Funmarketer Lesson of the Week:

A few years ago we designed and wrote an innovative self-paced marketing education program targeted at small business marketers and owners. I find that today, more than ever, smart marketers must continually educate themselves on marketing on three levels:

1. Continue to learn the fundamental marketing philosophy from the “old masters” of marketing and advertising.

2. Learn the “hottest trends” in online marketing (where most of the change is rapidly occurring).

3. Deepen their understanding of their own industry’s evolving marketing-place from both customers, suppliers and competitors.

Since my teens, I have been involved in a variety of leadership positions. Most of us are, if we stop really think about it. And every successful leader must develop into an effective teacher or else their message isn’t carried very far. As a marketer the role of teacher is especially important. You must help develop your company’s brand ambassadors — your customers and your employees. If you don’t develop effective messages for these ‘carrier pigeons of the brand’ to spread to their contacts then you severely limit the potential growth of the company you work for.

One of the best ways to become a good teacher is to first become a good student. If you continually learn from the marketing masters of old and then integrating that knowledge with the newest marketing tactics coupled with stunning business intelligence from suppliers and customers — if you learn like that, then when it comes time to teach you will be so well prepared the teaching will come out naturally.

Funmarketing Free Campaign Idea of the Week

You know I love the discipline of writing a powerful headline to go with an iStock photo. Well, don’t just limit this to iStock photos. Any ads you find in the paper, or any postcards or direct mail pieces you receive — feel free to write your own ads to go with them. It’s a great way to stretch out your creative brain as well as build up a backlog of ideas. Never know when you’ll need them on a rainy day.

My youngest son just returned from the Inauguration of President Obama. Believe me, it is a 16 year-old’s dream to be in DC for any Presidential Inauguration; but to be there for one this historic–wow! So just now DC is on my mind. Here’s a general, uplifting type of campaign you can use as a reminder to your customers that you are hanging in there with them during these tough economic times.

Headline — Tough Days? Plenty. Remember, Renewal is Around the Corner

iStock photo 1792363

Thanks and Happy Almost-Spring

Craig Lutz-Priefert

Instead of the “Lesson of the Week”, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts on one of my favorite marketing books.

Most small business owners run a service business – yet most marketing books target companies that sell a product.

The Invisible Touch by Harry Beckwith is a book for those of us working in service businesses. A bit lost wading through marketing books that merely focus on how the Diffusion of Innovation spreads for new products? Then turn to pp 57-59 and learn Beckwith’s take on how it’s different for a service business and you’ll soon understand you’re not alone in your frustrations, after all.

This is Beckwith’s second book devoted to service businesses. The first, Selling the Invisible, has a greater emphasis on selling, while this second work emphasizes marketing. I actually recommend you read both. The second half of The Invisible Touch is so compelling that anybody involved in running or selling for a service business should spend an evening or two reading it.

Here – at last – is a book on marketing written with a focus on small companies. If you are a salesperson wanting to boost your sales by selling smarter, then read this marketing book. It won’t give you some magic formula on how to close, and there are no case studies on securing your next appointment. It will simply help you gain an edge on your competition in the dozen or so ways that Beckwith outlines.

The first half of the book is valuable, but the second half really speaks to what’s important for a service business. Beckwith lays out four “Keys to Modern Marketing”:

* Price
* Brand
* Packaging
* Relationships

The chapter on Relationships also outlines eight profitable tips on building them.

The Invisible Touch is an easy read – just a couple of nights and you’re done. If you integrate even a couple of Beckwith’s concepts into your business during the course of next year, it’ll be well worth those evenings you spent reading it.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

January is almost here and it can be a very depressing month for many of your clients. Good marketers sell hope, and people need it more than ever right now.

Here’s a great photo that speaks to the renewal of spring and catching your piece of it. The suggested headline is for a financial services check-up, but it can work for

Photo: iStock #6439150

Headline: This Spring Make Every Moment Count
Subhead: Schedule an Investment Checkup Now – Then Go Play in the Sunshine.

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

If you aren’t using Google Analytics on your website yet, then the New Year is a great time to start.

Happy Marketing – and Happy Holidays!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Mention “Enriching the Customer Experience” and in our mind’s eye we envision a customer surrounded by an elegant showroom, with sophisticated, beautiful salespeople waiting on her. Images of Champs Elysees, Fifth Avenue or Orchard Road spring to mind.

But there is another way to enrich the customer’s experience, and that is to reduce the customer’s pain.

Less glamorous? Yes, but quite effective.

Every service business lugs along certain baggage. Dentistry involves pain and Fast Food means waiting in line at lunch time. No amount of smoke and mirrors advertising is going to change that fact.

The good news – your competitors are shackled by the same set of constraints.

The first thing to do is improve the service you deliver. If you are a dentist, then engage available technology to minimize pain; if you are in fast food, run people through line as fast as possible.

And that is where most small businesses stop–they only improve their product or service. And customers often fail to notice the improvements – because the company failed to tell them about the improvement.

This key to customer satisfaction must be a constant companion to product improvement–Subtly tell your customers you are minimizing their hurt.

For that dentist, a first step in communicating a pain-free office can be the waiting room. It should be bright, with prints of people smiling and laughing and having fun. The effect need not be in-your-face, but a few photos of smiling people sprinkled about helps the patient remember the benefit of why they came to the dentist to begin with.

And don’t forget – a big smile from the receptionist is always a pick-me-up.

What about that fast food line? Brightly colored Tensa-belts, floor graphics for the latest kid’s toys, balloons–any device to keep people looking about and distract their minds as they wait in that line.

Remember: Improve your Service, then immediately Consider the Customer and ease her pain. It may seem like common sense, but at the end of a long day it’s the last thing your staff is thinking about.

But the Chief Marketer must.

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

OK, we’re trying to keep your clients from being bored…but here’s a photo that captures boredom and turns it to your advantage.

Photo: iStock #4266563

Headline: Boys Parked In Front of the Big Game This Saturday?
Subhead: Treat Yourself to a Facial at Acme Spa!

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Try and watch two or three TV shows at once. If you have the “picture-within-a-picture” function on your television you can use that; or just park your laptop on your TV and run a DVD while at the same time watching, say, the news.

Distracting, isn’t it? No matter how smart you are or quick you are, you must keep shifting your attention back and forth between the two screens.

How many times do we do the same thing with our ads?

Make sure your ads have a Focal Point.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

Funmarketer Lesson of the Week

I recently spoke to several small business owners about simple yet effective ways to market to their current customer base. Here’s a quick overview:

1. Score your customers.

A popular way catalog companies rank their customers is called RFM:

R Recency – When did they buy?
F Frequency – How often do they buy?
M Money – How much do they spend?

Most small businesses don’t use all three elements of RFM in combination to arrive at a score, but the basic concepts can help you in your planning.

2. Allocate Resources.

Many different methods exist, but for most small businesses a simple A-B-C ranking will work well.

A Best Customers – probably the top 10-20%
B Second Tier Customers – the next 10-20%
C The Masses – the rest of your customers

A’s will receive most of your marketing dollars. If you are doing simple mailings, A’s might get monthly mailings, B’s quarterly, and C’s annually (like a Christmas card).

3. Communication methods:

Postal Mail
email
blog (but call it an ‘online newsletter’)
Phone calls
personal visits

For postal mail postcards work well as they are inexpensive and quick to produce.

4. Content:

Build the brand through:

Repetition – Get your name in front of them frequently.

Valuable content – Make sure the content you write is interesting to the reader and content that is easy to pass along to their friends. People talk to each other, and they like to contribute some wisdom of their own to a conversation. If you can be a source of that information, then your customers are more likely to continue to read what you send.

And that bonds them to your brand all the more.

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

As the economy is more and more uncertain Trust continues to be THE key theme for anybody who markets any type of service. Forget about shoving how many years you’ve been in business down their throats – everybody’s doing that. It is too sterile. Connect on the human level.

Photo: iStock #4481332

Headline: Seats Are Open at Our Negotiating Table
Subhead: Acme Insurance – Real Solutions for Your Real Life

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Marketers should have one ally in the sales department. If you work for a company of, say, 200 people and don’t have the ear of one front-line salesperson, then change that. Find that salesperson and buy them a cup of coffee or lunch. Get to know their problems and some of their successes out in the field.

They’ll give you insights into your customers you won’t get from sitting back at the office.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, I’m on a limited budget. Should I send out one expensive promotion or several cheap ones?

It’s a great question – and a perennial marketing conundrum. Those of you who’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point are familiar with his explanation of Stickiness. One of the case studies mentioned prominently in the book was Lester Wunderman’s use of a gold box in a promotion for Columbia Record Club. The use of the gold box – and the customer interaction with the ad, helped make the ad extremely “sticky”. It beat the conventional ads Columbia was using.

But how many of us are at Wunderman’s level when it comes to marketing? How many basketball players are at Michael Jordan’s? Not many, that’s for sure.

Yes, the world-class “sticky” package or ad is the goal. But, there is also a place for solid “block and tackle” marketing – the type that works every day to keep your company’s name in front of your customers. It’s why we suggest an ad campaign every week here – to help jumpstart your brain’s idea factory.

Enter Frequency. Frequency of good, solid communications with customers is vital. In direct marketing, like the Columbia ad, you often have one shot to snag the customer. However, in longer sell cycles, and especially if you market to businesses, the frequency and the repetition of the marketing message will sustain your brand in front of the customer until they are ready to buy.

Hey, what good is it getting a great promotion in front of a prospect that has zero immediate need for your product? Columbia Record Club was offering a rather ubiquitous product to an audience – millions of people enjoyed records. What if you are trying to sell IT services to a Network Administrator at a small company? You can easily be six months either side of his purchasing window. It takes one extremely sticky package to last six months with a client.

So the short answer – for most marketers there’s not a competition between Stickiness and Frequency. It takes a blend of both for marketing success.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

Trust is a key theme right now. Look at how most financial services companies try to portray trust – in a full-page ad from the president, or a letter from the president, or some other wordy (waaay wordy!) letter from an authority figure; usually a male.

Here’s a photo that builds trust. The young lady doctor/nurse has on the lab coat and stethoscope, so there is a bit of implicit authority there. But this shot is tinged with the other component that people need in stressful times like this – caring. See the two people next to the patient in the background? They are obviously taking good care of her and she looks reassured.

Imagine this as a headline/photo for any company that has a client base that might be nervous with the current negative economic news. Here’s a headline for an accounting firm.

Photo: iStock #3709313

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/3709313-young-caring-doctor.php?id=3709313

Headline: We’re On Call When Your Business Needs a Financial Checkup
Subhead: Acme Accounting – Taking Care of One Client at a Time Since 1985

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Surprised I used a “medical” photo for the accounting headline? Well, it’s not a medical photo to me. To me it’s a “Trust and Care” photo – and that’s what I’m trying to use to differentiate the accounting firm.

Use the right blend of photos of the hardware you use and the people who use it. Many times technical and professional people want to focus and highlight the machines they use in providing their service. An accounting firm may focus on a 10-key, an IT firm may use lots of zeroes and ones in their imagery.

A little of that is OK – it helps the customer instantly identify what you do. But too many hardware photos and too few people photos will leave the customer knowing exactly what you do – and not connecting how it relates to them. You need people photos throughout your marketing messages.

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, why do marketers need to understand Value Chain analysis? Why can’t we just write a super ad?

It’s simple: the more you understand how your product (or service) interacts with your customer the more effectively you can match company strength with customer need.

First, I recommend at some point in your career you go to the source for Value Chain Analylsis – Michael Porter. In his book Competitive Advantage Porter outlines the importance of the Value Chain. In a perfect world a company views Value Chain analysis as an integral part of its strategy. Senior management directs managers to map out contact points between Company Value Chain and Customer Value Chain and discover profitable intersections that provide maximum value to both.

But let’s face it – in most companies this simply doesn’t happen. You’re the marketer; you’re tasked with driving up sales. Senior management might pave the way by alerting other departments to the importance of marketing. But you’ll need to shoulder the heavy lifting of a value-chain analysis. Here is how to begin.

1. Read Porter. The Value Chain and his other concepts (such as the Five Forces affecting an Industry’s competitiveness) are valuable, life-long tools you can draw on. This isn’t a one-flight business book; it’s a serious text that requires some serious study. However, time invested in Porter provides solid returns later in a marketer’s career.

2. Start with your customers. Create a few customer survey tools and email feedback paths. Find out as much as you can about how your customer uses your product, and what they like about it.

Customer feedback alone is insufficient to create a solid Value Chain analysis. Yes, it’s important to discover how the customer uses and interacts with your product, but you must discover how the customer value chain connects to your company’s value chain. To accomplish that, you’ll need to…

3. Ask other people in your company. Find one or two key allies in the following departments: Shipping, Customer Service, and Sales. Glean information from each of them to help you understand the connections they have with your customers. You can then use this to your advantage, to match up Company Strength with Customer Needs.

And you can use that knowledge to start outsmarting your competition.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

I like photos with two people in them because you can write a headline that leads your audience to visualize the story in an instant.

Imagine this as a headline/photo for a paint store that is targeting women:

Photo: iStock #5282481

Headline: Julie, Will That Color Match?
Subhead: Acme Paints – We Know How You Feel.

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

If you are going to use kids, like in the above photo, then you must make sure it’s an appropriate subject. Yes, the ad pokes a bit of fun at males, but the product – paint – is non-controversial. It’s easy to establish a bit of emotion with the photo of the kids, since they’re cute, and you can bond quickly with the audience.

Unless you really are ready to deal with negative publicity, I recommend you keep kids out of your ads if your product or service is edgy at all.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, Any Tips on Trade-Show Marketing?

It’s easy for a small business to spend $5,000 – or more – to exhibit at a trade show. And I imagine many of you know all too intimately the pain of not generating nearly the number of forecasted leads. Low booth traffic is often the culprit.

Try this – before your next show, find out if you can secure the pre-show list of attendees. This list is an incredibly powerful tool, and is right up there with having an exciting trade show booth. With the pre-show list you can mail out a promotional offer to drive traffic to your booth. If your pre-show attendee list contains emails, then by all means send an email out, too.

Don’t be surprised if you have to pay a bit for the list. A moderate processing fee is common. A few shows turn the list into a profit center, charging far more than needed to cover the actual data processing and administrative cost. These shows may charge $500 or more for their pre-show list.

Yet you may find it worthwhile to pay even that much, if you are already committed to exhibiting at the show. Just remember there are usually several show you can choose to exhibit at. Next year when you do a cost-benefits analysis of which ones you’ll spend your marketing money on, factor in both the availability and the cost of the pre-show attendee list into your decision-matrix.

The physical make-up of the direct mail piece requires careful consideration. Simple and direct is usually best for a B-to-B mailing. A postcard, self mailer or letter will all work well. There is no use trying to create a full-blown direct mail package with letter, brochure, lift note and reply device. This specific sub-category of event-marketing promotion requires a brief, well-written format with an offer appropriate to the audience.

A Vital Tip: make absolutely sure you mail your piece out first class, presort. This is no time to skimp on money and mail it out standard (third) class mail. Don’t do it! Yes, I advocate standard class mail for general promotions: nine out of ten times standard class is your best direct mail option. Not now! The timing of the trade-show correspondence is simply too critical. Your standard class piece that is mailed nationally may take up to three weeks to arrive in your prospects mailbox, and that’s just unacceptable for a B-to-B mailing with a time deadline like this one.

The cost of every piece of mail that arrives after your prospect gets on the plane for the show is 100% wasted.

More on trade shows in another post.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

Here’s a photo with a nice age contrast. You can really feel the bond between these two.

Photo: iStock #6490887

Headline: Grandpa’s Almost as Soft as My Super-Tot Mattress

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

On reason I picked the multi-generation photo above was it really inspires trust and warmth right away. As the financial services companies continue to fail, their competitors in the same space are taking out full-page ads that tell how long they’ve been around. That’s great, but I think one photo like the one above would really go a long way toward making a customer feel reassured.

Much better than just saying you’ve been around since 1913.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

People ask me: “Craig, which is the most important of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?”

The FunMarketer Answer: It depends on what are you building:

Building a Brand? – Reach for the higher needs. Tougher, but more bonding to the customer.

Going for a Quick Sale? – Make it simple and aim for the basic or safety needs. (Greed and Fear work well, here.)

Does the above sound simplistic? I agree. Yet I find that I often need a very quick reminder, a re-focus of what I am really trying to accomplish with an ad or a campaign.

So I need to quickly ask myself what I am hoping the person who receives my marketing message will do. Remember it so she can bond with the brand? Then I better set up some type of internal resonance with her own storyline ala Laurence Vincent.

Or do I want her to pick up the phone or click on my online ad? Then I better press for a sense of urgency tied to something she needs quickly – a quick ready-to-eat meal for tonight’s dinner or a safe place to put her money so she doesn’t lose it in the stock market.

The beauty of Maslow is that he understands we are in a perpetual state of want. As soon as one of the basic needs is satisfied, another arises.

Maslow’s Hiearchy of Needs is used by many marketers. Most of us have at least heard of it. There are dozens or pyramids on the internet explaining the needs – and these are very useful for a quick overview. For those of you new to the concept, here is the original Maslow Basic Needs article.

Trust me: it’s worthwhile reading Maslow in the original, as you can get a nuanced understanding of his explanation of the needs that you’ll never develop just looking at a needs pyramid or reading a quick overview of the needs in a marketing article.

For example, you B-B marketers might especially check out Maslow’s Section III – “Further Characteristics”. If you target specific groups of individuals that may have common traits – sales-types and creatives, for example – Maslow’s insights in Section III may help you refine your message to a very defined target audience.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

Sometimes you need a photo that can pull double-duty as B-B or B-C. If you are producing collateral and some web pages that have to serve both audiences, here’s a nice photo:

Photo: iStock #2221205

Headline (B-C for Financial Services): Done Your Mutual Fund Homework? Good. So Have We. Call Acme Financial at 800-XXX-XXXX

Headline (B-B for Office Supply Store): Ready to Compare Suppliers? So Are We. Call Acme Office Supplies at 800-XXX-XXXX

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Remember Value and Trust. We are going into a couple of very tough economic years, and the “quick-fix” marketers among your competition will just hammer “price-price-price” in your customer’s face. You have to address the price question, no doubt. But if you consider to emphasize value and trust in your marketing you have a much better chance of winning over that new prospect.

And keeping that current customer.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, what is Data-Brand Marketing?

The FunMarketer Answer: The future!

For too many years, marketers were siloed into different divisions. “I’m a Brand Image marketer”; “My specialty is DataBase marketing“; “I’m a Direct Response expert”.

While marketers always will have varying strengths and expertise, the traditional walls that separated various disciplines are coming down fast. Anybody that buys Google AdWords knows what I mean.

AdWords at first glance may seem to be direct marketing – and it is. However, now that we are several years into Pay Per Click marketing we are starting to see an interesting phenomena: The power of a company’s brand can have immense impact on the AdWords campaigns you run.

If you have a well-known, well-respected brand in a category, then your brand’s name may actually convert at less than 1/2 the cost per conversion of a generic description. Here’s an example using that greatest of companies, Acme Widgets. Let’s imagine we are running an AdWords campaign for Acme’s ball bearing division.

Keyword: Ball Bearing
Keyword: Acme Bearing

If Acme is a strong brand, people searching for “Acme Bearing” may convert at up to 1/2 the cost and 2X the frequency of people searching for “Ball Bearing”. Why?

1) They already have an awareness – and often an affinity – for your brand.
2) They are probably closer to making a buying decision. Their search is more refined, as indicated by the more closely refined search term.

So now the smallest of companies can affordably combine Data and Brand in new ways to effectively market their products.

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

Most photos are fairly strongly skewed toward a Consumer or Business audience. If you’ve spent enough hours putting iStock lightboxes together you know what I mean. Here’s one I like that is versatile enough for either audience. And, if you are marketing to both, then you can use this to pull some good “double-duty” for your compmany. I wrote the headline below with a clothing store in mind, but it could just as easily be switched to a B-B use:

Photo: iStock #6289860

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=6289860

Headline: Time For a Wardrobe Checkup?

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Google Chrome was just launched and here’s how I use it so far. I often work with both Firefox and Explorer open at the same time, and jump back and forth between the two, depending on the task. I have different toolbars loaded onto my Firefox browser than I do on the Explorer browser. I tend to use the Explorer browser a bit more when I’m deep in AdWords, and the Mozilla browser when I’m writing in Google Docs or in my Yahoo or Google emails.

With Chrome, since most toolbars aren’t ready for it (yet) the top 1/4 of the screen is very clean. I’ve taken advantage of this larger screen space and have been using Chrome to watch video and look at photos and project proofs – tasks where the larger screenspace on the browser is a plus. One of Chrome’s biggest strengths is its simplicity and lack of clutter; so for now it remains my third-place browser for the most basic web tasks.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert

FunMarketer Lesson of the Week

Craig, why is Recency so important in marketing?

The FunMarketer answer:

Many of you active in small business marketing are no doubt familiar with the concept of RFM – Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value of a customer. The RFM scoring model has been popular among catalogers for decades. The Recency component of RFM is the reason catalogers like Lands’ End or L.L. Bean insert a new catalog in the very box you just received your merchandise in. Do they think you threw out the old catalog? Of course not. They know the Secret Power of Recency – that a percentage of shoppers are likely to order again quickly after leafing through the newest catalog.

Here is where many marketers fail – they don’t sufficiently factor in recency in their marketing. When somebody has just purchased, it is important to front-load your marketing to them. If you were going to send out one letter every quarter, why not send out three in a row, quickly, to reinforce the transaction they just had and keep you fresh in their mind. Plus, this is the perfect time for them to turn into a referrer.

How important a factor recency will be for your business depends on your situation; but it’s especially tied to your sales cycle. However, your competition is also likely bound to the same sale cycle, and if you are leveraging customers who’ve recently purchased and the competition isn’t, you’ll win.

So remember, Recency is a key marketing driver because you’ve just completed a transaction with a customer and a percentage of them are likely to buy – or to refer you – again.

Good Luck – and get back to them quickly!

Call me for more ideas at 402-423-2444 or email me at funmarketer@marketinghawks.com

FunMarketer Free Campaign Idea of the Week

If you need a quick ad for any type of sale, here’s a solid shot that’s not tied to seasonality:

Photo: iStock photo #5701764

Headline: In Case You Haven’t Heard…They’re Throwing a Sale This Weekend at Acme Furnishings

FunMarketer Tip of The Week

Direct Mail copywriters know the P.S. of the direct mail sales letter is critical to success. Many readers skip to the P.S. after reading the opening paragraph. This is a vital piece of real estate and the best copywriters labor over it.

You no doubt have similar opportunities in your marketing real estate that are similar to the P.S. position in the sales letter. These are spots in your retail space – or in your presentation or website – where you can strategically slip in a quick recap of the offer and a call-to-action.

So why not fill up a few of these empty holes with the equivalent of a P.S?
Can’t hurt to try.

Happy Marketing!

Craig Lutz-Priefert