by admin | Jan 9, 2012 | Blog
Why is it that some of our society’s brightest minds have no idea how to translate their “no holds barred” skills from the courtroom to the public domain of marketing communication in a battle to win more clients?
Maybe they just don’t need the extra business, maybe they don’t know how, or maybe the truth is a combination of arrogance and ignorance steeped in tradition! If you want to know the historical reasons why the legal profession is the way it is when it comes to marketing and advertising then you’ll see an excellent exposé here:
http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1181207138051 by the (American) National Law Journal.
by admin | Jan 21, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
Marketing communications are an ongoing process, similar to designing and building a house.
It is then important to maintain and build the value of your marketing properties and prevent this value being depreciated through neglect of infrastructure or promotional activity by competitors.
Firstly the structure must be designed correctly, beginning with the foundations that will support any future building.
Unfortunately, many businesses do the equivalent of trying to put a roof on a house with no foundations or walls by asking marketers to jump straight into execution and promotion. And many marketing suppliers oblige them!
By demanding that marketing people produce a Website, Advertisement, Brochure, etc. before the business has answers to strategic questions and clear plans for long term communication, inevitably always ends up wasting time and money.
To get the best return on the marketing investment, time needs to be dedicated to answer the questions that assist in building a solid foundation for the marketing of the business. By starting at the bottom and working up, the business building process will be shorter, less painful and more profitable.
by admin | Jan 14, 2011 | Blog
Image via Wikipedia
Optimal Communication needs to be Efficient and Effective.
Efficiency of Communication is both a science and an art and is a result of the systematic process of tracking, measuring, evaluating and adjusting your communication strategies and tactics.
Anyone that tells you categorically that “x will achieve y” is lying to themselves as well as you. When working with clients we follow advertising (communication) principles that we know produce the most effective results under the circumstances that are prevalent in the client’s industry category.
You do not need to become a communication expert, but you have to know enough to work effectively with them to optimize your Marketing ROI and keep your marketing communication (advertising) partners accountable.
Advertising or marketing communication is about scientific experimentation that minimises your investment risk, and maximises your return.
A) COMMUNICATION EFFICIENCY
1. Setting advertising objectives. For example, are you seeking to achieve
- Awareness / Trial / Purchase?
- A direct response?
- Increased brand awareness?
- Increased share of the market?
- Launch of a new product, etc?
2. Setting the budget will affect most aspects of the advertising campaign, most importantly:
- Media selection
- Geographic markets
- Length of the campaign
- Timing
- Reach, and
- Frequency.
One of the greatest and most costly mistakes small businesses make is to try to reach too many prospects for the size of their budget. The principle is that it is much more efficient to Reach 10% of the people and persuade them 100% of the way than Reach 100% of the people and persuade them only 10% of the way.
Reach is favoured over frequency due to a lack of understanding of communication principles. Most SME business owners send out a marketing communication piece to their entire database, say 10,000 people which will use up their entire marketing budget for the period. Instead you should be running a campaign and communicating with 1,000 of your best clients and prospects say 6 or 7 times times – spending pretty much the same dollar amount but achieving a much better result! Effectively getting your message to 10% of your target audience is much better than reaching 100% of your audience with a message they do not remember or act upon!
This applies across any media, not just direct mail. It will work in magazines, emails, online banners ads, etc. Many studies over the years have shown that 12 Half Page Magazine Ads easily outperform 6 Full Page Ads in for the same product / service in the same magazine.
Never sacrifice Frequency for Reach!
B) COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVENESS
Just like communication efficiency, communication effectiveness is also based on scientifically proven principles. Yet because it is primarily the science of persuasion and influence, dealing in the currency of perceptions, it is more of an art form and is harder to measure.
Much of this blog is focusing on the discipline of BRANDING or HOW WE COMMUNICATE to positively influence our target audience!
Branding is even more important for Small Business than Big Business as SME’s have a greater need to differentiate in a more competitive market.
If it is so important why are so few small businesses “branded?
Because most do not understand basic marketing principles and believe that branding is something that is expensive and the exclusive domain of the big boys of business. We are on a mission to change that!
In our next entry we will examine the General Principles of Advertising (communication) Effectiveness.
by admin | Jan 13, 2011 | Blog, Promotion
Marketing is synonymous with Promotion, because 80% of the marketing effort is spent on Promotion.
Promotion is usually the only element of the Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, Physical Environment) that marketers can control and constantly fine tune. Price changes are quick to implement and analyze and rarely change frequently. Changes to actual products or services, their distribution channels, processes or people tend to be minor, so the focus as it rightly should be is promotion.
Although some marketers have control over product design and pricing, distribution, etc, they are or should be, the closest to understanding and correctly satisfying customer needs, they are often restricted by the parameters of the marketplace; the cost of inputs, market demand, etc, so promotion becomes the key tool in attracting customers and fighting off the competition.
Promotion, until fairly recently was a one way monologue, well suited to marketing’s focus on Products. But with the increasing focus on the Customer Experience, a dialogue is today a critical requirement for every business. Yet most marketers, despite the advances in technology, in both small and big companies are struggling with holding this dialogue, making it meaningful or even capturing and correctly interpreting what the customers are saying. Adopting new and complex technology was never going to be easy. Coupled with the consumer’s newly acquired powers of Social Media, the customer is really King!
Hence you can see that Marketing is all about Communication, which is 2-way rather than Promotion which tended to be 1-way. Marketers are trying to stop “talking at” the customer and trying to “converse with them” and this is not easy, putting marketers and business owners under real pressure!
Communication just like Promotion, is still one of the greatest costs of “doing business”, so it is vitally important to get your strategy right before blowing your entire budget, communicating the wrong message, to the wrong people, at the wrong time…
Communication is a science, with it’s own principles. To get the right message in front of the right people, at the right time, and expose them to the message enough times to elicit a favorable response and then interpret that response and act correctly upon it, we need to learn the principles of effective communication.
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
An effective brand is the key to finding, attracting and retaining customers and earning profits! Yet most small business owners just don’t know where to start and are doing themselves and their customers a terrible disservice.
Much more has been written about “what is a brand” in the last 20 years then about “how to create it”, especially when it comes to small and medium enterprise.
qubePartners aims to address this need and provide easy to understand and simple to implement guidelines for SME business owners to either ‘do it themselves’ or being well prepared to work together with marketing professionals to achieve the desired business objectives in the shortest possible timeframe with the least amount of investment and personal stress.
Most importantly our aim is to make branding a fun experience! And experience one can learn from easily and provide the ability to apply this to their own circumstances. For example “Branding for Dummies” is a great book but it is over 300 pages long and not the 300 type of pages you can flick through. This blog is designed as a pleasurable read, a coffee table guide if you will, that can be read and absorbed and then referred to when and if required.
Simplicity is hard. It has taken me over 15 years to “simplify” my knowledge gained working on both the client and agency side of the marketing fence into this blog and the templates I will be including in it. You will benefit not only from my personal experience and knowledge gained by working with Australia’s biggest brands as well as over 100 SMEs in the last 5 years, but constant professional development, following the latest findings in professional industry journals and books written on the subject of marketing and branding.
Until my next post, here is my top 10 list of books that I would encourage you to read to both improve your marketing skills as well as provide you with a source of endless ideas and inspiration:
- “The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook” by Seth Godin and Jay Conrad Levinson.
- “Guerrilla Publicity: Hundreds of Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Maximum Sales for Minimum Dollars” by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, Jill Lublin.
- “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!” by Al Ries, Jack Trout
- “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” by Al Ries and Laura Ries
- “Brand Aid: An Easy Reference Guide to Solving Your Toughest Branding Problems and Strengthening Your Market Position” by Brad VanAuken
- “22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising: And When to Violate Them” by Michael Newman
- “Sell the Brand First: How to Sell Your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty” by Dan Stiff
- “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini
- “Simplicity” by Edward De Bono
- “How to Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie
However you can relax in the knowledge that everything you need to develop a powerful brand for your business will be provided.
qubePartners blog will show you how to harness the power of branding to grow your small business. We will be examining the techniques big (famous) businesses use to develop their brands and show you how to apply them to your small business. You will discover how to:
- Create (or recreate) your brand for growing your business through the scientifically proven principles of influence and persuasion
- How to position your brand to best satisfy your customers and fight your competitors
- How to align your brand with your core personal (business) values
- How to develop brand communications (marketing collateral) that will assist you in positively influencing your target audience
- How to avoid the pitfalls that plague your competitors and sometimes undo the years of successes of those “big brands.”
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