The Trade Show is Dead. Long Live the Trade Show!

Reports of the trade show’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Mark from Marketing Says...

I first heard of the death of trade shows as a sales tool in the summer of 1985. IRS rules regarding travel and other sales-related deductions had changed, and trade show producers foresaw a grim future for large-scale exhibitions.

 I’ve been hearing this fatal prognosis on a regular basis ever since.

 If you’re a sales professional, trade shows remain very much alive, because they offer a unique opportunity to meet current and potential customers in a fun, one-on-one setting. The most-likely successor to the trade show, the online trade show, just doesn’t provide the same venue to discuss a customer’s needs, and to demonstrate how your wares can meet – or exceed – these requirements.

However, "going to show" is much more than filling out the space reservation form, packing your samples and heading for the airport the day before the event begins. As with any other marketing initiative, you'll need to do your homework and know what you want to accomplish.

Here’s how you can make your next trade show worth your while!

Buy the ticket, take the ride

To begin the trade show planning process, start at the beginning: with your customers. You already know the industry, and most likely, there is at least one professional association that represents your customers. And just as likely, this organization sponsors at least one trade exhibition.

Start by looking up the organization's website. Any professional association worth its members' annual dues will devote at least one page of their website to their meetings and trade show opportunities, and contact information should be available there for staff who manage these events. Along with basic information about the exhibition, you can also learn about other promotional opportunities the association offers.

 Your customers can also help you decide if exhibiting at a trade show would be a good investment. Ask if they attend it themselves, if they plan to attend the next exhibition and what they think of the sponsoring organization in general. A good event draws members, no matter what city it’s held in.

Should you decide to secure booth space, reserving a booth at the exhibition should be easy – if you make your reservations early. The association will post exhibition hall floor plans, space contracts and other important  information on their website within 60 to 90 days of start of the event. If the show is popular, booth space will go quickly, and you may be shut-out if you delay completing your reservations.

When you make your reservations, you should also consider buying a membership in the sponsoring organization for your own company. Besides receiving a lower rate for booth space and other promotional opportunities, you’ll also be supporting your customers' professional association, and raise your visibility within the industry.

 

Your booth display

Your next consideration is how you will display your products and services at the trade exposition. Simply put, displaying at a professional, industry exhibition means an attractive, professionally-created trade show booth is a must! If your company doesn’t already have a booth display, you’ll need to have one created. Such displays can range in size from a foldout tabletop display that fits into an attaché-size case to the massive displays seen at major auto shows. Commonly, a display that fits a 10-foot-by-10-foot booth space is sufficient for most industry trade show purposes.

A number of vendors specialize in the design and manufacture of trade show displays, and can be located through via the Internet or in your local telephone directory. These companies can create a display for you that fits most any space or artistic vision. They'll guide you through the creative process, train you and your staff  on how to assemble and disassemble your new display, and many will even store and maintain your display when it’s not needed.

When you visit a booth display vendor's showroom for the first time, you might be amazed at what they can create! They can feature bold, floor-to-ceiling graphics, special lighting, provision for video and computer displays, racks for printed materials – anything that budget and creativity will allow! Keep in mind, however, that your booth display will be a direct reflection of your company’s image, and extra care should be taken in how that  image is presented.

Another important point to remember is that it can take as much as six to eight weeks from your first meeting with the vendor until your newly-completed booth unit is delivered (more if you make repeated design changes), so make sure the vendor will have enough time to complete your new booth and be ready to ship to the trade exposition on schedule.

Let 'em know you're coming!

Meanwhile, you’ll need to promote your presence at the upcoming exposition. As always, you'll have many promotional options to choose from, both traditional and non-traditional. In this case, more will be better!

Your company's website: create a special page promoting your appearance at the exposition. This page can include a brief welcome to attendees, a list the products you’ll be featuring and any show specials you’re offering.

And don’t forget to create a QR Code to link Smartphone users to this page! A number of free websites will allow you to create a QR Code, which Smartphone users can scan to access your “show page.” This QR Code should also appear in all of your print advertising and any show-specific sell-sheets you may create especially for this event.

In print: any print advertising promoting your company during this period should include mention of your appearance at the upcoming trade exposition. This mention should include the name of the professional association, the event's name and dates, your company's booth location and the QR Code that links the reader with a Smartphone back to your "show" website page.

Social Media: if your company maintains pages on such social media websites as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, mention of your participating in this upcoming trade exposition is necessary. The first mention that the company will participate should be posted as soon as booth space has been  contracted, followed by subsequent posts every four or five days announcing products to be featured and special offers. The frequency of these mentions should build to one mention every two or three days during the last 10 days before the exposition begins.

Direct marketing: if you can identify any of your customers within reasonable driving distance of the exposition (100 miles would be a good rule-of-thumb to use), a direct-marketing effort to invite those "local" customers to visit your booth might be in order. For example, sending a direct-mail announcement postcard 45 days in advance of the exposition, or sending broadcast emails 30 and 20 days in advance could drive more traffic to your booth.

If your company is a supplier member of the exhibition's hosting association, you may also receive a contact list of all the registered attendees prior to the event. Using this list, you can invite these attendees to visit your booth before the event, or note them for follow-up after the exposition. Either way, it's an important benefit that you should take advantage of!

Onsite at the trade exhibition

For a trade show exhibitor, making the most of his or her time onsite at the show is a continuing challenge. Some think it's easy: just be in the booth during show hours, talk to the attendees who pass by, then go back to the hotel room afterwards.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The core goal for any exhibitor is Making Contact. The more contacts you can make at the show, the more sales you can pursue. And the show doesn't end when the trade exhibition closes for the day!

Here are some ways to maximize contacts:

Plan your time: broadly speaking, your day onsite consists of three activities: making contact with current and potential customers in the booth; meeting with important contacts away from the booth; and being (somewhat) available to answer questions and address issues from the home office. You'll also need some "down-time" for rest and snacks, since all of this "contacting" can be hard work!

To aid in your time-scheduling, it's important to remember that exhibition hours are generally scheduled around educational seminars and association events. Commonly, trade expositions open with an evening "Welcome Cocktail Reception" in the exhibition hall, which provides attendees their first opportunity to see all of the exhibitors for the first time, and to scout where the exhibitors are who they want to see later. On subsequent days, the exhibition hall will be open during a continental breakfast period, lunchtime and a late-afternoon, after-seminar period.

Think through the giveaways: an inordinate amount of time – and money – can be spent on what giveaways to offer at the booth. Remember: the point of having giveaways is to draw people to the booth, and most companies don't have the budget to give trade exposition attendees anything they would really want, or that their own organizations would allow them to keep. One company I've worked with solved this problem with offering "goodie bags" of cheap toys that attendees can take home to their children. This strategy recognizes an attendee's disinterest in "junk" to pack, while offering them something to "take home to the kids" in a logoed bag.

Be in the booth: at least one person who is prepared to speak for the company must be in the booth during exhibition hours. Leaving a booth unattended is unprofessional and inexcusable during show hours, and can be avoided with some advance planning.

While in the booth, stand at the front and greet any attendee who comes by with a smile and a hello. A brief sales conversation should follow, beginning with finding out where the attendee is from and what they do. Each attendee should be presented a giveaway and sales literature, and even if they're not interested, be sure to exchange business cards for later follow-up.

And above all, try to avoid eating or sitting during exhibition hours. Look alert and friendly!

Be out of the booth (once in a while), too: knowing your customers' wants and needs is important. It's also true that it's important to know your competition, and what they're offering your customers as well! Make some time early during the exposition to walk the exhibition hall, and see what your competition is doing. Note their sales materials, and pick up samples from their booths. You don't have to be James Bond, just say hello, introduce yourself.

Be around, and not just in your booth: it will be a temptation to treat customers and other, important contacts to meals offsite. Try to resist this urge, particularly when scheduled events are taking place at the same time. Most associations will schedule an "off-evening" for this purpose. Otherwise, it will be important for you, and anyone else from your company who is also present, to attend and be seen at these association "social" events, because they represent yet another opportunity for you to meet new or existing contacts.

"Represent" at seminars: volunteer to sit on seminar panels discussing industry issues. Being able to speak authoritatively to industry challenges and practices will go far in raising your visibility – and that of your company – with current and potential customers.

Don't close before the show closes: by the time the trade exposition is nearing its conclusion, you'll be very tired, and there will be the temptation to start packing your booth and remaining materials for shipment home. Try not to, because there's always the chance of a last-minute visit from a customer. You paid for the space, and you should give yourself every opportunity to get one last contact!

Trade expositions aren't dead, and still represent one of the best ways to meet your current and potential customers face-to-face. If they aren't part of your marketing and business development mix, they should be.

Mark Paulson is a marketing and communications advisor and strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, charity, technology and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

 

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013

Ten Commandments of Preparing for Presentations

Think first, then plan. And being prepared for the unexpected isn’t just for the Boy Scouts.

 

Mark From Marketing Says...

 

It was Rehearsal Day, and panic was in the air. The firm’s Senior Leadership was preparing for two days of due-diligence presentations to the investors, but hadn’t shared their individual presentations with each other. Things weren’t going well at the run-through, and as a result, staff was running.

 

“Everywhere I’ve worked,” the wise office manager quietly observed, “this always happens. Everywhere. They’re never as prepared as they think they are.”

 

That may be true. But marketers don’t have the luxury of arriving unprepared for a presentation, especially if we’re demonstrating a new program to our colleagues and leadership. Often, this is our ONE chance to shine, our opportunity to highlight our ideas, value and relevance to the rest of the organization. For us, arriving unprepared at such a presentation is perhaps the most mortal of sins in corporate life.

 

I've seen this too often, and I still have the t-shirt from helping to pick-up the pieces afterwards. So, here are my 10 “commandments” that can help minimize the possibility of day-of presentation catastrophe…and to make sure that comedy does NOT ensue:

 

I. Before anything else, thou shalt draw thyself a roadmap: There’s no point in deciding how a presentation will look until I’ve completely thought-through why I’m doing it in the first place, to whom I'm delivering it, and what I want to achieve as a result of my presenting it. Then, I can develop my vision for the presentation, particularly what media will deliver my message best. A presentation doesn’t have to be an all-PowerPoint show, after all.

 

II. Thou shalt plan thoroughly: I begin by setting a personal delivery “due-date” of 48 hours before the presentation event, then work backwards through the approvals to the design and production process. I then consider the Big Questions: how long will the stakeholder, leadership and legal reviews require; how long will I have for my own review; and how much time will Creative need to design and produce the materials? Being late is NEVER an option.

 

III. Thou shalt establish the stakeholder/supervisor review schedule as early as possible: I meet with my stakeholders and leadership individually to establish how long they will need to approve the draft presentation, and how long their stakeholders and leadership will need to complete their approvals as well. Knowing where a particular point of friction in the approval process might appear – such as the extra time Legal might take to complete their review – pays dividends later. Remember: NOTHING moves in the client's direction without the appropriate final approvals!

 

IV. Thou shalt closely proofread copy before stakeholder review: I believe that correctable errors on presentation materials are acceptable within the department, but definitely are NOT acceptable once a draft presentation has been sent for stakeholder/leadership review. I know the embarrassment I may feel by having the staff catch my mistakes won’t begin to match the sheer mortification I’d experience if my boss, her boss or –perish the thought – the company president should point them out while I'm delivering my presentation! Proof early, proof often, and get other people to help with the proofing.

 

V. Thou shalt be Captain of thy own presentation: Designing a presentation is, next to actually delivering it, is probably the most fun part of the production process. However, too much creativity in a presentation can get in the way of good communication. It might be boring for the folks in the Art Department, but my goal is to effectively communicate an initiative or concept to a group of stakeholders, not necessarily to accommodate their artistic vision. As the presenter, I know more about the product and the audience I'm presenting to than the artist does, so I’m always prepared to politely turn-down any bolder-than-necessary design suggestions if they don’t clearly “fit” the product or audience.

 

VI. Thou shalt plan ahead for The Unforeseen during production: There's simply no way to avoid it – you-know-what happens, and it happens to all of us. What’s good about having lived through the experience of having "it" happen to me (a number of times) is not only remembering how I handled the situation the last time it happened, but also knowing how to deal it should it happen this time. Being prepared for The Unforeseen is always good, but also having a little patience and some extra time in the schedule can cure most production glitches without causing undue stress.

 

VII. Thou shalt have thy own trip together the day before the presentation: if my ultimate goal is to deliver a successful presentation, my penultimate goal is to make sure that presentation is as ready as I can make it the day before I deliver it. It’s a little like closing the textbook for the last time before taking a final exam: by then, I know the material. I know the presentation is as ready as I can make it. And most importantly, I know that I’m ready to deliver it.

 

VII. Thou shalt arrive early the day of the presentation, and test thy equipment one last time before anyone else shows up: I've learned that no matter how much I’ve prepared and rehearsedbeforehand, the gremlins might have come along for the ride anyway and made things…interesting. So, I make sure I arrive at least half an hour before the event, and test-run the presentation one last time. Doing this once, I caught a superimposed “Buy This Graphic Now” over a graphic that would have displayed during the actual presentation. It hadn’t displayed during earlier run-throughs, and the designer had no idea it was about to appear. I still shake a little when I think of what might have happened had it run...

 

IX. Thou shalt have a Plan B. And having a Plan C in reserve isn’t a Bad Idea, either: In a sense, this commandment is an extension of being ready to address any unforeseen issues or a day-of onsite surprise. While I expect a glitch or two in the production process, I also know that I have to be ready in case Something Awful happens onsite. Having a Plan B ready – or even, Plan C – can be as simple as knowing where the nearest commercial quick-print/business center is, what their hours are and if they can produce something quickly from my own laptop computer.

 

X. Thou shalt do thy homework, and be confident: All of this thinking, planning and preparation should lead to one goal: a confident, relaxed delivery of the presentation. “Know what you say, say what you know” is more than a funny catch-phrase from parochial school; it’s a roadmap to a successful presentation. That road is open, with the right kind of thought, planning and preparation.

 

Best of luck!

 

Mark Paulson is a marketing and communications strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, not-for-profit, technology, and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

Welcome to Fundraising Season, or Make the Call – And Maybe Lose the Donor

Mark From Marketing Says...

 

Meet Caitlyn, who wants you to become an
amateur fundraiser for her charity!

Every business has selling seasons. Auto dealers work hard in the summer to get you into one of their new cars, because it's late in their model year. In fall, heating companies will remind you to check your furnace for the winter ahead. Early winter brings the holidays, when everything goes on sale. And in the spring, yard retailers want you outside fertilizing your lawn and planting flowers.

Spring is also an important season for another kind of business. For charities, this is the start of Fundraising Season.

Charities target spring as a prime time to hold fundraising events. The psychology is simple: potential donors have been stuck indoors all winter, and now they're ready to get out of the house and have some fun. This is why, during the next two or three months, you'll see lots of charity walks, runs, lock-ups, wine-tastings and other fundraising events.

To recruit event participants, charities use many of the same promotional tools that for-profit companies are familiar with. They run print and broadcast advertising, circulate promotional emails, post banner ads on websites, place announcements on social-media websites, send direct-mail notifications, and will lobby local media to print articles about their event. Some will even hire telemarketers to drive event attendance.

You're familiar with telemarketing, of course. They're the folks who call you from morning until mid-evening, at home or at work. Telemarketing is effective because the seller is able to directly confront a prospect with a sales proposition, and to demand an instant sales decision. The answer is usually no – if the prospect even allows the telemarketer to complete their pitch – but this sales method generates enough "yeses" to remain an important sales tool.

Telemarketing is particularly attractive to charities because of the perceived "goodness" of their cause and message, and the ability to deliver their message directly to prospective donors and participants. The charity believes this "goodness of mission" will allow the telemarketer to at least complete their pitch, and their direct appeal for help will close the sale.

However, charity telemarketing represents a high-risk event-recruitment technique, because it's difficult to find anyone who truly enjoys receiving a telemarketing call. Indeed, while most marketing communications practitioners work hard to avoid any potential damage to their brand that unwanted telemarketing calls may generate, charities that use this technique simply view any negative perceptions as "collateral damage," an unavoidable cost of meeting their fundraising goals.

Here's what one such charity telemarketing call might sound like, and the negative perception it might create:

Imagine you're running an auto repair shop. You're busy helping a customer. You hear the telephone ring, and someone else in the shop answers it.

"Tony, it's for you," says your assistant manager. You put the receiver to your ear, say hello, and you hear, "Hi Tony, how are you this morning?! My name is Caitlyn, and you've just been named as..."

Your eyes glaze over. It's a telemarketing call from a charity, and they want you to participate in an "business networking event" to be held at a local restaurant six weeks from now. You then hear her say that between now and then, it's your job to raise a not-inconsiderable amount of money on behalf of the charity by calling your business associates, vendors, friends and family.

"It's easy," she assures you.

You look back at the customer you just walked away from, and at the other customers who are waiting to behind her. You make a decision. The telemarketer is still talking as you hang up.

You think it's a great cause, a national organization that provides support for children who have a catastrophic disease and their families. The charity also funds ongoing medical research into possible medical cures and treatments. But the telemarketer called you in the middle of your working day, and took you away from your customers to listen to an indifferently-delivered scripted sales pitch. You're not unwilling to help, really, but customers are more difficult than ever to come by these days. If you want to keep your customers' business, you have to take care of their needs first. And fundraising?! You run an auto repair shop! You don't have the spare time to be an amateur fundraiser for them!

Back with your customer, you'll probably apologize for stepping away for a moment, and you may identify the charity that caused the interruption. The other waiting customers might hear your apology as well. Later, you could also complain to the guys in the shop about being taken away from a customer by the charity's telemarketer, too.

Remember the Rule of the 100: now you're the dissatisfied customer, and because of your bad experience with this charity, potentially 100 other people might ultimately hear about your brief, yet irritating conversation with their telemarketer. And should the charity's telemarketers contact any of these people, they will remember your experience. And possibly hang-up on the charity's telemarketer, just like you did.

For the charity, the name of this game is Volume. That is, in order to recruit the 200 participants needed to make an event a success, a team of telemarketers might call as many as 5,000 contacts on a call-list, some several times if they weren't able to reach them the first – or subsequent times – they called.

Most likely, the charity will get their 200 participants for their event. And just as likely, the charity may also leave as many as 4,800 negative impressions among those they considered as potential donors.

It's a hard calculus, one that many charities seem willing to accept. But bear in mind that your organization's good name means everything to your continued success. Telemarketing may generate sales, but it also generates negative perceptions of your organization. And more importantly, it's hard to make friends for your cause when your potential donor hangs-up on your telemarketer.

Dial carefully.

 

Mark Paulson is a marketing communications advisor and strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, charity and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

 

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013

The Rule of 100, or Bad Customer Experiences Travel Fast

Mark From Marketing Says...

It's late winter here in Mark Land, and Old Man Winter is making a bitter last stand. Everybody's in a bad mood. It's far too cold to be outside, and there just isn't much playing at the movie theaters that's worth $12 to see.

So, the Dutch Girl and I went to the local shopping mall, just to walk around a bit and be out of the house. We found ourselves in one of the big national-chain candle shops. She picked out a candle, and dutifully stood in line at the cash register to make her purchase. The item was on sale, of course, so she was willing to wait a while as the sales associate checked-out other customers.

 A while turned into a longer while. And then longer. There was clearly An Issue in progress ahead of us between the young sales clerk and an older customer. There was a disagreement regarding how a sale item's price had been marked, and neither the clerk or the customer were in any mood for compromise. After some additional argument, the customer stomped away from the cash register, leaving the item she intended to buy on the counter. The sales clerk stared daggers at the dissatisfied customer's back as she left the store.

Then she glared at the Dutch Girl.

You can imagine the transaction that followed. "Brusque," and "borderline hostile" best describe it.

"Well, that was unpleasant," said the Dutch Girl as we left the store. "I'm not going back in there again, ever." "Neither will that lady in front of us," I replied.  "That kid behind the counter just cost the store more than a single sale. She made at least three enemies for the company, and more people will hear about this than she imagines. Her store manager probably doesn't even know about how expensive a temper-tantrum that was, but he or she may find out."

What I'm referring to is another durable rule of marketing, which I call "The Rule of 100." It's a simple rule, and can be applied to situations far beyond marketing. For the retail and service industries, however, the implications of the Rule of 100 are vast – and potentially expensive – to the small-business or shop owner.

The Rule of 100 goes like this. If you, as the owner, or a staff person who deals with a customer, fails to treat a customer in a courteous, professional manner, that customer might come away with a Negative Customer Experience. If that experience was particularly bad, not only will that customer remember how bad the experience was, he or she will be extremely motivated to tell someone else about what happened to them in your establishment. By name.

How motivated will he or she be? He or she might tell as many as 10 other people – friends, family, people in church, even total strangers – about the horrible way they were treated. If the story is a good one, these 10 people may tell as many as 10 of their friends, family and others about "what they heard" about your establishment. Like a stone dropped into a calm pool of water, concentric waves of bad news about your store or shop will travel outwards from this single, bad customer experience. Eventually, as many as 100 current or potential customers will have heard about how poorly you or your staff treat customers in a surprisingly fast amount of time.

And as bad as single customer encounter can be, consider the effect to your store's or company's reputation if the employee shared their bad day with several other customers that day. Potentially hundreds of people could know about his or her bad day at work by the end of next week, and have a negative image of your establishment.

No amount of savvy marketing or clever advertising can immediately overcome this sort of negative, word-of-mouth promotion. And how many sales went somewhere else, all because of one temper-tantrum?

Here's what you need to remember about a negative customer experience:

·         Customers, particular retail customers, always expect a good customer experience.

·         Customers will not tolerate a bad customer experience. Ever. A good price for a product or service will make up for it.

·         Customers will always tell their friends, family and others about a bad customer experience they had, but won't always mention a good experience unless it was a remarkably good experience.

·         News of a bad customer experience always travels fast.

The only way you can counteract this sort of negative publicity is to make sure that it never happens in the first place. It's difficult, since most everyone has an off-day once in awhile, but it's an important challenge to successfully meet if you're managing staff who deal with customers. And it's harder still to manage yourself, if you're the one having a bad day.

It's possible that the store manager, or the supervisor on duty that Saturday at the mall candle store was busy helping other customers, or otherwise wasn't aware of the sales clerk's melt-down. But it's easy enough to spot a team member who's having an off-day, and it's always best to move that person away from the customers to another task as quickly as possible. Stocking shelves might have been the better job for that clerk to have handled that afternoon, at least until she could have regained her composure.

When it comes to working with customers, I learned one of my favorite rules about customer service in my first professional job. It was from a sign that hung above the counter, where we staff people could see it, but the customers couldn't. It read:

"The customer may not always be right. But the customer is STILL the customer, and it's better to take a lump we didn't earn, and keep that customer as a friend!"

Amen.

 

Mark Paulson is a marketing communications advisor and strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, charity and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Channel Surfing, and Why Once Is Not Enough

Mark From Marketing Says...

In the process of marketing your business, advertising your products and services shouldn't be your first consideration. Knowing what you're selling, and to whom, comes first.

With this knowledge, comes power. In marketing, the power of your knowledge is the ability to clearly and effectively advertise your products and services.

Advertising, in its purest form, delivers your message directly to current and potential customers. The means by which you deliver this message, such as through a newspaper ad, radio spots, website ads, a banner on a little-league right-field fence or even the signage outside of your establishment are known as advertising channels. Think of a channel as just one road of many that you can choose to take in order to speak to your customers.

Your advertising campaign begins, as with everything else in your business, with a budget. A good rule-of-thumb is to devote five percent of your last-year's gross income to this year's advertising budget. This budget will need to cover the creation of your ads, the cost of their placement and any premiums or discounts you may choose to promote as part of your advertising.

This budget should also be an annual budget, not simply a budget that covers advertising created and placed for a few weeks or months. Whether your fiscal year matches your calendar year another date-to-date year, being able to keep all the money together for review and comparison purposes will make next year's budgeting process that much easier. Tracking your results will also show you which ads, and which channels were the most effective when you create next's year's advertising plan.

Once you have your budget, you then need to consider when and how often you intend to speak to your customers through your advertisements. If you are a retailer, for example, you already when the busy retailing seasons are for your products. If you provide a service, such as plumbing or lawn care, you also know when your customers need your services...and when they don't.

An important concept that you need to understand is the importance of repetition in advertising. Research has shown that a listener to advertising needs to see and absorb the advertising message a minimum of three times in order for that message to begin to adhere to the listener's consciousness. This is why you know who that cute lizard is on television. And which insurance company he works for.

In advertising your products and services, your goal is to maximize the number of times a current or potential customer sees or hears your message – called Impressions in the advertising business, and to maximize the total number of people who you deliver that message to – called Reach. Impressions and reach, along with your sales that result from your advertising, will help you to measure the overall effectiveness of your advertising.

Here's where your knowledge of your customers' wants, needs and preferences come into play, and will help you select the best channels to reach them. For example, older customers may prefer to read about special sales or other events in local newspaper ads, while younger customers might want to hear about the same sales via email. Radio spots on the local news-only station will speak to middle-age listeners, while younger males may pay more attention to the same spot when it appears on a sports-talk radio station. Your advertising needs to be where your audience is able to absorb your message, at a time they want to absorb it.

If you are not working directly with a marketing communications or advertising agency, you will be working directly with a sales professional from your local media outlet online channel outlet. These professionals should be able to clearly explain their outlet's Reach and the number of Impressions your advertisement can expect to receive, based on the number and frequency of placements your budget allows. Just remember to spread your advertising among several channels.

As any advertising sales person will tell you, there's a way to reach any target audience – and theirs is the best way to reach the maximum number of your customers!

Finally, let's consider some of the advertising channels that may be available to you:

·         Your Own Website: these days, owning your own website for your business is practically a necessity, and can represent a cost-effective way to advertise. Creating a website can be a do-it-yourself affair, but it's something that's best left to the professionals.

·         Website Advertising: Placing advertising on another website and owning your own website are not necessarily mutually-exclusive ideas. Websites to consider placing "banner" advertisements can include your local Chamber of Commerce's website, regional business or restaurant guide websites, and websites owned by local or regional newspapers, radio or television stations.

·         Radio: Radio is "red-hot," according to the ads that many stations run to attract new advertisers. It may, or may not be. But while it is true that people listen more to radio than watch television, the real questions are about which radio station has the audience groups you want to speak to, and as I mentioned above, when they listen. Away from the major-market radio stations, advertising rates can be surprisingly inexpensive, and the station may even throw-in free production of your ad spot to get your business.

·         Television: Again, away from the major-market cities, television advertising can be inexpensive. However, there is a level of complexity in creating a television spot that you may not want to attempt to tackle yourself. Plus, TV is all about showing the viewer something. Unless you own an automobile dealership, coming up with a product or service in a visually-interesting 30- or 60-second spot may prove to be problematic.

·         Newspapers and/or Shopper Publications: For many small business owners, advertising in the local or regional newspaper or shopper publication represents a cost-effective means to reach adult customers. Many local newspapers offer free circulation of their product within their service area, while most shopper publications are both free and found practically everywhere in the community. And while readers appear to be abandoning the big-city, large-market daily newspapers, research indicates these same readers are turning more and more to their local news and sports that the big newspapers won't cover.

·         Billboards: Essentially, your message – and maybe, your picture – written BIG! Advertising your message using this channel can also come with a big price, and a big challenge. Unless your billboard is located where traffic stops for an appreciable amount of time, drivers have perhaps two seconds to see the billboard and register your message. And then, they're gone. Some of the most effective billboards I've seen have been located right over the advertiser's parking lot – where saying, "Here We Are!" serves also as both navigational aid and local landmark.

·         Direct-mail: An important means to reach targeted audience groups. Direct-mail, such as large postcards or coupons, can be used to address audiences who live within a set geographic area, or those who match a certain age or other desirable attributes.

·         Door-hangers: Considered a cousin of direct-mail advertising, a door-hanger is a flyer that is either hung directly from, or otherwise stuck into, the front doorknob of a residence. Door-hangers are generally circulated within a specific geographic location, most often a neighborhood near the advertiser.

 Go get your board. The surf's up!

 

Mark Paulson is a marketing communications advisor and strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, charity and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

 

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013

Messaging The Message in Advertising

 

Mark From Marketing Says...

We were sitting on the couch on New Year's Day, watching the Orange Bowl. It was a commercial break, and the Dutch Girl asked, "What does a lizard have to do with auto insurance?"

That's a fair question, I thought. What does a lizard have to do with automobile insurance?

"Nothing, really," I replied. "Except to do what it just did. To grab your attention long enough to hear what they want to tell you. If they did the messaging right, you might think about buying car insurance from them. Otherwise, all you'll remember about what they're selling is a cute gecko, and they've wasted an awful lot of money."

 Think of advertising as a summer carnival. There is a lot to see and do there, with a barker at each attraction competing for the visitor's attention. If the barker can get the visitor to stop and listen to the pitch, the visitor may decide to buy what the barker is selling. If not, the visitor strolls away.

Advertising works in much the same way. The carnival's visitors are, of course, the customers you want to reach. The barker is an advertisement's design and general creativity, which serves to grab the customer's attention. The pitch is the ad's message, which is where the real work of the advertisement takes place.

 It's important to remember that while the advertisement's creativity grabs the audience's attention, it can also overpower the sales message the advertiser wants to convey. Understanding what needs to be said in an advertisement, and in particular, what it is that makes your product or servicedifferentfrom those of your competitors, can make the difference in creating a successful advertisement.

To begin the process of advertising message development, begin with the basics. Any advertisement should include your company's name, what it is that you sell, where you sell it, and how your potential customers can reach you. Remember, one of the first rules of good marketing is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to access you and what you're selling!

Next comes the difficult part: you need to explain why a customer should buy from you. Are your products better? Less expensive? Do you have a greater selection? Is your customer service better? Are your business hours more convenient? Is your location easy to reach?

Difficult questions, certainly. But since you may not have an Consumer Insights Department to answer these questions for you, here's how to get some answers for yourself. Write down five good reasons for customers to buy your products or services. A great clue can be what your customers may have said previously about why they came in.

If you can be honest with yourself about what it is that really attracts your customers to your business, you've just created your advertisement'sTalking Points. Talking Points serve as the superstructure upon which your advertising will be built, particularly when it comes to differentiating your business from your competitors. Not only can the Talking Points suggest what should be said in the ad, they can also help you decide what the ad will look like.

Once you have your five talking points, discuss them with a few people. They can be anyone – friends, family, even customers. Ask them to be honest in their response – remember, it's not about how you see your business, but rather how others see your products and services. From what you learn, you may decide to change your talking points. This sort of feedback always strengthens your advertising message.

Now that you have your talking points, you can move forward in creating your actual advertising. It may be something you can try yourself, but you might be happier with the results if you consult a professional marketing communications practitioner. Knowing what you want the ad to say, and being able to tell the practitioner what you want to see, will go a long way to making your vision a reality.

Here are some additional suggestions to keep in mind:

• On using humor: In a word, don't! Dying, it's been said, is easy – it's comedy that's hard. What's funny to me may not be funny to you, and no matter how innocuous the joke, it's almost a certainty that someone won't think the joke in your ad is funny.
• Simplicity: Shakespeare wrote that the soul of wit was brevity. For any given ad, you have somewhere between three to five seconds to convince your audience to listen to your message. Get to the point!
• Speak to your audience, not at them: Respect your audience, so speak to them as if they're standing directly in front of you. Look them in the eye, and tell them the truth.
• Believe what you say: If you don't believe what you're saying in your advertisement, neither will your audience. A genuine commitment to serving your customers as well as you can will always shine through!

Creating advertising messaging is a process, and at times, can be challenging. However, if you know who you are, what you do and can explain to your customers what makes you different – and better – than your competitors, the process can be a rewarding one.

 In other words, be yourself!

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013

The Nightmare and The Dream: Negative versus Positive Communications

Mark From Marketing Says...

It's been a pretty loud three months in the media. Starting in late September, we've listened to a local/statewide/national political campaign, replaced by the annual holiday sell-a-thon. The weight-loss products and adult continuing education advertising seem almost quiet by comparison.

There are lessons to be learned from what you heard, however, particularly if you have a message to deliver to your customers. If you listened closely, you heard two broad categories of marketing communications: The Nightmare and The Dream.

During the fall political season, you heard The Nightmare. Essentially, the message from either side was "Vote for me/us, or he/she/they will win, and he/she/they will destroy everything you hold dear in our city/state/nation." Democrat or Republican, think back to the imagery this advertising conjured of the Other Side. Dollars to donuts, it's not a positive image you're seeing, is it?

Then came the holiday season advertising. No negative imagery there! Nothing but happy families in their new cars, happy couples buying engagement rings, happy children with their new cellular smart-phones, and  happy, young single people attending holiday parties. This, of course, is The Dream: everyone is happy because someone bought them something that made them that way.

 

In our particular toolbox, The Nightmare and The Dream are a professional communicator's two most-used tools. Think hammer and saw. The Nightmare is the hammer, because we want you to do something – or else. The Dream is the saw, because we want you do something – and think you're happier for doing it. Our goal in either case is to motivate you to do something.

So, which is more effective, The Nightmare or The Dream? Like the hammer and the saw, both are effective tools, but not necessarily for the same job. The Nightmare works well in political communications, since it's based in us-versus-them confrontation. The Dream lends itself better to presenting a reasoned sales proposition, because it appeals to the listener's desire to be happy with his or her decision to buy a product or service.

 

I thought about The Nightmare and The Dream recently when I heard Michigan had become the 24th right-to-work state in the union. Under the legislation, it will become illegal next April in Michigan to require financial support of a union as a condition of employment, except for police and firefighters. In practice, it will allow workers to opt-out of union membership or to pay agency fees to unions for representing them in contract negotiations.

My interest is not political, as this isn't a political blog. Rather, I wondered how the union leadership would communicate their value and relevance to a formerly captive audience of members and other workers. With the economy still in the doldrums, Tradition and Worker Solidarity may not mean as much to workers who will find they can keep what had formerly been their union dues or agency fees for themselves. Would they use The Nightmare or The Dream?

In the union side, I imagine the value proposition being:

• We're on your side: we care about you. The owners don't. We've been fighting for workers since the 1930s. We're there when you need help. Where were they?
• You still need us: unfair labor practices and workplace discrimination haven't ended.
• Long-term: you won't do as well financially without us to negotiate for better pay and benefits with the owners on your behalf.
• It's more than the money: our training helped get you your job, and we'll help keep your training up-to-date.

Meanwhile, the right-to-work value proposition might be:

• You keep more of what you make: You get to keep potentially hundreds of dollars in saved union dues or union agency fees each year for myself.
• Personal choice: You don't have to give the union any money. You don't think they do that much for you in the first place, and besides, you don't like the politicians and causes they give your union dues/agency fees to.
• You have enough bosses already: Not only do you have a Foreman and manager to answer to, you also have to answer to a union shop steward. Do you really want a shop steward telling you how to vote?
• More opportunity: Lower union costs mean more jobs in Michigan. More jobs mean more choices in places where you can find work, and maybe you can make more money elsewhere.

Notice there are elements of both The Nightmare and The Dream in both value propositions. The Nightmare's "hammer" is softened a little with a reminder of the benefits of union membership, while The Dream's "saw" is tempered with the implication of fewer jobs under continued union domination. These elements would strengthen either propositions.

 I prefer to sell the dream, not the nightmare. A negative message can be powerful, it's true, particularly as a motivator. But I would rather point out the benefits of a proposition, and to convince you that you'll be happier by making the choice I want you to make. That way, when you make the purchase, you won't think you "had" to buy the product or service.

 Instead, you made the purchase because you wanted to. You're happy you did. And you may be happy enough to buy something else from me in the future.

 

Mark Paulson is a marketing communications advisor and strategist with extensive experience in for-profit, charity and professional membership association settings. No matter the channel or setting, he is an eloquent communicator who can tell your organization's or product's story to your customers or specific audience groups.

 

Copyright ^©Mark E. Paulson 2013