Category: Branding

Precisely-Targeted Advertising — Exhibit A

In the Men’s Room on the 300 level of the Rose Garden Arena in Portland — over a urinal — is a sign with this headline:

“You’re Back Again.”

The ad is for Flowmax, a pharmaceutical product for men with prostate-related urinary symptoms.

Dan Kennedy calls this “message-to-market match.” If you’re Flowmax, the people you’ll pay the most to talk to are men who need to pee. To reach those people — and only those people — you can’t do much better than the Rose Garden Men’s Room.

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I’ve written a white paper called The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them. It’s a study of some of the most common ways that companies waste their advertising dollars — along with suggestions to make those dollars work harder and smarter. Request your free copy here.

“It’s What You Say…

…multiplied by how many times you say it.”

Roy Williams

If you’re in charge of marketing your business, here’s something that won’t come as a shock: it’s harder to reach potential customers than it’s ever been. Attention spans are shorter, the environment is more cluttered, and your prospects have more ways to filter out your message.

• Voice mail and the Do Not Call list have greatly reduced the effectiveness of cold calling by phone.

• The Internet is turning the printed newspaper into a dinosaur.

• Digital devices like TIVO allow viewers to skip your television commercials.

All of this means that when you accomplish the difficult feat of gaining your prospects’ attention, you’d better tell a story that rewards their interest and moves them closer to doing business with you. The quality of your copy is the most important factor in this, and yet it’s often an afterthought once the media buying decision has been made.

Consumers, always a moving target, are now more elusive than ever. Your job is to get them to stop whatever they’re doing long enough for you to make your pitch. The success, or failure, of your efforts will ultimately come down to the two factors Roy Williams cites:

1.The copy – “What You Say”.

2. The strength of your advertising schedule – “How Many Times You Say It”.

While fragmentation has definitely become an issue, the fact remains that a radio commercial on a major station in Portland will still reach thousands of people at once. They will do their best to ignore you, but a compelling message, delivered steadily for a long period of time, will ultimately break through their filters and cause them to act.

You’d better make sure that the story you’re telling is relevant to your prospects’ lives. If it is, they’ll stop and listen. If it isn’t, they’re gone.

Here are some questions you should consider before writing your copy:

1. What problem is your customer having that you can solve?

2. What product or service do you offer that will solve that problem?

3. Why is your product or service the best choice to solve it? What evidence can you offer to support your claim?

4. How will your customers’ lives be improved when they’ve solved the problem?

5. What do you want your prospects to do after they’ve heard your message? Call your office? Visit your store? Log onto your web site? Define exactly what action you want them to take.

6. Why should they do it now instead of waiting for another time?

All of these questions need to be answered from your customers’ point of view – they will buy for their reasons, not yours.

Once you’ve answered those questions internally, make sure the person who writes your copy has access to them – and has access to you for any follow-up questions.

Fortunes have been lost by business owners who just told an untrained ad rep to “just bang something out.” Your copy — what you say – is too important to be left to chance.

If you’d like more on this topic, I’ve written a white paper called The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them. It’s a study of some of the most common ways that companies waste their advertising dollars — along with suggestions to make those dollars work harder and smarter. Request your free copy here.

Trying to Sell Without Selling

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about Unilever’s efforts to promote Axe deodorant by producing a television series called “The Gamekillers”. It details the sometimes contentious negotiations between Unilever — who wanted to make sure that viewers got the connection between the program and Axe — and MTV, who feared that an explicit connection would turn viewers off.

The end result was an entertaining show that may or may not have contributed to Unilever’s bottom line. Axe sales increased 60% in 2006, so obviously Unilever did something right. But without any response mechanism besides a Gamekillers Myspace page, how do you measure the results?

My white paper, “The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them” is still available at no charge. It neither recommends nor opposes creating your own television series, although right now I’m leaning against the idea. Click to download your copy

Does Relentless Advertising Work?

One answer to this question comes from a study conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Packard Children’s Hospital. According to AdAge.com (thanks to Rick Lewis for alerting me to this), kids 3 to 5 years old were fed two sets of identical foods — some in McDonald’s wrappers and some wrapped in plain paper.

They overwhelmingly preferred the stuff when it came with a Mickey-D’s logo.

Each child was given chicken nuggets, a hamburger and french fries from McDonald’s, and baby carrots and milk from the grocery store… With one exception, significantly more children said the McDonald’s-labeled product tasted better.”

McDonald’s spends an enormous amount of money to advertise to children, and apparently they have purchased brand loyalty beginning at a very early age. If you’ve ever driven past a McDonald’s at lunchtime with a car full of kids, you’ve seen brand loyalty translate into sales.

McDonald’s has enough money to be seen and heard just about everywhere; the rest of us have to be more selective in choosing market segments and media opportunities we can afford to dominate. But even without a huge marketing budget, you can still follow the basic principles that have kept McDonald’s at the top of their category:

1. Have a consistent theme and spokesperson — the Golden Arches logo has been there forever, and Ronald McDonald has been a significant part of the marketing effort for decades.

2. Establish a long-term plan, and stick with it. The most successful markets map out a year at a time, and they don’t cancel their ads after a bad weekend.

3. Make an offer. A small portion of McDonald’s advertising is for image, but most of it gives the target consumer a specific benefit — a coupon, a new product, a movie tie-in — for doing business with them today.

It takes careful planning, patience, and money to establish a dominant position in your market. And attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. But the basic techniques for gaining the consumer’s attention, interest, desire, and action haven’t changed.

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The Danger of Sale-Only Advertising

“Your customers buy when they want to buy — not when you want to sell.”

—– Clate Mask, Infusion Software

Jane sells high-end furniture to homeowners in the Pacific Northwest. As a general rule, she only advertises when she has a sale or special event.

In 2006, she decided to have a storewide year-end clearance sale. She bought a strong radio and newspaper schedule — good copy, great frequency, and a really good offer — and almost doubled her sales goal for the month.

She was so happy with the results that she put on another big sale in January. Sales weren’t as strong as the last event, but they were pretty good. So at the end of February, she had another sale.

The February sale was a bomb. Not much traffic, not many sales. Jane decided that the advertising wasn’t working anymore — and she’s decided not to advertise again until the fall.

What happened? Did people stop reading the paper and listening to the radio? Or were there other factors at work?

In my mind, Jane made three mistakes:

1. She patched together a series of short-term strategies rather than a long-term plan.

2. She created “sale fatigue” among her customers by holding three big sales in three months. By the time the third one rolled around, it didn’t feel like such a bargain.

3. She didn’t create any value in the customer’s mind before cutting prices.

Instead of deciding not to talk to her prospects until the next big sale, she might want to consider the philosophy of Dale Carlsen, President of Sleep Train Mattress Centers. Reflecting on the fact that the average consumer buys a new mattress every seven to ten years, Dale had this to say:

“If a customer doesn’t walk into my store when he’s in the market, I won’t have another chance for seven years. And I don’t know when he’s going to decide he needs a new bed. So I want to be talking to him every single week, all year long.”

The most successful marketers recognize that people make purchasing decisions for many reasons. Some, it’s true, are motivated by a big sale. But especially for big-ticket purchases, many consumers won’t buy until they’re ready.

If they’re not ready when your sale happens, the best advertising in the world won’t bring them in.

On the other hand, if they decide they’re ready to buy right now, they could very well buy at full retail. But they’ll only buy from you if they remember you’re there.

You don’t need huge budget to craft an effective long-term plan. If you can’t afford to be in multiple media like Fred Meyer, pick one. I’m partial to radio and internet, but any medium will work if the message is good, your frequency is strong, and you stay put.

If you can’t afford to be on a bunch of stations all the time, pick one. If you can’t afford to be on the #1 station all the time, pick the #10 station. To paraphrase Roy Williams, you’d be surprised how many couches 50,000 people will buy in a year if you talk to them enough.

“The only difference between lettuce and garbage is timing.”

—- Bill Glazer, Glazer-Kennedy Marketing

You can’t control the timing of customer demand. They’ll buy when they want to buy, not when you want to sell. That’s why Dale Carlsen advertises all year long, and why Les Schwab, Fred Meyer and The Shane Company don’t cancel their campaigns after a slow weekend.

Want the results the best marketers get? Do what the best marketers do.