May 16th, 2012
Measuring marketing success is like quantum mechanics:
How long is a piece of string?
I have borrowed this image of Alan Davies tackling that old physics chestnut, "How long is a piece of string?", from an interesting site called BrainPickings.org, which I encourage you to check out for all kinds of reasons.
With the Facebook IPO in full swing, it's not surprising that when GM said they were pulling $10 million worth of advertising spend on Facebook, the financial press took note. And of course there was no shortage of commentators ringing the alarm bells about the imminent demise of Facebook's ability to monetize.
I can't help but think of department store magnate John Wanamaker's famous comment, circa 1912: "I know half my advertising dollars are wasted. I just don't know which half."
Marketing works.
It's just sometimes hard to know how or why, and social media is no exception.
The worst part about working in marketing is that 2+2 almost never adds up to 4. Sometimes it adds up to 3, sometimes 10, sometimes a vivid shade of yellow. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either naive or the kind of person who calls themself an 'SEO Ninja' and thinks everything can be measured in clickthroughs.
And therein lies the problem.
Before the internet, we had to measure most advertising exposures in GRPs (gross ratings points), which is essentially a way to measure reach (how many people saw/heard your tv/radio ad, saw your billboard, etc.) and frequency (how many times they saw it). You might spend $1 million buying 400 GRPs for 8 weeks for your billboard campaign, but you really had no way to determine whether all those people speeding past your billboard on the highway were actually looking at your billboard, registering the message, and then making a purchasing decision based on it.
In the meantime, of course, you were probably spending money on other initiatives like tv ads, print ads, direct mail, promotions - all of which have varying degrees of measurability when it comes to purchasing decisions. The only way you could really know whether your efforts had been successful was to wait until the campaign was over and hope there'd been a demonstrable uptick in sales.
The people who say that social media marketing dollars are 'wasted' if they don't generate the right clickthroughs - and there are lots of them - have forgotten that marketing success is generally a result of a complex alchemy that happens when you reach your target market in multiple ways, via multiple channels, over a (sometimes long) period of time.
Why GM's decision isn't that momentous
Though the GM's announcement made headline news, it really isn't that significant in terms of Facebook's long-term prospects or GM's overall strategy, and here's why:
It's a drop in the bucket
Worldwide, GM spends $1.7 billion dollars in advertising every year. They're still spending $30 million on Facebook 'marketing' - they're just not spending $10 million in paid ads. That sounds like a lot to us regular people, but it's nothing for a big-budget advertiser like GM.
Clickthroughs aren't everything
Much has been made of the stat that 83% of people say they don't click through Facebook ads. I'd say the number is probably even higher, but it doesn't matter: No one clicks through billboards or magazine ads, either, but that doesn't mean they don't drive brand awareness, equity or sales in the longer term.
You can't get a 'conversion rate' on buying cars
People who advertise online like to talk about 'conversion rates': The percentage of people who clickthrough your ad, then make a purchase on your site. This can be an excellent measure of success if you're trying to sell something on, say, Amazon. It's never going to work for cars, because almost no one is going to buy a car via a website.
We don't know enough about GM's overall media mix
A senior marketing exec from McDonald's once told me that it takes 4-7 'touchpoints' (interactions with the brand via different channels) in order to get someone to buy an order of large fries. If that's what it takes to generate a $2 purchase, imagine what it takes to generate a $35k purchase of a car.
GM themselves probably don't entirely know what works
Once GM realized that its announcement had caused an uproar, they hastily released a statement about how they regularly review their marketing mix and make adjustments. I believe them: All large advertisers make changes to their media mix on an ongoing basis, based on new information or a change in focus or whatever. GM isn't abandoning Facebook altogether, and plenty of other carmakers are still spending money on Facebook ads.
The bottom line
There's a reason that advertisers are increasingly turning to neuroscience to understand buying behaviour: 95% of human decisions are made by the subconscious mind, so even when you ask people directly, they simply can't tell you why they made a particular purchasing decision. GM's decision to pull a very tiny fraction of their budget from Facebook tells us almost nothing about the true efficacy of Facebook advertising.
May 4th, 2012
Helping clients overcome the fear that branding will somehow 'cheapen' their product.
(I have borrowed this image from Saatchi & Saatchi's mostly failed concept of 'lovemarks': brands that go beyond loyalty into passionate emotional attachment. Lovemarks never really got off the ground, but I still think this is an interesting way to look at branding in general.)
Last time we talked about how small business owners - especially ones who have already had some success and are looking to take their organization to the next level - can be reluctant to embrace the idea of branding their company (or their product/service) because they feel that brands are somehow fake.
I understand: No one wants to think they're turning their professional services firm into the Kim Kardashian of consulting.
But, reality tv stars aside, branding really isn't about fakery, because as a small business owner you can't 'trick' anyone into having an emotional attachment to you, your company or your products. Branding is all about identifying the reasons people already feel strongly about you, then amplifying them so that it's easier to spread the word.
In fact, your brand already exists - you just haven't identified its components, articulated the message, and made it consistent.
How to get to a comfort level with branding
Okay, so how do you start to build a brand that's a real reflection of what you're already doing? Start with these steps.
1. What 'story' are you already telling about your company?
If you've been in business for any length of time, you've already been telling some kind of 'story' about your company. This may involve the strengths of the founder, how you got started, your philosophy or approach. As I've said before, branding is really just about telling the right story about your company. It's hard to say your brand is fake when it's based on a story you're already telling.
2. Examine the brands you personally love
I do always think it's funny when people tell me they don't believe in branding - but then pull out their iPhone, make impassioned speeches about whatever haircare product they use, or say something like "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." But it's a good opportunity to think about the notion that branding is somehow fake: If you really believed that branding was trickery, you wouldn't be using these products.
3. Remember that branding is really just a way to help people navigate a sea of products and services
If you walked into a grocery store, and everything in it was in black-and-white packaging without any branding at all, it'd take you hours to do your shopping because you'd have to examine every single product in the store. Branding is really just a shortcut to decision-making, a way to help consumers/clients understand "Oh, this is what I was looking for!" When you look at it that way, branding is really more about helping the consumer than tricking them.
4. List your real functional benefits.
'Functional benefits' are the 'factual' ways in which you're better than your competitors. They may include being cheaper, faster, having more selection, more convenient hours, better customer service, longest in the business, etc. Make a list of them, and be honest - only include the ones which are really different from your competitors.
If you've done a good job of editing, you'll end up with a list of 2-3 key functional benefits which genuinely differentiate you from the competition.
5. What do your best clients say about you?
Most successful small businesses have a core of loyal clients who keep coming back to them again and again, and who refer them to other clients. If you don't already know, ask them why they love you so much. Chances are, you'll find their reasons have little to do with what you listed in #1. They may like that you have convenient hours, but love that you always give them good advice; they may think you have good customer service, but love that your staff doesn't have much turnover and they can count on seeing the same faces every time they visit your office.
What your best clients say about you to their friends and family is the best place to start when building your brand - and it's absolutely not 'fake'.
April 4th, 2012
People who think advertising is a new thing that is somehow 'evil' haven't read any history books lately.
I've borrowed this excellent image from Zazzle.com, where you can make customized stuff in small quantities. They'll be less annoyed about this if you click here to visit their site!
(Today I ran into someone I knew in high school and they seemed appalled that I'd ended up in marketing, so I dug this up from my old blog on ERE.net and I've reprinted it here. It was originally part of a series on personal branding, but I think it works fine by itself.)
Advertising: The profession everyone loves to hate
I've spent my entire working life in 3 industries that people think are filled with cheats, charlatans and idiots: Real estate, advertising, and recruiting.
So I'm used to the faces people make - as though they'd just sucked on a particularly sinful lemon - when they hear what I do for a living. Many people can't restrict themselves to just the faces, either, and are happy to tell me that all real estate agents/advertising people/recruiters are shallow, materialistic, fake, incompetent, mean, and self-absorbed.
If I'm meeting them at, say, a dinner party where the other guests work in non-profits, government, academia or healthcare, there often ensues a lengthy discussion on how advertising types - and the evil corporations they represent - is pretty much responsible for the downfall of society.
The anti-branding position goes like this:
"If marketing people didn't keep trying to convince people that they 'needed' 8 televisions, 3 cars, a 4000 sq foot home with a 100-ft frontage, several $1000 handbags and a perfect size 2 figure, we'd all be much happier, society would be a meritocracy, eating disorders would be eliminated, and China would have uncensored internet access."
Thanks to the popularity of Mad Men, this is usually followed up with some comment about how shady advertising types are a recent invention of the past 50 years, and that we need to be stamped out before the sky actually does fall in.
Except that's not really true...
Let's just break it down:
"...8 televisions, 3 cars, a 4000 sq ft home, etc."
Guess what? Once you have enough to eat, are safe from predators, have a roof over your head and sufficient clothing to keep from dying of exposure, everything else you own is just stuff you want, not stuff you need.
"...with a 100-ft frontage..."
The human desire for land precedes advertising agencies by about 10,000 years, as evidenced by about a zillion wars over various patches of ground throughout the whole of human history.
"...we'd all be much happier, society would be a meritocracy..."
If there were any actual examples, in all of recorded human history, of societies in which happiness was rife and a meritocracy prevailed, I'd have an easier time believing this.
"...eating disorders would be eliminated..."
I hate unrealistic airbrushed models as much as anyone, but eating disorders have been documented since the Middle Ages, and there's evidence to suggest they've been around for more than 10,000 years.
"...advertising types are a recent invention of the past 50 years..."
Advertising and marketing has been around as long as humans have - archeologists have found evidence of marketing messages in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, and classified ads in Ancient Rome. The first clear-cut examples of 'modern' advertising in the 15th century, and the first newspaper ad appeared in 1622 or so.
In other words: As soon as the first human wanted to get other humans to 'do stuff' (help with the boar-killing expedition, believe in their god, buy their corn, or fight their war), marketing's existed.
What have we learned?
Since human society has managed to survive - nay, thrive! - 10,000 years of marketing and 500+ years of advertising, I feel certain that society is in no imminent danger of collapse.
March 24th, 2012
Your most influential target audience is your staff.
This is a painting called 'Confusion', and it's definitely how the inside of my head looks when I myself am not sure what's going on.
A couple of years ago I was working with a smallish-but-getting-bigger-fast B2B company, and our marketing efforts seemed to be fairly successful: We were getting buzz in the marketplace, having little trouble getting meetings because potential clients had always "heard good things" about us, winning new business over larger, more established competitors - by most indices, our marketing efforts were delivering results.
But revenue growth just wasn't following the same trajectory. Sure, it was growing - but not as steeply as our brand awareness and equity seemed to be. And we weren't sure why.
Then I sat in on an all-staff meeting, and I began to understand.
When the company was smaller, senior leadership (all of whom were highly entrepreneurial) was very involved with every client engagement. They were handling much of the day-to-day interaction, which meant they could build relationships, listen for opportunities, ask for referrals, sell additional services - all the revenue drivers that make an investment in marketing worthwhile in the long-term.
As the company had grown, however, a lot of the account management had been handed off to newer, more junior employees. When I sat in on the staff meeting, I could see that while the newbies were hard-working and anxious to do a good job, most of them weren't nearly as enthusiastic about the organization as the senior leadership, and in many cases didn't even really have a good grasp of everything the company sold, how it could help clients, and why it was so great.
In other words, they weren't familiar with the brand story, the positioning, or the value proposition.
Stop thinking about training your people. Start thinking about marketing to them.
Now, some people would say that this was a job for Sales Training. I tend to disagree - mostly because 'Sales Training' is something that seems to be reserved for 'Sales People', and I'm of the opinion that every single person in the organization, from admin assistants to account managers to the accounts payable people, can (and should) be sales influencers. They can spot opportunities, influence decision-makers, increase brand awareness, build relationships - all of the things that drive long-term revenue growth.
Try to give them 'sales training', and they'll tune out or privately decide that it's 'not their job', since they aren't in sales. Market to them, on the other hand, and they can become passionate evangelists who are invested in telling (and living) the brand story.
What does internal marketing look like?
Well, it looks a lot like your external marketing - just using different channels.
Some ways to start marketing to employees:
- Include a session with the Marketing Director as part of your onboarding efforts for new hires - I know you probably make fun of your marketing people for being so bloody enthusiastic all the time, but they can be infectious
- Make sure all employees have reviewed your marketing materials and know exactly what you sell, why it's different and better, and why it's so successful in the marketplace
- Deliver the same great experiences to employees that you deliver to your customers. Do you send flowers or gift baskets to new clients? Great - send them to new employees or on employee anniversaries, too.
- You know that e-newsletter you send to clients to tell them about all the neat stuff you're doing? Make sure you're sending the same info to your employees - before you send it out externally. It's amazing how well people respond to feeling like they're 'in the know' ahead of everyone else
- Have all staff - especially juniors and newbies - spend time with members of the senior leadership team, the same way you bring in the C-suites to help sell a new client. Employees will feel respected and valuable, which encourages engagement, and they'll absorb some of the entrepreneurial enthusiasm that your senior people are projecting
- You wouldn't hand a potential client a giant binder of single-spaced text and tell them to read it and call you if they want to buy something - don't do it to employees (via an Employee Handbook), either. Review information with them, point out the interesting bits, and encourage them to ask questions
- It takes 4-7+ touchpoints for a potential customer to really understand what you do and make a purchase, and it takes a long-term relationship to drive repeat business. It's the same with employees: Don't assume that a week's worth of 'onboarding' is all it takes for them to become experts in your business or passionate brand storytellers.
I know this has a lot of overlap with what HR would call 'training'. But when you think of it as informing, persuading and wooing your employees the same way you do your customers, you'll get the increased emotional investment that does a better job of driving long-term sales growth.
March 18th, 2012
Strategies for helping reluctant clients find better ways to express themselves.
Yes, this is a dung beetle pushing a large ball of dung. At least I didn't use an image of Sisyphus.
Yesterday I wrote about how to approach the problem of a client with a brand identity you don't like, and making sure you're not mistaking 'personal opinion' for 'professional advice'.
But what happens when you've asked yourself the right questions, remembered you're not the target, and still come to the conclusion that the client's brand identity is getting in the way of overall marketing success?
Negative know-it-alls never prosper
You know who I'm talking about: The people who waltz in and proceed to tell the client, with a boatload of condescension, that everything they've done up to this point is a giant heap of awful and they need to rebuild everything from the bottom up if they are to have a hope in hell of getting any more business from anyone, ever.
These blowhards do manage to get the odd client, but it's amazing how they never seem to keep them for very long. Because anyone who tells you they have the magic marketing answer to everything never does - sooner or later clients realize this for themselves, and go elsewhere.
When you first meet a client, you don't know how much money they've already spent on their brand identity; you don't know how emotionally invested they are in it; you don't know how the organization feels about it; and you definitely don't know if what they're doing is working for them or not. Walking up to someone at a bar and saying, "You know, you're really kind of ugly, but if you fix your hair, makeup and wardrobe, maybe we could go out sometime..." is the start of a totally dysfunctional relationship.
Ask questions, build trust
Client relationships are like any other relationships: Before they're going to take your advice, they're going to have to trust you. So before you make pronouncements about their brand and their organization, start by asking questions. These are the questions I ask when I think a client may need a brand identity overhaul:
1. Tell me the story behind your brand.
As I said yesterday, a logo or brand identity that looks unappealing to you may in fact have a great story behind it. You may even find that that story has value for their sales team, or quite a bit of equity in the marketplace. ('Kleenex', for example, is actually a terrible name, and the logo isn't much better. But it doesn't matter, since 'Kleenex' has been around so long, and is so ubiquitous, that it's become the generic name for any paper-based facial tissue.)
How this can help your case: If they struggle to tell you the story behind their brand, you can suggest that building a brand identity with a proper story behind it will make their sales and marketing efforts a lot easier.
2. Tell me the history of your brand identity. Have you worked with designers or marketing people before?
This is important to know, because if they say they just spent $50,000 on a new brand identity - especially if they worked with one of the blowhards mentioned above - they're going to be highly sensitive to criticism or suggestions for change. On the other hand, you may discover that the current logo was designed by the CEO's 18-year-old nephew.
How this can help your case: If you discover that they're new to 'marketing', educating them about how a properly-articulated brand identity can help them position and sell themselves can be all you need to propel them in the right direction.
3. Tell me about how you think marketing can help your business.
Good marketing starts with understanding the client's business, so by the time you're talking about branding you should already know what they do and why they think they're unique in the marketplace. Now it's time to drill down to identify gaps or opportunities that marketing can help to fill. Ideally this will become a discussion between you and the client - with you recommending opportunities, not just taking orders from the client - but it's good to start with what the client is thinking about how you can help them.
How this can help your case: If the client identifies a specific challenge ("Our salespeople aren't getting enough meetings" or "People aren't spending enough time on our website"), they open the door to a conversation about how the brand identity might be part of the problem.
4. Who is your target audience/market?
Over the years, I've worked with several property management-related companies, many of whom have had dreadful brand identities. At first I tried hard to get them to change, until I realized that 95% of their business happened as a result of long-standing relationships within a fairly tight-knit community of guys (yes, it's usually men) who have known each other forever, have owned commercial/industrial properties together, and tended to make business deals based on handshakes and beer. They didn't need expensive brand identities with charming brand stories - they just needed some basics to make them look professional.
However, when some of these businesses grew, and were looking to penetrate larger consumer markets, then it was time to push a better brand identity.
How this can help your case: Knowing your client's target market will allow you to demonstrate who else is excelling in their space - and show them how important it is that their brand identity is good enough to compete.
5. How do you see your business growing in the next 12-24 months?
As a business grows, so does their need for marketing materials. Today, all they think they need are business cards and a website; 6 months from now they may need anything from billboards to tradeshow displays to RFP templates; 2 years from now they may need branding and materials for line extensions.
How this can help your case: The more you know about your client's future plans, the more you can help them identify the marketing and communications materials they'll need down the line - and the easier it is to demonstrate how their current brand identity won't accommodate that kind of growth in the long run.
It's an organic process
It's a rare client who, after being asked a question or two, says, "Okay! I get it - let's revamp the whole brand identity! How soon can we do it?" That's okay - I'm a firm believer that the best brands are built over time, and as a result of a close relationship between the organization and their marketing team. Asking the right questions will help you build that relationship.
March 17th, 2012
You love your new client, but you hate their existing brand identity. Here's how to approach it.
In the past week alone, 4 different people - designers, web developers, content writers - have all called me and said the same thing: "I've got this great new client, who have this really interesting product, but their brand identity is terrible. It's so bad that I'm worried that whatever I do for them will end up being terrible too, and they'll either be mad at me or I'll be embarrassed to tell anyone I did it. What do I do?"
This is what I say:
1. Is it really as bad as you think?
If you're 'in the business', you probably have some very decided ideas about the way marketing materials should look and feel. I myself can't stand inconsistent fonts and colour palettes - they stick out like sore thumbs to me, they make me think that everyone involved with the company is unprofessional and highly un-detail-oriented, and I want to give the people responsible a stern talking-to.
But many times when I mention it to the client, it turns out that neither they, nor their stakeholders, have ever really noticed that there are 3 different fonts on their homepage. Their business is percolating along, with no noticeable gap in sales, and they've got bigger fish to fry at the moment. And so I have to step back and realize that I am not the target, I am more critical than the average person, and what I see as a 'disaster' isn't, really.
2. Is it actually having a negative impact on the client's business?
I think this website is terrible. The colours are totally 1990s, the site is loud and far too 'sales-ish', and I end up feeling that the guy behind it is far more interested in selling me stuff than in 'helping' me. But here's the thing: This guy makes a lot of money (he famously retired at 35); lots of people love him; and I understand that his website does a fantastic job of sales conversion for him. In other words, the site is working - so it doesn't really matter if I don't like it, or respond to the story he's telling.
The whole point of marketing is to drive the business goals. Unless you can demonstrate that your client's brand identity is actively getting in the way of doing this, you may just have to accept that your client may in fact know what they're doing.
3. Is there a good story underpinning a bad look and feel?
For years I worked with a company called Head2Head, and everyone hated their logo, which looked like this:
I inherited this logo - I didn't create it. In fact, it was created by the founder, who famously drew it on a napkin (and painted it) in the very early days of the company. Initially, I hated it, too - but then I realized that (a) it had a nice backstory; and (b) it became a sort of interesting talking point.
Plus, it's relatively easy to contain a difficult logo with good design:
See how nice and polished that looks? In fact, we often got compliments on our materials, and it didn't matter if those compliments were followed by "...but I still hate that logo."
(To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Head2Head renovated their brand identity, and it looks great - but now it has a different kind of backstory.)
4. What does the target audience think?
You may hate the look and feel of this website, for all kinds of reasons. But they "manufacture and supply researchers in the biomedical fields with specialized complex organic small molecules", and I'm pretty sure their target audience doesn't really give two hoots about how sexy their brand identity is - their brand equity and credibility is going to reside largely in word of mouth via scientists and whoever else cares about complex organic small molecules.
On the other hand, if you're about to spend a huge amount of money on a custom-designed house, are you going to trust a guy whose sense of aesthetics resulted in this site? Not so much.
Before you start worrying about the brand identity, it's important to remove yourself from the equation and insert the target market instead.
5. Is the current brand identity going to cause problems in the longer term?
One day last year, I got into a bit of a fracas with some woman on Twitter who took issue with my assertion that logos should never be black and white and brand identities should always include 4 colours in the official colour palette. She seemed to think that black-and-white logos and single-colour brand identities were just fine.
She was wrong, and here's why: Successful businesses will eventually need all kinds of materials, from websites to infosheets to business cards to product line extensions and patented processes. All of these things require graphics, imagery, and a brand identity that retains consistency even when fresh ideas are added. If you don't plan ahead, you'll run into trouble later on - it's almost impossible to shoehorn a new colour into a black-and-deep-red brand identity, for example. What's more, without a broader palette and a couple of fonts, you run the risk of a monochromatic site that doesn't give you anywhere to go, design-wise.
TOMORROW: How to guide a client to a better brand identity, even when they like the one they've got.
March 14th, 2012
Print ads can express great ideas.
They're just hardly ever worth the money.
This is a pretty ad. Unfortunately I have no idea what it's trying to tell me. I'm pretty sure dentists won't know either, since mostly they practice in offices, not fields.
A few months ago I got a call from one of my clients, who was excited. "I got an email from a business magazine and they want to do a feature on us! I told them you'd get back to them with all the details."
Neither of us had ever heard of the magazine, but that didn't matter. As long as they're not asking my clients to pose naked or offer opinions on religion, I'm happy to take PR where I can get it. And we'd had a lot of media exposure in mainstream channels in the previous 12 months, so I wasn't surprised that we were getting the call.
So I called the 'editorial assistant' who'd contacted my client. We discussed the feature (4 pages! with photos! and case studies!), and the various angles we could pursue. I investigated the magazine (something to do with 'women in business'), which seemed legit, if a little obscure. Over the course of 2 or 3 weeks, I provided detailed responses to questions, information about the business, and even provided the names of a couple of clients they could contact for 'commentary'.
But then the sales pitch started: They wanted a list of my client's suppliers (with contact information), and I started getting emails from a sales manager type 'recommending' that we purchase a half-page ad to accompany our 'feature'.
Finally I got a bit annoyed, and called the editorial assistant. "Look," I said, "you pitched this to my client as a proper feature article. Now I'm getting the impression that this 'feature' is entirely dependent on us or our suppliers spending a lot of money."
She denied it, of course...but after a couple more emails from the sales manager guy, we didn't hear anything from them.
It's all about the opportunity cost.
These days, most of my clients are small businesses who don't have a single dollar to waste on marketing. So spending $5000 for a half-page ad in some obscure business publication whose distribution is basically a mailing list they bought in 2006 just doesn't make sense.
I always think about what else I could do for my client with that $5000: I could host a networking event with good snacks, create several webinars, do a direct mail campaign, create a mobile version of their website - or my client could take 50 clients for fancy lunches, during any of which I know she could generate more business than she will through an ad in some magazine that no one ever reads.
Sure, print ads sometimes have their place.
Don't get me wrong - I know that for some brands, print advertising works, especially as part of a larger campaign. Big luxury brands can get a lot of mileage out of spreads in Vanity Fair or GQ, and from what I see on YouTube (where bedroom walls can often be seen in the background), kids are still cutting out ads from magazines to use as posters. Heck, I even had this Hermes image as my computer wallpaper for a while. Ads like these, which look like print ads but mostly live online, can generate a fair amount of brand awareness.
And I also know that even in this digital age, there's something kind of cool about being able to pull out a printed publication and point to your very own advertisement. For small business owners, especially, it can confer a sense of credibility, like "Wow, I have a real company, and here's the proof."
But ultimately, the goal of advertising - as a part of a larger marketing strategy - is to sell more stuff, and at the end of the day, a single print ad just isn't going to do it for you. So the next time someone calls you about advertising in a magazine you've never heard of, just say "no, thank you". I promise you'll have made the right decision.
March 9th, 2012
Using different suppliers might be saving you money, but costing you brand equity.
If you're a small business owner, chances are you haven't got a dedicated marketing department or the budget for a big marketing agency. So you've probably engaged a variety of different suppliers to give you a logo, stationery, printed materials, a website, etc. You're not a marketing expert yourself, so you've relied on these different suppliers to be experts in their fields and do their due diligence.
But are they?
Here's what can happen when you have different suppliers providing different pieces of your marketing materials:
LearningRX (with whom I have absolutely no connection, by the way) is a franchise-model business. That means that each of their franchise owners are out there doing marketing efforts on their own, using different designers and different channels (the ads above represent both online and offline advertising).
The result? Marketing with all kinds of different visuals, fonts, colours, messages - even the logos aren't consistent. You've got to be paying pretty close attention to even understand that these 3 ads are actually for different locations of the same brand.
Why does this matter?
Because branding is all about building relationships, and relationships are the first step to long-term loyalty and, of course, sales. Building a consistent brand identity is all about providing mental shortcuts for the audience: Giving them visual and textual cues which trigger feelings of recognition and familiarity which lead to relationships. When your branding is all over the place, you can't get to that sense of familiarity, and that makes relationship-building more difficult. Which in turn means that it takes longer to build up brand equity - you end up having to spend more money on marketing just to stay in the same place.
In the case of LearningRX, above, this creates two problems: LearningRX headquarters doesn't get the cumulative benefit of their various branches' advertising, because it all looks and feels so different, and individual franchise owners don't get the cumulative benefit of all this LearningRX advertising because the audience isn't connecting it all together. So the audience never thinks "Wow, I keep seeing this LearningRX company everywhere - maybe I should check them out."
How can you protect your brand, even if you're not a marketing expert?
As a marketing consultant, I of course tend to think that it's best to engage a marketing expert who can ensure that your printer, your web designer and anyone else who touches your brand is using it consistently.
As a pragmatic marketing consultant, however, I know that this isn't always possible. So in the meantime, here's what you can do:
- When you get your first logo done, make sure the designer provides you with source files, which should include AI or PSD files of your logo and fonts
- Get documentation of your official colours (PMS/Pantone/HEX)
- Get documentation of your official fonts (both the ones used in your logo and the ones in your body copy)
- Tell subsequent designers, print suppliers, web designers, etc. that you expect them to use your official logos, colour and fonts exclusively - if your colour palette is purple and green, they should not start injecting red headlines
- Keep track of your images - don't let different suppliers use different images in different contexts without checking with you first (you may need to add images over time, but if you use a particular photo on your website, that's what should be on your printed materials, too)
- Get source files for all your marketing materials, whether it's a print ad, online ad or website. (All reputable suppliers will give you these once you've paid them for the work.)
It's important to keep your source files and documentation in a safe place, so that a year - or three - from now, when you can't find your original supplier and need to get something done, you can provide the new supplier with the correct information. One of the biggest sources of inconsistency is when a client can't find the original material and a new supplier - who may or may not be an expert in their field - has to recreate something based on a low-res jpg or find a 'comparable' image.
And remember: If you've done your due diligence and provided the supplier with the source materials and documentation, and they come back with something that doesn't look consistent with previous materials, it's okay to say "Hey, this doesn't match what we've done in the past. Are you sure you've used the correct fonts/colours/images?" or even "Dude, what the heck? Why did you stick a huge orange headline in there when you know our colours are purple and green?"
BONUS PROTIP: It's true that even the same 'official' colour can look a little different in different media - a deep purple is probably going to look slightly different on a printed card than it does on a computer screen, for example. Sometimes this is unavoidable; other times your printer can advise you how to mitigate the visual difference. Make sure you ask for an official print proof before doing any big print jobs, and if you see a big difference, ask about it.
February 26th, 2012
Within a week of getting my first job in a big advertising agency - as the assistant to the Creative Director - one of the other assistants said to me, quite casually, "Oh, I wasn't surprised you got the job. [Creative Director] really likes women with short hair like yours - he thinks women with really short hair are more confident."
She wasn't, in case you're wondering, trying to be catty or mean. She was simply stating a fact as she saw it. And as I got to know my new boss better, I decided she was right: my short hair had been a definite plus.
At the same time, I knew the rest of my appearance was woefully inadequate for my new job. Sitting in the lobby for my first interview, I became convinced I'd never get hired, as every single person who walked by appeared to be tall, thin, perfectly accessorized and effortlessly cosmopolitan.
I, on the other hand, have a figure that could be charitably described as more 'Nigella Lawson' than 'Jennifer Aniston', wear the same earrings almost every day because I'm always losing half a pair, and didn't buy my first designer handbag until I was 25. I wasn't completely ignorant of fashion - I'd just lived in the suburbs my whole life, where the standards were lower, and I'd just moved to Toronto on an entry-level salary, so even outfitting myself with MAC cosmetics was a serious budgetary commitment. And the truth is that I'm not naturally gifted with a genius for fashion.
My style soon underwent a transformation: I found out where the other assistants went for jeans, waxing, haircuts, shoes, etc. None of us were making much money, so they had good advice on how to look polished on a budget (protip: if you base all your outfits around black, you can make shoes, handbags and other items work with multiple outfits, while still looking sufficiently cool). I learned a whole new lingo about brands and styles and haircare products, and had a lot of fun doing it.
(At Christmas I'd give my mother, a highschool teacher, a handbag or lipstick from some super-hip new brand, and she'd get a kick out of the fact that the teenaged girls in her class would be impressed with her coolness.)
What's fun in your 20s can pall later on
It's now been 10 years since I've worked in a big agency, but I'm still working in marketing, and as I get older I wonder: Just how long can you continue to work in this industry if you look like you're over 45? And if you do look like you're 45+, do you need to start investing in cosmetic surgery and more expensive clothing in order to proclaim your relevance?
The very fact that I'm reluctant to reveal my age (42) in this blog is perhaps a clue to the answer here. Genetically I've been lucky so far: Neither of my parents look their age, so most of the time I'm still passing for under 40.
I still worry. Sure, I've got a couple of pairs of Louboutins, a few DVF dresses, and my figure hasn't changed much since that first job (thanks to assiduous dog-walking and some yoga). I still base my outfits on black and I've been using a hard-core anti-wrinkle cream for years. But I have little interest in spending days at the anti-aging spa, and every time I have a spare $1000 kicking around, there always seems to be some more pressing priority than syringes of Botox and Restylane. In my 20s and even my early 30s, it was really exciting to get a new Hermes scarf or Armani skirt...these days, not so much.
I do take heart from the fact that the Canadian population - along with the populations of most of the developed world - is aging, and being over 40 isn't the career-killer it used to be. I also tend to think that if you stay technologically savvy, you maximize your experience while minimizing the negative effects of age. But advertising has always been a young person's game, and I wonder if the day will come when I'll lose business to some hyper-branded 30-year-old.
(Your insights are welcome!)
February 23rd, 2012
Knowing how you're going to fit into the marketplace should happen even before you've picked a name.
I came across this image today, over at Brands for the People, a new online brand development company which is designed to help small business owners create new brand identities for reasonable prices.
It's an interesting concept - and one for which I think there is probably a pretty good market - but what really caught my attention was the order in which they've arranged their 6 steps to creating a brand identity.
You'll see that 'Naming Your Business' is the last step in the process.
As someone who's been helping clients create brand identities for 10 years now, I could not agree more. Too many times, I've worked with organizations which have spent all their time and money on creating a product/service, getting an office, hiring staff - and only then start to think about how they're going to go about marketing their wares. And of course it's hard to create a marketing strategy when you don't know what 'story' you're going to tell to potential customers, or where you're going to fit in your competitive set.
I was going to write a long explanatory piece here, but the more I look at 6-step diagram, the more I think it speaks for itself. (The only one which might need explanation is Step 3, because what they mean isn't so much "how does your supply chain work" but "how will we approach the way we get things done".)
The bottom line is that before you choose your name - or lease an office, or start hiring office managers - you need to know why you're different, why you're better, how you'll stand out from the competition and why people will care about what you're doing. Knowing all that will determine whether you name your company "Clara's Cakes" or "Baked Nirvana", and whether your brand identity will be home-country-kitchen or super-modern-cult. And knowing those things will determine where your office is and what it looks like, the type of staff you hire, and even your product offerings.
February 15th, 2012
Your competitive set may be a lot different than you think.
Years ago, when I was young and stupid and working for a big advertising agency, I was part of a team that pitched a big television campaign for a packaged goods company. We spent weeks on a flashy presentation (quite literally: it was 1999, and using Flash in a boardroom presentation was still considered cutting-edge), packed the room with black turtleneck-wearing hipsters, and did the elaborate ad agency tapdance. We had feelers out at the 3 other agencies we knew were in the running and were certain we'd totally outperformed them in every way.
We didn't get the business. Neither did any of the other agencies. It went to a couple of guys we'd never heard of who'd invested in some digital equipment and some super-creative spec work, and offered the client a whole set of commercials for less than we'd budgeted for a single spot. And it turned out that the client was sick of high-octane presentations that tended to have little or nothing to do with the quality of the final product.
These days, I'm on the other side of the equation: Half the time we get a new client, it's because some marketing/design company pitched them on a website that was going to cost $30,000 and take 3 months to build, with an incremental $1500 tacked on for connecting their Twitter feed to their Facebook page. Sooner or later, the client expresses their incredulity to someone else, who says "Why don't you just call Sarah at StayAwake, because she can at least tell you if that's realistic."
I guarantee you that the other marketing/design company had never heard of us - and in fact I've had the odd angry phone call demanding to know who in fact we think we are - and never considered us their competition.
A different economy means different choices
It's not even as simple as choosing one marketing partner over another, either. It's that when an individual has $100 to spend on something personal, they're choosing between clothes and perfume, or between eating out and buying a lamp. When an employer has $10k to spend on employee development, they're choosing between a training program or a rewards program. Or when a company has $1 million to spend on growing sales, they're choosing between infrastructure and marketing.
And don't forget that your customers may not see your competitive set the same way you do. In my experience, above, we naively assumed that the client was only going to consider other 'big agencies' - but they were looking at a much broader set of possibilities.
Defining your competitive set
Fully understanding just who and what you're competing against for your customers' time and money has a lot to do with your industry, price point, and proposition, but asking these questions will help you get a better handle on what your competitive set looks like:
- Are you selling a commodity where customers can compare apples to apples? Or a service which has all kinds of different variables?
- What do your customers have to give up in order to purchase your product (i.e. if they spend money on your product/service, what will they have to forego buying)?
- When you lose business, who are you losing it to? Is it the same couple of companies, or a wide variety?
- Who do your customers see as your competitors? Are you sure about that?
- What is the end result/benefit of buying your product? What are the other ways a client could get to that result/benefit?
BONUS TIP: Try pretending you're a potential customer and Google some of the search terms you'd use if you were looking for a supplier. The stuff that comes up that you thought had nothing to do with your product or service is a good way to start thinking laterally about your competition.
February 12th, 2012
You need to be able to explain your advantage in 10 seconds or less
Here is a conversation I had with a potential new client a few weeks ago:
ME: "Okay, I understand what it is you do and sell, and you've told me a little about your sales goals and that you have an aggressive growth strategy for the next 18 months. But I can think of a few players in your space who seem to be doing similar things. Can you tell me how you're different or better?"
CLIENT: "What do you mean?"
ME: "I mean, if a potential customer is trying to decide between buying your product and buying that of a competitor, what factors will make them choose you? Are you cheaper, faster, more reliable...?"
CLIENT: "Well, we deliver a quality product."
ME: "Yes, but what does that mean to you? What will that mean to the customer?"
CLIENT: "Hhmmm...I'm not sure."
ME: "Well, how are you getting clients right now?"
CLIENT: "Most of our business comes from referrals from our existing clients, actually."
ME: "That's a good sign - it means you're doing something right. Why are people referring their friends and colleagues to you? Are they telling you why they're calling you?"
CLIENT: "They say that we're more trustworthy than other companies in our space, and that we have better customer service, and that we do a better job of solving their problems, and we become a better long-term partner. Oh, and we always save them a lot of money over the long-term, because we don't sell them stuff they don't need."
Aha!
Marketing is really all about communicating key differentiators
I knew this business had something going for it, because I happened to know that it had done pretty well in the preceding 2 years, even without doing any marketing. So clearly it was delivering a decent product. But getting them to articulate their key differentiators - service, strategic partnership, cost-effectiveness - was like pulling teeth.
This is a common problem for small businesses, especially those in the 'professional services' category. They've had initial success as a result of personal relationships - typically those of the founder - but after a couple of years, those relationships are saturated. They know they need to broaden their target market, but when it comes time to explain why they're different, and better, than their competitors, they find themselves tongue-tied or reliant on 35-page PowerPoint decks. Either way they lose the 10 seconds they've got to make a big impression with a potential new client.
Here's the thing: If people could do what you do, they wouldn't be in the market for your services in the first place. In other words, they probably don't know a whole lot about your industry or field. So you have to make it easy for them to understand the benefits you're offering before you try to explain all the details to them.
That's where the key differentiators come in. It's all about boiling down the ways in which you're different - and better - to a few key points that you can use any time you're communicating to a potential client, whether that's in marketing materials or in person.
Don't try to squeeze everything in at once
As I wrote the other day, trying to explain every little detail to a customer can backfire - people only have a limited capacity for new information at a given time, and the goal of marketing is to capture their attention long enough to get them sufficiently interested to give you more of their attention. So rattling off a laundry list of features and benefits isn't the best strategy. Instead, pick 2 or 3 and work them into a compelling story.
Here's how:
- Make a list of all the features and benefits of your product or service, and how they're different from your competitors
- Choose the top 3 based on what your current customers are telling you mean the most to them
- Construct your messaging around these 3 differentiators
- Test the messaging in the marketplace, and take note of which ones seem to resonate with potential customers
- Refine as required
Over time, you'll probably find that different messages work with different target groups: Your public-sector clients may respond best to cost and security messages, while your private sector clients may respond best to the fact that you deal with other 'big names' in their industry. That's okay - at least the next time someone asks you how you're 'different and better' than your competitors, you won't have to say "What do you mean?"
November 27th, 2011
Did you even look at that data afterwards?
In my 15 years in marketing, I've seen a lot of focus groups. I've had to recruit for them, write briefs for them, conduct them, spend hours watching them, and, not infrequently, try to prevent the client from getting drunk while watching them. (If you've ever been behind the one-way glass yourself, you know that by the last focus group at 8pm, it's a miracle if the whole panel isn't totally loaded through sheer boredom.)
Here is what I've learned:
- 99% of the time, focus groups are a waste of money
Oh, I know - you're thinking I'm a Luddite, or I just didn't do them right, or I didn't ask the right questions, or something.
Here's why I know I'm right:
- In all my years - as a junior ad agency type who had no control over the process or outcome, and as a senior advertising type who supposedly ran the whole thing - I have never seen a focus group overturn whatever preconceived notions the team had before the whole grisly business
- When a focus group 'insight' does get used, it's in exactly the way it wasn't supposed to be: as an anecdotal piece of evidence. "Remember that woman in the focus group who kept saying that she'd never buy cereal in a red box? That's why we definitely have to repackage."
- I have never met a roomful of people more judgemental and dismissive than a bunch of agency types and their client watching a group of people who aren't like them
- There's nothing you can learn from $50,000 worth of focus groups that you couldn't learn by just going out on the street and asking a variety of people what they think of your product.
The act of observing changes the observed
In the real world, people who don't work in marketing don't think about your marketing concept or your packaging or your Big Idea for more than 5 seconds at a time, and they definitely don't spend much time analyzing their 'feelings' about what they buy.
Asking them to read a couple of blurbs about your product, then spending 30 minutes discussing their reactions to those blurbs, may give you insight into their reading comprehension and imagination, but it won't get you even close to an objective assessment of the potential success of your concept.
(Want proof? Show a roomful of people a written explanation of 3 concepts, and ask for their thoughts. Then show them the advertisements that resulted from those concepts and ask them again. I promise you that their responses won't be remotely the same.)
The one benefit of focus groups
With only minor exceptions, people who work in marketing are shockingly homogeneous. We dress the same, listen to the same music, have the same worldviews, and are united in our tacit assumption that anyone who doesn't work in advertising is significantly less cool (and successful) than we are. We tend to forget that our purchasing decisions aren't, in fact, indicative of the rest of the world's.
Focus groups are a handy reminder that, in fact, there are all kinds of different people out there. You know, people who manage to get through the day without loving sushi, knowing who Seth Godin is, or wondering when Tindersticks is going to put out a new album. And while focus groups aren't going to give you that Killer Insight that will totally transform the way you advertise your product, they may just remind you that the people buying most of that product don't look (or act) like you.
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