October 2007 - Page 2 of 4 - McLellan Marketing Group

Marketing Resources — 10/25/07

October 24, 2007

As marketers, we are being pushed to know more about more things in more ways than ever before.

Today — we are literally stacking our education, experience in the business, acquired knowledge, personal experiences, interactions, observations and musings up like building blocks to create our portfolio of skills and abilities, in terms of marketing and branding.

The good news is that the information has never been more readily available. Books, podcasts, white papers, blogs, e-newsletters, webinars and the list just keeps going.

One of my goals for this blog is to be well, a resource for helping you find those resources. So from time to time, I’m going to give a nod to some good sources that I’ve stumbled upon.

Here are the offerings for this go around:

Resource #1:

Thanks to a post on the accenture blog about their new book CRM Transformation: Transforming Marketing, Sales and Service, I discovered Montgomery Research and their host of thought leadership white papers. Correlating to the accenture book — they have a section called The CRM Project.

There you can find white papers with titles like: Smart Enough Customer Decisions, Continuous Customer Dialogues (strategies for growth and loyalty) and Transform Customer Data into Profit. (Note: You do have to sign up to access these white papers, but it’s pretty painless.)

Resource #2:

Joseph Jaffe launches his new book, Join the Conversation, this week. Jaffe, best known for launching the conversational marketing company, crayon.

It makes sense that a man whose company specializes in community, dialogue and partnership would pen a book that spotlights how companies must adapt to the brave new world of the Internet, social media and networking, consumer-generated content, blogs, and podcasts by joining the rich, deep, and meaningful customer conversations already in progress.

I just got my copy today and can’t wait to dig into it.

:60 ticks marketing tip: High tech legibility test

October 24, 2007

The world of marketing is now very high tech. We have computers and digital files and PDAs and a host of other technologies that have improved the way we do our job. But sometimes the old fashioned method is still as good as it gets.

Outdoor is a tricky medium. It looks great on the screen or layout, but how will it look 50 feet up in the air, as you whiz by at 65 mph?

Assuming you were mindful of the 7-word rule (try never to have more than 7 words on an outdoor board) here’s how you can quickly check the readability of your board.

Squint.

Yup, squint. Print out your design and tape it to the wall. Step back 10+ feet and then squint. Can you still read the board? If so – odds are it will be legible from the road as well.

Now let’s see them create a high tech alternative for that!

If you were Apple, how would you respond to iCrime news?

October 22, 2007

I was watching the local news the other day when a sound byte caught my attention. "iPods linked to crime wave." So being a man of the new millennium, I DVR’d it.

Here’s the scoop.

Violent crime in the US increased in 2005 and 2006 for the first time in 14 years. Homicides and robberies are up, while other violent crimes are down.

"At the same time that violent crime rates began to rise, America’s streets filled with millions of people visibly wearing, and being distracted by, expensive electronic gear," explained the authors of the Is there an iCrime wave? report.

According to the report, there are four reasons why iPods are playing a key role in the iCrime wave:

iPods contain almost no easily accessible anti-theft protection
Unlike mobile phones, there is no subscription associated with iPods
iPods are high-status items and may be stolen for their status or to be resold
Since iPods plug into both ears (unlike a cell phone’s one ear occupation) iPod users may be less aware of their surroundings than users of other consumer products

Here’s my question for us in the marketing world: If you were the CMO of Apple and heard about this report/news story — what would you do or not do?

Grow or die. How’s that for simple?

October 21, 2007

A business cannot remain stagnant for long. You either grow or you wither up and die. Now remember that grow doesn’t necessarily mean you get bigger. Maybe you just get more efficient and more profitable. But somewhere, there needs to be growth.

Bob Bloom (former US Chairman and CEO of Publicis Worldwide) has created a free e-book called Bloom on Growth. In the e-book, he’s pulled some money quotes out of his new book, The Inside Advantage, which will be available in early November.

Here’s my favorite. Probably because I’ve been preaching this for eons.

“You can deliberately influence your customer’s entire experience with your firm or you can simply let it happen.”

We all know this is true. We feel it when we walk into an Apple Store or fly Southwest. So why do you think most businesses do not do this for their own business?

Is it too hard?
Too expensive?
Too time consuming?
Do they not know how?

What do you think?

Are you deadline driven? Good.

October 20, 2007

People moan and groan about deadlines and the pressure that comes with them. But, that’s exactly why we should love them.

Here are some of the benefits of deadlines.

We get things done: If there’s no deadline, there’s no incentive to actually complete the task. You can stay in testing mode forever.

We don’t over-think: Over-thinking leads to the homogenizing of an idea. The more time a group (especially) has to think about an idea, project or action – they more they can worry it to non-existence. Sometimes, you just have to leap off the cliff.

People have to overcome their issues: Teams inherently have conflict. A deadline forces each teammate to determine which conflicts are actually worthy of addressing and which ones they just need to put aside to get the job done.

Things keep simmering: When I know I have a deadline looming, even when I am not actively working on the project, it’s simmering on a back burner Ideas bubble up to my consciousness and when I do sit down to get it done, I’m already halfway there.

What do you think? Are deadlines good or bad? How do they help or hurt your efforts?

Additional sales tips/lessons from readers

October 19, 2007

A week or so ago, I offered to have a drawing for a free copy of Jill Konrath’s excellent book, Selling to Big Companies. All you had to do was share in the comments or e-mail a sales lesson, tip or horror story we could learn from to be entered into the drawing.

We got a few entries via the comments but several more in e-mail. I thought I would share them with you and then announce the winner!

Without further ado….

My biggest sales mistake is when I don’t know enough about the company or the person I am meeting with. If I can’t talk about them and their challenges, then the only thing left to talk about is me and our product. Once we start going down that road, I know I am sunk.

In the late 90’s I was invited to travel to Tokyo and meet with the man who could open up the Japanese market to our company.

Having completed cordialities, we started our very formal meeting. After about 20 minutes of fact finding conversation from both sides, I asked him through his interpreter if our design firm could prepare a proposal for him and send it over for he and his staff to review.

In amazement we watched him look down at the table, ponder for a moment, slowly push his chair back and stand up. He bowed. Said nothing and walked out of the boardroom. The corporate interpreter said the meeting was over and thanked us for coming. We were in the elevator just as fast as she could bow and say goodbye. Our personal interpreter said that he would share with us at the bar what had happened.

It turned out that I had put him on the spot. By asking him my question, he was unable to answer it without total disgracing himself in front of us and his staff. I had asked him a question that he would ultimately have to take to his subordinates to discuss before it could be answered. So, he was now in a shameful position because he could not answer properly. The only way he could deal with the situation was leave! Meeting over.

I know this is probably been said a thousand times, but I get on the good side of the gatekeeper. She holds the key to where I want to get and she can make or break my efforts. I have found that you don’t have to get ridiculous. You just have to actually notice that they’re there and engage them in conversation. Most people treat them like they’re invisible.

Offer an guarantee. The reality is, most of us have an implied guarantee anyways. So why not make it explicit?

Ask open ended questions that require more than a yes or no. And then build off that answer, asking a more probing question. Get the prospect to tell you stories to illustrate their pain points. If I hear myself talking for more than 60 seconds or so, I know I need to ask a question and then shut up.

Do something they will remember and tell other people about. Odds are, they are talking to several vendors. You need to be the one they remember. Do something remarkable enough that you know they won’t be able to resist telling someone about it.

And the winner of the book — John Siberell, one of our e-mail entries. Congrats John. Watch for an e-mail from me!

Don’t forget that Jill is also throwing the sales conference that’s a not to be missed for women who want to take their sales skills to the next level. Minneapolis. November 5-6. You’ll learn enough within the first hour to cover the investment and more.

Serve a steady stream of snack-sized messages

October 18, 2007

Ever hear those radio spots where the poor on-air talent is talking so fast it sounds as if they didn’t take a breath for the entire :60 seconds?

That’s an example of the "shove it all in" thinking.

Many business owners believe that they have to cram all the facts, figures and information into every single ad, sign, brochure and web page. They are in a panic, imagining that they might never have another chance to tell their story.

Of course, when they create marketing tools that are over-packed, that’s exactly what happens. The audience turns a deaf ear.

When you think about creating a marketing piece — think bite-sized snacks. One piece, one message.

Have you ever over indulged on Thanksgiving and when you finally pushed away from the table, you felt like you might burst? Contrast that with how you feel when you eat several mini-meals throughout a day.

Your marketing tools should be like mini-meals. Tasty treats that your audience will look forward to because they are not too filling and were created to delight the consumer.

Mason Hipp of SmallFuel Marketing, gets this concept in spades. His excellent series, Small Business Marketing 101 breaks down his counsel into 9 bite-sized posts. Could he have written one mammoth white paper? Sure…but his readers would have felt bloated and saturated.

Be a smart marketer. Don’t drive your audience away by drowning them in details. Give them plenty of time and space to slowly absorb your message. One bite at a time.

UPDATE: Got this note via e-mail:

From a 20 year radio guy- THANK YOU!!

I loved your example of trying to get too much in a radio commercial.

The main reason radio’s getting bad press is our own dumb moves. People as a whole are still satisfied with radio’s delivery quality- and the dirty little secret is they’re also satisfied with hearing their FAVORITE songs (look at most people’s iPod most played lists).

Three things to remember when you write a marketing plan

October 18, 2007

Last week we explored how to set a marketing budget and in that post, I emphasized that every marketing budget should be tied to a measurable marketing plan. So it makes sense that we should talk a little about some key do’s and don’t’s in creating your marketing plan.

Do less, but do it better: Most business owners make the mistake of being too ambitious with their marketing efforts. Which results in starting many things, but never doing them consistently and well.

You’re much better off to do fewer things but do them more often and better.

Balance your audiences: It’s a natural urge to invest all of your marketing resources on getting new clients. But, that’s shortsighted. The two most important audiences are your employees and your current customers. Be sure your marketing plan gives them enough attention.

At least half your budget and effort should be aimed at these two critical groups of people.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: One of your goals should be to deliver a business’ key messages through a variety of mediums. No matter how much you believe in word of mouth, direct mail, e-newsletters or an interactive website – don’t land on any one medium.

Stack up impressions by varying the media that carries your message.

What do’s and don’t’s would you add to this list?

Ready to show off your marketing smarts?

October 17, 2007

Think you’ve got what it takes? Are your marketing ideas usually the ones that are greeted with a hallowed hush of awe?

If so, then step into the ring with other marketing virtuosos.

My friend Gavin Heaton and the fashion mavens at The Bargain Queen have cooked up quite the contest. The entries will be voted on in round-robin style — being narrowed down until there is only one left. This means that no one and everyone is the judge of what makes a great campaign. This should be fun!

What’s in it for you? If you win, you get bragging rights, get to stretch your mental marketing muscles and the grand prize is an Apple iTouch.

Before you scoot over to Gavin’s blog to get all the details, ponder this.

For the cost of an Apple iTouch — do you suppose this little contest will drive traffic, links and subscriptions at the Bargain Queen? Seems like quite the bargain (no pun intended!) doesn’t it?

How could you harness this idea for your own?

Now that we’ve decided blogs are potential PR engines…

October 15, 2007

Ah, the good old days. PR pros bombarded reporters, news directors and radio jocks with their pitches, releases, and freebies.

But it’s a new day my friends and suddenly PR firms, publishers and business owners have decided that blogs are as viable as the daily paper, when it comes to getting out the word about a new product, book or idea.

All that is well and good. When it’s done right. But most often, I get e-mails like this:

Hello Drewsmarketingminute,
I found your site http://www.mclellanmarketing.com/ and I wanted to
know if you could Blog or write an article about XYZ (changed because I am a nice guy)! You can write your own article; alternatively you may use this recent press release below. You also take a look at the XYZ samples and information on our site at http://www.XYZ.com Thanks!

This guy has never read my blog. He found me on a list or technorati search. He didn’t use my actual name (unless I have become Drewsmarketingminute) and he insults my integrity, suggesting that I would just run his release verbatim.

I get several of these a day. I ignore several of these a day.

Ogilvy PR has the right idea. They’ve created a bloggers outreach code of ethics. I, and many other colleagues think they’ve got the right idea. I hope that all of us who live in the marketing world and may be pitching bloggers take note. If you want to reach out to a blogger…this would be a fine primer to study before you make that first contact.

We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.

Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.

We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.

We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.

You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)

If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.

If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.

Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

What do you think?

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