Laurel Black Communications + Design

Marketing Insights

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Marketing Return on Investment: Why Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Marketing Return on Investment:
Why Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

As social media marketing has grown, so has an emphasis on quantitative metrics to measure marketing effectiveness has grown, too. Because online marketing gathers statistics so easily and so exhaustively, it has become common to define campaign success according to the number of Shares, Likes, Follows and such. Agencies cite these metrics as a meaningful indication that the marketing they created is working.

I disagree. The only true metric of marketing success is your bottom line. Did the person who Liked, Followed and Shared actually buy anything? Did they even click on the link to your site? Can you make a clear connection between a lot of Likes and a jump in sales?

The job of marketing is to inspire purchasing choices in its audiences, and that requires more than statistics – it requires an understanding of human behavior. Even children know that marketing depends on timing, presentation and the ability to be persuasive in order to be successful. (“Mom, can I stay up till ten tonight? Pleeeeze?”) When you have to rely on human choices to meet your goals, you are entering the realm of emotion. Tying success solely to logic and numbers won’t tell you the whole story.

This is evident when reading marketing how-to books. They say that in order to close a sale, you have to connect with or “touch” the prospect anywhere from 5 to 27 times through various media. This is because each prospect needs a unique number of encounters with your product or service to feel comfortable making a purchase.

So since everyone is different, how can you know exactly at which of the 5-27 points of contact any given prospect decided to pull the trigger? Unless you are targeting individuals one by one, you can’t. You can track some of your sales through tools such as coupons, discounts and time limits, but these aren’t appropriate for all businesses, especially services. You could try surveys, but often people don’t remember the exact moment they decided to buy or what the trigger was.

Marketing Return on Investment

So we are back to the pre-social media mode of serial testing. How it works: you develop a clear understanding of your target market, including their general preferences for getting information, and then you choose several means of communicating your offer to this group based on that understanding. Since different people look at different media at different times in different emotional modes, you will choose a range of marketing media, not one, and deploy them in a systematic way over time, not once, so you can plot general sales results against them.

As you continue your marketing program, you will hone your sense of what works best through looking at your sales, in addition to the numbers that show how well your social media are doing.

Taking the time to create and execute a marketing program based on thoughtful consideration of your market has a much greater chance of success.

 

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Features & Benefits: What Are You REALLY Offering Your Customers?

Features & Benefits:
What Are You REALLY Offering Your Customers?

Features and Benefits: What are you REALLY offering your customers?Whenever the economy goes through bumps and down periods, its progress will be paralleled by fluctuations in competition. Product/service differentiation is key to holding your own in the marketplace, so it’s time to get crystal clear on what your business really offers.

A useful way to do that is to use the Features/Benefits Filter. Buying decisions are based far more often on benefits, which are perceived emotionally, than features, which are perceived rationally.

Example: I am buying some shoes. Features: made of brown suede, 3” heels, non-slip soles and they lace up. Benefits: really stylish oxfords that make me feel competent AND attractive. The features (and price) are important, but what’s really selling me are the benefits. Without them, the features don’t move me and I probably won’t buy.

This exercise applies to services as well. Example: I need a will, and therefore a lawyer. Features: someone current on estate law, with a convenient location and a reasonable hourly fee. Benefits: peace of mind knowing that my affairs will be handled per my wishes, and I will not be leaving a big mess for my family. The benefits of doing my will are far more engaging than the mechanics of the process, so I will actually do it.

To sum up: Features describe the product. Benefits describe what’s in it for the customer. For your marketing to be customer-centric, and therefore effective, benefits need the emphasis.Try applying the filter to your own offering from your customers’ viewpoint – looking at it through their eyes will tell you a lot about how to adjust your marketing and better position your business.

A laundry list of product or service features is a big ho-hum; clarity about the benefits you offer will strike an immediate note. Lead with those and you will reap major benefits for your business.

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Understanding Your Target Market

Understanding Your Target Market
(Hint: They aren’t you.)

Understanding your target market It is a principal of marketing that in order to be effective, you must understand the characteristics and demographics of your market.

And that means knowing more than their name, rank and serial number. You also have to know what motivates them, identify their pain points and be clear as to why they should buy from you. Otherwise you will not be able to present your product or service in a way that will mean anything to them.

Every organization, large or small, needs to understand what its value is from the customer’s point of view.

The first step is to understand that you are not your customer.

But I AM like my customer, you say. We like the same things and have the same needs —- that’s what I’ve based my business on. What appeals to me is what will appeal to them. We’re on the same wave length!

Well, surprise —- you’re not them. What they value about your business is not what you value about it. The biggest difference: you want to make a living from it and they want to solve their problem. Those two points of view are very different. Example: you want to sell Russian nesting dolls and they want to find a unique gift for Aunt Martha. It’s up to you to find the connection between these two unrelated problems and make a compelling case for it. Your customer is not going to get there on her own.

One simple way to figure this out is to pretend you are the customer and observe yourbusiness from his/her viewpoint.

All too often, when you read a business’s ad,brochure or web site, the messages are entirely about how great they are and not about how they can solve the customer’s problem. We’ve all had the experience of going to a web site to find answers to a particular dilemma, only to be confronted by a wall of self-congratulatory text that must be slogged through to find any answers.

It is essential to get into the customers’ mind-set and out of your own. This is hard when you’re immersed in all the day-to-day details of running a business, but well worth the effort. In customer mode, you’ll be able to see your business strategy more clearly. Pretending to be your customer will help you identify the problems and build on the strengths.

Understanding how people experience your enterprise is a matter of business survival. Since we tend to become blind to what’s constantly around us, the trick is to cultivate fresh eyes and ears so you can understand how your customer perceives your product or service. It’s a free source of important information.

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Bigger Isn’t Better, It’s Just More Expensive

Bigger Isn’t Better,
It’s Just More Expensive

As an independent creative,

I work both as a solo practitioner and as part of larger teams. In recent years, the opportunity to create fluid creative groups has increased, making larger projects a lot more doable. However, there has been a lag between the expanded capabilities of independents and how some clients perceive them. Many of us are unfavorably compared to large agencies due to assumptions about their supposed greater benefits.

Big agencies project images of greater power, sophistication and resources. They also try to convey a sense of status seldom associated with small firms. I think retaining independents is on the rise because more and more clients are starting to realize the following:

Big agencies prefer big clients.

The status thing works both ways. If you’re not the client bringing in the most revenue, that can have an effect on how your project is prioritized. As more businesses are launched, those that don’t fit the ideal client model of big firms may not get the attention they deserve. The good news: there are also increasing numbers of excellent small firms who provide gency-level work.

Big agencies charge more to cover their higher costs.

Large staffs have to be paid regularly and require large offices with all the necessary support. Maintaining a large firm with a massive overhead is a monster that has to be fed constantly. That creative director you’re meeting with? He may make $100/hour or more, but you’re paying his firm upwards of $300/hour just to sit in the same room. And he probably won’t be doing your work – that will be done by a junior or mid-level designer who makes a fraction of the CD’s salary.

David slays the agency overhead Goliath

Big agencies are less nimble.

Large staffs also mean layers of management to deal with that don’t exist in a smaller firm. Because of their size, large firms tend to be less agile than smaller ones. This can be a problem given the rate at which business changes. Fewer people mean less bureaucracy and more flexibility.

Big agencies no longer have a technology advantage.

The competitive advantage big agencies once had in research has been erased by online tools available to firms of any size. Technology has made the monopoly big firms used to have on these resources obsolete.

The use of big agencies is being questioned for good reason. Responsiveness, flexibility, working with a senior creative, less bureaucracy, far lower overhead (with resulting lower fees), and a level technology playing field mean that you have a lot more options than before.

When it’s time for your next communications project, go small.

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Positioning: RX for Your Identity Crisis

Positioning: RX for Your Identity Crisis

Have you ever had a prospect ask,“What do you do?”

There are few questions that will send us into deer-in-the-headlights stuttering as fast. When it happens, we resolve to Do Something About It. But figuring out a short, compelling way to explain your value as a business is HARD. So it gets shelved until the next time it happens and another identity crisis shakes your world.

The antidote: Positioning.

Positioning is the strategy you use to develop your brand. Your brand is essentially what your market thinks of you, based on all the experiences they have had with your organization. The crucial difference: Positioning is done proactively by you so that your brand will be perceived the way you want. Positioning tells your customers what they should think about you, instead of waiting for the effect of brand experience to kick in.

When you position proactively, you give yourself a big advantage. To get started, you need to decide how to complete these four statements:

1. This is what I offer:

2. This is whom I can best serve:

3. This is why I’m different:

4. This is why that difference matters to my target market:

Your statements must be clear and specific no matter what type of business or organization you have. They will help you understand your value from your buyer’s perspective so you can explain it to your prospects effectively. When you are clear about your purpose, your market, your difference and your value, those recurring identity crises become history.

For example, if you’re in retail, you need to explain why people should buy shoes from you and not Macy’s. If you are a lawyer, you need to be able to say why clients should hire you to do their estate planning and not the firm their cousin recommended. If you do economic development, you have to show why a business should locate in your community and not down the road.

Positioning: RX for your identity crisis

Once you have your four positioning statements, you will have the basis for an effective response to “What do you do?” You will also have the answer to their next questions (spoken or unspoken) which are “What’s in it for me?” and “So what?” These are the most important questions that an effective marketing plan must answer.

Going through this exercise for my design and marketing business was eye-opening. I realized I could not answer the four questions adequately on my own, so I sought guidance from three awesome marketing colleagues whose work I respect and who understood my work and my market. They were also willing to point out when I was deluding myself or going down an unproductive path.

When you tackle these critical questions, be sure to engage the help of a feedback provider who is objective. You could start by consulting with your partner, trusted colleagues or favorite clients. And if you’re not convinced that your positioning is clear, it may be time to work with a marketing professional. I know how valuable the results are, yet how hard this process can be. I would love to help — let’s explore the answers together.

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An Overlooked Marketing Tool for Professional Services

One Sheet for Professional Services

Marketing a professional service requires a different approach than what works for other business categories, such as retail, travel, construction or manufacturing. The most essential message that professional services need to send is the importance of value over price. It is crucial to separate these two issues in the mind of the market. As more and more business transactions migrate to the web, the more that professional services will be compared on a cost basis only. If the long-term benefits of excellence are communicated effectively, desirable clients will reject the low-price alternative in favor of better service. As I have written before, the most expensive service is the one that doesn’t work.

The One-Sheet

One tool often overlooked is the one-sheet. This is a promotional piece that can function both on-line and in print. It summarizes your services in a memorable, succinct way that speaks to your target market and includes a direct call to action. This form is used commonly to promote and compare new products; the name, one-sheet, comes from its length.

A one- sheet is an ideal way to introduce people to your service and get the conversation started. It is appropriate for all kinds of services. It can be posted on your web site, sent as a pdf attachment in an email, or printed out and mailed along with a letter. It should inspire the reader to contact you to describe their needs and learn more about how you can solve their challenges.

What to Include

This is your opportunity to position your business by explaining how you are different from your competitors and what you can provide that is unique: why a prospect should hire you and not some other firm. The message needs to be brief, yet with enough information that the reader will want to know more. Stating a common problem of your target audience and leading with it as a headline is a good way to start. The one-sheet should be about the pain points of your prospect and how you solve them, not primarily about your firm.

Also important: a short list of the services you provide, your contact information, and a testimonial from a previous client who is thrilled with your work. Readers should be able to get a sense of not only what you do, but how you do it and what you’re like to work with. Good personality fits are essential to good service delivery.

The most important thing to include is a clear call to action. Too often this is left out because it is assumed that the reader will know what to do after reading the one-sheet. Wrong! Whether you want them to fill out an online contact form, call you on the phone or sign up for your newsletter, you need to ask directly. Marketing tests have proven that CTAs work! Since different people like to make contact in different ways, make sure you include three ways you can be contacted.

Your one-sheet can be used in all environments where you want to communicate your value to prospects.  It is a quick way for them to understand your services and why they should hire you instead of your competition.

Email me at  laurel@nulllaurelblack.com and I will send you the one-sheet I use for marketing to professional services.  If you would like help creating one for yourself, give me a shout!