STRATEGY #418: Interactive Direct Mail

To help boost communications ROI, more marketers are employing interactive direct mail productions to focus on lead generation and improve customer relationships. But in migrating from traditional print direct mail to digital, there are some key points to keep in mind.

 
IDM Top 10

1. Don’t view interactive direct mail pieces simply as postcards in digital form. View them rather as ultra-targeted "websites" that can be delivered straight into a prospect's hands. 
2. Use digital tools correctly. Audio and video are great ways to enhance your message. But if overdone, they can also distract or even leave a negative impression. 
3. The first step should always be a thorough audit of your target audience.
4. Since your prospect has greater navigational control over the digital experience compared to print, make sure both the content and structure of your message are as relevant to the recipient as possible.
5. Consider the implications of the deliverables. CD, DVD, USB drive—which format is most compatible with your message and preferred by your prospect?
6. Invest in great packaging that is truly unique and features a very compelling call to action.
7. Don’t forget to budget testing of alternate designs and verbiage to optimize strategy.
8. Employ campaign metrics—digital productions can be built to capture detailed data, helping you to identify which calls to action and packaging were most effective.
9. Streamline lead capture—build in formats that enable interfacing with your CRM system. 
10. Use the captured data to refine strategy and empower the sales team with better qualified leads. 

Take the plunge. Invest your interactive direct mail with a two-way flow of information. You’ll be pleased with the optimization potential for your message development, audience segmentation and sales lead qualification. Not to mention your communications ROI!

STRATEGY #86: Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is experiencing fantastic growth—even in industrial marketing strongholds. An IDC forecast shows that Internet advertising will grow from 10% of all media this year to 13.6% by 2011 as Internet ad spending grows to $106.6 billion worldwide. Don’t discount the advantages of digital advertising.

Engage Your Audience
While they still have their place, static print ads are not as effective as digital media in engaging audiences in a two-way dialog. Even more importantly, digital advertising can be engineered to obtain information about the audience. This mined data is a valuable commodity you can use to guide and influence sales and marketing initiatives, fueling your sales organization and message customization. 

Extend Traditional Marketing Strategies
Targeting—Run segmented campaigns using messages individualized to the interests of each targeted group. 
Branding—Enhance established product and corporate identities with animation, video and other visually stimulating tactics within your ad.
Retention—Optimize customer response and retention by linking your digital ad audience with your website or microsites.
Relevance—Cultivate a positive audience response by making your advertising a favorable interruption that pre-empts audience needs by being exceedingly relevant.

All this is possible because the medium itself can collect and analyze customer behavior. It’s also important to employ technologies that enhance the visibility, portability and impact of your message on a variety of devices and in various settings. 

A new advertising paradigm is here that can rapidly enhance your marketing efforts through the participation of your audience. And customers will always be attracted to messages that are not only highly relevant to job success, but also interactively intriguing. The time to engage is now.

STRATEGY #369 — Email Programs

In a recent survey of engineers and other industrial professionals, GlobalSpec reported more than 50% of respondents spend six or more business hours on-line weekly. They’re looking for suppliers, product specs, research and to purchase. Are they finding your products?

Implementing a fully planned and well-managed Email Program is one more critical tool for your marketing arsenal. Use it to boost traffic by linking to your website or push timely information out to your markets. Retain and keep customers informed. Capture and develop valuable leads. Increase sales and raise brand awareness. It’s more immediate and affordable than print, but to work, it needs to be done well.

Hints

• Keep content focused, compelling and relevant
• Include dynamic graphics, optimized for viewing on multiple sources from computer screens to handheld devices
• Manage lists faithfully
• Segment your audience to target content for optimum results
• Insure timely delivery
• Track results and apply them to future emails

Planning is Key
Truly effective email campaigns are seldom formed and executed overnight. When managed as a targeted program integrated with your overall marketing plan, results will follow.

When preparing an annual email calendar, take into account:

• Internal production and marketing plans
• Industry and vertical market events
• Seasons/holidays
• Purchasing cycles of various customer markets
• Customer/prospect behavior
• Customer preferences

Plan frequency and topics per market segment. Content can range from product features and project profiles to a president’s message, special events, training, etc. Keep content short, powerful and direct, always driving your audience to a microsite (See Strategy 777) or sales contact. Now execute it faithfully.

Email programs can not stand alone. But they are a vital tool in the mission to capture, cultivate and secure new customers and grow sales. Infiltrate now.

Next time…Strategy #86 offers an engaging opportunity.

STRATEGY #37 — Animation & Illustration

Whether you’re launching a great new product or trying to broaden the application of an existing one, the fact is—industrial products and processes are complicated. Technical sheets have their place, but often, it takes seeing for customers to believe and understand. That’s when animation and illustration can be a silver bullet in your marketing arsenal.

Get the Picture

These marketing tools are now more effective than ever. The challenge is in finding the right combination of talent—an engineering mind that quickly understands your product and can guide a creative talent that can execute it accurately and effectively. High impact illustrations and animations don’t have to take a big chunk out of your marketing budget any more. We know.

The Power of Illustration

• Use in print or digital formats to jump start sales with pre-production modeling.
• Enhance marketing efforts with cross sections, cutaways and exploded views highlighting key features and hidden details.

• If a picture is worth a thousand words, a technical illustration may just make the sale.

The Power of Animation

• Demonstrate functionality, manufacturing, installation or maintenance. Add music or narration.
• Help customers absorb large amounts of data quicker and easier.
• Feature on microsites, CDs, trade shows, presentations and other venues to draw prospects in with a more memorable message.

When your product’s key features are not visible...when the process is so new or complicated that real-life demonstration is just not feasible...when you want to get the attention of your target audience to jump start the sales cycle or stir up demand, peppering your marketing plan with quality illustrations and animation nets powerful results.

Strategy #369 is up next—a program you will not want to miss!

STRATEGY #777 — MICROSITES

Shorten sales cycles by helping customers and prospects cut through the information clutter with focused, targeted information streams. The best way to start is with a microsite.

We know, your corporate website is great. But its purpose is so far reaching and multifaceted that targeted brand messages can get lost. Don’t force customers to hunt around and drill down to the nether regions of your site to get the specifics on a product, line or service. Most won’t bother.

Opt for Transparency

A microsite is a SMALL, self-contained website (one page or a small cluster of pages) separate from your company’s primary site. It has it’s own distinct URL. Content is very tight, focused and brand-centric—usually presenting a single product, product line, service, event or promotion. It could be a temporary site, for the duration of a promotion, or it could be a permanent addition to your web presence, linking to your main website.

Consider the Advantages:

• Microsites help you optimize keywords and promote keyword-rich content. This can boost your rank on search engines bringing in more prospects seeking your products or services.
• Use your advertising, direct mail and other promotional media to drive customers to your microsite, giving them easy access to targeted information.
• Their smaller size makes them quicker and easier for customers to navigate and locate desired info.
• This focused information stream is more cohesive than a corporate site which boosts branding and helps drive sales.
• Microsites can be changed or updated quickly and easily according to changing market needs.
• They can be your most dedicated sales rep, working 24/7.

Microsites provide a solid, versatile foundation for targeted information streams that cut through the clutter. Check out a couple of microsites we designed and built for two of our clients. Just click on the URL links to access the sites directly.

Be sure to come back in a couple of days, Strategy #37 will be illustrative!

Finding the Right Balance

As you move into the electronic/social media world to market your latest product, here’s a word of caution: Don’t neglect print for direct marketing.

Current research of third-party opt-ins reveals that e-mail reaches only 30–40% of the total b-to-b audience. But with snail mail, you can hit every target audience member’s mailbox with a message that will get reviewed before it hits the circular file.

Consider:

• In direct marketing, target audience coverage is everything. There are currently almost two-and-a-half times as many b-to-b prospect snail mail lists as there are e-mail lists available for rental. You can reach almost three times as many prospects with snail mail over email.
• Buyers can't read your e-mail if they're not online at work. Plant managers and engineers, health professionals, field service technicians, contractors and many other businesspeople are on their feet or out of the office all day. While more and more professionals are gaining access to their email on-the-go via mobile devices like PDAs and cell phones, this is still a growing trend...not the norm.

A special case…be sure to work around the presidential election clutter between now and November. Both physical and electronic mailboxes are going to be clogged with political messages. Consider delaying a really important introduction until the new year, and then do it right, with a healthy print component to augment that electronic blast.

Yes, our world is turning digital. But we’re still in transition. It’s not time to abandon print yet...and it may never be. When it comes to direct marketing, it’s important to find a good balance. Making the most of both mediums should optimize your impact and results.

Don

Score Big with Quality

If you’re not monitoring and tweaking your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns on a regular basis, you are probably paying more and getting a lot less than you could be.

John Lee of Hannapin Marketing nailed it, recently, with an article in Website Magazine about optimizing your Pay-Per-Click Quality Score. The bottom line? It’s all about staying relevant and connecting your focused, meta tags/keyword groups to your ads and landing pages.

Google’s Quality Score, Yahoo!’s Quality Index and MSN’s Quality Based Ranking are all essentially the same thing. They are values or rankings constantly calculated from complicated formulas. They essentially reflect (for each specific search engine) how relevant each of your keywords is to your ad text or website landing page. This score (or rank) is used, among other things, to determine each keyword’s actual cost-per-click.

This is a good system that rewards advertisers for presenting highly relevant keyword lists, ad text and landing pages. In general, the higher the ranking the lower your costs-per-click and the better your ad position. This system also rewards searchers by helping to weed out junk advertisers, helping prospects find the products and services they’re seeking faster.

Tips for Improving Quality Scores

• Optimize — Break down your ad groups into tightly-themed keyword groups. Never dump a large list of keywords into a single ad group.
• Infuse Ads with Keywords — Be sure the headline and text include keywords. This improves your click-through-rate (CTR) which improves your Quality Score. Also, the keyword typed in the search box by your prospect will be bolded in your ad text.
• Anchor Landing Pages with Keywords — Include keywords in the title, heads and body content. Marrying keywords and landing pages is a critical element in boosting your relevancy and Quality Score.
• Stay On Topic — Keep landing pages focused on the specific product or service you’re promoting. Don’t wonder into corporate philosophy, office culture, etc.

Since Quality Score is all about relevancy, make sure the content of your website and online ads matches your meta tags/keywords to a T.

Steve

Upswing In A Down Market

With some early prognosticators already predicting a slow 2009 because of inflation and recessionary pressures, you might be wondering what you need to do to keep sales strong, meet your numbers and maybe even grow a few market share points in the year ahead.

Plan for Success
Seriously. It seldom happens by accident. We’re already working with clients to assess their market strengths and goals before laying plans for the new year. And many of those plans are including internal campaigns to help re-energize a sales force…even an entire company. 

It’s important to get everyone involved. As every member of a company takes ownership for his part in the process to design, produce, market, sell, support or service its products and customers, a synergy of passion, cohesion and excitement will develop that can energize and drive success through the new year.
 
More Direct Marketing Tips

• Listen…Listen…Listen. Resolve to understand your customers better. Gather information, then share your conclusions with your marketing team members and with product development and sales colleagues. 
• Outshine competitors’ weaknesses. What unique selling proposition do they stress, and how can you counter them? Try to anticipate competitors’ product development plans for next year, and gear up now to beat them to the punch.
• Address inflation head-on. Add violators to your communications—”Special announcement,” “New offer,” “No price increase,” “Same price as last year,” “2007 prices still in effect” or “Repeat customer discount.” 
• Reactivate former customers. Research reasons that caused them to lapse. Then group them and develop strategies to respond to their concerns in powerful messages.
• Boost communications creativity…each production can be improved beyond the initial idea, and every offer can be made more enticing. Spotlight benefits instead of features. 
• Seek a balance…between under-communicating and “going to the well” too many times. Consider asking customers how often they want to hear from you: monthly, quarterly, twice a year. Respect the customer’s wishes and set up customizable contact strategies.

Most of All
Treat every customer and prospect as if they were the most important individual to your business—they are. Then segment…segment…segment. Make your communications relevant to their individual needs. It’s the best way to grow business in good times and bad.

Don

Blasting Your Way Into Inboxes – Part 3

From Parts 1 and 2, we know the “How” and the “Who” about email blasts, let’s wrap this up with the “When.”

The Right Time

Timing IS everything. From proper frequency to optimal day and time, timing can have a significant impact on your results.

With your lists secured, you now need to find the proper balance for usage. Both high and low frequency schedules will garner the same results–messages ignored, deleted or marked as “junk.” Do set a schedule, and be consistent. Customers and prospects often view consistency as a promise. And every time it is fulfilled, your credibility and overall image is enhanced.

Determine an appropriate blast schedule for your company based on the amount of relevant information you have to share, how often your customer/prospect lists want to hear from you, as well as the logistics of creating and executing each email blast. Whether it’s every week, two weeks, month or more, follow through on your schedule consistently.

Don’t forget the day and time. There are certain days of the week and times of the day when received emails are almost guaranteed to be deleted unread. And these can vary, depending on your specific audience. Marketing professionals can test a range of days and times to determine the most optimum choice.

Reaching Your Audience
Of course, all this planning and testing will be for naught if the email blast doesn’t ever reach your audience.

Some tools and platforms will catch your email in spam filters that could get your email address or even your company’s domain blacklisted by a client. Using professional email service providers (ESPs) should alleviate this concern. A good ESP monitors its listing status regularly with email clients, maintaining positive relationships with them. The ESP can also provide valuable data on each blast to help your marketing professional monitor effectiveness and continually optimize effectiveness of future blasts.

Okay...if you’re still with me, your head may be spinning with too much information. Just consider one more recommendation: Hire A Professional.

While it might be tempting to give email blasts a go without employing professional services, a misstep in this particular minefield could have a devastating effect on your business and your reputation. Email blast marketing is a great tool. Use it. But get assistance from a professional marketing firm. They can promote your company by setting up a highly targeted, opt-in campaign that can generate great feedback, qualified leads and increased sales for your business.

Melinda

Blasting Your Way Into Inboxes – Part 2

In Part 1, we covered developing the right message. Now, let’s look at reaching the right audience.

The Right Audience
Proper email campaigns deliver interesting, pertinent information to a target audience in the hopes of generating quality feedback. It should not be only a one-way communication from you to them. Properly executed, it can be a vital tool in building a mutually beneficial relationship with customers, prospects and other important audiences.

Most companies begin with their ready-made audience—their customers. But before sending that first blast, be sure you have permission from your audience to communicate with them in this fashion. It will minimize spam complaints, increase deliverability, decrease liability and should ensure better open-and-click results. It’s recommended that email invitations be sent first, to allow each one to “opt-in” to your communications plans.

There are many ways to obtain appropriate, targeted audience lists, and marketing professionals are a great resource. Remember that the more targeted the audience, the better the results from each campaign.

Securing the right lists is important. Managing those lists is paramount. Whether you try this on your own or secure professional help, make sure “opt-out” requests are cleared from all company lists, and segment your lists in appropriate ways to narrow the target for each blast to increase responses. Stay up-to-date. Follow up permissions with an email blast within six months or the permission is considered “stale.”

Marketing professionals have found that a small, responsive email list is much better than a large, indifferent one. That’s why the more effort you take to let recipients know you understand them and their needs individually, the better the response you will get to your blasts.

An art in itself, managing email lists can be a time-consuming effort. But those lists are at the heart of your efforts. Make it a priority to continually build and refine your lists. The better managed the list, the more exact the segmentation will be. And the more focused the message, the higher your ROI.

Next week, Email Blasts will conclude with a focus on The Right Time.

Melinda

Blasting Your Way Into Inboxes – Part 1

Email blasts are known by many names, some bad (spam) and some good (email campaign). Regardless of the name, email blasts—when implemented correctly—can deliver a return on investment as high as $48 for every dollar spent, as reported by the Direct Marketing Association (2007).

The success of targeted email blasts depends largely upon getting the right message to the right audience at the right time.

The Right Message
Email blasts should only be sent when there is a reason. If you send even one without meaningful content, the audience is more likely to just delete the next one...and every one after that.

Determining worthwhile content begins by asking “will they care?” and answering honestly. Anything from new products and news about your company or industry to events your company is organizing and recent media coverage about your company is typically worthwhile content. Marketing professionals are experts at deciding what information should be highlighted and what is “interesting fluff.” Both can have a place in email blasts.

You also need to determine your call to action. What is the point of the email blast? What do you want your readers to do? This is crucial to the results. If you don’t know what you want your readers to do, they won’t either, and your ROI will suffer.

Engaging Readers
Of course, determining the topic line-up and the call to action will only get you so far. If the topics are interesting but the writing isn’t, your results will disappoint. Get your foot in the door with the right kind of subject line–brief, creative, relevant, clear and void of spam words. Remember, you only have five words to earn a reader’s interest.

Obeying the Law
Inappropriate email blasts can earn a company up to $11,000 fines per violation, so it’s important to know and obey the law. Some violations can even allow the Department of Justice to seek criminal penalties, including jail time.

Marketing professionals have learned to create email blasts that adhere to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) and the CAN-SPAM Act’s rules. These regulations not only dictate who you can send email blasts to, but also how they can be written.

Ignorance of the law doesn’t protect you. That’s why employing a legitimate service that offers professional email campaign management and adheres to the CAN-SPAM Act is well worth the cost. Plus, you can be assured your campaign has a better chance of reaching your audience.


Test, Test and Test Again
Once created, it’s important to test your message before you blast. This is where the pros apply their years of experience with direct marketing to this medium. Testing should cover the Internet delivery process as well as a variety of the email’s elements. Does the format hold up? How effective is the subject line? Call to action? And much more.

Proper testing leads to optimization. And optimization leads to a more effective campaign and more successful results.


Next week, Email Blasts will continue with a focus on The Right Audience.

Melinda

Busting Banner Blindness in B2B

Modern technology and communications channels have helped to make multitasking and instant gratification hallmarks of today’s world. And these tendencies are impacting advertising effectiveness.

Channel surfers watch two or three programs at once, flipping between them during commercials. Others record favorite TV programs, then minimize viewing time by racing through commercials at lightning speeds. It takes incredible imagery, text or brand recognition to stop these remote-wielding, couch jockeys in their tracks to view a commercial message.

A similar phenomenon–called banner blindness–is happening on the web. Familiar with the typical locations and styles of ever-present banner ads on websites, studies claim that many users either ignore or really don’t even see banner ads any more. This is thought to be one of the primary reasons average click-through rates (CTR) are hovering around 0.4%.

Here are some things we do to bust through banner blindness.

Targeting

• Focus your ad placement to the right B2B audiences. Be sure you’re placing the right message on the right site.
• Position your banner ad on the optimum section of the site–where your prospects will be looking for your information.
• Test multiple designs and messages for optimum CTR.
• Rotate ads and change out ads regularly to keep CTR high.

Creative

• Maintain a strong, consistent branding look in all ads. Even if a user is not clicking through, your banner ad is building brand recognition for future response when the prospect is ready.
• Design ads to have a similar look and feel as the site–without trying to dupe the reader into thinking you ad is content instead of advertising.
• Use animation or video for visual interest.
• Keep copy brief.
• Put important things first. Remember, people scan more than they read websites.
• Keep graphic weight light so it does not slow down the page when loading.

I’ll admit it; some banner ads can be very annoying - just like on TV. And I ignore them just like I surf over their counterparts from my couch. But when it comes to business and the hunt for specific solutions, information and products, well designed, targeted banner ads are a great way to cut a prospect’s search time while increasing your quality leads.

Steve

Begin 2009 Planning NOW

With summer on the wane, it’s time to begin making plans for next year’s marketing communications strategies. Our team at S&A is already conducting early audits with clients to evaluate strategic and tactical adjustments needed for 2009.

With the anticipation of MarComm budgets coming under even more pressure in the months ahead, now is the time to take a close look at the tactical implementation of your strategic marketing initiatives. It may need adjustment.

Here’s a short list of things to consider when marketing dollars are at their tightest:

• Invest advertising dollars in more product specific, feature/benefit ads instead of broad, awareness campaigns.
• Evaluate trade shows. Unless you have a major new product to introduce, consider skipping a year and sponsor local meetings or events instead. There’s a good chance trade show attendance will be down because of tight budgets anyway. Get a better return on your investment by going directly to the customer with a traveling road exhibit, “Lunch & Learns,” etc.
• Focus on creating those sales tools your field reps really need.
• Create or expand and maintain your prospect database. Then use that valued resource for both research and segmented messages.
• Reevaluate your website. It’s time to refocus it from a passive product and information only site to a more aggressive selling format. Strengthen product and market specifics. Develop vertical audience microsites that speak directly to a refined target.

It’s never too early to start planning. Get the most out of every MarComm dollar next year with a focused, strategicaly-built plan. Questions about your products and markets? I’m here: dshorey@shoreyandassociates.com / 864.242.5407.

Day

Prospect Database…If You Build It, Will They Come? Part 2

Last week (07/21/08 post), Don laid out the initial steps for building a results generating prospect database. Here’s the rest of the story.

Structure communications to accommodate specific informational needs discovered in your research phase. Select communications vehicles and media aligned to prospect preference. Enter queries obtained from communications and relay them to the sales department. Since they’ve been generated by answers to their specific felt needs, these queries are sure to be of high value to your sales reps. The likely result—sales quotas reached, and full order books. Everyone’s dreams have now become reality!

Is there anything new here? Not really. It’s basic marketing: “… creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders," as defined by the American Marketing Association. But you’re employing digital tools for which your company has likely spent thousands, yet that sit unused or underutilized. With a little cooperation from IT and your sales department, your marketing department can help energize your organization.

While it’s fashionable to promote innovation as the answer to all challenges, there’s the other great neglected engine of growth…marketing. According to Peter Drucker: "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." A great marketing tool is a well nourished prospect database. Why not give a try to developing yours?

Don

Prospect Database…If You Build It, Will They Come? Part 1

The prospect database—is it A Field of Dreams, or the real potential of filled order book? Yours alone is the choice. First, consider the benefits of developing a prospect database and its two active loops—front end and back end. At the front end of the loop, a database enables you to open a dialog, exploring the needs of the marketplace. At the back end, it helps you communicate responses to market needs.

How to begin? Build it starting with customer accounts. Mine additional names through sources like Thomasnet and Globalspec. Input every email and phone query. Enlist the cooperation of inside sales…even the switchboard operator.

Early on, segment your market by product line interests, industrial segment, geography, sales activity or more. Then study what makes you strong or weak, by mail, phone or in person. In absolute terms, or strategically—relative to the competition. Find out what “keeps them up at night.” Learn where they get hands-on information to do their job better. See what information is critical to their decision-making process about products and services and where they look for this information. Expand your study for statistical validity, or to reduce your risk.

Now, communicate your findings throughout your marketing group. Take the best ideas to managers in all functional areas as suggestions—in pricing, distribution, product development, engineering.

Assuming change for the better results from this exercise, now you’re positioned to communicate responses and strengths back to the marketplace…the return loop.

Don

Check back next week for the rest of the story on structuring a great marketing tool: a well-nourished, prospect database.

The Hydrox Cookie Test

I admit it. I’m a Hydrox person, and proud of it. As a child, I scorned the heavier, sweet taste of Oreos, the big, bad cookie giant. Instead, I relished the original chocolate sandwich cookie, Hydrox, with it’s light, rich, semi-sweet taste. If I wanted to eat the filling first, each cookie separated easily, without breaking, and the flower and scallop design stamped into each cookie made me smile!

About 10 years ago, I began to notice that my favorite cookie was becoming harder and harder to find. Alas, in 2003, Kelloggs eliminated Hydrox from their product line altogether, without any warning or announcement.

Now, five years later, Hydrox fans still haven’t gotten over it. A January article in the Wall Street Journal reported that Hydrox lovers had established a website and an online petition to bring the cookie back. After the WSJ article, Kelloggs was also inundated with phone calls from over a thousand desperate Hydrox fans pleading for its return.

Have you seen brand loyalty like that recently? Do your products have a faithful following that would petition, pester and hound your company for a product you let slip by the wayside?

Okay, I’ll admit that consumer cookie lovers are not exactly the same audience as production managers, engineers, maintenance supervisors and other industrial clients. But I submit that if you market your products and services faithfully in a brand environment that defines the unique benefits and advantages you offer…and...if your products and services deliver on those promises, you should have a core client base that is loyal to your brand.

If you don’t have some customers that could pass the Hydrox cookie test, take a closer look at your branding initiatives and product deliverables. Loyal customers are worth fighting for.

BTW - As a Hydrox lover, I was delighted to see that Kelloggs is taking advantage of all us fanatics with a “Biggest Fan” contest. They’re also bringing our favorite cookie back for a limited time to celebrate its 100th birthday. So I hope to be enjoying my favorite cookie again (for a short while, anyway) by the end of the summer!

Melinda

Shorey & Associates Selects Summer Intern

Shorey & Associates has selected Bob Jones University senior Michael Smith to participate in the agency’s summer 2008 internship session.

“At Shorey & Associates, we see internships as a win-win situation,” said Day Shorey, agency president. “Our interns gain the opportunity to explore real-world applications in creative arts, technology, project management and marketing disciplines, while our staff is invigorated by the fresh infusion of energy they bring.”

As part of his internship experience, Smith will assist Creative Directors Steven Cox and Melinda Witty in creating and producing layouts and artwork for both web and print delivery.

Smith will graduate from the university in December 2008 with a BS in graphic design and a minor in photography. His previous professional experience includes portrait photography, especially for weddings, engagements and family gatherings. A native of Lansdale, PA, Smith and his wife, Lindsay, enjoy traveling, having recently visited Thailand.

Holly

Plan For Success

Have you committed to the discipline of an annual plan for your marketing communications? If not, you need to. Remember, a plan is your ticket to maximum performance from your marketing budget dollars. With the changing business and communications landscape, annual plans are more important than ever to help you guide your company where it needs to go.

First, evaluate or reevaluate your goals: higher sales revenue? improved market share? successful new product intros? Then consider your sales and marketing strategies to achieve those goals: exploit hot niches? “broadcast” successful sales pitches? support the efforts of reps and distributors better?

An annual plan doesn’t have to be cast in stone, but when followed, it will keep you from deviating from your priorities during the year as various “deals” and “great ideas” cross your desk. And it will help keep you on track toward achieving your sales and marketing goals.

Few companies stumble into success. Fortunately, an annual plan will help keep you sure-footed on the right road.

Don

Playing to the Wrong Audience?

Too often creativity is worshipped as the pagan god of advertising, leading the advertiser down the broad road to egregious marketing sins and billions of wasted advertising dollars.

Unfortunately, marketers congregating at the false altar of “creativity” tend to leave their good business sense behind. Instead of selling, their ads simply confuse, irritate or entertain. The intended audience shifts from client sales prospects to other “creative” types whom the ad’s creators are trying to impress. So your desired ad response changes from “This could help solve my problems!” to “What a clever ad!”

Instead of eschewing proven advertising principles as passé and mimicking the latest design trends, it’s important to focus on your objective to promote the sale of your products or services.

If your agency talks more about award-winning “creative” than it does about supporting your marketing and sales objectives, watch out! They may have your communications playing to the wrong audience...at your expense. Will your business grow by winning creative awards or sales prospects? Don’t count on ad judges to truly understanding your customers.

Creativity’s only purpose should be to capture the interest of the target audience relative to what’s being advertised. Real creativity takes place before an ad is designed. It happens during the definition of concepts that support product positioning and selling strategy. And real creativity also helps integrate the production with other communications.

Creativity is important. Don’t abandon it. But be sure to stay true to your audience, and they should respond to you.

Melinda

Who Owns Your Graphics?

Food for thought...copyright law says the original owner of a creative work is the “author,” or the one who created it. An exception to this is when the work is prepared by an employee within the scope of his employment. This means that any outside writer, photographer or illustrator contracted by you or your agent holds the copyright, unless you have directed up front that the contractor assign the copyright to your business. 

This is important for many reasons. If you attempt to use the copyrighted work in an additional marketing piece, a secondary medium or additional application without specific permission, you may be accused of copyright infringement. This applies to the purchase of stock graphics as well. Be sure to clearly define and negotiate all uses for a given creation at the outset, or you could find yourself paying additional usage fees to the creator or legal fees to your attorney.

Steve

It Pays To Position Yourself As A Specialist.

Who gets higher hourly rates, a general practitioner or a neurosurgeon? And which one would you rather entrust yourself to for brain surgery? There’s really no contest when major surgery is the need.

Your customers are much like you as a patient. They’re seeking a specialist to solve their business problems. And if you really know your customers, you also know the specific types of problems that keep them up at night. You have given this valuable intelligence to your engineers and product planners for response. And when you receive the fruits of their efforts, you’ll want to inform your customers of how you’ve responded to their needs.

So why do so many industrial marketers, armed with specific solutions, position themselves as generalists...boasting about general capabilities and buying factors such as quality, delivery response and service. Instead of coming to their customer’s rescue, they give the impression of isolation from their customers’ challenges.

The moral...tell your customers how you can help them. Communicate specific solutions, as many as you can. Then the market will perceive you as a value-added resource...one that can command a higher price tag and worthy of higher margins. Position yourself as a specialist—and get paid like one!

Day

Do Industrial Buyers Respond Like Consumers?

Consumer/package goods ad agencies will often try to persuade business marketers to spend big bucks on consumer-type advertising gimmicks. Their motivation may be self-serving, to pad their portfolios with “cutting edge creative.” The rationale: “Oh, but business buyers are people, too! You need killer creative to attract their attention.” Sure, they’re people—but they make buying decisions differently than consumers. Consider these differences:

• Business buyers are motivated by necessity. They must buy products and services that will keep their companies profitable and competitive.
• Consumer buyers can be persuaded to indulge themselves beyond mere necessity.
• Business audiences are more sophisticated in their understanding of the products and services advertised. They tend to be specifications-oriented.
• Consumer audiences are often unfamiliar with the subject advertised. They tend to rely on feelings rather than cold facts.
• Business buyers are hungry for job-related information. They will read long copy if it is clear, interesting, important and relevant.
• Consumers must be led into a buying mode, often where the facts must be obscured (e.g., cigarettes).
• Business purchasing is multi-step, sometimes spanning months or even years.
• Much of consumer purchasing is one-step or even impulse buying.
• Numerous people can be involved in the business buying decision.
• Only one or two are involved in most consumer purchases.

Significant differences, don’t you think? So remember, advertising methods cannot, should not be the same.

Don

What Makes Good Selling Technical Copy?

You know the myth, don’t you? The myth that you can persuade prospects to buy technical products using creativity alone. Just fill that copy chock-full of superlatives and exclamation points, but keep it short, because people won’t read long copy!

No competent advertising copywriter believes this myth, but amateur writers and some clients do. The truth is technical buyers are, first and foremost, technical problem solvers. And those technical problem solvers use two criteria for making their buying decisions: technical factors and buying factors.

Technical factors include performance descriptions, materials considerations, configuration constraints, power limitations, etc. Buying factors emulate marketing issues such as price, availability, delivery and service.

If your business is industrial or highly technical, most of your sales are driven by technical factors rather than by buying factors. Yet, even if buying factors seem to be primary, it’s important to construct your marketing pitches to focus on the benefits of the technical differences your products provide. At all costs, find a way to offer a superior technical solution that solves problems. Keep in mind that when your copy does a good job with a technical argument, the purchasing agents and other buying factor gatekeepers will be constrained, and you can justify a value-added pricing structure.

So, ask yourself…do those two paragraphs of puffy, pun-filled creative prose you or your agency just wrote make a superior technical/business solution argument? If not...look out...it could throw the purchase decision into the hands of a faceless gatekeeper!

Melinda

Do You Optimize? Web Graphics...A Special Case

Time is precious, especially if you’re on the Internet looking for a solution to a problem, such as information on industrial products. How many times have you lost patience with a slow-moving website, laden with large graphic files that take tens of seconds to download? Most people don’t care what your plant looks like or super fancy product visuals if it takes 20...30...45 seconds or even minutes to download to their machine.

With websites playing an ever-increasing role of providing ready access to products, services and information, faster is generally better. That great product glamour shot on your booth that grabs attention at 20 paces in a crowded trade show is NOT the same file you should put on your website. At the same time, don’t settle for a quick shot your plant supervisor took with his camera-phone on the loading dock.

Find the happy medium. A clean, well-lit product shot or illustration that loads quickly tells prospects you not only know your industry, but you also understand your customer’s needs.

Steve