Blog – Page 8

Retronyms: When something’s so retro, it has to be renamed

We love the term retronym. A retronym refers to something that was formerly called one thing, but then is replaced or updated in a way that it has to have a new name in order to be differentiated from its replacement. Here are some examples of retronyms:

Acoustic guitar: An acoustic guitar used to just be called a guitar. Then Les Paul came along and changed rock and roll forever. Now, you have to call those guitars that aren’t plugged in and amplified an acoustic guitar.

Analog clocks: These used to just be called clocks, until those geniuses who clearly hated all of the time problems from elementary school math decided that digital was so much easier. Presto! Analog clocks were reborn.

Desktop computers: Ah, remember when computers were only in geeky labs in college campuses. Then they migrated to offices and homes. Then, the evolution of smaller and smaller devices began, so the invention of the laptop meant that our old computers had to be called desktop.

Brick-and-mortar. We used to call these things “stores” in the old days. Now that e-tailing is prominent if not predominant, we had to back up and create a term that differentiated “real” shopping from “cyber” shopping.

English Muffin. Yes, in Southern England, it used to just be called a muffin. But the good old American muffin was so tasty and sugary-good, that it had to be renamed to differentiate the delectables across the pond from one another.

Manual typewriter. Duh. The term was invented after the electric typewriter was born.

Conventional oven. What’s so conventional about that oven? Well, it predates the microwave, so every prepared food has to have two sets of directions as to how to reheat things (and sometimes the conventional is still better…)

Forward slash. Before those long internet addresses, we just used to call that symbol on the bottom right of your keyboard a slash. But the intrusion of the backwards slash meant the invention of a retronym.

Corn on the cob used to be called….wait for it….corn until the popularity of canned corn required a retronym.

To Blog or Not to Blog: That is the Marketing Question

We spend a fair amount of time writing, editing and posting blogs for a variety of clients, as well as our own K2M blogs. Some clients want weekly blogs, others bi-weekly and some monthly.

Blogging takes a lot of work. Is it worth it? What does it accomplish?

There are few disadvantages of blogging, other than the time that it takes to write, edit and post.

But the advantages are pretty significant:

Sharing your vision with a wider world. You control the message when you create and publish a blog. This means you can write about a whole variety of issues, whether it’s your mission, aspects of your business or the products your offer, a current event that is applicable to your line of work or even something that just interests you. Not every aspect of the marketing world is totally in your control, but you do have power over the messages you create.
Sometimes more is more. Tweets can only be 140 characters. Facebook allows you more space, but only about a paragraph at a time will appear. A blog can be any length you want. This gives you time to delve into more complexities and nuances, whether it is explaining a new tax law, a novel treatment protocol or the intricacies of purchasing or selling items from clothing to houses.
You become the expert. Your potential and actual clients and customers turn to the internet for all sorts of information and advice. If they already have a relationship with you or are considering becoming your client or customer, then you are a natural place to point and click to get useful information. Your website then becomes a respected resource.
You draw people to your website. You spent time and money creating your website. When you offer useful or even entertaining writing and then link it to your social media accounts, your encourage people to visit your website. They may even check out previous blogs or whole other sections of your website. You can utilize analytic tools to determine the actual traffic patterns on your website, how much time is spent on each page and even the order of pages that people visit.
Google and Facebook like original content. Google is becoming a more and more sophisticated search engine. One of the key components of the Google algorithm (what makes you findable in a search without paying for Google ads) is creation of new content, content that does not appear in other places. And Facebook is beginning to follow suit. Just because you have a great website doesn’t mean that people are necessarily going to find it or look for it. But if you publish a blog, especially on a topic that doesn’t have a lot of other people writing about it (like not March Madness!), you can often be on the first page of Google searches.

So, if you’re not blogging, why not? And if you are, are you blogging enough? Do the topics and writing draw people in? Despite the ubiquity of blogging, it is an art and it needs constant refining to maximize effectiveness and reach.

We are happy to help you blog your best.

Data Before Decisions

There are so many decisions that have to be made every day in your profession: decisions about procedures (medical, legal, corporate), decisions about personnel, time management decisions, figuring out the best way to navigate interpersonal issues at work and at home, thinking about tax implications and paying for taxes, and of course, marketing decisions.

Too often, we are tempted to make marketing decisions based on a hunch. We would never pay our taxes on a hunch or start a patient’s medication on a hunch or file an appeal on a hunch or list a house’s price on a hunch or start a new product line on a hunch. But, we sometimes mistakenly feel that marketing is amorphous.

Yet, the tools are readily available to use good data to drive better decisions, even in marketing.

Perhaps, the most important question you and your marketing professional need to have answered is this:

What marketing are we currently doing ?

How do you find this out? Make a list of every marketing tool you currently are employing like:

listings in phone books and directories
online listings
your appearances (or your staff members’) at community and trade events (health fairs, business networking opportunities, community and residential boards and committees, professional organizations and conferences, charitable events)
a review of how you communicate with your clients throughout the year (do you send calendars, holiday cards, newsletters, coupons?)
an inventory of promotional material items you have purchased and produced, how many of these you have distributed and through what means (this spans the spectrum, everything from pens with your name on it all the way to professional brochures)
a record of your electronic presence including website(s), social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, linkedin and Google+ accounts

The second follow up question, equal in importance to the first is this:

How effective is our current marketing?

Here is where data should be the driver. You shouldn’t just be guessing “people seem to like our website”, “I put a lot of time into Facebook”, “I have run out of pens with our name on it”, or “Does anybody use the Yellow Pages anymore?” Your marketing professional and you need to be sure that you are evaluating all of your marketing efforts with as much data as possible. Together, you should be able to figure out the following:

Do I have a reliable system that everybody uses who engages with new customers to determine how they found out about us? What is that data? What does it show me?
How many potential clients did you come into contact with at each community event? Did any of those contacts transform into future business?
If you have a dedicated phone line attached to a Yellow Page ad, how many calls come in on that line? Do the phone calls turn into legitimate business?
How much does my online listing and online advertising cost me (per click, per month?) and how many people are becoming customers, clients or patients?
What is my “reach” on my social media accounts? How many people engage with what is posted? Do they click on links to my website?
Can I figure out from my new customer data if new commercials or advertisements are effective? Are they targeting the right people? Do we need to make changes?
How do people traverse on my website? Which pages do they linger on? Which pages get the least amount of traffic? Is there a discernible pattern of how people interact with my website?
How does my marketing budget and my marketing output compare with my competition?
How do we track the effectiveness of client communication like newsletters or gifts? How can we figure out how these are received and if they are servicing our brand? Are they cost effective?

If We Were in Charge of Marketing Fruits and Vegetables

We understand that there is a true, non-ironic marketing campaign for fruits and vegetables.

We think that is noteworthy. Broccoli and kale deserve as much marketing firepower as Dorito’s and diet Coke. We are also glad that we are not in charge of the marketing. After putting vegetables into every dinner through dressing them up, subterfuge, exhorting their healthiness and just nagging, we are glad to be out of the marketing veggie campaign.

In fact, we have gone the other way. We have taken a turn towards the dark side. We have come up with the anti-marketing for some of our favorite foods. Do you think these taglines have legs?

Cauliflower: It’s good for you and it makes your house smell.

Oranges: A Healthy Fruit that is both sticky and non user friendly.

Kale: As bitter as family dinners can be.

Avocados: Even Though We’re Green, We’re Super High Calorie!

Potatoes: You can dish us out because we always have dirt.

Pomegranates: Don’t Wear Your Good Clothes

The Oscars, More or Less

The telecast of the 87th annual Academy Awards is admittedly not the same type of advertising blockbuster as the Super Bowl. They do, however, provide some insight into current marketing trends and some subtle and not so subtle marketing tactics. So, after the final credits rolled, what do we want to see more of and what do we want to see less of?

We Want More:

Lady Gaga: we always knew she had pipes, but wow, she did a wonderful tribute to Julie Andrews. Let her sing something at every awards ceremony from now on.

Now we really are wanting to see Glen Campbell’s documentary Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, which shows his life since his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and his final tour; Tim McGraw sang the final song that Campbell penned and there were many tears flowing in the auditorium and in our homes, too.

We haven’t been that interested in Birdman, but boy, those Hollywood-types seem interested in it, so we guess we’ll hunt it down.

Eddie Redmayne: British, skinny, beautiful voice from Les Mis, he’s a god. And he speaks well and loves his wife.

We might have to see Grand Budapest Hotel again, as it really was an artistic achievement, and was duly recognized by the Academy.

More awesomeness: Did you see all the cameos in “Everything is Awesome”? Devo, Andy Samberg, a possum, Oprah holding an Oscar made of Lego’s and the list goes on!

Boyhood and Still Alice also went below our radar but the winning actresses representing them looked pretty compelling on screen, even if Patricia Arquette is a touch goofy.

We Want Less:

Underwear: It’s a hard gig for Neil Patrick Harris, but we could have done without the tighty whiteys, (but oh, did you see his pecs?)

Memorializing: Have somebody sing while the names are being shown of the people who died; don’t make us listen to another sad song afterwards. No exceptions, even Lady Gaga (see above). Also, where was Joan Rivers in the memorializing?

Dakota Jones: She was so petulant with her mother Melanie Griffith. Get over yourself, Dakota.

Dresses that people trip in: If Jennifer Lopez can’t walk in it, it should be illegal.

Paying a Fair Price for Marketing

Many small business owners and service providers have trouble coming up with an appropriate marketing budget. They struggle with figuring out how much to spend, mostly because they can’t do the “opportunity cost” analogy. It’s hard to quantify how much future business you are missing by not marketing appropriately and putting a portion of those costs upfront.

It’s clear that small business owners and professionals value their own time. Most service providers and business owners would never dream of giving away their product or services and pricing themselves so as not to make a living. Yet, these same business owners and service providers have trouble envisioning marketing as a service and a product, and one that needs to be priced fairly.

So, consider some of these costs and opportunity costs:

Creation of new written content: Do you have the time to “populate” your website or write new, effective posts on your existing or nascent social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, linkedin)? If you don’t love to write or don’t have time to do so, then this is clearly something you should pay somebody else to do. Writing for websites and for social media is somewhat specialized. A reputable marketing professional can give you a good idea of how much time this writing takes and what an approximate cost for it should be.
Advice and input on graphic components of you work: Do you have an eye for design, an idea for branding or logos or a good sense of style or do your eyes roll into the back of your head when you’re dithering between slate gray and heather gray? The graphic design component of marketing is critical. Graphic designers have so many tools at their disposal to tweak a tired logo, they are up on the latest fonts and which ones are looking passe and they provide an invaluable service.
Assessment of past and future marketing plans: How do you know if your previous marketing was successful or not? Do you have any in-house tracking of how you obtained new clients and customers? Do you have any sense of the success of past ad campaigns, social media blitzes, coupons, corporate sponsorships or listings? Your marketing professional will be able to help you track the past (if at all possible) and make plans for the future that include real-time analysis of engagement with social media and development of non-intrusive in-house marketing research.

Marketing isn’t free, but the opportunity costs of not marketing may be very expensive indeed. It’s important to engage marketing professionals who understand your goals, your budget and who can provide the services that you do not have time or the ability to provide yourself.

Sweet and Not-So-Sweet Tweets

We love Jimmy Fallon’s Mean Tweets bit. He is able to catch celebrities reading fairly nasty tweets about themselves. It is a commentary on how hateful people can be when anonymous, and a reminder that celebrities aren’t immune to negative comments.

Fallon has captured the popularity of Twitter for lots of people who use Twitter in a variety of different ways. Some people follow their favorite entertainers (particularly comedians whose tweets are funnier than most). Others use Twitter to find like-minded opinions, searching through the hashtags as well as resources. Yet others utilize Twitter to develop a following and to create buzz.

Two Twitter stories from this past week:

One of our children had trouble with shipment of a coat she had ordered from a major department store. She got on the chatline and was treated quite favorably (especially for a 13 year old). She received an apology and a refund of the shipping cost. The next day, the Mom on her own Twitter account told about how great the store treated her daughter, including the store’s Twitter handle and the hashtag #customerforlife . The mom received within 12 hours a tweet back from the company, saying thank you for the shout-out and further inquiring about if the coat had arrived. Great use of Twitter.

A neighbor had a very unfavorable encounter with a third party installer of window blinds, purchased through a large national company. The neighbor happened to see the tweet of the CEO of the company, complaining about the poor customer service he was receiving as an airplane passenger. The neighbor sent a tweet to the CEO, saying that the airline’s behavior was nothing compared to how he was treated by the vendor. Within 20 minutes, the neighbor received a call from a representative and his blinds were installed within 48 hours.

So, the Twitter takeaway:

As customers, be aware of the power of Tweets. They might not make it to Jimmy Fallon, but companies are watching their @, and minding their reputation in the Twittersphere.
As business owners, you or your marketing professional should be checking on your Twitter reputation as well and should be checking to be sure you are answering everyone, your fans and your critics.

Super Bowl Successes and a Few Fumbles

Super Bowl XLIX is now in the history books with an exciting, close game resulting in the New England Patriots’ victory. Also victorious were the NBC execs and shareholders who brought in a tremendous amount of ad revenue. Here is our review of the evening (mostly in chronological order):

How does Idina Menzel do it? Great sound and she coordinated it with the Flyover…awesome!
The Chevy Colorado fakeout ad where it looked the like the TV went on the fritz had us going for a second. Good one!
Although we “sorta” liked the Esurance celebrity components (Lindsay Lohan, Bryan Cranston), we didn’t quite get the “sorta” branding. Were we having to think too hard, even though our brain was congealed with seven layer dip?
Kimsdatastash (TMobile) about saving the data was mildly amusing, but we kept thinking the hashtag would be #kimsubiquitoustush.
Speaking of butts, one of our daughters (we won’t name names) was following the Super Bowl,along with buzzfeed‘s list of the best butts in the Super Bowl. Bragging rights go to the Seahawks’ Earl Thomas III (#29). It truly is noteworthy.
Big fumble on the part of Nationwide insurance. They had a great ad with Mindy Kaling and Matt Damon (Am I invisible?) but they brought down the party with a strange ad about childhood accidents. Not only did most people think the ad in poor taste (and what is it actually selling?), but family members of those who had died from an accident were actually offended. The Twittersphere blew up right after the ad aired, overwhelmingly negatively. Hmmm.
We loved the BMW I3 with a throwback of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric talking about the nascent internet back in the day and driving together and grappling with the technology of the BMW.
Avocados from Mexico was an unexpected treat with the depiction of the first ever draft of animals to various countries.
A whole host of commercials were the heartstring tugging kind. Maybe we were feeling giddy from the snow day coming up the next day, but we weren’t particularly cynical about these, but we also thought they were, to use a so “last year” term: meh: So “meh” to Budweiser’s Buddy and the Clydesdales, although the dog is cute, “meh” to Dove’s ad about Daddy’s, “meh” to the Nissan ads (actually we thought these were actually maudlin, double “meh”), “meh” to Coca-Cola.
Moving on to Always’ #likeagirl campaign. This ad has already been making the youtube circuits for so long, that all of us who buy feminine hygiene products had already seen it multiple times, and every girls’ PE teacher and coach had already seen it. I guess the fathers of boys saw it now too. It’s pretty good, but so 2014 at this point.
Half time show really should not be a source of complaint. Katy Perry left nothing on the table, except why didn’t we get more of Lenny Kravitz? Bringing back Missy Eliot was awesome, and the fireworks with Katy suspended were pretty cool. If you have to suffer through pop music, at least let it be a spectacle.
What is #superbowlrally? There were ads for it, but what is it? How can you advertise something mysterious?
The greatest car ad (although Pierce Brosnan’s Kia ad was OK) was the Fiat ad where an elderly man’s Viagra (unnamed blue pill) bounces around until it lands inside a Fiat gas tank, expanding it (get it?), creating a hybrid with the tagline “Go a little longer”. Perhaps it was the alcohol in us, but it was clever.
Weird ad: With Jeff Bridges sort of looking Dude-like on Square Space. Again, like superbowlrally, what is Square Space? We’re admittedly far too lazy to figure it out on our own.
Perhaps the two best ads of the night were the result of improbable celebrity hawkers. The first was Pete Rose wearing his Skechers in “the hall” and being told he’s not allowed in the hall, even that one. A great way to be self-deprecating about his continued disbarment from the Baseball Hall of Fame and to include the audience in an inside joke. But, far and away, we love intense Liam Neeson and to see him with that intensity in the Clash of Clans ad was pure genius.

Marketing During the Big Blizzard

As I post this, a huge storm is bearing down on the East Coast. Back in Michigan, we are somehow warmed by the fact that today the sun is bright…even if it’s only literally 12 degrees…Fahrenheit, of course. There is no snow in the horizon, although there is still plenty on the ground, just not on the streets.

But, as I watched my social media accounts and received messages from relatives on the Eastern Seaboard, I noticed an extensive use of social media that was totally unpaid for by most businesses:

1. I saw a Facebook message about a well-known health food market with a picture of a line going around the block, filled with tired-looking people . The friend who posted described the store as “the Donner party”. Did not make me want to go there.

2. This reminded me of several posts I have seen this week from all over the country, complete with pictures of gas pumps. What were people touting? The cheap gas they had gotten, the location of the pump and any “tricks” to the cheap prices (Kroger rewards was one.) This made me want to go there.

3. Also yesterday, I saw a tweet with picture of a chicken soup being served for dinner at a friend’s house. The soup container had the logo from a nearby deli. The tweet mentioned the Big Blizzard and that they had all that they needed and the name of the deli. This made me want to make chicken soup or possibly purchase it.

4. I received a message from a friend about a new movie she had just seen and liked and she thought I would like it. She sent me the link to the theatre’s showtimes. I texted back with the movies I had watched at home on streaming Netflix this weekend. This interchange made us both want to watch more movies.

So, the message isn’t so surprising. Marketing doesn’t end with your marketing budget or even with your marketing professional. If the experience in your office, your store or your show is a good one, there is residual marketing. Of course, you can’t control the word of mouth…except to provide the best experiences you can and hope your clients and customers will tweet, message and post about it at some point.

The Three R’s of Marketing: Research, Research, Research

Continuous research has to be part of the weekly and monthly (sometimes daily) work for whoever does your marketing.

Research may not be the sexiest part of marketing, but without it, you might as well be sending bubbles into the ether.

There are different phases of research, depending on where you are in your relationship with your marketing partner.

At the beginning, a new client should be the beneficiary of research on not just the business they run but also trends in their industry. When the marketing professional and the client work well as a team, the marketing professionals “get” their client’s business. They understand the day to day struggles, they understand the issues that impede growth, they understand the challenges and opportunities. Excellent marketers can present information about a large scope of business issues, including current business communication issues with the office, how the office or business is perceived in the community and how much room there is in the market for growth.

After establishing a strong relationship, the marketing professionals still have research to do. Industries are never static, whether it is the practice of law, medicine, dentistry, real estate, publishing, retail, or communications. Research with a well-established client means interpreting the data regarding social media reach, it means understanding the various niches of television, radio and internet advertising, and it means continually staying on top of new challenges and opportunities. As an example, understanding the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act affects the writing and the social media that we do for medical, dental and legal clients, and it also informs our understanding of the challenges of running small businesses.

Project specific research is often a part of marketing services. For example, if a client wants to purchase an ad in an industry magazine, it is the marketing professionals’ job to figure out the best way to spend money in that endeavor through interpreting who the audience will be, what advertisements seem to “grab” the most significant industry players and even what look works best for that publication.

One of the great aspects of doing work in marketing is that there is always more to learn: more to learn about our clients, their products, their successes, their challenges and how best to formulate a cohesive marketing plan.