Archive for May 10, 2010

10 May 2010
Business • Marketing Strategy

Mission Statement in One Sentence?

BNET posted an article about clarifying your corporate mission based on a post from a Harvard Business Review blog.

The idea began with a story about Clare Booth Luce, the playwright, journalist, and Republican Member of Congress. In 1962, Luce met with President Kennedy, who was, at the time, pursuing an ambitious agenda domestically and overseas. She worried about his diffuse priorities. “A great man,” she advised him, “is one sentence.” President Lincoln’s sentence was obvious: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” So was FDR’s: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.” What, Luce challenged the young, impatient president, was to be his sentence?

Here are some examples of simple clear corporate sentences:

Google: “We organize the word’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

NASA: “To understand and protect our home planet, to explore the Universe and search for life, and to inspire the next generation of explorers.”

National Geographic Society: “Increase and diffuse geographic knowledge while promoting the conservation of the world’s cultural, historical and natural resources.”

Virgin Atlantic: “To grow a profitable airline where people love to fly and where people love to work.”

Toyota North America, pledges: “To attract and attain customers with high-valued products and services and the most satisfying ownership experience in America.”

This statement says nothing about what the company actually sells — cars and trucks — but puts customer satisfaction at the heart of everything it does. Time will tell if this pulls Toyota through its current troubles.

The ideas are simple, is it enough to be pretty good at everything? You have to be the most of something: the most elegant, the most colorful, the most responsive, the most focused. This is a potent thought, should you test your own company’s mission against it?

Dean’s Mailing & List Services: To help organizations save every tenth of a cent on marketing costs with our experience and expertise because we care about people.

How would you express your company’s mission, values and aspirations — in one sentence? Talk to us, we are great at asking the right questions that lead to answers and new solutions.

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07 May 2010
Direct Mail • Marketing Strategy

Timing

DMNews ran a great article titled “When marketing, travel through the four dimensions of time” by Paul Mandeville. They say “timing is everything”, it may not be everything but it sure can play a big part in the success of marketing efforts.

Mr. Mandeville suggests that in a marketing campaign timing has four facets:

Timing  (Recency)– the nearness of a message to a customer event that triggers that message, for example, sending a coupon for related accessories within 3 days of purchase.

Frequency – the number of times you choose to send a similarly themed messages before you stop further attempts, for example customers should receive three messages from you within the first month of purchase and at least one message every three months for the first year or two after that trigger purchase.

Pacing – the amount of time between messages of a similar theme, for example sent the first message within 72 hours, and if no reply, send message #2 seven days after purchase, and if still no reply, send final message #3 ten days after purchase.

Sequencing – the act of coordinated, separate but related content.

The article stated that financial services and retail firms have been able to achieve a double digit lift in response, without increasing their discount offers, simply by using timing to their advantage. You can do the same. Direct mail is a great way to implement this strategy or include it as a part of your marketing that speaks directly to your customer when they want to hear from you.

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05 May 2010
Advertising • Direct Mail

Writing About Intangibles

To help you create messages that sell more of what can’t be seen, we are sharing an article by Pat Friesen that appeared in Target Marketing Magazine. Whether you sell insurance, toilet tune-ups, home loans, teleconferencing, investment services or other intangibles, we hope these tips help.

  • Call to action. This is basic, but often overlooked and undervalued. Tell people what you want them to do and why they should do it. What action do you want your customer to take as a result of receiving your message? What can you do to motivate your customer to call, click or complete an application?
  • Humanize benefits. Show people enjoying the end benefit of what you sell. For example, most parents want their children to get an education. So, if you market loans or insurance, show a smiling graduate in cap and gown with a benefit caption below it.
  • “You can’t say that.” The next time your attorney or compliance officer utters these words after reading your copy, respond with, “OK, what can I say?” It may mean changing just one or two words, and may make your copy even stronger.
  • Engage them with something unusual. Providing toilet tune-ups is more attention-grabbing than saying you check for leaks and rusted parts.
  • Focus on customer benefits, not company history. Nobody really cares that you are headquartered in Omaha, Neb., and have been in business for more than a hundred years unless you tell them why it’s important. Such as, you have a hundred-year history of paying claims promptly, and customer service calls are all taken in the heart of America, not offshore.
  • Create an offer with value that supports what you sell. Instead of giving away pricey tangibles such as iPods or free dinners, provide an easy-to-use calculator or a free checklist. Consumers value information that educates and empowers.
  • Keep it simple. Intangibles are often perceived as being difficult to understand. Confusion slows down decision making and results in avoidance. Your marketing mission is to make your product simple and understandable.
  • Never use the words “applying is easy” … unless it’s true. When was the last time you completed your company’s application? Give it to five people who fit your customer profile but don’t work for your company, and ask them to fill it out. Watch them do it. Simple-to-complete applications/forms combine the right words with good design, simple organization and readable typefaces.
  • Write in plain English. Yes, insurance and financial services do have regulatory content that must be included. However, don’t pepper your marketing copy with killer words like “undersigned” and “the party of the first part”. Instead, use plain English that’s easily understood.
  • Have your creative team work as a team. No matter which media you use, you get the best, most effective end product when you have your writer, designer, programmer and others involved in the creative process work together. Don’t isolate them.
  • Cross-sell. Cross-sell to both customers and prospects.
  • Reactivate. Policy holders lapse and account owners close their accounts, but this doesn’t mean they don’t want to do business with you again. Did you know that customers that previously had a relationship with you are more likely to buy than cold prospects? However, they need reassurance that you still love them. And they need to be asked. This applies across all industries, all products and services, tangible and intangible. In economic times like these, reactivation is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate new business.

How can we help you deliver a message about the intangible benefits that you bring to your customers?

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04 May 2010
Design

Marketing and Color

Deliver Magazine talked to Cynthia Cornell a color researcher with Color Communications. She offered some loose meanings for colors.

Blue-based reds (like raspberry) are associated with more expensive products

Yellow based reds (like tomato) are imagined to be less expensive

Orange can play up affordability

Yellow is the first color the eye sees, when it is used with a dark color for high contrast, it becomes more powerful and easily read

Green conveys possibility and hope

Blue connotes confidence and safety, it is a great choice for financial and medical institution mailers

Purple is very popular right now, but it is traditionally used with high fashion, sports teams or sweet treats

Black conveys a strong sense of power, promise and the ability for high contrasts. Add sheen or matte to black and it becomes more powerful

White implies sophistication and formality, but also a high-end price point

Does this refresher about color inspire you to try something new with your design? Can we review your ideas or help you put them into new idea?

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03 May 2010
Business • Marketing Strategy

The Plan for Those Who Don’t Plan

BNET recently offered these ideas about business planning. The premise started with the observation that during the last twelve months, the business and economic landscape has continued to change and no one can predict what’s next. So why waste time with five-year plans?

One of the most prevalent rules for entrepreneurs is to create a long term plan! But in 2010, small businesses are learning that it’s more important to be agile and flexible. Plans are unhelpful when they restrict your thinking or don’t allow for deviation or reinvention.

That kind of thinking can give you the edge in the market. Liberating your company from traditional business planning may mean you can be both more enterprising and more robust for survival in difficult times. Here are four tips for navigating your way through the unpredictable business landscape without a big strategic plan:

  1. Think fluid. Don’t get stuck to a rigid strategic plan. Instead, see where the water flows and trust your instincts — not your spreadsheet — in pursuing new options. Make sure your business is agile enough to react to market trends or new innovations in technology. If you spot a new opportunity, you don’t have to check it’s on the plan first — just go for it.
  2. Prototype. Test your ideas in the real world. Better to launch beta versions of your website, so you can evaluate and tweak as you go, rather than trying to perfect the model before you launch. Otherwise you might never get the site off the ground.
  3. Reinvent. Learn to love change and be prepared to rethink what you do and how you do it. Maybe your business feels a bit stale, a bit stuck. You might need to shake up your organization so your clients start thinking differently about you. Re-energize your organization by taking your team on an ‘away day’ to brainstorm new ideas; think laterally about how you can re-engineer your offering to grow the business.
  4. Think goals, not plans. Set objectives for the year: deadlines to meet, products to launch. It’s important to know what you want to achieve — if not necessarily how you’ll get there. This allows you to think big without initially worrying about the details. A goal may be “I need to get a new client every month.” Perhaps you don’t have a strict linear plan for how you’ll actually achieve that — you just start off the instinctive way: word of mouth, social networking, client meet-and-greets, and so on.  You can’t chart this activity on a graph, but mentally focusing on the goals will help you reach your desired outcome.

A timeline or a spreadsheet can’t capture those opportunities that arise from serendipity and random meetings. If you remove the traditional business planning mindset, you’ll be liberated to grow your business in line with how the world really changes — not with what it says on a spreadsheet.

How can we help you test a new idea or be fluid in your marketing?

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