In the AdAge Blog section there is a great feature on the top 200 Brands based on ad spend. There were not a lot of surprises on this list for me, but check it out.
Designed by Marketing Degree, for information on the research, click here for full report.
There is something sort of obnoxious about being hit in the face with a solicitation the minute you walk into a store, especially at the membership wholesale clubs that cost money to shop in. I suppose it’s like television ads before movies; you’re paying to be there but you’re a captive audience, so why not try and sell you a car? Recently I was walking into our local club to buy diapers. I find the shopping experience at these large stores irritating, but that’s the cost of saving a lot of money on expensive necessities like diapers. I wasn’t but ten feet into the store when someone yelled to me, “Sir, would you like to learn more about satellite television?” I managed an uncomfortable smile as an acknowledgment, but walked past him.
The experience got me thinking about calls to action, and how weak the sales person’s approach was. If you insist on bellowing at me the second I walk in, why not ask me something a little more engaging? “Sir, can I show you how you can get rid of your cable company?” Or, “Would you like to save money on cable?” Something along those lines and it becomes a little bit harder to ignore.
Surprisingly, you’ll find this same approach in direct marketing campaigns all of the time. It’s darn near an epidemic with online campaigns, but can also be seen in print.
With integrated campaigns it’s especially important to have a compelling reason for your recipient to get online and respond. Asking a recipient if they would like to learn more about your product or service may not be the best approach.
Include a benefit in your call to action
It’s really easy to include a benefit in your call to action, regardless of the medium, offer, or product/service. Suppose you are selling an insurance product. Instead of “Learn more about Acme Insurance”, try “Let us show you how to save 25% on your premiums”, or “Visit our site to claim your personalized premium reduction offer.” Ok, that might not make it past legal review, but you get my point.
A lot of online advertisements and landing pages include the “Learn More” link. I suppose it’s just easier or somehow feels more user-friendly, or perhaps seems less “sales-ish.” I would argue that the risk of turning off some prospects with a more aggressive call to action is mitigated by the risk of boring the heck out of them and driving them into inaction or page abandonment.
Next time you’re planning a campaign, remember that “Learn More” is NOT a call to action. It is an invitation to ignore your offer, just like the sales guy at the wholesale club. I may actually want to learn more about satellite television, but nothing sounds worse to me than knowingly engaging in a sales pitch in front of a busy store as I’m trying to remember where, in this one million square foot customer-trap, the diapers are.
One of the more memorable Pepsi ads in recent years was the commercial with two truck drivers running into each other at a truck stop. The Coke driver and Pepsi driver bond over a good song and soon the Coke driver is enjoying a Pepsi Max. Once the Pepsi driver tries to capture the moment with a picture on his cell phone, the love-fest ends and a fight ensues.
It reminds me of something my brother told me when he was working for Pepsi making deliveries. He told me that if he was ever caught drinking a Coke while wearing his uniform or driving the truck, he would be immediately fired. I found this really hard to believe, after all, this is the land of the free. While it seems a bit harsh to be fired for drinking a competitor’s product, I guess it does make sense on some level. When you consider the millions of dollars most major companies spend each year on supporting their brand, why wouldn’t they be strict about protecting it?
At the Cupertino, CA headquarters of Apple there is a store just for employees. Every Apple employee, from the maintenance team to senior developers, are able to purchase Apple products like Macs, IPods and software for about 75% off retail. It’s not a profit center but rather a place to create and reward their greatest brand ambassadors, their employees.
I began to think about brand ambassadors this past week when I was trying to replace our cable company. I called one of the satellite service providers hoping to get more information about installation and how satellite TV services works. Instead, I was given an extremely aggressive sales pitch. The goal of the sale person was clearly to get me signed up to have a rep come out and evaluate our location for service. He said that the installer would come out and answer all of my questions before installing anything. Oh, and the only way that he could send a rep out was if I signed up for the service and did a credit check. I explained that before I had the installer come out I wanted to get some questions answered. No luck, it wasn’t going to happen. It was all or nothing. Now, regardless of their branding efforts, their millions of dollars in ad spending and what have you, I will always think of them as the aggressive, unfriendly brand.
Other than marketing, your sales team needs to be your best brand ambassadors. Knowing that they are probably in front of your customers and prospects most often, what are you doing to ensure your brand is being protected and represented well? Here are a few things to consider.
Emails
I am sure you have received emails from someone where the font is a script of some sort and it is in purple or red. Or maybe the email signature has a smiley face or seasonal graphic of some sort. This may be cute when emailing grandma, but they don’t reflect well on your brand. Companies should set standards for email use that apply to all employees with an email account, including the CEO and the shipping manager. Font styles, size and color should be consistent. Furthermore, the email signature should be consistent in style and layout.
Presentations
When your sales reps give a presentation, who is writing it? Many companies do not have sales support staff, so they often write and create their own presentations. Be sure to have a consistent Power Point presentation template for everyone. The layout, colors and general branding should be the same to ensure brand continuity.
Messaging
Similar to the last point, all communications need to be consistent in style and messaging. Be sure everyone talks about your product and service in a similar way. Letters to your clients and prospects need to include the same language, i.e. tag lines, benefits/features, quotes, whatever. A sales person once asked me to proof a letter she was sending to a group of prospects. The letter was on the wrong letterhead, used a bold-script font and had inconsistent spacing. It was a mess and didn’t look like any of the letters we send out.
Your sales team has one goal in mind, to sell. They don’t want to worry about branding, presentation styles, fonts and letter spacing. This can all be easily done for them with templates. That being said, it’s important your team is as passionate about your brand as you (hopefully) are. I doubt very much the CEO of the satellite company I called wants his prospective customers to be pressured and to have what can only be described as “stressful” sales experience. But if he does, shame on him.
CareerCast recently published their annual list of the most stressful jobs in America. While the study appears to be unscientific, the results are surprising. It appears that you stressed-out ad folks are in good company. The position of Advertising Account Executive made the top 10 as the number 6 most stressful job. I have been an account executive in a previous life and can remember the stress of endless cold calls, pitches in front of prospects that were splitting their time between me and a game of Bubbles on their Blackberries, and the monthly grind to make my numbers. But that was radio, which is a tough sale because it’s so hard to prove ROI.
I don’t want to take anything away from my colleagues in the advertising industry, but I do question the accuracy of the list. For example, the number one most stressful job on the list is an airline pilot. I get it – they have hundreds of lives in their hands on any given day, but what about the flight attendants? They have to deal with people who like to carry on three large bags then get an attitude when there is no overhead space. They’re on the frontlines when they have to enforce the airline’s ridiculous policies. That’s got to be stressful, yet they don’t appear on the list. Just in front of ad execs they gave newscasters the number five spot. The stress there is competing for the news story in a highly competitive field. But tell an ER nurse in a city hospital about being a newscaster and your likely to get an earful. Just like flight attendants, nurses didn’t make the list.
I suppose the reality is that all stress is relative. For me, I’d love to sit in the corner office instead of the center cubical, but according to the list, a corporate executive is the third most stressful job. That being said, I don’t like to judge other people’s stresses because I find most of the time they are self-inflicted.
So what is a stressed out account executive to do? You have clients that expect creativity from you and your firm. You have deadlines to meet, ROI targets to hit. Well, I don’t like to talk about problems without having solutions. Let me tell you how Structural Graphics helps to relieve some of the stress.
If you have ever worked with Structural Graphics, you know that we offer a complete turnkey solution. We take your direct marketing project from conception to delivery and even campaign reporting after that. Though we often work directly with companies, we also have many great relationships with agencies. We’ll make you look like a hero to your clients by offering high-impact print solutions, as well as digital assets like personalized landing pages, QR codes and real time campaign reporting.
Give us a call to find out how we can make your job a little less stressful. Your number one goal as account executive should be to prove a positive ROI for your clients. Let us help.
I once read that the majority of people believe that advertising doesn’t work on them. In other words, they don’t fall for the tricks of the trade. However, at the end of the day we’re still mortals who like pretty pictures, beautiful-looking people, flashy headlines and great sounding deals. So, as I was sifting through a stack of mail that my wife refuses to help with, I noticed two interesting pieces. Even though I knew exactly why they caught my attention, and despite the fact I have worked in direct mail for over a decade, I am no more immune to a well-designed piece.
The first direct mail piece was from Yahoo. The outer envelope was oversized and made of a nice glossy cardstock. It looked important. The graphics were bright and well done, so I wanted to open it and find out what they had to offer. I was a bit disappointed. I pulled out the contents and it was a single card, sort of like a buckslip only it was cardstock like the outer envelope. To be honest, I just opened it about 24 hours ago and I can’t remember what the card said or even what the main offer was. I was really surprised because it was clear they spent extra money on large, higher quality components, but didn’t deliver on the promise of the outer envelope.
What could they have done? I immediately thought of our Flat Book-Cube design. Yes, I am a little biased, but the Flat Book-Cube packs a lot of punch and offers a generous amount of copy space. At tradeshows and presentations it’s always fun to watch a person’s expression as they pull a Flat Book-Cube out of an envelope. Let’s just say, it commands attention.
The second piece was from Gerber. Since our daughter was born we have been getting tons of “baby mail”, but this piece was pretty impressive. It was a somewhat thick package and was also personalized. It had a little icon that represented the age category our daughter was in. This level of personalization is great because it lets the recipient know that the piece will be relevant. When I opened the envelope a large sheet of coupons for baby food was folded out. What made the package unique was the nutritional guide that was included. It was a tabbed guide with different sections that dealt with baby nutrition. All of the tabs addressed concerns we were having with what to feed our daughter in her stage of development, so it was really relevant and helpful. Overall, it was a nice package, so what was the problem?
Though it was a great package I think they could have made it even more impactful. The tabbed guide was really helpful but it was also too flimsy. When I ripped the guide out with the intention of hanging it on the fridge, all of the individual tabs separated, so it just became a pile of papers on our already cluttered appliance. I thought of our Reference Guides. They are generally made with a heavier stock and can include any number of tabs that flip or pull out. It’s a sturdy piece that offers tons of copy space and design flexibility. Admittedly, the Reference Guide would have cost more to produce, but it also would have stayed in our kitchen for a long time. What would the value of that been for their brand?
Direct Marketing News ran a great article last week on the effectiveness of combining direct mail with digital solutions to create an integrated campaign. The article uses the TruGreen integrated campaign as a case study, but the message in the article is well known amongst marketers.
“Effective direct marketers understand, support and leverage an integrated approach for customer acquisition,” says Chris Nolan, cofounder and president of direct marketing agency Mercury121. “Direct mail will always be a leading channel for customer acquisition. With marketers now able to layer on the interactive elements which drive prospects to the Web and personalized content, they’re bound to see a boost in response and the conversion of their top prospects.”
A true integrated campaign allows you to combine a few of our favorite things! There’s a high-impact direct mail piece, well designed landing pages to capture response, and of course, QR Codes or Personalized URLs to engage the recipient.
To learn more about our integrated campaigns click here.
“Web bait” is a popular term amongst webmasters and search engine professionals. As the term suggests, web bait is anything you add to your site to attract visitors. It may be a provocative picture, YouTube video, funny article, or even a free download of some sort. The point is to attract hits and to get visitors to share it with their friends. This is a popular technique among blogs and other informational type sites. Quality isn’t the goal, it’s quantity of visitors. Since most sites like this generate income through advertisers or affiliate links more traffic equates to more dollars. For business websites the challenge is a bit different. The objective should be to drive quality traffic that converts.
In the last year few years we have focused far less on volume of web traffic and started to really analyze the quality of the traffic. We use various forms of web bait, like our weekly project videos, blog articles, twitter updates and case studies. Though we don’t expect anything to “go viral” per se, we know that our updates do get shared with colleagues and other marketing professionals. We don’t have gimmicky articles about some conspiracy theory, provocative pictures of Brittney Spears getting out of a car, or even a cute video of a dog and cat playing together. We have content that is created by us and meant to be useful for our prospective clients. Those are the people we want visiting our website.
So how can your website attract quality traffic and prospects, and not the multitudes of other web surfers with too much time on their hands? Here are a few tips to think about:
1. Create individual keyword-rich landing pages for your individual products or services. That way people will find these pages when they are searching for that specific product or service. It will also help search engines determine the relevancy of your website and ultimately raise your rankings.
2. Offer highly focused whitepapers or case studies on your website. Require people to give you their name and email address. A relevant prospect should have no problem letting you know who they are if they want to read your content. Of course, it’s best to let them know you will not be spamming them or selling their information.
3. On your response forms (i.e. contact us, request more info…etc.) add qualifying questions. This allows you to grade prospects right when they come in. For example, if you provide a very high end service, you could ask a question about their budget. The response choices could start with very high dollar figures so they’ll have an immediate expectation as to the cost of your services.
4. If you’re tweeting or blogging, be sure your contributions are relevant to your industry and potential clients. Surprisingly, I find that many businesses tweet or blog about random topics that are not relevant. Their strategy seems to be to appeal to a wider audience, but this goes back to the point of driving relevant traffic. Personally, I like blogs that are a bit lighthearted and have a personality, but don’t stray too far off topic.
5. Provide enough information on your website to allow visitors to determine for themselves if they are appropriate for your product or service. Some companies don’t like offering pricing or anything too detailed about their processes for the public to see. I suppose security is a concern, but I think the benefits of managing client’s expectations upfront outweigh the security concerns, but you have to make that determination for your own business.
Though QR codes are not a new technology, their assimilation into the mainstream marketing world is in its infancy. With the emergence of smart phones and the ability of consumers to scan codes directly on their devices, QR codes have gained new respect amongst most marketers.
I can remember many presentations that our marketing team made to the sales department to keep them up-to-date on what initiatives we were working on. We would show them lots of pretty slides and a few mock-ups of upcoming campaigns, but that didn’t usually get us more than an “Oh, that’s cool.” Even when we talked about ROI and increased response rates, we usually just got the polite accolades of the group. Well, that and a buck will buy you a cup of coffee… and probably not that if you live anywhere in the tri-state area.
QR Codes offer an opportunity that your sales team is craving. Deliver actionable sales leads in real-time, directly to the sales person and you become a marketing super hero. In combination with a well designed landing page, QR Codes can quickly and efficiently direct your prospects exactly where you want them to go. Last year, an innovative financial planning company, TIAA-CREF added a QR code to a printed piece, which directed recipients to a simple landing page with a click-to-call button on it. When the user clicked it, they were connected to a sales rep right on their cell phone.
Even though sales will love the real-time lead delivery, there is something in it for marketing too. QR Codes are a proven way to bridge print with digital by guiding recipients from your printed pieces to an online portal. Once a prospect is online, the ability to collect valuable marketing data is virtually endless. Furthermore, it becomes much easier to generate accurate and comprehensive ROI reports.
Here are some examples of creative ways QR Codes have been used in campaigns.
These are great examples of how easy it is to harness the tried, tested and true direct-response power of direct mail with the latest web and mobile technologies. Leveraging them both offers your campaign the ability to capture responses on several levels and ultimately increase ROI.
So perhaps you should not expect your sales team to pour on the accolades when your new glossy catalog comes out. However, you’ll have the affection of a grateful sales team when you find your own innovative way to use QR Codes, capture leads and deliver them into their hands.
Need more? Check this out for more information about QR Codes and how to use them in your marketing.
I get a lot of bills in the mail. It’s really a fairly unpleasant ritual, going through my mail pile. I sift through it with great efficiency, looking to separate that which is necessary to keep, that which might be worth keeping, and that which can go right into the recycling bin (I try to do my part for the environment, too).
Those plain little letter sized envelopes with anonymous return addresses from somewhere in the Midwest…I assume they are bills, so they automatically get placed into the “must keep” pile. They all survive the first cut. Guess who knows this…the people who send them. They know I will think it’s a bill, and that’s one reason why they send their information in this way (besides that fact that it’s cheap). At least, that’s what I believe.
Anyway, once I have done my civic duty and placed the unwanted ‘junk’ where it belongs, I look at the stuff that I find interesting (because I really don’t want to ruin my day just yet by looking at the fuel oil bill for my house). I may spend a little time flipping through a cool catalogue, and maybe looking at some kind of coupon offer made by my local purveyor of “whatever”. Eventually, though I get my courage up and begin slicing open my “bills”.
It’s not a painless experience. I want to get it over with as quickly as possible. I make sure to open them all at once, plowing through the envelopes with a letter-opener. Once they are all open, I take them all out of their respective envelopes, put the envelopes in a pile (also meant for the recycle bin), and begin the gruesome task of looking at how well I have lived for the last month, knowing and regretting the fact that I now have to pay the fiddler.
But, wait! As I thumb through the pile, I find (much to my relief) that half of the stuff in my “bill” pile is not bills at all. They are actually marketing offers! I am not only relieved, but excited!! Why am I excited? Because I have fewer bills than I thought (for the moment)! Then, my emotions turn again…this time to disdain. Disdain for these marketers who attempted to trick me into looking at their offers by making me think that their communication was something that I needed to look at…or else! Do you know what I do with these “interlopers”? Not only do I NOT read on to find out what a great offer has come my way, I throw them in the trash! They aren’t even worthy of the time it takes me to bring them to the garage. Trickery is no way to get people to do business with you. Neither is cheapness.
I don’t know about you, but when it comes to receiving mail, I actually appreciate the thought and creativity that people put into their messaging. Not that many companies do it, but for those that do, it creates a positive impression. If nothing more, they have impressed me and I think more highly of them. I may even take the time to read about what they have to say and what they are trying to sell me. Structural Graphics can certainly help those that want to do a better job of enhancing that positive impression, for me and everyone else that they would eventually want to call a customer.
I was talking to my wife and her sister, who run a local bakery and café here in town. I told them what I was working on for our blog and instead of the usual “oh, that’s nice” that I am used to, I sparked some interest. It’s rare that my line of work shares anything in common with two talented chefs who run a successful small business, but today was different. My sister-in-law immediately reminded me about Boar’s Head. It used to be a 
highly exclusive brand of meats. Their ads were entirely focused on creating a brand image of exclusive, high quality, and different from what you get at your grocery store. “If I want Boar’s Head ham now, I can just go to the convenience store down the road”, she said. “It used to be a brand that you could only find at high-end delis.” Being in the food industry, she knew what she was talking about. She also pointed out that Green Mountain Coffee has a similar story. The brand used to be associated with specialty brands sold at exclusive coffee shops. Now you can find Green Mountain in your local Mobile on the Run, or McDonald’s (recently, McDonalds switched to Newman’s Own and stopped carrying Green Mountain).
So what does this have to do with online advertising? Well, in these two cases, the companies clearly sacrificed brand image for a wider distribution audience. That’s understandable, but with a brand, once you lose the foundation it is built on, you usually can’t get that back.
In the world of online advertising, attention-getting is absolutely everything. Rarely will you find a banner ad, or email sponsorship, or PPC (pay per click) ad that is focused on brand-building, not direct sales. I suppose this is because the attraction for many marketers to online advertising, is that you can quickly report on effectiveness. You spent X number of dollars on a Google Adwords campaign, now how many sales did that get you? That’s what most online marketers are concerned with. So how do you attract more sales from your PPC ads? Well, price, of course. In a very noticeable way, the rise of online advertising has trained consumers to become price-shoppers. Brand recognition may not always be top of mind when you’re looking at a group of ads on a page, each one promoting a lower price on their widgets.
One of my favorite blogs to read, TheBigFatMarketingBlog, had a clever article recently about the E-Trade “baby” campaigns. I think these television ads are brilliant. They are funny, memorable and highly viral. They also support a brand image that the company is
young, hip and uses the latest technology with online and mobile trading tools. However, our friends at BigFat don’t agree. Their argument is that the ads are cute, but do not drive sales. In some ways they’re right, but I believe that way of thinking is short-sided. It gives no consideration to their brand building efforts. The question isn’t, “How many people opened an account after seeing the TV spots?” Rather, the question should be, “Is the TV spot supporting their brand?”
To that last question, I would argue, yes. In fact, I received a mailer from E-Trade once, and I remember reading through the entire thing. I spent a lot of time with their direct mail piece because I had a positive brand image. If it weren’t for their brand-building marketing efforts I may not have been engaged enough to give that mailer a second thought.
So what is your company doing to build its brand? Do you rely solely on online or email marketing? Are you just trying to get someone to click on your ad? I hope not. If you trust your audience enough to send them a nice branded mailer, or run an integrated campaign including other traditional mediums, you may find that not all consumers are price-driven. You may not have to sacrifice your brand or even your bottom line just to attract more sales.
