The New Magic Marketing Words: “Green”, “Secret”, “Cure” and “Fat”
July 2, 2008
Not so long ago, THE DEFINITIVE go to magic marketing word was “free”. Whether it was a free sample, a free trial or a free issue, free was a great word to use to capture attention.
Those were the days when marketing messages were only being created by “professionals”. Then came the internet, where anyone with a connection to the internet could become a “marketing professional”.
Now, the bar is higher. Giving away something for free isn’t good enough anymore.
PR (as in the public relations field) professionals have never had the option of getting attention by using the word “free”. Instead, PR Professionals have always had to look to other words to get attention. According to an article in the NY Times, Need Press? Repeat: ‘Green,’ ‘Sex,’ ‘Cancer,’ ‘Secret,’ ‘Fat’ those attention getting words are shifting.
In a world that gets more connected (and therefore smaller) every day, the words that attract attention tend to be either very topical or are words that denote that a topic is either scarce or cutting edge.
The word green is the latest buzz word because of the recent US energy “crisis”. (I adore the recent BMW ad that says, “Where we’re from, high gas prices are nothing new.” ) It’s “anti” words like toxic and poisonous will also grab attention.
The word sex has been an effective attention getter since cave men were drawing on walls as well as any word to do with money such as rich and wealth. Debt is a powerful anti money word.
Words like secret, buzz and breaking seem to work these days, as do the anti words cure and trick.
Another buzz word… fat the ultimate public enemy in a society obsessed with appearances. Fat is really an anti word but recent events have turned the tables on the word thin which has been taken to the extreme.
Now, the REAL art in composing marketing messages is to use those words without coming across like some sleazy used car salesman!
Does Your Niche Market Include Baby Boomers?
June 27, 2008
If your niche market includes targeting baby boomers, you might be surprised to find a lot of your target audience spending their time on the web.
This is in STARK contrast to the current landscape of most of the web. Most of the web is created with young eyes in mind. Take for example the prevalence of teen tiny type used in many website designs Choosing the right typeface is truly an art… read David Airey’s Typography Tips but many graphic artists are in love with a 9 pt arial for content instead of the much easier to read 12 pt size.
Kay Frenzer over at SEOdiva offers a unique perspective on who is actually surfing the web. In her post Gaping Hole in Online Marketing to Baby Boomers, she chronicles many fascinating statistics of baby boomers on the web and how many of them feel ignored by the web.
One thing I’ve noticed with my older clients is they always want to add a page to their blog about “how to use a blog”. Yet, I have SEVERAL clients who are 60+ who are launching their second (or third) careers and are using a blog to help promote their new business.
So if your niche market includes Baby Boomers (people age 45+) then take a look at your site through THEIR eyes. Will they see themselves in the images featured on your site? Can they READ your site? Are you trying to reach them online?
According to Kay’s research, if your niche market included Baby Boomers, you’ll find a lot of them feeling ignored and unloved online!
Funny Marketing Blunders: Flower of the Month
June 16, 2008
Funny Marketing Blunders File:
They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but is being featured as a “funny email to send to friends” really the best way to build your company’s image? You have to wonder if the message on this flower shop’s sign helped to sell more product. Even though this marketing blunder is more than 2 years old, I got the following funny email from my friend this morning:
I wonder if they come in different colors?
I wonder about the fragrance?
I wonder if it would help to put those preservative packets in the water?
I wonder if they bloom?
I wonder whether they would look better on the kitchen table or in the entry?
I wonder if they’re cheaper by the dozen?
I wonder if they come long-stemmed?
Captured at 115th and Allisonville Rd. in Fishers which is just North of Indianapolis.
The sign is real and was up for two hours before someone stopped and told them how to spell PEONIES!
Is there really no such thing as bad publicity? Is even the worst marketing effort still better than no marketing effort?
Need Help with Small Business Advertising?
June 11, 2008
Small businesses need all the help they can get when it comes to creating successful and effective advertising messages. This is why many small business owners cringe when they hear the quote attributed to John Wannamaker that goes, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
You can almost hear the cries of agony from small business owners through your monitor….
“HALF of my advertising is going to be WASTED!?!?!
You mean I have to spend TWICE what I need to spend to get my advertising to work?”
Um… that may be overly optimistic. Seth Godin writes in his post 5 Common Cliches (done wrong):
Half my advertising works, I just don’t know which half. Actually, it’s closer to 1% of your advertising that works, at the most. Your billboard reaches 100,000 people and if you’re lucky, it gets you a hundred customers..
I deliver even worse news in my book and elsewhere on this blog… it’s possible that what IS working in your advertising messages may actually be HURTING your business instead of helping to build it.
I’m just overflowing with good news today, aren’t I?
It gets worse. Dominic Canterbury in his post “I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half” hits the nail right on the head when he writes:
I’m telling you this because as an independent business, you probably learned most of your marketing tricks by watching the big, successful companies. Very sensibly, you might have presumed that huge and expensive marketing departments headed by big-name gurus would actually know what they’re doing.
Turns out, though, the big boys really don’t know what they’re doing. No doubt some of it is working, but they don’t know how, when or why. And to make matters worse, it’s looking like the really big, flashy and expensive stuff is actually the least effective.
UGH! If you can’t learn from the big guys, then where can you catch a break? Well, there is a silver lining to this dark, dark advertising cloud… watch the successful SMALL businesses in your area and see what they’re doing.
The problem with this approach is you can’t see EVERYTHING they’re doing because you can’t be everywhere at once. However, there is one thing you can look for in successful marketing messages… usually they speak to the solving a problem for a tightly targeted customer. (Read my post The Power of Pain for more on this subject.)
Creating a tightly targeted “niche marketing” message is the first step in creating affordable AND successful small business advertising campaigns. This is my cue to shamelessly self promote my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.
Affordable Small Business Advertising
June 9, 2008
Over the past two decades, I have spent my career helping small business owners to create affordable small business advertising. The problem most small business owners have is that the only place for them to turn for help in creating such advertising are the media reps which sell local advertising. Every once in a while you’ll find a real pro selling advertising at the local level whose primary focus is upon creating success for your business. These advertising pros recognize that they will achieve success by helping YOU to achieve advertising success. If you’re lucky enough to have found such a gem, be sure to send him/her a nice thank you gift because this type of local media rep is very rare.
Many advertising reps are focused on one thing: selling advertising. Whether your advertising works or not for your business is usually not a primary concern. Offering an affordable advertising solution is usually the FURTHEST thing from your local media rep’s mind.
With that in mind, here are 5 keys to creating affordable advertising for your small business.
5 Keys to Creating Affordable Small Business Advertising
1. Tightly target your advertising message.
When you try to create a message for everyone, then you’re in fact speaking to no one. By tightly targeting your advertising message, you can then…
2. Tightly target your advertising message delivery.
When you’ve created a tightly targeted message, you can then tightly target your delivery. You’ll buy your small business advertising based on the number of “impressions” you make. When you tightly target your message, you can tightly target your audience. That means fewer “wasted” impressions, which are impressions you make when you’re reaching members outside of your targeted audience.
3. Focus on a single media
When you’re operating on a limited advertising budget, there is no such thing as a “media mix”. For the absolute MAXIMUM impact, pair radio or television with your website.
Radio and television are GREAT at operating “under the radar” and getting tightly targeted advertising message noticed.
4. Tightly target your ad delivery.
This is where you’ll meet with resistance from your media rep. He/she will usually try to get you to allow the station to determine where to place your ads. Worse yet, you may try to spread your ad dollars over as long as possible. THIS WILL DRAMATICALLY AFFECT YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN’S SUCCESS!
If you’ve got a limited budget, then your goal should be to OWN a single program or day part. Don’t allow your ads to run willy-nilly. If you’re buying radio, schedule your spots so they HAVE to run 9 times in a 3 hour period. (Your rep won’t like this… the traffic department won’t like this, but stick to your guns and don’t sign the contract without this!) If you’re buying television, (especially if you’re using the incredibly affordable “cable” advertising) you may not be able to specify a particular show but you can certainly limit your spots to a specific station. Again, your goal is to OWN your little corner of the television network.
If you can only afford 20 spots on cable, then schedule those 20 spots over a 4 day period. Don’t try to spread those 20 spots over 20 days… your message will get lost in the sea of advertising clutter.
The word picture I use with clients is to think of a glob of peanut butter. The “month” of advertising is represented by the slice of bread. Instead of spreading the peanut butter thinly over the entire slice of bread, plop that glob of peanut butter onto the slice of bread. Don’t spread it around because we want the viewing or listening audience to KNOW when they’re tasting peanut butter!!!
5. Make your call to action a visit to the website.
This is important. See, advertising is a combination of art and science. You may need to tweak the message you’re delivering.
If you make your call to action “call our office for an appointment,” then the only form of measurement you have is whether the phone rings. However, if the call to action is “visit our website” then you can take a look at your log files and see if the ad drove visitors to your website. If it didn’t, it’s time to “tweak” either the message or the delivery method.
I had an experience with this with a client of mine. We create a tightly targeted marketing message and delivered it via local cable advertising. Because the ad drove customers to a web site, we were able to objectively see if the ad was “working”. It was. People were coming to the oddly spelled domain name via direct request. Using a traffic analysis program, we could track their movements through the websites. At that point, we knew the advertising was working so instead of changing the message or the media we used to deliver the marketing message, we began to look INSIDE the website for the problem.
A look at the log files showed that customers were leaving when they reached the product pricing page. The client lowered his product’s pricing and like magic the phone began to ring.
The important point to consider is, had we made the call to action “Call for more information” we couldn’t have pinpointed this problem as easily or effectively as we did by using a visit to the website as the “call to action”.
If you’re looking for a simple, step by step approach to creating affordable small business advertising that delivers results … pick up a copy of the book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results .
The exercises contained within the book will really help to illuminate your way to creating tightly targeted advertising messages that speak to a niche market and deliver results.
Small Business Advertising Solution
June 5, 2008
If you’re looking for a small business advertising solution, then begin by identifying the target audience for your marketing message.
Advertising is simply a way to talk to a LOT of people at once about the products and services you offer. Advertising is where you turn to when you can’t go out and meet your customers individually to explain personally WHY they should be doing business with you.
However, because the message is being delivered to the masses, it’s tempting to create a message that is focused on YOU and what YOU want instead of the prospective customer and what he/she wants. Instead of creating a customer building small business advertising solution, by creating “spray and pray” advertising messages, many small business owners will take a stab at advertising their small business, fail and then abandon advertising all together.
Small Business Advertising Solution
It’s not just small business owners who have trouble communicating with a large audience. Public speakers face a similar dilemma when preparing their message for the masses. The reason is simple: It’s almost impossible to effectively communicate with a faceless mob. However, the public speaker has a distinct advantage over the advertiser in that he/she can SEE the audience and can focus on a single individual in the audience. Focusing upon several individuals in the audiences helps the speaker “connect” with his or her audience.
The success principle holds true of your advertising. You’ve got to target your message so it connects with the audience. Just because you can’t see the audience as the message is being delivered, doesn’t mean you don’t need to still make the connection.
Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results will help you to put into practice this same success principle. Instead of trying to create an advertising message for a faceless mob, Beyond the Niche helps you to put an individual’s face on your target audience.
Beyond The Niche takes you step by step through the process of identifying and targeting your niche market. It then walks you through the process of creating compelling and selling advertising and marketing messages, the kind of messages that break through the clutter and reach your prospective customers. Learn more about niche marketing here.
Segmentation and Target Market Plan
June 3, 2008
Niche Marketing involves breaking down a market into segments (segmentation) and then creating a target market plan. Market segmentation is simply the process of narrowing down who you want to target with your marketing message.
Market segmentation and then creating a target market plan is essential to marketing success both off line and online.
The beauty of market segmentation is it allows you to focus to your marketing activities on the most productive targets.
There are three commonly accepted methods of market segmentation:
• Geographic segmentation – based on location;
• Demographic segmentation – based on measurable statistics, such as age or income;
• Psychographic segmentation – based on lifestyle preferences, such as being urban dwellers or pet lovers.
You can segment a market using any or all of the above.
One common problem with market segmentation using the above methods is you’ll be faced with an array of figures…. instead of seeing through the figures to the people behind them.
Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results helps you to see BEYOND the figures and gives you tools to put a human face on those figures and percentages garnered through market segmentation.
Secrets to Mobile Billboard Advertising Success
June 2, 2008
If you haven’t seen it yet, you will soon. Mobile billboard advertising is an up and coming mode of advertising to a local market.
It’s a natural if you think about it. In most of America’s major metropolitan areas, spending hours sitting in traffic is the norm instead of the exception. Mobile billboard advertising offers rotating ad space on the panels of a box truck to businesses. The panels of the truck rotate so if you’re stuck behind one of these trucks, you’ll see several ads delivered on a rotating basis.
While it’s a new way to deliver outdoor billboard advertising, the secrets for success are the same as traditional billboard advertising. You only have 10 seconds to deliver your message. You may have the viewer’s attention for a few seconds longer than that, but short and pithy with plenty of “white space” will always work better than long and complex with little breathing room within the ad.
TEN SECONDS!!!!
Look at your watch and time it. Read the ad out loud and see how long it takes to read everything in the ad. Take the mock up of the ad and test it on your family and friends. Stand the sample up on a counter or desk and walk your friends and family through the room at a brisk pace. Were they able to read the ad, even though they were being drug through the room by you? Jostle them, shout at them and pull upon them as you drag them by the ad. If your family and friends (who care a LOT more about your ad than your potential customers do) can’t recall the basic message of the ad, send it back to the drawing board.
Note: Most outdoor advertising companies are VERY aware of the most effective way to use their media. Problems usually arise when the business owner asks for the space to be “filled” with information.
Don’t think that because many prospects will be “forced” to read your ad via the rear panel of the truck that the rules of advertising are different. Many more prospects will be exposed to your ad as it travels down the road at a reasonable speed.
While featuring a phone number on a traditional billboard is a mistake (you should use an easy to remember domain name instead), in the case of mobile billboard advertising… you can successfully use a phone number in addition to the easy to remember domain name for your business.
Even though you’re delivering your message “to the masses”… you should still tightly target your mobile billboard advertising message. The rules of niche marketing still apply.
Mobile billboard advertising is a great way to bring your billboard advertising to eye level with traffic, but the success still lies in tightly targeting your advertising message to a niche audience.
Advertising That Tries to Speak to Everyone
May 23, 2008
When I began my career in advertising (over 20 years ago… gee… I must have been 12 at the time ? ) my advertising mentor was Joan Elias. Joan had launched her own advertising agency and she took a chance on a recent college grad who displayed a unique ability to be able to “see” inside a consumer’s head.
Joan Elias taught me that when you try to create an advertising message that speaks to everyone, you create an advertising message that speaks to no one.
Many business owners often find themselves chasing after an array of marketing tactics instead of implementing a cohesive marketing strategy, a marketing strategy that has, at it’s core, the basics of niche marketing.
Unfortunately, niche marketing tactics which may result in great success for one business may fail miserably for the next… all because niche marketing tactics must be implemented within a cohesive marketing strategy.
Advertising that tries to speak to everyone will eventually be heard by no one. Define what your business does for your customers, whether they be businesses or consumers.
Got that?
Now, create advertising messages that tell that story to those customers.
Oh, and be prepared. See, advertising and marketing will DEFINITELY help a structurally sound business grow. However, if there are “cracks” in the foundation of your business, expect a successful advertising or marketing campaign to reveal those weaknesses in a hurry.
Advertising Today: Niche Marketing
May 21, 2008
I love it when 20 somethings write about how “advertising today” is somehow different than advertising at any other point in history. They write like ads never failed before the turn of the millennium. They seem to think that the practice of niche marketing began shortly after Al Gore invented the internet.
The internet hasn’t changed how people operate. The internet is just another communication tool. When men were drawing on cave walls thousands of years ago… they drew dirty pictures. When the internet became mainstream, guess what kind of pictures were leading the way?
The same is true of advertising. Advertising “truths” written at the turn of the 20th Century are still as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
The difference is that in advertising today, especially with advertising on the internet, you can SEE what works and what doesn’t. There is little opportunity for delusional thinking. Either those waltzing dancers are driving people to the website or they’re not.
The waltzing dancers is a reference to a television spot which aired a few years ago. Obviously created in response to the “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” television show’s success, the ads were aired outside of those tightly targeted programs. I wish I could remember who paid to produce and run those ads, but I can’t remember. What stuck with me was the way my teenage son gasped when he first saw it and uttered these immortal words:
“THERE IS NO WAY THAT AD MAKES ME WANT TO BUY THEIR TIRES.”
The campaign quickly died, but I still wonder what the agency AND the tire company were thinking.
Let me put it this way, I can’t FIND the waltzing dancers tire ad on YouTube… but I can find 81 versions of Bridgestones hilarious 2008 Super Bowl ad:
What makes that ad great…. it’s memorable, it’s hilarious AND it clearly illustrates the implied benefit of Bridgestone tires.
What the internet has done is provide a way for that classic to live on and be played over and over again.
Which brings us to what makes the ad above REALLY super stupendously great… I’m airing it here for free. Bridgestone isn’t paying me to air their ad. Yet, it’s getting played here and throughout the internet… long after the campaign ended.
Advertising today is no different that advertising 100 years ago. There are many different ways to make an ad memorable. Being funny is the hardest. Tightly targeting your message to your niche market is the easiest.
