Feature – Page 6

A Tale of Two Library Branches

I live in a town that has several library branches. Of course, we have our regular branch, of which I am a fairly regular customer. I read a lot and I don’t like paying for books, either on my bookshelves (which are overflowing) or my Kindle, which I’ve sort of grown apart from.

Libraries are changing. The nature of people’s relationships with the printed word is changing. In addition, libraries and their free access computers are serving all sorts of customers, particularly those who now need a computer to apply for jobs and manage other aspects of their lives that a smart phone isn’t quite up to. Librarians’ tasks are different than they used to be. They have to help with online searches and resume builders, in addition to helping find and reserve books, both print and electronic.

But, truth to tell, I went to the library for a very ordinary, not 21st century task. My daughter’s English class now requires that all of the students read 20 books of their choosing (with faculty approval), some of which must be of specific genres. My daughter had completed her book on a Thursday night and didn’t get a new one checked out at school on Friday (English class didn’t meet that day). She wanted to be ready for Monday morning with a new book. So, off we went to the library.

The tale of the two library branches began when we arrived at our “regular” location to see that the library was closed due to a planned fundraising event that night. OK, this was a little bump in the road; We can deal…off we headed to branch #2, a few minutes away. I have been to branch #2 before. Admittedly, I didn’t like it as much, but when I would go there, it was because there was something I needed there that day (a DVD, a book title that I didn’t want to wait to get shipped to my branch, etc.). I never really did a compare and contrast as to why Home Branch and Further Away Branch were better or worse than one another.

We arrived at Branch #2. It wasn’t great and it wasn’t because of us. We were in a good mood, ready to check out good books.

I discovered why I love my home branch. My home branch knows how to market books to their customers. They make me want to read their collection, to check out their DVD’s, to peruse the magazines that they get that I don’t get. So, what was missing at Branch #2 that I thought every library had?

My home branch has big displays of all of the new books and DVD’s, easily visible and in a prominent place. They also display (laminated so you can pull it down to read it) the New York Times bestseller list. And it’s right next to the computer so you can reserve a title while you’re thinking about it.
My home branch always has used books for sale. It’s a fundraiser for the library and ends up being a regular impulse buy at $1 per title right by the check out station.
The children’s librarian is visible to all and the adult librarians know a heck of a lot about all literature. At Branch #2, my daughter had to find a librarian to ask for some recommendations for a fantasy book (she’s already read a lot and wanted a new idea). The librarian recommended The Hobbit (OK, not the most original suggestion) and then showed us how to see suggestions on the library computers. But when we went to the library computers, none of the pull-down menus worked.
The children’s librarian at the home branch has all sorts of stuff to hand out to kids: recommendations for middle school readers, new series to try, all the Caldecott and Newberry winners, etc. All of these are printed, so you can carry the list around to see what’s in the collection or go reserve it on the system. (Sometimes, printed is ok.)
My home branch rents out tools (you need hedge trimmers, an edger, a chainsaw…free at the library!)
The home branch keeps its computers in tip-top shape. Somebody there is always making things function.
The staff at the home branch either know me or pretend to know me, either of which is fine, by the way.

It’s interesting that there are lessons in good customer relations and good marketing wherever you turn. You know when you as a customer or client feel valued and when you have been well-served. Perhaps that is the strongest marketing component any business or non-profit possesses, and one that should be regularly assessed and tweaked.

The Anti-Nielsen Family?

We were talking about “Must See TV”the other day in our house.

Our house is atypical and typical at the same time. It’s a mother and father and three teenage daughters. Everybody has their own smart phone and there are multiple computers and tablets. We have a Netflix account for actual DVD’s and for streaming. The oldest teen (who now is away at college) also keeps a Hulu account. Everybody has a lot of work to do in the evenings, either from homework load or extracurriculars or actual work. That’s the typical part.

Here are some atypical parts:

one TV
no cable (and no, we are not Amish)
the TV is rarely on, never during the day; occasionally on late on a school night, more likely on the weekends

And now, here are some outcomes:

Nobody watches sports. (We didn’t grow up in Detroit if that makes this statement more palatable.)
Exceptions to the no sports: certain college football games, maybe the World Series, the Super Bowl depending on who the halftime performer is, pieces of the Olympics and lately the 15 year old thinks Rory Mcilroy is “so hot”, so we’ve seen more PGA action than ever before.
Nobody watches the news. We still get a weekly newspaper and the parents get online news. Truly, the kids might be getting their news from their friends. Another example of how we’ve failed them as parents.
We are unaware of TV schedules for the most part. Because of Hulu and Netflix and other ways to find content, everybody in the family is divorced from any set tv schedules.
We still binge watch and various members of the family “crowd around”the family computer. There will be times when I have seen a daughter watch dozens of episodes of “Say Yes to the Dress”. We all binge watched “Arrested Development”…and then we watched it all again. When Joan Rivers died, we found every performance we could find and the documentary “A Piece of Work”and watched that. One daughter is obsessed with Elizabethan history, so we watched all the seasons of “The Tudors”. “House”was a project during the summer, as has been “Bones”. The father watches comedian performances ad nauseum. The mother and oldest daughter are obsessed with”Orange is the New Black”, partly because the mother was a huge fan of “Weeds”, a show that she binge-watched, having never seen it on Showtime (back to that Amish thing).
We still can’t wait for “Downton Abbey”. Perhaps because we have a historical fiction gene going in the family, and because it’s on PBS on Sundays, and it was so easy to get all of the earlier episodes, we do seem to know when it restarts every year and we rearrange our lives for that.
We rarely see commercials and when we do, they really bug us.
When we go on vacation, the kids attack the cable television like it’s Halloween candy.

The lessons from the above ruminations: We are still searching for content, and we continue to find things that amuse and entertain us; we are hard to reach for advertisers, but not impossible, we do spend money on getting content, although it may be “atypical”, and we do represent the “nichification”of the viewing marketplace, where we create no water cooler talk about shows.

First, define your audience.

It seems to be such an easy concept: define who is likely to receive your message.

Yet, so many people get it wrong.

How many times have you been a captive audience for a presentation, whether it was parents’ night at school, or a sermon in a house of worship or a conference for your profession, where you were flabbergasted by the speaker? Countless times is has happened to us: a speaker who had done no research or preparation for her presentation on either the topic or more likely the specific needs or viewpoint of the audience. One time we actually heard a speaker say, “I was working on this during the ride here.” And we were offended…offended that he probably received a speaker’s fee for clearly minimal or no work and offended that he valued us, his audience, so little that he thought he could wing it and we wouldn’t notice. (We noticed; it was a really lame Power Point.)

We’ve seen speakers who were oblivious to the time constraints or room conditions and had no notion that they weren’t connecting to the audience and sometimes were even alienating them. We’ve seen speakers who dumbed down their message and underestimated how offensive that would be. And we’ve seen speakers who used insider lingo and sometimes even spoke in foreign phrases, unintentionally (or was it intentionally?) excluding those who didn’t understand that portion of the message.

How many times have you seen an advertisement on TV and thought to yourself, “I may not be the target audience for the show I’m watching.” There was a famous newspaper story entitled “My Tivo Thinks I’m Gay” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), which detailed a writer’s regular TV watching suggestions from Tivo. Apparently, his Tivo had extrapolated from his watching a couple of HGTV shows that he was gay.

One of the first steps in any marketing process is to understand your “audience”. Who is your audience?

Your current customers and clients
Potential customers and clients
Those who are seeking the services or products you offer
Those who engage with any of your marketing materials, whether they are clients or not, employees, family and friends

You may have different audiences for different sectors of your marketing plan and even for different aspects of your business. A full service small bank has to market to those who are arranging financing for a house as well as high school kids who are setting up their shared checking account with ATM cards with their parents for college.

The key to all of the messages that we put out “there” is that we have to find ways to connect with all of the members of our audience in all of their complexities and nuances.

Back to School? We Protest!

Back to school musings…

We know…we know…everyone is titling their stuff “back to school yada yada yada”…but here’s the thing—it’s been going on since June! We were stunned to see back to school ads in newspaper circulars just two weeks after most schools let out. Larger stores were offering specials on back to school clothing and school supplies in between the bathing suits, towels and pool floaties.

So, what’s the deal? Halloween sales begin in September, Christmas in October, Easter in January—what does this mean besides that stores are desperate to get your attention and sell before the competition? We notice that it affects our culture.

True story: At a friend’s house there was a discussion about what main course dish should be prepared for a particular event. This friend makes an amazing family recipe stew-like dish. We suggested it as a meal. We were rejected outright. Why? It wasn’t the right season for that recipe. Even if it were a chilly night, that dish is deemed an autumnal recipe only in their home–a house that is wedded to the calendar and its events and holidays. To our ears the rejection seemed arbitrary—and kind of annoying. Good food is good food, right? Who really cares when you make it or eat it…?

On second, third and fourth thought, however, we get it. Would chocolate bunnies hold the same allure mid-August? Would roasted pumpkin seeds make us ecstatic in May? Would fruitcake be a welcome hostess gift in October? Would latkes be as delicious in July? Well, maybe yes to the latkes—a fried potato by any name….

There is something to be said for respecting the calendar and the cycle it perpetuates. We won’t sell you any rulers, scissors or glue in June and we suggest you abstain from buying them. It may indeed even add to your quality of life. In our friend’s house, the excitement of a holiday-trussed-entrée is palpable. The scents and visuals cue a certain emotional response and bring on anticipation and pleasure in its resolution. In our homes, kids get to be off for the summer without being bound to their backpacks full of supplies and heavy books. They forget some of the burden of school and get to be excited by the new pencil smell and fresh white pages of a new notebook (do they still use those?).

So, here’s our quiet protest…we’ve held out until now…didn’t buy one school supply. Now the sales are even bolder and there’s still almost a month to go. We’ll take our kids in a week or two to get their supplies….perhaps they’ll have a few fewer folder covers to choose from, but they’ll hold on to their summer breezes a little longer, and perhaps our homes will enjoy summer’s more relaxed quality a bit longer as well.

Tales from the Crypt: Mostly Dead Websites

In the past few weeks, we at K2M have been utilizing lots of what we call inbound marketing in our own personal lives. Inbound marketing is marketing used by a business in order to be found by potential customers or clients. It is what people find when they are looking for you or the service your provide, whether it’s phone book listings, internet listings or your own web pages.

There are more kids around us this summer and more need to find things to keep them busy, places to go, new restaurants to try, movie times to check on, pool schedules, local attractions for day trips…you get the idea. In our quest to keep our kids entertained and to save us from their constant cries of boredom and need to be fed something new and different, we, like you, have been slaves to our electronica, desperate for WiFi wherever we go, and exploring lots and lots of websites. Regarding those websites, we know that a decent website is not the sum total of a good inbound marketing plan, but A LOT of the websites we have encountered have been, as they say in The Princess Bride “mostly dead”.

What are the components of mostly dead websites?

Non-existent contact information with no phone numbers or addresses, so you can’t tell if the establishment is real or fantasy.
Contact information that indicates that the restaurant near the DIA is still in business, but when you go there, it is boarded up (Yes, it really happened).
Outdated information that has been contradicted by your friends who are “in the know” and who assure you “just ignore their website”.
Stock photos that have been around since the Clintons were in charge the first time.
Clunky, nonresponsive menus and tabs that take you to error messages or unfinished pages.
Sites that are not compatible with mobile devices or tablets.

Argh! Don’t fret…our children have been well-fed and entertained, despite the cyber-detritus we have encountered. But it has strengthened our resolve to make sure our clients’ inbound marketing makes people pleased to find their companies.

BTW, if you have a mostly dead website, your own strategic marketing plan could use some help, too. “Miracle Max” and his abilities–that’s from the world of fiction. But maybe we can help you revive your mostly dead.

The Strength of our Labor Force

For many professional services and even in the automotive world, the most expensive component of the products we deliver is the labor. People are paying our businesses for the work that we put into doing what we know.

So, what about our labor force at K2M?

We are proud to have writers, graphic designers, project directors, web designers, editors, sound and video production managers and lots of other vendors and creators who excel in their craft. That is a given. But, we make the extra effort to really differentiate ourselves from others. How do we do that? It is not just that our labor force has knowledge of their specialty area, we also know you.

When you become a client of K2M, we make it our highest priority to be sure that we tell your story to everyone who is working for us. For us, this means more K2M meetings, more discussions with our labor force, and more people in the creative mix, but it’s worth it. When the graphic designer and the sound editor both understand the ethos of your company and your goals for growth, when the video producer and the writers are aware of the challenges that you are facing right now, then we are truly approaching your business needs with a team approach in all of the marketing we do on your behalf.

You may not know all of the names and the faces of everybody on your marketing team, but we know your story.

Camp and Marketing

Many of you, like me, are in the midst of kids leaving for camp, arriving from camp, or happily (we hope) ensconced at camp.

During this time of a few less kids in the house, I began to examine why we choose the camps we do for our kids, as well as other things, their extracurricular activities, their doctors and dentists, even their schools.

In most cases, and certainly in the case of camp, I didn’t choose my children’s summer camp experiences based on the marketing on the part of their camps. I chose their camps based upon the experiences that those camps gave to me as a child or based upon the experiences of other families whose advice and opinions I trusted. I made decisions the way I make other decisions about professional services: do I feel like I or my child could form a relationship with these people? Do I like this camp? Do I like this drum teacher? How do I feel about this dentistry practice?

So, should those camps quit their marketing campaigns? Absolutely not. On the contrary; after I began to formulate my decisions regarding camp, I did go through all the marketing: the brochures, the applications, the websites, the social media, even the embedded marketing involved in the application processes. Additionally, when there was more than one camp in contest for my childrens’ summer time, websites, photos and facebook certainly played a role. Not only did I check them out for information, but also to see pricing, payment options, luggage and packing information, etc. Inbound marketing at work!

So, what’s my take away?

As a client, I would tell you that the most import element to grow your business is to make sure you are cementing good personal relationships with your clients and customers. Then I would try to make sure that all of your inbound marketing components recreate the sense of care you provide. There is no question that with the ease of online research, people will reach out to see how you present yourself.

Why do so many clients want marketing, but not believe in it?

It’s interesting how often I have a meeting with a client who is interested in purchasing one marketing package or another, yet discusses the improbability of success through marketing. Websites, adwords, direct mail…these things all seem to the client like a scam cooked up to trick the business owners into spending money unnecessarily.

I promise each and every client a straightforward process free of smoke and mirrors. However, even with marketing reports and statistics, there is hesitation. Particularly among professionals who offer a professional service, there is a notion that advertising is base and not really effectual. The comments I hear are, “who would really choose a lawyer based on the internet?” or “nobody really goes to a doctor because they get a postcard in the mail.”

Here are some answers…

Marketing has been around since the beginning of time. There is a super thin line between any kind of persuasion and marketing. Any time one persuades another to buy into a process or to do something, it’s marketing. If marketing didn’t’ work, there’d be no advertising anywhere. Businesses only market when it positively affects their bottom line.

Websites and online marketing? It seems intangible, but if you track your leads or sales it’s not. Asking “How did you hear about our company?” goes a long way to proving what works and what doesn’t.

Images and Identity

In the past couple of months I had to take a look at K2M Creative Media’s website. After launching Phase I of the new site a few months ago, it was time to assess the images. Although I liked the original imagery, I was becoming less satisfied with the stock image choices on the site.

Over the past years I have been both in charge of and part of selecting images for countless client projects. It has always been an acknowledged time-consuming but crucial component of creating materials and expressing the brand for a client. Occasionally, the image is so central to the message and so impossible to find in stock resources that we have created our own art for the project.

I realized again in accomplishing this task for my own business how important images are to marketing materials and how difficult it can sometimes be to see the forest for the trees. It took what felt like forever to choose images I love for our website. The process began over two months ago when I first started image shopping. I had to engage some help in order to narrow the field! The easy online accessibility of images and the huge volume of them made it even more difficult somehow—there were so many choices….an endless menu of possibilities, each one offering up a different message to clients about our company.

Trying to express such a personal thing as one’s own website through images was a great exercise. I have always thought that a professional of any kind ought to experience his/her own business from the client’s perspective once in a while. It’s analogous to every doctor needing to be a patient in order to understand the experience.

I am so glad I recently worked on reimagining our site. It reminded me how important it is to choose images well, and how difficult the process can be—especially for oneself.

I hope you enjoy our choices and feel as inspired by them as I do.

Interactive Online

Ideas morph faster in interactive media than anywhere. The interactive space reinvents itself daily–sometimes faster. But for all the change, some constants exist. Great interactive work is more about utility than advertising, more about conversation than message and more about people than products.

It’s less about delivering brand message and more about delivering invitations to participate in your brand. In this rapidly changing and expanding space, interactive marketing strategies have evolved. Where once the focus was solely on driving traffic to web sites, we now also seek ways for content and applications to reach people wherever they are, however they want and whenever they need. The user experience now includes e-commerce, web design, search marketing, social media, mobile marketing and rich internet applications. It is important to reach and serve customers throughout the expanding interactive universe.

Marketers are micro-publishers and hyper-disseminators. An exciting new horizon!