You’re Judged on Your Associations

Mom always said…"you are who you associate with" and she definitely wasn’t wrong. Of course as time went on, you grew up, became wiser, made your own choices and while you still shared interests and maybe even the same group of friends, you probably no longer shared every opinion or thought of theirs anymore. That’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, some companies (and/or marketing agencies, marketing vendors, etc) don’t seem to get the "you are who you associate with" rule which is a very costly and damaging mistake.

Point in case: On a rare evening when I had an hour or so to watch TV I was watching a show on the issues surrounding human trafficking all over Asia. It’s awful. Young girls sold into sex slavery against their will. Horrible living conditions and little education make this lifestyle (for lack of better terms) a vicious cycle for these children and women who grow up under these circumstances.

"Okay, Meg, got it…it’s horrible and all but how does this relate to marketing and business?" Well, as I watched this expose, I viewed two ads during two different commercial breaks. One was for Korean Air and the second paid for by the Travel Commission of Vietnam encouraging tourism. Unfortunately, Korean Air and the Travel Commission of Vietnam didn’t think to ask (or their marketing agency or vendors did think or care) to ensure their ads were aired in a rotation that employed the "negative marketing" tactic.

Negative marketing (just a word I use..nothing official) is when you avoid placing your company in the middle of anything that is relative to your company’s services but is negative. So while I know Korean Air and the Vietnam Travel Commission are in no way promoting human trafficking, my mind is subconsciously (or consciously) associating the two because of the proximity of the two messages. A HUGE MISTAKE! So I ask myself, "Why would I want to go to Vietnam (even if it’s not the country that the expose is focusing on) when human trafficking in Asia is such a huge problem? I have no intentions of supporting that activity."

So business owners, Marketing Directors, TV/Radio/Print/Online marketing vendors, do your clients a favor. They’re hiring you to act on their behalf and produce revenue! Gone are the days when anyone should tolerate vendors that take the client’s money for the sake of making a buck. We need to partner, care, embrace the client’s business and it is our responsibility as marketers to make sure they see a positive return on the money/time they spent with us.

Marketers, be responsible. Business owners and Marketing Executives, be aware. Ask questions!

This is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing and I would love to hear your thoughts/experiences with "negative marketing."

FAKE RFPs!

I capitalized the subject because yes, I’m fuming mad! Okay…I’ll take a step back. Let me explain.

As a small business, how do you decide how much information to provide to a potential client either in the first exploratory meeting or in responding to a request for proposal (RFP)? This is a question I’ve struggled with for years. While you definitely want to differentiate your company and provide the “edge” that makes you better than your competitors, you also don’t want to give away the shop. It’s a balance but a very important.

A small business has to use every resource and minute wisely. So it’s extremely important to be able to read the potential client - either through the RFP provided or, if you’re lucky enough to have a face to face meeting, by the detail they’re asking you to provide. What I mean by “read” is to determine if the prospect is serious about hiring you/your firm for services or if they’re fishing for free consulting.

Unfortunately, it happens that companies out there use this unscrupulous tactic (and I’ll go as far as saying unprofessional approach) to gaining marketing insight under the guise of an RFP but with no intentions of hiring you or any firm for that matter. This just happened to me and my team. We receive many RFPs and respond to the ones that we feel would be a great win-win relationship if we were awarded the job. We invested hours in the response and were invited in to meet with the company’s team of “professionals.” We spent an hour and a half more than we had scheduled to be there with them, answering questions and having a dialog that we thought would definitely lead to a beneficial and inevitable partnership.

Unfortunately, I have to kick myself one more time as this firm went out of their way to make their attempt for free marketing advice look “legit.” I did see some red flags throughout the process that looking back should have stopped me in my tracks but in this day and age, when you assume you’re dealing with professionals in executive level positions within a well established firm, you can easily justify those flags. So I did only to get a “thanks but no thanks” email.

As a regular part of our process, when we don’t win an award, we follow up with the prospect to learn what we could have done better and what it was that made them decide not to hire us. In this case, the response I got was quite telling that we were taken for a ride. I don’t have proof but when you see it enough, you recognize it.

So here’s my point. As a small business owner who is trying to do everything from manage existing client/customers, grow the business and meet payroll, you really need to be quite cynical when reviewing RFPs. I’m seeing this tactic used more and more and it’s down right “bad business.” You don’t have the time to waste and the example I just shared with you; cost me a lot of money. Be careful. Listen, ask questions, and determine if the prospect’s intentions are genuine. Don’t justify your red flags. Ask more qualifying questions if you have them but don’t give away the shop.

A legitimate prospect should be happy with your track record of success versus having to understand your “process” in order to make a decision to award the contract to you. Your “process” is your edge. Don’t give it away for free.

Has this happened to you? What did you do/would you have done in this case? Would love to hear from you!

Convert them today, retain them tomorrow

In the world of online marketing, we thought it was about time to discuss some key metrics, as metrics are the tools we should be using to refine and drive your marketing process.

We discussed in our last post the importance of strategic marketing, and how the knowledge of technology alone doesn’t cut it. This is our short list of metrics we believe “keep it strategic.”

Conversions

A conversion is simply a way of measuring that your marketing efforts are effective. Conversion code is placed at the bottom of the page you want a user to see, and you can track them from the source activity to the action you wanted them to take on the site. For example, if you wanted someone to sign up for a newsletter, you’d put the code on the “thank you for submitting your info” page, so you can differ from people who actually signed up, versus people who just viewed the sign up page. It is absolutely essential to track conversions. Why? It’s the way to track your marketing ROI. You can see what your best performing activities are, shift budget to better performing activities, and realize potential.

I also spoke briefly about conversions in one of my recent posts: Strategic Marketing: It’s Not Just Making it Look Pretty!. However, I want to offer some examples of how you can create conversions on your website.

• Visit to a key page on your website: In this conversion type, you want to drive a visitor to go to a key page. Maybe this page contains information about a product and you are hoping to provide information on a regular basis, so that, the user comes back to your site to take action again and again and eventually bookmarks your page/site.
• Event registration: This type of conversion requires a visitor to sign up for an event. Keep in mind, an event can be an online event such as a webinar. Regardless of what the event is you still require registration information from the registrant. This builds your in-house database which you can repurpose for other marketing efforts such as direct mail and email marketing. Additionally, you’re gaining valuable insight into the interests of your site visitors/prospectes. Those that attend the event can further be marketed to with the potential of a sales conversion being much higher as they’ve already showed extensive interest.
• Completion of an online form: This is probably the most popular type of conversion. You’ll see examples of this as “contact us’ form, forms required to download white papers, brochures, request more information/quotes, etc. Again, the visitor willingly provides information which helps build your in-house database.
• Online purchase: If you’re selling products directly from your website, this conversion is the holy grail! A good understanding of how the user gets to the purchase page, why they got there, and how we can get them back there again is essential. Also, thinking about up-sell opportunities is very important at this stage. You can gauge all of this through conversion tracking.

When designing (or redesigning) your website, think about the actions you want your visitors to take and funnel them to take those actions. Implement tracking analytics and studying your website’s performance as told by your visitor’s actions and movement around your site. Adjust and refine to increase conversions.

Going forward, make a conscious effort to understand:

• What you want your website visitors to do (Convert!)
• Make it appealing and easy for a visitor to convert
• Track, adjust and refine!

In our next post, we’ll discuss the idea of website traffic – understanding where it comes from, how we understand it, and how we can use it to our benefit.

JPFUEXXP5WQE EX8Z94ZKAEW7

Strategic Marketing: It’s Not Just Making it Look Pretty!

Pay-Per-Click: Work or Waste?

So I just came from a sales call and the prospect is a very successful business man who runs a very successful business. He’s tried his hand at online marketing, namely Google Adwords pay-per-click (PPC) and was “soured.” He claimed the leads coming from these two campaigns weren’t converting and the ROI just wasn’t there. I truly believed him. But I was there to change his mind. Don’t get my wrong. I don’t want to sell anyone anything that isn’t right for them but I am a PPC evangelist and to answer my own question, IT DOES WORK!!!! It works well……………if it’s done right!

Everyone from Verizon/Idearc to Yellow Book to ATT are getting into the Google Adwords space (because their products are dying and they have no choice) but I’ve found none of them do it “right.” I’ve also found that very few (okay, I haven’t found one yet) business owners who try their hand at it or have their nephew run it for them do it “right” either. Thus, their budget is quickly exhausted by unqualified clicks. Don’t mistake “clicks” for leads! They’re not the same.

So what does “done right” mean? Here are a few key measurements that I use to deliver a positive ROI to my PPC clients. 1) Track conversions. Conversions are not leads they are actual people who clicked through and took some sort of action (filled out a form, called, requested a quote). 2) Set positions. Your ad shouldn’t appear in a position below #3 on the first search page. 3) Quality score. Drive your traffic to pages on your site that are highly relative to your keywords. 4) Dayparts. With limited PPC budgets, use phone numbers in ads to reduce clicks (this is the only form of marketing where impressions are FREE). Also, turn campaigns on and off to fit the times/days/week/months of your sales cycle as well as when most of your audience is online. 5) Geotarget. I constantly see ads for companies that are in California that clearly don’t service my area. WASTE OF MONEY! 6) Trim the fat. Your keyword list will shrink over time. Eliminate keywords that are not converting and have limited overall traffic. Focus your budget on keywords that convert. This will increase the frequency of your ads and fuel what’s working. In the end, all of these steps will optimize your budget, increase qualified leads and return a positive ROI.

Yes! PPC does work - when done “right!”

Have you run a campaign that was a bust? Let me hear about it. How about those of you out there seeing positive return? What’s the highest return rate you’re seeing?

Motion Stays In Motion

How do you keep your numbers positive in a downturn economy?

It’s interesting out there right now. Well, interesting isn’t the word. Bad might be more accurate. The reason I used the word “interesting” is the fact that I’m getting more calls than ever from companies who never did marketing before (or have done very little). They feel that starting to market now will help their business. In a way it can’t hurt but in another way, they’re so wrong.

My Dad told me a great anecdote the other day. He was a Coca-Cola stock holder for years and would attend the investor meetings regularly. He remembers clearly this one particular meeting as if it was yesterday. He tells the story of a woman who stood up and hammered the President of Coca-Cola questioning him on why advertising is the largest line item on the books. She exclaimed that Coca-Cola was twice as big as its nearest competitor, Pepsi Co., and nine times bigger than the next five companies combined. She wanted to know why the marketing budget has to be so big and why couldn’t that money be paid out in dividends? The President stood calmly and replied with this.

Marketing and advertising are like the coal that fires the steam engine. You feed it over time and the engine starts chugging along until finally it’s at a good strong pace. Stop feeding it with coal or slow the coal feed down and the steam engine will continue to run at a good clip……for a while. But eventually it will start to slow and ultimately come to a stop.

I encourage small and medium size businesses to consider marketing one of the most important functions of their business plans. Motion stays in motion. Once you get some traction, you must continue with the momentum. If your momentum is currently slowing or stopped, marketing efforts will not be a quick fix. They will need to be a considerable investment with a dedicated approach. If not, motion stays in motion and if you’re going down, it’s damn hard to pull back from a nose dive!

Importance of relationships in business but especially in marketing!

Marketing a is a fast paced business and at the height of the economy any schmuck could call themselves a marketer.  Today the economy has tanked and clients want to KNOW what they are getting and more importantly if they can trust you with their hard-earned money.  When they are spending money on a marketer they are investing in you and your skill set.

This goes beyond customer service which is important too; but building a relationship with a client means each of you have agreed to put your faith in each other.  For example, I was just asked the question, how do you (Vision House) measure success as a company. My answer: We measure success by our client’s success. If our clients invest in us and trust in us to spend their marketing money wisely, we are compelled to turn a positive ROI for them. When we do, the bonds of the relationship strengthen.

It takes a skilled marketer to know what to do with a client and that knowledge grows over time.  So get to know your clients, focus on doing more than meeting their expectations—exceed them by demonstrating that you view the relationship as important– business-wise of course– but also because you are a firm of integrity and anything less than quality service to clients you value would be unacceptable.

Clients will know the difference between a firm that provides good customer service and one that builds client relationships.  Think about the companies, or organizations that you come in contact with and I’ll bet you can tick off right away those that work harder to let you know your business matters to them in the long term.  And in this economy that is the key to keeping business.

You’re lucky you have a job!

A relative of mine, who will remain nameless for reasons that will become clear, works for a large company - cubicle land/ corporate America. We all know that company. Similar to “Initech” from the movie, Office Space (if you haven’t seen this movie, it’s a must for “lessons learned in management”). The company with multiple layers of management who mostly were promoted to their own level of incompetence (ref: Peter Principle). They were great programmers so they are promoted to manager. Most of the time, programmers don’t make good managers = Peter Principle. Anyway, back to my relative….

His “leadership,” after cutting bonuses, reducing vacations and benefits and have every employee do the job of two (they laid off the other one) has the mentality that they’re lucky to have jobs therefore their complaints go unacknowledged. Morale is in the toilet and “leadership” is asking these people to follow them…or else. Or else they lose their jobs?

This entry is about leadership. There is nothing more I despise than a weak “leader” - a leader who has been appointed to a position but has not earned it. Company owners, managers of big and small companies alike, listen up! People might follow you under duress but to quote a line from Office Space “they’ll do just enough to not get fired.” Bottom line is, they won’t respect you and a leader leads out of respect and trust that is earned not appointed. The more you have their backs, the more you realize how much they sacrifice for your company, the more you provide a “give and take” atmosphere, the harder they’ll work for you, the more loyal they’ll be, more your people respect you, the more productive they’ll be! It is this that will see your company through these tough economic times.

So managers, business owners, if you’re one of “those” complaining about your subordinates or employees not doing their jobs, take a look in the mirror. YOU are to lead them. That is YOUR job! What kind of a leader are you? Challenge yourself. How can you find the balance between asking your people to do more with less and follow you?  There is another movie I highly recommend which focuses on the qualities of a true leader - The Last Castle with Robert Redford.

Post your stories about your leadership! What are qualities that define a good leader for you?

The world moves round in a circular motion…..right?

RIGHT! Motion stays in motion.

So you’re looking to dip your toe into social media? Or maybe you need a pay-per-click lead generation campaign? Or maybe you care about your natural page rankings? So you look for a company that specializes in exactly what you’re looking for. Instead of looking at these as ala carte, it’s not only more economical but a better strategic move to integrate a full circle online program that is all encompassing.

Think about this. You want to implement a search engine optimization campaign to increase your website’s page rank. In order to truly do this, you want to consider article and press release directory submissions. Well, if you’re going to create articles and press releases, might as well spread those messages through you social media campaigns - a one-two punch. And while your social media and SEO campaigns are gaining traction, let’s drive traffic immediately to your site(s).

Everything we do, every ounce of effort has impact on your entire marketing strategy - or at least it should. You should be thinking like this when looking for a marketing firm and when executing a marketing strategy. Even if you truly are looking for a piece of the pie, ask how that marketing firm intends to integrate their efforts into your existing marketing initiatives.

Full circle marketing is the new black! Continuity is key to your message, efficiency and ROI! Motion stays in motion.

Let’s here from you out there! What have your experiences been? I know there are some SUPER smart subscribers to this blog. Share your knowledge!

Small Businesses, Stop Listening To the Insanity!

Okay..that’s it! I’m mad! Damn mad! I’m listening to prospective and existing clients alike vent about the garbage fed to them daily by marketing vendors who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about! In this economy (or any for that matter), you cannot waste a dime on ineffective and inefficient marketing! On or offline, more vendors than not will take your money and waste it! The key to any marketing campaign is conversions! Conversions! Conversions! Meaning, actual leads that turn into sales. Clicks don’t matter. Page ranks don’t matter. What matters is the effort spent results into sales.

I have a client who called me the other day concerned that their traffic to their website was less than they expected. Ironically, of the traffic they were getting (they’re a highly specific medical practice), they were seeing a 46% conversion rate! Meaning 46% of those who did come to the site as a result of our online marketing campaign turned into a legitimate lead! I had them go back and cross analyze those leads to sales (patients in this case). 20% turned into new patients!

The reason they called me? Another vendor was in to see them and sold them a load of crap with regards to page rank and traffic to their site! Once I showed them the actual - IMPORTANT - numbers, they were floored. I asked them to contact that vendor and challenge them with questions regarding their conversion tracking methodology. As suspected….they lied and said those numbers are not important.

I guess this entry is more for the lame vendors out there who got into this business because they saw their share of marketing budgets go toward online marketing but who have NO CLUE about marketing….learn marketing 101, and this space will be a nice place to compete! It will also be much more pleasant for small businesses in the Greater Philadelphia area. The less garbage they hear, the less insanity in the market place!

Small businesses, tell me about your marketing vendor experiences. Let’s hear the good, the bad, the ugly! You are in power now. It’s a nice position to be in! Use it…let’s hear from you! Comment on this posting!

Until next time, this is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing, LLC saying have an effective and efficient day!