Feature – Page 5

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?

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.

Grading Your Marketing

Small business owners, regardless of our line of work and our clientele, always have a shortage of time.

When our businesses are running somewhat effectively and we have enough income, we can hire others to help us get things done. One of the major time-consuming, but critical task in every business is marketing. That is why, frankly, K2M exists: to take on those time-consuming tasks so that our clients can focus on what they do best, whether it’s selling their products, serving their patients or supporting their clients.

One of the aspects of our work that we are putting more time into is creating a transparent reporting system for our clients. Every client (not just ours) who hires a marketing firm needs to know how their money is being utilized, what tangible results can be traced to marketing dollars, and where future monies should be directed or, if necessary, redirected.

Our reporting system is our own marketing report card. We thought we would share some elements of our report card. Use it to grade us or whomever you have entrusted with your marketing:

Research: How well does the marketing firm understand your line of work, your employees, your customers, your competition and your challenges?
Customer Service: How “reachable” is your marketing firm? Can you get answers and responses in a timely manner? Are matters resolved?
Brand Health? How attentive is your marketing specialist to your brand identity, in terms of logo usage, staying on message and creating marketing tools?
Social Media Presence: What is the quantity and quality of your social media presence? Are you utilizing the correct platforms? Do you have any data to indicate what the status and health of your “reach” is?
Strategic Planning: Do you have regular contact with your marketing professionals to talk about future marketing, whether it is about spending money, changes or growth in your business, new directions and phasing out old projects?
Integrating Marketing: Does your marketing professional give you advice and input about ways to conduct your business that also improve your marketing posture?

Marketing is complicated and ever-changing. For it to work well, you and your marketing professional have to communicate effectively, plan regularly and work in tandem with one another.

Report Card Marketing Lessons

It is the season of report cards. For many students, the first semester is over or ending and report cards have already been posted (or in the retro world, mailed).

As parents, teachers and students, we see the report cards differently. Seeing them through a variety of lenses means that what the report cards say may be interpreted differently for each reader.

Students want to know that the work they have done is recognized (if they are good students). And if they struggle, they want some glimmer of hope that there is an opportunity for improved grades and future success. The best report card forms give space and permission for teachers to address the students directly with guidance for improvement and space to explain the strengths of the students that they bring to the class. When report cards do not allow these longer information pieces, teachers need to find other ways to communicate with students whether it is through comments on homework and assessments, or editing marks on shared documents.

For parents, we want to know what our child excels in and what he or she needs more support in. We also want to be reassured that the teacher “gets” our child. Depending on the report card form, there may not be evidence of that. So schools and school systems have to make sure that they find ways to communicate that our child is in good, capable hands via additional tools, not just the report card.

Teachers view the report cards as the official notification from school to home on the students’ progress. Good teachers know that this document cannot be the first mode of communication if “there is trouble in River City”. Teachers undertake the task of report cards seriously, because it is the permanent record of the progress of each child.

Ultimately, report cards’ messages are disseminated in many directions, and they are, innately, a marketing tool, too. At their best, they make students feel acknowledged and understood, they underscore the choices that parents made in choosing the school or the school system and they solidify the communication between home and school.

Next week, we will discuss marketing report cards.

To Gift Card or Not to Gift Card

Photo by Tom Eppenberger, Jr.

We’re of a mixed mind regarding gift cards. Here are some great reasons to love giving gift cards:

You don’t have to agonize over purchasing a gift for someone and wonder if it meets their aesthetic standards: the right style, the right color, not to mention the right size.
The cards are certainly easy to obtain and easy to use.
If you know the recipient loves shopping, the gift cards allow them the experience without the economic pinch: fun for kids and adults.
If you know the recipient hates shopping like you do, most cards allow e-commerce, too.
At this point, most gift cards no longer expire nor reduce in value. This is not universal: spas and restaurants typically have a year expiration date. And of course, you were out of luck if you didn’t spend your Border’s cards before they went bankrupt…

And yet…there are some down sides:

The cards do seem impersonal. How much time did you spend on purchasing the gift? Not much.
There is no denying how much you spent on the gift when it’s a gift card, where as sometimes a real purchase isn’t as patently obvious.
For those of us who don’t splurge on ourselves, there is something about receiving something tangible that we never would have bought for ourselves.
We know the corporations depend on people purchasing gift cards but not utilizing them: it’s a huge business, upwards of $2 billion of unredeemed gift cards yearly! We don’t like giving the stores money for nothing in return!
If you’re going to be impersonal, maybe cash is a better gift…

Clothing Shopping: Bricks and Mortar or E-tail?

As we are approaching Thanksgiving, as well as the winter holidays, we are confronted with many different pitches for things to purchase, whether it’s the automobile ads that are in high gear right now, or the multiple Black Friday plugs, as well as the flood of sales and specials landing in our cyber inbox and our actual mailbox.

It’s interesting to consider how we ultimately make a decision whether to buy items online or to buy them in a brick and mortar store. Are we more impulsive when we point and click or are we more likely to buy when we are browsing in an actual retail establishment?

In a recent, completely unscientific spate of clothing shopping with one mother and two teenage daughters, we discovered the following:

When a specific store’s website shows a lot of varieties of dresses that look like they would be becoming on you, it’s very tempting to go to that store and try them on. Any savings on sales taxes are easily mitigated by being able to see the clothes on in person. We particularly liked going to pick out clothing with a clear idea in mind, and then being able to check out with efficient customer service assistance. Winner: Bricks and mortar
Mom, like lots of people, HATES trying on swimsuits. Finding a website that is known for flattering and not too revealing swimsuits for adult women’s bodies is an antidote to the hell that is swimsuit donning in a department store dressing room. Winner:E-tail
A visit to a department store during a non-busy time (not Black Friday weekend or any of the weekends after it) is a good beginning step in making shopping decisions. We can see how the sizes fit and what is looking “in”. Once that is done, a good website is much more enticing than spending time in the department store or the mall (this goes for Mom, Dad and kids.) When we were in stores with minimal salesperson contact, we were less likely to buy and much more likely to browse. Winner: E-tail
It was easy to stay focused and on target when we knew what we wanted to buy. The biggest impulse buying: the stop at CVS on the way home to buy “necessities”, which somehow turned into a much larger, far less focused shopping foray. Winner: Bricks and mortar
For women and girls, it is a little scary to buy shoes online, unless you really know the brands and how they fit your foot. Mom did buy a pair of winter boots online that looked like they would fit (they did), but girls stuck to the stores. Winner: Both

So, what do learn from all this? As customers, there was no one sure way to market to us. We found the information we needed, which included styles, colors and prices by surfing on the web. We made ultimate shopping decisions, depending on how certain we felt about the item, either in person or online. We tended to be loyal to stores and brands we knew, especially if we had previous good shopping experiences

The best marketing plans to entice us? Give us well-constructed websites with accurate information, including pricing and availability. Send us incentives to keep us as loyal customers. And when we arrive in your store, allow for some impulse buys, but make sure we are recipients of good customer service.

Know Yourself

Often, the hardest part of the work we all do is the lack of time we spend on reflection. We rarely take the time to ruminate. We create to-do lists, but we sometimes neglect to set goals. We take even less time to consider the essence of what we do. And yet, we are shortchanging ourselves if we don’t allot some non-interrupted, non-multitasking, purely us and our partners time for reflection accompanied by future planning.

What should we do when we reflect?

There are lots of things you can do when you reflect. You can consider how your office is functioning, how you communicate with your colleagues and with your clients. You can think about what you would most like to change or fix, if there were no obstacles, like lack of time or money or imperfect staffing. You can set some measurable, achievable goals.

But, there is one aspect of reflection that is critical in terms of marketing what you do. We all must constantly ask ourselves, who are we, what is our essence…or even to identify our brand, what makes what we do, or who we are, uniquely “us”.

Here are some questions to guide you in that reflective work:

Why should someone do business with you?
How are you different from other people who offer similar services that you do?
Do you think that your clients or patients could explain what is special about you and your business?
Do you think that strangers or visitors to your office, your store, or your website would be able to quickly understand what is unique and valuable about you?

Even at K2M, we admit that we don’t always carve enough reflection time in our days, and even in our weeks. But, when we do, we find that our work improves. When we remind ourselves what our core values are as a marketing firm (fair and transparent prices, quality product, knowing the needs of our clients, understanding our clients’ stories), we make better choices about time management and project direction and the content of our marketing is improved.

This time of year is often an incredibly busy time. Let’s not lose our way, thereby getting off track, because we forgot to consider our paths.

Remembering the Milkman

Remember the milkman? Remember him from movies? Old TV shows? Well, in my house we remember him from last month. Yes, we’re serious. It’s not because we live in a quaint little suburban town (although we do)—it’s a modern place, not a rural village. It’s not because we are super old-school (just about some things)—we like modernity!

When my youngest was about to come into this world, my neighbor gifted me a milkman who would drop off some bare necessities weekly. In those days that included toddler must-haves for the older two, like apple juice, milk, eggs, popsicles on hot days and cream for the adults’ coffees. The milkman, Bob, was a longtime businessman with a longstanding route and territory. He had clients that had been with him for over 20 years at the time.

He carried the heavy stuff to my door, made small talk, left little holiday treats for my kids and when we got a dog, included a biscuit for her with almost every delivery. After a while the milkman was clearly not necessary. I was getting out of the house daily, working again, going shopping, and managing just fine with the help of some childcare. But by then we had a relationship with Bob and I just could not bear to sever it. So Bob stuck around. Eventually, since it was less expensive by a smidge at the store, I pared down my milkman’s list to just cream and the buttermilk my European-born husband still loves to drink nightly (he swears it’s good for you.)

Many years passed and this year, once again, I considered stopping the weekly milkman deliveries. We discussed it at home—we don’t really need it, it’s silly to pay monthly for these two items delivered every week, etc. I couldn’t do it though. In fact, even though Bob himself hadn’t been coming around for a while, his son had been delivering for him during a layoff because Bob wasn’t feeling so well. I still couldn’t let go of the connection. What would Bob think if I just said I was done with the relationship? How could I explain breaking up with him? I’d have to tell him over the phone, and imagining his silence made me queasy. He was a good salesman too. Maybe he’d try to pitch me a reason to stay. That would just kill me. I’m not great at saying no to a direct appeal.

In fact, not only did I not cancel the milkman, I left him a note. Since I hadn’t seen him in a while, I added a personal note to my check. It was just a sticky with a “Hi, Bob, I haven’t seen you in a while and I wanted to say hello and see how you are doing.” Bob called me when he got the note. He was so touched to be thought of—and he had bad news. He was closing his delivery route. What? I felt blindsided. I leave a “hello” and you end it?!? It was kind of a silly feeling, as I had been considering ending the relationship myself. But there it was—how different it feels to be told it’s over than to do the telling. Bob’s health wasn’t great (I think he’s around 85 years old) and he needed to be indoors this winter, not out in the cold schlepping milk cartons in and out of his van. I understand. I’m an adult—I get it…his health is more important.

Yet, this weekend, when I had to buy a carton of half-n-half in order to enjoy my coffee, I choked up at the market. For 9 years I haven’t had to buy cream for my coffee except for a couple of times. I was really going to miss Bob. The personal connection we have because of a weekly dairy drop off touched me.

Once upon a time, every purchase anyone made was personal. There was no such thing as ordering from a stranger. Every part of one’s life was interwoven with providers and makers and givers and doers. My relationship with Bob the milkman was a holdout from the past, for sure. It was such a gift really, to have a person that brought me more than just the item. He regularly made me and my kids, and certainly our dog, smile (yes, I’m sure the dog smiles.) The relationship was a small one of the many in my life but I will feel that twinge of missing it for many years I’m sure. I can’t bring myself to dispose of the cooler from his dairy that sits on my front porch so it’ll stay there for a while. And I’ll send Bob the occasional note, or call to say hello, because really we became friends through these years. That’s the real gift my neighbor gave me I suppose—milk delivered and a friend for many years.

Marketing and Procrastination: A Bad Combination

image by dreamstime

Procrastination is something many of us struggle with.

Some of us make lists, moving unpleasant or difficult items regularly to the bottom of the lists. Some of us never make lists; we just conveniently keep forgetting to deal with things that we find bothersome.

If you are doing your regular work, often times the “marketing tasks” get pushed down on your to-do list. Marketing tasks somehow don’t feel as urgent as the client who is coming to your office in five minutes or the patient who needs immediate attention.

But, the truth is, that putting off marketing decisions, marketing tasks or even delaying budgeting for or paying for marketing is really like leaving money on the table.

You cannot depend on all of your clients to be your clients forever. Moreover, you cannot assume that their fees and costs of doing business with you are going to be constants. Very few companies and practices can really ignore the reality that obtaining new clients, customers or patients is the most important component of a solid business plan.

So it’s time to quit procrastinating. Start with following these steps:

Move a marketing discussion to the top of your to-do list.
Engage a marketing professional, and at least begin the conversation. Try to be sure that whomever you hire “gets” you and your business.
Be sure to state what you feel are your most pressing marketing needs, but allow the marketing professional to also give you some advice to what they see as your most pressing needs.
Be sure to follow through with what is asked of you, whether it is reading copy of revised website materials or engaging staff to get their opinions as to what marketing materials work best in your office.