Print Solutions Magazine, July 2003 -- Marketing Magic, Page 3

Cliff Atkinson, MBA (cliff.atkinson@sociablemedia.com), serves as an instructor, speaker and presentation media expert in his role as president of Sociable Media (www.sociablemedia.com) in Los Angeles.

Richard Roberts (richard@reroberts.com) is principal of Richard Roberts Copy & Consulting (www.reroberts.com), a marketing communications provider in Boston.

Joe Combs (joe@combswagner.com) is co-partner of combswagner (www.combswagner.com), a public relations and marketing strategy agency in the San Francisco Bay Area. Myla Wagner (myla@combswagner.com) is also co-partner.

Jay Bower (jbower@crossbowgroup.com) is president of Crossbow Group (www.crossbowgroup.com), a marketing services firm in Westport, Conn.

Jeff Propper (jeffpropper@lunargroup.com) is founder and president of The Lunar Group (www.lunargroup.com), an advertising and marketing communications agency in Mountain Lakes, N.J.

Incorporate visual elements in your sales presentations.

"How much potential business will you lose if you blow your next sales pitch?" Atkinson asks. "How long will your venture survive if you miss the mark in your investor presentation? What will it cost if your employees don't understand an important new policy? If the answers are meaningful to you, then so is the quality of your presentations." He says "PowerPoint®" often is synonymous with "low-quality sales pitch," but many clients and prospects respond favorably to well-organized and well-displayed presentations that include numerous graphics.

Integrate messages for cross-promotions.

"Sponsors have gone from making sure their cans of Coke or Pepsi appeared as on-screen props to BMW making its own films," Roberts says. "Product placement has become 'Advertainment.' Public relations has been no less affected."

Roberts cites cable station MTV as a prime example of communications integration: When MTV hosts a concert or beach bash, it invites primary advertisers and others to join as sponsors. The sponsors can mention their participation in their own marketing, and MTV promotes them as well in its promotional efforts. At the event itself, the sponsors' products--shoes, hats, bags, T-shirts, musical instruments, CDs, etc.--are given away, sold and awarded. When MTV broadcasts the event, kids donning or using the items further boost the marketing campaign. Roberts says such cross-promotion efforts are efficient, cost-effective, controllable and measurable.

Attack trade shows from different fronts.

"While the primary focus for the majority of trade show exhibitors is to generate qualified sales leads from the booth, it's been our experience that attacking a show from a number of different fronts delivers the most significant impact for achieving sales and business growth objectives," Combs says.

Combs offers five tactics for better trade show marketing: 1) Meet with existing customers--use preshow promotional teasers to stimulate interest among clients and prospects, and invite some to dinner during the show. 2) Seek media exposure--work in advance to coordinate meetings with editors, and offer to present educational sessions. 3) Promote brand awareness and visibility--time major announcements to coincide with trade shows. 4) Compare yourself to other exhibitors--analyze their booth location, style, messages, giveaways and printed marketing pieces. 5) Network for your company--mingle with potential business partners.

Maximize your advertising agency's value.

Companies conduct time-consuming searches to find the right advertising agencies, Bower says. They invest long hours talking to colleagues in other companies, pouring through credentials, interviewing agency principals, and weighing proposals and chemistry. "Want to maximize your ROI?" he asks. "Then understand that it's after your search is completed that the hard work begins."

Bower offers six suggestions to help you maximize your ad agency's effectiveness: 1) Invest in the briefing--dig deep into your product's promises, and insist that the agency does the same. 2) Demand accountability--require that your agency give you a detailed, quantitative plan for helping you achieve ROI. 3) Listen and learn--prod and probe, but resist temptations to second-guess every creation. 4) Make sure key players communicate well with one another. 5) Agree on strategy, then monitor execution. 6) Respect schedules--phony deadlines are destructive to relationships.

Stand out with advertising creativity.

"When it comes to creating awareness for a company's product or service, it's hard to beat advertising," Propper says. "The concept is simple--send a message to as many people as possible, as often as possible. However, without a well-constructed, well thought-out media plan, you may be wasting a considerable portion of your budget." To stand out, he says, you must saturate and sustain. "Choosing the right media requires thoughtful strategizing, tireless planning, and savvy negotiation skills," he says. "When all is said and done, advertising is about reaching as many consumers as possible as many times as possible with the least amount of waste."

Propper suggests testing creative messages before deploying them. One-on-one interviews "emphasize the advertising's clarity and the respondent's ability to identify emotionally with the ad," he says.

The biggest marketing mistake document industry professionals make is viewing marketing as a series of events rather than a process, says E. Brooks Warner. "Marketing is a business process just like quality or management, and it's a discipline just like accounting," says Warner, founder and CEO of 101 Marketing, a marketing firm in North Granby, Conn., that serves a variety of industry firms. "Marketing is a part of a company's culture and should be viewed that way."

Businesses in the document industry often don't have a clear understanding of the marketing process, Warner says. "You very rarely see continuity in our industry, but you see it a lot outside of our industry," he says. "When you see a Nike television commercial, you know after five seconds that it's a Nike commercial without ever seeing the Nike swoosh. All of the experiences you've ever had with Nike as a company rush into your mind." Businesses such as Nike are able to make consumers think positively about their companies because all of their marketing efforts are tied together, he says.

Because many document industry distributors and manufacturers don't understand the marketing process, they often market themselves in unplanned, haphazard manners, Warner says. For example, a business may send a direct mail piece to clients and prospects or place an advertisement in a trade or local publication, then await the results. When the company doesn't see immediate results, it may conclude that particular marketing method isn't successful and cease using it altogether. "The marketing process is a fabric and each thread is connected to every other thread," Warner says. "Each element feeds from and into every other element, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts."

Industry firms need to consider marketing a vital element of their businesses, Warner says. "There is far too much of a production mentality in our distribution channel," he says. "That's primarily because it's a custom channel. More or less, everything we make is unique and solves a specific application-based problem." As a result, industry firms often mistakenly push marketing under the rug, he says.

Manage your activities by the numbers.

"In this day and age, running your marketing department without constant attention to the numbers is simply irresponsible," Livneh says. Marketing goals must be expressed in quantifiable terms, or "measurable marketing impact," she says. Defining results in comparable terms allows you to compare different branding vehicles, such as print advertising versus online newsletter sponsorship.

Livneh offers three tips on tracking the success of marketing methods: 1) Salespeople always should know how leads were generated and who influenced decisions. 2) Diligently measure whatever you can. Direct traffic to your web site and use separate "landing" pages or tacking codes for each marketing method, or include different toll-free phone numbers as calls to action on direct mail pieces. 3) Estimate what you can't measure directly, and prioritize your budget based on results.

Beware of the "Feedback Loop Gap."

"We have the data. We have the pretty reports," Sterne says of most firms with web sites. "But we don't have an educated team who can take the resulting statistics and turn them into meaningful plans. The process of creating web strategy and executing on web tactics has gone missing." He says web servers generate information and create logs, and most people assume the information is generated to determine how well their businesses are doing. "Nice thought, but not the case," he says.

Instead of capturing and cleansing log data, converting the data to colorful reports and guessing what the data means instead of analyzing it properly, Sterne says firms should assemble educated teams that include both technical- and business-minded people. That way, armed with an understanding of results, companies can map out changes to improve web site usability, increase customer satisfaction and boost revenue. Often, he says, "the technical side doesn't have a view of the company's business drivers, and the business people don't know what the data mean nor what valuable information might additionally be available."

Start with a specific goal and work backward.

"In my role as a web metrics consultant, I spend a great deal of time explaining what can be measured, so that the advertising and marketing department, the customer service managers and, yes, even the board can start deciding what they should measure," Sterne says. Some fundamental online metrics include number of visits, duration of visit, depth of visit, page views and number of registrations. But companies' marketing goals are different: owners of e-commerce sites want increased sales, but owners of advertising-supported content sites might be more interested in increased page views.

To determine the success of your web site, Sterne says, start with a specific goal and work backward. A manager responsible for monetary donations could set an average monthly contribution amount as the baseline. She could alter her direct mail, print and broadcast campaigns and look for an increase in the number of site visits. She could suggest changing the site's design to increase the number of click-throughs to the donation page. She could alter the copy on the donations page to increase the number and size of gifts. But it's necessary to identify specific goals first.