Advertising and Marketing Blog
Business Killer: Status Quo
Posted on 09/23/2010, by DMC
Could there be anything more likely to make a business boring, predictable or less relevant than following the status quo. If the last decade has taught us anything shouldn’t it be that we can either evolve with the times or get crushed by them? For full disclosure there are few business that fall more easily into the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” trap more often than ad agencies. However, I’m not here to rant on my agency brethren.
Maintaining the status quo means a lack of thought leadership, a vulnerable brand identity and a market share taken for granted. Customers and prospects will ALWAYS find new ways to get by what you're selling them. And they’ll either do it in cheaper, more efficient ways. Or they’ll do it themselves. The point is rational, unemotional, analytical evaluation of every business – and business process – on a regular basis is a healthy thing. Here are a few ways to make sure you aren’t stuck in the trap.
Talk to your customers – often
No one knows more about the value and weaknesses of your company and products (or services) than the people who are paying money for them. And listen carefully to what they have to say – the vast majority of the time they want to keep doing business with you. They’ll just want to know they’re being heard and their concerns are being taken seriously. You’ll find the change they require is often incremental and you may even discover new areas of revenue generation that will ultimately lead to ... new customers.
Gain some outside perspective
One of the great things about working with a third party – whether a consultant or agency – is the viewpoint they can bring from not having to live your business day in and day out. Separation yields perspective. Choose a good vendor to help you look at your market/offerings/company again and you may very well find it a breath of fresh air. And make sure you allow that person/team to objectively challenge your thinking, your current assumptions, your tactics. If you choose a competent third party – and authentically empower them – the likelihood you’ll get back greater value increases exponentially.
Execute
Were I forced to choose a single business skill above anything else it would be the ability to execute. It is what will separate winning and losing ... small gains in market share and achieving an exit strategy. Especially in small, emerging companies we see too much planning and not enough executing. The market will give you all the data and feedback you need, if you have something in the field to offer. It’s one of the primary foundations of good marketing – test, test and retest. Getting something the field will proivde you with more validation – and more opportunities to execute.
Great ideas can come from anywhere inside (or outside) of the organization. Be open to hearing them, validate what you’ve heard and deliver.
Marketing Analytics are Fun
Posted on 08/18/2010, by DMC
Now don’t get me wrong, I love a well designed ad or campaign just like everyone else. I get caught up in the emotion of rocking headlines, inspiring visuals and body copy that tugs at my heartstrings. Recently, I was completely inspired by the campaign that Nike did for the World Cup (below).
However, as we’re going through our day-to-day providing strategic marketing services to our clients, I also get really excited to dive into the analytics of HOW the campaigns we build are actually doing the job we design and architect them to do. Marketing analytics play a huge role in the success of any marketing campaign. Right now we’re not talking about some of the core operational metrics we deal with everyday like conversions, close rates, customer lifetime value, etc. Here are five of my current online faves we use in analyzing the success of our marketing campaigns.
Open/Click Through Rates
The bread and butter analytic measurement for e-mail campaigns. Just knowing these two things can give you tremendous insight into the value of your e-mail marketing campaign. Is the subject line engaging enough for our prospect list to open the e-mail and see what’s inside? One of our best read e-mails carried the subject line, “a left brain and right brain walk into a bar.” Then once they’re in are they clicking on the link(s) that we want them to?
Shares/Retweets
With social media waging war for their piece of marketing budgets – and with programs being executed only sparingly well – how do we provide vision to marketing executives that social efforts are working? One great way to do that is shares/retweet. It’s surprising simple from a back end perspective and will help frame the discussion about how a particular campaign is growing a client’s community. And really in this world isn’t share the new “convert” anyway? Want to broaden your message, extend your reach and influence residents on a peer-to-peer level? Click to share.
Capture Forms/Landing Pages
The Robin to an e-mail marketing campaign’s Batman. Get people to click through to a landing page and you’re half way home. Those folks are ready for more detailed sales information and they’re open to the next conversation – the capture form. Think carefully here and don’t get too greedy. What information do you really need to take the next step? E-mail address, Twitter handle, name and company? Don’t try to get it all at once, you’ll scare off more people than you convert . . . and give yourself more reason to continue to nurture those leads.
Non-Branded Organic Traffic
Warning, I’m about to get my SEO geek on. It’s great that customers and prospects can remember and type in the web address. It’s the rest of the world that intrigues me. How we can keep traffic growing among those visitors who don’t know a site well enough to type in the address directly? To have a site come up in search results, etc. Those are new and potentially very valuable visitors. By the same token, for the most part we ignore traffic stats for the home page. Of course people come to the home page more than anything else. I’m far more interested in what inside pages are getting the most traffic. Are they the pages we expected with our architecture and design? If not, what’s missing?
Traffic Spikes
What makes site traffic go wild? Blog posts, and e-mail distributions? Does traffic spike higher when the post or e-mail is paired with social media outreach? How long does the bump last from a single post/distribution? And how can we make that peek last as long as possible? We love to look at this data to help determine the types of content to focus on for a particular audience. Take this in comparison with overall weekly traffic and you can come to some good conclusions on not only effective subject matter but days of the week people are most likely to be on your site anyway. Obviously a tool like Google Analytics is a must have.
Data is the best friend of successful marketing campaigns. What are some of your favorite metrics for analyzing he success of marketing campaigns? Let us know – it’s all gravy.
Finding The Line
Posted on 12/04/2009, by DMC
How do we know where the line is in life? We have generally accepted standards of what is over the line with regards to our actions. We can all agree that some things are just plain over the line, for example: running someone down with your car when you're drunk (looking at you Stallworth), calling the President a terrorist, yelling “bomb!” on a plane, or farting loudly (ok, or even at all) in an elevator. But in advertising we encounter grey areas which deal with much less than life and death.
You Want Marketing Results? Try 820% in Two Weeks!
Posted on 09/23/2009, by DMC
At the beginning of this month we launched a new marketing campaign for the Hillsborough County department of solid waste. The goal for the campaign was simple – encourage homeowners within unincorporated Hillsborough County to request recycling bins. The conceptual idea for the campaign began with a group of famous “Ben’s.” The connection between famous Ben’s and recycling bins is an easy one for general consumers to grasp. They are found across the mainstream consumer landscape. And they are easy to identify. Go ahead, take a minute and see how many famous “Ben’s” you can think of . . .
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