Mad 4 Blog

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.

Your website may serve as a full-service e-commerce interface through which you sell products and services. Or it may simply be a place where people can learn more about your business. Either way, viral marketing can help you increase website traffic––and therefore brand awareness and sales––at a very low cost, with minimal effort.

What is Viral Marketing?
The phrase ‘viral marketing’ refers to almost any means of using word-of-mouth campaigning to pass along your message. Typically, marketers target individuals or groups who are likely to pass along or share a given campaign message. For example, a funny YouTube video is likely to be shared with friends and it is easily forwarded to colleagues; therefore, putting your business message in this format and getting it out to people who are likely to share it with others can create a big buzz for your brand with little effort. In many cases, key message sharers may even be given incentive for their efforts. Many contests which are hosted online offer extra entries or added prizes for fellow bloggers or website owners who use their own forum to promote the contest.

How Can Viral Marketing Promote My Website?
By making your website the centerpiece of your viral marketing campaign, all of your advertising efforts will have one single call to action: visit us online. Although it can be coupled with other media to really strengthen your campaign, online viral marketing is key for websites because viewers of your message will be able to click straight through to your web address once they’ve interacted with your ad. Once your audience is at your website, they can further engage with your brand or even complete transactions.

The best part is that even non-conversion visits can help you strengthen your website’s presence, because increased traffic to your page and more interaction with it will make it rank higher organically in a search engine, such as Google. When your rank rises, your website will be even easier to search and locate for people who are specifically interested in what you have to offer. This begins a cycle of increased traffic begetting increased traffic, which will ultimately impact your website’s success. Because such little cost is needed in the first place to initiate a viral marketing campaign (compared to other online marketing tactics such as a pay-per-click campaign) it’s easy to achieve high ROI.

What Comes Next?
Viral marketing campaigns may occur organically. Sometimes a website becomes an overnight sensation with very little work on the part of its owners. But that’s not something you can rely on when planning to put your business online. One of the best things about viral marketing is the fact that it’s completely accessible to everyone, and you don’t even need a ton of insider information to kick off your campaign. All you need to do is create an easy-to-use website, and then utilize social media tools that you probably already know, such as business-relevant discussion forums and Facebook.

However, to ensure that your efforts have a huge effect, you may want to consider a professional viral marketing team. These experts can help you come up with the unique creative needed for this kind of campaign to launch. Viral marketers are also familiar with a myriad of potential vantage points from which to target and approach your audience, to keep your message moving. This team of professionals can not only determine where your efforts will have the biggest impact, but they can also help you collect and analyze the results of your campaign. By tracking responsiveness and user data, you can sharpen and hone your viral marketing strategies. This will enable you to build even stronger platforms in the future.

Curious to learn more about viral marketing? Ask Mad 4 Marketing how we can help you create a buzz about your business without breaking the bank.

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.

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.

While buying commercials during major televised events isn’t exactly modern advertising, the annual post-Super Bowl commercial run-down is still where advertisers look to gauge current consumer responsiveness. Despite the most fastidious analyses of emerging trends, it’s the act of holding a time-honored tradition against itself for comparison that reveals the most about the state of the advertising world.

For example, last year’s popular E-Trade “Baby Talk” ads were all but overlooked this year when it came to Super Bowl XLIII’s commercials of note. And Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser’s commercials, while popular, fell short of the standards set by the brand in previous years. Could this indicate consumer restlessness, a summons for change? How much should advertising executives look into this unpredictable turn-around? Maybe it’s too much to assume major social signals from a rout flip-flop of consumer opinion, but then again, if one were to consider the many large-scale events that have altered the national mentality since 2008’s big game, it isn’t absurd to think that viewers might be seeking something more than mundane from even their television ads.

And what about the fact that the least favorite of the commercials tended to be big-price-tag objects like cars (Hyundai and Toyota) and flat-screen TVs (Vizio)? Is this a reflection of the economy and mentality of the nation as a whole? The relative popularity of career-driven ads from Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com would indicate that consumers do have economics and salaries on the brain. Should advertisers take this as a warning to focus their campaigns on budgets and deals, rather than flaunting the merits of the high life? Or maybe slant campaigns toward entertainment-rather than enticement? Of course advertising agencies have to ask themselves if the latter strategy is just going to make the end consumer rewind the TiVo a few times, or if it translates to response and sales.

One entertaining commercial showed immediate success with a call to action that didn’t go unnoticed. NBC sold fourth-quarter ads at the lowest rate of all the Super Bowl commercial slots. In turn, the fourth quarter commercials showed some of the event’s highest viewership, due largely to the last-minute touchdowns on behalf of both the Cardinals and the Steelers that had viewers glued to their set. One of the fourth quarter ads that garnered the most attention in this time slot was GoDaddy.com’s spot with model Danica Patrick, inviting viewers to log online for more information on her “enhancements.” Next year, it wouldn’t be surprising if NBC raised the rates on the fourth quarter by a skosh in response to that time slot’s success this year; media buyers beware. And, thanks to the immediate traffic that GoDaddy.com’s website achieved, instant-gratification calls to action (like logging online to place a vote or watch a video) are guaranteed to start popping up in hoards.

Of course, one commercial that made every reviewer stop and take notice was the Doritos “Crystal Ball” commercial bought by Frito-Lay. This was the second year Doritos auctioned off its commercials to amateur advertisers, allowing consumers to not only design and produce spots for the Super Bowl, but also allowing consumers to vote for their favorite spot online (with winners accepting a one million dollar prize). This technique ensured popularity during the game itself, and garnered a lot of publicity before and after. Not to mention the fact that this ad was consistently ranked as a top Super Bowl commercial in an otherwise indecisive year. Putting your demographic in charge of appeasing your demographic seems obvious-it’s practically self-fulfilling surveying. In the advertising world, a self-fulfilling prophecy of consumerism is as good as a genie in a bottle. And after 2009’s Super Bowl, the advertising world is looking more into consumer-based commercialism, which viewers can bet they’ll see more of come Super Bowl XLIV.

Whether Super Bowl commercials’ popularity can be used to measure America’s response to the economic crisis, or whether it’s simply a matter of preferring hot-blooded horses to dancing lizards, media relations experts are sure to hold the sanctity of Super Bowl responsiveness up as they plan the rest of 2009’s campaigns. No matter how clever, creative and forward-thinking a firm’s marketing strategies, sometimes the only place to turn for trends that will spark the next big pitch is a 43-year-old football tradition.

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

There might be companies out there with sensational products and excellent marketing strategies, they might even promise the gift of youth, but if they are unable to communicate that correctly to their consumers, why should we believe them?

As in the book Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss, I take a zero-tolerance approach to punctuation in any kind of communication, especially strategic marketing communication. That includes emails, blogs, post-it-notes, text messages, even notes to my husband on the fridge!

My golden rule is that if I receive an email with a typo or grammatical error in the subject heading, I do not, under any circumstances, trust or even read what’s inside.  And I certainly don’t respect any form of advertising or promotion if the creators have not given it proper thought or gone to the trouble of proofreading it. Some might call that snobbery, I call it saving the English language from death and destruction.

I do not reject the idea that language can evolve - of course it should and it does, we create the need for new words and syntax everyday, but when it evolves for the worse, and when we lose vital meaning in our words and communication, this is a matter we have to address.

Take the poor apostrophe for example. There are specific rules involved with this commonly abused punctuation mark. Generally the rule is that if you’re signifying possession, an apostrophe should be used except when the possession is already inherent within the word, such as yours or its. The apostrophe in it’s is there to signify the abbreviation of it is.

Apostrophes are commonly misused in plural nouns, for example, many grocery stores will have a sign somewhere in their store saying avocado’s or banana’s. Aaaaaaaargh… this drives me insane to the point where I want to get out a sharpie and deface their signage!

Unfortunately, in the case below, nobody was on hand to make any corrections so  recruitment was definitely NOT at its best.

In my opinion, the apostrophe is an endangered species. If, like me, you care about the possibility of apostrophe extinction from advertising or any type of communication, check out the Apostrophe Protection Society, of which I am an avid member! http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

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