Category: Media

The Line Between Targeted and Creepy

Suzanne Obermire of RRW Consulting has a thoughtful post on the struggle to establish good boundaries in direct marketing. The issue in question is mobile marketing — delivering advertising to cell phones and other mobile devices.

When I take off my direct marketing hat and think about mobile marketing from a consumers’ perspective, it can be a little frightening. Marketers can know where I am at all times. Essentially, they can track me. It does seem like an invasion of my privacy…

Boy, howdy, does it ever. Speaking as a cranky old guy, I can say without equivocation that I don’t want ads on my cell phone. I don’t want personalized ads to show up in my email. I don’t want to be followed around.

But that may be generational — I grew up in an age of mass media, and mass advertising. I don’t mind commercials on the radio (in fact, I create them and sell them), or on television. Newspaper and magazine ads don’t bother me, either. There’s an implicit, decades-old contract at work: you deliver me news/music/entertainment, and I “pay” for it by putting up with your ads.

There are signs that the contract is breaking down on both sides — spam and greatly increased clutter on the advertiser’s side, TIVO on the consumer’s — and it’s not surprising that advertisers are looking for any technological advantage they can get.

To stay on the good side of the “creepy divide”, the key is going to be permission. Offer something of value to the consumer in return for permission to contact them.

My company is now involved in cell phone text-message advertising, but listeners must opt-in to get the messages, and can opt out easily at any time. I’m just finishing up a program with the Oregon Elections Division that starts with a contest: text the word “vote” to 81530 for a chance to win an Ipod Touch. When people enter the contest, they’re invited to sign up for text-message voter reminders on things like registration deadlines and the last day to put a ballot in the mail. You don’t have to get the reminders to enter the contest, and you can stop them at any time. More than three hundred people have chosen to get the reminders.

Asking permission cuts down on the number of people who will get our message. But it keeps us honest, and it forces us to make sure our messages are of value to the consumer. It’s one way to stay away from “creepy”.

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Effective Use of Images

I didn’t see this until a Wall Street Journal columnist complained about it (and by the way, YouTube remains the most miraculous invention of my lifetime). Kellogg did a wonderful job in selling the benefits of eating All-Bran cereal.

Humor is in the eye of the beholder — you may or may not find the ad amusing, but the pitch works either way. Here’s what they did right:

1. They chose one target consumer — the boomer having problems with “regularity” — and offered to solve that one problem for the consumer.

2. Besides a single mention of great taste, they didn’t talk about any other features or benefits.

3. They made the offer time-specific: a “10-day challenge”.

4. Very effective use of visual metaphor. Rather than a happy guy getting up from the toilet, they used a beam sliding out a hole, barrels dropping off a flatbed (note the placement) and a dump truck (bwaaaa ha ha!) dropping a load of, um, dirt. The consumer watching at home got to figure out what it all meant.

5. They didn’t make it hard to figure out what it all meant.

Nicely done. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=RwX8MzOKOzI]

 

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Steady Marketing Builds Trust

One of the most common — and frustrating — conversations that advertising/marketing professionals have with their clients is the one where the client just wants to advertise when they have a special event, or at “peak” times of the year.

  • The jeweler who only advertises at Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas
  • The car dealer who’s off the air for six months and then does a blitz for a weekend
  • The piano dealer who does a big newspaper campaign when they have a sale, and then goes quiet until the next one.

Those of us who’ve been at this for a while know the value of consistency — of getting into the customer’s head over time. The big sale campaign is so much more effective when the potential customers are already familiar with the merchant. And some businesses (The Shane Company is an example that comes to mind — love him or hate him, you know Tom Shane and why you should come to his store) are so successful at this that they never have to do a big sale.

Sometimes we win the argument, and sometimes we lose. Our most successful clients “get it”, stay in front of their customers, and reap the benefits. We do the best we can with the rest.

In an effort to win more of those arguments, I’m going to be borrowing the words of Seth Godin, who has a very powerful post on his blog this morning. The money quote, for me, is this:

The best time to look for a job next year is right now. The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now. The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.

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“My Advertising Didn’t Work”

These words were spoken, I’ll wager, by a couple of companies who recently advertised in the Oregonian. And it wasn’t the O’s fault. Names are withheld in the hope that they decide to give radio a try — why embarrass them publicly when we could play the hero instead?

Advertiser #1 is a local clinic specializing in sclerotherapy — a treatment for spider veins. Their beautifully-laid-out display ad gave their web address in big, bold letters. Unfortunately, the address belonged to an identically-named business in Memphis, Tennessee. Two weeks later, it’s still not working properly.
      

      

Advertiser #2 is a practice specializing in elective surgery. Their ad, in a recent Sunday paper, said “To obtain information about this procedure, and the Portland-based surgeon who performs it, please call [phone number] or visit [web address].The web site had no information at all about the surgeon, and no contact information for the practice. It invited potential patients to come to a seminar, but there was no information on when or where the seminar would be. And if someone happened to call the phone number on Sunday or Monday, here’s the message they received, in its entirety:

“I am sorry, no one is here to take your call. Please leave a message.”  No business name given, or any other information at all. Not even a promise that someone would call back. Speaking as someone who recently spent some time talking to surgeons, I’d want a little more before I’d consider climbing onto the table.

Both of these businesses spent good money on advertising that might have generated results… but they forgot to check on the basics.

This is Mistake #6 in my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them. If you’d like to read about all seven, click the link at the bottom of this post and I’ll send you a copy.

As you get ready to launch a campaign, you need to take some time and check your sales funnel.

·        Is the phone number correct in your ad? Pick up the phone and dial it.

·        Do you have people in place to answer the phone or check the web inquiries? Have your ad rep make an inquiry and see how quickly someone responds.

·        Is someone responsible for following up each lead in a timely fashion? Make sure that person is held accountable.

·        Do the links work on your web site? Click on them!

·        Do your people know what’s in the commercial? Are you sure? Gather the staff together and play the ad for them before it hits the air.

·        Is the featured product in stock, on display, and marked at the correct price? Go through the store and check.

A good ad campaign with poor follow-up is money wasted.

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Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

A Couple of Reasons Your Advertising Isn’t Working

These come courtesy of Roy Williams’ Monday Morning Memo, this week entitled “Blind Spots”. Just two points to consider — read the whole thing here.

 2. reputation.
Consider the people who don’t buy from you. Are they buying elsewhere because they haven’t heard about your company, or is it because they have? I’ve never met a business owner willing to believe their company had a bad reputation…
 

 7. media myths.
Are you anxious to find a more effective media? If so, you’ve got really bad ads. I’ve never seen a company fail because they were using the wrong media or reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen thousands fail because they were saying the wrong things. A powerful message will produce results in any media.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.