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