Mad 4 Blog

Women are responsible for 85% of buying power. In fact, American women spend about seven trillion dollars per year. So if you think you do not need to dedicate time and money to address women in particular with your products and services, then you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Mad 4 Marketing can put those dollars to better use by devising advertising tactics specifically geared toward women. As a woman-owned and women-run marketing agency with an eye on the trends of gendered buying, we believe we know a thing or two about marketing to women. Here are just a few helpful tips:

Market to Women in a Modern World

One commonly made mistake is when companies assume that marketing to women means separating them according to attributes that were outdated about a century ago. Obviously, women are not black-and-white cookie-cutters of one another—and they should never be pandered to as stereotypes. Remember, women aren’t all mothers and housewives. Even though they make purchasing decisions for men and children, they have their own unique standards and don’t want to be addressed as conduits to the men and children in their lives. In fact, treating all women like Susie Homemaker can actually dissuade a female audience from working with your business. Women don’t just want kitchen appliances and pink products and handsome male models. When you market to modern women, you have to keep in mind relevant, recent analytics about what women are responding to in advertising and how they think about their purchasing power. Relying on research rather than creating a caricature of your female audience is essential.

Think About How to Market to Women – Not What

There is no need to market different products to men than to women. Assuming that a woman wants a silver minivan while men want a blue sports car means that you are alienating large segments of the population. Instead, marketing must simply speak in a certain way to its intended audience. The fact is that women communicate differently than men. Within creative, women want to see organization; for example, they are more likely to buy from a website that is easy to use than their male counterparts, who may linger longer on a less-organized site. Women also like strong, appealing visual design and are more affected by aesthetics than men, who may zero in on the product specs. Contrarily, women like to know about value rather than attributes. Most importantly, women want to build a relationship with your brand. Creating an ongoing bond—such as through membership or rewards for return business—may encourage the female buyer.

Since its inception in 1992, Mad 4 Marketing has focused on keeping the female perspective in mind, and we consider ourselves experts in marketing to women. The company devotes ongoing energy and resources to understanding how women think about buying and investing. Contact Mad 4 Marketing to learn how our insight about marketing to women can help your business grow like MAD.

You may be surprised to hear the above statement, especially coming from us, but it is the simple truth. In good times and bad times, a large percentage of the marketing efforts you put out into the world won’t be as effective as you had planned. What makes marketing successful is the strength of your brand and the emotional connection of your unique message.

An important thing to keep in mind is that failure should not be seen as terminal. In the world of marketing, we tend to look at failures as part of a greater growth process. It’s important to understand what aspects of your marketing endeavors failed or succeeded and then analyze your results to discover why. Many marketing efforts are actually staggered, so that continual analysis/improvement is built directly into the process. Being able to adapt as you go is always a bonus, which is why we never recommend blowing your annual budget on any one tactic. Rather, you should seek cost-effective and well-rounded strategies that will allow you to explore multiple angles and make the greatest possible impact on your determined audience.

Good marketers know that success or failure can be measured in many different ways. For example, even if your conversions aren’t hitting the marks that you expected when you began your marketing campaign doesn’t mean that you haven’t connected with your audience. Every time you engage with prospective clients, you’re building up a bigger presence and allowing them to familiarize with your business and services. Naturally, we always want these impressions to convert to sales. However, the ultimate success of some marketing techniques may not be measurable in nickels and dimes; but by introducing your brand and opening a line of communication, you’re still accomplishing invaluable marketing connections.

As always, consistent and comprehensive marketing campaigns that approach niche audiences from multiple angles over time are the most surefire way to guarantee marketing results. At Mad 4 Marketing, we offer strategic insight that will allow you to enhance brand awareness and connect deeply with your audience through targeted messaging. To address every agenda–from rebranding your company to engaging in social media or even building a complete 360° campaign–we’ve got the talent and experience to help you achieve impactful, successful marketing.

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.

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.

When we first learned we would be working with Baptist Outpatient Services marketing team on their new Breast Center campaign, we were extremely excited. The center was to be the very first Baptist Health facility of its kind and was eagerly awaited. We had the utmost belief that our client would create an exceptional center and we were privileged to help in its branding and promotion.

This was a chance to help those with suspected or diagnosed breast cancer to, as the tagline suggests, get treated better at a place that would provide the respect and compassion they and their families deserve. We needed to create a look and feel that would separate itself from the competition, provoke an emotional response from the target audience and encompass the center as a whole.

Creative concepts began by a review of the facility’s interior swatches. The center’s bamboo floors stood out from the start as something to bring to the foreground. We started to see the center as a place to go for healing and soothing during a very difficult time and we wanted to reflect this in the creative.

Once the campaign’s ‘zen’ look and feel was established, a double page spread was created for placement in high-end lifestyle magazines. This was intended to resemble magazine editorial. Its title was ‘5 Reasons Why Not All Breast Centers Are Created Equal’, and we saw it as something our audience would read while relaxing on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon.

Elements such as white orchids, sage green bamboo leaves and the tagline treatment with a pink ribbon, a recognizable symbol of breast cancer awareness, all worked in conjunction to communicate the peacefulness of the center while also appealing to our target market.

The team at Mad 4 Marketing worked hard to make this a campaign of which to be proud. Spanish and English materials included a direct mail postcard, VIP invitation, physician preview reception invitation, mall signage, event banners, print ads for various community and regional publications, and collateral such as a breast health brochure, scheduling cards, thank you cards and a breast cancer information binder cover, as well as a landing page with banner ads on various geo-targeted websites.

Residents of the South Miami area were invited to tour the beautifully appointed facility at the grand opening, held on Saturday, June 27. People received free health screenings and witnessed a dedication ceremony with a live butterfly release, as well as dance performances from a local high school. They also enjoyed tea stations from around the world and snacked on dainty finger sandwiches.

The campaign was, and continues to be, a great success and we are glad to be involved in the creation of such an excellent resource for breast health. For more information about the center and to view the campaign’s landing page, visit www.BaptistHealthBreastCenter.com.

With so many new trends leaning towards online advertising, and the explosion of social networking sites onto our computer screens, we must be cautious not to forget our good old friend, the print ad (or postcard or brochure, for that matter).

Of course, it’s 2009. Mad 4 Marketing’s own interactive department is growing like mad, and if your company doesn’t have an online presence, it might as well not exist, but rather than throwing every last cent of your marketing budget into a one dimensional campaign, try employing a 360 degree marketing approach. Set some money aside for tangible materials that enhance your marketing efforts and drive traffic to a website or landing page to work in conjunction with an online campaign.

Success in blending traditional with non-traditional media very much depends on the strategy, creative and its placement or production. But if done correctly, this multi-layered approach allows you to target potential customers from every which way. Talk about a full-on, full-frontal advertising assault. Your potential customers won’t know what’s hit them.

At Mad 4 Marketing, we believe that traditional media in today’s increasingly untraditional world needs to stand out from the crowd and requires some out-of-the-box thinking. We recently worked on a campaign for Baptist Health and its first location in Broward County in which a series of teaser ads were created and placed in corners of newspapers in sequence, heightening the reader’s curiosity with every turn of the page. This was not only a ‘page-turner’ but also cost-effective in comparison to a full page ad on the back cover.

Price breaks are a blessing in today’s economy, which allows advertisers to take advantage of lowered rates as well as occasional added value in the form of editorial. Another cost effective way to target specific neighborhoods in a fast and efficient manner is the direct mailing of brochures, postcards or flyers – things consumers can touch, feel and hold. After all, humans are tactile creatures, and computers are great and all, but sometimes don’t you just want to reach out and touch print? Plus, with so many companies focusing all of their marketing efforts online, your company has an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

This method also acts as a shortcut for driving traffic to your site. Consumers glance at the URL on your postcard or print ad and are able to go straight there.

Some say print is dead but we at Mad 4 Marketing say it lives, and we must never underestimate its power when used in a 360 degree campaign.

According to a recent study conducted by McCann Erikson UK, 86% of marketers lack the ability to implement social media programs. And two-thirds of those surveyed said that they didn’t know how to apply social media effectively in marketing. Because these same marketers claimed that they do understand the importance of social media marketing, it seems they’re just short on exposure and skills.

Lack of experience is fairly common among marketers because social media isn’t only a newfangled trend, it’s also one that’s still emerging and constantly redefining itself. For almost any marketing company, it’s hard to juggle pre-existing areas of specialty while keeping up-to-the-minute with the latest shifting social media trends.

What’s really startling are the results of a 2009 MarketingSherpa study which reports that two-thirds of marketers who have no experience in social media marketing claim that they feel knowledgeable—if not very knowledgeable—of how social media works. While in fact most marketers are inexperienced with social media, they tend to have a sense of overconfidence—a devastating trait in the world of business.

Troy Janisch of Social Meteor blames this sense of overconfidence on the disconnect between how an individual uses social media tools in their personal life, and how it can be used in marketing. Marketers’ relative ease with such systems and tools socially leads them to believe their experience will translate to professional prowess.

However, this overconfidence doesn’t mean that you have to go to expensive specialists just to create a social media campaign that parallels your current marketing strategy. Janisch actually believes that marketing companies are more than able to incorporate their given understanding of social media to a larger campaign by identifying goals and then creating a staggered strategy to achieve them. This can be done by breaking up an ultimate goal (the overall social media objective) into small-term steps which build to meet the long-term objective. Janisch suggests 30-45 days per interval as a realistic timeframe that will keep the ball rolling. In each interval, one small-term goal (such as researching trends, collecting feedback or engaging users) can be met.

The overall idea is to avoid creating short-term, simple projects that may find brief success, but fail to accomplish the greater ROI that is easily achievable through social media conduits. Long-term programs are especially beneficial to marketing companies with limited experience in social media, because it allows them to test ideas, incorporate new technologies and adjust their project as needed throughout the course of the staggered project. It’s a learn-as-you-go gambit without the perils of naïveté or overconfidence, which means added security and benefits for the client.

At Mad 4 Marketing, we don’t pretend to know it all. We’ll be the first to admit that we’re always learning and growing, merging innovative approaches with the latest technology to get results. Let us demonstrate our ever-improving social media acumen with a long-term program proposal that uniquely addresses your audience and objectives.

Search engine optimization is not a science; it is more of an art. While rigid mathematic equations and research methods are used to derive the formulas that rank web pages, the best path to getting your website ranked amongst the top few is still very subjective and controversial.

One ongoing debate considers how selective a page should be when you’re trying to stuff it with key words. Some SEO analysts believe that one page can be so tightly written that several key words can be incorporated–meaning that the page will come up first in organic listings for each key word. Others seem to think that having several key phrases will detract from the article, because the focus isn’t as exact.

For example, search engine optimization specialist Mike Moran recently stated that a page trying to promote more than one key word at a time will not only be less effective—it might actually confuse the search engine, and lead to lower ranking. For example, if we wanted to write this article about Mad 4 Marketing and M4M, then that would be okay because they’re essentially the same word and wouldn’t detract from each other. The same thing goes if we want readers to locate this page to learn about search engine optimization, but also used SEO. However, if we wanted this page to be optimized for Mad 4 Marketing and search engine optimization, therefore stuffing the text equally with both of these phrases, Moran believes that our primary message would be unclear, and this would make our page weak. In other words, having more than one key word would be like wearing a bright blouse with a colorful purse and a pair of patterned pumps: it’s just too much, and the objective eye (the search engine) doesn’t know where to look.

Moran’s argument makes sense; there’s no denying that a highly targeted one-key-word web page won’t do well. However, when you consolidate space and use several related key words throughout the same page, you’re also reducing the size of your website and the amount of work that goes into it (aka, saving time and money). Scripting a new page for each potential target key word is indeed a lot of work—but the real question is, will it pay off?

Some say it’s too hard to build a massive site with a page per key word. Others say it’s nearly impossible to get the rankings you want otherwise. Mad 4 Marketing would love to hear what you think is the best way to optimize your website. Are you all about single key words, or are you getting results with multiple-lead pages?

In 2008, Mad 4 Marketing began a mobile marketing campaign for Satori, an eco-friendly apartment rental community developed by Altman Management Company. Audiences were asked to opt in to the Satori mobile service by texting “Satori” to 34343; this initiative was advertised traditionally through regional newspaper ads, street-side signage and flyers handed out at Fort Lauderdale events. Once participants were linked to the Satori mobile system, they were able to get directions to the leasing center, learn about early leasing initiatives and receive texts about special promotions and updates. They were also automatically entered to win six months’ free rent. Through mobile marketing, Mad 4 Marketing enabled Altman Management Company to stay connected with prospective tenants.

This is just one example of how mobile marketing can be integrated into a larger marketing schematic. As most agencies will agree, mobile marketing is the future of marketing because clients are able to reach out to their audience anywhere and anytime, invoking direct responsiveness for their efforts. Enticing viewers to reply immediately is the major draw for mobile marketing—this is especially fundamental in an economy that wants to see immediate, profitable results. Mobile marketing not only allows the audience to engage and immediately respond to solicitations (while they’re already connected, with phone in hand), it also allows clients to track participation and measure interest from various publics. Rather than a billboard or banner ad reaching as many eyes as possible, the point of mobile marketing is to utilize one private screen to capture one pair of eyes, to see what they look at and how they respond—individually and traceably.

Unlike web marketing, mobile marketing isn’t about brand awareness, it’s about accessibility. Many web ads are simply meant to familiarize viewers with brands, services and logos—which is why CPM (measurable impressions) are key. Contrarily, mobile campaigns are considered wasteful if they don’t prompt an immediate click, call or text response; mobile marketing is all about an effective call to action. This means that an impression isn’t just an impression—it’s one step toward a relationship with a future customer. Even once his or her attention turns elsewhere, that one-time exchange of information is a green light for further interactions and conversations down the line. It’s not just one-way marketing; it’s networking.

In the future, more people are expected to own fully interactive phones with enhanced features and heightened capacities—so the potential for mobile marketing is only expected to climb. Don’t miss this lucrative bandwagon; Mad 4 Marketing’s experienced mobile marketing team will help you learn how that ubiquitous little handheld can connect you with consumers and bring your business big-time results.