The Marketing Plaza

It’s a new year and a new decade.  No better time to take stock of your marketing commitments and make some serious resolutions. Here are 10 to consider for 2010.

1. Commit to some marketing.  Really, any marketing.  Doing no marketing is called “going black.”  Occasionally there are legitimate reasons to go black, but not now.  The goal for 2010 is to get into the “Black” on your balance sheet and income statement, and that doesn’t happen by going black in marketing.
2. Test something new. Same old, same old doesn’t work.  It’s time to break out and try a new marketing vehicle, be it Twitter or a billboard.  It doesn’t have to be a new fangled social media outlet, it just has to be something you haven’t tried before so you can test its effectiveness.
3. Re-test something old. If you stopped doing print ads because they stopped pulling for you, reconsider the medium with a changed message in a different publication. For instance, move from a trade magazine ad to a consumer newspaper ad, or stop a newspaper ad and move to a biz journal ad.  Don’t throw the baby out with bath water.  Print ads may still work, just in a different pub or with a different message or creative treatment.
4. Go social. Yes, it’s time to do something in the social media world. Create a personal Facebook page, create a Facebook business page, start a Twitter account on a topic of expertise, consider blogging.  Don’t do it all, just get a toe-hold so you’re in the game and can talk the talk.
5. Fish where the fish are. Take a fresh look at your intended audience or market.  Where do they congregate?  If your market is on Facebook, then that’s where you need to be, but if they are meeting regularly at a club hall or in the back of a restaurant every Tuesday, get old-fashioned and show your face at the real-live networking event.
6. Rethink your audience. If sales are flat, is there a new audience out there for your old product?  The classic example is Arm & Hammer’s baking soda being reintroduced as a refrigerator de-odorizer rather than just a baking ingredient.  Does your product have a new audience waiting to discover it for their own special needs?
7. Get back to benefits basics. Stop thinking about what your company or product does, and remember why it’s important to a customer.  What do you really provide? If it’s tires, are you providing reliable safety or wheels that define a personality, rather than just rubber that hits the road?  Remember Harley Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles. They sell virility to men going through a mid-life crisis.
8. Get help. Marketing takes talent.  From writers to designers to media planners, don’t try to go it alone. You may need staff, but you likely just need an ongoing consultant, ad agency, or marketing service.  Get the help you need at the price you can afford. You can always trade up to full-time staff, or a more creative agency later. It’s more important to get started and learn what works and what doesn’t than wait for the perfect help to come your way, or for the day you can afford the fancy agency.
9. Start early. Marketing takes time. Brochures done on the spur of the moment rarely hit the mark. You want sustained sales not short-term sales. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder.  Give yourself and your team time to get the message and tone right.  Start now, in January, but don’t look for results in February. Look for results by the half-year mark, year-end, and ever onward.
10. Stay on strategy. Marketing is like exercise. It only works if you continually work at it with a goal in mind and a strategy for getting there.  So don’t start marketing in January and quit by February.  Marketing is not a treadmill.  It ‘s a path to the future. You should never get off it.

If you want help with any step, feel free to call the strategists at Plaza Communications and Consulting Group (www.plazaconsultinggroup.com).  We’d love to help you start the year off right!  Happy New Year to all and Merry Marketing for a Prosperous New Year.

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Is Shakespeare finally obsolete?  Is it no longer true that a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet?

In marketing, names are the brand, and not naming a company or product correctly can make the road to success all that much harder to travel. Given enough time, money and talent any name can become a household brand, but not everyone has the deep pockets of Apple, Google, Cher or Madonna.

In today’s hyper-connected world, naming protocols are all that more complicated and need to take into account Internet compatibilities among other things.  A new company, for instance, needs to be registered with the correct state authority, but if the corresponding name is not available as a url, even the best name can prove troublesome with online brand congruity.

Initials, once popular in the Fortune 500 realm, from IBM to ATT&T, are difficult for smaller companies.  Initials tent to be hard to remember, don’t help in SEO searches, and feel cold in the ever-funky social media world.  In the digital-sphere, better to have a name that means nothing such as Starbucks for coffee rather than initials that reek of corporate culture.

Unfortunately, small businesses, in particular, sometimes have to just get started with a less than perfect name and deal with the consequences later. But without the deep pockets of larger corporations, rebranding at a later date is not always an option.

The answer?  When starting up – get as  close to the perfect name as soon as possible, but don’t invest too much in it until you’ve completed your due diligence, which includes:

1. A check of state records in any state in which you think you’ll do business.
2. A check of available urls  in the .com arena.
3. A check of alternative url choices in the .com arena.
4. A review of similar names with minor misspellings.
5. A gut check on the look and feel of the name with not only company principals and close loved ones, but a decent designer.

It takes most people nine months, the full gestation period, to choose a name for a new baby.  Businesses frequently  launch in far less time, which can result in some odd or oddly uncreative names, frequently named after the business owner.  If you just want to send out an invoice, any name will do, but if you want to build a brand, get a marketing person on your team to give you a broader view of options.

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Is your company long-term greedy, or short-sighted for sales?
A clue may lie in your  definition of  marketing.

Great marketing, according to best-selling author Joe Vitale, is inspired. Perhaps that’s why most marketing isn’t all that great.  For most companies, marketing tends to be out of desperation rather than inspiration.

It’s part of the problem American businesses face, in general, with short-term versus long-term thinking.  In the short-term, the business needs a sale – badly.  Hence, a CEO calls in a marketing team to help facilitate a sale  NOW!  It’s what causes confusion between marketing and sales promotion. I call it Desperation Marketing.

Better marketing is long-term based — building reputation, relationships and community over time.  Inspired marketing draws people to a product, service or business because they want to be affiliated with what that company has to offer.

I recently met with a business planning professor from a local college to discuss business planning. He used to work for Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. He told the story of one of his mentors — a great Goldman Sachs leader of his time– who decided to retire a few years ago when the company became, in his opinion, too short-sighted. By short- sighted, the retiring executive meant ‘in search of this year’s sales.”  Goldman Sachs had been known, he said, for being “long-term greedy,” a positive attribute that differentiated the company for greatness and fostered  building long-term wealth over short-term gain.

I have no way to test if the story is true, but it rings true because this week Goldman Sachs is all over the news in terms of its outrageous bonuses for 2009. The company claims that its executives deserve the bonuses due to outstanding performances during tough economic times.  Even if  true, it’s  insensitive to the marketplace – defined as the rest of us.  It also positions Goldman Sachs as self-centered and  greedy – short-term greedy.

I’m not here to bash Goldman Sachs.  It’s just a story that was told to me this week. But, I am here to say:

“Think about your marketing and positioning.”

Remind yourself that, unless you’re a venture capitalist or a real estate house flipper, you’re likely in business for the long haul.  Use your marketing dollars and efforts accordingly.

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No matter where I turn, I bump into Charles Darwin.  Today, a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article on how the publishing industry has been affected by evolution. Then, I stumbled on a SlideShare presentation by another Charles — Charlie Hoehn, a recent college graduate making his mark on the world.  He quoted Darwin while providing his peers with job hunting advice.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It’s the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Is your marketing Darwin proof?
Is your business?
Are you adaptable to change?

Really?  I kind of doubt it because change requires more than just changing tactics.

Today’s marketing pros have to be true Change Management artists.  I’ll continue to argue that the fundamentals of marketing remain the same, but the techniques have clearly changed.  One by one, clients are finally admitting they have to learn how to communicate in the social media age, and want to go from 0- 100 in Superhuman speed. It won’t work unless the companies fundamentally change the marketing behind the communications techniques not just the communications channels themselves.

A TV ad doesn’t work in print. A print ad doesn’t work on a billboard – -not without some changes. They are fundamentally different medium and require different approaches within a campaign. The same is true of social media. If you are planning on just repurposing existing material on a social media platform, abandon ship before you leave port. The tone, value and approach in social media are all inherently different from traditional mass market messaging.

I encourage you to enter the social media world.  Just don’t do it without changing yourself first – from the inside out.  That includes corporate culture, marketing plans, and studying a bit of Darwin and Marshall McCluhan. After all, the medium is still the message.

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What excites you about your business?
What is exciting about your business?
What would make a client excited about your business?

These are three similar but very different questions.  If you can’t answer them, you’re not ready to market your business. Let’s take them in order.

1. What excites you about your business is your passion. This should be “why” you’re in business and has only a little to do with marketing.  A great marketing person can take your passion and turn it into a campaign, but that would be a residual bonus.  Your passion is your reason for being in business. Don’t confuse it with a marketing message. If you choose to make it part of a marketing message, do it consciously and for a good marketing reason.
2. What is exciting about your business is the value add it provides to your customers, consumers or clients.  It’s why they want to do business with you.  This should be a key part of your marketing message, but not a headline. This is a key benefit that people receive for being aligned with you.
3. What would make a client excited about your business?  Well, now we’re into serious marketing — how to reach a prospect and turn him or her into a client!  This takes some research, listening, intuitive understanding of how customers engage with you, and pure objectivity.  Here’s where Voice of the Customer research can really be beneficial.  You may think that a customer values your on-time delivery, when what they really value is your special sauce (if you’re a pizza place), your special gloss coating (if you’re a photo house), or your local take on the news (if you’re a regional newspaper).  In each case, I can guarantee that on-time delivery is important, but it may not be the key reason current clients do business with you, would recommend you to others, or future clients might be inclined to give you a first or second look.

Don’t wait to ponder these three questions.  Start asking employees, key customers, and anyone else you happen to meet during the course of the next day what they find exciting about what they do, what you do, and what they think others would value in doing business with you.  You might be surprised by some of the answers.

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