Posted on
September 2, 2010 by
Preetha
More and more, marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. We are in a world inundated by information and interruptions, so more often than not, we are forced to ignore everything that does not matter or resonate. There is a good reason, therefore, why “relevance” has become a new buzzword in marketing.
So, as marketers, how do we get it right?
- Always start with the objective – your business, personal, professional or marketing objective. What is it you wish to communicate? What action do you wish your message recipient to take? Once you get this right (and refined), you can move on to the “How”.
- Based on a good understanding of your objective, you can now move to understand the audience. You need to determine carefully what the characteristics are of the person(s) that would or should be interested in your message (and objective – i.e. product, service or other resource).
- Once you know the characteristics, determine whether you have the right tools to segment your entire contact database to identify these specific individuals in order to create your target list or pool.
- Now that you have clearly determined your objectives and the person(s) that you will be communicating to, it’s time to focus on the message and medium/media of choice for your communication.
- Here’s the key to the message getting read or received – it needs to resonate. How do you make it resonate? First, consciously, put yourself in the shoes of one or more recipients. Clear your mind of you! You don’t matter. Only the individual who is about to receive your message. Now, write down some key points that will matter to the recipient. What are ”your” pain points? What will motivate or provide incentives to “you” to act? Make a list of 5 to 7 points.
- Now, you have the meat – the primary content of the message. Prioritize those points from most to least significant. Try to use the most important point as your subject line, headline or title to get the attention of the recipient. You have the raw material to begin crafting your message. Based on the medium of communication [hint: the more ways you communicate the message (provided you are not overdoing it!), the more likely your message will receive the attention you think it deserves], your entire message may be a couple of lines (e.g. on a targeted display banner ad) or a couple of paragraphs (e.g. a targeted email message).
- A few hints about your message – brevity wins over length, bullets work well to make a point, a couple of graphics or pictures catch attention and the headline/title/subject line merits time and effort.
- If you can, create your own small focus group – colleagues, employees, friends, family, loyal customers and test out the messages. You are testing for two key aspects – relevance and resonance. Did they work?
- By now, you should have the message(s), the targeted list(s) or recipients and the media. The last thing you need to determine is when and how often you want to communicate the message(s) through one medium or many. This too needs to be a deliberate decision by you. Put yourself in their shoes once again. Timing wise, what seems optimimum, how many messages would irritate you, how many would be too few to take action. Did that help? Now, you are ready to go!
Some of you may be thinking - boy, that’s a lot of work to create a message. But, think of the end objective. What do you want to accomplish? Who do you want to reach? What do you want them to do once they receive your message? The only way to success in this new world of over-abundance of everything, especially information, is to take the time to do it right upfront, so you spend less time wondering why nothing happened later.
Good e-marketing to you and hope you “get it right” always!
We are making our way steadily through the month and my list of “all things August”. It would almost be a crime if I didn’t write about the beloved classic the The Wizard of Oz. Unbelievably this classic was released 71 years ago on August 25th. Before I begin, here are a few fun facts about the 1939 classic:
- The movie was an adaption of the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
- The original Tin Man (Buddy Ebsen aka Jed Clampett) had to quit filming as he was allergic to the aluminum make-up.
- The movie was nominated for 6 Academy Awards (too bad it was up against Gone With the Wind that year).
- The 1939 version was not the first time the book had been made into a film.
There are several good life and business lessons that we can learn from The Wizard of Oz, but one I found extremely important is to beware of the “Wizard of Oz”. You know who I’m talking about, the person or company that promises the world if only you give them what they want first (in other words, a lot of money). Just like the wizard they hide behind a curtain of deception. They promise top Google placement, higher SEO, more fans, more followers, more customers and of course out of the world profits, but in reality they can’t deliver.
The good news is that you don’t have to be fooled. The better news is that just like Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Lion you have it in you already to make your business a success; in essence you don’t need the “man behind the curtain”. If you have a worthy goal like Dorothy, the courage of the Lion, a heart like the Tin Man, a Brain (or even half of one) like Scarecrow and of course worthy and helpful friends or partners along for the journey, there is no telling how truly successful you will be.
So, don’t be fooled by the yellow brick road. There is no easy path to success in business or life. You will make mistakes and trip and fall along the way, but therein lies great learning and growth.
So before you go looking on the other side of the rainbow, you may want to take a closer look at where you are, who you are and who you have around you, and you may find that you already had it in you all along.
P.S. Stay away from Lions, Tigers and Bears. Oh my!
Next on my list of “all things August” is Friendship Day. Did you know that there was a day to celebrate Friendship? And what the heck does friendship have to do with business? Aren’t we just supposed to be associates? I would like to think not. Friendship is way more valuable than association. Who of us can honestly say we’d like to limit the value we provide to or receive from our customers and colleagues?
Here are some qualities that I believe reflect friendship. I believe that these very same traits should be incorporated into our business relationships for the purpose of benefiting your business:
- You want what’s best for the other person- When selling or supporting your customers this should always be your top priority. If your customer believes that you really want the best for them, and if you demonstrate this through your words and actions, then you begin building trust and a trusted relationship. To say that trust (in any relationship) is valuable is such an understatement! If your customers really trust you, then they will also trust you with their other friends who could turn into valuable business referrals. This ultimately means more business success for you.
- Honesty and Integrity –This quality again leads to trust. Even if the truth hurts, it is always less painful than trying to cover your tracks or mistakes.
- Understanding – Do you truly understand your customer’s needs and wants? Have you spent the time to discuss their pain points and developed an appreciation for their challenges?
- Respect – It is important that you respect your customer’s time, perspective and opinions. This means listening and genuinely having a high regard for them.
The great author C.S. Lewis once said: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival. ”
So, by declaring every day as “Friendship Day” with respect to your prospects and customers, you are placing a very high value on your company’s survival and future success. Because in the end, friendship is always more worthy and significant than mere association.
This month, I have chosen to blog about events or anniversaries that we recognize in the month of August and how they relate to marketing. First up on my list is the launch of MTV.
Believe it or not MTV will celebrate its 29th anniversary on August 1st. Whether you believe MTV to be worthwhile or not, you can’t deny the powerful influence that it had in the 80’s and 90’s – marketing is all about influence.
MTV from its start had almost an immediate influence on what was selling in the record stores (do they still have those?). Record stores where MTV was available found that even if the band was not receiving airtime on the local radio station, if it was playing on MTV, it was selling. That is influence!
MTV not only influenced record sales but they were making or breaking careers. Once popular contemporary artists like Christopher Cross began to see their careers dry up because they did not fit the MTV core audience. On the other hand, artists like Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Tears for Fears and such had great success due to MTV. Thriller was obviously a great album in its own right, but it’s out of control success is owed to MTV’s huge influence.
So why did MTV have such influence and power? I believe it is because they truly knew their audience (generally 14-24 year olds). While they catered to them, they also created trends that were followed. They were not only influencing the music they were listening to, but what they were wearing and saying. Remember “I want my MTV”, “Rock the Vote” or “Too much is never enough”.
Do you know your audience? Are you having an influence?
It doesn’t take catchy slogans or even Madonna to influence your audience. How about having the right product for the right audience at the right price? How about having excellent customer service? How about talking to your audience and asking them about their needs now and in the future. If you can engage your audience then you can influence them.
Now I must end with just one more MTV slogan:
“Think”.
Email marketing is a wonderful communication and marketing tool. Email marketing can also be abused and overused. Make sure that you focus on your email marketing being the former rather than the latter. There are numerous resources available that you can tap on how to become a successful email marketer. Search online. Pick a random set of 5 or 10. You will get more than a few great tips on how to do the right thing.
For a change, I thought I would cover the things that don’t and won’t work with email marketing. Keep these in mind to as you discover and optimize this powerful communication medium. Or count on it to go from being powerful to powerless -
- Don’t send email to mass lists (typically purchased)
- Careful not to use mis-used/abused words and symbols in the subject line so you don’t get marked as spam – e.g. FREE (especially in all caps) or !!!!
- Never send an email that does not include an Unsubscribe link
- Does your content really matter? Is it interesting? Don’t send email without first putting yourself in the place of the recipient and assessing its impact. Do not send irrelevant, mass e-blasts!
- Don’t send email too often (use your judgement on what this may be – again, put yourself on the receiving end!).
- Never send email without some tests to ensure that links are working and that images look as they should – at least in the most popular email clients. Here are some of the top ones – Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, Gmail, Apple Mail and now a slew of Smartphones as well.
- Finally, perhaps most important but often overlooked, don’t forget this - have a CLEAR OBJECTIVE for your email. This will help you determine the recipient list (this may be a subset of all your contacts), the content, the subject line and a clear call to action.
More power to you!
Marketing Fireworks
This month we celebrated Independence Day on the 4th of July. And what would a July 4th celebration be without fireworks?
Fireworks and the 4th of July have a long history – they were actually used to celebrate the 4th of July in 1776 (all though the date they celebrated this grand occasion was actually July 8th that year). Of course fireworks are much older than our relatively young country. Fireworks have been used for centuries by ancient Indian and Chinese cultures for many celebratory occasions. King Henry VIII (1491-1547) even had a Fireworks Master.
Now that you have a few fun facts about fireworks, let’s talk about their relevance to marketing and business. -
- Fireworks like marketing/business plans can be dangerous. You can get burned! So, pay attention. Pay attention to trends and new technology. Pay attention to the shifts in your industry. Pay attention to your customer’s wants and needs. Most importantly pay attention to your competition!
- If no one is enjoying or seeing the fireworks or your latest campaign, you are literally burning money. In this economy especially, no one can afford to burn money, so make the right decisions when it comes to advertising and marketing your business or products or capabilities. May I suggest moving as much as you can from print to digital? Digital is much more cost effective and reaches a wider audience. Also digital methods of advertising are so measurable you can continually tweak and improve their performance. Also, take a serious look at what you can do with inbound marketing. Read more in this great post from Hubspot.
- Fireworks displays are generally short lived. They may be beautiful and get lots of oohs and aahs, but they really don’t last long. Some campaigns and plans may have shorter lives due to their nature and that’s okay, but every organization that wants to succeed needs a long term strategy and plan as well. So, have a long term strategy that includes short term plans if needed, but make sure you do make the plan. Remember, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”.
Having celebrated Independence Day once again this year, take some time out for your own brand of marketing fireworks!
This headline takes off on what I just read in UK’s The Guardian publication - How Facebook will take over the World.
In spite of complaints about it’s speed, searchability, and other features, Facebook is doing something right. Whither thou goest MySpace? And now Orkut may be facing the same challenges in India and Brazil.
So, Facebook is almost up to 500 million active users and expects to be at 1 billion users shortly. 500 million is equal to 22% of all internet users. Globally. That’s beyond amazing.
Not just individuals, but businesses should be using Facebook fan pages to connect and communicate with their customers and prospects.
To give you an idea of what else is going on in the e-world, here are some awesome statistics compiled by Hubspot:
- There are 1.67+ billion internet users worldwide
- 90 trillion emails were sent on the internet in 2009
- There are 126 million blogs today
- 10+ billion tweets sent since 2006
- 2 billion videos are streamed on YouTube EVERY DAY!
So, there you go. Any doubts that you should be spending more energy, focus, resources on e-Marketing….where your customers and prospects are?
My last post talked about Perception “Be’s”, which got me thinking about actual bees. Bees may seem way off topic for a marketing blog, but we can actually learn a lot from those little creatures.
Here are my top five lessons we can learn from bees:
- Bees have been around for over 30 million years. They have some serious staying power. Does your marketing/business plan have staying power and the ability to adapt to a changing environment? As we know the world is ever changing, just like in the wild, and those that can adapt will survive.
- Bees (in particular honey bees) can and do plan ahead. They produce winter bees to sustain the hive and protect the queen bee during the long cold winter months. Are you planning ahead? Are you keeping an eye on emerging trends and technology?
- Bees are unique. They are the only insect producing food that is eaten by humans. Unique doesn’t necessarily mean that your product has to literally and absolutely be “one of a kind”. Unique can mean remarkable or without equal. So have a goal to make your products and services remarkable!
- The way bees work together is phenomenal. They each have their roles, but one goal. That goal is to sustain the hive. Take a look at your organization and do you see happy and productive people working towards a common goal? Do you have a TEAM in the true sense of the word? If not, what can you do to change that? For some ideas to make that a reality, please see an earlier post of mine: Are your Employees a Marketing Asset?
- Honey bees communicate with each other by dancing. Here in our office we have dance breaks too. Now, not all of us are getting up and busting a move, but when we have great news to share or a big win, someone will yell “dance break” and we have a mini (or maxi!) celebration. We are truly a team, in every sense of the word. Are you a team? Are you dancing together and often? If not, try it, you may find that dancing does wonders for your organization.
Here’s to you being the best that you can be!
In spring, we introduced a turnkey solution for Reg E Opt-Ins that capitalizes on our e-marketing technology and addresses Reg E compliance for financial institutions in a highly automated (and thus cost-effective) way. Several have taken advantage of it and have received good results in return.
Recently, some of our customers asked us for recommendations on what they could do to further increase the rate of opt-ins or in some cases where initial results were very good but a perceptible slow-down was occuring, what else they could do. Here are some of the recommendations for revving up the rate of opt-ins at your financial institution.
- Disable ALL other display banners on your website except the Reg E banners for a period of time. That way only the Reg E banners are showing during a period of time.
- Add display banners for Reg E to your online banking , if not already there. (Some of your members might have your login page saved as a favorite or bookmark, and thus those members never see the main website).
- An initial Reg E email provides a boost when sent. We are starting to see our other customers start to send follow-up e-blasts to re-inforce the message.
- Last but not least, Inform and Educate - it will help to have an announcement on your site and a page dedicated to explaining what Reg E is and why members need to/should/will benefit from opting-in, perhaps in the form of a FAQ. The opt-in form explains some of that, but a more integrated and accessible page could go a long way to encourage members to click to opt-in. Plus you could include a button or link on that page, separate from the banner giving members another way to get to the opt-in form.
Perception is powerful. How your customers and/or potential customers perceive you can ultimately define the success of your business.
Perception is based on the insight and knowledge your customers have about you. So, how do you go about giving them clear insight and knowledge of your business, your people and its practices?
Here are some “Be’s” for you to follow:
- Be who and what you say you are
- Be responsive( especially if your customer is having an issue)
- Be approachable (remember, people do business with people)
- Be organized
- Be generous with your time
- Be proactive
- Be passionate about your product or service (If you aren’t, who will be?)
To quote the Army, “Be all that you can be”!
