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Blog posts tagged Advertising
Have you got an addiction to discounting?
April 13, 2011
I am one of the most disorganised jokers you'll ever meet but a book by one of the world's best organised people influenced me hugely ... even if it didn't do much good.
It was "My years with General Motors" by Alfred P. Sloan.
Sloan led General Motors to become the world's largest motor manufacturer. It was so important to the US economy that they used to say "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA."
But General Motors — and Ford and Chrysler — got into terrible trouble and had to be bailed out, barely surviving.
There were many reasons why, but one was their marketing. Besides the fact that their ads all tended to be boastful and dull, they fell into a habit I see as the marketing equivalent of crack addiction: heavy discounting.
This gives an immediate boost to sales, but you become addicted to it. And you get nasty after-effects — as with crack.
- The people who buy most from a promotion are your best customers, who would have bought anyway
- People bring forward their buying so there is a slump afterwards
- You are training your customers to expect bribes
To explain more why this is so dangerous, I must take you back 25 years.
Ogilvy and Mather had a unit called the Ogilvy Centre for Research in San Francisco. The Director, Alex Biehl, worked on a project called PIMS - which stood (I think) for Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies.
The aim: to discover how different marketing weapons affect profits.
Over 200 firms took part. One thing the project revealed was very simple, very important — yet is news to almost all marketers.
Firms that spend more money on discounting than advertising are far less profitable than those that spend more on advertising than discounting.
The project divided firms into four quartiles. Those in the top quartile spent most on advertising and least on discounting. Those in the bottom quartile did it the other way round.
The ones in the top quartile were on average twice as profitable as those in the bottom one.
Think about it. When you spend more on offering deals than explaining why people should want to buy your stuff, you are perilously close to saying, "Our stuff is not good enough to sell on its merits at full price."
To go back to where I started, today General Motors is no longer the world's biggest automotive firm. Toyota is.
Another brand once led its market but no longer does. It is Dell.
And guess what? Every single email Dell sends me offers a deal.
They have been overtaken by Hewlett Packard and Acer.
I am not saying never discount. I offer discounts all the time.
Nor am I saying traditional advertising is the answer to your problems.
What I am saying is that messages that give people reasons, emotional or rational, for buying are the key to building your business and brand.
By the way, never forget: one person can be a brand, as I reflected last night when I passed Jamie's Italian in Bristol — which was, as always, packed out.
It has done so well so fast that I believe it's going to be floated on the stock market.
Drayton Bird is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut. He runs Drayton Bird Associates and is a renowned direct marketing teacher, speaker and author.
For more information, read our guide to how to price your service.
11 cheap (or free) advertising methods to grow your business
March 02, 2011
The internet is a virtual bonanza of potential customers and clients if you know how to advertise your business. There are a lot of companies online trying to get into your pocket by offering services that will promote your business.
Fortunately, you can do most of these promotional services for cheap, or even free.
Owning a website
It may seem like common sense, but it needs to be said. Your business needs a website to be competitive online. Without a website you will be facing a constant uphill battle. It will only cost you a few dollars per year for hosting and a domain name, and with that you can generate customers and sales.
Online classifieds
Any business can get a massive amount of exposure by using online classifieds such as Craigslist. You can place free ads for your business online everyday and targeted people will stumble upon them. These ads can be anything from a one-day event like a garage sale to a service like photography.
Search engine optimisation
Free search engine traffic is tantamount to winning the lottery. If you are able to convince the search engines that your website is the most relevant site for your targeted keywords, you will experience a consistent flood of search engine traffic. This traffic will naturally convert into revenue. You can either do the optimisation yourself for free, or you can pay someone to do it.
Article marketing
A successful article marketing strategy will drive traffic to your website as well as help with search engine optimisation, and it’s completely free. It can be a labour-intensive method though, writing many different articles for many different sites. All that labour will bring reward. A well-crafted article marketing campaign may significantly raise your rank in the search engines
Social networks
Some businesses are perfect for social networking traffic and some are not. If you believe that your business will be buzz-worthy, you might want to consider creating a Twitter profile as well as a Facebook fan page. These accounts will allow you to interact directly with your online customers. You can let them know of promotions or events, and they can give ideas and suggestions to improve your business. It will also allow your business to grow virally through word of mouth.
Online video sharing sites
If you are able to produce a few interesting videos that are related to your business, posting them on sites like YouTube and Vimeo.com could send you a steady flow of website traffic. These sites are free to submit to, and the potential traffic gain from them is astronomical. Make sure that you submit more than one video to maximize your exposure.
Online photo sharing sites
Online photo sharing is like online video sharing. If you have some photos that are relevant to your business, don’t be afraid to share them on Flickr. This will increase your website visibility and send more targeted visitors to your site.
Pay per click advertising
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is rarely thought of as cheap, but it can drive a massive amount of high converting traffic to your site. You will have to find a balance between cost and revenue to make the best use of PPC advertising. While it can be very helpful for your business, it could also be a major drain on your budget if you aren’t careful. It might seem like a good idea at the time to pay for the top spot on Google, but if you aren’t converting enough sales it’s not worth it. You can purchase PPC advertising on almost all of the major search engines, as well as some sites like Facebook.
Email marketing
Email marketing has been stigmatised as spam. While much of the email marketing you receive is indeed spam, your campaign doesn’t have to be. The difference between a legitimate marketing campaign and spam is that people will actually request emails that are legitimate. So how can you make your email marketing campaign legit? All you need to do is create a massive email list of interested parties to send weekly emails to. Creating that list is a little more difficult. You will to give something away for free in order to entice people to provide their email addresses to you. This can be something as simple as a small report or document that is related to your business. After you have created your list, you can begin email marketing without the stigma of a spammer. It is important to allow your recipients to remove themselves from your list if they want to.
Local business listings
If you are promoting a bricks and mortar company, you should be taking advantage of the search engines’ local business listings. This will place your website on the front page with similar local services when someone does a search within your operating area. This can be a great way to get a fledgling business in front of the eyes of thousands of potential customers.
Online directories
It’s true that most online directories are losing their usefulness when it comes to search engine optimisation, but you can still make use of local directories that target your specific area. You will get a small boost to your page rank and some traffic from the directory itself. You shouldn’t waste any of your time or money with a paid directory. They won’t provide enough traffic to make their service valuable.
There are many different ways to get your business’ name out there on the internet, and you should use all of them. For cheap, or free, you can drastically increase your customer base by tapping into the internet. There are new advertising methods popping up every day, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.
Daniel Offer is a partner in the Facebook chat programme Chit Chat for Facebook
Attention grabbing: How to get your product noticed
January 24, 2011
If, like me, you are a product person, then I think it’s safe to assume you spend a healthy amount of time thinking about how your product can make an impact on its market.
At Actinic, we are pretty lucky as we have a sizable user base, but it wasn’t always the way. Plus, I have never met a product company that doesn’t want more users.
So here are my top ten tips for making a big splash:
1. Get to the influencers
Every industry has a set of influencers. Get to them, demo your product or offer early access if you are yet to launch. An interesting tip I picked up is to look at those that write books about your space, contact the authors and the people that are quoted on the back and get them on board.
2. Become active in the community
You need to become the face of your product in relevant online communities — everything from social networks to discussion groups. If you’re not the authority for your product then someone else will be.
3. Go to industry events
Get out of the office and away from the desk. Nothing beats good old-fashioned networking and many events are free to attend.
4. Make business cards work harder
Seriously, business cards are not dead. In my opinion they are the most powerful marketing tool available and considerably more acceptable to hand out at events. The premise of the double-sided card is simple; one side has your contact info, the other a short description of your product. But avoid marketing BS at all costs.
5. Comment on the competition
A great tip I picked up at a conference last year is to search for comparisons between your competitors. If your space is reasonably mature you’ll find everything from reviews to blog posts. Why not include a comment while pointing out how your product is different from those being discussed?
6. Generate a marketing kit
I am amazed at how few companies in the tech space still offer a marketing kit. It’s one of the most useful tools a marketer can provide. Think about how you can condense all of your information into a concise PDF or simple HTML site. Include interesting information, case studies/testimonials, product details, market statistics etc.
7. Blog, Tweet, Facebook update
It all makes a difference and remember no one likes a constant stream of “why you’re the best”. Mix things up, be interesting.
8. Don’t forget PPC
Pay-Per-Click advertising is the long-established method of getting eyes on the prize. The reason for this is simple — it works. Google and Bing ads are the obvious starting place but don’t forget about Facebook, where you can target a campaign based on people’s interests and demographics.
9. Get listed
Think about Linkedin, Crunchbase, Mashable and others — they are often free. There are loads of business directories, make sure you’re in all of them.
10. Delight your customers
Cliché I know, but if your current customers are not raving about your product or service then I doubt the new ones you’re trying to attract will be either. Also no-one sells a product better than an existing, happy user.
Benjamin Dyer is an expert contributor to IT Donut and director of product development for ecommerce specialist Actinic.
Folly from some not-so-great marketers versus what the real greats think
September 27, 2010
Here's a strange story for you.
A few months ago I wrote an e-mail for a firm selling investment advice.
They took forever to get the damn thing out and never told us how it did, but one day sent us an e-mail asking us to adapt it for another firm's list with whom they had a deal.
By accident we saw two revealing insights into why so much marketing is bad.
An internal message said our e-mail was outdoing anything before — which would have been nice to know.
And note from the other firm said their new marketing chief was more interested in brand values than response, so could we make our e-mail shorter and less aggressive.
This reminded me of what the smartest guy with the biggest brand in the world said about marketing.
Sergio Zyman is the former chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola. In five years, when few people thought Coke could sell any more, he and his team increased its sales by 50 per cent, and the share price quadrupled.
You couldn't imagine anyone less like a direct marketer than someone who sells Coca-Cola. Or anyone you might think more dedicated to brand values.
What your job really is
Zyman could teach a lot of direct marketers who hanker after quasi- intellectual tripe about the realities of life.
He said in his excellent (and funny) book "The end of marketing as we know it" that marketers should be "the ultimate stewards of return on investment in assets".
Zyman’s wonderfully down-to-earth definition of the aim of marketing is this: "To get more people to buy more stuff more often at higher prices so the company makes more money".
He says a lot in his book about marketers' lack of intellectual discipline, and the way they fail to set exact targets, talking vaguely about "more" sales, "more" market share but never putting a figure on the increases — saying precisely how much more.
As I always say — though I probably stole it from someone smarter than me — if you aim at nothing, you usually hit your mark.
Boardroom folly
Zyman is particularly critical about the way marketers get into the boardroom and then start being more interested in what goes on there than their customers.
One of his best stories tells how he showed his first Coca-Cola ads in 1993 to his boss Roberto Goizueta, who said, "I don't like those ads."
"Look, Roberto," he replied, "If you're willing to buy 100 per cent of the volume worldwide then I'm happy to do the advertising that you like. Otherwise I've got to keep doing it to those damned consumers."
My favourite quote on this is from one of the great businessmen of the 20th century.
The architect of Sears, Roebuck's rise to become the world's greatest retailer was Julius Rosenwald. He once remarked, "My ambition is to stand on both sides of the counter at once."
I doubt if he ever used the phrase "brand values". He just knew that no matter how important such things may be, "Nothing happens in business until something gets sold."
Who said that? Thomas J Watson Jr. of IBM. Strange how the best people tend to say similar things, isn't it?
Honesty is the best policy
August 31, 2010
In marketing, people often say what they would like to be the truth rather than what it is. It always catches up with them.
It reminds me of something I read in a New York Times obituary in 1984. "Honesty is not only the best policy. It is rare enough nowadays to make you pleasantly conspicuous."
This is not only funny; it is very good advice and came from Charles H. Brower. He was chairman of the advertising agency BBD & O — Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn — a name the great W. C. Fields said sounded like a man dragging a heavy trunk down a flight of stairs.
When he took over, the agency was in a mess, and he was the architect of its renewal. Today it is one of the world's three biggest advertising agencies.
Sometimes telling the truth can get you out of a tricky situation. For example years ago I was writing copy for a slimming product when the law changed, and you had to say in your ads that such products had to be used in conjunction with a calorie-controlled diet.
My client was very worried. Now losing weight didn't sound nearly as simple and easy.
I just revised the ads, putting at the start the following:
"Doctors agree: you can't lose weight without having a calorie-controlled diet."
I believe the ads did just as well or better, because most people don't believe in miracles — and the mention of doctors did no harm.
The principle of accepting and even capitalising on your short-comings is well worth considering. Here's another -—something we wrote for a client about a year ago.
"To be honest, you may find a slightly lower interest rate if you hunt around. That's because the loan industry is in a price war. But will there be a guarantee it will never go up? 6.8%APR is one of the lowest rates around (in fact we are committed to being amongst the very best value providers for every product we offer)."
There are plenty of examples where people don't tell the truth in their marketing. What's more, finding a claim that is true and differentiates you is not easy.
But Waitrose - Quality food, honestly priced — may not seem creative but it is good.
As is Never knowingly undersold — John Lewis
Drayton Bird is a renowned direct marketing teacher, speaker and author. Find out more about him on his profile.
The top ten common mistakes with Google AdWords campaigns
March 09, 2010
When training others in setting up their AdWords campaigns, I have noticed that many will have made identical mistakes. My challenge to you is – how many of these errors can be found in YOUR AdWords campaigns?
1. Using just one advert to match to lots of unrelated keywords
Here’s an example advert that is suffering from this mistake:
Virtual Office
temporary staffing, virtual office
registered office, mail forwarding
www.freelanceofficestaff.co.uk
In this example, the advertiser is attempting to use one advert to advertise many of their products and services. To overcome this mistake, set up multiple ad groups, one for each product or service.
2. Sending people to the homepage
A common mistake is to send all visitors direct to the homepage of your website. You have just a few seconds to get and keep someone’s attention on the web! Don’t risk them leaving immediately as they cannot find what they are looking for – send them directly to the page about that particular product or service.
3. Incorrect capitalisation
Capitalise the first letter of each word in your advert (see the example in point 4 below) – this works by making the advert stand out more and increases the likelihood it will get clicked.
4. Using your company name as the heading for the adverts
This mistake is often replicated by web marketing agencies as well as individual advertisers. Here’s an example:
Bristol Party Hire
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk
Your advert is NOT about you – it’s about closely matching what the potential visitor is searching for. The advert heading should match the keywords the visitor has used as closely as possible. For example:
Bristol Bouncy Castles
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk
5. Not tracking the results
Make sure you track your results so you can test which keywords work best to generate leads and / or sales. You can do this by using Google’s conversion tracking (found in the Opportunities tab).
6. Leaving the content network on
The content network is a large number of unrelated websites, all running advertising on their website. Visitors to their websites have the opportunity to click on your ad, costing you money. Turn the content network off to avoid these unnecessary clicks.
7. Leaving ads running 24 hours per day
For most products and services, it makes sense to only run adverts at certain times of day. For example, B2B advertisers will benefit from running adverts only during work hours.
8. Not using negative keywords
Negative keywords will prevent irrelevant searches. For example, you will probably want to cut out people seeking “free” things. Ideally build a large negative keyword list to save yourself money.
9. Failing to use broad, phrase and exact match keywords
These are the three different keyword types which all need to be included in your ad groups to cut down on costs. So make sure you include them all.
10. Underutilising the display URL
The display URL can be manipulated to increase Click Through Rate. For example, if advertising bouncy castles – instead of www.bristolpartyhire.co.uk use www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk/BouncyCastles.
Claire Jarrett of MarketingByWeb
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