Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Timing Is Everything. Or Is It?
Recency is a media term that speaks to reaching the audience at the right time. Selling someone a car loan when they are actually car shopping is a home run. Selling pest control in the dead of winter is not.
Last year, Shell Oil increased their marketing efforts during the BP oil spill. The speed in which they got their message out was impressive, though some could criticize them for taking advantage of something out of their control.
In a much more recent example, this week I started seeing banner ads promoting Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. Given the news this week regarding Bin Laden’s demise, President Obama stands to receive a substantial boost at the polls. Is he doing what Shell did, leveraging current events to help advance his reelection efforts?
The ads might have been running for a while. It might be coincidence. It might be brilliant marketing. It might be too much.
Party affiliations aside, what are your thoughts from a marketing standpoint?
How would you grade your marketing?
As business owners we often get too close to our product, our operations and our marketing that we lose the outsider’s perspective. We forget to think about how the audience is going to react to a specific innovation or marketing campaign even if we think it is the best thing since sliced bread.
A recent example of being too close is a campaign developed by Drake University.
The campaign promotes the Drake Advantage “your passion + our experience” and “your potential + our opportunities”. The Drake Advantage was concisely summed up as D+.
Oddly, D+ is not something I would want associated with an institution of higher learning nor receive from any educational environment.
Drake’s response was they wanted something “edgy and intriguing”.
One thing is for certain the campaign certainly has people talking about Drake University, just not the way they might have intended.
Business owners need to take risks and trust their guts, but even the greatest ideas should be vetted with an outside perspective.
If we get too close to our own thinking we often lose the ability to think objectively. And doing so can result in a failing grade.
Is your customer experience your worst advertisement?
Sports Authority recently announced it is putting its advertising account up for review to find partners to “help define our brand and bring it to life with our customers”.
My first thought (and I wasn’t the only one, based on the comments left on the article) was that a more aggressive effort might only bring more people to discover a horrible shopping experience.
Many businesses are again focusing on topline revenue growth after making all the cuts they can. However, before investing in sales and marketing, are you sure you are providing the best possible product or customer experience?
Some examples of good advertising hurting a poor product:
- McDonald’s heavily invested in advertising to drive people to try the McDLT, which generated lackluster sales because it wasn’t a good hamburger.
- Kinko’s (now FedEx Office) advertising creates an expectation of generating great things with their printing capabilities, but the actual experience left you wanting for more, opening the door for Office Depot, OfficeMax and Staples to steal share. Even with new FedEx branding, the customer experience hasn’t changed.
The average grocery store trip is 10 minutes longer than it was just two years ago, indicating consumers are spending more time making buying decisions. With this in mind, make sure your company or product not only meets their expectations, but exceeds it whenever possible.
What are you doing to ensure you are providing the best customer experience?
Are You Telling Your Customers You Are Closed For Business?
A recent Ad-ology study noted that 48% of U.S. adults think a lack of advertising by a bank, retail store or auto dealer during a recession is a sign that they are struggling and thus make them less likely to do business with them.
Conversely, a vast majority perceives businesses that continue to advertise as being competitive or committed to doing business.
What message are you sending your customers?
Welcome To Smarter Marketing.
Economic downturns and uncertainty bring cuts and most of these cuts hit marketing because marketing doesn’t impact how you do business. Conventional wisdom now says that companies who market during a downturn come out ahead of their competitors because they kept their business known while others disappeared.
While that sounds great in theory, it is hard to practice especially when jobs or your livelihood may be on the line.
I suggest another approach – keep marketing, just make it more efficient and more effective.
Thus the reason for this blog – to provide thoughts and ideas that can help small businesses market themselves more effectively – without increasing – and often times decreasing – their marketing spend.
I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you in the hopes they help your business succeed.
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