014?
  • What 2 or 3 trends did you notice have taken place in your industry and outside of it that you need to incorporate into 2015 activities?
  • What 5 pieces of really good customer feedback did you receive this past year that you need to take deliberate action on?
  • Is there one part of your marketing activities that if it got more attention could yield better results?
  • What are the 2 mission-critical initiatives that absolutely need to be accomplished by June 30th 2015?
  • How did your marketing (from strategy to execution) match up with your competitors?  Was it “beige”- boring or was it “full of color”- impactful?
  • What are the top 3-5 problem areas that could impact your bottom line or stunt the growth of your brand if you don’t tackle them now?
  • What are the 3-5 opportunities that could grow your bottom line, brand visibility and preference?
  • What do you produce, offer or do that excites your audience and makes them think “Wow!”

As marketers, one thing we know for sure is that change will not stop in 2015. The economy will continue to shift on us —hopefully with less drama. But by reflecting back on 2014, taking control of your marketing activities rather than being tossed around by the waves in the marketplace, along with thinking optimistically about what 2015 can hold, 2015 might actually be a year worth celebrating.  It will be for us and hopefully will be for you as well.

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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.

 

Move over ROI. Now it’s ROO.

Making this kind of offer won’t necessarily produce an immediately measurable return. But its impact will ultimately return value many times over.

If you’re tracking financial return on investment (ROI) as the sole benchmark to determine if your marketing programs are working, then you need to know that there are other ways in this new world to go about doing so because otherwise you’re missing a big part of the picture.

You see, as much as we like to talk about ROI being a critical metric for marketing success, there are not many organizations that really calculate this metric — I mean really calculate it.  The reason being that linking ROI to business efforts is just plain difficult, especially as a cumulative total, due to the blurring of cross-channel integration, competitive activity and economic and marketplace factors. The truth is, most CMOs have a general sense for what’s working and what’s not with respect to overall marketing spend and therefore overall ROI is calculated with experience and intuition (not on a spreadsheet).

The thing is, marketing isn’t black and white, and there are a number of marketing objectives don’t link directly to revenue / return.  What if the objective is branding or awareness?  You might expect an indirect impact on sales.  You would also measure the success of the campaign very differently; maybe you just want to see if more people visited the website, or visited the store.

Enter Return on Objectives. Analyzing ROO means that you accept and understand that not all goals are measurable with hard data. Sometimes, marketing efforts simply help a business move in the right direction to meet its long-term objectives. For example, it could take the form of a business that develops a social media plan and creates a library of content on its website blog page, Facebook page, YouTube channel, and so on over the course of a year, all of which will undoubtedly move the company closer to its long-term brand building objectives.

There has been and always will be two schools of thought on the value of hard vs. soft metrics. Solely relying on traditional ROI isn’t enough and there will always be marketers who don’t like the fact that soft metrics play an important role in marketing today, but without considering them, a big piece of the story is missing.  For example, the value of word-of-mouth marketing and an emotional connection to brands can’t necessarily be quantified. But that doesn’t make it any less important.  A CEO, CMO, or CFO who ignores the less tangible importance of engagement and consumer perceptions of brands will limit the potential growth of those brands. In today’s world, that’s a big mistake. The best marketing leaders and teams can marry the two — hard and soft metrics — in order to make the best strategic decisions for the company.

Think of it like this: If short-term financial ROI is the single factor with which marketing activity is measured against, many large successful brands would never advertise. For most business types, only a smaller proportion of marketing communication generates a short-term purchase response, and this is particularly true for well-established mature brands.

Investment in marketing communication for some brands should therefore be seen for often what it really is: reinforcing/strengthening favorable brand perceptions and insuring the brand’s strength and status for the future. It isn’t always a math calculation where the dollars spent have to exceed dollars coming in. So much of building brand value is tied to emotional involvement in a brand, and that’s even harder to quantify than social media conversations and sharing. However, I don’t think anyone would argue that emotional involvement doesn’t add to equity (at least I hope they wouldn’t). Otherwise, a brand like Nike would be just another athletic shoe company. Disregarding those emotions because they can’t be precisely quantified would be a tragic mistake.

As well, what current ROI metrics don’t account for are what I’ll call “lurkers,” the people that are watching and waiting to take action. If we as marketers bail too soon based on the short-term analysis of results, then we miss the boat.  How many of us have at one time or another been a “lurker?” All of us, right?

That said, without a doubt most marketers want to prove that the dollars they have invested have achieved measurable success and cost effectiveness. For me, ROO can be defined as the “Total cost of campaign divided by the number of objectives met.”  To do it right, the key to measuring ROO is that specific objectives need to be created from the outset of a project along with a specific end date. In other words, the marketer must plan for measurement at the same time that the campaign is being developed.

So, instead of evaluating success based on revenues, marketers should take a look at measuring returns based on whether their objectives, from brand awareness to customer relationship-building, are met. Completion of these objectives, rather than dollars earned, will determine the success of a given campaign. As a result, ROO results will come in all shapes and sizes, but will not necessarily be defined in immediate dollars and cents…just like the offer in the photo above probably achieved for Plaza Cleaners.

My point is that ROI numbers don’t tell the entire story and relying on hard metrics alone isn’t enough. The hard and soft data is available to you for you to use it. You can bet your competitors are…or will be doing so soon.

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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.

 

The Seven Cardinal Virtues…Of Marketing

business angelA few weeks ago I wrote about the Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing and hopefully all of you sinners out there have repented. Given the response, I thought it might be good to talk about the flipside, the Seven Cardinal Virtues of Marketing. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “Vices and virtues: Can’t have one without the other!” Anyway, as individuals responsible for the marketing activities of the organization, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we do have a responsibility to “behave” in a way that allows for the marketing function to perform its responsibilities in a manner that helps the company survive and thrive.

Patience

In today’s world of “needed it yesterday,” too many marketers see patience as something that can’t be accepted by the company because it’s “just not how we roll.”  Well, as a marketers we need to continue to be reminded that patience is a valuable skill and critically important to the growth of the company.  For example, staying the course of what the brand’s strategy is when you know it is the right course, rather than over-reacting to others’ activities. As well, patience guides how long to stick with your marketing message.  It may feel like it is old and stale to you but that’s because you’re exposed to it daily while prospects and customers aren’t nearly as familiar with it. That doesn’t mean you should keep repeating the same thing over and over again, especially if a better approach is required. Be patient with yourself and resist the temptation to compare your progress to that of others.  Hey, it takes some time to set up a lead generation and follow-up machine that will crank out good results month-after-month, right?

Diligence

Sometimes the best course is to apply a little dose of patience and sometimes one needs to persist and push through the challenge at hand. Be diligent in doing something every day to move your marketing and sales programs forward.  You can always do a bit more to optimize the website, create more content, tighten your message or figure out how to better add value to the selling process. Keep learning the new skills necessary to succeed in a changing marketing world.  Since the web is such a powerful awareness and lead generation tool, anything you can learn about how it works is helpful. With social media becoming an increasingly more visible component in your marketing efforts, be determined to write that blog post, send some tweets, utilize LinkedIn, etc., even when you don’t feel like it. You never know when your efforts will pay off.  In short, it’s keeping the brand’s finger on the pulse of the market, and working to respond properly to it.

Fortitude

News Flash! The marketplace is as fluid as water so the watchwords for the day are “Stay Alert and Stay Brave.”  “The Fast and the Furious” isn’t just a name of a movie series, it’s also how the Net moves. It can also describe competitive activities and certainly how your customers think and take action. Keep in close touch with those factors that will either lead you to success or be the things that will keep you up at night.  Do your best to stay up to date by doing the necessary customer and competitive research by seeing what is being written and said about you online from Epinions to Yelp and many more review sites. Remember, “not knowing” is just that and more than one company has been blindsided by bad sales results because they imagined they knew what was going on in the marketplace and what customers and prospects thought of them.  Sure they did.

Honesty/Justice

Customers know when companies are not being upfront or honest with them by what they see, read or hear in the marketing or advertising. They know when you’re trying to hide behind the small legal type or legal mumbo-jumbo.  And guess what?  As people who really dislike honesty, they bail…and they let others know about it as well.  Conversely, think like your customers: If you had a problem with an order and wanted it resolved, you’d want to be treated fairly—and so would they. Make sure that your marketing material and activities reflect a company who respects and values their customers…because we know that they’re not easy to come by.

Faith/Courage

Believe in yourself and what your company is marketing. Know that marketing does work, regardless of the naysayers throughout the organization from C-Suite to the folks in finance and sales. My business partner is quick to point out that marketing is a self- fulfilling prophecy: If you believe in it, you’ll commit to it, invest in it and give it time to work… and it will. Or, if you don’t really believe in it, you’ll hold back, and guess what? It won’t work, and you’ll be right as well. If we’re honest with ourselves, there are times when we’ve wondered if what we’re doing is really achieving the goals we’ve set forth. Realize that success usually comes only after setbacks. View failure as an unavoidable component of success.

Prudence

Planning and acting can be difficult for a lot of marketers who often fear looking indecisive or making a mistake when the firm’s future—or their job—is at stake. Making decisions that are politically expedient, that travel the path of least resistance or avoid confrontation are dangerous and often unproductive without thinking through the ramifications of the decision. And when that happen, like clockwork, a marketing problem raises its ugly head. To help with that, first listen to what others have to say because the right answer might possibly come from them….really. Second, judge with the information in hand. And then, once you judge the right thing to do, the next thing to do is act. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Chastity/Charity

It’s a virtue combination that in our everyday life we think is important….but is rarely acted upon in business.  Yes, as marketers we’re responsible for communicating a meaningful and unique value proposition that the brand alone can own and then making sure that the audience embraces it both emotionally as well as rationally.  But shouldn’t we also make sure that the brand contributes something meaningful to the market – or even better, the society? A brand should stand for something more than just the product or service that comes from a company. A reputation for being a good corporate citizen only comes through actions that don’t have an obvious ROI attached to it, such as sponsorship or participation in causes or activities that benefit the community because it’s a right thing to do. Think about how as a marketer this chastity/charity mindset could feed the soul of the organization.

As marketers, we realize that the marketplace brings with it many trappings and temptations that could lead us astray from doing the job that both we and the company expect. Recalibrating our thinking and actions to embrace the virtuous side of ourselves in a way that also benefits the organization will lead us to a better place. Let’s go and do good.  Your company and customers deserve it.

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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.

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