Marketing Manner

In order to be successful in a business venture that includes marketing with poster printing campaigns, you must be able to analyze the market environment. Business owners must be able to express how their business idea fulfills the customer’s need better than the competition. First, however, you must assess your business’s market environment. Continue reading »

I’m not sure whose idea it was for publishing and creative professionals to do work “on spec” before getting a job, but I’ll betcha it wasn’t a creative pro! It was probably a greedy CEO who didn’t want to pay for something that he might later regret. According to Answers.com, “spec” has been used to mean speculation since the 1700s. “On spec” describes “work, such as advertising that is done for a client without a contract or job order, for which the client will pay only if the work is to be used. When a job is done on speculation, the person doing the work takes the risk in the hope of making a profit, gaining a valuable credit, or for some other reason. In the advertising business, creative talent will often work on spec in order to establish a name in the industry.”

Why is it that anymore, it seems like the creative markets are the only ones expected to produce work on spec? Why can’t doctors or lawyers all take time to draw up plans for our wellness or our legal matters and then we just pick whoever’s got the best plan? Well heaven forbid we take up a doctor’s or lawyer’s valuable time! That’s horrible that some pros’ time is considered more valuable than others. We are all people. We all produce something that someone else wants or needs. We should get paid for that, even if we’re just asked for a sample. It’s our right!

Whenever I see a job that says it requires an unpaid, original sample, I always walk away. My time is too valuable for someone who’s not paying me to get! Someone I don’t even know for that matter! Who do these people think they are?

I know designers are upset; I’ve seen plenty of blogs about them being asked to create a design on spec for many clients. Some clients even come to expect it, it seems. It’s just a big scheme many times for companies to get free, fresh ideas from people whose work they never intended to use anyway.

I know that newbies need to build up their portfolio, and when I was in college I did write for free. But, it was an internship and I knew I wasn’t going to get paid. I did get some good contacts from that internship though, as well as good experience. But, please, to all the creative pros out there: don’t do anything on spec! There are many more horror stories than there are success stories. And, the more people do work on spec, the less creative pros get paid down the road. Every time someone produces work for free, that lowers the bar for what is a decent wage. And that doesn’t exclude those that are doing work on spec; it’ll come back to you too. Our time is just as valuable as any other profession so treat it that way!

When you decide you need to redo your marketing strategy, what do you do first? I hope you create a detailed marketing plan. Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants when marketing won’t get you very far. You’ll never know if your marketing strategies have been successful if you don’t have a plan in place to measure your efforts against. So how do you know if you’ve succeeded in meeting your plan’s goals? 

You need to create a marketing plan that includes measurable goals.

It doesn’t sound as hard or tedious as it sounds. The key to make something measurable is to add numbers. While you’re creating your marketing plan, make all of your goals, often referred to as objectives, specific and clear so that they can be easily measured.

Marketing Objectives
You need a “marketing objectives” section in your marketing plan, which is where you put to paper what you want your marketing plan to achieve in the coming year. Each marketing objective should include a description of what you what to accomplish along with numbers to give you something concrete to aim for. For instance, you can say you want to become one of the top selling baseball hat companies in the American marketplace by the end of the year. That’s a somewhat measureable goal by you looking at the marketplace at the end of the year, but it will be easier to measure if you add some numbers. Let’s say you want over 35% of the American baseball hat marketplace to belong to you. This is a much better goal because it’s measurable with numbers, meaning there won’t be any ambiguity of whether you met your goal.

Benchmarking
You can keep track of your results by including specific benchmarks in your plan. Examples of benchmarks could include “selling 500 widgets by the first quarter,” or “having 100 people visit our Web site to learn about the product by XX date.” Now, you could have said “having more people visit our Web site” but by adding a number and date to the benchmark, and the reason for visiting your Web site (which is measurable by seeing which pages of your site they visit), you’ve just made that benchmark measurable.

Now you’ve got an easy way to see if your marketing objective is being met, and if not, you’ll know you need to change your strategy. By adding a specific date, you can take action now rather than waiting until next year to figure out what you were doing wrong.

Keeping Track of Results
You need a way to track how well your marketing plan is working. Schedule monthly or quarterly meetings and spell out in writing what your definition of marketing success is. If one goal is to create a higher sell-thru rate, you’ll need to decide on a specific number that will constitute a success for sell-thru numbers by a certain date. If you don’t meet this specific objective when you get numbers back from the suppliers and stores, you’ll know you need to work with your packaging or advertising strategies.

Also write down how you intend to track sales and costs, and at what point will your marketing plan change? For instance, you might tweak your marketing plan if you lose 10% of customers in the first quarter. Marketing isn’t science – you can use whatever metrics you’d like to measure success. Just make sure you always measure and measure consistently.

I don’t have anything against Google, per se, but its AdWords program is getting worse. People just aren’t making more than beans off of most of their AdWords ads. When it first started it was easy, but now it’s gotten complicated and people aren’t clicking as much as they used to. And what about those people who don’t even know that they need your product, much less know that they need to search for it? Those people aren’t even aware of your Google ad.

Depending on what kind of business you have, AdWords may just not be right for you. You can do all your homework and research your customer and targeting that customer. You can even make sure that customer needs your product. You can create awesome marketing materials and an eye-catching Web site, but AdWords won’t help if your target customer doesn’t know your product even exists!

Yep, that’s a big problem (understatement of the year, I know!).

If Google AdWords isn’t working for you, then it’s time to get back to basics, or traditional advertising methods. Why? Because Google AdWords targets people who know what they are looking for and many people don’t know what they’re looking for because they don’t realize a solution exists. That’s where traditional advertising comes in – it reaches the people who don’t know there’s a solution for them out there.

Direct mail – this is a great choice when you have a very targeted consumer, especially a targeted regional consumer. Even if people throw away direct mail as junk mail, they at least look at a postcard or brochure to see who sent it. And, the fact is, many people read their “junk mail.” A 2006 U.S. Postal Service survey found that 80 percent of people skim direct mail. A letter may not work in this case, but if you have a solution right out in the open on a postcard, who’s not going to look? And if the consumer doesn’t even know there is a solution, you’re the first one to reach out to them!

TV ads – more people may be watching TV on the Internet, but not everyone is. Many people can’t afford to buy a nice big 30-inch computer monitor to watch “their” shows on. And many people still have “their” shows that they watch every week without fail.

Billboards – who doesn’t drive to work? Not very many people. And even those that work out of their homes or don’t work at all have to drive somewhere eventually. That’s why billboards won’t ever stop working. Until people can zap themselves from place to place, billboards will be a great way to reach thousands of local consumers.

Magazine and newspaper ads – Although the circulation numbers have gone down for each of these mediums, they’re still pretty good. And research has shown that Web site visits go up after advertising the URL in a magazine or newspaper ad. That means people are still reading and these ads still work.

If you aren’t getting the response you want from Google AdWords or any other type of Internet advertising, give it a break and try traditional again. Everything from handing out business cards to hanging flyers counts. It doesn’t have to be expensive or high tech to be effective advertising.

Social media directly influences how we make purchases, according to research conducted by Universal McCann, a global media planning company. In their report, “When did we start trusting strangers?” the company interviewed 17,000 people in 29 countries to see how social media impacts their buying decisions. The leader of the report, Tom Smith stated “This has huge impacts on the way that advertisers and brands have to think about social media – moving involvement from a ‘nice to have’ to an ‘essential to have.’”

Here are some of the stats from the report:

• The top channels for informing people about products and services were Instant Messenger and email, at 44.5 percent and 42 percent respectively.
• Over 29 percent of those polled have commented on a product or brand on a blog
• About 27 percent have posted an opinion about a product or brand on a social networking profile
• People gave their opinions about entertainment most often, with 60 percent having recommended a film and 52 percent recommending music
• Technology was also a big topic to blog about: 57 percent have recommended home technology and 54 percent have recommended some kind of portable technology or mobile phone service on a social media channel

This report shows that everyone that uses social media is an influencer to a certain degree. Of course, some more than others. Many blogs are dedicated purely to reviewing certain products. And, how many times have you recommended a book on Amazon.com or have written a bad review of a Web site that you didn’t get good service from? I know I’ve done both and I don’t consider myself a social marketing guru. That’s the point of social marketing – you don’t have to be a guru, you just have to have your own opinions. And other people will trust your opinion on social media sites.

Universal McCann is using this report to give their clients the following advice:

1. You must participate in social media. If you don’t have a social media presence, you’re toast. (I’m paraphrasing here, of course .) Basically, it’s no longer a choice because people are going to be talking about you anyway, so you might as well be proactive and join the discussions.
2. Be transparent. You must be honest and open about how your company works. If you made a mistake, own up to it and control the discussion. If you just ignore it you won’t be able to do any damage control.
3. Invest in your product. People review a product because they had a good experience with it. With the market now being driven by consumer recommendations, the good, responsive companies that have an online social media presence will stand out. 

If you don’t get involved in social media, you can’t influence anyone. Traditional advertising and marketing alone won’t do it; people don’t trust companies, but they do trust strangers.

Marketing professionals provide a service to their clients. The knowledge, time and experience of a professional needs to be figured into the final fee for a marketing project. The client doesn’t need to know exactly how much time you spent on her project to get it done; she just wants to know if it’s going to be done on time.

Actually, many clients prefer to get a fee-based quote rather than an hourly quote. People want to know how much they are going to be paying you when everything is said and done. It’s just easier to budget when you already know what the final tab will be.

The more experienced you get, the less time it will take you to do things. For instance, I can write a press release in less than an hour because of my experience because I have a general idea of what needs to be said and where things go. Does that mean I should charge less than a newbie who takes two hours to write the release because he has to look things up? That’s ridiculous, but that’s exactly what happens when you charge by the hour. You end up devaluing yourself because you get faster at certain tasks. You can make more money as you get better at your job by charging a flat project-based fee rather than an hourly fee.

Not only can you make more money by charging a flat fee, I think it seems more professional. Hourly workers are generally at the low end of the totem pole at companies, with salaried workers in managerial and executive positions. Charging an hourly fee can make you seem like an amateur.

Charging by the project is a way to market your service as more of a product, which I think is a good thing. Clients know what they’re getting – they know they’re paying X amount for Y service (or product, if it’s a brochure or press release) no matter how many hours were put into the project. Plus, it eases clients’ minds because they don’t have to worry about you padding the bill with hours of surfing the ’Net. Charging a flat fee eliminates a lot of guesswork and worries that clients face. When you shop at the grocery store, you don’t care how many hours it took to make that sweater, you’re only concerned with how much you’ll have to pay for the sweater. You care about the end result. That’s how many businesses that outsource marketing functions think as well.

Blogs such as Duct Tape Marketing endorse the fee-based approach, as does consultant Alan Weiss. Weiss even wrote a book about it: Value-Based Fees: How to Charge and Get What You’re Worth.

If you’ve been basing your fees on the hour, think about how that can affect your future business. As you work faster, you’ll end up making less money, so seriously reconsider your fee structure.

First, email was too much. Too much info, too much time. Then we used MySpace and Facebook to keep in touch with our social networks. Now, even those have gotten to be too much. Who has time to create personal, long blogs to let her social circle know what’s going on? IM-ing is too time-consuming because you have to interact with everyone individually. Entering stage right: Microblogging! 

Microblogging is like IM, but instead of messaging just one person, you message everyone in your social network at one time. Twitter and Plurk are two popular microblogging sites, in case you think you’ve never heard of microblogging. You’ve probably heard of one of these sites, right? 

Microblogging is a way to let your friends know what you’re doing at all times. It’s kind of like the “status” feature on MySpace. Using Twitter, for instance, allows you to let everyone in your social network know what you are up to in that precise moment. Right now, in my Twitter profile I’ve got “Working on a blog, laundry is going, dog is snoring under my chair.” Fascinating, I’m sure. But, isn’t “What are you doing?” the first thing we ask when we call up a friend? And the answer we give is basically what goes into Twitter and other personal microblogging sites. But more and more microblogging sites are cropping up that are getting more business than personal. 

Yammer is a site that answers the question “What are you working on?” for those in the corporate world. The nice thing is that you can screen those outside of your company so that only your co-workers know what you’re working on. So why would Yammer and other microblogging sites be useful to the corporate world? 

People are starting to ignore their email.  People’s inboxes are filling up at a much faster rate nowadays, so much so that many emails are ignored for days at a time. With microblogging, you often don’t have enough room to be longwinded, so you can let people know what you’re doing in a sentence or two. If you’re working on a project with a boss that likes to call every half hour to get an update, you can just microblog your status. This also helps to deflect any annoying “check-in” phone calls that turn into “By the way, can you also do this or add this?” 

It’s easier to store info. Many companies trap their knowledge in PowerPoints or in one top dog’s email that gets deleted after said top dog leaves the company. Companies are starting to upload content onto company Wikis, which can then be linked to and indexed by conversational microblogs. Now it’s getting useful, and we can’t have that! Something that was intended for fun being business-oriented!? The horror! 

Managers can see who their “connectors” are. The connectors are the people who control the flow of info through the department or company. If the managers see that there are only one or two people that are distributing info, they can add other connectors, or narrow down who is diluting or screwing up company messages.

1. You know all about money. Entrepreneurs have to know how much money is in their bank account at all times. Entrepreneurs also know a good deal when they see one because they know the value of things. Most good entrepreneurs have a lot of good debt (things that appreciate, like houses) and not a lot of bad debt (credit card debt). Everyone is going to have some bad debt in their lives, but good entrepreneurs generally have more good debt than bad debt.

2. You are competitive. Many business owners participated in sports when they were younger and they have a drive to win. Others might have been competitive with themselves, always trying to best their last grade, their last sprint time or their last video game level. Entrepreneurs are just competitive by nature.

3. You are productive much of the time. You have to believe “the early bird gets the worm” to be a good entrepreneur. Either that, or you must believe in burning the midnight oil. Whichever time of day is most productive for you, you must be able to be productive during a large part of the day so you can get things done. If you are a procrastinator that spends half the day on non-productive tasks, you’ll have a hard time running a successful business.

4. You are a risk taker. You have to be the type of person who trusts her intuition and acts on a hunch. You have to be willing to lose something to have just the possibility of gaining everything.

5. You are okay being a loner. As an entrepreneur, you won’t be able to hire your best friend as your CFO. You have to be able to work on your own and with people without being a social butterfly at all times. If you can’t work on your own to get things done and you’re always relying on other people, your profits will go down the drain. You also have to be comfortable not being your employees’ favorite person. You have to fire people and hand out discipline when needed.

6. Good entrepreneurs are flexible planners. If you don’t plan and make multiple backup plans for your main plan, you’ll have trouble running your business. You have to be flexible and plan for 89 scenarios that can pop up at any moment. If something comes up that you don’t know how to handle, you need to have a list of contacts to call on to help you out. There’s another plan that needs to be put in place.

7. Entrepreneurs love to work. You have to love what you are doing to do it effectively and successfully. You shouldn’t be looking forward to retiring. Many good entrepreneurs are sad when they retire, or they don’t retire completely. Do you feel like you could work for the rest of your life? Do you enjoy your work that much to devote a lifetime to it?

Some of the most famous posters of modern times are the ones produced by the USSR during its communist era.  The Soviet propaganda machine was notoriously prolific, and thousands of posters were printed extolling the virtues of the “mother land”, while decrying the evil wishes of Russia’s enemies.

There were anti Hitler efforts during World War II.  During Olympic years, posters praising Russian athletes appeared regularly.  Of course, posters of Soviet heroes like Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin were everywhere.  There were posters, eerily reminiscent of George Orwell’s “1984” story, telling citizens to keep their mouths shut or be charged with treason.  When the state run economy needed to increase demand in a certain product (for instance, cigarettes) posters were often employed to do the job.  And, of course, there were many militaristic posters asking young men to stand up and defend the country.

These posters were not just effective in their day; they continue to be popular now.  Many people pay good money to have copies of theses posters – and similar ones from other countries – because they are so popular.

How does this relate to business?  Well, it should tell you that a poster can still be a very effective marketing tool for your small company. 

Take a look through some of the more enduring posters in history.  Look at what made them unique, beyond the fact that they are old and historic.  Try to incorporate these aspects into your own poster designs.
Basically, you should engage in a form of modern propaganda.  Obviously, you are not out to badmouth another country, or even another company (at least not explicitly).  But you are out to make your own company look better, and to make customers think of your company as the very best one in the industry.  You are trying to convince all of your target customers that your company can offer them more than any other.

In a sense, you are doing exactly what those old Soviet posters did, only your intentions are much less hostile.  At least I hope they are.

In fact, in all of your marketing efforts you should take on a more propaganda like attitude.  If you constantly remind yourself that you are engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the customers, you will undoubtedly create more effective marketing items.  So take a page out of the old Soviet book and increase your profits.