Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Puppies

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The promised post on trade shows in the marketing plan has been delayed due to the arrival today of new puppies. As many of you know, I breed and show Scottish Terriers. Up until now, all the puppy litters have been born at my co-owner’s house, and I get them at about 3 weeks. Well, we swapped on this litter, so the puppies were born at my house this morning. Maybe by tomorrow I will be sort of back on schedule, but today is all about puppies. 🙂

More on advertising

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Advertising seems to be the topic de la semaine.

Bob Bly posted Is Madison Avenue Advertising a Total Fraud. While I am not sure I’d say total fraud, one of the points he makes is that agencies value creativity more than sales, which is not in the best interests of the client. Now, not all agencies are clueless about the need for actual SALES RESULTS, but I do agree that awards and "cool ads" seem to be more valued than the perhaps less exciting but maybe more effective ad that actually drives response. As I said in my earlier post this week, the message and getting the prospect to take action are the important elements. Art and design help get the message across, they aren’t the goal.

Jennifer Rice (What’s Your Brand Mantra), commenting on an earlier Bly post about the Madison Avenue Branding Rip-Off, makes some excellent points about advertising and branding:

IMO, there are two core issues here: first is the fallacy of ‘brand advertising’, and the second is that agencies are usually not well-suited to do brand strategy.

The brand-advertising fallacy:
As a client, I was told by my (nationally recognized) ad agency: "no, we cannot do response-oriented advertising until we’ve run ‘brand’ advertising for at least 3 months." Sorry, but that sets off my bullsh*t meter. The imagery, tone of voice, tag line, copy… there are plenty of elements that can deliver the brand message in conjunction with a sales promotion. CFOs don’t have the patience for so-called ‘brand advertising’ anymore, and marketing is now accountable for results.

Absolutely!! Your advertising is ALWAYS brand advertising (even if you don’t realize it). Best to do a little selling as well. As well as realize that everything in the business impacts the brand. You can’t create a brand image separate from the reality of the organization or the product. It won’t work.

Which I suppose bring us back full circle. So much advertising DOES seem to try to create a brand image not grounded in reality that it is ineffective, leading to a conclusion that advertising doesn’t work.

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On a completely different note, thanks to David Parmet (Marketing Begins At Home) for posting about this non-Christmas carol. If you are getting sick of Jingle Bells and Drummer Boys, you’ll get a kick out of it (even if the music itself isn’t your favorite genre).

Images of Ad People in the Media

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Writing my post on advertising got me thinking about the representations of marketing people in the media. One of the many thoughts that crossed my mind was that the "ad man" [sic] is one of the most despised in popular culture. Along with the sales person and the publicist/PR person ("spin doctors’).

The stereotype: The ad guy is a bit of a trickster, perhaps a liar, who will tell you what you want to hear and make you like what you don’t … Wobbly ethics (if any). Slick.

Here are some of the fictional ad and PR people I came up with today. Please add your own.

Deceitful weasels: J. Pierpont Finch, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and pretty much everyone in Wag the Dog. I also remember faintly a British series set in an ad agency where just about everyone was pretty awful.

Unethical deceitful weasels: The tobacco industry. Example, the movie: The Insider

Positive but kinda clueless: Darrin Stephens, Bewitched (the TV show, not the recent movie) and two of the protagonists in the TV series Thirty Something. And both of those shows STILL had "bad/badder ad guys " as counterpoints to the more sympathetic "good guys."

Now, perhaps some advertising guys fit this stereotype, but no one I know. I guess that’s why we call it a stereotype 🙂 But, why do we have so little respect for the "ad man?" If TV and movies are anything to go by, we don’t believe a word of what we read/see in ads; we "know" they are lying to us.

But of course, that isn’t really true, is it? We do pay attention to ads, and sometimes — often — we purchase products as a result. But we can’t help wondering… did someone put one over on me?

Or the bane of my existence early in my career, the assertion from any and all that "I could have written a better ad than that…" In other words, no special skills required, anybody could do it…

All leading to no respect for the poor ad guy, even when she gets it right.

So my question is, does this cultural lack of respect for the practitioner and skepticism about the ad content contribute to the trend to less advertising (at least for small to mid sized companies)? Or is it just one of the symptoms? Are we quick to dismiss the form because we are so familiar with the negative stereotype that we easily convince ourselves that ads "don’t work?" Or is this negative stereotype just a manifestation of a world view that disparages advertising.

Now, really, the answer to these questions is pretty much irrelevant — the situation is what it is, and as practical marketers, we just need to get on with it. It’s just fun sometimes to wander onto more "philosophical" paths.

Next: my thoughts on trade shows.

The Marketing Plan: Advertising

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[longish post]

Advertising. Small to mid-sized companies, whether B2B or B2C, want leads and buyers, not intangible awareness. As a result, they often decide not to advertise. They can’t track it, their sales people don’t probe inbounds for lead source, they have a limited budget and can’t run with any frequency, there seem to be better venues for their marketing dollars. And so on. There are all sorts of reasons (good and bad) why companies pull back from advertising.

Those that do advertise are increasingly pushing their agencies and in-house ad teams to prove that "traditional" advertising works. There are just too many choices for the promotional budget, and too many that CAN be tracked, for the dollars to flow quite so easily into huge media budgets.

It is perhaps more apparent in B2B, where direct mail and online marketing have really damaged the print media. In the technology sector, ad pages are way down from the heyday of 10-15 years ago, and quite a few publications have folded or gone online.

My belief: the right amount of advertising is good for the marketing plan. The key is figuring the right amount is for your market, your product and your situation. Where do we start?

First and foremost, always, is the marketing plan. What are your objectives? Under certain circumstances, an ad may be the best way to reach your audience. Here are just a few:

  • New product launch. Ads are an effective supplement to your PR outreach, especially if you have something really new to offer. Yes, you are going to have a comprehensive PR campaign, but you don’t control that outcome. Ads, you do. When time is of the essence, a well-placed ad is often the best thing.
  • Targeted market with specialized publications. If you know your prospect really is reading the publication, she is likely to see your ad. There are from two to six publications in just about EVERY market. You don’t need to be in all of them, all the time. Ask your customers what they read, and go there. For someone on a limited budget, these trade pubs are THE way to go. Smaller circulations mean lower ad rates, but if you’ve got the right target, nearly all the readers are your audience. Versus more general publications with more readers, but perhaps fewer readers of interest to you.
  • You need to reach the audience and you ain’t got nothing new. Editors cover new products. Adding a little feature or a new color does not make a product new. It may get picked up, but it probably won’t. If you want the readers of a magazine to know about your OLD product, you gotta advertise. This is especially true in very competitive markets where the offerings from the competitors are not highly differentiated. Hard to break through the clutter. And there is an added benefit when you advertise. Typically the pub’s editorial staff reads its own pub. It’s in the job description 🙂 Advertising doesn’t guarantee that a reporter will write about you, but it improves your chances that she’ll remember your company and its products when she writes on the topic.

My rule of thumb: if a publication is of GREAT interest to you and your prospects –what we call a tier one pub for PR purposes — you should consider advertising. Not all the time, perhaps only in selected targeted issues. But you should support it, and take advantage of the editorial climate it offers to deliver a controlled message. When I was at SurfControl, we noticed that our direct mail responses (the staple of our marketing outreach) declined when we weren’t advertising. Clearly, the ads DID affect overall response, even if we couldn’t track it exactly.

So how do you maximize your ad expenditure?

  • Always include a call to action. Tell the prospect EXACTLY what you want him to do next. Try to get your sales force to capture inbound source information.
  • A simple message: Show the reader you understand his pain, tell her you have a solution, deliver the proof that your solution works, and give a call to action. One big benefit. Three features. Three facts. Action.
  • Integrate integrate integrate. Use the same messages and images in your advertising as in your direct mail and PR. Repetition helps recall. Schedule things so your prospects get 2-4 impressions from different vehicles within short timeframes. Perhaps a couple of ads, a direct mail campaign and a PR launch or trade show. DO NOT let the members of your team splinter off to "do their own thing."
  • Track as much as you can. Easier to do online, which is one of the reasons that I recommend ads (print and online) include a specialized URL whenever possible. Sure, a lot of your response will still come in through the front door, but if you give a good enough reason to go to the special page, you can gather better marketing information about the prospect. You should also track the publication dates of your advertising against your web hits. You may find an uptick when ads appear, which is good supporting data.
  • You don’t have to run a full page four color ad in every issue. Look at the editorial calendars. Bracket trade shows. Run fractional ads (I like 1/2 page vertical). Challenge the ad rep to give you a good package. They usually have print and online inventory, plus special issues and sister/network publications to throw into the mix to give you a good rate. If you are a company placing the ads direct, DON’T FORGET TO TAKE THE AGENCY DISCOUNT. If you have an agency, negotiate the agency discount. Don’t give 15% away without good reason.
  • Always include a call to action. Awareness advertising is next to useless. You’ll get awareness anyway, so don’t forget to ask for the order.
  • Don’t let design dictate. The message is far more important than what color you use, and you are wasting your money if the ad design HINDERS reader comprehension of what you are selling. It’s an ad — the reader knows you are selling something, so don’t try to hide it with "cool design." Images and layout are important but the whole thing has to work together to tell the story, and make the prospect act. I can’t tell you how many ads I have seen in my lifetime where the design has actually obfuscated the message. Dumb dumb dumb.
  • Did I mention a call to action???

I hope you find this information useful. I’d love to hear YOUR experiences and thoughts about how advertising fits in the marketing plan.  Leave your comments or send me a trackback.** I’ll also do a summary post of any commentary in early January.

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