Customer Service: Image is everything… So is marketing done right
Image is everything. You already know this: With a well-implemented marketing and public relations plan, your business or not-for-profit agency can highlight the positives of your product or service to the community. Maybe you’re a lone ranger in business or you have a small team of co-workers to help you dream up plans to promote your brand and marketing message. Of course, they might all be great ideas, but beware. You might not know what you are getting yourself into until it’s too late.
I remember friends from a non-profit agency at the start-up phase of an important new initiative. Given a limited budget, they launched into the initial reverie of “we can do this marketing thing” with great enthusiasm. They weren’t far into the work when the newsletter that was supposed to take a week to write and put together was now three weeks late, and it featured events that would certainly be over before the mailing ever got out. The fun turned into a hungry beast that munched through hours of precious time in page layout accompanied by searches through help manuals to place and rotate text, import images (from a limited clipart selection) and manipulate photos and grayscales, which ended in the ultimate reality that Word is not a design program. Oops! Have you ever been there? It’s just as frustrating when you actually have design software, but the learning curve is too steep to use it in a timely manner. You question yourself: “Why did we spend money on that?”
My friends were disappointed, but being troopers, they nevertheless marched on to promoting the main event to raise funds for their more-than-worthy cause. They decided to buy radio ads, most of which ran at 3 a.m. and again at 4:30 a.m. True, they got the air-time at a really low rate — not that it helped much. You can only imagine if you’ve been through this. The grand event was lovely, but the attendance was low, and the net financial result was basically a wash.
Effective advertising is achieved by reaching the right people at the right time. You have to maximize return on your investment, but it’s hard to do when you don’t ask the right questions in advance.
This tale does improve. After the delusions of grandeur, no doubt driven by the noble cause, the reality of marketing and promoting sank in. Time, money and resources, let alone the frustrating experience of long hours, computer-rage and lost potential income, forced them to take a deeper look at their skills and how to spend their time and money more effectively. They were wise to ask for help the next time around. With better front-end preparation, an actual marketing plan and guided media placement, one year later a profitable fundraiser made everyone ecstatic.
Many well-intentioned organizations have struggled through the frustrating and painful process of self-marketing at some point. So what if you need to be fiscally conservative for now and implement marketing strategies without professional help? Sometimes circumstances necessitate going it alone.
You can become more knowledgeable about public relations, Internet marketing, trade shows and the diversity of marketing tools your business or organization needs to succeed. Visionworks Marketing & Communications is offering a series of classes designed to make you better equipped to go it alone. Ideal for the one-man shop, startup business, non-profit organization or fiscally conscious small companies trying to stretch a buck, the classes cover topics ranging from media planning to Web development to social networking to graphic design. Visit us at www.Visionworks.com for more info, or call 573-449-8567. Getting a little guidance can certainly ease the pain and frustrations of doing your own marketing.
Lili Vianello is President of Visionworks, a Columbia-based, full-service marketing and communications firm offering Web design and maintenance. Contributions to this article were made by Visionworks staff members. Visit them online at www.visionworks.com.