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!

As the president of the Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three. I get lots of direct mail. This week, I received a postcard from a very prominent state university trying to get me to sign up for a program designed to "provide intensive study and experience in both the elements and contexts of leadership."

Sounds interesting.

There is no way for me to respond.

There is no phone number, no email address, no web address to visit. No informational session to sign up for. There is absolutely no call to action.

When you're designing direct marketing tactics as part of your strategic marketing plan, don't forget the call to action.

Here are some ideas for CTA's that you can use to better calculate your return on marketing investment. I'm guessing the ROI on this piece I received will be $0.00. 

• Download a white-paper
• Access a survey
• Phone Number
• Email Address
• Special Landing Page
• URL
• Free Trial
• Sign up for a demo
• Webinar
• Complementary tickets to a special event
• Enter to win a drawing
• DVD with more information

Happy marketing - and don't forget the Call To Action!

 A few months back I wrote a post Keep It Personal and the value of personalization and how it can improve the impact of electronic or direct mail marketing. In addition to creating stronger brand identity in the market, it brings life and emotion to your people and your brand message.

I encountered an example of how powerful personalization can be in my personal life this week.

I have sponsored a child through World Vision for about 8 years. When I was single and most of my money was discretionary, it made me feel good about myself that $30/ month was being sent to a small country in Africa to help a young boy named Omar get food, clean water and access to medical care.

I was literally talking to my husband a few weeks back questioning whether Omar was actually receiving the stuff I was sending him when I received this in the mail:



If you look closely, the picture in Omar's left hand is a Christmas picture of my husband and me about 3 years ago and the picture in his right hand is a picture of our family from last year.





This is a picture of the full piece I received from World Vision on Omar. The part on the left is a brief bio of what is going on in his life and the picture of him in the center holding the pictures of us.

This had such a profound impact on me. Never will I meet Omar face-to-face, but the fact that he knows what I look like, that he's kept pictures of me, my husband and daughter for years - made me realize how important my $30/mo was in his life. This experience made me feel like I had a relationship with Omar even though we will never communicate electronically or in person.

How can you bring your brand to life and make a human, emotional connection with your clients or prospects? I'm thinking about the same things for my business. 

I can tell you that it starts with being clear about your brand. Who you are and what you stand for. If you're looking for ways to clarify your brand or ideas on how to personalize your marketing tactics - visit Element Three's website to learn more.

I'm in the process of writing an audit for a client on their marketing tactics and I had to stop to write this blog post.

Here's why.

As the president of the Indianapolis Marketing firm, Element Three, I get the opportunity to see into lots of different companies and how they're executing their brand and marketing strategy through different tactics.

Overwhelmingly the biggest mistake I see companies make - is that they execute various marketing tactics - like email marketing, social media, twitter, Facebook, sales collateral, websites and trade show events with no purpose. 

What's the intent? What do you want it to do for you and then PLEASE look at the statistics, calculate your return on marketing investment and adjust accordingly.

What does this have to do with the title of this post about Element Three on Facebook?

Let me explain.

I wrote a post Why Element Three doesn't have a Facebook Page in March of this year. The reason we didn't have one is because I couldn't put my finger on it's PURPOSE for us. Even though nearly every agency in town had a fan page and we were getting tons of requests to help clients with their social media presence - I couldn't justify the time and effort without a clear purpose.

A few weeks ago I became settled on the intent and purpose of Element Three having a Facebook presence. It's a back-stage pass to our office for clients and prospects. The happenings and goings-on will be posted - with pictures of the creative process and our team in action. We also have plans for special offers to be made available only to people who have 'liked' us - as our thanks for following us and adding value. The people and culture of an advertising agency is nearly as important as the work; and it is our intent to have this page be a window into our office.

So I ask this question - can you look at each of the marketing tactics you're working on - and clearly define its purpose? If not, stop - and don't do it again until purpose is established.

Oh, and next time you're on Facebook - will you Like us?

It's our FINAL event within our summary seminar series KEEPING UP WITH THE WEB. We have received excellent feedback from participants in our first three sessions. 

Here are a few of the comments we have received in our post-seminar questionnaire:
"The information discussed was incredibly relevant to my business"
"Excellent seminar"
"Very informative"
"Ton of good info"

Join us at our event on August 11th to go in depth with Google Analytics and how you can harness its power to assist you in measuring return on marketing investment and how your traffic is engaging in your brand and your website.

WHEN: Wednesday August 11th @ 9:00 am or 1:30 pm
WHO: Business owners, marketing professionals and executives
TOPIC: Understanding Google Analytics as an Effective Measurement Tool
WHERE:  3500 DePauw Blvd.
             Pyramid Three
             Conference Room C, Lower Level
             Indianapolis, IN 46268

Are you measuring your marketing? Do you have Google Analytics set up on your website but don't know how to interpret the data? In this session we will go walk through the ways Google Analytics can be leveraged to measure your online and offline marketing efforts. Get more out of your marketing and attend this session.

Register and get more information on our Google Analytics Seminar. 

A special thanks to Cirrus ABS for partnering with us to put on this great summer seminar!

Element Three is excited to be partnering with Cirrus ABS for our second summer seminar, SEO: Creating and Converting Lead Opportunities.

When: June 30th at 9:00a or 1:30p
Who: Business owners, marketing professionals and executives
Topic: SEO: Creating and Converting Lead Opportunities
Where: Pyramid 3, Lower Level, Indianapolis, Indiana

We’ve all felt it. That tiny bit of doubt in the back of your mind. Am I up to date on the latest in online marketing? Is my brand well represented in the digital media realm? Are there opportunities that I’m missing? No worries. Here’s your chance to make sure your brand, and your marketing efforts, take advantage of the latest online tools and strategies available.

Please join us for the upcoming session SEO: Creating and Converting Lead Opportunities.

In this session you will learn how to leverage search engine optimization. Learn from the experts ways you can get your company more visible on the web and how to turn your website into a lead generation tool for you. With over 1 billion searches daily on Google alone, optimization is a must for businesses and organizations.

This is the second of a four-part series. Space is limited. Please sign-up early to assure your spot.

For registration and more information, click here. We hope to see you there!

You’re Invited!

Element Three is excited to be partnering with Cirrus ABS for our first summer seminar.

When: June 9th at 9:00a or 1:30p
Who: Business owners, marketing professionals and executives
Topic: Net Centered Marketing: Leveraging Your Website for Results
Where: Pyramid 3, Lower Level, Indianapolis, Indiana

We’ve all felt it. That tiny bit of doubt in the back of your mind. Am I up to date on the latest in online marketing? Is my brand well represented in the digital media realm? Are there opportunities that I’m missing? No worries. Here’s your chance to make sure your brand, and your marketing efforts, take advantage of the latest online tools and strategies available.

Please join us for the upcoming session Net Centered Marketing: Leveraging Your Website for Results led by experts in marketing, brand development and online marketing.
In this session you will learn how to leverage the investment you have made in your website and how to integrate your offline marketing efforts with your website. Attendees will walk away with specific action items for how they can enhance the effectiveness of their website and online brand presence.

This is the first of a four-part series. Attend one or attend all. We look forward to seeing you there. If you have additional questions about the series, please contact me directly tiffany(at)discoverelementthree(dot)com.

Space is limited. Please sign-up early to assure your spot.

For registration and more information, click here.

I was doing some research for a client presentation tomorrow and ran across these two charts that demonstrates how dynamic the social media landscape really is.



In 2008 MySpace led the pack with receiving 41% of the visits in the United States to social networking sites. Facebook and YouTube were far behind with 8% and 7% respectively. Today, in 2010, the graph for social media traffic looks much, much different. Facebook is leading by commanding nearly 50% of the traffic with MySpace losing market share and YouTube continuing to maintain and grow their presence in the social networking space. 

If you are looking for ways to enter into the social marketing realm, create a fan page on Facebook. While there are countless other tools you could engage with - Facebook has emerged as the clear leader.

Another meaningful graph - Facebook surpassed Google for Weekly Market Share of Visits in March of this year. No small accomplishment.



Before you enter into the social marketing arena, be certain you are clear about your brand message and how you intend to communicate your Unique Selling Points as benefits to your core audience(s). A strong brand positioning strategy and message matrix is an meaningful exercise for companies moving into the social space.

At Element Three we help clients in Indianapolis and throughout the Midwest manage their brands both online and offline. An integrated plan will reap the strongest return on marketing investment.

It was a fun day today at Element Three. One of those days that makes me excited to be an Indianapolis Marketing Firm where we get to develop brands, marketing strategies and engaging creative for our clients.

We are blessed to have an incredibly talented group of interns that are joining us for the summer from Herron School of Art and Design. Alice Reiter, Ceverly Strand, Andrea Haydon and Joel Wittman are working with us on various creative marketing efforts both for Element Three and the clients we serve.

Below are some pictures of our interns in action. Element Three has been asked by a client to create a name for their new product line and they have also engaged our logo creation services to develop a full brand identity. Once it's developed, we'll be sure to post the name and logo for you to see.

Here we are in a brainstorming session centered around developing a name for the product. Armed with a brand brief, markers, post-it notes and lots of candy - we got to work.


Jamie Cousins and I hard at work!


Jamie, Andrea, Alice, Joel and Ceverly talking through various options for the client.


   
Tools of the trade!                                                                    Alice giving us instruction.

At our Indianapolis marketing firm, Element Three, we have worked with several different clients that have the goal of building a strong brand presence in the marketplace but have the complication of having sales people all across the nation that need to be supported. How do you build a cohesive company brand while still allowing for the personalization of the individual sales reps?

The short answer? Brand both. Create ways for the corporate brand to be visually consistent and laser focus the marketing message; but, also allow for the sales rep picture, contact information and personal note to be included. Be sure to create clear hierarchy in the brand visuals. The company should be first, the sales rep second.

Here is an example of a recent postcard that went out for our client Connext Financial. This was designed to brand both the company (Connext) and the sales rep (Lisa).



Done consistently, customers will begin to associate your sales reps with your company and both will build a strong brand of trust.

Are there areas in your organization where you can more clearly involve the face your customers see every day? Remember, people do business with people, not with companies.  The more you can give a face to your organization the more effective your marketing efforts will become and the greater return on marketing investment you will see.

I have a meeting with a prospect tomorrow, and I'm nervous about it.

Let me tell you why.

1. They have a successful business
2. They have money to spend
3. They know they need our help
4. They have a new product to launch

Why am I nervous? because of #5
          5. They don't have a business plan

Too many times we encounter this situation. Everything is in it's place, client's have money to spend, but they have not clearly articulated where they want to arrive.

Marketing is about taking you somewhere different than you are today. It's about creating a magnet that attracts the type of customers you are equipped to serve well. It's about creating growth at a pace the organization can support and sustain. It's about building a brand that attracts employees with similar values. Without a business plan, you are leaving the destination up to the marketing partner/ agency or team you are hiring. Think of the business plan as the map. Marketing's job is to help you determine the appropriate strategic marketing efforts to help get you there.

Without a clear destination, all of the brand strategy, marketing integration, strategic marketing planning or best brand strategy agency in the world will not get you to the desired result. The best thing you can do for our Indianapolis Ad Agency, Element Three or other partner you select is to give them your business plan. That way you know you'll arrive at a place you intended.

At our Indianapolis Ad Agency, Element Three, we help our clients increase revenue through three avenues (in any combination) Brand Development, Marketing Strategy and Creative Execution. In the interest of being transparent about how we're working to grow our business and making the marketing efforts on behalf of the agency be more effective, I thought it might be valuable to share with our readers a few tweaks we are going to be making to our blog to strengthen it's strategic value to the agency.

Side note: Writing posts consistently is an expensive waste of time if you are not working towards strategically leveraging it as an important part of your marketing efforts. If you are thinking of starting a blog (or have one without a strategy); identify your goals before beginning.

We write our blog for three primary reasons

• Potential employees or interns can read our blog to see inside the convictions and   ideology of the agency when evaluating if they want to work here
• The content feeds the Element Three newsletter, an integral part of staying in contact with clients, prospects and partners
• Gather leads - you read our blog, think we're really smart - you contact us for more information

Here is a screen shot of our blog as it looks today:



As I was working with our blog partner, Compendium, to identify ways we might be able to improve the conversions of our visitors - we identified a very obvious thing -

To contact us for more information; you had to link off of our blog, go to the Element Three website, and find the contact us page. What!! Three steps before you could contact me? So, Change #1) add a big button that says contact us and links directly to a form & contact info.

Second thing, we currently only have white papers for people to read as a value-add to the blog posts. We also have a fantastic Assessment tool where people can learn where the low-hanging fruit opportunities are in their organization. People love the results of this Assessment when they take it, our biggest problem is getting people aware of it. Bingo! We're going to add a link to the Assessment from our blog with a brief description. That's Change #2.

Lastly, we have a place where we are asking you if you would like to sign-up for our newsletter. By signing up for our newsletter, we push the information to your in-box and you don't have to remember to come back and visit us (or set up an RSS feed). The sign-up process for our newsletter is equally clumsy to contacting us. Three clicks - and that's assuming you know where it is. We are going to work with our HTML email provider, Delivra, to help us insert the appropriate code so you can enter your email directly into the text box and hit submit. A double-opt-in message will then be generated to confirm your subscription. Change #3.

We were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves - we have been constantly blogging for over a year. But, upon further review - we realized there were some significant areas where the experience for the user could be enhanced considerably.

Where is there opportunity in your marketing activities to improve in areas where you are already putting effort? Don't abandon a tactic too early, ensure you are doing everything to give it the greatest chance for success. If you're not sure, call us! (soon there will be an easy contact us button to do so!)

I worked from home today, and it was the most exhausting day I've had in a long time.

My nanny had an event she had to attend today and so I stayed home to watch the kiddos. To keep my 14 month old daughter from coming a complete diva, we have another little girl who comes to our house a few days a week.  Today was one of the days when both little girls (14 and 9 months) were at our home.

Here's what I learned from walking a day in the life of my nanny.

1) It's busy. Really, really busy. And I now have a better appreciation as to why the toys aren't always arranged perfectly when I get home. Sometimes you're lucky just to make sure nothing was swallowed today.

2) I now understand how you can forget to change my daughter out of her p.j.'s. It's just details - keeping both behinds clean and making sure there is no poo on their clothes is mission critical - making sure she has a cute outfit on is not.

3) I now understand how you can forget to flush the toilet. When you have two kids on the loose, you're lucky to even find 5 seconds to get there - and chances are there will be something urgent that forces the process to 3 seconds. Gross, I know.

How does this experience apply to my professional life?

It got me thinking about those around me. If I spent a day in their shoes, would I have a renewed compassion or understanding for their situation? It was a reminder to step out and live a day in the life of the people I work with at Element Three and to understand more fully our client's perspective when working with us.

Sometimes we think our vantage point is the only one that is important. At least for today, and hopefully longer, I will make an effort to put myself in the other person's shoes.

Will you?

This is the time of year when execution starts to fall off dramatically. Chances are you came into the year with fresh optimism, a binder full of great big plans and somewhere between January 1st and today, you got interrupted by some very urgent tasks that have taken you off track.

This is a reminder that urgent is not always important AND, the best laid plan means little without execution.

Have you found yourself 25% of the way through your marketing strategy? Are you still on course to complete the items you laid out for your company/department/staff to complete or has the ugly urgent taken over your day?

Becoming a slave to the urgent happens in every area of our lives, but I see it profoundly occur in the world of marketing. Especially in organizations without a dedicated marketing department or internal staff. When marketing is not kept front and center - the urgent gets in the way of the important.

If you're off track, it's not too late to realign behind your plan and recommit to execution. If you're on track - then congratulations - keep it up. It takes a long attention span to fully execute a marketing plan.

I hope this year you are as diligent in executing your plans as you were in formulating them.

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?