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Objective: To promote awareness in the community of the St. Cloud Times newspaper’s conversion from an afternoon to a morning paper.
Strategy and Execution: The St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times has been an afternoon newspaper for over 120 years. Converting the paper to an a.m. edition could potentially have caused quite a jolt to daily readers and advertisers, not to mention a reorganization of the workday for newspaper employees. Weekly Q&A sessions for employees were energized by the presentation of employee appreciation gifts such as ceramic latte mugs, plastic traveler mugs, embroidered baseball caps and t-shirts. Two weeks before the conversion, the newspaper hosted a VIP reception for city dignitaries, vendors, advertisers and government officials to unveil the new logo for the paper. Finally, during conversion week, the paper hosted a series of PR events such as “Buzz Breakfasts”, the delivery of breakfast and the new morning newspaper to every city official and morning drive-time disc jockey. The Breakfast Buzz bags included imprinted travel mugs, t-shirts, embroidered baseball caps, yo-yos, ceramic latte mugs, static cling window signs and free coffee with newspaper purchase. The comprehensive program also used radio, TV, and billboard advertising to further emphasize the message.
Results: The success of the St. Cloud Times’ conversion to a morning paper was reflected in an impressive year-over-year increase of 2.1% for single-copy sales. In the newspaper industry, this represents a significant increase
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Is Your Marketing Missing a P?
-or-
Why Properly Executed Specialty
Advertising Works!
by Nye Ohrberg
If you’ve been in the marketing game for any length of time, you’ve seen all manner of professional nomenclature come and go. Positioning, share of mind, top-of-mind awareness, guerilla marketing…it’s a long list. And when something new does emerge, the tendency is to dispense the old to the archives of yesteryear.
Well, sometimes that’s a good thing (I am sooooooooooooooooo sick of hearing marketing mavens and advertising gurus trumpet “positioning” as if it were the Holy Grail of promotion!). Sometimes, however, it’s not, and one of the old saws that got tossed out quite a while ago but deserves to be resurrected is the “4 P’s of Marketing.”
You remember that, don’t you? It’s “Product · Place · Price · Promotion.” Or do you remember the 4 P’s at all (and if you’re young enough, chances are you’ve never even heard of it)? Whatever the case, let’s first do a recap of those P’s.
Product: The right product for the application. It doesn’t have to be the best product in its class, because this isn’t strictly about quality. It’s about applicability and practicability. It’s also about knowing what your product can and cannot do and who is most likely to be interested in this product. [NOTE: I’m using “product” here to mean both product and service. Call it literary shorthand.]
Place: Where customers can find your product. In real estate, it’s “location location location.” Same here. But more importantly, your product needs to be offered and available at a logical place. That is, it needs to be placed where potential customers are most likely to look for it or where it is most likely to attract buyer attention, either via product affinity or shopper surprise and consequent impulse.
Price: The right price for the product and the market (and, of course, your profitability). Notice that word “right.” It doesn’t mean the lowest price – it means the price that fits the personality and perception of the product. Indeed, the marketing annals are rife with examples of products that were priced so comparatively low that buyers perceived those products as being of inferior quality and, as a result, eschewed them.
Promotion: The communication of a product’s features and benefits. How that communication is delivered depends on myriad factors including target audience, product application, competition, time constraints, budget constraints, and lots more. But your communication must be delivered effectively, consistently, and repeatedly, or your product with simply gather dust in its place – regardless of the price you charge.
Those comprise the four wheels of your marketing vehicle. If one wheel goes flat – or just plain falls off…or isn’t even installed – your business will careen off the sales road and into a no-sales abyss.
That’s the longstanding principle of the 4 P’s, and it’s a principle that makes sense, all of the marketing profession’s pseudoscientific modern monikers notwithstanding. However, there’s a P missing – and it’s been missing right from the start. That P is “Presence.”
Presence – the Missing P
Presence is where your product exists in the eyes, hearts, and minds of your future, current, and former customers. Or, to be more precise about it, where your product’s messages and/or reminders exist.
Do not confuse presence with share of mind or top-of-mind awareness. The concepts are similar, but only just so. Share of mind and top-of-mind awareness are internal functions. They are at the mercy of the whims and fancies of memory and the synaptic detours to which our brains are subject. No matter how often a marketing message is transmitted, a potential buyer’s unaided recall of that message is easily and all too often diverted by any of an array of life’s little distractions – including the at-the-decision-moment arrival of a competitor’s message.
Thus, share of mind and top-of-mind awareness have no true presence, other than what might carom around in a prospect’s head. Real, genuine, enduring presence requires physicality – an existence that is external and not dependent on what a potential buyer might cull from memory.
Enter specialty advertising products. Of all the marketing and advertising investments available, a specialty advertising product (e.g., promo product, premium, et al) is the only one that has and can demand presence.
It’s basic human nature. You have no compunction about throwing out a brochure or flyer or other flat printed marketing communication. But an actual product? Even the chintziest geegaw stays around longer than a sales letter, sitting on a desk or stuck to a refrigerator or holding your morning coffee or whatever…and “broadcasting” a message 24/7. THAT is presence!
Promo Items Don’t Work…or Do They?
Yes, I can hear you now. You’ve used trinkets and fuzzballs before, and they simply don’t work, right? Well, the sad fact is that too many advertisers – and, for that matter, promo item sellers – don’t know how to make those specialty items work.
Years ago, I convinced a client to purchase a considerable quantity of pens, coffee mugs, tile coasters, and assorted other promo goodies, and I showed them a promotional program for sending or otherwise giving these items to current customers, new prospects, and employees.
After a few months, I followed up to see how the program was working. The client told me that it wasn’t working at all. And why wasn’t it working? The client was reluctant to give away the merchandise because it was so “valuable.” That was tantamount to the client saying they don’t give out brochures because they cost so much to print! Yikes!!
Unfortunately, scenarios like this are far too common. Even more common, though, is the penchant for promo product buyers to choose products based solely on price and then distribute these products willy-nilly without any kind of promotional program behind them – as if just handing a prospect a pearl-handle pickle picker is going to pry open their checkbook!
Promo items don’t work that way. Sure, even without a program or romanced message or enticement to respond, that pickle picker may stay around. But its presence – especially immediate but also long term – is minimal, to say the least.
The 3 R’s of Effective Direct Mail Promo
Specialty advertising works only when it is properly executed, and far and away the most effective use of promo items is in a direct mail campaign. Yet proper execution of such a campaign entails multiple stages, not just a one-hit-hopeful thrown on the wall to see what sticks. It involves various and ongoing communications steps that engage the target, repeatedly deliver the sales messages, and motivate the recipient to take action. And most importantly, it must involve “dimension” – mailers that are not as flat as the results those ubiquitous envelope mailings typically generate.
To truly work, a direct mail promo employing specialty advertising items should adhere to the “3 R’s of Effective Direct Mail Promo”: Relevance · Repetition · Reward.
Relevance: Make each item relevant to the message you’re trying to convey – NOT necessarily your product – and complement that “borrowed interest” item with creative copy that crystallizes the allusion to your message.
Repetition: Follow up, follow up, follow up. Hit your targets again and again and again with different promo items but a reiteration of your message, your product’s features and benefits, and your offer. Statistics for flat mail alone show that a follow-up mailing averages twice the response of the initial mailing. Dimensional follow-up mailings almost always do even better.
Reward: In direct marketing parlance, this is your offer. Every direct marketing professional will tell that the offer is king. They’re right. It is. But people being people, an offer of a discount or some dollar or percent savings isn’t nearly as powerful as when it’s coupled with an offer for another free gift (remember, you’ve already sent them one gift in that first dimensional mailer). People simply like to get free stuff…and that stuff creates presence.
Now don’t think that I’m just shilling for the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx. Those 3 R’s apply to the entirety of a campaign, and they need to be followed equally among all of a campaign’s marketing communications – especially including emails and the advertiser’s website.
You see, the “multiple stages” I mentioned earlier aren’t limited solely to direct mailers. A correctly developed and implemented promotional campaign should take advantage of all appropriate and affordable direct marketing media – that is, media that can follow the 3 R’s and fully exploit the potential of presence-building promo products.
What’s Old Is New…and Newly Powerful!
Since the advent of the Internet, an ever increasing share of an advertiser’s marketing mix has gone “e.” It makes sense, at least to a point, because e-communications are cheap, quick, immediate, and instantly generated. The trouble is, though, e-communications can be just as easily ignored, deleted, or automatically blocked. Wastage is exceedingly high in e-only marketing.
Nevertheless, the fixation on “e” shows no signs of abating. But a funny thing has happened on the way to today’s cyberspace: Direct mail is moving from quaint to unique and exciting – direct mail, that is, that’s dimensional…that doesn’t just sit their flat amidst other promo envelopes and relentless bills.
That means specialty advertising items. And again, promo items stand alone in their ability to generate and sustain presence among a business’s prospective and current customers.
Of course, there’s nothing new about the notion of promo gadgets. They’ve been around for millennia. What is new is the immense burgeoning potential of promo items to cut through media noise, gets sales messages received and remembered, and produce viable measurable results.
The paradigm has shifted. Product, place, price, and promotion – the traditional four wheels of the marketing vehicle – now have a fifth wheel: presence.
Presence – cultivated through a carefully planned, developed, and executed multi-stage promo-item campaign — is the steering wheel of this vehicle, one that has the power to guide and maneuver targets from contact through curiosity to concrete buying interest.
Nye Ohrberg
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See how Google is using QR codes! And you should be too…
What’s that bar code?
This unique bar code on the lower right of the sticker (known as a QR code) lets customers - and potential customers - instantly learn more about a business, by visiting a mobile version of the business’ Place Page on any supported phone. Here’s more on how it works and what you can do with it:
- Make sure your phone can scan a QR code with its camera, either with an application that you download or via software that’s already installed on your phone. To find out what application to use for your phone, we recommend doing a Google search for the model of your phone along with “QR reader”.
- When you see a QR code, use your phone’s application to scan it. If you’re scanning a QR code on one of the window decals that we’ve sent to thousands of U.S. businesses, you’ll quickly be taken to that business’ mobile Place Page on Google, where you can:
- Read reviews to see what other users think about the business
- Find a coupon that the business has posted to their Place Page
- Star the business to remember to check it out later, or to remember to visit again
- Leave a review right after you leave the business. What’s a better time to write what you think, than when you’ve just visited?
Ready to try it? You can try scanning this code from your phone right now. (Hint: It will take you to google.com)
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Do you feel it?
Everyone I talk with seems more optimistic about their business … the new car ads are starting to re-appear (didn’t think I would ever look forward to seeing them!) … the daily earnings reports from Wall Street are showing profits once again and it’s not just because it’s spring time!
Could the Great Recession finally be coming to an end? I pray it is.
In the meantime, my phone has literally been ringing off the hook with clients who want to improve their response rates on their marketing. Another sign???
But, and this is important: The old direct mail marketing methods won’t work. Spending is still too tight so you have to stand out more than ever before. Here’s how …
“Don’t throw away this opportunity!”
What am I talking about? I’m talking about Lumpy Mail of course! Lumpy Mail is what we call 3-dimensional mail. It can be a letter or a marketing message of some sort sent in a package such as a bank bag (yes a real bank bag!) or in a bottle (think of a message in a bottle) or in a tube or it could even be sent in a letter-size envelope with a piece of candy or something to make it “lumpy” and intriguing enough for someone to open it.
Think those ideas will get someone to open your marketing? You bet it will!
In fact, I’m going to give you the 3-step campaign that pulled in an incredible 50% response rate. Most direct mail campaigns generate about a 1 % response rate; 3% if they’re lucky!
“Finally! An offer you can put right in the bank.”
This one got a 50% response rate!!
When you need to grab a prospect’s attention, there’s no better way than to send them something they absolutely can’t ignore. Imagine getting a letter in the a trash can or in a bank bag? You just have to open them up.
The pieces you see in the pictures are part of a multi-step campaign we did for the National Basketball Association that was not only fun, but it worked!
The goal was to increase ticket sales.
The trash can mailer you see takes some chutzpah because you actually come right out and tell the prospect, “I knew you would throw my letter in the trash so I did it for you, but I think you would be making a big mistake. Here’s why …” Then you explain why you think your message is so important that they shouldn’t throw it away and instead should take the time to read what you have to offer.
In the next step of the mailing, we sent prospects a bank bag that said, “Finally, an offer you can put right into the bank.” Inside, we included another marketing message. Wouldn’t you open a bank bag if it was sent to your in the mail?
Finally, the third step was the clincher! We sent a coconut in a clear security bag. The coconut was divided in half so we could include an offer letter and a testimonial inside.
We’ve used this particular package in several campaigns, one of which generated a 60% response rate! When was the last time you generated a 60% response rate?!
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; promotions such as these outperform traditional marketing every time, especially in the current economy.
For more about these and other Lumpy Mail campaigns fill out the form on this post. And if you need help putting together your next campaign stuffing it mailing it getting you data to send it to call us at 866-776-6632.
Always taking your from where you are to where you want to go,
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In the age of Internet advertising and social networking, it may surprise many business leaders to learn that one of the most powerful marketing tools are often perceived as toys. The power hitter in reference: promotional products.
Promotional products are the pens that feature a company name on the side, the coffee mugs that showcase a firm’s logo or the branded polo shirts at a golf tournament. Statistically speaking, one in every four people is likely to have one of these items on their desk at work or in their kitchen at home.
These advertising specialty products are often seen as benign trinkets, viewed as silly toys or maligned as ineffective gimmicks. A closer examination of this $18.1 billion (with a “b”) industry reveals promotional items are in fact highly productive marketing mediums if used properly.
Aside from their perceived image, promotional products are one of the essential “M’s” in the business development equation. Six Sigma CRM, a leadgenaration 1-1 multi Step Marketing Automation service for entre-preneurs, notes that if a company has a clear, viable mission and message that resonates with their targeted prospect but lacks the marketing and merchandising effort to connect both with their end user, then the selling effort is destined to fail. Promotional products are the surprising superstar that enables organizations (start-up to Fortune 500) to effectively take their mission and message to the world. And does so in a way that is memorable, affordable, customizable, flexible and amazingly successful.
A 2009 study of the advertising purchasing habits of end buyers, ranked promotional products as their top advertising choice over mainstream media including television, newspaper and internet. (Source: t Louisiana State University and Glenrich Business Studies.)
A second study, “Effectiveness Of Promotional Products As An Advertising Medium” conducted by MarketTools, Inc. evaluated the action, reaction and relationship of products and their recipients. The study found that:
• 94 percent could recall a promotional product they had received in the past two years
• 89 percent could also recall the advertiser
• 83 percent reported that they liked receiving promotional products
• 48 percent would like to receive promotional products more often
• 69 percent generally keep the promotional product
“The MarketTools study,” notes Steve Slagle, president of Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), “validates what we communicate every day about our industry: promotional advertising items are the only media that consistently shows staggering results in end user recall and reaction. Specifically, the study found that 80 percent of the study participants could clearly identify the type of promotional product; 74 percent could recall the company/brand, the product/service and the message advertised.” “Further,” adds Slagle, “when consumers were asked which particular action they took after viewing and/or receiving the promotional product, the study revealed that consumers made a purchase (20.9 percent) more often than after viewing a print ad (13.4 percent), TV commercial (7.1 percent) or online ad (4.6 percent).”
Just as a superior recipe can be an epicurean flop in the hands of an inept cook, promotional products can be ineffective in the hands of marketers that lack the knowledge to optimize their value. Working with a seasoned industry professional can ensure the selection of the best product and the best campaign strategy that will produce results that can be substantive and exciting.
A recent campaign conducted by Erich Fischer, national Creative Technology guru, is a perfect example. His client was struggling with the diminishing traffic at their public workshops, down to as few as few as five attendees signed up for the last event. By incorporating Six Sigma CRM type tactics (a tube mailer with a simple promotional item inside), the same client sold out (filled every seating space) at their next workshop.
Misunderstood and underestimated, business owners and marketers mustn’t be so obsessed with the flash of social networking or the sex appeal of Internet-based advertising that they forget the tremendous power of promotional product-based marketing tools. Promotional products, often perceived as just toys, are in fact power tools loaded with desired advertising clout.
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B2B Sales professionals are always worrying about “how to get past the gatekeepers,” and I’m often asked to answer this question when I’m speaking to sales people. I refuse because it’s the wrong question. It suggests both artifice and difficulty, and I like neither. Instead, the superior question is:
“How can I get sought after and invited in by the decision-maker?”
Regardless of whether you sell Promotional Products or Copiers, my underlying premise is to engineer a situation where you are sought out, invited in, and welcomed as an expert.
Any sales trainer who is still directing you down the “101 tricks for sneaking past the gatekeeper” path should be studiously IGNORED!
The “Welcome Guest Process” in Brief
The process, presented here is very abbreviated form, it’s actually quite simple. it begins with
Step One:
One way or another getting qualified, interested prospects to raise their hands.
Step Two:
Step Two is then to send them information that raises their interests levels and “pre-sells” you and the value of the appointment itself.
Step Three:
Step Three is not to call them, but only to go and sell to them after they call you and ask you to do so.
Successfully implemented and religiously adhered to, this changes the entire life of the sales process. it multiplies income because your time is not wasted, stress is replaced with pleasure, closing rates skyrocket, transaction size increases, and referrals are easier to obtain.
This is one of the things our Silent Salesman Automated System prototype masters and some of the reasons why successful CEOs Sales People and Marketing Directors flock to us…
Our focusing on Lead Generation and Lead Conversion until the franchise prototype is seamless for all of our clients is the key because once that process is built they can now grow exponentially.
It’s the first system that intergrates Varible Data Direct Mail, Voicemail, E-mail, Live Callers, and TXT Messaging into one Automated Multi-Step Marketing System we call the Silent Salesman.
It changes everything because now marketing gets to do what they do and sales gets to do what they do and the CEO loves it because when those two work seemlessly you now have a prototype that allows you to grow the company exponentially.
Nye O.
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