Mad 4 Blog

When you are planning to present your company and wares at a trade show, convention, workshop or career fair, the road leading up to the big day is typically fraught with preparation, orders, projects and last-minute arrangements. You get ready for your big appearance for weeks, making sure that everything is in order and clocking long hours. Everyone has horror stories about the night before a big event, when they suddenly realize that they can’t find their booth reservation slip or forgot to order more business cards. But there are ways to eliminate some of the hassle and make the most of your event so that all of your hard work leads to successful results.

Here are some tips that will ensure your exhibition runs smoothly to help make the experience as relaxing and rewarding as possible:

•    Determine a target audience. From design to materials to pitches, one way to rally before a trade show is to determine who you’re trying to approach. Simply making an impact isn’t enough; with a diverse array of attendants, you’ll want to be sure you interact with and impress the correct people. With this goal in mind, it will be easier to streamline your objectives and organize your preparation.
•    Keep a tight budget. Throwing a lot of money at your booth set-up or handouts isn’t the way to achieve success. By keeping a strict, low budget and only investing in what will intrigue and inform your target audience, you’ll walk away with greater return on investment.
•    Train one cohesive team. The same team who will attend your event and staff your exhibition should be on-board throughout preparation. Keeping everyone on the same page and allowing them to participate from the ground up ensures their knowledgeable performance on game day, and also builds team strength.
•    Prepare sound bites. Have you worked on your elevator speech in awhile? Now is the perfect time to train your team how to explain your business in one minute or less. The ability to create a big impact with limited time is key to succeeding on a convention floor. Unenthused or unprepared answers can undo all of the effort you’ve put into preparing for your exhibition.
•    Don’t count heads. Your purpose at an exhibit isn’t just to collect or pass out business cards; you should focus on building relationships rather than speaking quickly to as many people as possible. Although your efforts may be less measurable at the end of the day, you’ll see greater results over time by creating bonds with individuals than by prioritizing the length of your sign-up sheet.
•    Use your time wisely. From the moment you hit the floor, be prepared to work. No matter how many trips to the coffee machine it takes, your team needs to be attentive and energetic throughout the day. From set-up to break-down, trade show dates can feel like the longest days of your work year. But that’s just more reason to juice every moment for what it’s worth. If you’re not going to go for the glory, what’s the point of signing up at all?

Chris Madsen, CEO of Mad 4 Marketing, was named to the Junior Achievement 2010 Business Hall of Fame at a ceremony held March 3 at the JA World Huizenga Center at Broward College in Coconut Creek. Madsen was honored along with fellow laureates David Fee of Lotspeich Company, Michael J. Grimme of AMC Liquidators and AMC Furniture Outlet, and Wayne Huizenga, Jr. of Huizenga Holdings, Inc. The Business Hall of Fame honorees share a high level of achievement in business and have demonstrated business excellence, vision and innovation, and community responsibility.

Madsen, who founded Mad 4 Marketing in 1992, built the Fort Lauderdale based marketing and advertising firm into a full-service agency with annual billings in excess of $7.5 million. The award-winning agency has met with success for clients in the public and private sectors through a variety of traditional and non-traditional advertising campaigns encompassing interactive marketing, branding and innovative strategies.

“My experience with Junior Achievement touches every aspect of what I do today as a business owner,” said Madsen. “Years ago I led a group of Junior Achievement students. Guiding them through the process of bringing a product to market was phenomenal and helped me make the decision to be an entrepreneur.”
Junior Achievement is a non-profit organization which ensures every child in America has a fundamental understanding of the Free Enterprise System through a series of business, economics and life-skills programs that enhance the education of young people. Junior Achievement reaches more than 50,000 kindergarten through twelfth-grade students in South Florida annually.

Community service is important to Madsen, who is well known for her commitment to the South Florida community through her work with a host of organizations. Her civic involvement includes positions on the boards of directors of the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, Governor’s Council for Sustainable Florida, Leadership Broward Foundation, The Commonwealth Institute, Women’s History Coalition, Nova Southeastern University and the Urban League of Broward County. Madsen is also the past president of the Florida Women’s Alliance and the Stranahan House, serves as an Executive Committee member of Broward Workshop and the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, and is on the Advisory Committee of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Her long list of awards and accolades includes the South Florida Good to Great award, Women’s Connections Woman of the Year Award, South Florida Business Journal Woman of the Year Award, March of Dimes Women of Distinction, and the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce Small Business Leader of the Year Award, to name a few.

In 2010 it’s time to ask: why isn’t the face of your business on Facebook?

True, Facebook has been around as a social networking site for students since 2004. But rather than become an outdated tool over the years, Facebook has been expanding its services to better enable professionals to use the popular website for interacting with clients and colleagues. And it’s not just about marketing to the college-age kids who were Facebook’s original audience—though they remain its main demographic. In 2009, adults between the ages of 25 and 34 doubled by the month, while adults between 35-54 years of age demonstrated a growth rate of 276.4% in presence over six months in the first half of the year. In fact, Facebook was increasingly utilized for adult marketing as soon as the website opened enrollment to all adult age groups in 2006. And it’s been taking off as a popular marketing platform ever since.

The relevance of Facebook is that it’s all-in-one social media marketing. It’s a quick and easy way to let prospective customers know what’s new with your business, in real time. You can reach out to interested individuals anywhere in the country—or anywhere in the world. And you can immediately receive their thoughts and feedback about your announcements, products or services. Whether you’re courting new clients or keeping in touch with existing contacts, Facebook is a casual and convenient way to communicate via words, pictures, links and multimedia. It’s easy to get started and easy to use, and your consumer base is already built in. Plus, there are several ways to get involved.

The first way to get involved with Facebook is to create an account. Although accounts are reserved for individuals (rather than businesses), an account for your company can be started by an employee, or a dummy account name can be used to represent the company name. This account will allow your representative to link directly to friends, post status updates and shared pictures. This account can also be used to fan pages, join groups and leave commentary on other relevant pages of Facebook.

Then you’ll want to create a ‘Group’ and/or ‘Fan Page’ for your business or product. The difference between these two options is that a group is a static page that other users can join, which doesn’t give companies the option of communicating directly and freely with its members. However, every time someone joins this group, Facebook will tell all of their friends that they are a member, which may bring about brand awareness and inspire others to join. The group’s homepage can provide further information about what your company does, and allows you to contact members directly through their inbox.

However, a fan page may be even more pertinent to businesses joining Facebook because this page allows you to advertise your brand’s identity while also sending out messages and updates to those who are interested in your services. Notifications will be shown to a user’s friends when they ‘become a fan’ of your page. Messages are sent out as live feeds, rather than as messages which stay in someone’s inbox until it has been read. However, fan pages can be accessed by non-Facebook members or those who aren’t logged into their account, so these may be more accessible than group pages overall.

Furthermore, you may wish to purchase advertising directly on Facebook. Though pricing remains competitive for space on this popular website, advertising on Facebook pages is popular because it allows buyers to tailor viewings to certain age groups, geographic locations, personal interests–or any of the other information that users supply when they join Facebook. This means that none of your advertising dollars will go to waste, because you are able to specifically target the audience who will most likely be interested in your company’s services.

Last but not least, complementary advertising campaigns (such as any coinciding print advertising you do) should feature elements that promote your Facebook page and encourage fellow Facebook users to become friends with your main account, join your group or become a fan of your business through its unique page. Your presence and pages become a hub which interested parties can easily access from a site where they are already likely to traffic and be active, which means you’ll have a leg up on expansive, dynamic marketing when you put your business on Facebook.

According to the latest consumer trend study published by Trendsspotting.com, the 2009 recession was a blend of fact and hype. And despite the fact that many economists seem to believe it’s coming to a close, that may not be the case, according to real analytics of spending in such sectors as food and beverage, travel, apparel, technology and education throughout the United States.

The report also indicates that consumers may be wary of marketing that plays into the recession scare, tired of being told what’s going on in their own wallets and how to budget their hard-earned dollars. This reaction is as if to say: ‘You don’t know me!’

In fact, as mentioned in our article about women spenders, other analysts are coming to a similar conclusion when it comes to holiday shoppers this year. Although the recession has affected how women budget their gift-buying budget throughout the year, and deep discounts will still hold an appeal, women are frustrated from the year’s rigid penny-pinching and may be just as likely to cave and spend periodic full-price amounts (especially when they are treating themselves) throughout the final weeks of 2009.

But how do these retroactive reports compare to early projections of consumer spending in 2009? Here are some year-old predictions from the Trendsspotting.com blog:

“The recession will put consumers in a more powerful position.”

“The recession almost seems like a blessing because [people] are now forced to readjust their values and make different choices.”

“Social networks will flourish as a result of the economic crisis.”

“The credit crunch is also adding fuel to more folks doing it themselves, DIY.”

“People will go to high-priced designers to look like they’re not spending a lot of money, but looking lavish will seem emotionally wrong.”

“When times are down, people want to lift their spirits. […] Americans will be working more and playing less.”

Of course, not every prediction was set in stone. For example, the site predicted that “dwindling budgets [will] suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball” AND “advertisers will want to buy advertising on big, well-known websites.”

Progressing into 2010, it will be interesting to see how experts predict the new national mentality on spending on the heels of such a tumultuous economic year. Will Americans continue to keep a hawk-like visage on their bank accounts? Or will consumers increase their spending in a year that feels less scary, with much less scare-tactic marketing? Only time—and precise analytic surveying—will tell.

Every fashionista worth her Balenciaga bag knows that the September issue of her glossy magazine is the most critical issue of the year, complementing the hype from New York City’s Fashion Week with cold-weather ensemble suggestions featuring the newest fall styles. The September issue traditionally expands from approximately 300 pages to somewhere over 700 pages (or 840 pages, according to the most recent record set by Vogue in 2007). Naturally, the September issue of any fashion magazine is the one that sells the most copies, and correspondingly sells the most interior magazine ads. It is these print ads which largely finance the continued production of the magazine.

Which is exactly why it’s such a grave concern that the past two years have shown a steady decline in magazine ad sales, which culminated in the dramatically dangerous dip in sales this year. Many magazines showed up to a 22% decrease in ad sales from recent years, including a loss in the double digits for some of the most well-known fashion and beauty magazines. This year, Anna Wintour oversaw a quick-fix brainstorm where funds were spent encasing the slimmer-than-usual September issue of Vogue in wrappings with a chic leather handle and buckle-clasp, proclaiming, “CAUTION (still) HEAVY.” Tongue-in-cheek, it was a clever sales gimmick–but only a temporary band-aid on the much more permanent (and far more solemn) problem of decreased ad sales.

And it’s not just fashion magazines that are suffering. From National Geographic to Scientific American, all magazines are feeling the drought. In fact, all print ad sales have dropped an average of 30% since last year. In an economy where newspapers across the country are closing down on a regular basis, the magazine industry must be apprehensive about its own future. Advertising experts caution that magazines should take heed of their recent losses. Magazines are advised not to cut their losses and bury their heads in the sand, blaming the economy and waiting for the slump to pass. One of the more likely culprits is the world’s increased wariness about its investments; caution has moved investors to examine new and alternative advertising options in pursuit of more aggressive and traceable ROI–such as web and mobile marketing.

This may also be why digital revenue for magazines is on the rise, with income from non-static sources doubling between 2006 and 2007 alone (presumably in direct proportion to a greater overall effort by magazines to modernize). And it’s advised that magazines continue seeking cutting-edge alternatives for their marketing strategies. Through interactive marketing, magazines will be able to rebuild relationships with their audiences in a new, modern way-before the chance is lost for good. In the past year, newsstand magazine sales have decreased by an estimated 12%. Better-than-ever subscription costs simply haven’t been enough to salvage proceeds in this economy. With competition from online blogs, newsletters and, well, digital magazines, it seems like print magazines are going to have to sharply redirect their focus and funds if they hope to survive.

Hopefully, they will embrace digital solutions and come up with smart, strategic plans to save print magazines from extinction. Because tech-savvy as readers are today, it’s still just not as easy or rewarding to flip through a laptop from a cabana chair on the beach.

Think it’s time to cut back your budget for marketing? Think again.
In a tough economy, it’s more important than ever to strategically market your business.

Across the nation, large and small businesses are looking for ways to trim unnecessary expenditures from their budget. For many, this might mean erroneously reducing or eliminating marketing budgets. In reality, it’s more important than ever to put your company ‘out there’ in order to flourish in tough economic times. Here are a few ways to advertise without breaking the bank:

Consistent Branding and 360-Degree Marketing
The most important aspect of marketing in a hard economy is to build and retain customer relationships. With so many messages bombarding prospective clients on a daily basis, you want your services and products to stand out at the forefront. The first way to do this is to keep your brand prevalent and accessible; this can be done with a strong branding message that stays in front of your audience. Your message should accurately reflect your unique services, and be consistent across various advertising touch points—from advertising to point-of-sale to customer service. You will want branding to make you recognizable and transparent across all marketing mediums: print ads, interactive, broadcast, logo iconography. As you connect to your audience through a 360-degree campaign–which may involve both traditional and nontraditional advertising tactics–your business will retain a powerful presence within customers’ minds as they make purchasing decisions.

Nontraditional Marketing Tactics
Alternative marketing is one way to boost your bottom line on a small budget. Rather than launch expensive mass media campaigns, you may actually make a bigger impact with pinpoint strategies. For example, grassroots marketing often involves using highly targeted outlets—such as ads displayed in shopping plazas or community newsletters—to connect with audiences on an intimate level. Your business can focus on creating messages that address the core group of individuals who are most likely to need your services. This can lead to a greater return on investment than bigger, traditional campaigns. A billboard that reaches a thousand eyes might equal 20 sales—but so might shaking 20 hands at an event where you interact with your audience—and it’s much more meaningful and cost-effective. Rather than reach as many sets of eyes and ears as possible, by using precise analytics to target and address your audience, you are given able to speak directly to your client base in a more personalized way. This builds brand loyalty and establishes a line of communication—which will not only benefit your business in the short-term, but have a lasting effect for years to come.

Interactive Marketing Strategies
Utilizing web marketing to maintain an online presence doesn’t have to be a budget-breaking endeavor. You can harness the power of the Internet on a limited budget by getting acquainted with blogging, e-mail marketing and free analytic tools. Once you’ve established a home base for your business online, all you have to do is give readers a reason to stop by and see what you’re all about. Hosting a blog on your website lets you speak directly to your industry peers and prospective customers, while managing your message. A blog can tie together e-mail marketing, web advertising and social media messages. Creating fresh content on a regular basis is also an affordable way to improve your page rank and increase traffic to your site. You can watch viewership climb by utilizing Google Analytics, a free online interface that automatically tracks and graphs your website’s unique visitors, daily traffic and other relevant data. Seeing how readers locate and use your website will help you understand how your audience thinks. Then you can continue to invest in cost-effective advertising techniques, such as e-newsletters, to encourage repeat visits and stay connected with your customers.

When people think about guerilla marketing, typically they think of a specific example—one stunt that made national headlines and became thereafter notorious. Like that time actors rushed a crowded train station to perform a song-and-dance number about the product they were hired to promote. That’s guerilla marketing. This tendency to define the concept by its example perfectly elucidates the nature of guerilla marketing. That’s because the term isn’t any one thing—in fact, it’s pretty much everything that falls outside the realm of traditional marketing (such as television commercials, print advertising, digital marketing).

So what is guerilla marketing? Can we define it on its own, other than by what it’s not? Well, we can certainly try to clarify the concept. Here are a few defining characteristics of guerilla marketing:

1. Guerilla marketing is…a low-budget way to spread the word about products or services by arranging an unusual stunt in an unexpected public space. These kinds of stunts are apt to stick in viewers’ minds, create conversation, and generate buzz. Recent examples include the increasingly popular crowd stunts (such as the one mentioned above) which occur in train stations, shopping malls, and airports. Less extreme variants include marketing in quads at college campuses or advertising on street vendors—simply putting your message in an unpredicted spot to make the public take notice.

2. Guerilla marketing is…also called viral marketing, nontraditional marketing, unconventional marketing, and modern marketing. So there’s a good chance you already know what it is, just by a different name. Don’t worry, it still smells as sweet—and works just as well.

3. Guerilla marketing is…being used more and more as marketing agencies, both large and small, discover the monetary benefits of thinking outside the box. Especially in this downturn economy, guerilla marketing proves itself to be as cost-effective as it is efficient—if you know how to do it right. Helpful hint: research what hasn’t worked in guerilla marketing before you research how to do it. That will keep you from many pitfalls along the way as you plan your strategy.

4. Guerilla marketing…can be used as part of a larger campaign, or independently. Often, when guerilla marketing is used alongside other means of advertising, it’s being used to familiarize a product or service with its customers, so that when they encounter the opportunity to buy, they already feel familiar with the brand or concept. Alternately, when guerilla marketing is being used as a sole marketing outlet, its purpose is to create intrigue and generate hype—this is often done when introducing a new concept. Clever marketers can make consumers want something before they even know what it is!

5. Guerilla marketing is…as addressable as you want it to be. Large-scale guerilla marketing endeavors can be geo-targeted—it creates a lot of noise and notice in whatever location it takes place, but without the ability to accurately target demographics (that is, it hits its key audience in addition to a lot of viewers that won’t translate into customers). However, careful, clever, smaller campaigns can target a more niche audience. For example, a walking, talking teddy bear outside of a kid’s carnival can specifically target parents and children.

6. Guerilla marketing is…exposure, for better or worse. On one hand, it’s fun to throw caution to the wind and come up with unique, risqué, off-the-wall concepts that have never been done. On the other hand, it requires a lot of brainstorming, troubleshooting, and research to come up with a truly unique idea—and to calculate the receptiveness and responsiveness that will be gained. How safe is it to invest client’s cash and base a campaign on an idea that’s never been tried or measured? Guerilla marketing is a highly inspired method that’s at its best when it’s big, daring, and bold. But remember: the bigger they are, the harder they fall—and the most striking and creative ideas may expose agencies to a lot of liability. Once launched, there’s often no going back—so make sure the payoff is worth the added risk.

Mad 4 Marketing has been creating buzz for its clients through alternative means since well before it became the trendy thing to do. We know how to market businesses of all sizes and shapes—creatively, at a low cost, and for the largest possible ROI. We like to combine guerilla marketing strategies with public relations and traditional advertising to create all-out, custom-made campaigns that hit the right marks at the right time to create a lasting impression on our clients’ future consumers.

Interested in hearing stories about some of the successful and not-so-successful guerilla marketing stunts which have recently caused a stir? Check back with the Mad 4 Marketing blog for outlandish, impressive anecdotes of guerilla marketing stunts from across the globe.

What happens when the rules of marketing get thrown out the window, and creative minds go in a new direction? What if instead of buying media and selling a client’s products, marketing agencies say: ‘Let’s just give away the goods for free!’ Sounds implausible, right? Well, it just so happens to be the newest craze in marketing for the food service industry. At Mad4Marketing, we’re always seeking new ways to stay on the cutting edge of modern advertising. That’s why we’re paying close attention to the recent Denny’s Grand Slam Giveaway, an event which took place on Tuesday, February 3^rd and set unprecedented return rates with its $5 million “freebie” marketing endeavor.

After seeing a reported 22% revenue decline in the third quarter of 2008, Denny’s decided to reacquaint America with a once-upon-a-time bestseller: the Grand Slam breakfast. The allure of two pancakes, two eggs, two pieces of sausage and two of bacon lost much of its mass appeal as the price rose from its 1977 debut of $1.99 to the $5.99 tag it hefts today. Another detriment to sales is that the Denny’s tradition of sitting around a table for breakfast is all but retired to the Sunday crowd, while weekday commuters opt for a fast cup of coffee paired with anything that can be passed through a drive-up window and consumed with one hand. The mission was to make America reconsider their relationship to the most important meal of the day. And Denny’s thought they could do so by showing them what they were missing-for free.

Like most other marketing endeavors, it began with an ad. But not just any ad-an extremely costly, highly coveted Super Bowl XLIII ad. Denny’s bought a 30-second spot in the third quarter of the Super Bowl for an estimated $3 million. The message was fairly straightforward: come to any of our restaurants between 6:00am and 2:00pm and let us show you what a “serious” well-balanced breakfast looks like. Our treat.

Companies who have tried this tactic before include McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks, all with equally impressive-albeit far less expensive-results. Starbucks led the most adventurous marketing campaign prior to the Denny’s ad; in response to their first-ever drop in quarterly sales, Starbucks premiered its 2008 Election Day free-coffee-when-you-vote ad during Saturday Night Live, followed by online advertising on Facebook.com. Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds also offered free cups of brew, while similar endeavors from high-profile chains included fast food samples from Ben & Jerry’s and Taco Bell.

But this is the first time that a restaurant geared toward sit-down service attempted the same feat. And it was by far the most expensive per-item giveaway to date in the food service industry, with Grand Slams selling for $6 per meal as opposed to a $1.40 cup of coffee. It was also the first time Denny’s purchased a Super Bowl commercial. Could they succeed? Mad4Marketing was eager to view reports, interested to see what this explorative effort would reveal about consumer responsiveness.

According to the follow-up report from AdAge.com, Denny’s experienced greater turnout than anticipated, and were pleased with the results. After spending a total of $5 million dollars between advertising and food expenses (Grand Slams value at between $1 and $1.50 at cost), Denny’s gave away 2 million of their most famous menu item (about 16% of the Grand Slams sold in the previous year). With a Super Bowl audience of about 98 million viewers, that’s a 2.05% return on their 30-second ad (plus one 15-second post-game spot, and a full-page ad in USA Today). It surpasses the 1% success benchmark set for giveaway promotions. But in terms of impact and revenue, the big question still remains: will customers be returning to pay for the complete breakfast once they’ve sampled it for free?

Naturally, we’re keeping a close eye on Denny’s for further information about sales performance in the coming months. With more than 1,500 stores nationwide, a positive and unanimous result might make other industries consider what a solid giveaway marketing strategy can do for their products, even outside of the food service industry. If nothing else, the Denny’s Grand Slam Giveaway has served as a positive example of thinking outside of the box in terms of marketing. They took a risk. Not only did they embrace a new strategy, but they expanded upon preconceived standards by giving away entire meals and doling out the big bucks to make it happen.

At Mad4Marketing, this display of enterprise certainly piqued our interest and got our thinking caps on. What if a local launderer gave everyone a free day of dry cleaning? We’d certainly gather up last week’s trousers and give it a try. What if a chain of salons gave away free manicures for one afternoon? We imagine lines would form down the block. Free shoes…? Don’t even get us started; we’re taking a sick day! It’s fun to speculate, but in what ways might we at Mad4Marketing follow the Denny’s example and “seriously” push the boundaries of alternative marketing techniques for our clients? You’ll just have to keep an eye on us to find out.

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