Strategic Marketing Means Tackling More than Low Hanging Fruit

Your house is a mess. It's easy to pick up the dirty clothes, straighten the shoes left by the back door, make the beds. You know, the easy stuff. But when was the last time you reorganized dressers and closets? Climbed a ladder to dust the tops of light fixtures and moldings? Or bent low to clean your cabinet under the sink? Now if you did that, your house would be really clean. But who has time? Or the energy to do all that?

Can much the same can be true of your marketing efforts? Too often we spend our time addressing "low hanging fruit". Like the clothes left on the floor, we spruce up what's easy and not especially time consuming. Get a new logo, ask the agency to come up with some new ads, write a few press releases and leave the harder stuff like market research and strategic goal setting to another day.

Today, Brandcurve.com comments on this very issue. Seems Toys R Us has a cute new logo. Is the logo good enough to hide the fact that their stores are crowded, difficult to navigate and rate badly on customer service? Not really. I'd suggest they are just trying to sweep the bad stuff under a pretty new rug.

Want to know how you can tackle your strategic marketing? Log on to our website for free tools!

Rid your Business Documents of Abstractions

Is your organization a world-class provider of cutting-edge solutions? Do your people offer turn-key robust service? I’m sure you do. Unfortunately, your customers and donors have no idea what all those abstractions really mean or should mean to them.

We might criticize teenagers for talking in a language that defies comprehension (whose BFF R U?), but if you are writing business documents, be careful that your messages can be easily understood. Business language, no matter what the business, is too often laden with meaningless jargon. In fact, it’s so common that we stop recognizing the words as meaningless hype.

If you want to build your brand (who doesn’t) stop using mumbo-jumbo and start talking so that your messages are crystal clear.

Want to know how? Log on to our website and read this month's enews for our top tips.

7 Rules for Best Managing the Production Process

Your sales team is screaming for the brochure that you promised in time for their sales blitz. The copy revisions you sent four departments for approval were due back a week ago and no one has responded. The annual report you need for a major board of directors meeting is late coming in from the printer. Your e-newsletter was due out four days ago and you don’t have an idea for a topic yet.

Whether you’re a small business or a non-profit marketer, trying to get materials created, produced and printed on time and with the requisite approvals can be enough to make you hide under your desk.  But before you surrender to the chaos that often surrounds production, here are our top seven rules for bringing some order to your world.

1. It has to be right
2. Plan backwards
3. Be careful what you promise
4. Manage the input, or it will manage you
5. Automate
6. Build in some margin
7. Know thy vendors

Want to learn more? Check out the Fixyourmarketing.com enewsletter for the whole scoop.

Best Crisis Communication Starts with a Plan

Despite the run of recent crisis situations (think Virginia Tech, Jet Blue, Walter Reed Army Hospital), plenty of you are still going about your business without a crisis communication plan. Here’s a tip for you nonprofit marketers and small business marketers: the only time you can develop a solid crisis communication plan is BEFORE the crisis. AFTER a crisis happens, you’re not planning – you’re just reacting. And that’s a dangerous place to be.

Before you decide your chances of a crisis are small and you can handle it, think again and while you are at it read our enewsletter month for a checklist of where to start your planning process.

Get Big Results from your Small Business Marketing with a Little Product Demonstration

Want to infuse energy in your nonprofit's or small business's marketing? Consider product demonstration. For inspiration, check out Nikon’s integrated marketing and outstanding product demonstration in its recent campaign for the D40x Digital Camera. Sure, those ads and the web site took a chunk of marketing dollars. And your small business or non profit marketing budget probably looks nothing like Nikon’s. But there’s nothing like a great product demonstration or a free trial – even on a small scale - to create buzz.

What would happen if you gave out freebies (or let people use your service if you’re a service business) to show what your product/service can do? You could have testimonials, quotes and best of all, a whole group of brand ambassadors. And if you’re planning a new ad campaign, allocate a percentage of that budget to create a special web page or other elements to tie in to your tradiational ads. And don’t forget the PR!

One great lesson from the Nikon campaign is how integrated it is. The company went beyond just broadcast ads and sticking up a landing page web site. You can find the ad on You Tube. And while there is information on the camera imbedded in the special Picturetown site, there are plenty of links back to the Nikon site so viewers can get all the information and technical specs they want. Also imbedded in the site is a chance to win a D40x. Every day for 40 days, Nikon is giving some lucky viewer a camera. You can enter every day. The catch? You have to click the D40x icon on the web site to enter, and each day the icon moves to a different page – giving you the chance to search through the site for a chance to enter again. You’ll also find product reviews on tech and consumer sites and plenty of coverage in blogs (including Nikonians, a non-profit organization of Nikon users).

Bottom line: When a marketing campaign like this one truly comes together, it’s a beautiful thing.

Small Business Marketers, Take a Lesson from the Best Commercials of 2006

Ok, you are running a small business, working your hardest to market your products and services. And, your advertising budget is missing a couple of zeros compared to American Express or Geico. Never fear, you can still learn something from the "big guys".

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers announced this week awards for the best commercials of 2006. The spots are downright fun to watch - and a great lesson in how companies put creativity to work to promote their brand. Even as a small business marketer you'll appreciate the creative thinking and strategy behind some of these spots --and the web site is killer. You can see the awards categories (humor, animation, public service, low budget, etc.) And you can take a walk down memory lane as you review the winning spots from every year back to 1992.

If you’re looking for ideas or just want to entertain the creative side of your brain for a few minutes, it’s worth a look.

Don't Drive Your Graphic Designer Crazy!

Are you driving your graphic designer crazy? Could be if you are asking him or her to make endless changes, especially after your brochure, letterhead or whatever has gone to press. But, don't worry you are not alone and there is help. Here are our tips:

1. Goals: Know what you want before you begin. What do you need to achieve? Before beginning any project, outline the purpose for it first. You should know why you are working on it in the first place -- especially before spending serious money and time to have that brochure, website or annual report designed and printed.

2. Due date: When do you need it? When is your drop dead date? Start from the date you need to have it in hand and work backwards. Leave plenty of time for edits and at least 10 working days for the printing process.

3. Audience: There is no such thing as the general public. Know exactly will be reading your website, brochure, etc. and write for them.

4. Budget: How much can you spend? Have a firm number before you even start the project. This should come from your expected ROI.

5. Approvals: Who needs to sign off? Just you? Or a committee? The more people you involve the more opinions you need to be prepared to deal with. Involve as few people as possible and make sure that an objective set of eyes read and edit every word.

Second Life: Marketing in a Whole Other Universe

Second Life has been on the virtual scene since Fall of 2003. But now it seems to have entered our e-reality!

While I'd like to dismiss it as just another "on line video game" unworthy of discussion, on May 1st Second Life reached 6 million members. That's far too many people to ignore. Giant brands like Nike, IBM, and Reuters have jumped in and small business marketers are there as well.

The tough part comes in trying to decide if you can find any profit-making opportunities in this alternate universe.

Those that have already jumped into Second Life are utilizing this space by:
1) Selling virtual products and services
2) Marketing their real-world products and services

Since I'm not a techie, I can't tell you how to develop virtual products you can sell to virtual people. I do want to help you decide whether or not your company needs to have a Second Life presence. Here are a few articles to get you stewing on it:

Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP, wrote a great blog last month discussing his skepticism behind marketing to "avatars", the characters you create on Second Life.

This article in Business Week last October talked about the media's presence in the alt-world.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has even jumped on the bandwagon. This interview with their Second Life go-to guy discusses the process that went into the developing of their presence.

If you're a Harvard Business Review subscriber, check out their archives for a story titles "Avatar-Based Marketing." The author, Paul Hemp, is now looked to as an expert on the subject.

So how do you decide whether to take the plunge?
As a small business marketer, with local brand recognition, you may not want  to invest a ton of time marketing in the alt-world, but should consider offering products for sale to the "avatars." This could generate a small additional cash flow, but can also increase opportunities for recognition upon real-world expansion.

Read the articles. Get familiar with the subject. Then make sure you keep it open as an option. In 6 months user numbers went from 1 million to 6 million. It's up to you to decide your breaking point for when it will become a necessity.

Check Out this List of Brands already established in Second Life:

Adidas	Major League Baseball
Aloft Hotel Suites	Make Magazine
American Apparel	NOAA
Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH)	Reebok
BBC Radio 1	Reuters
Channel 10 (Microsoft)	Scion
Dell	Sun Microsystems
Duran Duran	Text 100
Global Kids IBM

Best Marketing Planning by Taking Your Show on the Road!

Great advice today for nonprofit organizations and small business marketers from Donor Power Blog. When you are stuck for answers, take your show on the road. We recommend this to clients and friends as the best way to put their strategic marketing planning into high gear. Planning takes your and your team's full attention. When the phone is ringing, and colleagues casually drop by your office for a chat, the hard work of planning often gets put aside for another day. So schedule time with your team out of the office. Find a well-lit venue that will allow you to use a conference room for the better part of the day. (HINT: Often companies and foundations will loan conference room space for no cost to non profits --so ask around!) Bring a white board, lots of paper, order in lunch and go to work. It's amazing how your ideas will flow!

In Marketing and Life, Think Strategy Before You Jump!

Several weeks ago we posed the question, when is it OK for small business marketers or nonprofit organization NOT to blog? I was delighted to see Elizabeth Holmes' article in today's Enterprise section of the Wall Street Journal tackling this issue too.

Remember when your mother asked you "would you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if all the other kids were doing it?" Well no. And you shouldn't jump into blogging or on line marketing just because everyone else is doing it either. Bottom line, it's only appropriate to blog, or have a website, or advertise or engage in any one particular kind of communication strategy when it fits your STRATEGY!

We see so many entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations working hard on all fronts, including their marketing. But often what gets overlooked is strategic marketing planning. Taking the time to think about what communications strategies will best connect YOUR products and services with YOUR target audiences will undoubtedly give you better results than investing precious dollars on promotional strategies that don't make any sense.

So, do you need a website? Maybe. Do you need a blog? Maybe. Do you need to advertise? Maybe. Do you need a strategic marketing plan? YES -- ALWAYS!

If you need help with your strategic marketing planning, log on to our website for lots of free tools or contact us!