Marketing Questions & Answers
Q:
We’re hearing “Test. Test. Test.” Exactly what should you test for in direct mail or B2B marketing?
A:
Focus on Big Things. Testing different stamps or paper stock will barely move the needle in determining effectiveness. It is better to look at major variables such as the products or services you offer, media list or publication, sales proposition, copy appeal and timing.
If it is a B2B product, the “value proposition” is requently synonymous with your overall product positioning. Testing a benefit driven headline or two can be very important. Additionally, you should be testing new product features and benefits as much as possible in determining the right ads, mailings, media, copy, formats and schedules. Testing can often start with 5,000 names. Though it is possible to work with a smaller universe and sample population in many niche industries.
Q:
What are the benefits to hiring a marketing agency?
A:
In essence, when hiring an outside Agency you should expect to receive:
- Better Ideas. Anyone can learn to work a desktop publishing system. But, making things work is another matter. We specialize in looking at a situation and coming up with ideas that make ads, brochures and websites work better.
- Planning.Though many clients do planning, there is often a lack of expertise in this area. We have the ability to make a determination on industries, competitors, markets and products.
- Interested, Objective Advice. Another important factor is the ability to offer objective intelligence on marketing. We work without bias, sacred cows or territories. We look at your product or situation with fresh eyes.
- Efficiency. Remaining in- house for a service that can clearly be done better, more effectively and less expensively outside is not a hard decision. Our fee will come very close to what you will pay in-house when you consider payroll costs (benefits, sick days, vacations), equipment, training, lost hours, false starts and ineffective solutions.
- Differentiation. It goes hand in hand with better ideas. Without differentiation (the quintessential difference between your product and your competitors) almost no advertising or marketing effort is effective. Clients often need Agency partnerships to bring this to fruition.
- Better Relationships With Customers. If properly conceived, your marketing program should build better business relationships.
Q:
Our management is taking a closer look at the marketing budget. They think it’s futile to spend money when the market just isn’t there. I know there are counter arguments for this. Why should we continue marketing in a down economy?
A:
Through past recessions studies have been done to determine advertising effectiveness (including direct marketing and promotion). The answer is always the same: marketing in a recession pays off. Here is a reference to support this. In a classic study by the American Business Press (Marketing Effectiveness Study, 1989-90) a commercial transportation component showed that a "medium" level of advertising exposure to end-users increased sales 80%. A "high" level increased them by 157%. And the same effect applied when current and potential dealers were exposed. Spending in a recession makes it easier to gain a greater “share of mind” from prospective customers. There’s simply more exposure for your marketing when your competitors cut back.
Q:
How can big challenges be solved by Great Little Ideas?
A:
Sounds paradoxical, doesn't it? Don't big challenges call for really big ideas? Not necessarily. In fact, we have taken this standard premise and turned it upside down. We find that our strength lies in our ability to use "great little ideas" to deal with big challenges.
One example is the "Little Meteor" program we developed for NetPrint. It started with an imaginative little dot above the letter "i" in NetPrint. It then grew into a new logo. This became the official brand name for the product (a line of office paper). Then our small ideas spawned new packaging, swatchbooks, promotional poster, trade advertising PowerPoint presentation and web site design.
Q:
To gain a new account we've made our presentation. How do we follow through to get the sale?
A:
You have made the presentation but the customer has not yet made the buying decision. It is critical that your proposition stays top of mind after you leave. Here is how one company made an impression that closed the deal:
- The next day the customer was sent a silver-plated piggy bank. Enclosed was a message about savings.
- Two days later he received a folding umbrella. The message was about service, "We'll keep you covered."
- Two days after that the customer was sent a decorative clock. The message: "Isn't it time we close the deal?" The third gift was the charm. The customer called and said "You really want our business, don't you. Come on over and let's sign the contract."
Q:
How can site reports help us improve our website?
A:
If you don't know what’s happening on your site, how are you going to improve its performance? When major advertisers run broadcast spots they check ratings data. In like fashion, for B2B, the Web let’s you gain useful intelligence with visitor activity reports from services such as thecounter.com and sitemeter.com. These sites provide ways to track visits to your website on a monthly or daily basis and give you a wealth of information. For example:
- Total visits
- Unique visitors
- Visits this month
- Visits last 30 days
- Time of day visited
- Browsers used by visitors
- Domain of visitors
- Operating systems of visitors
- Color resolution of monitors
- Referrals to your site
This information is available for each page in your site. It tells you what visitors are seeing and gives you a relative measurement of individual page performance. Unless you have a lot of traffic, you’ll probably want an invisible page counter that provides private email or online reports.
With accurate tracking information you can edit and improve your site. If you are promoting online, you can use these data to re-register your site with prominent search engines and fine-tune your positioning. If you are using traditional media you can make useful adjustments in your spending. A final benefit: you can intelligently rethink navigation and linking strategies in redesigning your site.
With this vital information in hand you can spread the excitement internally about what the site is doing for the company. If you want to get the support needed to fund improvements, proof of performance is a strong argument for increased investment.
Q:
We have been running our business-to-business advertising in plain black and white. Lately we have been considering adding color. Does this pay out?
A:
It depends on how much color you add. We recall past studies by McGraw Hill’s Laboratory of Advertising that we believe to be still valid. They showed that investing in one additional color did not result in readership increases. That is, the percentile increase in readership did not come up to the percentile increase in cost. However, going to four colors is another story. Four color reproduction definitely did pay out in terms of increased performance.
Q:
What's wrong with keeping an old address database?
A:
In a rapidly changing world your customers move or go out of business at a startling rate. Here is some useful info from American Business Information on what occurred in their business data base over a single year:
Names in data base: 10,183,000
Firms out of business: 800,000
Percentage of change: 7.8
With a list that is one year old, you are wasting nearly 8% of your
mailing investment. But in addition to the number of names that were
deleted, historically there are over 3 million new names on the scene
in a year. That makes a total change of 3,800,000 names –
a 37% turnover!
Q:
What are the advantages to smaller agencies?
A:
There are some obvious reasons why smaller shops can be preferable to big agencies, i.e. principals who personally work on the business, closer day-to-day involvement, etc. But there are other significant reasons to think small:
You get better creative. Consider that the best creative process will be
a couple people sitting in a room and throwing ideas at each other. The
big shops tend to operate by committees. And remember, a camel is a horse
created by a committee.
Small agencies are less expensive. Those who worked with big agencies can tell you about the waste of client money that takes place. Without massive overhead and unnecessary staff, small agencies can work for more reasonable compensation and offer high quality work.
Clients are important to small shops. The reality is that big shops can’t afford to handle small clients. If a client represents 1% of the agency billings, the people who work on the account will represent 1% of the agency’s salary pool. And you can figure out who they would be.
Small agencies make the client’s money go further. Small shops are experts at making small budgets go further. One way is by generating attention-provoking messages. Another way is by squeezing the most value out of media and direct marketing budgets.
Small shops are friendlier. The people who work at small agencies are generally warmer, more personable. That’s why they are there. They like the friendly atmosphere.
