Is Your Brand Big Enough for Your Business?
Posted by toby | Filed under News and Information
By Toby Eberly
When I was a child, my mother always bought my winter coat a size larger than I needed. This way, I grew into it instead of growing out of it. The idea was to get more years out of the coat, which made the most of the money she spent. More importantly, the oversized coat made me feel more substantial. This not only helped to stand down more than one bully who wasn’t entirely sure if I was all fluff or stuff, but it gave me a general sense of inflated confidence and positive self-awareness. By the time I reached the actual size of the coat I was wearing, I had already been acting that big for so long that I frequently forgot my actual size.
She never made me wear the coat after I had outgrown it. She had the sense to know how foolish I looked and would feel, walking around with my arms dangling out of the sleeves, seams spreading at the shoulders, and buttons bursting from their fraying threads. She could have just as easily gotten her value by making me keep the coat one winter too long but that would have embarrassed me and her, and she was too proud to have that happen.
My mother had the sense to know the everlasting value of pride and positive self-image. From logos to websites, I see too many businesses every day that have long since outgrown their brand and yet they try desperately to avoid the reality that it’s time to do some upgrading. Think big and grow big. Get your value by spending for the future instead of trying to stretch every dollar spent in the past.
Kiwi Outshines!
Posted by jesse | Filed under News and Information
KIWI recently set out to change the way consumers think about shoe care with a little help from their friends at Hanlon Creative.
A household brand name for nearly 100 years, consumers have always known KIWI for its original paste polish product, but today’s KIWI goes beyond the traditional tin. The new face of KIWI revolves around an innovative product line that includes boot and suede protectors, shine sponges and women’s comfort cushions. It was time for the brand to follow.
Hanlon Creative launched a fully integrated campaign to reclaim KIWI as the kings of shoe care. At the heart of the campaign were incredibly simple, yet effective ads. Visually representing the benefit of each product, these gems didn’t just talk to consumers, they sang.
The campaign has also picked up quite a bit of hardware from both national and international advertising award shows, as well as, being selected to appear in the 2011 Communication Arts Advertising Annual.
“It’s always nice to be recognized, but much more satisfying to toast our clients’ successes,” says Andrew Hanlon, President of Hanlon Creative.
By combining just the right combination of print, online, social media, interactive sales videos, point of purchase displays, collateral materials and FSI couponing, Hanlon Creative achieved results beyond KIWI‘s expectations – double digit increase in annual sales from the year before.
“We couldn’t be happier with the campaign and it’s just the start of things to come. We’ve certainly set the bar high for ourselves for next year,” laughs Hanlon.
Tracking Value in Marketing Campaigns
Posted by toby | Filed under News and Information
Measure the objective not the investment
By Toby Eberly
When executives start asking marketers for return on investment measurements, they’re already showing a lack of appreciation for the process that needs to be addressed before anything else can be accomplished.
Return on Investment isn’t a fair way to measure marketing success.
Here are 2 reasons why…
1- If an individual is engaged by marketing and ultimately doesn’t become a customer, that could have nothing at all to do with the marketing and everything to do with some component of the larger value chain: sales, product development, technical support, etc… who knows?
Unless you actively and consistently follow every customer and non-customer back through the entire purchasing process from how did you find us to why did you or didn’t you purchase- how do you accurately address return on investment? Is the average organization willing to fund that level of marketing research and discovery? If not, how can they expect to make any credible decision on the return on their investment?
2- Knowing what doesn’t work can be just as valuable as knowing what does work. However, if they’re measuring by investment and not by objective, they’re not likely to see it that way.
The scientific method is based on the success of failure and the value of knowing what doesn’t work. How is it that marketers are expected to be held to a standard that the most intelligent people in the world don’t have to meet?
Return on Objective is a more accurate way to assess marketing effectiveness.
Setting objectives requires breaking the entire marketing process down into individual tactics and having a well thought out strategy to unify and implement those tactics to achieve a given objective. When the right process, strategy, and tactics are discovered and proven, the result will be the potential for accomplishing the greater and ultimate goal of increasing revenue and profitability.
Unfortunately, intelligently approaching that effort takes more time and money than many organizations are willing to invest.
Meeting the stated objective is our goal. The investment is a necessity. Allocating the investment to meet the objectives in the most cost effective way is where we are held accountable. But, return on investment is not a guarantee any where in business.
The next thing to understand is that now, better than ever, we can measure the overall effectiveness of nearly any marketing tactic and know whether it met the assigned objective. Whether the cost of meeting the objective was justified by the end result is a legitimate concern, but again, that requires an entire analysis of a campaign’s success or failure to see where the tactics and strategy did or do not meet the objectives.
Obviously, you can’t spend indiscriminately but, not all marketing objectives are immediately linked to revenue and not all organizations are prepared to fulfill the value proposition they offer.
For example, building brand awareness generates interest and attention. Providing a content rich website creates trust and credibility. Maintaining contact with prospects through relevant email marketing content continues to build a relationship. None of these things guarantees a conversion to customer nor do they guarantee that a poorly hired sales rep won’t sour a potentially lucrative relationship, an overwhelmed production or service department won’t fall short on delivery, or that an inundated customer service rep won’t fail to ease the pain of a bad brand experience. Therefore, measuring return on investment becomes a trap for marketing to be blamed for factors they don’t control.
What’s the solution?
Be prepared for self defense and don’t let the naysayers stifle your best ideas. Initiate, move forward, and absorb the risk for what works and what doesn’t. Make sure you can argue the value of all outcomes. Know your purpose and make it clear to others. Be the stronger, more persuasive voice in these executive level debates.
Here are the key points to make:
Careful planning and consideration of the message and target audience can help us determine what tactics make the most sense, but there will always be periods of trial and error- just as there are in areas of product development, service delivery, or hiring and firing of human resources.
Marketing’s primary objective is to generate leads, interest, or engagement. We inform and intrigue prospective customers. At every step of the process, effective marketing should get the prospect one step closer to becoming a customer but actually generating revenue and return on investment requires components well beyond marketing alone.
Which brings me back to the starting point; set objectives for each tactic within your marketing strategy and measure to the objectives. Return on investment is accountability that must be owned by the entire organization, not just marketing and the value of knowing what doesn’t work has to be respected just as much as knowing what does work.
2 Easy Ways for Improving SEO
Posted by toby | Filed under News and Information
By Toby Eberly
Avoid the pitfalls of .pdf files
Putting promotional marketing content out in the form of .pdf files may seem like an inexpensive tactic for content management strategy. What many people don’t realize is that it is also an ineffective strategy because people can’t easily find the content.
Here are 2 things you can do to start improving your search engine results.
1. Lose the .pdf press releases. A search engine optimized press release is a great opportunity to put relevant and updated content online and improve your chances of having prospective customers find you.
However, .pdf files rank substantially lower in search results than web pages or blog posts because search engine spiders prefer HTML code over .pdf formats. In fact, most search engines will only show .pdf documents when no other results are available for the sought after keywords.
So, you can improve your search engine optimization results by creating a web page or blog post instead.
2. Include summary paragraphs when linking to .pdf files for case studies, product promotional sheets, or white papers. For all the same reasons listed for press releases, .pdf format is not as effective when you want to have your information found by search engines.
However, dedicating web pages or blog posts to white papers and case studies isn’t always an optimal solution either. In most cases, you actually want visitors to download these documents.
So, keep them in .pdf format but be sure to write a keyword optimized summary on a dedicated web page so that people can find the information you have included in your .pdf documents.
One last thing- always be sure your .pdf documents are professionally designed and adequately represent your brand identity. Ultimately, you want people to print or forward these documents to other decision makers. Make certain the impressions they make are as positive and true to your brand as all your other marketing content.
Tags: marketing content, search engine optimization, seo
Marketing for a Mutually Valuable Relationship
Posted by toby | Filed under News and Information
By Toby Eberly
Building a bridge to nowhere will get you nowhere and waste a lot of time and money along the way. So, don’t chase business client’s that don’t share your common values or interests.
Attracting people for mutually valuable professional relationships is no different than building the same type of personal relationships. Look at your best friends or your best clients. How did you meet them? How did you engage them in conversation? Why are they still part of your life? The answer is common interests and common values.
You didn’t force yourself upon them with irrelevant conversations. And, you didn’t endear your self to them with a pattern of incompatible decision making. You no doubt share a propensity for similar judgments, good and bad, and you likely share a long list of topics that you can discuss for hours on end.
Trying to force a relationship, personal or professional doesn’t work out for the long term and its value to you in the short term is likely to be more of a negative distraction than a positive influence.
Long-term, successful, and mutually valuable relationships rarely begin as awkward or unnatural developments in your life. Eventually, unfairly balanced relationships that serve one person over the other, lead to a tipping point and the relationship collapses. So, why invest time, energy, and expense in building relationships that you know are inherently weak from the beginning?
Instead, identify clients that share your common interests and values. Understand what you can do to help them succeed. Focus your efforts on impressing them with your relevant value proposition. Encourage their trust and build a relationship that will last long enough to make both of you happy and successful.
Tags: marketing relationships
