This Blog is primarily for Small Business Owners experiencing frustration with a lack of growth or systematic approach to marketing. My ideal reader wants to take his or her business to the next level and knows they can benefit from professional marketing. Our readers want proven marketing ideas and tools.
Kevin Allen is an expert in business development and in leading companies and individuals to achieve their ambitions. Kevin is the author of The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following. He spent two decades on the front lines of business development at the top of advertising giants McCann-WorldGroup, the Interpublic Group and Lowe Worldwide and is recognized as one of the advertising industry's most accomplished growth professionals.
One of Kevin’s colleagues coined him the Billion Dollar Man! A veteran of the Interpublic Group and a "Mad Man" of agency McCann Erickson, Kevin worked with such brands as MasterCard, developing the globally famous "Priceless" campaign, Microsoft, Marriott, Smith Barney, Nestle, L'Oreal, Lufthansa and Johnson & Johnson. At McCann, he created what is arguably one of the industry's most envied new business programs, which named McCann Worldgroup the number one agency in new business and Global Agency of the Year, two years in a row. Kevin can be found on the web at Kevin Allen Partners.
Behind every decision to buy–whether the item is a service or a product, an argument or an idea–is an unspoken emotional motivation. This is the hidden agenda.
Kevin worked with the McCann World Group, the Interpublic Group, and Lowe Worldwide, where he helped gain Ad Age’s recognition as "Turnaround Agency of the Year" in 2009. He has spent 25 years in advertising and was a key developer of the now iconic Priceless campaign for MasterCard.
Next week’s podcast is with Kevin Allen, author of a very unique book called The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following. Kevin comes across initially as someone from the Mad Men era. He worked with the McCann World Group, the Interpublic Group, and Lowe Worldwide, where he helped gain Ad Age's recognition as "Turnaround Agency of the Year" in 2009. Kevin has spent 25 years in advertising and was a key developer of the now iconic Priceless campaign for MasterCard.
Kevin may have spent some time in the Mad Men arena but he has created a space of his own. In the podcast he takes some of the most celebrated idea of advertising such as the word “pitch” and transforms it into today’s vocabulary. An excerpt from the podcast.
Joe: If you find your target audience, a pitch is effective, you connect, you know that right away. How do you find that target audience to pitch to?
Kevin: That's a great question. I think that over the years, a number of ways that we would define our targets. Still today, I work with a number of companies who still look at functional and descriptive measures to describe the people they're talking to, sort of women, 25 to 54, in certain counties with certain incomes and so on. But the fact is that community formation, now more than ever, not only say within the U.S. but around the world, community formation is on the basis of belief and value system. It pushes us further to try to figure out a way to develop a definition of our target audience that runs more deeply.
In a way, if you remember from the book, I take a page out of politics, whereby the notion of the conceptual target is a way by which you can develop a powerful emotional definition of your audience. Soccer Mom, for example, was a great one.
In the pursuit of the Marriott business, no matter whether the person was staying at the JW, their topflight property, and spending several hundred dollars a night, or they were staying at Fairfield, the emotional composition of that audience were called Road Warriors, people who are out there selling for their companies.
It's a terrific way because at the end of the day people come together because of what they believe and how they feel.
Joe: When you're talking, it seems that you attach a nice conceptual name, that name that just grabs you right away, soccer mom. You identify and you know exactly who that is, who your target audience is, in two words.
Kevin: Well a company that I work with, a dear friend of mine actually, it's a fantastic company that she runs. She was trying to figure out, "How do I better define the kind of companies that I work with," says this friend of mine. After a weekend of work, we realized that the one of the things that's common to the people that they really can help are Frustrated Visionaries. That was the term, because they are brilliant at being able to crystallize the pathway for someone with a vision.
You can see that no matter whether their prospect was a small company or a Fortune 500 CEO, they were able to define their audience in an emotional need state term and then connect their product, what they do, to that need state. It's terrific.
This is a podcast that is, should I say, “Priceless”.
Kevin Allen can be found at KevinAllenPartners.com – The Bookshelf on the website is a very clever idea.
Recently on a podcast I had with Chad Smith of the Constraints Management Group during are discussion I asked the question, “why McGraw‑Hill come to Carol and him to write the new edition of Orlickys Materials Requirements Planning ?“ He told a very interesting story which I paraphrase below:
The problem is that the market really doesn't know how bad the problem is. They don't really understand why MRP is failing. What the real deficiencies are of MRP. That led us to write a white paper. We wrote a white paper in spring of 2008. We submitted it just on a whim to the APICS organization saying, here's something that we've written. Are you interested?
We got an immediate response back from APICS saying can you condense this a little bit for our magazine? We said sure, we'll do that. We condensed it and little did we know that it turned out being the cover story for the July/August 2008 edition of the APICS Magazine.
That intrigued us. It told us, wait a minute, there's something people are resonating with what we're writing here. APICS sponsored a webinar a couple of weeks later on a topic and 250 companies signed‑up. Three weeks later Carol spoke at the APICS conference in Kansas City and there were 350 ‑ 400 people in the room. There was standing room only.
We got pretty excited because what people told us was the reason why they got so interested in this was because of our depiction of the problem and the fact that the way we described the problem was exactly what they were experiencing. There just didn't seem to be a fix out there in the industry.
We spent the last couple of years articulating this. We were asked to write a chapter for another book that McGraw‑Hill was publishing. Based upon the strength of that chapter, the editors of that book kicked it up to McGraw‑Hill and said you really need to take a look at this. This deserves a whole book.
We went round and round with McGraw‑Hill a little bit because McGraw‑Hill was a little bit worried that people had never really heard of this concept, these new concepts. I agreed the book might not sell well because nobody's really heard of this new approach to MRP.
They came back and said; “We have this Orlicky book that needs to be updated. Would you like to do that?”
From Carol and my perspective we were like, wow, yes, absolutely. That's a perfect scenario for us. It allows our message to get into the typical MRP user and even buyer of software so that we can really demonstrate what the problem is and what the direction of the solution is. How we can augment or how we can amend the MRP and ERP for the new century.
What did Carol and Chad do that was so different? Their description of the problem was exactly what customers were experiencing. We spend countless hours on branding, messaging and every other marketing tactic under the sun but do we ever articulate the problem are customers and prospects are having perfectly?
Brant Cooper wrote a blog post that I had in my archives that stated:
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) was an American Architecture and Literary critic, as well as Sociologist and Philosopher. I often attribute a particular quote to Mumford, though I can’t seem to locate the source. When asked where to put a sidewalk, Mumford responds:
“See where the people walk and then pave their path.”
How many times have you seen two sidewalks intersecting at 90 degree angles, with worn grass cutting the corners? There’s a fine line between executing on your vision and listening to your customers. Consider Mumford’s quote, thinking of the sidewalk as the “vision” and the path as “customer needs.”
This is why the essence of Lean Marketing is defining the problem that you solve from the customers perspective. The better you can articulate that position, the more value you provide to the market place you are serving. The definition of the problem may even be more important than the solution. In fact, you have to be willing to move your solution to pave the path.
Most organizations try to develop marketing plans designed to guide their action for today, tomorrow and in the future. This serves as a platform for their marketing goals. We might even send the goals through the SMART procedure to make sure that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific.
The problem is that this is mostly internally focused. Sales and Marketing needs to be about the customer, it’s not about us. The old saying, defining the problem correctly is half the battle has never been more accurate. Defining the problem you solve takes quite a bit of effort (it needs to be done by product (service)/markets). If the essence of marketing is defining the problem for a customer, the A3 provides a structure and a template for achieving this. A3 is a one- page document used to capture the dialogue in a problem solving process. Sending your marketing through such a process will enable you to create the clarity to areas such as CRM, Social Media, Joint Ventures, Client Retention, Client Acquisition, and more. It is a tool that can be used both strategically and tactically. Actually, it has developed in its own right to a thinking process.
I feel somewhat challenged to use predominately Social Media, the web and a 28 day plan in selling our Fort Wayne home. Yes, I do have yard sign.
I have always discussed that people that talk the talk should walk the walk. Last year I did a blog post Hiring a consultant, can I see your marketing plan?, that referred to this idea. I have always been dead serious about this requirement, it is really not an option to me. So, I have take upon to sell a house primarily through social media and the web but more importantly I am following a Value Stream Marketing Concept that includes:
First thing that we did was develop a 28-day plan. We broke down into user stories and than into 4 – 1 week scheduled iterations much like the Agile or Scrum practices that I use. I have even developed a Marketing Kanban board for the occasion which I think will be quite interesting for the whole process.
One of the initial steps or iterations we did was to include a Home Staging Release to promote the Interior Design store, Wild Hare Decor (another disclaimer – it is my wife’s store). Of course, we listed on Craig’s list, scheduled a pre-moving sale, an open house and blogged about it on several sites. I think it should be a lot of fun and a true learning experience.
I am very interested in sharing this process as it takes place. It is always one thing talking the talk, it is another Walking the walk.
THE SEVEN FASCINATION TRIGGERS MYSTIQUE – Why we’re intrigued by unanswered questions LUST – Why we’re seduced by the anticipation of pleasure ALARM – Why we take action at the threat of negative consequences POWER – Why we focus on people and things that control us VICE – Why we’re tempted by novelty and “forbidden fruit” PRESTIGE – Why we fixate on rank and respect TRUST – Why we’re loyal to reliable options Each trigger adds a different type of attraction. Mystique, as we know, adds curiosity. Trust adds stability and comfort. Lust adds warmth and humanity. Power adds respect, or fear. Alarm adds a sense of adventure, or immediacy, or even danger. Vice adds irreverence.
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Good description of the Agile Marketing Process versus the typical waterfall method. I am really starting to love this stuff!
Jason Cohen describes how a free book transformed marketing at Smart Bear Software: objectively measuring the effect of marketing efforts, getting accurate lead information, and giving people something genuinely useful. This Pecha Kucha talk was delivered at Joel Spolsky's Business of Software 2008 conference in Boston.
Jason’s thought process on how to get quality leads from you e-mail subscriptions and whitepapers seems to be such a natural for industries transforming to online marketing. Remember, the old bingo cards and how your salespeople use to love chasing those three month old leads. How do they feel about internet leads? If you want quality, you may have to give up quality! What do you think?
By the way, doesn’t Pecha Kucha sound like a Pokeman Card? Actually it is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.
I was reading Success Coaching U Blog and Joe wrote an article about Ready, Aim, Fire. Good headline, you already can guess what the headline is about, Target Marketing. I remembered a piece of advice I received from another Duct Tape Marketing Coach on targeting your direct mail, which I call the Machine Gun approach. For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose the source, but the following statistics were shared:
I don't have a success story, I have a sobering story. Here it is: Number of pieces mailed: 10,000 Response rate: 1% Number of inquiries: 96 Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70 Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30 Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14 Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100 Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200
Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42. In other words, you must spend $871.42 to get to each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now. Not so good for a small business....
I will call this method the Machine Gun Marketing. Another method of Machine Gun Marketing is the Marketing Idea of the Week. You have an Ad Rep call on you and they have this special 3 for 2 deal. Plus they have this even that they will be attending and handing out another 1,000 pieces of whatever they are selling. Oh yeah, you will also be exclusive to your area of expertise and we will even create the ad. What a deal! But….you will have to do something by Thursday, this being Tuesday. Sounds like a great idea?
If it is not part of your overall marketing strategy, if it not targeted, and I mean really targeted, and you have extra cash in your marketing budget that you were just clueless on how to spend it and you have no collateral material supporting it and you cannot create the ad yourself(a two-step ad, by the war), and you already know how you are going to measure it and….. I have asked Ad reps, that I do not respond to this type of marketing, many have stopped calling. I wonder why…has their machine gun jammed or just ran out of bullets?
What may seem like value to you may well be spam to the person you're sending it to. This is the curse of traditional companies fumbling their way through the social channels.
Even the best of the best in advertising and communications don't get 50% success rates on any of their campaigns (targeted or mass). This means that the majority of the people you are targeting are simply not all that interested in what you have to say.
There's no value to me, there's no value to the agency and there's no value to the client.
That's the shift towards delivering value.
It may sound pedestrian, but seriously think about the last time you really focused on delivering value first and then spreading the message far and wide.
Dismal Newspaper Future in the Forecast The outlook for newspaper ad revenue in 2009 is "terrible," according to a forecast released recently by Kubas Consultants, based on their survey of 400 newspaper executives. This is not surprising, but the forecast was still striking for its alarming language: the "very negative outlook" is due partly to the "next disaster area," employment classifieds, which are suffering a sharp downturn like real estate did two years ago. Indeed, the Kubas report ventures that "the severity of expected declines is remarkable."
Overall, executives surveyed by Kubas expect overall revenues to fall 9.1 percent in 2009, making it the fourth consecutive year to see revenues decline. According to the Newspaper Association of America, total ad revenues (including print and online) slipped 0.3 percent in 2006 and 7.9 percent in 2007. In the first three quarters of 2008, they are down 15.5 percent compared to the same period in 2007, falling from $32.8 billion to $27.8 billion. If Kubas' predictions for 2009 come to pass, by the end of next year, newspapers will have lost about 30 percent of their total revenues in four years.
Classified revenues will be "hit particularly hard" in 2009, says Kubas, compounding previous losses. Kubas has real-estate classified revenues down 13.9 percent, automotive down 15.5 percent and employment down 16 percent. Thus, employment is expected to pass real estate and the loss leader in this category, reflecting the steady contraction of the labor market, which is expected to continue well into 2009. National and retail ad revenues will bring no relief, however, with the former expected to fall 10.8 percent and the latter 7.5 percent next year.
Kubas also noted the troubling slowdown in the growth of online ad revenues, clouding the sole bright spot on newspapers' ledgers. In fact, the report points out, online revenues actually contracted in the third quarter of 2008; the NAA has them contracting in both the second and third quarters.
Newspapers hobbled their prospects for future growth by tying online ad revenues to upsells from print classifieds. As print listings collapse, there are fewer opportunities for these upsells. In fairness, online was never much of a bright spot; it's "still a small percentage of total newspaper ad revenue. The pennies gained in online will not replace the dollars lost in print." (Source: Media Daily News)
Just returning from a Trade Show in Tampa called "WasteCon". It's a gathering of municipalities seeking the latest trends in waste management. Sound fun, huh?
First, I have to say, I can't stand most trade shows. Flourescent lights, cheesy attention-getting gimmicks, noise, schmoozing, long hours standing around, the repetitiveness of it all, hotel rooms. Etc., etc., etc...
HOWEVER, you have to go. You have to get out and into the mix. Everytime I head out to a trade show, I'm filled with dread, anticipating the drudgery of it all, but what I learn everytime is that, if you can tough your way through it, attending trade shows can transform your business.
The intensity of networking, business card collecting, education, getting caught up on trends and the pulse of your industry - especially in high-pressure economic times - is invaluable for your business success.
When you go, be sure to take a box of business cards and hand them out aggressively. Don't be afraid to give multiple cards to individuals you think might pass extras along to other people.
Also, get "off campus" with key people. Activities like golf, dining, etc., can help you form close relationships with people you might not live near and that can help when the business relationship reverts to emails and phone calls.
Have a specific follow up plan for contacts made and follow up IMMEDIATELY upon completion of the trade show or even DURING the trade show while your discussions are fresh in your new contacts' minds.
I say, trade in the dread and get to your industry trade shows. You'll be glad you did.
16 October 2008 Brought to you by E-Myth Worldwide
Do you believe that 'marketing' is a synonym for 'advertising'?
In our Seven Centers of Management Attention™ business model, advertising is not part of Marketing, but an element of Lead Generation. Marketing produces knowledge of your best customers rather than generating leads, and with this knowledge you will waste fewer of your advertising dollars.
Advertising is Not Marketing
Not everyone is a potential customer for your business, and knowing the demographics of those most likely to become customers is valuable. This knowledge is gained by marketing, which is the research and analysis of who your customers are, where they are and why they buy from you.
Marketing discovers your customers' demographics; their age, gender, occupation, income, education, marital status and location. Effective marketing will also show their psychographic profiles as well; their self-perceptions, personal values, behavioral tendencies and purchase preferences.
Here's a bit of an interesting scenario (real names withheld to protect and maintain privacy):
I got an email yesterday from Person A who had received a cease and desist letter from Company B. Person A had named their business fairly recently, while Company B had been in business for well over five years using the same name. Both are working in the same industry. Person A had secured the .org domain name, while Company B owned the primary .com domain name.
Company B's email was not so much a "cease and desist" as much as it was a very kind email asking Person A to reconsider the name considering the equity and trademark work that Company B had already done. Company B also, rightly, stated that they would need to defend all infringements on their trademark (a truism we know all too well in Marketing). From a legal standpoint, if a company does not defend their trademarks legally, it dilutes any and all ability to do so as time goes by.
Person A wanted to know how they should handle it.
Here was my response:
"If you did know that the .com was taken, and had done a basic search to see that the name you were thinking about using was the same as this company, then they are right.
I would also say that if you didn't do that... you probably should have... and the other company is right.
They are asking you nicely to respect the fact that they have been running a business using the same name in the same industry for some time.
The question is: why did you name your company by the same name?"
It seems simple enough, but I am constantly amazed at how few Businesses use the existing (and free) channels to do basic and preliminary leg work to see who else is out there and what they're doing.
The lesson is very simple and reminds me of an Entrepreneur's Conference session title from a few years back: "Is Your Market Researcher Some Yahoo Named Google?"
We all need to be choosing our names wisely. We all need to run every name we're thinking of using (including mis-spellings and different versions) through the Search Engines. It's no longer "good enough" to just register a business in your local state or province. Everything is global when it hits the Web (and everything hits the Web), so be smart, be kind and be online. The above scenario was easily avoidable, but now it's sucking the time and energy out of two Entrepreneurs who should be putting all of their energy against building their business instead.
Nomenclature is a function of Marketing. Maybe legal isn't, but that doesn't preclude any of us from doing some preliminary leg work.
Avoid disappointment make sure you do it right. Radio can be successfully used for short-term or long-term campaigns. But the only thing more frustrating than trying to use short-term techniques in a long-term campaign is trying to use long-term techniques in the short term. Do you understand the rules for when and how to use each?
Click above for the entire article.
If your selling, manufacturing or even a contractor, you should be reading my other blog www.yourmarketingmachine.com
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