Blog – Page 2

Party Etiquette: Does Your “Push Marketing” Need To Be Pulled?

Until recently, most marketing was “push” marketing. Advertised sales and special promotions pushed consumers to act; telling us when, what, and where to buy. Products and services were pushed into the marketplace with the goal of an immediate boost in sales. Branding was based on product lines, not on the company culture. In the last few decades, the internet has fueled the rise of “pull” marketing; a subtler conversation with consumers that invites us in as friends, rather than demanding our attention.

Here’s why “pull marketing” should be a major part of your marketing strategy.

Be interesting…

Sit in a room full of puppies or children and shout, “come over here, come over here, come over here.” Odds are, they will ignore you, or even run away. But if you do something interesting, entertaining or otherwise engaging, those pups or kids will naturally gather around you – and they will stay as long as you continue to pique their interest.

Target is a prime example of a retailer committed to pull marketing. Their commercials are bright and colorful – lots of movement and music and fun. Target is promising just the sort of experience that room full of puppies or children would run toward.

Build a rapport…

With Millennials (now the largest generation) and Gen Z flooding the consumer market, “pull marketing” becomes even more important. These digital natives can instantly learn everything about your product – and do a price/feature comparison between your brand and others in seconds. They already know how to buy, where to buy and what it will cost. You don’t need to tell them that. All you can influence is “when” to buy, “why” to buy, and “what” to buy – and you do this by using your marketing to build a rapport that pulls them in and builds a relationship.

Be genuinely social…

One huge mistake business owners make is ignoring the “social” in social media. They feel that the purpose of social media is strictly to get their own message out – to talk at people. Who is the person you avoid at a party? Is it the one who seems interested in you, the one who entertains you and makes you laugh – or the one who talks only about herself all evening?

Case in point: Wendy’s sassy Twitter exchange with a consumer who accused them of using frozen meat – complete with a mic drop ending – went viral last January and instantly turned Wendy’s Twitter feed into a “must-read” experience.

If you blast out posts that are the equivalent of standing at a party yelling “look at ME, look at ME,” you’ve written yourself out of the conversation.

Social media marketers follow various ratio rules, such as the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of your posts can be persuasive call-to- action pitches for your services and products, but eighty percent should be informative, entertaining, and sharable content. That’s how you build your brand, extend your reach and keep the attention of your audience. In Forbes.com, May 15, 2017 article “12 Of The Worst Social Media Mistakes And How To Avoid Them” the Forbes Communication Council wrote, “think of promoting your business as a “commercial break” among other content that provides value.” Yes, that’s a lot of work, but that’s how you get results. If your audience wanders off to talk to someone else at the party, you’ve lost your ability to talk to them at all.

Marketing has generally become more conversational and personal. Today’s consumers have high expectations and short attention spans. That calls for a fresh approach to your marketing strategy.

Cheers…and a Laugh!

shutterstock_510691372 A recent experience got us thinking about the concept of giving “something for nothing” and the impact that philosophy has, both on your business and on your clients.

One of our associates was planning a Saturday evening out with her husband. She happened to find a local comedy club that was offering FREE tickets to that night’s show, with no catch other than being told that there was an $18 drink minimum per person. This drink minimum was explained over the phone and was also printed on the tickets. While this couple usually opted for dinner and a movie or a play, they decided to give the comedy club a try.

As it turned out, the two-hour comedy show was very enjoyable. Over the duration of the show, our associate and her husband each enjoyed two drinks, with each beverage costing an average of $12. They left the theatre that evening feeling entertained and refreshed.

On the way home, they talked about the “gimmick” that the theatre used to draw them to the show that evening. “Would we have gone to a comedy club that we had never been to before if they weren’t offering ‘free’ tickets,” they wondered. What if the club had, instead, sold tickets for $18 per person to the show, but included a free drink (or two) with each ticket. The couple admitted that they would have been much LESS likely to try something new if this had been the offer, and would have most likely opted for their usual date-night dinner and a movie combo.

The psychology that the comedy club (which was completely full on that Saturday night, by the way, filled with “free” ticket holders) utilized was very clever. The concept they used is this:

People gravitate to and are more willing to pay for something that is known. In this scenario, the unknown was the comedy show. The couple had never been to this club, didn’t have friends who had gone there, and weren’t sure if they wanted to spend the money to try something different on their date night. The comedy club removed (at least psychologically) the “risk” of not enjoying the show by offering the tickets for free. “Well,” a “free” ticket-holder could conclude, “even if we don’t like the comedians, we didn’t pay for the tickets, so no great loss.”

And the $18 drink minimum? This ensures that the club makes money that evening, and probably makes more than the minimum because once people start drinking and enjoying themselves, they tend to continue. People are psychologically more prepared to spend $18 on drinks, which they are familiar with, than the SAME $18 on a show that they are unsure of. Net result for the company is the same.

The “free” tickets also ensure a greater likelihood of a full house, which tends to create a better atmosphere at a comedy show . The better the atmosphere, the more fun people have, the more they drink, the more money they spend, you get the thinking.

In the end, everyone won – the club, which packed the house and made money from the high-margin cocktails, the comedians, whose jokes will always sound better to a full audience, and, of course, the customers, who enjoy a few drinks while taking in a good show in an energized atmosphere, and the feeling that customers enjoy most of all – that they got a great deal.

Are You Who You Think You Are?

todo-list-297195_640-2 We recently experienced something new. A client, whose name is known to us locally has a business name that is similar to another recognizable business name in another city far away. We discovered it by observing a really diverse group of likes to the client’s Facebook page, a group so diverse and so far away geographically that something didn’t add up. Only after investigating the Facebook pages of the likes did we discover that many of these “likers” had erroneously happened upon our client’s page, thinking it was associated with that other business.

Product and business confusion aren’t new. Do you remember the diet/appetite suppressant candy called “AYDS”? They were successfully touted on the inside cover of Parade magazine and sold like hotcakes. But the discovery and naming of the AIDS virus was the death knell for the AYDS candy. They tried to change their name to Diet AYDS, but it didn’t work, and eventually the product was pulled from the market.

So, how do you avoid product or business confusion and what do you do when it occurs?

Be very clear in all of your Facebook and website home pages what you do and where you are located.
Be aware of other products with similar names as years so you can handle confusing correspondence, hits or likes when they occur.
Cull your likes. We know that people want to amass large numbers of likes, but people who have liked you accidentally are “unlikely” (pun intended) to become your customers, especially if they are based in, let’s say, Tashkent. It’s easy to remove people gently from your Facebook likes without creating fuss and without adding more confusion.

This lesson brought home to us the possibilities of identity confusion for all those one and two person physicians, lawyers and other service professionals. Often just advertising or marketing your business with just your name can allow for confusion later. So John Smith, MD would be better off to incorporate as “West Side Dermatology” even if he is a solo practitioner.

It may not be easy or advisable to change a business name, but purchasing other domain names that draw traffic to your more confusion-possible name may be a good solution.

Doing Your Anthropology Homework: Observing Teens during the Summer

teenagers Adolescents are a bit more visible in the summer. School’s out; college is out except for those who stay on campus. And they’re just around. Not all; some are traveling or working summer jobs. But, if you look around in the coffee shops, restaurants, on the roads and highways and hangouts, summer time is teen visibility time.

What does this have to do with you?

Do you have teens with whom you come into contact? If so, now is the time to surreptitiously observe their behaviors in their natural habitat or even engage in discussions with them. You will discover how this soon to be powerful spending group (if not already) makes buying decisions about clothing and services. They may not need a lawyer or a realtor right now, but they do go to doctors, they do purchase clothing, music and streaming services and they buy a lot of food.

Here are some topics you might want to ask the teens you run into:

What social media channels are they using and how often?
Do they plan to buy a car any time soon? (You’ll find these numbers very low, depending on where they live and their use of Uber)
How are they listening to music these days? (Itunes, Spotify, Tidal?)
How often are they using apps that you rarely use like Uber and Venmo? Have them explain how they interact with these apps.
How do they choose where to go for healthcare when away from home?
How do they pick where to eat or drink with their friends?
Have they been in downtown Detroit recently and what have they done there?
Are there any retail establishments that are still worth going into in person or do they do all of their shopping online?
How did they buy their books for school this year?
When was the last time they were in a mall? Which one?
What was the last movie they saw at a theater?
What was the last thing you watched on a screen and what streaming service did you use (if applicable?)
Can you name any broadcast TV show and what night it is on?
What was the last live sports event you attended?

Having these conversations gives you a snapshot of how this large sector of the population spends money and responds to marketing. It may not be relevant for your small business right now, but it could be indicative of trends you need to adjust to in the future.

Now go out there and study!

Managing Change in the Marketing World

change-948008_1280 (2) The one thing we know for sure is that change is inevitable.

Those practices and companies that can adapt to, rather than be fearful of change, will be the ones that can stay stronger longer.

Thinking through the past 20 years, consider how these changes have affected your personal life and the daily functioning of your business or practice:

Finding information in the palm of their hands. The personal computer is now quite old, but having it in your purse or pocket is not quite as old. If your business is not findable on a mobile-friendly site, you are losing daily possibilities of contact with future customers, patients and clients.
Facebook algorithms. First there was Facebook in its infancy, just for college kids to connect names to faces. Now you can find anybody, but more than that, ideas, events videos, jokes, good and bad news are all instantly shared. Many companies use their Facebook page to stay visible and relevant. Advertising on Facebook is still affordable, but Facebook is still tweaking how their advertising works and particularly how they adjust the “stream”, which means the posts that show up on your daily feed. So, just posting regularly is key, but the content of the posts really matters, too.
Evaluating new platforms and understanding their use. Do you Snapchat? Tweet? Utilize Instagram? Tumblr? Pinterest? How about your customer/client/patient base? Which platform is an appropriate platform for you? How do you master its use and utilize it to your best advantage?
What has happened to TV advertising? Everything and nothing. Having a great ad at the end of the NBA Finals, like Nike did, still can be an iconic moment and captures on high viewing events. But counting on TV watching in real time with ads is changing so rapidly that the Nielsen rating, advertisers and networks are still trying to come to terms with it. There are some fire sales out there and some good buys occasionally. Continue to watch the Youtube ad revenue increase and also keep an eye on advertising changes on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
How has Google searching changed? A lot for high income/highly educated searchers. Google searching has always been a moving target as everybody competes to be be found above their competitors. In addition, lots of small businesses and practices found a small Google adwords campaign to be an affordable way to get to the top of listings. However, many savvy customers now ignore the top listing, as they are onto the fact that the top hits in a Google search are not “organically” the top searches.
Adblockers are game changers too. Apple and Android users can now use adblocker aps that effectively block all sorts of paid ads, and only let through their paid ads. This means that your well placed ad on a website may become invisible, requiring two ad purchases: the original ad and an ad with the Adblocker service. Oy!

Understanding change helps your manage it. Your marketing team needs to understand how people arrive at your doorstep, literally and metaphorically. They need to understand how you operate and how you wish to communicate your core values. A good marketing team understands the opportunities that change provides, along with the pitfalls.

What has not changed is the power of word of mouth. For this reason, the best marketing plan still includes being excellent at what you do and making every interaction with customers, clients and patients as positive as possible. People have infinite choices when choosing all sorts of professionals and vendors. They will remember whose office was organized and polite, who answered their phones, who made them wait too long. And then they will tell their friends and family. And they might use different means to share their information.

What are you Doing this Weekend? A Macro Look at Marketing in our Lives

Photo by tradland

As Friday winds down and our glances and our attention wander to the view of the outside world, we begin to answer this question, “What are you doing this weekend?”

Have you ever thought about how we decide to spend our weekend time?

Let’s just discuss the actual “free hours”, not the hours we’ve set aside for chores or errands or even the family or social obligations, the graduation parties, the kid’s soccer game, the office after-work client entertainment. Let’s talk about what we truly choose to do, like:

Watch a movie or videos at home.
Play on a screen.
Read a book, magazine or newspaper in print or on a screen.
Attend a religious service or event.
Attend a sporting event or watch one on a screen.
Eat a meal or snack out.
Attend a cultural event.
Take part in an outdoor or indoor leisure activity.
Exercise.
Get together with friends or family.
Travel.

Have you ever truly thought about how you finally landed on choosing which of your precious hours you spent doing what activity? An honest evaluation would reveal that you are often influenced subtly by marketing even when choosing leisure time pursuits.

Ask yourself these:

How did we decide on this restaurant?

What made me go to this website? How much time did I linger on the site?

How did I choose this movie?

What keeps me coming to this club/church/political organization’s activities and why do I avoid others?

When I choose something to read, how much does marketing, the opinions of others or even the choices of a book club influence me?

Marketing is ubiquitous, although it can be subtle. When you consider how you make personal choices in your life, you can also step back to consider how others make business decisions, choose professionals to help them as attorneys, physicians, psychologists, realtors and caterers.

Use your weekend to recharge. But maybe spend a few minutes thinking about how you make choices and how you are influenced. It may give you insight as to how others make decisions to choose to do business with you.

Lemonade Stand Lessons

lemonade-stand-656401_640 (2) Did you see them? They’re back!

The lemonade stand is set up in your neighborhood somewhere. What leads to these oldest of pop-up ventures?

Kids decide they want some money. They need more I-tunes, to convince their parents to pay for Spotify or Tidal, they’re saving up for a trip to Sephora or the Apple store or whatever….
The only thing these entrepreneurs have to sell for free is their time and their pilfered lemonade making supplies.
The production of the lemonade is cheap and easy.
People drink more lemonade when the temperature goes up.
More customers are nearby as the weather is better.
Their visibility is their marketing.

Dang, those kids know basic level marketing. So, what can we do to emulate our neighborhood marketing geniuses?

Go where your customers are. If you are in a store or even an office that has nearby driving or walking traffic, come outside for a bit. Hand out samples (or lemonade!!!) or a coupon. Potential customers live or work near the businesses to which they are loyal.
Determine what you can afford to give away for the sake of marketing. A bit of your time? Some product? Printed collateral about your business?
Think about people’s changing needs in summer. If you sell boutique clothing, pretty soon kids will be in tow. Advertise charging stations or your Wii for the kids while the parents shop. (Hey, charging stations for the parents while the kids shop is good, too.)
Get outside in general. Conduct a door hanger campaign that requires you or someone who works for you to hang advertisements on the doors in a specific neighborhood. This is meta zip code specific marketing.
Join forces with the lemonade gang. Sponsor their lemonade stand for a day (I bet an even $25 would make them swoon) if they also give out your materials.

When the College Students Return Home…

The college kids are back. They’ve moved out of their dorms (except the California and Chicago kids, they’ll be home soon). They are in between spring semester and summer work or fun or learning. They are becoming quite the consumers. They’ve been spending money (theirs or their parents), making buying decisions and developing spending habits.

What are college kid spending and money behaviors?

They do have brand loyalty. It just doesn’t look like it always did. They may have gone hyper-local, loving the special food truck near their dorm and developing a loyalty to that vendor. Or they have a brand loyalty to a social media platform or an app (Spotify?)
They are beginning to weigh the trade-offs with different consumer products. They know Spirit Airlines is cheap, but they also know other airlines don’t charge for carry-on bags. As they are forging their ways to adulthood, they are trying to determine what their consumer values are.
They are walking the line between fitting in and being countercultural, iconoclastic or individualistic (but while still fitting in). It’s exhausting.
They love home, but they also find it provincial.
They are developing their political sensitivities (especially in an election year). They may have already volunteered for a candidate or given money to one or two. You may be receiving their political mail at the home address.
They are beginning to think big picture as consumers, trying to plan how to pay off student debt, developing good credit and handling more complex budgeting.
They are discovering the world of events: live performances, sporting events and the social scene and determining what is “worth it”.
Depending on where they are going to school, they are becoming consumers of household goods including new and used furniture, cars and auto insurance.
They are somewhat aware of health insurance, but happy to not have to pay for it or choose it yet.
Except for the most sheltered, they tend to know how much their living costs are and what their tuition is. They know the relative wealth of all their friends. They can tell you how the richest kids behave (and what aspects of that behavior they envy.)
They know the best places to shop for cosmetics, hip clothes, cheap food (especially pizza), and bus tickets.

Getting to know a college student helps you to see your own business through their eyes. Consider what would entice them to come to you.If you know a particularly articulate college student, it may be worthwhile to pick their brains. What would be the harm?

So You Want to Go Into Marketing?

marketing topics We often encounter college and high school students who are considering the world of marketing. Typically, they ask us, “What do you do all day?”

As marketing professionals, every day is different. That’s what great about our jobs. One day can be filled with a giant event for a client. The next day can be planning social media posts for a month. But, if you come to shadow a marketing professional or be a summer intern, you should learn to hone certain skills, including:

Be self-directed. Marketing requires constant movement. Clients need to feel you understand their day-to-day operations. There are constant fires to put out, and lists and lists of projects. You have to be organized, focused and thinking one or two steps ahead.
Be the best writer and editor you can be. You can hire lots of writers and editors, but if you are not an excellent writer, you will not be able to supervise those around you and demand their best product. Every email, every contract, every social media post, every blog needs to be error-free and on message, in addition to being catchy and the right tone. Developing proofreading skills and finding errors in your writing and those of others is paramount.
Develop an eye for graphic design. You may not have the skill set or the temperament to be a graphic designer, but learn their lingo about images, about fonts, about image placement. Determine what style matches various products and various clients. Study logos, their development and their usage.
Become a student of marketing. Spend time pondering how you interact with marketing messages, how you choose the products that you utilize, and even how you consume media.
Become adept at major software used in the marketing world. WordPress is the most used template for creating websites. Practice utilizing it, so you feel comfortable creating pages and posts and adding images.
Experiment with different software programs including those that deliver email messages and manage social media posts.
Play with different social media platforms and go out of your comfort zone. Create anonymous social media accounts that allow you to practice posting on various platforms.
Spend time with an event planner to understand the many aspects of business and social event planning. Often marketing professionals will need to have these talents.
Learn the nuances of crafting press releases and creating media materials.
Get a good look at a marketing client contract to understand the business aspect of the marketing world.
Sit in on a marketing meeting between a client and professional. Observe how the marketing professional manages to listen to the client and to determine their most important marketing priorities and dovetail that with what may actually be most needed for success.
Figure out what the metrics are for each client to determine a return on investment in terms of marketing dollars.
See what other skills you might need to call on and develop them or find people who have them. Marketers get called on to write speeches, make Power Point presentations, run brainstorming meetings, and develop business plans.

We encourage students of marketing to get some hands-on learning and are happy to talk to them about the ever-changing world of marketing.

How the Matzo Turned into a Tortilla: Holiday Marketing

tortillas In the final days of Passover, I needed some more matzo and headed off to a usually well stocked market. I got there to discover the Passover display seemed to have disappeared, although the holiday was still going on. I went to customer service and asked what happened to the Passover items and the gentleman said, “Oh, we turned the Passover display into the Cinco de Mayo display.”

Yes it happened, the matzo turned into tortillas. Some things were the same, really. The kosher for Passover for Coca-Cola has no corn syrup and neither does the Coca-Cola made in Mexico.

It got me thinking about marketing for holidays that are yours and not yours. When do we honor our clients and customers by recognizing the significant holidays in their live and when is it cultural appropriation?

Holidays present some ideal times to sell certain products or even have themes or decorations. They may or may not be appropriate to recognize on social media (would the post be inclusive or exclusive) and sometimes, there isn’t a great way to tie in to the holidays.

Recognizing the needs of your customers during holidays is a way to show you understand what’s important to them. So, mentioning that your party store has “lots of items for your seder table” shows an understanding of the phrase “seder table”. Offering longer hours during Ramadan indicates that you know that those who observe Ramadan aren’t going to want to be out and about during the day when they are fasting, but their nights are longer.

Not every holiday is a reason for a sale. At this point, it seems that Labor Day and President’s Day are sale days. We still find Memorial Day sales disrespectful (really, a day we honor our war dead?) and we even have mixed feelings about cashing in on Cinco de Mayo, but that’s because nobody understands what we are celebrating. Read our previous blog about Cinco de Mayo here. Likewise, we are not comfortable with MLK Day sales events.

Are any holidays universal? We often wonder. You can’t go wrong with a post about Thanksgiving, we know that, but it’s a fine line with lots of other times. Since posts reach everybody, you have to decide what the purpose of social media posts which mention holidays are. Is it to advertise your faith and cultural traditions, to acknowledge the diversity of your clients and/or both? Is there any downside? Consider these as you move forward.

And now, pass me the Margarita, Cinco de Mayo is almost here.