Local marketers outline client strategies
What are the three most important areas of concern for your clients heading into fiscal 2007-2008?
Terry Woodruff
President, Woodruff Sweitzer
1. Determining return on investment
For today’s marketing manager or chief marketing officer, the No. 1 challenge is determining or proving return on investment (ROI). In the boardroom, marketers are under more scrutiny than ever before. Every department in the firm is under pressure to perform. Marketing is not exempt. If budget cuts are necessary, marketing spending is often the first to go.
At Woodruff Sweitzer (WS), we have encouraged marketing directors to allocate funds for setting specific awareness, attitude and/or usage (AAU) goals and conducting pre- and post-campaign quantitative research. WS has developed strategic partners including True Media Services, Evoke Research Co. and Anderson Fallon PR to enable us to monitor and measure consumer awareness, track story pickups and develop highly targeted media buys. When additional dollars are a challenge for benchmarking success, we suggest moving a percentage of the budget into measurable media such as sponsored links, banner advertising or direct response pieces, or create a product specific Web site, event or seminar.
2. Competing with competitors with deeper resources
Our answer is to stop competing with them head-to-head. WS will determine a compelling point of differentiation and create a new category or brand voice for that client. We will also develop highly targeted guerrilla tactics based on a manageable budget to reach your audience.
3. Ensuring continued growth and profitability during a period of succession.
Several of our clients are family-owned companies that are transitioning from one generation of leadership to the next. As this transition takes place, they look for ways to remain strong for years to come. We work closely with the management of the organization to clearly understand the successful brand pillars and principles that made the company successful and build upon those and identify opportunities to evolve the brand into today’s changing marketplace. We also proactively look for new opportunities for continued growth and look at their business as a whole — not just the advertising. This has resulted in our involvement in new product development, package design, crisis management, public relations and research.
Lili Vianello
President, Visionworks Marketing & Communications
1. Using new media effectively
Clients are becoming increasingly attentive to the evolution of new media and the challenges and opportunities of using each one effectively. The Internet, in particular, is of interest to them. Effective Web utilization goes way beyond building a site and doing the basic search engine optimization. Ongoing tweaking is a must. Other options include viral marketing and blogging. We work with clients to make sure not only that they have an attractive and effective Web site but that their target audiences are seeing it.
?2. Marketing to a new generation of consumers
Today’s youths do not use much of the media that have been effective in reaching their parents and grandparents. They do not identify with the issues and style of messaging that have produced results for older generations. Attention spans are shorter and the ability to process multiple streams of simultaneously received information is far greater. Our clients who are targeting this age group turn to us to help them understand how to speak to this complicated audience: Market Smart.??3. Allocating resources wisely
It is easier for the inexperienced to make poor spending choices than good ones. Pitfalls include spreading dollars too thinly or trusting an advisor who is personally benefiting from the sale of a specific medium. Visionworks Marketing & Communications brings an informed, unbiased, strategic approach to allocation of client budgets. Don’t spend more; spend more wisely.
J. Michael Roach
President, IDP Group
1. Working with the local economy
Our clients are concerned with one thing: the state of the local economy. The housing market has dropped off considerably and the effects are widespread. Columbia has reached or nearly reached the 100,000 metro population mark, big names have started to take notice, and a boom in development is really changing the landscape.
What used to be a nice little town has suddenly become very competitive. What’s nice for us and for our clients is that the big-box retailers don’t always enjoy a competitive advantage. Many local businesses are very well run, and they have enjoyed an increase in business. Bigger players are helping to weed out the competition, and weaker businesses are closing, resulting in more customers for the well-managed businesses.
2. Survival of the fittest
Likewise, what is now an arguably overbuilt housing market will level off, and the developments now under way will bring new employees, new shoppers and new homebuyers as the city continues to grow, which will in turn create a stronger economy.
To help that end, our clients look to us to help them understand how to position themselves as a viable or even preferred alternative to the big name brand that everyone else chooses. With this also comes a merger and acquisition phase, where the local players jockey for position, develop marketing partnerships and forge strategic alliances.
3. Finding strength in numbers.
To help them continue the success they are achieving, we’re closely working with our clients to identify new markets, new products and new opportunities as well as to package those ideas into desirable brands that create a strong buying preference among consumers. Our strategy is to create a loyal following with their customers that will springboard them into the lead when the economy turns up again. The key is to adopt a new way of doing business and a new of way of branding it. Out with the old and in with the new.
Jack Miller
President, True Media
1. Analyzing which media to use
In today’s cluttered marketplace, the importance of which media or mix of media to utilize in an advertising campaign is truly a science. All of our clients are requesting more data and information on media’s audience delivery. Sophisticated advertisers are no longer interested in paying for advertising simply for the privilege of being associated with a particular medium or because the media representative who calls on them gives them free football tickets. Clients want accurate reporting and pricing based upon advertising exposures. To meet the demand, research companies are continuing to improve the way they measure consumer media behavior. In addition, progressive media outlets are changing their age-old pricing structure to relate ad costs directly to exposures, and they are willing to guarantee delivery of these exposures. The most recent example of this is with the magazine industry. Media buying agencies are requiring that publishers guarantee each issue’s circulation instead of averaging multiple issues like usual. Nielsen media research is working on a similar concept in television.
2. Integration of traditional and non-traditional media
A continued area of interest is the integration of non-traditional media with traditional media. There is no doubt that Internet media buying is the fastest-growing portion of advertising today, but working with non-traditional media is much more than just buying banners. We are actively working with clients to develop social networks online, blogging opportunities, and strategic search word strategies, in addition to the more typical banner advertising. Experiential marketing where companies introduce their product through unique, street-level, gorilla-style campaigns is also an area of focus.
3. Marketing to non-English speaking customers
The next year will also show an increase in the number of marketers who expand their demographic targets to include foreign language groups. As the U.S. population of foreign language groups continues to increase, local and regional marketers are working to find ways to introduce their brand and products to a whole new segment of the population. While national companies have had this strategy for several years, local and regional companies have been slower to adapt. This should change beginning next year. True Media is continuing to have more conversations with clients in identifying these additional demographic segments by market and structuring media campaigns in order to include these groups.
Paula Elias
President, Axiom: An Identity Company
1. How do I stand out in a crowded field?
2. How do I tell my original story in a powerful and relevant way?
3. Do traditional media still make sense for me and/or how do I use new media effectively?
The first two questions are not new. They are questions clients always have asked, and without an answer to these two questions, the others really don’t matter. Axiom is concerned first and foremost with finding authentic and meaningful answers to these questions. Knowing who you are and why that matters to your potential customers is the first step in creating a successful identity campaign, and it should determine how everything else looks and sounds, whether it be your radio, print or TV campaign, your Web site or even your in-store signage. Of course, a great logo, brochure and Web site can be among the many reasons people look to see who you are and what you’re doing, but what will keep them coming back are the relevance and the value of your message. Every business has a unique story to tell, and a great marketing campaign hinges on finding that story.
The last question is just a new variation of the age-old question about how to reach the right market. Traditional media have become, and will continue to be, more fragmented. The exciting thing about this is that every day there are more interesting ways to reach people. Blogs, podcasts, video on the Web, desktop delivery and event marketing are all effective and powerful ways to communicate your message when used correctly—whether alone or in conjunction with traditional media. But in the end, it all comes back to talking to the right people about what matters to them most. It’s the only thing that will make people pay attention.
Jocelyn Knaebel
Vice President, Bucket Media Inc.
1. Using the right media and reaching enough people
Radio, TV, cable, newspaper, magazines, Web sites, coupon books, yellow pages, billboards, Facebook, blogging, gas station pump toppers, and the list goes on and on. This can be overwhelming for a client. There are so many media choices and having a budget to do everything is impossible.
Begin with the client’s customers. What media choices are they utilizing; and what is the best way to reach them? In other words, define your demographic. Not just age and gender, but also lifestyle. Are they surfing the Web? Are they reading the newspaper? Are they text messaging? If they are between the ages of 18 and 35, their lifestyle habits and the way traditional media affect them are much different from those of a person between 40 and 55 years of age. With the 18-to-35 demographic, you may want to look at more electronic advertising, such as pod casting, e-mail blasting, Facebook, or text messaging. The 40- to 55-year-old customer can more easily be reached through traditional media.
Having sophisticated technology that helps rank the media for your demographic and knowing the strengths of each medium is crucial. There are formulas you must use to make your advertising effective. You must carefully evaluate reach, frequency, and Gross Rating Points. This technology helps to make sure that you are buying media effectively and efficiently and not spreading your advertising dollars too thin. In essence, it helps to ensure that you are not fragmenting your budget.
Regarding Web advertising and the effectiveness of your Web site … knowing how to deal with search engine optimization is crucial. If you want your Web site to work for your company, you must manage it. Buying keywords and having a strategy to move your site to the top when someone “Googles” you, takes a constant eye on the process and it only improves your chances, there are no guarantees. Working closely with the Web designer and monitoring spiders, META tags, banners, pay-per-clicks, pay-per- impressions etc., can be overwhelming.
2. Measuring the efficiency of a media and advertising plan
Efficiency is very important to a successful media plan. You must make sure that your advertising dollars are actually making an impact on your target market. Once you determine whom you want to reach with your advertising, you must figure out the most effective ways to reach them with the resources that you have. Carefully evaluating where every cent of your marketing budget is going is key, and being armed with the right resources is crucial.
Without these resources, clients could too easily fall into looking only at the cost of the ad (the rate) and not looking at the cost of the ad in relation to the number of people in their target demographic that the ad was reaching. Efficiency in using your advertising dollars is vital.
3. Quantifying the value of advertising
There are so many factors to look at when you are trying to answer this question. It all depends on how many people your ad is reaching in your target demographic and what the market bears when it comes to cost per point. Although very costly to purchase on your own, market research, ratings and software are available to help determine the answer to this question. Evaluating media based on cost per rating point and cost per thousand is a measuring tool that will help. Businesses need to consider every form of media on an equal playing field to ensure they never overpay for an ad. If a business has $100,000 in advertising dollars and they are spending the bulk of that with one “group,” they are probably buying from the sales representative they like the best, rather than looking at what delivers the most people for the budget they are spending.