Smart Marketing

A tip from a marketing consultant about hiring marketing consultants

As a marketing consultant, on the eve of the World Series, I was struck by the backgrounds of both managers for the opposing teams; JimLeyland of the Detroit Tigers and Tony LaRussa of the St. Louis Cardinals.

You see, many potential marketing consulting clients I meet want to know about my credentials. I tell them about my 8 years in the marketing trenches with General Mills, Novartis and Select Comfort. I tell them about how I led marketing teams on such consumer brands as Honey Nut Cheerios, Bacos, Fiddle Faddle, Poppycock, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Ovaltine.

Then I tell them how, since 1994, I've worked with over 100 business-to-business companies and helped implement marketing campaigns for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, financial services companies, educational institutions and almost everything in between. But for some of them, my credentials aren't enough. They have their eye on another marketing consultant who has more experience or better credentials.

To them I say; look at Jim Leyland and Tony LaRussa's credentials. JimLeyland was never a major league baseball player, having been cut by the Tigers as a minor league catcher. Tony LaRussa hit just .199 in a 6 year career with 4 different teams.

You see, I think the lesson for all marketing consultants out there is this: it matters less about your credentials and more about your performance. If you are able to focus an organization's marketing efforts and lead them to incremental progress, that will spell success for your clients.

All the rest of it is just window dressing.

Internal marketing tip - Never tire of stating your marketing objectives

I just lunched with an old friend of mine who I worked with in General Mills'  marketing department. As we told war stories back and forth, one of his stuck in my mind.

It seems that as a matter of course, during a year long stint in the Betty Crocker division, each staff meeting he attended began with everyone in the room reviewing the annual marketing objectives. They would take the first 5 minutes of each staff meeting to read each marketing objective out loud and discuss its importantce. After 5 minutes of this, they then launched into their meeting.

Then, at the end of every staff meeting, they would again review the marketing objectives.

Some might consider this overkill, but so what if it is? In my opinion, marketing's feverish pace and the distraction bombardment we are all under ("maybe these spam emails are right and I should look at refinancing my mortgage") makes this a perfectly justified practice.

Good marketing is done with the end in mind (stolen from Steven Covey), so one of the most important things a marketing group can do is keep those "ends" in mind. 

What do you think? Was this internal marketing tactic overkill?

If you want to learn more tips and tricks for implementing your marketing efforts, take a look at my book Stand Out from the Crowd. It has a whole chapter called "How to Successfully Implement any Marketing Effort".

The basics on marketing copywriting; An interview with Rick Holton

I recently caught up with marketing copywriter Rick Holton to ask him some questions about how to effectively write marketing copy. Listen to what he says:

Why is writing so important to a business’s marketing efforts?

People don’t respond to messages they can’t understand or that don’t apply to them. Because you have only a few seconds to catch and hold a reader’s attention, your marketing writing will succeed if you:

•  Write clearly and get straight to the point

• Make it clear why your product or service is important to the reader

• Look at the issue frfom the reader's point of view, and

• Use format effectively.

 
What are the most common mistakes businesses make when writing their marketing copy? How can they be avoided in the future?

 The single most common mistake small businesses make is not planning adequately. Before marketing their goods or services, they must identify what it is they are really selling, who their target market is, and what motivates that audience. It’s difficult to persuade someone if you don’t know what motivates them.

This sounds obvious, but I learned it myself the hard way. I started out by thinking that I was selling just writing services, although I occasionally sold training services to get my foot in the door. It turned out, however, that companies started inviting me back, not to write, but to do more training, and I realized I was missing out by not promoting my training services better.

I also thought that my biggest target market would be engineering firms, since their writing is often difficult to read, especially for the layman. It turned out that 90 percent of them didn’t know they had a problem and that most of the rest thought it wasn’t worth spending money to fix. I was selling to people who were almost never going to buy.

You can avoid the mistakes I made by writing a marketing plan and doing enough research up front to segment your target market and find out what motivates them.

If businesses address these issues, what can they reasonably expect?

 If you plan carefully before you start writing marketing copy, your marketing copy will improve dramatically. This is all the more important for a small business that doesn’t have a team of dedicated marketing professionals on staff.

 
In your opinion, who was the best marketer of all time?

My former business partner, Gaile Haessly would definitely get my vote . She wrote our marketing plan, she helped me refine our marketing mix, and most importantly, she put everything on a timeline, both the easy things and the hard things, and she made sure we did them.

 
Did she know everything a small business needed to have in its marketing program? Pretty close. Was she a better marketer than Oprah or Martha Stewart or Genghis Khan? (choices put forth in my blog entry “Who was the greatest marketer of all time?”) Probably not. But great marketing, in my opinion, is measured by its follow through; and she was a master at that.

Rick Holton provides writing, editing, and training services for businesses, nonprofits, and government. He helps them craft better sales and marketing materials, web content, sales proposals, grant proposals, newsletters, articles and whitepapers. For more information, see his website at http://www.holton.cc.

 

 

 

Providing world-class customer service; The ultimate marketing tool

A member of my mastermind group owns an internet company that really excels at what it does. Recently, he came to me for advice on how best to communicate a changeover in the service he provides.

I suggested to him that he should communicate well in advance how the service was about to change. Then, after the changeover occurs, he should communicate again.

Well, my friend has gone above and beyond the call of duty. He issued several communications to his customer database about the impending change. Then, he held a question and answer session right as the switchover was about to occur. Now, a week after the changover has happened, he's hosting a teleconfernce to address any issues or questions clients might have about the switchover.

I was struck throughout this whole process how strong a marketing campaign this is. He has increased his communications with his clients (almost always a goal for businesses) and reinforced his bond of trust with them. Several clients have been more vociferous to him about these changes I'm sure, but many have chosen to remain on the sidelines, silent.

But he shouldn't take our silence as a lack of attention. We ARE paying attention; we're just watching with one eye.

I guess there are several lessons I've taken away as I watch this successful businessman conduct his affairs:

• We marketers must always find unique ways to communicate with our clients. If it takes a momentary hiccup in our service to provide us with that opportunity, so be it.
• Proactivity is the watchword for any marketer. If you want your clients to stay with you, you must be proactive in your service and communications.
• Always provide a "pressure relief valve" to your customers if your service is experiencing difficulties. Blog about it and solicit comments. Hold teleseminars and ask for feedback. Give out your email address and suggest others write in with their complaints. The fact that you offer an outlet to your clients is almost as important as the feedback you get.

In my newest book Stand Out from the Crowd; Secrets to Crafting a Winning Company Identity, I wrote a chapter on this subject entitled "The Keys to Delivering World Class Service" because it's an often overlooked part of a company's identity.

What do you think? Am I right in thinking this gentleman's approach is admirable?

Marketing metrics; The two numbers your marketing department must know

Whenever I begin working with a growing company client, I ask to see two marketing numbers. I'll get to what they are in a minute. But let me first explain why they're so important.

Too many companies these days want to measure the ROI on their marketing investment, yet they can't tell you the dollar amount they typically invest to get a new customer. Knowing this number is important because a company, once they know it starts to set expected returns for its marketing programs.

These same companies also can't tell me how valuable a customer is to their company, over the life of that customer. Instead of determining exactly how important a lifetime customer is to their business, they instead chase after new customers willy-nilly.

As a way of closing this lttle preamble, let me ask all the business leaders out there: Would you be happy to spend $1 to generate a new customer if your profit on that sale was $0.50? Would you be happy to spend $1 if your profit was $5? No and Yes. Knowing your two marketing numbers helps you arrive at a more scientific approach to your marketing. You're no longer just throwing a bunch of programs out there and hoping something works.

The two numbers you always need to establish for your company are cost per new customer and lifetime value of a customer. You arrive at the cost per new customer by adding up your annual marketing expenses and then dividing by the total number of new customers you acquired that year.

You arrive at your lifetime value of a customer by adding up the total $ amount of purchases, over the life of your company, and then dividing by the total number of customers over this same life (this is more work, but it's worth it).

In both of my books The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses and Stand Out from the Crowd, I devote chapters to marketing metrics like these because these days what you measure is just as important as what you market.

Who's got some thoughts on this out there?