Tiffany's Marketing Tidbits

Marketing is a critical component to every successful business. In this blog we will discuss tips, tactics and strategies to help you integrate marketing into your organization's business strategy. It's not about IF you should do marketing, it's about focusing on HOW to customize marketing activity to fit your organization's unique situation.

Think about it like working with a personal trainer. Trainers are uniquely qualified to put together an exercise program that fits your unique body and family history to help get you closer to your desired results.  This blog is focused towards helping you understand how to customize marketing strategies and tactics to your organization. If you need some help, call me!

Nearly everyone who works at Element Three has a personal Facebook page, but it has never felt right to me to have a corporate page. And, I have never been able to articulate exactly why Element Three does not have a Facebook page for our organization, until now.

I ran across this explanation that another agency had posted about their reason for not having a corporate Facebook presence - and thought it was perfect.

click here for the full article.


Here is what was posted by Agency Park & Co, a branding and marketing agency located in Phoenix, AZ.

Park&Co's Facebook effort is going dark. I know you rely on us for tons of compelling industry and agency news but I'm sorry to say you're going to have to wait awhile before you see us again.

Before panic sets in let me explain. It's not that we don't have time or we don't think the medium is valuable, it's that we're done posting underwhelming news and links you can find a number of other places. And let's be honest, you don't sign on to Facebook to see our next birthday celebration photo or snarky quip.

Facebook is a valuable medium and one that a bunch of us here at Park&Co love and use regularly. But we love it because it's a place to share and connect with friends, to see what's happening in their lives and to broadcast the highlights from ours.

So until we can come up with a really good reason to have a Facebook page for the agency (and we're working on it), we're going dark. Despite our Facebook darkness there are still a bunch of places you can connect with us starting with our website - http://parkandco.com/

What are your thoughts on corporate Facebook pages?

Note to Reader: You may not be able to appreciate this post if you are a man or wear a size zero. All others, read on.

I was shopping online at Piperlime (something I do more often now that I have a little girl) checking out what the new styles and colors are for spring. Never one to resist a good sale, I clicked on this button:



When the page loaded and I saw a pair of skinny jeans, 60% off  and FINAL SALE - I thought to myself - are you COMPLETELY CRAZY? What girl would buy a pair of skinny jeans online that were FINAL SALE? Finding a great-fitting pair of regular jeans is a 1:100,000 odds of winning, finding a great pair skinny jeans? 1:1 million - if you're lucky.



It made me think. What would I feel comfortable buying at Final Sale and what makes that different from the jeans? And then I thought, when are the times when we make people feel like they are buying a pair of skinny jeans at final sale?

Most of the time, marketing is oriented towards aiding the sales process. It is about creating a connection with a strong brand, clearly articulating features and benefits of a product or service and making a complex story accessible and easy to understand. We must be aware; when doing marketing for ourselves at Element Three or working with one of our clients - that we don't present an offer that contains too much risk for the buyer. Clients and prospects will be turned off by the giant leap you are asking them to take. Offer a party shirt for $30 - something you can wear once, discard and not feel bad about it. To parallel business, it's like a free trial, a small project or an online demo.

I'm even fairly comfortable with risk - but Final Sale, Skinny Jeans? Are you crazy?

What about you, where in your business are you asking people to buy Final Sale, Skinny Jeans?

The past few weeks I have been 'lunching' with different people, reconnecting in the New Year. Undoubtedly, one of the early topics is how 2010 is starting off for our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, and what we learned in 2009.

I want to be certain that I don't forget what 2009 taught me; so, I thought it would be a good idea to write it down. We're not always given the option of whether or not we go through a difficult time, but we do have the option of deciding to learn from it.

This is what I learned in 2009:

1) Cash really is King. It's not just an old business adage. It is the fundamental lifeblood to any organization. Without it you cannot get the resources you need to produce your product, to market, to sell - to do anything. Access to cash allows you to move forward.

2) There is no substitute for experience, no matter how smart you are. I thought I knew a lot about business. Having my own business from the age of 15 and growing up in a very entrepreneurial home - I have been around business for a long time. I've been told about lean times and hard seasons, and lived through them as the child of an entrepreneur - but never lived through it as a business owner. I will be more prudent as a result of 2009; in my spending and my decision-making. Both personally and professionally.

3) The greatest gift someone can ever give you, is forgiveness. I made some bad decisions in 2009 that had an adverse impact on the Element Three team. To receive forgiveness from those I hurt was an incredibly humbling experience. I hope that I will have the grace to extend such forgiveness to others. For their forgiveness, I am eternally grateful.

4) Good companies go out of business. In my naivete, I thought only bad companies went out of business. That only crappy companies with crappy products and services were the ones that didn't make it. Not so. Many great companies cannot make it through seasons like 2009 because they're not capitalized well, they have big client pull back, inventory levels that are too high or just are not ready to throw their life savings into the company to get it through the rough patch. There were some great companies and great people who were casualties of 2009. We're immensely thankful we were not one of them.

5) In tough times, you have to Decide. You have to decide you want to survive. 2009 taught me that in tough times you cannot be ruled by your emotions, because emotions cannot be trusted. You have to decide you're going to get out of bed in the morning, because you're probably not going to feel like it. You have to decide you are going to make the tough phone calls and that you're going to be honest with yourself about the difficult decisions that have to be made to keep the organization alive. You're not going to feel like laying people off. You're not going to feel like making cold calls. You have to Decide you're going to.

In a crazy way, I'm thankful for 2009. It made me grow up in ways a better economy might not have and it made me more thankful for my family, my husband and my daughter.

I'm curious, what did 2009 teach you? Did you decide to learn from it?

The Indianapolis based company, SGI, is looking to hire an additional Account Coordinator. Our Indianapolis Marketing firm, Element Three, has done work for SGI (we redesigned their logo and helped articulate their brand position). SGI is a stable company with strong leadership.

For more information on the position, click here. Interested parties should forward their resume to Jack Burns, jburns@mysgi.com. This is an entry level position for someone a couple of years out of college. Experience is not necessary.

This week we launched two new websites for Element Three clients.

The first is for GEMMS, a company that sells software exclusively to cardiologists. Element Three was responsible for the design, search engine optimized content and site-map. We partnered with Hanapin Marketing to complete the programming of the site. Click here to view the site.



The second site that went live this week functions as a landing page. This client, DeHart Benefit Solutions, is an independent strategic partner for AGIS. DeHart Benefit Solutions needed to link into the AGIS content - yet also have their own distinct brand. You will see the DeHart brand represented on the landing page, and then the AGIS brand is dominant on the subsequent pages.  Click here to view the site.

Element Three completed the design, content and layout of the landing page. We also were responsible for the design of the logo, company name and brand development with this client. We partnered with Bitwise Solutions to complete the programming.

Yesterday, a group from our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, was at a client in northern Indiana. On their conference room wall was the following quote:

"You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures"

First of all, I'm a sucker for a good quote, but I liked this one for other reasons. I like it for what it told about what was valued and important in their organization.

1. I learned they value long-range planning. Long range planning takes discipline, foresight and communication to maintain and implement. Clients with those attributes are successful in marketing.
2. I learned this organization values risk. Any company that acknowledges there will be failure, is a company that embraces calculated risk. Successful marketing and brand development requires companies take on calculated risk.
3. I learned this company understands there is not a straight line to success. Marketing is based on testing, testing, testing - and measuring response. There is not a straight line to lead generation, but rather a process of hypothesis, execution, evaluation, adjustment, execution, evaluation, and on and on. 

I'm excited to work with this client. With these attributes so front and center in their culture - we're set up for a successful partnership.

Are these characteristics present in your organization?

I wanted to share this new award being brought to the Indianapolis area, the inaugural year of Inspire: The Power of Mentoring Awards. College Mentors for Kids is accepting nominations in seven industry categories for this new award. 

The goal is to increase visibility of mentoring in the community and recognize its impact on individuals and organizations. Please see the attached document and visit www.collegementors.org to learn more about the award and nominate a mentor. The nominees will be honored at a lunch on Wednesday, February 24.  Feel free to share this widely with your personal and professional networks.

Nomination form is available by clicking here.

Deadline to nominate a mentor in your life is January 31st.

Really? Air quality?

This headline/ article below was featured in Inside Indiana Business' daily e-newsletter.


How about the fact that Indiana ranks high in obesity? Or the fact that we have an incredibly high rate of our population that smokes and the unemployment rate in some of our counties is the highest in the nation? And, to add to our grumpy state, our inner-city public school system graduates <50% of high-school Seniors.

How about we focus on things we can change to improve our 'Happiness' level instead of pointing to things like congestion and air quality.

Why am I so bugged that someone spent time researching why we're unhappy? I tell you what makes this Hoosier grumpy - is when people point to random, external factors that contributed to their current state of affairs.

We all know it's coming - coupons and special offers coming to our cell phones via SMS and MMS messaging. I thought this article was interesting. Especially interesting to see the numbers around our social dependency on cell phones. My husband and I are in the category of 'household with no landline' - and we love it. Why spend the money when we're almost always gone and with cell phones, we have more than one line.

Here is a link to the entire article.

• 89 percent of adults in the United States have a mobile phone
• In 2009, 17.5 percent households, or approximately one in six in the United States are purely mobile phone dependent and have no landlines
  • Oklahoma and Utah have at least 26 percent
  • Nebraska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington DC have at least 20 percent
• 58 percent of Americans have a mobile phone with Web connectivity
• An average of 54,922,000 of Americans received an SMS ad between Sept – Nov 2008
• 81 percent of young adults report use text messaging
• 66 percent adults aged 30-49 report use of text messaging

... was the title in an article today on Adage.com by local Ad Agency president, Tom Denari.

His focus was on the importance of getting past the rational feedback target audiences give you when conducting research and getting to a place where they are giving you their emotional reasons for making (or not making) a product or service selection.

"Isn't it common knowledge that consumers are motivated more by emotion than reason? Isn't that why brands exist? And, if we can agree that brands work on an emotional level, then why are we asking consumers to make rational judgments in testing scenarios? As soon as we ask consumers what they think of something, they stop being consumers and start becoming evaluators. They are now put in a position to think, to give rational feedback to something that is largely trying to affect their emotional or -- more accurately -- their irrational instincts. We've effectively made my mom the marketing director.

Even if a research methodology is trying to measure an emotional response, attempting to glean a valid, accurate response is almost impossible. The vast majority of this research requires consumers to use language to describe emotional responses. Unfortunately, humans have a very difficult time doing this. And even when they do, verbalizing emotion actually brings that emotion to a cognitive level. If it's cognitive, it's now rational and no longer emotional."

At our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, we have long subscribed to this line of thinking. That customers use rational reasons to justify their emotional impulse.  Our Creative Advisor, Marcia Stone has created a proprietary research methodology, the Deep Dive or Brand Chemistry process, that gets to the emotional drivers behind a purchase decision.

The Deep Dive process is our most comprehensive approach to gathering customer feedback. Based on the work of Harvard Professor; Dr. Gerald Zaltman, Element Three has customized his approach to make the methodology available to small and mid-sized companies. This proprietary process captures the customer’s gut-level response to why they have chosen a specific product or service. This process can also be used to gather feedback to campaigns and creative approaches.

Through an experiential focus group, customers go through exercises and creative outlets to express their reasons for selecting a company's product or service. Coming out of this session, organizations will better understand how to focus their brand message towards the customer’s needs and how to quickly connect what you have to what they get.

For more information on our Deep Dive process, click here.

Today in Adage, they published an article entitled: Ten Signs the Worst of 2009 is Behind Us... and 10 Reasons to Remain Worried about 2010.

So which is it?

Truth is, none of us know for sure.

I encourage you to read the article in its entirety, but a couple of macro themes stuck out to me.

1) Consumer confidence remains low. Until people are certain their jobs are not going to go away and they become certain they are not going to need to support additional family members or friends - people are going to do without and pull back on discretionary spending.

2) The available housing inventory is decreasing as a result of the 'first time home buyer' tax credit and crazy low interest rates - but whether or not we can continue to outpace the number of foreclosures and defaults coming into the market has yet to be seen.

3) Ad spending is down for what could be the third consecutive decline, unprecedented since the Depression. People are certainly consuming less, but they are also becoming more focused in their spending. At our marketing firm in Indianapolis, Element Three, we have encouraged our clients to spend less building general awareness (these would be ad dollars) and shift that spend towards client retention, penetration and creating brand awareness in target markets. This is a time when companies should become more focused in the products they offer and the customers they service.

What are steps your company is taking to become more focused in their marketing efforts in this economic period?

It's here again. December. The month when companies make an effort to thank and acknowledge their customers, clients, vendors and employees.

Unfortunately, the 'to-do' of getting a Christmas card out the door or a small gift of appreciation is thrown in among the other million things that must be accomplished at year end.

Here are a couple of points to remember when sending out your company card

• Make it personal. Keep the correspondence as personal as you can. If you are sending out a card via mail, have the person who works most often with that client add a personal note. It doesn't have to be long, just relevant. If you choose to send out an email, use personalization strings to individualize the mass communication and add a video element from your CEO. This can be done very inexpensively with a Flip video or partnering with a company like Cantaloupe.

• Keep it on Brand. Your holiday card is part of your brand image and should reflect the personality, values and essence of your organization. It is important that this touch-point build upon the visual and verbal branding of your company as well. 

           

One of Element Three's clients, Innoware, has a great job opening for a smart, experienced marketing professional in Milwaukee, WI.

Here is a little bit about the job opening:

Position Title: Product Manager
Position Description: Innoware is a leader in the paper and plastic tabletop marketplace and is experiencing unprecedented growth. An exciting career opportunity is available on our marketing and product management team. Reporting to the Vice President of Marketing, this position has been created due to the accelerated growth of our paper business headquartered in Menomonee Falls, WI.

We are seeking an energetic person to take a leadership role in the product management function. The Product Manager is a key management position in the company with an opportunity for future growth.

Primary Duties:

In a word. No.

The fourth quarter always ushers in talks of business planning, sales planning, strategic marketing planning - all kinds of planning. Don't misunderstand me, I think planning is vitally important to ensuring you are focusing resources on the highest impact opportunities. However, the rubber hits the road in execution.

Too often companies will spend months planning, getting their message just right and understanding the audience, only to run out of attention span when it comes to execution. Execution is the boring, tedious part that takes discipline and a long attention span.

Steve Nealy said something that will stick with me for a long time. He said, "sometimes in marketing, you just have to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes". In other words, all the market research and customer feedback in the world is not ever going to give us the level of feedback the marketplace will.

A word of caution as we enter this planning season for 2010 - don't get stuck on perfect. Leave time, resources and energy for the most important part - execution.

As important as it is to have a clearly defined point of differentiation in the market, it is even more important you have proof for the claims being made. At our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, we use the phrase "claim of distinction' when referring to an organization's brand positioning strategy.

It's not enough to just claim what is distinctly different about your company/product/service - you have to be purposeful about integrating proof of those claims into the operations of your organization.

For example, if safety is a claim of distinction for your organization - you need to make sure you have a safety program to minimize accidents, provide safety gear at every entry point into a plant, train personnel above that recommended by OSHA or standards the exceed the industry.

If you are going to be bold in claiming a distinction - customers and prospects are going to want to ensure you can provide proof of those claims. If you can provide that proof, you will build a strong, authentic brand for your company.

Have you ever hired a personal trainer to help you get into shape? Did they start by throwing you on a treadmill at 10 mph and squatting 400lbs? My guess is no. If they’re any good at all, they started with an assessment. They have to first understand at what fitness level you’re beginning, talk with you to understand your desired goal and then chart the path to reaching your goal.

Same principles apply to marketing. At our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, we don’t want you to bring us a list of marketing tactics you want us to help you execute. We want to work with you to develop the plan, strategies and tactics to help you achieve your business goals.
As proof, we have developed an Assessment tool for organizations interested in understanding where opportunity lies for improving their marketing efforts. Here is a more detailed description of our proprietary Assessment.

The Assessment is a tool Element Three developed to identify areas where marketing, brand and sales efforts can be improved and better aligned to drive business results. It was developed to help organization’s direct their resources (time and money) towards the highest impact opportunities. The assessment takes less than 10 minutes to complete and explores five areas;

Once completed, Element Three will return to you a one-page summary of findings and recommendations. The data collected will be kept confidential.

If you are interested in learning more about our Assessment or taking it to learn your Organizational Fitness Score, please contact me at tiffany(at)discoverelementthree.com to receive the link.

One of the major missteps I see companies make in marketing is that they make the communications, ads and messages too much about themselves. They focus too much on the product, on their people, their company history, values or culture and too little on what BENEFIT each of those attributes brings to the audience.

It’s much harder to turn what “You Have” to a “You Get” positioned message.

Here are the things you need to review to ensure you are not too product/service-centric in your message but connecting it to your target audience.

1. Clear understanding of what your company uniquely offers the market
2. Knowledge of your target audience, not only the demographic profile, but their preferences; where they go, what they do and how they spend their money/time
3. Spend time with your customers to know what words they use to describe your product or service. Use their words to communicate with them, not yours.
4. Articulate what pain, problem or opportunity your product/ service addresses for your target market(s)
5. Test your message and marketing with a subset of customers or prospects to ensure what you’ve put together resonates with their needs.

If you do these things, you’ll be much closer to being customer-centric instead of company-centric in your message and marketing.

Yesterday we had a client in to make a big presentation of three different directions their brand could be expressed creatively in the marketplace. We sensed the client had a little bit of discomfort with what might be coming and some apprehension around the unknown.

To invite them to the presentation, instead of sending out a standard email invitation, we created custom invitations for each individual attending the meeting and hand delivered them to the office.

Instead of telling them to not be afraid or asking them to keep an open mind, we replaced the emotion of trepidation with excitement.  We wanted them to feel special and know they had the opportunity to participate in something fun and exciting.

Our client showed up on-time and eager to participate – setting us up for a productive time together. We walked away with a chosen direction and excitement for what lay ahead.

Do you have any examples of creative ideas to engage clients in a way that moves them emotionally?

From VisionEdge Marketing, here are four reasons you should be thinking about marketing planning for 2010 for your organization.

• Research actually shows that companies who carefully plan their marketing strategies during and after economic downturns bounce back quicker and more effectively once the economy recovers.
• Marketing exists solely to bring value to the organization by finding, keeping and growing the value of customers. It's difficult to bring value without a plan.
• Marketing's initiatives - when planned, tracked and measured correctly - add direct value to the company's bottom line.
• Successful marketers know they need to take a measurable customer-centric approach to their planning.

If you are thinking about putting together a marketing plan for 2010 and don't know where to start, click here to access Element Three's one page marketing plan. It is an easy way to get started.