It seems like every day brings more depressing news from the papers, television, radio, blogs, and other outlets. Coupled with the recent ice storm here in northern New England, things appear pretty dire. Since my power is back on for now, I’m enjoying my third cup of hot cocoa, thinking about the things that make us happy in difficult weather, seasons, and this economy. The first thing that comes to mind is shopping, followed closely by getting a good value, and finally, getting a great value!

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted the message from marketers and advertisers that we are going to see more “feel-good” ads. The ads are effective during poor economic times for suspending the malaise of the customer, at least for the brief moment that the products and services are being introduced. Combining the thought of shopping, which feels good with all these “feel-good” ads and we have a confluence of imagery and sound that begs for action. So, imagine how grateful and pleased customers would be if they got a great value for very little or no cost to them.

A typical approach is to offer significant discounts on products, but this can backfire as it may appear that the firm is in financial difficulty and needs the cash flow. Lowering prices gives the appearance of desperation and can lead to backpedaling, or worse. Also, another risk is that current customers may resent both the firm and the new customers, and ultimately the product or service itself as it reminds them of their perceived bad decision. Only significant market strength and flawless execution in other areas can offset this type of mistake. A good example of this was Apple’s reduction of the cost of the iPhone after their most die-hard fans rushed to purchase it first.  Media outlets covered this extensively in the fall of 2007, here is an article from the Huffington Post discussing one reaction.

There are hundreds of little ways that a customer can feel great about their purchase, and more than a few are in the control of the vendor firm, to wit:

1. Price – decreasing prices is very risky in a difficult economic environment
2. Assumed or associated risks – including risk of adoption of a solution, risk of replacement, and a myriad of financial risks could be mitigated by vendor firms
3. Additional or unexpected costs – costs of implementation, cost of carry or ownership, and cost of use are just a few, but each industry is unique and has its own nuances that can be researched and potentially reduced or removed entirely.

Of course, there are other stakeholders in business besides customers; employees are marketing channels “on the ground floor” as they talk to customers, potential customers, and even suppliers. Doing something special for employees pays dividends that multiply throughout the season but also into the New Year.

I mentioned suppliers in the previous paragraph and they should not be overlooked. If a supplier offers a discount for early payment, firms should take advantage of it, its good for the firm and its great for the supplier. In these tough economic times, giving suppliers liquidity can bank some goodwill for later if better payment terms are needed.

You never know, if enough firms actively give during this holiday season, maybe the economic environment will improve, and that will spread the holiday cheer for everyone.

*Apologies to the movie Elf. Copyright New Line Cinema (2003)

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Kevin Flavin has almost 20 years experience in the financial services industry. Balancing the first half of his career as a buyer, he has spent the last ten years as a vendor in a range of roles from sales, product management, but always marketing. He is based in the Boston area. He is also a monthly contributor for the AMA Boston blog.

Build an organization ready for a unified trip into the future. Prepare the hearts and minds of the junior staff to senior level managers during this terrible economic time. I wanted to share one of few bright lights in the economic darkness in today’s “Inside Higher Education.”

It is tempting to freeze hires and cut budgets, but now may not be the time. Adjustments are surely needed. We can learn now from the crisis of higher education endowments and from Bard’s president Leon Botstein as reported at Inside Higher Ed.

Name the programs that should prevail and grow them.  Everyone and everything cannot be treated equally. We can all take a lesson from the endowment debacles of most large universities and the announced plans to cut programs equally across the board.  Think about it: Given the sprawling nature of the large college or university, there may have been no other decision to take. Higher ed is not in the habit of differential treatment of valid programs and less-effective research centers or teaching programs. (Community colleges may operate differently, when current income is by necessity closely tied to program expansion or contraction.)

Set expectations. A college president who has always thought differently, Bard’s Leon Botstein is focused on the current endowment crisis. Importantly, he has already set an expectation within Bard about change and growth, although I expect this dynamic approach has earned detractors as well as supporters. I think Botstein’s wisdom pertains to nonprofits in the present moment. Just substitute “income” for the word endowment in the following:

Institutions should be going through programs, eliminating some, but building others — and spending their endowments to make institutions (themselves) more creative. Operating on the assumption that endowment growth or losses matter “ is a tragedy (says Botstein) that makes everyone risk averse.”

There are three “take away” messages here:

(1) Endowments gave false confidence during good times and promote growth for growth’s sake. As Botstein says, highly publicizing decline on endowment by wealthy institutions may backfire form them. Everyone knows despite the decline the institutions are still wealthy and can afford to be thoughtful about what next.

(2) It’s not possible to produce a responsive and creative leadership group mid-stream. Nonprofit leadership needs to start now to create a culture over time in which everyone buys in to effective strategies for change. Again, this may be a significant cultural change for your and your nonprofit.

(3) Today’s news of broad cuts is a cautionary tale about restricted funds and growth for growth’s sake. In the first case, take the example of creating a program to suit a particular donor) that may be related to mission but taken out of the context of the entire organization’s goals and revenue projections. 

Next steps? How does this translate to nonprofits small or large? Start now to:

-Make it safe for people to look at programs that aren’t working.

-Create ways re-deploy program directors and mid-level managers in shaping new priorities so people are more willing to shed old jobs or outdated roles.

-As the CEO or communications senior leader, be public and consistent in the ways you will encourage growth, self-assessment and change, and the best possible work within your organization.

On the marketing front - John Deveney (Deveney Communications) advises that during times like this, nonprofits can’t afford to miss the target: You must know your audience and carefully pick and implement the social media that will help you meet your goals. Shel Holtz interviewed John recently after he received PR News Nonprofit Award for his work on behalf of New Orleans.

Having done quite a bit of pro bono work on the Gulf Coast myself, I know that the recession visited the Gulf Coast at least three years ago. It takes optimism and creativity to pick ways to promote the city when so much mythology still circulates about its ability to “come back” Could there be a harder PR challenge?

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Bev Freeman is a communications consultant to nonprofits and higher ed based in Boston, specializing in planning and implementation of communications strategies to support fund raising and visibility efforts. Her clients have included Harvard School of Public Health, The Harvard Humantarian Aid Initiative, MIT, Tufts, Oxfam America, Screening for Mental Health, and leadership organizations on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (post-Katrina) where she has done visibility work, federal-state relations to keep federal sources of funds flowing to the area, and fund-raising for summer camps and mental health services. Prior to consulting, from 1991-1999 she was public affairs director at the Harvard School of Public Health and also special projects coordinator for Harvard’s provost. She was director of a national infertility counseling nonprofit, RESOLVE, Inc. for 8 years and also has experience in state-level social services.

As a marketers, let’s admit it, we love to network!  OK, so I will speak for myself.  All these networking tools are a whole lot of fun!  For the longest time I have been hearing the buzzword Social Networking and not really placing great emphasis on it.  Of course the social networking epiphany didn’t actually happen for me until after I started receiving phone calls and emails as a result of it.  For about 14 years, my career has primarily revolved around traditional and on-line marketing for B2B and B2C companies.  I have many contacts in the industry but have mainly had dialogues around marketing best practices.  This past summer, my career evolved into more of a business development role, and I can’t say enough about how social networking has helped me to be more successful in forming new relationships and partnerships!  Clearly social networking has gone corporate .  The trend has really increased in the past couple months, which is interesting, because that’s when I began really getting into it.   Here are the three social networks I frequent the most and what I’ve discovered about each one.  I highly recommend you use all of them and more!

LinkedIn

Yes, one of the classics.  LinkedIn focuses mainly on business networking, and I have found great connections there.  It is also a great place to keep up with people’s careers.  You’re able to make recommendations and write about the latest projects or business ventures you’re working on.   The profiles resemble resumes, which is great for those seeking employment or finding new business prospects or ventures.

Facebook

Facebook originated as an ideal place for college students to connect.  Over the past years, however, it has also gone corporate.  Although I couldn’t convince the folks at my company to have a presence on it (hello?), I created a profile and am building connections as a result of it.  Facebook is more personal.  It extends beyond just knowing someone on a professional level.  You’re able to display photos of family and friends as well as events you’ve attended with colleagues and friends.  There are a lot of fun applications you can use to “play” with your friends.  I haven’t really checked those out in great depth yet, but they include things like sending a friend a drink or taking quizzes to see if you’re alike.  There are a lot of ads and applications on Facebook.  It doesn’t hurt to check it out to see if it’s right for your company.

Twitter

This one is very interesting (and addictive at times).   Twitter is probably one of my favorites because it’s so amazingly simple!  This simple application enables you to post statements (140 characters or less), whether business-related or personal for all to see.  The way Twitter works as a networking tool is you post items, people will “follow” you if they’re interested in what you have to say, and in turn, you can follow them.  You build your network by following and being followed by people.  You can post URLs of your website, blogs or anything you think may be of interest.  If using it for business be sure to have the user name match the company name for consistency.  It gets really fun when you start getting followed.  For me there is this challenge of building my network of followers.  I have read some great posts and met some interesting people on Twitter.  It’s another great place to plug a new product, blog posting or anything else you feel would help your business. 

There are many social networking tools and web sites.  The walk-away here is to invest your time wisely on the ones that “give back” – whether personal or professional.  Please, always be yourself because people see through that more than ever today. 

Visit my profiles

www.facebook.com

www.twitter.com/ableo2

http://www.linkedin.com/in/annabarcelos

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Anna Barcelos has over 14 years of B2B and B2C broad-based marketing experience, both traditional and on-line. She is the Director of Marketing and Business Development for BLI Messaging, a Providence, RI-based email, voice, survey, SMS and fax technologies company.  Anna is currently a member of AMA, MarketingProfs, and SOCAP. She is also a monthly AMA Boston blog contributor.

You may remember a series of blog posts about Vic Beck’s service in the US Navy as the chief of media operations in Iraq. Mr. Beck was the Vice President of Communications on the Board of Directors for the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association and we are pleased to have him back!  This article about Vic appeared in the Globe today and is a good summary of his tour in Iraq.

In Iraq, he got the word out

By Susan Chaityn Lebovits, Boston Globe, December 14, 2008
In December 2006, Vic Beck was spending his weekdays working in a public relations firm in Wellesley and his weekends watching his son’s basketball team in Sudbury. But one phone call changed everything for a year.

Beck, a Navy reservist, learned that he had been activated. The following April he was shipped off to the Middle East where he became the spokesman for US Central Command in Dubai. By that August he was the chief of media operations in Iraq, where he remained until he returned home last spring.

As chief of media operations, Beck orchestrated two news conferences each week for Iraqi and international journalists. He was responsible for ensuring that everything ran smoothly - from getting translators and securing satellite uplinks to supplying photographic and video images, and making sure that the participants had proper entry access. He also helped high-ranking military officials prepare for the briefings.

“I had a staff of 85 people, from speech writers to press monitors, so all of the Western media outlets based in Iraq, such as ABC and The New York Times, were able to get what they needed,” said Beck, who holds the rank of captain in the Navy Reserve. He also oversaw the “embed” program, in which reporters accompany troops on patrol.

“When I first arrived, there were mortar attacks every other day,” said Beck, who lived in a small trailer outside the US Embassy in Baghdad.

“Typically there would be a few seconds warning that a missile or rocket was coming in,” said Beck. “You could run to one of the cement shelters, or drop to the ground.”

While Beck admits that receiving the phone call to ship out to the Middle East for a year caught him off guard, he was quite familiar with military life, since his father was a career Navy helicopter pilot. His home in Sudbury, where he lives with his wife and two children, is the only place Beck has ever stayed for more than six consecutive years.

Beck was born in Rhode Island and began his nomadic existence at 6 months of age when his family moved to Florida. Throughout his childhood he moved seven times, Beck said, with his stopovers including Monterey, Calif., and Yokohama, Japan.

Beck attended the State University of New York at Brockport, where he majored in communications, hoping to get into radio. He was a program director for the college radio station, and landed an internship at a radio talk show in Rochester, N.Y., where he’d wake up at 3 a.m. and read through the newspapers searching for interesting topics and people for the morning program’s host.

Two months before graduation, Beck said, he realized there just aren’t that many plum jobs in radio.
“I moved to my parents’ house on Long Island and went back to one of my old summer jobs, moving furniture for United Van Lines,” said Beck. “My life was not how I’d envisioned it would be.”

In an attempt to break into communications, Beck took a sales job, going door-to-door selling Cablevision high-speed Internet and digital cable television services.

“It was an awful experience,” said Beck. “I knew the Navy and decided I’d learn to drive ships for a while and figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”

Beck began training to become a surface warfare officer, a position that involves coordinating a Navy ship’s movements, operations and weapons systems. When he got his orders to report the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise he couldn’t have been happier.

“It was better than I ever imagined,” said Beck. “It’s like driving a city block, it’s really a floating industrial city.”

Beck’s first chance to put his new skills into practice came in 1988, when a Navy frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, hit an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf and nearly sank, with a 15-f00t-wide hole blasted in its hull.

“At the time, the USS Enterprise was operating outside of the Persian Gulf,” said Beck. “In retaliation, our planes, which came off the Enterprise, attacked some oil platforms inside the gulf.”

Some of the challenges in helping aircraft take off properly, explained Beck, include maneuvering the carrier to harness the necessary amount of wind to accommodate particular planes.

After serving on the Enterprise, Beck was one of the navigators for a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Richard E. Byrd, and completed a cruise around South America that included training exercises with US allies such as Brazil and Argentina.

“The most interesting area was going through the Straits of Magellan,” said Beck, at the continent’s southern tip. “We were working six hours on and six hours off, navigating around huge chunks of ice.”

Beck spent five years on various ships before being assigned to a shore job, as assistant director of the Navy Office of Information in Boston, which covers all of New England.

“That’s how I got started in public affairs and found public relations as a way that I could go back to my communications days,” said Beck. After seven years of active duty, Beck became a civilian, yet remained a member of the Navy Reserve.

Now that he has returned from Iraq, Beck continues as a reservist, serving one weekend a month and two weeks out of the year in Washington, D.C., working in communications for the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a post now held by Admiral Michael G. Mullen.

Since leaving active duty Beck has worked as the head of corporate communications for a number of companies. Currently he is the director of communication planning and strategy for S4 Inc., which is based in Burlington and has offices across the country, including several military installations. At S4, Beck provides strategic communication consulting for various government organizations, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and private businesses.

“Whatever efforts Vic needed to get the job done, he did, and never complained about it,” said Scott Silk, a friend and former boss of Beck.

“I frequently call on him from my cellphone to navigate me through the streets of Boston, as he knows them by heart - he has a wonderful sense of direction and a great memory.”

Going into 2009, we all are looking for good ways to plan next year’s marketing campaigns. Determining your top priorities is a big challenge when you do this planning. Fortunately, prioritizing your marketing campaigns can be done in less time if you follow a brief set of guidelines.  

Judah Phillips, in an insightful post at Web Analytics Demystified, asserts that the primary criteria for prioritizing web analytics work is: “Is revenue at risk?” Analytics in support of revenue-generating tasks has to be at the top of your list, so when deciding what information you need right now, ask yourself first if any revenue will be at risk if the task is not completed.

This method works equally well for other aspects of your marketing work. Karen Gedney, writing at Click-Z, echoes this viewpoint for email programs. She suggests that, when setting priorities for an email marketing campaign, make sure that everything you spend generates revenue, “and your marketing priorities will arrange themselves.”

If you’re at a small to midsize organization and wear multiple hats, setting priorities is more complex. You may have several priorities on your plate, all of which are revenue-generating. If you sit down at your desk in the morning and have to choose whether to make email, PPC campaigns, social media, PR, analytics, or designing a print ad a priority today, what do you do? The scores of you marketers at start-ups, non-profits, and other organizations where wearing five hats is the norm know what I mean. The more varied the range of tasks you need to prioritize, the more criteria you need to use to determine your top priorities.

Here are five tips for setting priorities in a multi-faceted marketing practice:

• At least half of what you do in a given week needs to be customer-facing. That means focusing on getting your email campaigns out, tweaking your PPC ads, drafting those print ads, and writing those white papers. You are in the business of communicating your company’s or organization’s message to your clients, and all your work needs to focus on that goal. You may have a lot of work to do that is internal to your company or department, but you must keep the primary focus of your department, namely, communication with customers, in mind.
•  Do whatever absolutely needs to happen every week first. If you always send out an e-newsletter, work on that early in the week. If a print ad needs to go out by Tuesday, make sure it’s done by the week before. Optional activities, like adding materials to your social media campaigns, will need to be done later in the week. Otherwise, you are always playing catch-up.
• “Will this shake things up?” At least one thing you do this year should.
• Incorporate metrics into everything do in such a way that it seldom becomes a part of your to-do list on its own. Part of every email campaign is to check your metrics the evening of day the campaign goes out, and then again one week afterwards. Every morning, you need to watch your web traffic. Every day, you need to see how your PPC campaigns are performing. If you make measurement a part of the whole in everything you do, it isn’t an onerous separate task you need to schedule. This makes scheduling and prioritizing that much more straightforward.
• Do one thing you really like every day, and one thing that is relatively dull. Don’t schedule all dull days, or you will start to get burnout. At the end of a day doing your least favorite thing, write an article, or design an ad. (Or insert your favorite task here).

Organizing all the tasks before you can seem daunting at first, but it’s actually quite a doable process. Setting your top marketing priorities can be one of the most useful things you can do towards the end of the year. It’s an ongoing process, as well, especially when you are wearing a lot of hats. Thus, starting out with a good list of priorities will pay off throughout 2009.

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Christina Inge is the marketing manager for Spinwave Systems, a Westford-based tech company specializing in energy management solutions. She also serves as marketing and public relations coordinator for the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell. She has over ten years’ experience in communications for both B2C and B2B audiences.

This summer the American Marketing Association and Aquent launched a series of conversations about the marketing profession. We encourage you to check out these valuable marketing tools and resources, including: the compensation calculator and the first installment of the Insight-Series.  The Insight Report demonstrates the key findings distilled from the survey, including a stark alignment between seniority and satisfaction.

Try the Quick Salary Calculator (opens new window)

Download the Insight Report (pdf format)

As president of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association, it was my pleasure to welcome representatives from several other chapters from the Northeastern Region.  Our guests included representatives from the New York Capital Region Chapter,  the Rochester New York Chapter, the New Jersey Chapter and the Hartford Connecticut Chapter.

On Friday evening, Amy Quigley, Maryanne Spillane McInturf, Keith Laferrier and Jim Gallant, members of the Board of Directors from the Boston Chapter, entertained our guests over dinner at the Tavern on the Water in Charlestown.

On Saturday, we met at the Constitution Inn in Charlestown for an all day conference with work sessions guided by special guests, Michele DeKinder-Smith from Tampa, Florida and Karen Stone from Nashville, Tennessee. Both Michele and Karten are successful past presidents of their local chapters and accomplished leaders of the Professional Chapters Council, for the American Marketing Association.

The purpose of  the leadership retreat was to bring several chapter leaders together from around the regionso we could support each other and exchange ideas. It was good to see old friends and to participate in such a productive meeting.

Today, the news raised the threat of deflation. While this is especially troubling to the cyclical and seasonal businesses, they have many options to counter the downturn including seeking bailouts. Smaller firms must look to other means to protect themselves. A natural reaction is to protect the home turf and marketing can be a powerful tool to accomplish that. While customers have been assaulted with a barrage of negative news and an outlook that it will continue at least through 2009, all businesses need is to look for ways to separate from the malaise.

Defense Wins Games

Protecting the business revenue is a primary goal in an economic downturn. However, not all revenue is equal – some revenue comes with so much expense, it’s almost not worth earning. Knowing the factors that make up great revenue helps to decide which activity to invest in – and market for new customers.

Marketing isn’t limited to reaching out to new customers. It should also consider the choices that the current customer base made at their point-of-purchase. Marketing can give current clients a sense that they’ve done something right, hopefully to the point that they’ll keep doing it again and drive more business.

Gathering information on customer sentiment and satisfaction is usually best accomplished through a market research firm. Many belong to the Marketing Research Association.

Results of market research can be leveraged into action items for current customers to improve satisfaction, but also to expand the relationships into new areas. Sometimes, new areas of growth can arise from marketing into existing customers for new products and services and is usually an easier prospect.

Growing Through a Downturn

The results of the market research can help determine the list of factors that the best customers have in common. These are the “sweet spot” factors for current customers and should form the baseline for any new customers.

In a tough market, new customers need to feel that they are making a smart choice when each decision may be scrutinized later. Successful firms take control of the messages to the market to ease the decision of the buyer. One way of doing this is to separate the business from the negativity in consumer sentiment by increasing demonstrations of financial strength and growth.

A few good examples are:

1. Announcing new wins to the customers in some manner. Showing success regardless of the economy turmoil in providing services that are important now is important to both new customers, but also for existing customers. It shows the business has stayed relevant and forward-thinking. The important thing is that the customer receives the knowledge of the new member to the family, the delivery mechanism must work for both types of customers and may take the form of email, printed newsletters, lunch with sales, a roadside bulletin board, or all of the above.
2. Actively introducing new products or services increases the “buzz” and may slide into a viral marketing situation. Some media outlets are looking for positive news to counter the negative news. One method is to offer limited-time trials or samples to buzz-makers. A public relations firm can help manage the message, especially in advance of holiday shopping, even if the product isn’t seasonal as this recent launch of the new Blackberry.
3. Publishing a case study of a customer highlighting the factors referenced above adds credibility and practicality to the messaging, such as this study by Akamai measuring the ROI.
4. Starting a loyalty program can also galvanize best customers against competitor products, especially the types of competition that isn’t obvious, i.e. energy drinks vs. coffee. Starbucks recently introduced the Gold Card.

These programs should accomplish two things: they can remind customers why they made the original choice and create buzz for new customers of the products and services The over-arching objective is to capture the best customers while looking for “like-best” new customers.

What new ideas do you have to manage your message to the market?

To leave a comment, please double-click on title.

Kevin Flavin has almost 20 years experience in the financial services industry. Balancing the first half of his career as a buyer, he has spent the last ten years as a vendor in a range of roles from sales, product management, but always marketing. He is based in the Boston area. He is also a monthly contributor for the AMA Boston blog.

Last week’s article Recession Nation: 49 States at Risk pointed out that every state in the country with the exception of oil rich Alaska is either in or at risk of being in a recession.  Working for a marketing services organization, I automatically hear from customers and prospects that their budgets are being slashed.  It’s a common trend I’ve experienced during my 15 years in marketing.  Yet, each and every time I see a recession as an opportunity.  Are marketing people delusional in feeling this way? Are we eternal optimists?  I don’t think so!    No matter what happens in the economy, let’s not forget our customers!  How do we help them if they are in situations where their budgets have been cut?  What do we do within our own organizations when management puts the pressure on us to reduce budgets?  We do what we do best – get creative! 

With all the latest cost-effective on-line technologies, even the smallest budgets can be used for successful marketing campaigns that yield opportunities for revenue.  Here are three cost-effective ways to leverage both traditional and on-line marketing without putting a strain on marketing budgets.

Keep going with email marketing
Despite the challenges marketers face with email marketing, whether deliverability or CAN SPAM compliance, the fact is – email marketing works!  82 percent of the marketers surveyed by Datran Media indicated that they planned to increase their use of email marketing this year.  There are numerous statistics all over the web about how you can use this cost-effective medium to generate leads and up-sell your products and services to existing customers.  The key is to find an ESP (email service provider) that does all the leg work of ensuring that your emails make it to your prospects and customers.  All you need to worry about is your message and call to action. You can send emails for pennies compared to traditional marketing efforts.  Most of you are already doing it.  Those that aren’t, what in the world are you waiting for!

Make your direct mail campaigns work harder by incorporating PURL technology
PURLs or personalized URLs are a fairly new application that automatically generates a separate URL for each person you’re targeting.  The technology works by creating a personalized web page for each direct mail recipient (e.g. www. AnnaBarcelos.CompanyName.com) that is printed on the direct mail piece.  A DMA study a couple years ago indicated that 42% of direct mail recipients prefer to respond on-line.  Capture these recipients by directing them to special pages that contain offers or collect information to help convert them to paying customers.  PURL technology is cost-effective at pennies per recipient, fully trackable and can double response rates.  I don’t know about you, but I recycle most of the direct mail I receive.  Bet I wouldn’t throw one out if it had a PURL on it.  Wouldn’t you be curious to see what awaits you on a web page created just for you?

What about the good ole fashioned telephone?
It costs 8 to 10 times less to generate revenue from existing customers than obtain new ones.  So why do companies still spend countless amounts of money trying to get new customers when there are plenty of existing ones that they can up-sell products and services to?  Take a look at your existing customer base and their current purchases.  I’m sure there are up-selling opportunities, but you won’t know until you pick up the phone and talk to them.  So simple, yet we don’t do it often enough.

These are just three ways to add more muscle to limited marketing budgets.  As marketers, we are smart, creative people.  Let’s use that ability more than ever during these trying times.

To leave a comment, please double-click on title.

Anna Barcelos has over 14 years of B2B and B2C broad-based marketing experience, both traditional and on-line. She is the Director of Marketing and Business Development for BLI Messaging, a Providence, RI-based email, voice, survey, SMS and fax technologies company.  Anna is currently a member of AMA, MarketingProfs, and SOCAP. She is also a monthly AMA Boston blog contributor.

“The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.  On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.” - David Ogilvy

Halloween and the U.S. Election have passed, it’s time to start thinking about the burst of activity surrounding the holidays. For those in the U.S., it begins now. I was perusing the 75% off display at a local retailer of left-over Halloween decorations and fall harvest motifs when I noticed that the Christmas trees were already on display. I realized that as more and more retailers bend to the will of seasonal shopping instead of being consistent providers of general goods, consumers look to other avenues to find what they need. Unfortunately for me, the mop bucket was not to be found at this store. Apparently, I’m not the type of customer this retail outlet is catering to, the new displays were telling me that.

Whether you’re preparing for that shopping extravanganza that occurs every fall through January or just preparing for next year’s activity, your mind must be focused on your customers and what level of sales you can expect. I know in my industry, the financial services firms are taking a beating, both in the markets and in the press. While this is worrisome the inclination to “hunker down” may be too powerful to resist. The more aggressive competitors see this as an opportunity like no other; this is a time to take market share, build a better brand, and introduce new products and services while the weakest industry players cut back.

Make an assessment of your messaging methods and look for improvements
While most of the world is focusing on the issues and problems of the economy, get your message in front of them, too. Your customers are plugged into their favorite news outlet, and are more receptive to hearing what you have to say - take advantage of the heightened awareness of the new President, faltering economy, and international response to the U.S. elections. Put yourself in their minds and look back at your company’s marketing messages. You may find that your message is off the mark, or worse, there isn’t enough to see.

Traditional Methods Still Work…
It doesn’t take more than a moment to realize that anything that can be purchased can be Googled. As time passes, more and more of your customers are doing the same thing to find you - what does your website and press releases say to them? It’s time to review and update your message to reflect the new economy.

For many years, the Direct Mail/Direct Marketing approach was arguably the best method. With the introduction of email, the cost and timeliness of your DM efforts have improved. However, many companies are simply applying the same concepts to the new platform, not adjusting to the platform. Many firms start with a strategy of creating an email campaign, maybe even a corporate blog, but few are consistent and thorough in utilizing the strategy to its fullest. Many corporate blogs start to wither and die from inactivity. Think about what a stale corporate blog says to your customers. Stick with the strategies long enough to see if they work; if they don’t, kill them quickly.

New Methods for New Customers
It’s natural to think about your current customers, but what about your next customers? Have you reviewed your messages to them? Do they need updating? Are you moving into new areas, both product and service, as well as geographical?

As email and websites have changed your marketing, you need to continuously look for the next movement. Twitter comes to mind as the potential next wave. It’s hard to believe, but Twitter is just two years old! At first glance, it can appear as a toy for the Web 2.0 generation. On the other hand, if Twitter is applied in the appropriate manner, it can be a powerful tool to reach out to new, younger customers, build brand awareness, capture ideas, and even open new opportunities. Try your company in these measurement tools designed just for Twitter: Twist and Tweetlater. There are thousands of tools available to make your messages heard.

What does the “ticket” say on your company?

1. Is your message on target for what your company does?

2. Is it reaching your customers; are you leveraging enough outlets to reach them?

3. Are you doing enough to attract new potential customers; do they see your value to them?

Tell us what you’ve done differently using old tools or new tools to manage your message to your customers?

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Kevin Flavin has almost 20 years experience in the financial services industry. Balancing the first half of his career as a buyer, he has spent the last ten years as a vendor in a range of roles from sales, product management, but always marketing. He is based in the Boston area. He is also a monthly AMA Boston contributor.
 

With the holidays fast approaching, those of us in B2B marketing are probably wondering what kinds of email messages to send to our customers. We are not, after all selling a product that is going to make an appropriate gift, so there is little need for holiday promotions—indeed, they would seem a bit odd for a company selling data center services or enterprise software.

Chris Marriott at iMedia Connection suggests that B2B marketers maintain their visibility during the end of the year with engagement-heavy messages. He suggests sending surveys as one idea that will help your company gain awareness as inboxes get crowded with seasonal offers. The question of appropriate B2B email campaigns for the holiday season is also addressed in a blog post by Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports. Quoting Linda Bustos, the post urges B2B marketers not to cut back on their standard messaging schedule at this time of year. Instead, marketers should keep their frequency the same, but change their message to a more lighthearted, less information-filled content model. Bustos suggests sending a Season’s Greetings message, as well as a lighter-on-content version of one’s usual newsletter.

End-of-year satisfaction surveys and seasonal messages are all great ways to round out your email program as 2008 closes. Nonetheless, I’d suggest looking at your audience and overall messaging strategy before cutting back on substantive content. Winter is a traditional time to regroup, think, and plan. If you’re in the technology space, your messaging likely includes a lot of educational content. Throughout the year, you produce white papers, podcasts, application notes, and other documents that your audience turns to in order to be well-informed. If they are technical staff, keeping up-to-date on new developments is important to them, but they often lack the time. When they are crazy-busy, your audience may only glance through all the technical documents you offer. Many of us take advantage of the slower time of year to do a lot of the reading we simply don’t have time for when business is hectic.

The quieter B2B environment during the holidays may provide just the opportunity for your audience to sit down and actually digest some of your more substantial reading. This may be the perfect chance for you to send out that longer white paper—now, when your audience might actually read it while sitting at their desks, instead of putting it away for later. There are fewer interruptions at the office over the holidays, and not everyone is partying 24-7. Test out at least one mailing this holiday season that contains an offer for a white paper or other educational document. In your email message, emphasize the key points in the document, and home in on the benefits of the topic. Underline how much can be learned from the white paper—if your readers are in the mood to expand their knowledge, they’ll respondyour message will stand out.

Although, for your audience, it might be best to keep most of your emails light over the holiday season, bear in mind that you might have an opportunity to reach out with great content that could be lost in the shuffle at a busier time of year.     
 

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Christina Inge is the marketing manager for Spinwave Systems, a Westford-based tech company specializing in energy management solutions. She also serves as marketing and public relations coordinator for the New England Quilt Museum. She has over ten years’ experience in communications for both B2C and B2B audiences.

It’s that time of year again, the leaves are changing, the nights are cooler, the school buses are rolling, and, if you’re lucky, senior management wants to know what and where you want to spend next year. They aren’t making any promises, but it looks like the current financial crisis means that you should think long and hard about what to spend at all. On the other hand, those that have the resources may come out aggressive and try to take your market share. Everyone is looking hungry, including your clients. Should you go for broke or pace for the marathon? Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

A well-thought-out, or even a mediocre-thought-out, strategy involves a lot of thinking and a lot of ideas. Sometimes that takes time, sometimes that takes effort, usually it takes both. I’m right in the middle of our annual planning sessions for the upcoming year, but I have an advantage. I have a fuzzy idea of where we’re going to be in the future. Knowing that helps to plan for the next year because I have a benchmark that I can shift-up or shift-down throughout the year depending on industry issues and opportunities.

At the very beginning, you need to know what do you do, how do you do it, how well do you do it. This involves some internal analysis and navel-gazing. In addition, include external things that impact you, like regulations, customers, even the potential ones, technology, best practices, and finally competitors. Knowing the long term trends in your industry will help you allocate to the right initiatives and helps to plan on where to put your resources to the best effect.

As you begin to plan, you can use a pre-made system, and there are many, many out there, just check your favorite search engine. Here’s one that I don’t endorse, but I liked their web url: Bplans.com. As a note of caution, it is unusual to find an exact pre-made format for everyone’s needs, so take a flexible approach, glean what you can and discard the rest.

One thing to remember, and this has a lot to do with your audience and your role in an organization, I’m focusing on Marketing plans, not business plans. Business plans address financials and other non-marketing topics that marketing doesn’t have responsibility for. If you find a business plan you like, cut those sections out rather than comment that it doesn’t apply. A good place to get the right perspective is to check out the SBA. They have some good plans, at least to get you thinking about how to write your plan.

Finally, spend the balance of the strategy explaining how you’re going to get there. Feel free to borrow other resources in the plan. Let some other departments do some of the heavy lifting - they’ll reap the benefits with you as you succeed. If you have metrics, detail them; proof is better than benefits, which is better than features.

I try to break mine down into three sections:
1. Initiatives - goals, objectives, industry initiatives (client, regulator and competitor), corporate initiatives.
2. Product, services, solution - a description of positioning is the important part as it makes sure everyone is in agreement, or you know who isn’t. I recommend that you discuss market segmentation here, with backup in an appendix. You can also, if there is relevance, talk about changes in distribution, changes in pricing or value, and the other Ps. Use your best judgement when discussing People…
3. Influences - these include external factors such as regulations, competitors, etc. If your products are so mutually exclusive that it makes more sense to discuss these topics in the prior section, go for it. But most firms, and I state this rhetorically, have products that are extensions, complementary, or otherwise tied together, and so a separate section is easier to read than re-stating the same points in each product strategy.

I hold a few sites out on a small list to remind myself of topics I may have forgotten, or new issues that need to be addressed. A very good place to look after you’ve finished your first draft, is the wiki on marketing plans. If you’re like me, I update the plan once a year with notes from the past year, new ideas that we’ve been bouncing around, and any other chaff that comes my way. Since the wiki is updated constantly by donated content from global sources, you can get some good fodder for new ideas or threats to your firm that you may not have thought of or seen yet.

Four additional tips for a lasting strategy (and have learned the hard way):
1. Write it for beyond your known audience, including the timing. I’ve found old strategies that I’ve written switch the e-mail referred to at other companies.
2. Condense the executive summary, the current state, and the future state onto the first page of the document. If you find yourself defining, explaining, rationalizing, and proposing, start again. Finally, the Executive Summary should state any significant change to the current process, like a creation of a cross-departmental-strategy-execution team.
3. Use appendices for tables of data, include expense by product, by intitiative, market move segmentations, etc.
4. Don’t define the obvious. It’ll make your document a dull read and lose its efficacy. If you’ve always sold through VARs, or direct sales into prospects, and continue to do so - then, so what? Don’t waste type, space and reader’s attention span with the mundane.

Finally, be creative, have fun, but make sure it’s professional. This document has your name on it, make it good enough to look at next year as the foundation of your next one. It should be a pleasure to read. It’s a stake in the ground and you’re holding the sledge hammer - wear your best shoes.

To leave a comment, please double-click on title.

Kevin Flavin has almost 20 years experience in the financial services industry. Balancing the first half of his career as a buyer, he has spent the last ten years as a vendor in a range of roles from sales, product management, but always marketing. He is based in the Boston area. He is also a monthly contributor for the AMA Boston blog.