Mad 4 Blog

A few weeks ago, The New York Observer and other outlets began reporting on a trend making its way through the celebrity world: reverse or anti-product placement. Called a “wicked” new marketing strategy, this fascinating pattern describes marketing and public relations companies sending out free samples to famous persons with the hope of linking that brand with the A-lister’s strong public image.

But what’s so strange about that? Haven’t agencies been mailing out free samples and swag for decades? Isn’t it actually a commonly used form of publicity and sponsorship?

Yes; but now the difference is that they’re not just sending out the goods of their clients. They’re sending out samples from their client’s competition. Why would they do that? Well, because they’re sending out those branded products to celebrities with whom their own brand would never associate. For example, gleeful (albeit probably untrue) rumors are rampant in the fashion industry that a competing designer brand sent Snooki (the moniker for Nicole Polizzi of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”) a handbag from Gucci—all in an effort to devalue the respectable brand and boost their own sales. Snooki, who’s been in the news recently due to an arrest for disorderly conduct, is infamous for her less-than-brilliant comments and untoward antics on her hit reality television show, now in its second season.

The Observer also calls this tactic “deviously dirty” as a form of “unbranding.” It sounds technically legal—but could there be connotations of negatively associating a brand that fall under libel? Maybe someday; for one thing, the worlds of fashion and celebrity certainly love to argue about brand and copyright infringement, and they never shy from a potentially publicity-inducing legal battle.

So what do you make of this practice? Is it bratty or genius? Is it even ethical?

In a world where Tiger Woods can still swing a club like nobody’s business but can’t sell a pair of sneakers because of the goings-on in his personal life, there’s certainly something to be said about how seriously the American public takes brand association. In fact, perhaps we should be a little surprised that this sort of thing didn’t become common practice a lot sooner, especially way back when there were Martha Stewart arrests and Britney Spears breakdowns to capitalize on with anti-product placement.

At Mad 4 Marketing, reverse product placement doesn’t quite bear the level of finesse that we would want to enact for our customers and clients. We prefer to help you build and market strong brands that stand out simply because they’re the best and reaching the best-suited audiences for your products and services. But in the meantime, it does provide us with a hearty laugh behind our hands and something to chat about on meeting breaks.

And it makes us pay a little more attention to what Ms. Snookums is going to wear next week on “Jersey Shore”—and wonder where it really came from!

So, we’ve already discussed a few reasons and ways to monitor audience responsiveness. But once you’ve got yourself set up in that regard, there’s a more advanced step that you should implement. And that’s creating a customer profile (or set of profiles) by which to base your next campaign strategies. This is just one way to analyze and then apply the information that you’re collecting in an organized and practical way.

This step comes into play once enough data is collected to start drawing parallels and noticing trend-based patterns (perhaps six months to one year after you start). What you’ll want to do is come up with one baseline model–or preferably, a few model types–based on how customers/clients/audiences are buying and using your products or services. Depending on your business and how divisions fall among those who interact with it, you can create very generic models–such as female/male–or create entire baseline characters, such as the buyer who is under 30 years of age but married with a household income of more than $100,000. Or individuals who shop before 5pm. Or some other kind of category that is unique to your business and exhibited in repeat behaviors.

This will also depend on what kind of information you can derive from the types of marketing you’re monitoring and analyzing. Using as many stats and demographics as you have access to can lead to more tedious but more beneficial profiling overall. Tracking should also take into account the beginning, middle and late stages of each model type’s interaction with your brand. You definitely want to acknowledge ways that behaviors change with time and figure out why. Then you can incorporate how you’d like to ideally see relationships develop–based on realistic, data-backed prospects.

It always makes sense to ask successfully acquired clients and customers how they came to hear about your business. By carefully comparing how well each of your advertising efforts performs, you can bulldoze past a lot of trial-and-error and simply direct your budget toward what works, both in quantitative and qualitative units. For example, if no one’s seen that ad in the newspaper but everyone heard about you from a friend or relative, you may wish to pull your print ads and focus on buzz-generating word-of-mouth campaigns–or even reward former patrons for referring a friend. And if you’re reaching a higher caliber of clientele via brochure than billboard, you’ll certainly want to bring your message down to the smaller scale, which can also cut back cost.

These days, tracking is everything when it comes to building successful campaigns. Online, it’s perfectly easy to determine how a person landed on your page; analytics mark each click-through by its referring links, search engine source, browser type and even the viewer’s physical location—it’s not only effortless, but also automatically built into most website content management systems. But even online there’s always more you can do; when it comes to e-commerce, many shopping outlets utilize codes. Asking buyers to enter a code before they take advantage of a sale helps marketers to track which sales and campaigns were more successful than others, and to help determine if shoppers heard about it from a newsletter, referral or ad. This is why you might see several usable codes available for the same sale, depending on where you hear about it.

In what other ways can coding and tracking be used in your business endeavors? Mad 4 Marketing recently posted job listings on several career search websites. But each posting required us to pay a fee, and since we weren’t sure which websites or which wording would be most successful for attracting the best new teammate, we decided to generate a few different ads. We asked job candidates on each board and posting to reply with a different subject line. This took a little more time and thought, but we were able to see from where we were getting hits, and what kind of prospective employees were nipping the bait. After the first week we cut our ad placement (and cost!) in half and only used phrasing that was clearly expressing our desires to the most qualified candidates.

Another example is Satori’s text message campaign. In 2008, we used a lot of on-the-scene guerrilla marketing to advertise for the newly opening apartment rental community in Fort Lauderdale. We wanted to reach out to those who already lived in and loved the surrounding area of South Florida. At each event (such as street fairs, art shows and the boat parade), we advertised the chance to win six months’ free rent by texting a code to a given phone number. At each event, the code differed. That way, we could see which community event had directed the most participants to our giveaway, as well as which regions or crowds were most interested in Satori. This information turned out to be extremely valuable in later marketing endeavors, such as choosing local ad placement.

The bottom line is that tracking efforts are a smart investment in the future. It means looking past today’s brochure or even tomorrow’s website, toward next year’s entire marketing strategy. Tracking provides you with the tools to always understand and surpass prior tactics–and no matter what, this means that you will ultimately succeed.

Skyline Trade Show Tips offers helpful studies, suggestions and guidelines for optimal performance at trade shows. One article explains how you can have fun when presenting at trade shows. Although frequent trade show attendees may find the process rote, there are still a few ways to keep trade shows upbeat and exciting. Here are just a few tips from Skyline, expounded upon by Mad 4 Marketing. Because after 18 years in business, we certainly have a history with trade shows!

Guess the Hottest Booth Trend
Before entering your trade show, everyone on your team should pick a trend that they predict will be the hottest trade show trend. You can bet on types of candy being handed out or the most popular colors used in trade show displays. There are endless variations! To make your bids, you’ll be forced to consider previous trade show experiences. This will help you get into the right mindset to attend, while allowing you to reflect on prior experiences. In turn, this can help you brainstorm your own unique ways to stand out from the crowd. Once everyone has submitted their bid, you can spend the day figuring out the most popular trade show trends. One person will be declared the winner! And you’ll also gain plenty of notes about the hottest and most successful trade show trends.

Add Key Words to Conversations
Skyline suggests playing a word game where you challenge your co-workers and fellow booth staffers to interject silly or obscure words into conversations with visitors. Mad 4 Marketing thought of a way to improve upon this game. Before attending a trade show, itemize your company’s key messaging. This can be anything from a business slogan to power words that are relevant to your industry, such as “customer satisfaction” or “first in service.” Each time someone on your team uses one of the phrases in conversation, they can collect a point or cross their phrase off a bingo chart. Whoever wins receives a prize!

Count Engagement Timing
This game can be played two ways. You can walk down the center of an aisle at a trade show and count how many steps you can take before someone makes the effort to directly address you. Or, you can approach a booth and begin to pick up pamphlets or fiddle with the display while counting how long it takes for a staffer to come speak to you. The biggest advantage to trade shows is the ability to engage with your colleagues and customers. This game allows you to learn the tricks and techniques of other businesses while figuring out what will and won’t work for your own company in the future.

Ask the Hard Questions
At a trade show, it may be fun to visit rival booths and ask them questions such as ‘What are your business weaknesses?’ and ‘Why are you better than your competitors?’ (You can even interject your own company name for the second one!) Being able to freely engage with the competition is an advantage you should never pass up. This is your opportunity to find out everything you can about the companies with whom you compete–often, under the cloak of anonymity. Just be prepared to have your own answers in case they turn this fun little game back on you!

Rebranding can breathe new life into a business and attract new customers. It can also help keep your company current with trends in the marketplace. In 2008, InterMedia became Mad 4 Marketing, so we are definitely familiar with the hurdles of designing, building and exposing a new brand. We know exactly how tricky it can be to spread the word, establish key messages and ensure client retention. But with today’s digital marketing options, rebranding is made even simpler with the help of a few key strategies.

Cost-Effective, Automated Rebranding

First and foremost, using the Internet to establish rebranding is an incredibly cost-effective way to make many people aware of the change. You’ve already got the real estate to advertise it: your own website. Naturally, you don’t want visitors to arrive at your address one day and see that there’s been a complete overhaul. They’ll probably assume they’re in the wrong place and leave altogether. So in weeks and months prior to your rebranding, be sure to let visitors know what they can expect down the line.

Changing your website address entirely? You can retain some of your presence online by setting up an automatic redirect from your old site to your new site. Or, you can leave the old website up but change the homepage to explain where you’ve moved and why. Letting readers click through manually can make an even more solid impression, while providing necessary information. Remind them to also change their bookmarks and links!

Keywords and Consistent Messaging

Today, many businesses earn referrals and acquire clients directly through their website. Naturally, you don’t want to sacrifice your strong online presence or lose incoming traffic when you change your content or location. The only way to combat this is to have an advance plan for SEO. As a large part of your rebranding efforts, remember to target words and phrases that can be used throughout all advertising efforts and tied back into Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Researching effective keywords may take some trial and error as you watch how traffic lands on your new site’s pages. Then you can adapt your PPC investments accordingly to keep your new website at the top of search engine lists.

However, by evaluating where traffic comes from and how it moves through your old website in the months prior to your new brand’s launch, you should be able to deduct which keywords should be carried over, what should be ditched and which content should be carried over directly to your new page—with a change of names, of course. Careful analytics before and after your rebranding process will help you utilize the strongest possible keywords to grab online traffic and express your new message to all visitors.

Using the Power of Links

Aside from keywords and targeted content, another quick way to loan strength to your new page is to build link connections with influential websites. By having many pages linking to your site, especially heavily populated websites, you’ll not only receive direct references from those locations but this will also cause search engines to rank your website higher by association. Once again, web analytics play a large role in this process. You can track who’s been landing on your page and from where to determine all of the major sites who link to yours. Rebranding is a great excuse to reach out to everyone who used to link to your old website and asking them to update their links–while announcing your rebranding initiative.

Of course, it’s also a good time to make new connections and develop contacts online. Figure out which websites might be interested to hear about your rebranding and provide them with all necessary information to promote you. A great way to encourage promotion is to offer a link exchange with them, so that your website is returning the favor to help strengthen them. You may want to come up with other incentives for this kind of partnership, or directly purchase a link. Powerful websites may take your offer more seriously if you begin by linking to them first as a show of good faith. Linking without reciprocation to relevant websites may make them take notice of your page organically while they’re doing their own analytics follow-up.

The most important piece of advice to remember is to be patient. As with all steps in the rebranding process, gaining a solid footing online through redirects, links and keywords may take time. But by utilizing available web analytics and other resources–including your own contacts and existing website–rebranding your business can be much more efficient and affordable.

When times are hard and budgets tighten, the first thing most businesses think to do is pursue new clientele. But don’t be surprised if marketing agencies remind you to redirect some resources toward client retention, rather than client acquisition. Putting aside part of your budget to nurture existing client affiliations is a trustworthy investment in today’s economic climate. Here, we have identified five key elements of relationship marketing:

1. A Little Goes A Long Way.
The clients and customers who have a home in your digital rolodex are those who already know and like your business. When you take the time to reach out to your mailing list, a little goes a long way. You don’t need to woo them or explain your services. Marketing to existing clients can be just a friendly way to maintain a connection, get back in touch and keep contacts up-to-date about your company’s latest developments.

2. Extend Brand Familiarity.
Brand awareness goes beyond a brief introduction to your company. In fact, though awareness develops the moment a prospective client learns about your brand, it must then be grown by repeat encounters with your business’s name, logo and services. Over time, a mere recognition of your brand will deepen into familiarity and trust. Not only will clients return time and again, but they may even spread positive feedback to others.

3. Get to Know Your Clients.
By cultivating long-term relationships with existing clients, they’ll come to trust your company—but you’ll also be able to get to know them. A long-term relationship means that you can study customer likes and dislikes by welcoming feedback and collecting data about how they interact with your brand. As you learn your client base, you can tailor future marketing endeavors toward them for even greater response. You can also target new audiences who share the same needs and preferences.

4. Take Advantage of Social Networking.
By using the social networking platforms that are already in place—such as Twitter and Facebook—you can easily stay in touch with clients and customers. As soon as you build a relationship, you can open a line of communication and create a reciprocal pathway for feedback and the exchange of ideas. You can also share updates about services, specialties and successes within your industry. Clients will never feel like you’re out of reach, and you’ll be easy to access when they’re ready to buy. Letting people feel connected to your company is an easy way to create dependable, long-lasting relationships.

5. Show Your Appreciation.
Always remember to show gratitude for ongoing patronage. November is an excellent time of year to show your appreciation, before your gesture gets lost in the chaos and solicitations of the holidays. Just saying ‘thank you’ with a small gift or postcard can show that you value your client’s consideration, serve as a reminder of your existing relationship and greatly increase your chance of working together again in the new year.