Strategy

How’s your marketing game plan going?

March 1, 2017

I know everyone is anxious for spring to arrive but you have to admit, March got here in a hurry. You’re almost 25% of the way through the year. How are you doing on meeting your goals? If you aren’t hitting all your key metrics, maybe your marketing game plan is a little off.

Rather than wait until late in the year to do a course correction, let’s do it now so you still have most of the year to make up any lost ground. Let’s look at some of the common mistakes that get made.

Depth not breadth: While I applaud people for being ambitious, the truth is, most marketing plans are unrealistic. Even if you had nothing else to do all day, you’d never be able to execute everything you have in your plan.

That doesn’t serve you well. What usually happens is that a company kicks off the year with all of these big and bold marketing initiatives. But because you have so many plates spinning, you can’t possibly attend to all of them. Which means none of them get enough time and attention. As plates crash to the ground, you abandon many of the tactics in the plan and really have no idea which ones could have gained traction. Or you’re very hit or miss on your execution, which sends the wrong message to your audience.

Here’s my suggestion. Do about a third of what you thought could be accomplished. But, do that one-third better than you could have imagined. Great marketing is about leaving a lasting impression. It’s tough to do that with mediocre messaging or execution.

Deadlines are not optional: When you cut out two-thirds of your tactics, you absolutely can and need to deliver on the one-third. That’s not just about quality. As mundane as it sounds – deadlines matter. When you tell someone you’re going to send out a monthly e-newsletter and it goes out 7 times a year — that sends a message. When you offer quarterly webinars but cancel them because you under promoted them and didn’t attract enough bodies –- that sends a message.

After you trim back your marketing plan to a manageable level, you must commit to the timeline. This is particularly challenging if you wear other hats in the business. It’s easy to run from customer fire to customer fire. I hate to tell you, but the only time your own marketing is on fire is when the ship is about to sink. Don’t wait for that to happen. Your customers make their needs a priority for you. You have to do the same for your own marketing. If you do not carve out and protect the time, it just won’t get done.

Talk less, listen more: The marketing monologue is dead. There are so many ways for your consumers to talk to you, about you and around you – you’ve got to make listening a priority.

Do it formally by launching customer surveys, creating a client review board, or ask your best clients to test new products for you as part of an insider’s club. Do it informally by chatting with them at trade shows about how they’ve adapted your products, hang out with them on Facebook or in forums where they gather to talk about their work challenges.

Your best customers have plenty to say. Your least satisfied customers have plenty to say. The ones in the middle don’t care enough but if you show them that you care, they just might.

I know you’re probably tired of hearing me say this but marketing is simple, which is why it’s so difficult. We can’t help ourselves. We complicate it and muck it up. If you’ve gotten off track, now is the perfect time to do a course correction.

Shhh, we’re secret shopping

January 11, 2017

If there’s one marketing tactic that we execute for clients that always yields incredible results, it’s when we secret shop their operation. Without exception, a secret shopping program will:

• Provide insights that surprise you (good and bad)
• Spotlight specific areas where your training and communication have failed and you/your employees are hurting your brand
• Uncover sales opportunities that you are letting slip through your fingers
• Identify employees who are brand ambassadors and those who are actually doing damage to your reputation

We secret shop some of our clients every year and even though we’ve done it before – each time produces new insights and results. We always modify some aspects of their customer interaction, marketing, and employee training based on the results of the effort.

Many times we not only secret shop our own clients but we include their competitors as well. This produces an incredible wealth of new knowledge – from vulnerabilities to what they’re saying about their competition (you!) to prospects. Depending on the study – sometimes we don’t tell our operatives who the client is but at the end of the process, we ask them who they would hire/buy from. That’s always an eye opener!

If you’re a B2B leader/owner and are about to dismiss this as a retail marketing tactic – think again. We’ve done it for plenty of B2B clients with the exact same results. No matter what you sell – you interact with people to market and sell your offerings. We’ve done secret shopping on the web, over the phone, via email and in person (usually a blend of more than one throughout the sales cycle) and the learning is huge, no matter what you sell.

Like all marketing – doing it and doing it well are two different things. There are some elements of a secret shopping program that you’ll want to pay special attention to if you want reliable results.

This is not a DIY project: There are some marketing elements that you and your team are perfectly equipped to do on your own. This is not one of them. You need to bring in experienced outsiders who understand your industry but more important – understand how to effectively secret shop and report back the results.

You want to choose a firm who has professionals that are experienced in handling the entire secret shopping experience from initial contact to the final report. They need to be privy to your key messages, brand and sales process or they won’t be able to help you identify how to improve.

Create a safe environment: Secret shoppers often have to share less than ideal results with their clients. If you don’t make it perfectly clear that you’re ready to hear whatever they discover – it may make it difficult for them to be as candid as you need them to be. Prepare yourself – no matter how good you and your employees are – you’re not going to get a perfect grade. There’s always room for improvement.

Consistency is key: For the results to be meaningful, the experience needs to be consistent – all the shoppers need to look for the same things, ask the same sorts of questions, and grade the experience based on the same criteria. This allows you to know that the reported results aren’t an anomaly and should be reacted to – good or bad.

Next steps: The most important part of the secret shopping experience is that the company you hire can help you identify next steps to correct the issues and accentuate the positives. This will probably include employee training, some tweaks to your sales process and it may even include some changes to your product/service itself.

If you want to start your year off with a serious boost – consider a secret shopping program.

Narrow your focus

November 16, 2016

As you begin to look to at your marketing plan for the coming year, I’d like to suggest you adopt a theme of “narrow and deep” for your marketing and even your business model.   In other words, narrow your focus.

What do I mean by that? For some reason, business owners and leaders struggle with the idea of specializing. We get the concept in our own lives – if you had a heart problem would you go see a cardiac specialist or your general practice doctor? If you wanted to update your bathroom, would you choose a company with years of experience in updating bathrooms or a general plumber? If you were flying, would you prefer your pilot have logged most of his hours in your specific kind of plane or be a generalist?

When we are choosing professionals to work with – we tend to gravitate to specialists and we justify that choice by saying:

• They have experience in exactly what I need.
• They can better anticipate and solve problems along the way.
• They’ve built up resources and partnerships to help them be successful.
• They will be faster and more efficient because of their depth of experience.
• They are more likely to get it exactly how I need it to be.

And we acknowledge that they may appear to be more expensive but because of all of the reasons we just listed, in the end, they will probably save us time and money and if not, it’s because something went wrong and then we will be glad we invested the extra money.

I get why it’s harder to narrow your focus and choose to specialize rather than be a generalist. There’s money on the table and someone wants to hire you. You have a payroll to meet, financial goals to hit and you’re hoping for a little bonus at the end of the year. So why would you turn down anyone who is ready to hire you?

It’s a challenge to say no when someone is offering to hire you or buy something from you. But let’s be honest – your company is not equally good at everything. When you make a sale and it’s tied to delivering something that is outside your sweet spot – it’s difficult to get it done on time and on budget.

It’s often the project that requires you to do more legwork for the same price because you aren’t as familiar with the specifics. Even if you’ve done it a few times, it doesn’t come as naturally, so you slow down to make sure you do it well.

I’m betting that if you took the time to identify the deliverables that you have the most expertise in and have done the most and compared the profitability to the one-offs you do – the difference will be striking.

Let’s add to all that – when you are a specialist, you can charge more for your expertise. Why? For the same reason, bathroom makeover specialists can charge more than the handyman. Look at your own buying choices. People will pay more for the reassurance that you’re very good at what you do and if something goes wrong, you will know how to quickly fix it.

The advantages to specializing are pretty dramatic:

• It’s easier to market yourself and help people understand what you offer.
• Because you’re very good at it – you deliver a superior customer experience that leads to more word of mouth and repeat business.
• You can charge more per deliverable.
• You differentiate yourself from all the companies who are generalists and also do what you do best.

As you think about what’s next for your marketing and your business – rather than adding to all the ways you communicate and all the things you talk about – why not narrow your focus and consider pruning down to what you do best?

Are you accidentally doing public relations?

October 26, 2016

According to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) the definition of public relations is “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

My translation is that public relations is any communication that benefits both the sender and the receiver. It delivers a value to everyone in the conversation. That sounds like a worthy target – after all, who wouldn’t appreciate hearing from someone that delivers information, stories, or news that adds value to their day?

In today’s vernacular public relations is earned media. In other words, you didn’t buy the coverage. I’m not suggesting that PR is free – just that you don’t buy placement like you might purchase ad space.

When most people hear the phrase public relations, they think media relations. Working with the traditional media to write a story about your organization is certainly one aspect of public relations but it’s just part of the picture. I’m guessing that you’re accidentally dabbling in public relations, you just don’t realize it.

Many would argue that social media community building, helping a client avoid a crisis, or making an event something special are all PR tactics. See – you’ve already started down the PR path – why not try these less common but very effective tactics?

Reach out to bloggers: A kissing cousin to traditional media relations is connecting to bloggers who write for an audience that matters to your company. Bloggers are often more accessible than a traditional journalist and may be more open to helping you tell your story. A great tool for identifying bloggers who cover topics that relate to your organization is www.alltop.com.

Remember that top bloggers receive dozens of pitches every day so do your homework. Ideally, you’d spend some time getting to know their content before you need to make your pitch. Bloggers notice people who contribute to the conversations they’re having on their site so jump into the comments section and add value.

If you do all of that, you’ll know exactly which blogs are the best fit for what you’re trying to do and they’ll be glad to hear from you because you won’t be wasting their time.

Own a branded study: Thought leadership is one of those buzzwords that has almost worn out its welcome. The only reason it hasn’t is because the logic behind it makes so much sense. Again keeping in mind the PR credo – benefit your audience as well as yourself – the PR spin to thought leadership is that you share what you know. Identify something that your audience really needs to know and invest in getting the information for them. Then shout it from the rooftops and go out of your way to make sure that anyone who would gain from knowing what you learned, hears about it.

The key to this tactic is that you don’t hold the information hostage. Be absolutely reckless in how you give it away. The beautiful thing is that pretty soon you’ll be known as the company who went out of your way to help others and you made them smarter along the way. Every year, they’ll actually look forward to hearing from you. Soon, you’ll be branded as the organization that A) seeks the information every year and B) shares the information every year.

Who wouldn’t want to do business with a company that offers that combination? The cherry on top is that you can probably garner the media’s attention as well.

That’s actually the secret sauce of PR. The more you help others, whether that’s a reporter or a member of your target audience, the more attention you earn for your own organization as well.

What’s your halftime speech?

June 22, 2016

We’re a few days away from July and that means the first half of the game is over. It’s halftime.  Are you heading into the locker room to slap everyone on the back and tell them to protect your lead or are you about to give a hell and brimstone speech about digging deep and finding more?

We don’t usually think of business in these terms but just like halftime is a critical element in a football game, we can choose to make this halfway point equally important to our 2016 business outcomes.

One of the reasons why the halftime speech works is because they only have 12 minutes. That’s how long a regulation halftime lasts. There’s no wiggle room or opportunity for a bullet pointed list of topics. Twelve minutes means you need to get to the point and you only get one point.

I think that’s where we get into trouble, don’t you?

By now, your marketing plan (if you ever wrote one) has been blown out of the water by distractions, delays, or determined opponents. Or more likely – all three.

If you aren’t thrilled with the score at this halfway point in the year – I’d be willing to bet that you’ve allowed the distractions, delays and determined opponents get in the way. You stopped playing your own game.

It’s time to get back to that singular focus on the 12-minute halftime speech. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you prep.

How far behind are you? What are the tangible costs/losses?

You have to start by re-assessing your situation and being realistic about what you’ve sacrificed. It also can be very motivating. You can’t make up sales any better than you can make up sleep. You can do better – but it doesn’t go back and replace what was lost.

Are your original goals still viable or do you need to set a new goal?

You can’t win every game. But that doesn’t mean you can’t gain something from it and still call it a win. It’s like the football team that is losing by 30 or 40 points so they start rotating in their second string to give them playing time. That means the game can still provide value. You’ll waste the whole year if you keep chasing a goal that’s no longer viable.

What have you learned about the field of play and do you need to change your game plan?

You may have spent months putting together your game plan but it was based on assumptions. Now, six months into the game, you have plenty of real data and experiences to draw from. Now is the time to adjust based on your game day observations and the pace and tenor of the game so far.

What do you need to neutralize to win?

It might be a consumer perception, it could be that you are trying to do too many things so none of them are being done as well as you need, it might be your pricing structure or your financing model. But something has prevented you from being as successful as you wanted to be at this point in the year. If you don’t neutralize it – the second half will play out pretty much how this first half did. Now it’s time to sum all of that up into a single message. If you can’t describe it and get everyone fired up in 12 minutes or less – you’ve made it too complicated. What’s the new win? What’s in the way? How will you change the playing field to your advantage? What’s in it for the organization if you win? How will you keep score?

It’s time to get out there and make the rest of 2016 an exciting game!

Marketing idea: What does your customer experience?

January 26, 2016

The concept of creating a memorable customer experience is nothing new. Companies like Disney, Zappos and Ritz Carlton have become famous for how their customers rave about doing business with them. Who doesn’t know the famous Ritz Carlton line “we are ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen?”

So the concept has been around for a while, but I predict it will take on new importance in 2014 and beyond. The digital fishbowl that every business lives in today makes every nuance of every interaction a potential powder keg. It used to be that focusing on the customer experience was what the big companies did or how the top 10% thought differently than everyone else. But today it’s not a nicety; it’s a necessity.

Here’s why:

Because one slip up can cost you plenty. Your customers possess the ability to skewer you with a single Facebook post or online review. It seems as though people are rather quick on the social media draw when it comes to taking a shot at a business that has done them wrong.

Just this last week, one of my Facebook friends shared a bad restaurant experience. At the beginning, she did not reveal the name of the establishment, but as people told their own stories and started trying to guess where she had been, she finally revealed it. Others started chiming in with their own horror stories about the place.

Guess what – I’m never going to eat there. Small example but it’s happening every day to companies big and small.

You know more, so they expect more. Thanks to all of the digital data we now collect, the databases we can build (whether we do or not), the very public lives people live and how easy it is to be connected to a business through social media, e-newsletters, websites, actual interactions etc.

Whether we’ve been paying attention or not, our customers are telling us more about themselves every day. They like our Facebook page updates or they redeem a certain offer. They choose to attend our business after hours event or they refer a friend. In every one of those actions is data. The question becomes – what are we doing with what we learn?

If we don’t create an amazing experience, someone else will. Let’s say you don’t own a computer and neither do your customers. (I know…fat chance, but go with me here) Unless you have no competition – all of this still pertains to you. You cannot compete if you don’t delight. You may not be at risk for the cyber blasting that review sites and peer networks allow for but you’re still fighting for their business every day.

Someone will figure out a way to make the transaction helpful, easy and/or fun. This affords them two things. First, it gives them the crack in the door to get in with your customer and eventually, steal them away. Second and perhaps even more annoying, it allows them to charge a premium price. So not only will your customers ditch you, but they’ll also pay your competitor more.

I don’t care if your product or service is better. I don’t care if your product or service yields better results. The truth is, people will settle for a good enough product or service if the experience of acquiring it is special enough. You cannot rely on just being better.

Right or wrong — your customer is judging you every step of the way. And deciding if they’re coming back for more based on that interaction.

Simplify your marketing

December 14, 2015

With less than a month until we ring in 2016, I am going to cling to the belief that you have started working on your marketing plan for the upcoming year. I want to get a message to you before you are too far along in the planning process.

Do half as much.

That’s right – my prescription for a successful 2016 is to do half as much marketing. Here’s what I am not saying:

• Spend half as much
• Invest half as much time
• Try half as hard
• Reach half as many people

What I am saying is I’m betting that you’re stretching yourself too thin this past year. Let me sketch out a typical company’s marketing effort and see if you recognize a bit of yourself.

Company A has a robust marketing program, with most of their efforts being focused on attracting new customers. These new customers are needed, according to the marketing and sales team, to achieve the aggressive 2013 sales goals set by leadership.

The company has committed to a print media buy and fully intended to create a new series of ads for this effort. Unfortunately, the team was spread thin, so they only created one ad, which they ran throughout the schedule. They also identified the top trade shows for their industry. By the time they got around to planning the new booth, the rush charges would have killed the budget. So instead, they’re using last year’s booth and giveaway.

They also send out direct mail to key prospects (they really hope to follow these mailings up with phone calls in 2016).

Recognizing that only using traditional marketing methods was shortsighted, the marketing team decided to embrace content and digital marketing. The goal was to create one new article or white paper a month that would be used for a customer and prospect newsletter and as new content on the website. The team got five new articles written, and for the other newsletter issues they just advertised the current special. Only 10 of the 12 newsletters went out, but eight of them were on time.

The team launched a Facebook page, Twitter account and started a digital ad/retargeting campaign. They linked the Facebook and Twitter accounts so the updates were duplicated because they didn’t always have time to create fresh content for both. The digital ads were supposed to support and promote the new article every month, but in the end it was easier to just drive traffic to the website’s home page with a pricing teaser that proved marginally successful.

You see where I’m going with this, right? Every tactic that my imaginary company implemented can be very effective. There are an infinite number of marketing solutions but unfortunately, both your budget and your time/staff resources are finite.

This has always been the case, but the addition of digital marketing tactics has just exasperated the challenge. Marketing has evolved into a never-ending spinning plates exhibition, with the marketing professionals trying to catch the plate that’s closest to the floor.

The result? By trying to do too much, nothing gets done as well or as often as it should. Key audiences get ignored or short-changed and opportunities are lost.

I’d like to suggest a different path for 2016. Identify your three most significant audiences, based on your company’s goals. Then, decide on the one or two marketing tactics that will have the greatest impact on moving each audience deeper into your sales cycle. Put together an action plan that outlines how you are going to get those tactics accomplished with more depth, frequency and quality.

Your mission – keep it simple, focused and do it better than you’ve ever had the time/budget to do it before. Then, watch what happens.

What don’t you know?

December 1, 2015

Take off your “I’m trying to be healthier” hat for a minute and answer honestly. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could start every meal with one of your favorite desserts?

You either said yes or you’re lying! Of course it would be great to do that – desserts are not only tasty but they’re festive and somehow celebratory. But we know better. We know desserts don’t serve our bodies very well and we can’t live on them alone. (Even if your idea of dessert is fresh fruit) We have to follow the plan of eating enough of the good for us stuff that we can indulge in a dessert now and then.

That same principle works in marketing as well. We all want to rush to the tactics and the creative. It’s easy to get caught up in that trap. And it’s not just that because it’s the fun part. We’re under the gun all the time to produce results and somewhere in our subconscious there’s a voice urging us to get going already.

There’s a third reason we rush to execution. It’s comfortable. We know how to do it.   Marketers live to accomplish and get things done, as a general rule. The execution stage feels right and good.

But if you want to be successful – you need to battle that urge and slow down. You need to stay in the uncomfortable place of not knowing because that’s where insights and actual innovation happen. All too often, we put together a marketing plan or even a marketing campaign based on what we think we know. We rarely linger in the “what we don’t know” because it’s uncomfortable.

Think about all the assumptions we make every day about everything from how customers perceive our product or service to what it’s like to do business with us.

Especially with the advent of content or digital marketing, many marketers are simply putting out more stuff without much regard to what would actually move the needle. I believe if we were willing to stay in the discomfort of not knowing for longer – we’d actually execute better and enjoy better results.

So, how does one stay in the land of discomfort? I think it all starts with identifying what you don’t know in some key areas. Take my examples and dive much deeper into identifying what you really do not know. Pay attention to the assumptions you’ve been operating on for years. Now is the time to test them.

What you sell: Do you really know what people think about your product or service? Do they understand how to evaluate its quality?   What might they consider instead of buying from you?

Your company: Have they ever heard of you? What is the first word that pops in their head when they think of you? From their perspective, what does it say about them if they do business with you?

The buying experience: What does it feel like to buy from you? How consistent is the follow up? How do your sales people come off? Are you consistently keeping all of your customer service promises?

Your current customers: How do they talk about you and their buying experience? Do they brag about doing business with you or keep it on the down low? On a scale of 1-10, how delighted are they with you? What would make them go away and make a different choice?

Like I said…these just scratch the surface. You should also be asking yourself what you don’t know about everything from production to promotion and post sales systems. The biggest danger to you is the assumptions you’re operating under.

The longer you stay in the “what we don’t know” zone, the better your marketing will be. Then, you can treat yourself to some dessert!