Category: Marketing

What Other Problems Do Your Customers Have?

In the wine department of the Hollywood West Fred Meyer store is a device that looks kind of like a clothes hamper full of slowly circulating ice water. A sign on the device says,

“Free Chilling Service — 25 Times Faster Than a Refrigerator”

You just put the bottle in the water and come back in a little while. 3 minutes for “cool”, 5 minutes for “cold”, 7 minutes for “ice cold”.

Somebody at Fred Meyer realized that for some of their shoppers, a good wine selection solves one problem — what to serve at the party — but leaves another potential issue — the guests are arriving in less than an hour and the white wine’s warm.

By offering to solve this second problem at no extra charge, Fred Meyer’s positioned itself as the first option for this segment of customers.

We’re all in the problem-solving business.

  • People with transportation problems go to car dealers.
  • Homeowners who need to find a buyer hire a real estate agent.
  • People who believe they look old or unattractive go to a clinic for botox or lipodissolve.

In many cases your customers are consciously aware of the primary problem they need to solve, but may need to address other issues as well.

Sometimes these issues are a barrier to doing business. The Red Cross, recognizing that many people feel they’re too busy to give blood in December, recently announced a program called “You Give, We Wrap.” Donors bring their holiday gifts to the center, and Red Cross volunteers will wrap the packages while the donors are giving blood.

Sometimes these secondary problems can even be an opportunity for extra profit. When you buy a gift from Amazon.com, they’re happy to wrap it — for an additional $3.99 per package.

Whether you’re trying to generate extra revenue or just position yourself as the first choice for your clients, it makes sense to ask — what other problems can I solve?

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Like what you’re reading? Download my free white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How To Fix Them.

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.

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

The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes

I recently completed a 13-page 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.

Among the subjects I cover are:

Why trying to reach the largest possible audience can actually hurt your results.

What your prospects are really interested in (hint: it’s not you),

How many topics you should cover in each ad

The one item that must be in your advertising if you want to generate results

Why you should stop agonizing about reaching “The Right People” — and what you should concentrate on instead.

Why you may be leaving money on the table even if your marketing generates new customers.

You can download a copy of this report at no charge by signing up here.

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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