Mad 4 Blog

One important aspect of marketing is to constantly evolve and stay ahead of the curve. This includes staying on the cutting edge of technology. In the past few decades, there has been a dramatic shift from traditional print marketing to online marketing. Over the years, there has been an increasing gap between these two formats. And this means that money is wasted by companies launching dual advertising campaigns while trying to cover both bases in terms of distribution and audience engagement. But one company noted this discrepancy and took action to fill the void: USB Insert™

USB Insert™ is a revolutionary marketing solution that seamlessly merges print advertising with the online experience. This option connects your corporeal audience to any abstract content on the World Wide Web. For example, USB Insert™ is suggested as a trade show hand-out or magazine insert. Because it’s small and discreet, it’s easy to pass out and share with others. Once USB Insert™ is plugged into any computer, the user is immediately and automatically directed to your company’s website, online catalog or interactive experience. Your redirect link and the content involved are entirely up to you.

This also frees up the focus of your ads. Your hand-out or brochure can focus on key messaging and enticing creative, saving in-depth explanations for online. And it’s much more traceable than print media, with user tracking capabilities built into the USB card. Because your content is already based online, no memory or storage space is necessary.

How Can It Help My Business?

First and foremost, bridging the gap between print marketing and web marketing reduces your marketing expenses. Rather than do everything in duplicate, you can use one format to cover all of your bases, without expecting your print readers to memorize your URL. At the same time, it’s an exciting way to stand out from the crowd. A simple mailbox flier or event hand-out suddenly earns a second look. Your customer can easily pop out the USB card and plug it in at home or the office. It’s quick, convenient and easy to use.

USB Inserts™ not only pique the curiosity of those who receive them, but also make your giveaways or brochures more interactive. This heightened level of engagement transfers to the user’s online experience. By grabbing and keeping your customer’s attention, this option makes your unique brand message instantly memorable.

Naturally, USB Insert™ marketing is ideal for anyone targeting the coveted tech-savvy youth crowd. It’s also smart for techno-savvy businesses, such as hospitals and colleges. By consolidating your ads, USB Insert™ effectively reduces paper waste and contributes to environmentalism; so it suits businesses with a strong eco-friendly slant.

USB Insert™ is just one outside-of-the-box example of how Mad 4 Marketing uses emerging and nontraditional formats to benefit your business. By staying in touch with digital and interactive developments, Mad 4 Marketing is able to offer clients advertising options that put them ahead of the pack.

When preparing for a new marketing event such as a sales pitch, convention, seminar, trade show or demonstration, it is always a good idea to pause about three-quarters of the way through (when you still have time to make significant changes) and reevaluate your ideas. You’ve already brainstormed once, when you chose to attend your event and began planning your marketing strategies. However, once you’ve begun plotting your presentation and ordering materials, it’s important to take a step back and ensure that you’re staying on target to meet goals along the way. The worst thing you can possibly do is invest your time, effort and money in an event, only to find out on the last day that you’ve managed to lose sight of your entire marketing agenda.

When building a plan of attack over the course of several weeks or months, it’s easy to exhaust your perspective. As you progress, the ‘why’s and ‘how’s of your initial concept might be compromised, edited or even discarded. In fact, you may even lose your most valuable strategizing tool: objectivity. Suddenly, ideas that would have seemed laughable last month have found their way into your opening lines!

The way to avoid this potential catastrophe is to workshop your event. This means gathering together a group of team members who have been tasked with preparing for your event in addition to those who will be staffing it. Then, you’ll also want to invite outsiders who have nothing to do with your project. Respected industry professionals may offer valid insight, as may organizers or fellow participants of the event you’re planning to attend. Acting as a comprehensive survey group, these contributors should all take part in assessing your current status as well as your ultimate plans. You’ll want to show ideas or samples of your displays, giveaways and other promotional materials.

One good way to test your strategy is to compose a blind presentation; this is also a good time for staffers to practice speaking. Afterward, you should interview your workshop attendees to see what they would guess for your key messaging, intended outcome and prospective audience. If these assessments aren’t matching up with your goals, you’ll want to discuss how changes can be made to better present your business. Transparency is vital when attending an event for the first time; now is not your window to be clever or coy about what you have to offer.

Once everyone is on the same page, now is the time to invite your workshop to assess the outstanding weaknesses in your event presentation. That’s right; as hard as it may be to shoulder, now is the time to hear all of your potential vulnerabilities from a myriad of critics. The harder they are on you, the better. No matter what they say, it will be easier to suffer brutal honesty at this stage than to wait until you’re up in front of a panel or crowd, with your business on the line.

Don’t be scared of your workshop outcomes. Remember: everything at this point is constructive. There’s still time to tweak your presentation and discover new solutions. You’re not expected to start all over again, but conducting a workshop will give you the fresh perspective and honest analysis you need to succeed at your upcoming event.

Many businesses dread the idea of marketing their wares through sales prospecting, such as cold calls and blind mailings. And they should, because the first mistake is thinking of sales prospecting as its own solution, rather than a strategy which paves the way for future marketing endeavors. Sales prospecting is not a way to tell someone for the first time about your company with the hopes of completing an instantaneous transaction. It’s a way to introduce yourself and your brand so that a potential relationship can be built. But more importantly, it’s a way to weed out interested parties from those who are never going to become customers, so that you don’t waste marketing efforts on them in the future. This can help you further tailor your next efforts and potentially cut costs by only marketing to those who will likely convert to sales.

1)    Start with demographics. When you begin calling or mailing individuals to whom you’d like to make sales, you’re usually working from a contact information list. You can choose your contacts based on general demographics such as region, income, age, marital status, etc. When choosing these factors, you’ll want to be sure to cover not only those characteristics which match your current audience, but also those who you’d like to reach out to with later marketing endeavors. A marketing team who will manage your materials and your campaign once you pass the preliminary sales prospecting point can help you determine which audiences will be most responsive to your efforts.

2)    Sort out the best candidates. Sales prospecting will help you go through your list of contacts and narrow them down to those most likely to build a relationship with your business or make purchases. When you think about sales prospecting as a means to whittle down your wide ocean of prospects to a smaller pond, you can change your entire outlook on the process. While it can be frustrating to consistently receive rejections and not make any sales after hours on the phone, when you adjust your mentality so that you’re simply targeting those who are interested for later marketing, sales prospecting will go a lot more smoothly.

3)    Give them all of the information they need. Once you’ve determined that someone may be interested in what you’re offering, the next step is still not to harass them about sales. Rather than completing a transaction, make it your goal to obtain further information from each person, and then reciprocate by providing them with even more information about your company through the mail, e-mail or even your website. Once you’ve broached a relationship with a prospective client, you’ll want to let them familiarize even more with your brand so that they become comfortable with the idea of using you in the future. You’ll also want to target future marketing to this individual to gradually coax them into sales. Individuals will appreciate the fact that you aren’t badgering them into an agreement right away, but rather allowing them to learn more and make a choice on their own.

4)    Follow-up. It may be tricky just to sit on your hands while an interested party makes up their mind about your business. But just because you’re not jumping at them with sales and deals doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to prompt them. In fact, you definitely should not lapse in keeping contact with anyone who’s expressed interest in your products or services. Follow-up is a key component of sales prospecting. After sending out some materials about your business, you’ll want to reach out again to be sure they’ve received those materials and find out what they think. At this point, your agenda is to perpetuate a dialogue and make sure that your prospect has everything they need to make a decision. This is why it’s a great idea to encourage individuals to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your company’s blog. It’s one way to naturally integrate ongoing communications without putting your candidate on speed-dial.

5)    Use marketing to supplement your efforts. After you’ve completed all of the previous steps, you should be working with a tidy list of individuals with proven, expressed interest in your business. The next step is to market to those individuals as part of an effort to build brand awareness and invite them to complete conversions through your company. This is the time to offer unique creative to keep them enthused about using your business in particular, as compared to your competitors. You may also want to now supply sale rates and special offers to further prompt your target into action. Because they’re already been in touch with a representative from your company and have already become familiar with how your business works and what you can offer, closing the deal is that much easier. Plus, after all of your hard work you don’t have to waste more expensive marketing tactics on the original broad list of candidates. You’re now saving money by marketing to those who are most likely to become long-term customers. Best of all, because you bided your time and let them make the choice to use you on their own—so they’ll even think it was all their idea!

By now we’re all aware of the incredible impact that social media can make in terms of brand awareness, promotions, sales and networking. However, social media is a dual-edged blade. With ongoing open access across the globe, the same lines of communication that you’ve opened to strengthen your business may become potential avenues for brand denigration. Although you can’t micromanage your company’s image online, you are in a position to help shape and monitor conversations about your company in public forums. Especially those initiated by your own employees.

The news is littered with stories about employees who use Facebook, Twitter and other online forums to represent their place of business in a negative way. Inflammatory items may include job-bashing, coworker gossip, office confidentialities, inappropriate pictures or simply making a not-so-funny work-related joke. Examples range in scale from enacting personal behaviors which are counterintuitive to company policy to posting controversial remarks about clients. Though these may not be malicious in intent, once a person is publicly associated with your business, you want them to consistently uphold its reputation in all respects, no matter how small.

The foremost thing you can do to protect your business is create a social media policy. Typically, this legal contract is enacted between the company and its employees through your human resources department. Social media policies delineate what online behavior and language is acceptable from employees and reminds them that they represent your company by affiliation at all times, whether or not they’re on the clock. But it isn’t always easy to formalize lines between a person’s professional obligations and private life. Policies should cover:

•    What constitutes social media and the public sphere
•    What type of language and behaviors are approved
•    What company data or materials are considered confidential
•    What repercussions will occur when policy protocols are breached

Most social media policies explicate that it is up to each employee to take personal responsibility for their public representation by using good sense and keeping the company’s best interests in mind. Accountability makes up 90% of social media policies.

Naturally, it’s impossible to govern every message board, every posting and every photo of each of your employees. Businesses can start by monitoring their employee’s computer use while at work, and then follow up by making sure that social media outlets directly affiliated with your brand (such as your Facebook fan page) are free from harmful remarks. Further efforts vary according to budget and business size; however, one simple way to check up on your online representation is to regularly browse for the company name and key words through a standard search engine. This action takes just a few moments of time, but the results can be a very useful for determining how your company is being showcased online and by whom.

With a social media policy in place, when/if employees come into breach of protocol, your business will be in a position legally and ethically to respond with adequate remonstration. Think about it this way: you put so much time, energy and money into building and advertising your brand—so isn’t it worth protecting? One sheet of paper with a few guidelines and room for two signatures at the bottom may be all that stands between your business’s success or failure at the mercy of social media.

Did you meet all of your marketing goals in 2009? Or were there areas where you saw room for improvement? Now is the time to analyze previous successes—and failures—to determine new marketing strategies for 2010.

The past year has been a rocky time for businesses across the board. And in times of economic uncertainty, it’s not uncommon for companies to branch out and explore new strategies to market their products and services. Whether a limited budget meant that your company tried alternative marketing for the first time, or a changing consumer climate introduced you to new audiences, last year was a time for trial and error when it came to advertising and brand promotion.

Whether you ultimately flourished or floundered, there are lessons to be learned from each step you took. In the new year, these lessons can be used to set you up for even greater marketing success in 2010. Here are some tips to help you devise your marketing goals for the year ahead:

Create a vision for the full year.
Looking at your budget for the upcoming year, you may be tempted to plan a gung-ho advertising campaign to get the ball rolling. While making a big impact at the start of the year is one way to go, another advisable technique is to plan a staggered process that creates a lasting, solid impression of your business brand throughout the year. You’ll want to incorporate options from across the spectrum, from print ads to social marketing to interactive website strategies. Plan your pricing and agenda so that all messaging ties together and builds throughout the months. That way, you’ll have the strong, comprehensive results you desire when it comes to January 2011.

Don’t be afraid of change.
Taking new strides can be scary. In fact, you may have already shaken things up last year, and it didn’t quite pan out. This may make you think twice about pushing forward and exploring even more new routes—but then again, what can you gain by doing the same thing you’ve already done? If you devote the time to analyzing previous marketing plans, you can target areas that need improvement to predict results and reduce—or eliminate—your risk. Smart, evidence-based changes will give you an advantage this year.

Learn from past mistakes.
The first step is admitting that it’s okay to make mistakes. In fact, mistakes can be useful. Although it may seem tempting to forget previous endeavors that didn’t quite match expectations, it’s time to haul out old plans and notes to analyze exactly what went wrong and where there was room for improvement. Maybe all you needed was a more accurate sales projection. Maybe all you needed was a different marketing agency. Whatever needs amending must be determined so it can be fixed, preparing you for new successes in 2010.

Mad 4 Marketing, like all agencies today, is evolving its RFP processes to successfully communicate with Procurement departments in addition to the marketing and advertising executives we’ve traditionally worked with.

The recessive economy has forced companies to try and do more with less. That creates a cost driven emphasis that creates concern. The core question is what are our clients most interested in? Quality? Results? Lower cost? Of course they want all three. The concern that agencies have is that once the selection process is handed over to Procurement, regardless of the wording in the RFP document, low price wins.

Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom reports that nine out of ten procurement officers have had no experience in marketing before their current role. At recent events like the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) annual conference, and the American Advertising Federation’s annual Hall of Achievement awards, speakers pointedly critiqued and condemned the procurement trend as strangling creativity and innovation.

Yet complaining to each other will not help. The procurement trend is driven by economic reality. The result has been an attitudinal shift that will not change in the near term. Agency prosperity will depend upon what it’s always depended upon – selling the value. The difference is that we must sell the value to an audience that may not fully understand the differences between offerings.

Agency response to the changed environment can take several directions. Let’s call the first option the “Sharpen Your Pencil!“ response in which we minify expense wherever possible, take aim at a projected winning bid, and find a way to get there. This response is short sighted.  It will win some accounts at the lowest acceptable margin, but the question is whether we can provide our best work, get the best results and keep that client for the long term, not to mention living the agency brand which is inextricably tied to quality.

A second possible path is the “Stick to our Guns!” scenario. This response, in which the agency takes a stand and prices/proposes exactly as they’ve always done, is an equally ill-conceived strategy. It says to the client that your agency is unmoved by their concerns. Even winning accounts, you’ve established an us vs. them relationship that is likely to result in perceptions damaging to the long-term health of the partnership.

In my opinion, a better option might be called “Let’s Play Ball!” In this scenario, the agency proactively works to find a business structure that may look different from historical models, but speaks to client concerns, while allowing the agency to produce at a high level and be profitable. Two obvious questions, what does that mean specifically? And how does one present new business concepts within what are often rigidly structured RFPs based on an assumed business model, i.e., a matrix of hierarchical roles and their related hourly fees.

To answer the first question, it’s a matter of business creativity. We are seeing a lot of experimentation now. Some powerful clients like Coca-Cola and P&G are mandating versions of value based pricing. As the mega agencies continue to deal with that reality, no doubt some of the finer business minds will find ways to turn a negative into a positive and find competitive advantage in adapting to performance based compensation models. Some smaller agencies are giving up on the thought of hourly fees and adopting a project based pricing model, even in an Agency of Record context.

The more difficult question is how to pursue such strategies within the rigorous confines of RFP rules. Depending upon how tightly a given RFP is structured, agencies may need to wait until short-list presentations to plant those seeds. It can certainly be a question during the question period, “May we present alternative compensation models?”

But in the long term, it’s an educational process. Business development people should be including procurement leaders in their outreach. As previously mentioned, 90% do not have marketing backgrounds and would benefit from being part of ongoing dialogue. By creating relationships before the RFP process, you might find a more beneficial set of RFP rules and review procedures taking place. We’ve done educational campaigns for clients. This one’s for us, too – to enable more powerful, and long-lasting agency/client partnerships.

Every year, businesses put aside a heft of their marketing budget for “in-season” advertising. In Florida, the peak tourist season spans from approximately December to March, when snowbirds head south for winter. Consumerism increases, and companies reach out to the influx of eyes and ears (and wallets) with targeted seasonal advertising.

And that’s a great idea. Ads are able to reach a wider and more diverse audience than they can throughout the rest of the year. Companies can use the same local exposure to reach new clients and expand brand awareness. However, there are also several reasons why businesses should limit in-season marketing, and recalculate their advertising budget for year-round investments.

The main reason is that seasonal advertising leads to seasonal business. If most of your advertising is aimed at those who only live in-state for one third of the year, it means you won’t be seeing business for two thirds of the year. Although you want to capitalize on seasonal crowds, make sure it’s never at the expense of the non-seasonal market.
Here are some tips for balancing your own seasonal advertising strategies to cultivate new business and keep it going throughout the year:

Maintain a Year-Round Presence
For continued brand awareness, it’s important to not only make a significant first impression in someone’s mind, but to repeatedly announce your brand, products and services until your prospective clients become familiar with who you are and what you can do for them. That means you should reinforce big in-season advertising campaigns with year-long reminders. This is not only good for encouraging new business, but will also remind past clients of your excellent services, and inspire them to use you again.

Never Automate Your Advertising
Even though you want your target audience to repeatedly encounter your brand throughout the year, what you don’t want to do is desensitize your audience to your message. Therefore, be sure that you’re constantly announcing yourself from new angles via mixed media platforms. Did you launch a comprehensive print ad campaign last season? Maybe this season calls for a radio spot or viral marketing strategy. Staying fresh as you frequently present your brand will keep your company top-of-mind. Another strategy is to run your ads erratically; instead of placing an ad in the paper every week, create a varied schedule so that it catches readers’ attention each time it’s viewed.

Catch the Less-Targeted Off-Season Audience
Think it’s brilliant to advertise at the height of the season? So does everyone else. Although in-season advertising has its merits, it also means heavy competition. On the other hand, advertising during the slow season means that your message may be more prominent, and have a greater opportunity to sink in. Everyone wants to stand out in the crowd, but doing so may come
at a high cost during the winter months. Meanwhile, when the season is slow or in transition, making an impact is not only more affordable, but poises you to reap high rewards—without all the hassle, pressure, cost and competition.

Although Florida’s busy season may tempt you to chase new and varied business, remember to never undervalue the merits of consistent business. Balanced, year-round advertising is the way to create a strong and lasting presence with loyal, return clientele.

One way to make your marketing go a long way is to partner up with a complementary business to create a mutually beneficial campaign. Recently, Mad 4 Marketing was invited to participate in a series of seminars hosted at Regent Bank sites throughout South Florida. By participating in these seminars, Mad 4 Marketing was able to advertise its expertise through Regent Bank’s promotional efforts, while Regent Bank was able to provide industry-specific guidance to their customers. This situation created a harmonious opportunity for both businesses, allowing Mad 4 Marketing and Regent Bank to get the most out of their combined advertising efforts.

Regent Bank developed this seminar platform as a way to provide a valuable service to their current client base, while attracting attention from prospective bank customers. This valuable marketing strategy was a way to welcome a broad audience to their local bank sites, where they would be able to connect with bank employees and learn about the bank’s new promotions. Topics included:

•    Top Tips is Today’s Economy for Condo Boards and Property Managers
•    Navigating the Changes in Small Business Administration Loans
•    Is Your Networking Strategy Working For You?
•    Unconventional Marketing Methods for Unconventional Times

Mad 4 Marketing benefited from this opportunity because it allowed the company to reach out to Regent Bank’s diverse customer base from a standpoint of industry leadership. Introduced as a knowledgeable and trusted resource to the bank, Mad 4 Marketing was put in a very strategic position to generate new contacts and represent the company. Mad 4 Marketing was also able to invite their own regional contacts in Boca Raton and Davie, Florida, to hear Chris Madsen, Amy Chattin and Tiffany Tobol share their marketing insight. Chris Madsen, President of Mad 4 Marketing, spoke about creating 360 degree campaigns. Amy Chattin, Director of Client Services, introduced the merits of non-traditional marketing techniques. Tiffany Tobol, Director of Interactive Marketing, addressed interactive marketing strategies for small businesses.

And of course, those who attended these seminars benefited from the chance to hear experienced professionals provide guidance on a number of relevant topics, at no cost to them. Seminars were held either before or after work hours, and light refreshments were served. All seminars offered attendees the chance to network and make connections with the bank, seminar presenters and each other.

The January 5th, 2009 cover of the New Yorker magazine humorously illustrates the dilemma of practicing positive and enlightened marketing during times of economic crisis, when the obvious temptation is to pander to the fears of clients and their customers. We’ve seen the “Recession Sale!” and the “Bailout Prices” and other exploitive triggers used by second-rate marketers and amateurs to try to gain consumer attention, and will indeed see much more of this negative message advertising in the near future. Experience, research and insight says this tactic does not work, and worse, it casts the client’s products, services and entire brand image in a negative light, and loses mind share to the blizzard of all-too-real crisis headlines found throughout the media today.

Soon, these crisis messages will switch to the promise of “Hope” and “Change” as promised by future leaders, but the crisis mentality of the consumer will continue for some years, and many worried advertising executives watching their marketing accounts cut in half by unenlightened business leaders and boards of directors will continue to try and gain market share by shouting, focusing on price points, discounts and last minute panic ads with a background colored in the black and white of a pending Depression. Once again, this won’t work.

During the Great Depression, while many advertisers focused on fantasy to feed the need to escape hardships, the New Deal gave others the idea to brand virtually every product as “New!” or “Improved!” - a practice that continues to this day. What did the most successful companies do to survive the last Depression, and what will today’s agencies do to ensure the success of their clients in the future?

The answers to both of these questions are truisms of our profession: positive, truthful communications that respect the needs and desires of customers. Great agencies have great clients, because belief in a client’s product produces the best ads, and clients who believe in the experience and professionalism of their agency understand that successful marketing is much more than exploiting buzzwords, or making just another screaming automobile commercial, just like their competitors.

The bottom line: the companies who not only survived the last depression, but emerged as timeless brands, invested the largest percentage of their budgets in advertising. Today, many shortsighted executives cut marketing budgets first to placate worried investors, or worse, to pay for their own inflated salaries. After all, the crisis mentality worries about today, not tomorrow, and certainly not about next year or the next decade.

Agencies that succeed in today’s shrinking advertising marketplace will shun easy exploitation, understand and believe in their client’s products, and creatively convince consumers to “buy for benefits,” a process that requires the difficult orchestration of numerous effective marketing tactics, both traditional and non-traditional, and therefore requires prudent investment. History has shown that when companies cut the marketing budget, they are cutting their own throats, even though it will take a while for them to realize they are disappearing.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…