Marketing is strategy. Sales is execution.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Links, Marketing How-to on August 25, 2010 | 10 Comments
Marketing’s job is to create awareness
In recent years a confusing, disturbing trend has evolved: marketing is being confused with sales, or being treated as if it is sales. True, pure marketing has always been about communication. It has encompassed P.R., advertising, promotions, direct mail, trade shows, etc. It’s about the message, not about closing the deal.
Marketing titles have further blurred the lines between marketing and sales. And it’s a very important line to keep perfectly clear. But in order to give sales people exalted titles, such as “Marketing Director” (and to avoid the word “sales”) both the roles and the functions have become confused. In particular, it’s brought us back to one of the oldest questions in business: who’s in charge, sales or marketing?
What Fast Company says:
“Marketing’s primary function should be to develop the market, to create demand for the product or services which results in High Probability Prospects. The primary function of sales-people should be to find and do business with the High Probability Prospects, as they develop.” [Jacques Werth, co-author "High Probability Selling"]
In other words, marketing’s job is to create awareness; sales’ job is to make the sale.
With the blurring of the line between sales and marketing functions, you’ll often find that a “director of marketing” is really a sales person in marketer’s clothing. If one of those hybrids becomes your client, it can make it very hard to create effective communications.
True marketing people understand both the process and the reasonable expectations from marketing efforts. Sales people only expect results. Immediately. That’s not how marketing works. Coke became Coke through more than a century of branding. You don’t get there overnight.
The point is, when sales is in charge of marketing, the true purpose of each is lost.
Marketing creates awareness. Awareness creates sales.
Often, companies get the mistaken idea that sales can do just fine on their own. (“Who needs marketing?”) They get the idea that sales is all they need if they see dollars marching in every time sales people come back. But how often are those sales people doing it all on their own? If they don’t have good marketing materials and support, are prospects really as receptive?
My simile is that sales people are the ground troops and marketing is the navy, pounding the shoreline to make it possible for sales to land on the beach. The troops need that covering fire to make it, but because they’re down on the ground, it tends to look like they did it all on their own. Ultimately, neither one can win the war alone. (O.k., that simile is done.) The simple point is that prospects are far more receptive after they’ve been softened up by really good marketing materials.
And don’t forget that a single piece of marketing can be seen by tens of thousands of people at a time, while a salesperson can only talk to one prospect at a time.
Marketing is strategy.
Marketing has always been about communication. For communication to work, it must be on strategy. That strategy must be arrived at before materials are created, and it must be communicated through compelling messaging. To be compelling, the marketing communication must be relevant to the true target audience.
(By the way, figuring out exactly who your target audience is must come first. You need to be able to answer, “For whom does your product or service exist? Why will they want it? Who else does what you do? What makes your offering different? What will it take to win?”)
Sales is execution.
Sales has typically been based on making promises. Things go wrong when those promises are at odds with the marketing strategy. That’s bad, very bad. One of the basic tenets of branding is that the very same message is communicated by everyone, in all departments, across the board. If outbound sales is saying whatever comes into their heads to make a sale, you’ve got to rein them in and make sure, absolutely sure, that they’re only communicating the agreed-upon strategy.
Sales and marketing are inextricably, symbiotically connected. The ultimate job of marketing is to support sales. And the ultimate job of sales is to execute on the promise of marketing. Marketing is about driving awareness and interest. Sales is about closing the deal. They’re connected, but distinct. They need each other, but cannot do each other’s jobs.
The most successful sales people I’ve ever known say, “I’ve never made a promise I couldn’t keep.” The most successful marketing corollary is “Never over-promise.” By sticking to truly relevant, entirely believable messaging, everyone will succeed.
Example: if you’re doing an ad for a coffee maker and write, “How to make the best coffee in the world,” it stretches believability and accessibility. It’s over-promise. But if instead you write, “How to make a better cup of coffee,” you’ve now set a believable, attainable goal (with thanks to Leo Fassler).
Keep them separate, but together.
What’s communicated by everyone in an organization is vitally important – to the company image, and to the brand. If you want a consistent message going out to all your current and potential customers, you have to make sure that your internal folks understand exactly what to say to your external audience.
Sales cannot make up its own version of the marketing message. Marketing cannot remain aloof and separate from sales. You have to talk to each other to communicate and agree on the messaging that works best for everyone.
Marketing strategy is defining the target customer – understanding their needs, knowing the competition, setting appropriate pricing, developing effective promotional materials – and then communicating all of that to the sales team so that they can apply their sales techniques most effectively.
You need each other. Really.
Marketing is at the core of branding – you’re creating critical awareness about a product or service within a targeted audience, and about your specific potential for fulfilling the need for that product or service. Marketing is also about defining the benefits of the product or service and how to communicate those benefits effectively – all of which is given to the sales force to execute on.
Sales is the other end of the stick, using inbound or outbound people to zero in on specific targeted prospects as a result of warm leads from responses to marketing materials.
Marketing creates tools that support sales. If the tools are not working, sales has to let marketing know and, together, you have to redesign those tools to end up with communication that does work.
If either marketing or sales gets the idea that they’re running the show, someone in charge needs to sit them down, straighten them out and then turn them loose to try it again.
Content mills: degrading writing quality and writers’ lives.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on July 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
Have you noticed sloppy, even grossly inaccurate writing on “how-to” Web sites? Or on travel and food sites? How about oddly similar articles showing up on multiple sites? Or enticing headline links for articles that entirely disappoint when you click on them?
There’s a reason. A new animal recently emerged in the online world: content mills. They are brokers of online content, and they’re quite uncaring about writing quality, let alone writers. And every self-respecting writer is outraged by what the mills claim as “fair pay.” So self-respecting writers won’t work for them. And that’s why you may have become disenchanted with so much of what you see online.
What kind of writers are producing this muck?
The only writers actually writing for the mills are the desperate kind. Writing, after all, is a lonely, cerebral, isolated profession. That fact alone seems to have made us ripe pickings for this mostly Internet-based phenomenon. Some examples of mills are Associated Content, examiner.com, Demand Media, Elance, and Seed. They all follow the same business model: pay as little as you can for words to fill up online pages.
What exactly do they pay? Demand, for example, claims to pay $5-15 for 500-1,000 word articles. Consider the fact that it takes a decent writer 2-4 hours to do a decent 500-1,000 word piece. So what do you do if you’re only making $2.50 per hour? You rush, you “borrow,” you plagiarize. Your mission in life becomes writing as many articles as you can, as fast as you can, so that you’re making slightly more than $2.50 per hour.
Hence, we have “mash-ups:” material grabbed from all over the Web and “re-purposed” for an article. Associated Content and examiner.com are even worse – they only pay writers by the click. So writers have to become promoters of their own sloppy writing to make anything.
Do mash-ups equal plagiarism? In many cases, yes. When the original author isn’t even given credit, what else can it be?
What should writers be paid per word?
The average good-quality magazine article pays $1-2 per word. So a decently written1,000-word article should pay $1,000-2,000. Not $10. But before you think of dashing off 1,000 words and looking for the $2 per-word market, you should realize that to get to 1,000 really good words for the really well-paying markets, a writer typically puts down 4-5,000 words, then works, re-works and polishes their material. And that can take 20-40 hours.
So, how can writers survive working for the mills? We can’t. And that’s my point. The mills don’t actually care about writers because quality has nothing to do with what they’re after. They only care about selling content, whatever it is. The business of the mills is to stockpile random content to sell to sites that need “stuff” on their pages. All kinds of sites and publications buy that stuff just so that you and I might be attracted to visit … and just possibly click on the ads there.
Where might you read some of this paltry-paying stuff? Demand Media lists eHow.com, LIVESTRONG.com, Cracked.com, Trails.com, Golflink.com, Answerbag, Mobile, and Impact Stories as some of their content. And here’s what Associated Content says about how they pay their “contributors:” “You earn money for every one thousand page views your content generates (PPM™ rate). The baseline PPM™ rate is currently $1.50 – meaning if you generate 30,000 page views, you’re paid $45.00 in Performance Payments.” That means that you only get paid if you drive the masses to click on your articles. So you’re not only paid peanuts for your work, you have to work pretty darn hard to get paid the peanuts.
What does this mean for you and me? The quality of online content is rapidly and clearly declining. But you may have noticed that.
The valuation of content over quality.
This really is a David and Goliath scenario. The mills are extremely well-funded and some of them are owned by some of the wealthiest people in the country. So even though the Web has brought a great many boons, if you’re a writer, globalization and content mills have become your foes. There is likely no stopping them. But a growing demand for quality may set them straight.
Jaron Lanier wrote about this very thing in his book, “You Are Not a Gadget.” He sees similar ills in the rise of aggregation of data with total disregard for the human element. In other words, many of the factors driving the growth of the internet are not based on what you and I really want. It’s based on getting those ads clicked. Period.
If writers were like other trades – teachers, police, electricians, carpenters, firefighters and so on – we’d be talking to each other, getting angry and starting to organize. But we’re not like other trades. We’re largely solo enterprises, and some of us truly hit the wall looking for work. Those of us who have reached that level of desperation actually bow down to the demon and start writing for the mills. None who do like it. But they think they must.
A similar phenomenon occurred around 30 years ago when stock photography came into being. It pretty much killed professional photography. Ad agencies and magazines that used to pay thousands of dollars for photo shoots began paying $1-200 for stock shots instead. As the stock houses grew in number and strength, photographers bowed to them and turned over their images. That only helped drive the nails into their coffins.
The basics of branding.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on July 19, 2010 | No Comments
Branding baby steps.
The idea of “branding” may sound formidable to many companies. A daunting new task for marketing to add to its plate. I can make it simple for you. A company’s brand is ultimately defined by three things:
- Competencies – what you do
- Standards – how you do it
- Style – how you relate to your marketplace
These are things that need to be both defined and agreed upon before any creative work starts.
Once they are agreed upon, they need to be maintained with consistency across every form of communication – from e-mails to business cards, and from one-on-one conversations to a major marketing campaign. Without that consistency, there can be no brand.
To put it into simple steps, you need to determine: your message, your target audience, how your product or service benefits them, what the competition is saying, and how you’re better or different. And that, folks, is what branding is all about.
Tag lines rule.
This may raise a few hackles: to me, a tag line is the heart of any brand. Headlines come and go. Vision and mission statements are useful when you can’t fall asleep. But to know what an enterprise’s brand is really about, look at their tag line.
One of my favorite, short-lived tag lines of all time was from UPS: ”Moving at the speed of business.” When that came out, I thought, “boy, now they’re going to give FedEx a run for their money.” But what did they do a year or two later? Changed it to: ”Trust brown. ” Trust brown? Their rationale (if there is one) was that they didn’t want to frighten off their non-business clientèle. Umm, no matter what you’re shipping, or to whom, wouldn’t you want it moving as fast as possible? ”At the speed of business” sounds pretty darn fast, doesn’t it? Alas. (Imagine a FedEx did me-too … that might be “Pick Purple.” Ugh.)
And only a tag line can consistently appear in ads, commercials, on stationery, at trade shows … heck, you can even answer the phone saying your tag. (Although I don’t recommend that since those scripted greeting are long enough already …) The bottom line – in my experience – is that tag lines are the hook for everything you do that’s marketing. Choose one carefully because you don’t want to be changing your tag every six months.
Super-brands.
There are many “super-brands” in our marketplace today – Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, FedEx, etc. They are super-brands not just because of how they define their product or service, but also because they define their category. That means, in part, that we refer to Coke when we mean most any soda, or Kleenex when we mean any tissue, and Xerox when we mean any kind of photocopying. (It’s good to be a super-brand.)
While UPS is a huge company with a well-established brand, it still needs to distinguish itself from FedEx, even though they are in the same category. We, the people, have given FedEx a significant branding edge by making it common to say “FedEx it,” regardless of how we’re actually going to overnight a package. “UPS it” just doesn’t have the same catchy feel.
I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the only people who say “UPS it” are the ones who mean just that and only that, while “FedEx it” has become ubiquitous, no matter which company we ultimately use to overnight something. We’ve done the same with Kleenex for years, which was why some years ago they changed their actual product name to “Kleenex brand facial tissues” in order to protect their brand. (Thank goodness for lawyers.)
Branding is not new.
While some “marketing folk” may try to beguile you with their branding acumen, know this: branding is a repackaging of “USP” – Unique Selling Proposition. USP was invented by Rosser Reeves in the 1940s at Ted Bates & Company.
USP became the standard by which all advertising and marketing agencies would judge themselves and their work: ”Are you selling the benefits? Are you making empty claims? Why should people care?” Little things like that. Every agency came up with its own nomenclature for the USP process, but it was all thanks to Rosser Reeves.
The key differentiation that branding brings to the table is the concept of companies having internal and external audiences. To put it simply, you have to market to your own troops before you market to the world at large. This means creating an awareness of your branding and an esprit de corps within your firm while pushing the message out.
Some will go so far as to encourage companies to “live the brand.” I draw the line there, recalling what my European father always said, even after moving to America: ”we work to live, we don’t live to work.”
Now you know enough to cause some serious damage. Go forth and brand.
On creativity.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on June 27, 2010 | 2 Comments
“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Box? What box?
Everyone in marketing communications earns their bread by being “creative.” We are measured by the level of “creativity” that we bring to the table. It’s a constant challenge. But one develops a habit of not being linear; of “thinking outside the box.”
And yet it’s enormously challenging to explain to non-marketing people exactly what we do and how we do it. There’s a story that keeps circulating among us on Web boards about a writer who was hired to do an ad. He did it; he brought it to the client along with a bill, and the client said, “That’s not very long, is it? How long did it take you to write it?” The writer responded, “About 25 years.”
We develop our craft over time.
I can write far more quickly today than when I first began. A lot of that is the result of an evolving ability to make better and better judgement calls – we learn to more quickly recognize what works and what doesn’t the more we practice our craft. We also know how to jump-start our thinking to put things in motion.
Many people think that “creativity” is some kind of voo-doo. That we’re selling snake oil. Alas, there are far more who misunderstand us than those who recognize and appreciate what a good copywriter can do.
“Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.” – Jules Renard
Sometimes creativity is genius.
J. S. Bach wrote The Brandenburg Concertos as a kind of job application – a job he never got, and the concertos remained in some drawer for a couple of hundred years before anyone even played them. To me, he’s still the pinnacle of human creativity, and yet I can’t help thinking that in his own mind he always saw himself as a church organist (orgelmeister) who had to write a new cantata every week to support himself and his very large family.
And wasn’t Einstein exceptionally creative? The mere ability to think of light bending in space means that one’s mind is not bound by existing knowledge – one “creates” new ideas as one comes to a kind of enlightenment.
Then there’s creativity that borders on magic in all the technology we see coming into being on a daily basis, such as more and more functional flat-screen applications.
I will leave you with two quotes on this subject:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke
“The real technology – behind all our other technologies – is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.” – Andrei Codrescu
No one is born a copywriter.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on June 27, 2010 | No Comments
There are no copywriting courses.
While it’s possible to be trained as an art director or designer, it’s not really possible to be trained as a copywriter. The aesthetics of good design can easily be taught in theoretical courses, but copywriting is a craft, like cabinet-making. You can be shown examples of good copywriting, the tools you might use, but to learn how to produce your own copywriting you have to work at it and learn the craft through experience. And, like cabinet-making, the more you practice, the more you learn how to do it better and better.
I’ve been writing since I was about 12, and my first professional writing career was in public relations. After three years of that (in the music business in Hollywood), I knew I couldn’t keep doing it – it seemed incredibly dishonest to me since one had to continually say “I think this is the greatest (artist) (performer) (band) since the invention of sliced bread.”
Someone said, “why not try advertising?”
Someone I knew was a copywriter and suggested trying it. I found out fairly quickly that I’d need a portfolio, which I didn’t have. So I proceeded to work on building one – fictional ads for real products and companies. The more I interviewed for jobs, the more feedback I got (and requested).
Finally, someone said, “Your stuff is really good, but L.A. is kind of small (late 70s) so you should go to New York.” Eventually I made the move, got some interviews and was told, “Your stuff may be good enough for L.A., but it’s not quite good enough for New York…”
Back to work on the portfolio, begging for interviews for feedback, and a few months later I got my first job. The more I did it, the more I learned. But what struck me the most was that copywriting is a craft unlike any other. It’s the most powerful self-editing method I’ve ever encountered.
It makes capitalism work.
I initially recoiled at the thought of writing ads … after all, we all hate them, right? But I came to realize something: advertising is an essential element in our economic system. The American economy was built on competition. It’s pretty hard to compete if you haven’t got any awareness for your product or service. That’s where we come in.
Advertising is also far more honest than P.R. or “promotional” marketing. You aren’t telling anyone you personally love something. You’re creating a stand-alone message that says, “this is an ad for something; you know it’s an ad; we just want to introduce you to this (product) (service) and let you decide.”
The rest is up to the product or service. We don’t actually sell anyone anything. We simply create awareness of and interest in the products or services of our clients.
Why writing for the Web is like writing for the road.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on June 1, 2010 | 2 Comments
Writing for the Web is a lot like writing billboards.
Think about it: when you’re driving at highway speeds and you see billboards, you can actually only read the ones that are short and sweet.
There’s a reason: the rule of thumb for successful billboard headlines is about five words. Five, max. And the rule for clutter is none. You’ll know it immediately when there’s a billboard created by people who didn’t know the rules. You’ll catch some piece of it, but never all of it, and you’ll already be half a mile down the road when you decide to give up.
Billboards like that are a complete waste of money since no one can read an entire paragraph – let alone a sentence – going at 65 miles per hour.
Guess what – the Web is exactly the same. We’re all learning to click through Web sites faster and faster. The briefer the message, the more likely we are to get it. The best Google ads are the shortest. The best Web sites are the easiest to read.
The rules of the road.
This online world is whole new way to communicate. Interestingly, the rules of the road apply more than any others. People are speeding by to get where they want to go. They don’t want to be distracted. And they especially don’t want to be confused. If your Web site slows them down, your visitors will be gone in the click of a mouse.
Here’s the key: focus on the essential message you’re trying to communicate – the core message – then say it in as few words as possible. Play with the order of the words – you’ll be amazed at the possibilities re-ordering a sentence will open up. The great concepts didn’t just happen. The key thoughts were edited, honed and crafted until the fewest words possible said it all. Then compelling ways were created to deliver those words.
Look where you want to go.
All new motorcycle riders are taught: ”look where you want to go.” That may sound absurdly obvious, but it’s a matter of life of death on a two-wheeled transport. If you’re riding around a curve and you become fixated by oncoming traffic instead of looking at the spot ahead where you want to get to, you’ll involuntarily start heading toward that traffic. It’s quite simple, and quite dangerous: our focus affects our steering on a motorcycle. Look at what you want to avoid instead of where you want to go and you’ll be heading for disaster in no time.
It’s the very same when we’re surfing the Web. The way to keep visitors on course and on your site is by providing relevant, meaningful content that’s easy to read and understand. Don’t distract them with eye-candy or pointless side-trips. If you know where you want your visitors to end up, put them on that road and keep them on that road.
Unique is an adjective, not a benefit statement.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on May 4, 2010 | No Comments
The use of adjectives such as “unique” to describe a product or service is a sure sign of weak or lazy copywriting skills. It takes real work and real effort to uncover benefit statements that are meaningful to customers, and that help products and services stand out.
Most of us start with questions when we work with clients. And the common element in all our questions is the uber-question: “why should people care?” When clients answer, “because we’re the best,” it doesn’t do us much good. We have to dig deeper because our client’s customers will demand to know: why are you the best; how did you become the best; how long have you been the best; who’s your closest competitor; what makes you better than them?
That’s why any copywriter worth their salt (Roman soldiers were paid in salt way back when) will insist on benefit statements over adjectives, because they’re the only way for products or services to truly have “unique” as a takeaway, without ever having to say it.
Adjectives are a crutch.
If you’re working with a writer who uses adjectives like “unique,” or “one-of-a-kind,” or “exclusive” as easily as most people use napkins, you could be working with a writer who’s dependent on a crutch.
That’s what those hyperbolic adjectives are. They’re known in the trade as “empty claims.” Pretty much in the same category of believability as “the check is in the mail.” No truly professional writer will settle for such lightweight writing—and you shouldn’t, either.
However, if your writer backs up those weak adjectives with powerful facts, that’s a different story. E.g., “we’re unique because we’re the only auto detailing business in town that will come to your home or business.” If that’s really true, that’s not so bad. But unique is still an adjective, so you still have to back it up. And as soon as someone else starts doing what you do—where you do it—you’ll have to drop it.
Find the difference, use the difference.
What if instead you could say, “the only auto detailing business in town where every employee is trained by Norm, detailer to the stars.” Nobody could ever take that away from you. See?
Sometimes clients realize their uniqueness and can provide benefit statements to back it up, but most often they don’t. So it’s up to us professionals to dig for them, polish them and present them to the most appropriate target audience for that specific product or service.
If your business really is a “me-too” business, such as another burger joint in a sea of burger joints, then your writer will need to work very hard to come up with that certain something that sets you apart, and then play it up for all it’s worth.
How to make new business permanent business.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on May 4, 2010 | No Comments
Listen first. Speak second.
It’s a common trait in all of us to want to impress someone we’ve just met by telling them what we know and what makes us special—not literally, but by implication, by casually mentioning accomplishments, recent triumphs or how we can help them.
Nothing could be more disastrous in a first business meeting. The people you’re meeting with know one thing for certain—no one knows more about their business than they do. If you come in with answers instead of questions, you’ll immediately set the wrong tone.
The single best way to impress clients is by listening—very well. And by asking carefully crafted questions that lead them to tell you more and more about their business. They need to know that you want to know about their business, and that you understand you can’t possibly help them until you do.
Once you’ve learned as much as they feel they need to teach you, you can start to strut your stuff. You can dazzle them with the techniques you’ve got up your sleeve for promoting their product or service.
Do your research before you meet.
It can also set you back in the eyes of your potential client if you show up knowing nothing. So when I suggest listening first, it doesn’t mean it’s o.k. to be unprepared. It means listening intelligently. When they mention a competitor, you should be fully prepared by knowing what that competitor does and, if possible, where they stand in relation to your client.
Merely showing up for a meeting with a client doesn’t earn points, it’s just the price of entry. Showing up with facts in your pocket is the way to win friends and influence people.
The Web is waiting. Use it for all it’s worth. If your meeting is with Mr. Widget, get online and search “widgets.” When you discover Widget King and see that they claim to be the world’s leading widget maker, you’ve got your first, key question: is it true, Mr. Client, or just a claim?
If you want to take your preparedness to the next step, do in-depth competitive analyses. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Contact the appropriate media for the category. There are magazines and journals for virtually everything, and each of them has reps that are waiting for their phone to ring. Let them know that you’re pitching a client in their category (without giving away the name, if possible—they may have friends who may be your competitors). Then ask them for data on the category leaders. They’ll be happy to help because you might suggest that your client run ads in their pub.
You’ll be amazed at what you learn … and so will your clients.
Practice, a lot.
If you’re going in as part of a team, make sure the team rehearses before the meeting—thoroughly. Don’t just go through the drill of holding up samples of your work and presenting case histories. Have someone play the potential client and ask all the questions a client might ask. “How long have you been in business?” “Do you have experience in our category?” “Are there companies we can call for references?”
Think of questions you’d hate to be asked, and then ask them. Be ready with answers. When you’re ready, it shows. Clients love confidence. It helps them feel good about choosing you.
Don’t rest on your laurels.
Asking intelligent, knowledgeable questions is the best way to convince clients they’re making the right choice by selecting you and your company. But that single event doesn’t guarantee you the business forever.
Continue applying the principles of winning business to keeping business. Keep up the research and remain very aware of your client’s marketplace. Suggest what your gut tells you is the right thing to do even when the client thinks the status quo is just fine.
You also need to be prepared for the client pushing for change. They’re the first ones to tire of an ad or promotional piece. They see it every day and think that everyone else is just as familiar with it as they are. They need to be assured that what you’ve done is still fresh, and that you’re on top of the situation.
If the client starts telling their agency what to do, how to do it and when, it won’t take long for them to come to the conclusion that since it looks like they’re doing all the thinking, they may not need you at all.
Don’t let things go that way. Once they do, it’s very hard to turn them around. Maintain control by staying ahead of the client. Keep watch on the competition and be the one to suggest the next move.
Your creativity is your expertise. Use it in how you do business, not just in what you do for business.
Five steps to creating marketing campaigns that work.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on April 5, 2010 | No Comments
The most important element of marketing campaigns is effective communication. Marketing, after all, is all about communication. Effective communication is the only way to produce positive results.
How can you produce effective communication? By understanding that communication is a science. What’s more—as in any scientific field—there’s both a methodology and a sequence that need to be followed in order to achieve a stated goal.
The methodology for marketing is a sequence of steps based on critical questions. The people handling your communications need to know which questions to ask at each step.
The answers to those questions are essential for the people who write, design and execute a finely-tuned marketing program.
“If you build it, they will come” has led to many a business failure. The rule that businesses have learned the hard way is “if you create awareness, they will come.”
STEP 1: Define your message.
- What is it about your product or service that needs communicating?
- What sets your product or service apart?
- What specific need does your product or service fill in the marketplace?
- Who else is out there offering a product or service like yours; how are they doing?
This can’t be a haphazard attempt: this is your USP, your brand. The message needs to be clear, concise and compelling. And, most important of all, you’re not producing the message for yourself—you’re doing it for your target audience. So it’s not about what you like or what folks in your company like; it’s about what your target audience likes and will respond to.
STEP 2: Define your target audience.
Once you’ve defined your key message, you need to know to which audience it will be directed.
This is not based on whimsy. The only way a product or service can succeed is if:
- It fulfills a specific need for a specific target audience
- You make the specific target audience fully aware of the existence of that product or service (which, by the way, is the key role of any communications effort).
These are the questions that need to be asked in order to arrive at your true target:
- Who’s the key audience for your product or service?
- What’s the key benefit to that audience?
- Is your product or service something they’ve been wanting, or is it entirely new?
- Who’s the competition? What’s their track record?
- What’s different about your product or service?
- What will it take to win?
STEP 3: Determine an adequate budget.
A base rule of thumb is to assign at least 5% of gross sales to marketing communications. But, remember, the most successful companies are spending an average of 15%.
The key here is to realize that it’s not enough to create great advertising—it needs enough exposure and time to be seen and assimilated. For advertising to work and build, it needs to be a sustained effort.
STEP 4: Establish an effective tracking system.
Most sales people in most companies typically ask the marketing people, “How will I know the advertising is working?”
One way is to have a “response mechanism.” For example a business reply card (BRC) in a magazine, or an 800 number in broadcast and web site advertising. In all cases, however, it’s essential that leads be tracked from their origins.
The BRC, for example, would be coded so you’d know which publications are pulling the most; the 800 number should be a dedicated number that makes it easy to track the source of calls. The Web site should have a response field for “How did you hear about this site?”
Another way to track the effectiveness of your communications efforts it to track sales for a measurable increase.
Once again, advertising is a slow-building process. It may take several exposures of an ad or commercial before results are seen. But once the momentum is established, the speed can be maintained.
STEP 5: Plan an on-going campaign to maintain ongoing sales.
Advertising is not just a kick-start for sales. It can actually be the engine that drives sales cycles by creating and maintaining awareness .
The way to convince those who doubt its effectiveness is to ask, “How many additional sales people would it take for us to match the kind of exposure our marketing communications are giving us?” A single ad can expose your product or service to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people at one time.
Once you’ve seen that what you’re doing works, you need to understand how to keep up the pace and—if you’re ready—how to increase it. Important caveat: don’t increase demand when you can’t match it with supply. Advertising works. If you’re not ready to meet the demand it can create, you can do more harm than good.
There are multiple ways to get the word out, including online. Ad placement is a science and needs to be carefully considered, preferably by media placement professionals who understand demographics and target audiences. Allowing yourself to be persuaded to advertise by a sales rep at a publication or media company most often turns out to be just like the definition of a boat: a place in the water where you throw money.
