Big city marketing on a suburban budget: Part 3

Part 3 of 3: An integrated approach to optimizing your advertising and Brand Capital

If you were to visually draw out a good Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) plan, it would look like a spider web; all initiatives linked by common threads and the closer to the center you get, the more sticky and dense the strands get.

The initiatives along the outer edges of the spider web would be traditional advertising media: radio, newspaper, magazines, outdoor and television. These vehicles are low-involvement and are best used for getting your brand exposure and gaining awareness. They are also the most wasteful from an ROI perspective as it is difficult to track their effectiveness in a meaningful way.

The next level in would include some higher-involvement tools with better ROI. These would include online advertising, direct mail, sponsorships, trade shows and cause marketing.

Go in another level and you would see PR, e-mail marketing and consumer events. These are high-involvement, high-ROI tools that give you more intimate access to your customers.

The next layer includes your most interactive and highest-involvement tools as a marketer: your web site and the point-of-purchase (wherever that may be: online, in your own store or restaurant, in a mass retailer, etc.)

The very center of the web is your desired result. That could be a sale, acquiring consumer information, gaining web traffic, etc.

A potential customer that first hears about you through one of your low-involvement initiatives can slip away fairly easily. The trick is to walk them down to the more sticky tangly levels where you are closer to getting your desired result. Using a TV commercial or billboard to plug your web site or a retailtainment event is a great example of how to do this. Use your online advertising to promote a new product and have users click-through to your web site for a free demo which tells you where and how to purchase.

Obviously many companies don’t employ all of the tactics on my spider-web drawing in their IMC approach. The ones on the chart are just examples of the types of things that you can keep in your arsenal as a marketer or business owner. The important thing to remember is that you need a mix so you have several ways you can reach a customer and several tools that you can use to drive towards your goal. “If you build it, they will come” does not work as a marketing strategy. Focusing all your resources on a great web site or a great POP strategy is not enough. You need other initiatives to drive traffic to those places where you can make your best pitch.

There are also many places where you can build Brand Capital in the IMC web. And you could really use any of the tactics to drive brand capital. But don’t try to do it everywhere… Building capital for your brand is a goal for the campaign as a whole, not for each particular initiative. It will be easiest to track your success if you choose one place on your IMC web to be the primary driver for Brand Capital. And it will work best if that place is very close to the center like on your web site or at the point of purchase. You should always focus on the places where you have the chance to make the most meaningful impact on a consumer. The places that you’re most likely to earn a sale are also the places that you’re most likely to optimize Brand Capital and begin a long-term relationship with a prospect.

A great case study right now is Panasonic, who is pitching their new flat screen TV’s. All the communications (TV, magazine, Internet) revolve around a teaser about a mysterious woman wearing a red dress to a funeral. Although they’re selling TV’s, they want to do that through a more interactive medium than TV or magazines, so the call to action in all advertising is to visit Panasonic.com to find out more about the woman in red.

When you get to Panasonic.com, you can play an interactive game to discover why the woman wears red and enter a sweepstakes (using your email address). And if I solve the mystery, I get an online coupon for 10% off anything in the Panasonic online store. The clues for solving the mystery, by the way, are seen through the “eyes” of Panasonic products like TV’s, digital cameras and DVD recorders. I won’t spoil the ending for you though… Check it out at Panasonic.com, it’s pretty cool.

And make no mistake, that Panasonic campaign cost MILLIONS. And no, not every business can do exactly what they did. But the idea is simple and repeatable at almost any scale.

It costs virtually nothing to run a sweepstakes. All you need is a means for collecting information and a prize. And it’s probably cheapest to do over the web just like Panasonic did. And then you need other means to drive traffic to the site. Panasonic used mass media, but you can use a sign, flyers, inexpensive internet advertising or an ad in your local newspaper. If you have a good prize and you get the word out to a good starter set of people, maybe even your existing customer base, you’ll also get a good number of people to enter based on word of mouth.

And even that small-scale effort, which would cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars depending on how you approach it, qualifies as an Integrated Marketing Communications strategy. Outline your objectives, create a message, spread the word using a mix of low-involvement and high-involvement media and you’re there.

In conclusion…

When you’re selling a particular product or service, you’re always going to be tempted to go after the low-hanging fruit when it comes to marketing and advertising. The message is simple, “buy my product.” And there’s nothing wrong with that approach.

But you can do a better job of marketing if you look beyond just “buy my product” and start seeing your goal as “buy my product regularly.” In order to that without the cash to throw behind regular mass media advertising campaigns, you need to look at more efficient means of communicating. Better ROI and less waste.

That’s why a strategy designed to build Brand Capital is such a good approach for so many small and medium-sized firms. You can build your brand on a small budget and stay top-of mind with your customers and your prospects by using their response to your last campaign to fuel your next campaign with little incremental cost.

Big city marketing on a suburban budget: Part 2

Part 2 of 3: Simple ways to build Brand Capital

I feel kind of toolish doing this 1 of 3, 2 of 3 stuff, but seriously it was the only way to get all this down and keep it even remotely readable and scroll-friendly. So I apologize. Here we go.

There are a million ways to build Brand Capital for your product or service. Even the smallest, most innocuous details add value and often, those are the details that your consumers will remember most. Here are some simple ways to build (and spend) Brand Capital and increase ROI on your marketing initiatives:

Like my example in the last post, let’s say that you are introducing a new product or service and you want to do something to help spread the word and get people interested. So maybe you start a contest or sweepstakes. You put it on your web site and have people enter with their email address. It works and a lot of people hear about your brand and enter your contest. You’ve just earned Brand Capital in the form of an email list. Now it’s time to reinvest.

Once the contest is over, you need to initiate regular communications with your customers. And don’t wait too long; you want to get them while your brand is still fresh in their mind. Send them a newsletter or special offers or news on new product/service launches. Send them e-cards on their birthday. Any decent web designer can toss together a good looking email template that will be easy for an HTML novice to update. Plus, doing email blasts are super cheap.

If email isn’t your cup of tea, or not relevant to your marketplace (although that excuse is dwindling quickly), traditional direct mail also works. Local businesses in particular can use direct mail fairly cheaply and effectively. And if you go to a digital printer, you can even customize your marketing materials with the names of your customers.

Remember though that direct mail is most effective and most easily trackable when it’s focused on a particular segment and particular marketing goals. No sense in doing something if there’s no way to tell how successful you’ll be. So stay focused with your audience and your message. Especially if you’re a small business, the cost of doing direct mail can get out of hand very quickly if you’re not careful.

Also remember that it’s better to build and own the mailing list yourself. That’s where the capital really is, not in the marketing message that you’re sending. You can advertise in a pennysaver or coupon book that gets mailed to targeted segments of the population, and send the exact same message that you would with a direct mail piece that you built and sent yourself.

But that alone won’t build the capital you need because once your ad stops running, the vast majority of people on that mailing list will lose interest in you. On the other hand, if you wanted to use the direct mail coupon book to get your name out to a larger consumer base but had a plan in place to then capture those people for your own mailing list (for example, taking their information when they call, purchase or visit your web site depending on what the call to action of the advertising is).

Communicate with your customers often and personally. Or at least in a way that feels personal to them. Pay attention to the details and make them feel special. Your customers, whether B2B or B2C are very savvy. They know an ineffectual form letter when they see one. So treat them better than that. Send them cards; follow up with phone calls (if appropriate); if their purchasing patterns drop off, send then special offers and incentives asking them to come back; if they start purchasing more of your product, reward them with special offer and incentives.

Also remember that just because you think of yourself as a small business, your customers may not. In all your communications, try to act like a big business. Think, “What would Apple do?” before sending anything out. A few years ago, my wife and I ran a very small (microscopic, really) business selling collectible toys and action figures on eBay. We were a very small fish but we still put together a logo and a web site and email templates and cool looking auction templates and a creative way to package people’s purchases before we sent them out. We got great feedback and several repeat customers. There were a few people that we traded emails with for a more extended period of time as we considered trying to expand the business… And until we let them in on the secret, they had no idea that it was just two of us having fun with a side project in our spare time. There’s no reason to act small when you’re trying to make a lasting impression.

The bottom line is that the more that you communicate with customers and potential customers, the BETTER you communicate with them and the more of your Brand Capital that you reinvest in them, the more happy customers you’ll have. And the more they’ll reward you by sharing your brand with their friends and family.

Similar to what I was saying about communication, more formal loyalty programs are also a great way to build brand capital. Not only will it encourage existing customers to remain your customers, but it will also add value that will encourage them to share your brand with others and give you a mechanism to more closely track the purchase behavior of your existing customers. Learnings that will help you market to them in the future.

The idea of building capital also works in your B2B relationships. Earn favors that you can cash in later to benefit your marketing programs. Think and plan for the future: build relationships with companies that you’ll need when your company reaches the next plateau in its growth cycle. That way, when you get there you’ll have a plan and vendors locked and loaded and you won’t lose momentum because of slow reaction time.

Talk as often as possible with the trade and consumer media most relevant to your category, even if you don’t have anything extremely exciting to share with them. But let them know what you’re doing and keep up to date with their editorial calendars. A good relationship with the media means that you may be called as an expert if an appropriate story comes up. It also means that when you do have exciting news to share, you’ve already got established contacts to pitch to.

Nothing I’ve discussed here is difficult to execute, nothing is particularly expensive… But your small business can definitely learn to communicate like a big business. And in the process, you’ll sell more, have happier, more loyal customers and activate some great buzz for your brand via word of mouth referrals. Not bad!

In the final part of this trilogy, I’ll go into how this whole bit about building Brand Capital can fit nicely into your integrated marketing communications plan.

Big city marketing on a suburban budget: effective brand building for small businesses

Part 1 of 3: Brand Equity vs. Brand Capital

If I asked someone to list a few of their favorite brands (no particular category), they would likely toss out some very big names. Mine include Apple, Target, Coca-Cola and Guinness.

I like them because, to me, they stand for the best things about their respective categories and because I have responded to the way that they have communicated with me over the years. Apple is not just a computer, it’s MY computer and it performs the way I think a computer should. Guinness is not just a beer, it’s a premium beer with a great heritage and I prefer the taste of Guinness to other beers.

These companies and others like them have taken years and billions of dollars (spent with the biggest, most expensive agencies in the world) to affect my perceptions of their brands and my behavior when it comes time for me to make a purchase decision. They have built tremendous equity in their brands, earning the trust of the market and commanding fierce, almost cult-like loyalty from very vocal segments of the people who buy their products.

As we know, not everyone can afford a big city agency or the multi-million dollar ad campaign. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t build great brands anyway. Small businesses have the potential to build fantastic brands (and become medium-sized businesses in the process)… They just have to take a different approach.

Everyone is familiar with the term “brand equity,” literally, the value of a brand. Some brand names are worth millions or even billions. But if you’re a small business owner, chances are that your brand is worth squat. Yet, whenever you talk with a marketing firm, ad agency, etc., the guy/gal on the other end of the table will tell you that you need it and that their company will put together the ad campaign that will help you earn it.

Unless that person happens to be a marketing superhero or you’re sitting on the next huge cultural phenomenon like, say the next eBay, the reality is that you’re a long way away from any meaningful brand equity.

But you can grow your business now and focus on what’s important by looking past the lofty, ivory tower of brand equity and instead set your sights on building “Brand Capital”.

I define Brand Capital as the result of an efficient, well-planned marketing initiative. Then, like any other kind of capital, you take it and reinvest it in the brand, leveraging it to earn more capital and in the process, boosting (in small doses at first) sales, brand awareness, customer loyalty and word of mouth around your brand. It works like a snowball effect; the more Brand Capital you earn, the faster you’ll roll down the hill and the more Brand Capital you will earn, etc.

Say you have a short-term goal of announcing a new restaurant to a local market. If you take out an ad in your local newspaper for two weeks telling people to come eat at your new restaurant, they may do just that. But what happens next? Some of the people that came may become regulars. The people that saw the ad but did not come during the two weeks will likely forget about you and your restaurant. When it comes to furthering your long-term goal of running a profitable restaurant, you haven’t done much, You didn’t earn any capital to further your efforts.

Instead, what if you start with your ad in the newspaper but this time add a special offer, like “visit our web site for coupons and a chance to win ______!” And additionally, you can also tell all the people that come to the restaurant that you’re doing a special promotion and let them fill out a card with their name and email address so that they can enter. This e-mail list definitely counts as Brand Capital: it came out of your original initiative (the newspaper ad) and it can be easily and cheaply leveraged towards building your brand and starting long-term relationships with these customers in your next initiative.

The next post, Part 2 will go into some ways to build and use Brand Capital and Part 3 will outline how to incorporate your Brand Capital goals into an integrated marketing communications campaign.

President Bush and New Coke

We all know that a lot can change in a year. Last November, George W. was re-elected for a second term as President because the American people trusted him, trusted his values and trusted his ability to fight terrorism and win the war in Iraq.

Now an AP poll, published this morning, says that not only do a majority of Americans disapprove of the overall job Bush is doing as President, but nearly 6 in 10 Americans don’t even think he’s honest. (Source, AP) What happened to this guy?

In 2000, Bush told America that he would restore honor and trust to the White House. The people believed him and gave him a term. And during those four years, whether you agree or disagree with his actions and policies, he always defended his convictions and seemed to act in a manner consistent with what he believed was right for the country. He acted quickly and decisively when September 11 happened. In the most controversial moments of his first term he passionately defended a politically risky (and extremely divisive) position on the war in Iraq. But the majority of Americans still trusted him even though a significant percentage of others (of diverse political alignments) were skeptical about his intentions.

President Bush was everyone’s lovable (but maybe not so bright) straight-shooting cowboy President.

As he entered his second term, Bush’s cult-like following seemed to be at an all-time high. Not only did his supporters buy his political platform, they actually bought his memorabilia. When was he last time you saw so much bumper sticker support for a President AFTER he was elected? People actually changed their bumper stickers after the election to support "W The President" instead of "W For President". Amazing.

If Bush was a brand, he’d be something along the lines of Coca-Cola. Very popular, but a little old fashioned. Made a career on the color red. You want to believe that all you’re getting is a cool, refreshing beverage, but there’s always that caution in the back of your mind that it may be rotting your teeth.

In 1985, Coke changed the attribute that, more than anything else, defined it as a brand: its flavor. Sure, it still had the Coke name and the red Coke can, but New Coke was not Coca-Cola. An uproar followed and Coke was forced to reintroduce their original formula as “Coca-Cola Classic” just three months later. (Source, Wikipedia)

The reason that Bush’s popularity has nose-dived is that we’re not getting the same old Coke that was elected last November. This is the “New Coke” Bush. The guy who used to come across as a straight-shooting cowboy willing to do whatever it takes, now comes across as being unable, and sometimes even unwilling, to run this country. Instead of defending national security, he defends the ethically questionable (and sometimes illegal) actions of his aides. When the Scooter Libby indictment came down, Bush said Libby was a great American. Karl Rove is still gainfully employed by the White House.

When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi, everyone expected to see Bush climb out onto Ground Zero and tell us that everything was going to be fine, just like he did after 9/11. But this time, it took days for him to even get there, long after the situation had become desperate. On that day, he praised his FEMA chief (who he affectionately referred to as “Brownie”) for doing such a great job.

In 1985, people revolted against the soft drink that said it was Coke but wasn’t. Now they are revolting against the guy who said he was a man of integrity and action but apparently isn’t. His customers deserve better. Maybe he needs to find a better brand management team to advise him. The Cheney-Rove Agency isn't doing the job it used to.

This chain of events means that Bush and his party are now especially vulnerable, much as Coke was in the 80’s. Fortunately for the President though, the Democrats aren’t Pepsi. But they should be if they are going to claim the supporters that the President is losing.

Suburban Wolf, Real Estate Agent

OK, so we’re taking the plunge and we’re going to sell the place ourselves. No agent, no one to blame other than myself if this doesn’t work.

Step 1: My wife re-did the master bathroom this weekend. It used to be kind of dull gray. Now it’s a light green, which is a much brighter, more cheerful color and I think it actually makes the room look bigger. There’s also a coordinating shower curtain, bath mat and towels.

Step 2: The carpet in the downstairs of our house is impossible to keep clean. We don’t have a proper foyer” when you come into the house and basically, you can’t help but drag all kinds of crap into the house with you and it all ends up right in the carpet. So, we’re ripping it out in the living room, dining room and kitchen and installing a contemporary-looking laminate hardwood floor. We bought the material this weekend and installation will likely happen sometime this week.

Step 3: We’re changing out all our light bulbs with those GE Reveal light bulbs. It really affects the way colors look in your house. Totally gets rid of the yellow glow and makes everything look more appealing.

Step 4: List. Still deciding whether to do the online option or the half-service agency. I’m going to do some more research over the next week though and make a choice. Either way though, the only commission I have to pay is to the buyer’s agent. That means that I have some extra cash to play with in negotiation. I may even offer a higher commission for the buyer’s agent as an incentive to get them to work for me a little.

Step 5: Marketing. I’m going to put together a little system for myself to manage leads and make sure that I don’t lose touch with people. I’ll also do some kind of flyer and possibly create some other communication tool if it makes sense.

Step 6: Sell this place and move to that elusive house that we’ve been chasing for the last five months since we decided to sell.

The quest is on. More details to follow.

-E.

4G Web Strategy

I just read this article on ChangeThis.com, one of my favorite sites on the net. Click here to check it out.

Written by Dave Wilson and davidcoe, a couple of marcom veterans from the UK, it’s a terrific and funny account of the evolution of the Internet over the last 10 years and what marketers need to do today, in the 4th Generation of the web to build successful sites.

They also talk extensively on the importance of focusing “above the site” in utilizing blogs, e-newsletters, landing pages and micro-sites and below the site on the data acquisition and storage tools. Putting up a good site just isn’t enough anymore; you need to get users addicted.

The one thing that the Daves didn’t really get into in this piece, which I’d be curious to hear their take on, is where the “viral” piece of the internet fits in and how they approach this in the 4G Web. If you build a solid foundation as they’ve described, a lot of that will happen naturally, but I’m sure that some techniques are becoming more relevant than others as expectations of web sites change from the end-user’s perspective.

Great article, check it out.

-E.

Suburban home-selling blues

This past June, my wife and I decided to sell our home.

We live in a small-ish three bedroom townhouse and even before our daughter was born, it was already stuffed to the gills with living things. In addition to my wife and I, we also had two cats and two dogs. Once Isabel came along, the house was suddenly thrown into chaos. Humans were tripping over dogs, dogs were tripping over cats, everyone was tripping over Isabel, and so forth. Our townhome had officially become too small.

So the time had finally come for us to (gulp) sell our place and get a “real” house… One that had a formal dining room, a 2-car garage, a yard and a deck. The whole enchilada.

We’ve made some major upgrades since we moved in three years ago and our unit is among the nicest in the complex. Unfortunately, the Alpharetta market is flooded right now with condos and townhomes, most newer than ours. So we knew we wouldn’t walk with much money, if any, from the sale. But we still thought that we could sell within a couple of months and still break even.

After four long months on the market, our MLS listing expired this week. Not only did we fail to sell our home, we never got a single offer.

It’s been a long story, I know, but there’s a point.

In four months we never got an offer. Yet during that period, four other units in our complex, all with identical floor plans, were sold. Only one of the four was nicer than ours (the other three didn’t have nearly as many upgrades as we did) and only one of the four was listed for substantially less than ours (about $5,000).

That means that two units offering less value for the same price were chosen instead of mine. And throughout the process, we got virtually no negative feedback about the place. Certainly nothing that should have been a deal-breaker. So why should inferior units sell before mine?

The failure here, as I see it was in marketing and salesmanship. Which, as a marketer, is a little painful to admit. I had hired a real estate agent who promised to be an aggressive negotiator. I didn’t realize at the time that “negotiating”, to her way of thinking, didn’t begin until we had an offer on the table. So how will we get a buyer to the table, I asked her. “We’ll just have to wait and see,” would be her response.

Here’s what would happen: someone would come to see our house and their real estate agent’s information would be recorded digitally in the infra-red lockbox doohickey that was on my door. The Marketing 101 response at that point would be to follow up. “Turn strangers into friends” as Seth Godin says. But my agent, the expert with 20+ years of experience stuck with “We’ll just have to wait and see.” Likewise, I stuck with her.

As time went by, I found that my agent would not contact other agents at all unless they came to show the place a second time. The information stored in the lockbox, which could have well been dozens of leads, all went to waste. When she did contact other agents, the conversations (as they were reported back to me) seemed a casual “Thanks for coming by, where else are you looking and when do you think you’ll make a decision?” rather than “What did you think, what are your concerns and what can we do to make this work?”

I can’t know for certain, but it seems like my unit lost out to inferior ones because my real estate agent was losing out to superior ones. When my listing did expire, I didn’t think twice about letting my agent go.

So now what next? Being someone like myself, someone who understands sales and marketing and someone who is used to conducting negotiations without an intermediary, I have to wonder why I should be so dependent on the world of real estate agents to make this work.

And unlike some other markets where selling “by owner” is a viable option, the Atlanta market is particularly entrenched in the traditional real estate agent network. And especially since there’s such a housing surplus in Atlanta, agents won’t show houses that are for sale “by owner.”

But, now agentless, I do have other “hybrid” options that allow me to have more control of the process and may save me from playing “agent roulette” again.

There are online agencies that will, for a fee, still allow you to list on the MLS without having to deal with a selling agent and at closing, you would only have to pay commission to the buyer’s agent. There is also at least one “partial-service” agency in Atlanta that has a similar model but offers an agent who will assist with contract negotiations for a 1% commission.

Being frustrated with the agent system, I will likely end up going with one of these two options… But I have to imagine that I’m not the only one. There are probably thousands of people in the same position that I am at this very moment, looking for a better way to sell their house: with minimal interference from third-parties and with less money going into the pockets of real estate agents.

Keep in mind also that the high commission rates charged by real estate agents are a holdover from a time when agents were a more crucial part of the process. It was difficult for “regular folks” to find all the houses that were available and do any kind of meaningful competitive analysis on a particular area or neighborhood. Now, thanks to the Internet, I have just about as much information at my fingertips as my agent does. But I am still required to pay her the same price even though I no longer need her to do my research.

It’s very possible that I, and others like me, may be the beginning of a critical mass that will force the real estate industry to change in a big way.

I’ll keep posting on my progress. Until then, if anyone is interested in a modestly priced three bedroom, 2 bath townhouse convenient to GA 400 and downtown Alpharetta, please let me know.

-E.