3 Strategic Considerations for Your Website

PROSAR Blog on Effective Websites Stylish image of laptop with Effective on screen

When we ask, “Is your website part of your marketing plan?”, most organizations affirm that, indeed, their website is an important part of their overall marketing. But often, they’re wrong.

Many websites are simply an online brochure with little more than some background and a listing of services/products offered. Oh, and a Contact Us page with a form inviting people to “Contact us!” That isn’t marketing, it is informing. Information isn’t a bad thing, but on its own it’s rather passive and unproductive.

The goal of marketing is to effectively communicate with a target market to align perceptions and reinforce or change behavior. ­Essentially, if you say the right thing in the right way to the right people at the right time — you should see some positive result. What results are you getting from your website?

With the great functionality available online, websites are an opportunity to do so much more than simply inform. By presenting information in engaging ways and using marketing automation tactics to build relationships, your website can complement and contribute to your marketing plan. To help make your website an active part of your marketing initiatives, consider the following suggestions.

 

Provide Content with Context

Go beyond simply presenting facts. Certainly, you should be factual and include details, but also provide context to make it relevant to your main audience. Why should they care, what’s in it for them? Marketers learn that Features explain what something does, while Benefits describe why it matters to the user. Then they can internalize and personalize material, making them more likely to act on your information.

Regardless of what your organization does, you’re selling something: products, services, memberships, ideas, etc. — there is a persuasive purpose for your website. Making your content meaningful to the user and helping them visualize how it makes their life better or easier, will have greater impact. Take advantage of your website to effectively position your organization and its message with persuasive and contextualized content. [Read more: 5 Reasons to Use Content Marketing]

 

Try to Interest and Engage

As you add relevant (and contextual) information, consider how to present it in an interesting manner. Infographics, animations, video, etc. make information more fun and often more memorable. People learn differently, so providing more than one way to interact with your information can improve the strength of your message.

Providing different formats also makes your information more shareable. Encouraging sharing and integrating your social media accounts with your content is a powerful conduit to reaching a larger audience and creating more meaningful ties.

Explore non-frivolous ways for the user to interact with your website. Polls, forms and other interactive online tools are important to gain information about your users and even start a dialogue. This can guide more effective communication, perhaps with dynamic content, and even lead to sales conversions. Use different and dynamic formats on your website to engage your audience. [Read more: Improve Conversions with Dynamic Landing Pages]

 

Create a Continuous Plan

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of ongoing improvement that North American businesses embraced in the 1980s. Some are still working at it (which is, after all, the point). It is a smart strategy to consider for your website, since your site is never “done.”

Most organizations realize the importance of keeping their website up-to-date and adding new content (including different media formats). Some companies go further and integrate promotions with emails and create new landing pages for each campaign, others track behaviour on their websites and make subtle changes to improve the user-experience or take advantage of high traffic pages.

Your website is a never-ending story, an evolving presentation that welcomes old and new visitors to drop in at any time. A plan that involves routine updating and analyzing, integrates communications and promotions, and facilitates the sales process, will maintain your website as an effective marketing tool.

It’s easy to treat your website as a constant, but that shouldn’t make it static. Ideally, it is constantly evolving and growing to better communicate with your target audiences and continue to provide the information and experience they are looking for. Consider and practice these three points; this process can reward you with business growth and loyalty. [Read more: Using Growth Driven Design to Make Existing Websites Perform]

The New Email Paradigm: Do More with Less

Header Image: Email Best Practices: Learn the tips to improve your email skills

As more companies adopt marketing automation tactics, you might expect that they are sending more emails; not if they’re doing it right. Some marketing automation software solutions have email engagement tools that enable better targeting and more effective email marketing. Not only does this improve your success and increase your ROI, but it also helps to maintain a good sender record.

The objective is to send relevant information and offers to those who will be most appreciative; and now there are more tools to hone that implementation. For example, SharpSpring introduced engagement-based monitoring and suppression tools late last summer. It assigns a score (from 0 to 16) to contacts, and that score changes automatically depending upon a contact’s actions (or inaction) with respect to your emails, forms, website and social media. If a contact reduces to a 0 score, they are deemed to be unengaged and are prevented from receiving emails. Their score will be automatically increased if they send you an email, visit your website, submit a form or download content. May sound harsh when many organizations want to get their information in front of as many people as possible, but this strategy has your success as its focus.

Inbound Marketing is More than a Trend

The genesis of inbound and automated marketing was the realization that interrupting prospects and trying to force their attention was becoming ineffective. Additionally, prospects are tired of receiving what they perceive as junk, and many countries have regulations in place to back them up. Engagement tools are an evolution along the inbound path, respecting prospects and helping you to determine who is interested in your information and who is at risk of becoming unengaged. (A comprehensive strategy would include campaigns to nurture those contacts and improve engagement where possible.)

Although it may seem counterintuitive, smart email suppression makes for more successful campaigns. To get a sense of how effective smart email suppression is, SharpSpring studied emails sent by 5,000 of their clients. Their analysis was done three months after they implemented engagement tools and automated suppression controls. It compared the month of September 2017 with September 2016. They found that the overall number of emails sent dropped by 30 million. However, as the graph below shows, both opens and clicks increased — dramatically fewer emails sent, but more opens and clicks generated.

Fewer Emails Delivered – Higher Engagement

To further illustrate the impact of strategically suppressed email delivery, the following chart normalizes the results for 1,000 email contacts (from this same study). The engagement tools allowed only 667 emails to be sent, but those emails generated more opens and clicks.

Targeting Engaged Prospects Improves Success

Suppressing Emails is Respectful, and Good Business

Another major benefit to employing email suppression is maintaining a good sender status. Big ISPs (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo) have included engagement in their algorithms for designating email as Junk or Spam. Keeping your delivery rate high with email suppression helps to maintain a good sender status, facilitating favourable delivery by the major ISPs. The best designed emails are worthless if they don’t make it to recipients’ inbox. The example shown in the chart above eliminated the possibility of any of the 333 unengaged prospects to become annoyed, and possibly file a spam complaint.

As you’d expect, email marketing for most organizations involves e-newsletters, promotional offers and simple auto-responders. An obvious starting point, but certainly not sufficient to sustain a highly engaged database. These email initiatives should form part of a larger strategy that includes content of interest and meaningful ways for prospects to engage with you. (Remember, inbound marketing focuses on earning a prospects interest and trust, so using email to simplu push out your promotions is not a sustainable model.) You should start with a thorough understanding of your prospects and customers, analyzing the journey they take in dealing with you, and determining where, how and when you could most effectively communicate with them.

You’ll reap greater rewards by using a more strategic approach to your email campaigns, ideally integrated with structured automated marketing tactics. In addition to email suppression, companies striving for best practices are also using personas, buying cycles, behavioural and list segmenting, dynamic content, and planned workflows to nurture and engage their audience.

Like most business people, you are probably receiving more emails overall, your own experience will support the importance of understanding prospects and delivering the content and experience that will keep them engaged. (Click here for Email Best Practices download.)

It’s worth noting that with the increasing use of content and emails as a distribution channel, there is a corresponding increase in unsolicited emails. It is important to respect CASL legislation in Canada. Not only because it’s the law and good business etiquette, but dumping a bunch of emails on people who likely have no interest in your services is not a good growth strategy.

 

Click to download Email Best Practices Whitepaper

Understanding the Branding – Marketing – Advertising – Sales Relationship

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“It should be simple,” he lamented, “just help me sell more.” Ultimately, that is what most small- to medium-sized business owners want: increased sales. However, increasing sales over a longer period in a sustainable manner to help a business grow to the next level is anything but simple. It requires an understanding of branding, marketing, advertising and sales; and how they work together. The following is a brief overview of how I see it working at the top level, without delving into the nitty gritty of conducting and applying research, tactics, etc.

Overall, your marketing communications strategy should represent the philosophy of your corporate culture, it’s raison d’etre. Starting at your brand level, marketing guides your organization’s communications, behaviour and actions of all staff — it is the essence of your organization. This may seem rather esoteric, but it is fundamental to truly understanding the role of marketing and of branding; which are often mistakenly lumped in with advertising and sales. And, that’s understandable, they weave together rather intimately.

Branding is focused on creating an appropriate image for, and experience with, your organization and positively positioning your organization in your audience’s mind.

Marketing is primarily concerned with strategically communicating your service/product features and benefits, in a strategic manner that amplifies your brand. Marketing should ultimately be focused on satisfying customer needs (and addressing pain points), which should lead to greater sales. But it is not necessarily a linear relation.

Advertising, however, has a direct relationship with sales. If you run an effective ad campaign in your local paper or on Facebook, you can typically rely on an immediate and commensurate bump in sales. Advertising involves using broadcast media to persuasively inform your targeted audience of your product/service’s features and benefits, giving them a reason to buy… now.

Sales is more than the end result. It incorporates the frontline, efforts (human or digital) to assist your audience in making the buying decision. Whether you have counter staff and retail clerks on-site, or stylish infographics and pop-up incentives online, a strategic frontline is a major factor in nurturing and closing sales.

Clear? If it is, consider that branding guidelines should inform your marketing, advertising and sales initiatives to ensure that every touchpoint helps to properly position your organization. An aspect of marketing should be involved in advertising and sales to hone your message appropriately for your targeted audience (and segments therein). Facets of advertising can, and often should, be included in marketing initiatives. The ultimate sale is often envisioned and sometimes explicitly included early in the marketing process (remember your ABCs: Always Be Closing).

Analytics can help to see through the confusion and determine the success of specific initiatives. Especially online, you can track all manner of marketing and sales initiatives to better understand how and when your audience engaged, or didn’t. And automated marketing solutions can help you use this information to nurture prospects through to a sale and even customer loyalty. However, part of marketing relies on an intuitive understanding of the rather convoluted marketing process.

Back to our lamenting business owner: he’s right that the underlying objective of the marketing and sales process is simple: to differentiate your organization and position it positively to your main audience. The implementation is the tricky part — just communicate the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. It’s not easy being right all of the time, but the alternative is relying on luck, and we all know that luck runs out.

Your target audience is not forced to do business with you, people have choice — often abundant choice. This makes marketing crucial to any organization seeking to be successful. Strategic marketing differentiates your organization from others and effectively communicates the features and benefits you offer. A good marketing plan, effectively implemented will get it right most of the time.

Step 1: Personalise…

You have been choosing the right settings to target your ads to your chosen audience, you have been buying the right keywords to reach the right people when doing a search and you have been listening to your customers’ feedback on social media. So how does that all apply to your interactions on LinkedIn?

Cork, Ireland

Well, LinkedIn advertising will get people to your page or website to learn more about your company, but personalization will remain the key to your success with individuals. Indeed, although it might seem old school, LinkedIn is based on the power of one’s network and the relationships that you, as a member, can build and maintain. After all, people still buy from people! In order to understand how to better tailor your approach via a connection request, a message or an InMail, let’s take a look at the meaning behind the word:

 

Personalize

Person – nalize

Person – analyze

 

Priority #1: Person

Your priority should always be the person you wish to address. On LinkedIn, it could be a connection, a prospect, a longtime customer, a potential new provider, etc. Every opportunity is a good one to connect. In order to stand out, you need to personalize your approach based on what you know about the person in front of you (virtually) online. Make it about them! Take an interest in who they are: look at their profile, their social media activity, recent posts or articles that they shared, and see what you have in common, or how you might be able to help each other. Remember that the main focus of any communication should be your customer or potential new customer and what they are interested in or how your product or service can help them improve their business, their lifestyle, their way of working or doing something in particular. Think of questions that are relevant to them.

The idea is that you want to get them talking. You want to give them a reason to answer your message, pick up the phone when you call or engage in conversation when they meet with you, and that reason is that you took an interest in what they do.

To do so, keep this in mind when writing to them on LinkedIn:

  • The first few sentences of a message should be about your prospect: What did you find interesting in their profile? What recent article that they shared made you want to write to them? What makes them so interesting?
  • Next, you should be letting them know who you are and how you could be of value to them. Keep this short!
  • Tell them in a sentence or two, why are you reaching out to them, give your message a purpose.
  • Finally, give them a call to action, ask them a question or give them a possible time to talk and discuss. Most people will answer when asked a question.

 

Priority #2: Analyze

Now, in the word personalize, you see the basis of the word analyze. The idea is that once you get them talking, you need to listen to what they have to say. Ask questions, either in written form, or verbally if you are on the phone with them, and take an interest. The more that someone reveals to you, the better you will be able to personalize your offer to their needs. You may have only one product, or you may have an array of products, but you still need to provide a solution to a problem that your customer is experiencing. And this information does not tend to be offered up easily as it might show a sign of weakness or an opportunity for their competition. Hence, your objective is to build a relationship with your customer and inspire trust.

Be patient. You might need more than one conversation to be in a position to make an offer, you will also need to analyze their behavior to determine their willingness to move forward with you towards a purchase or an investment. This is where the relationship part kicks in. LinkedIn will help you find the right contacts and connect with them, but you will need to build the professional relationship and maintain it until your prospect is ready to buy. Keep in touch online by connecting with them, sharing content and staying top of mind until it is the right time for them to call you back!

 

Finally, make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date, pleasing and well branded for your prospects. Indeed, a prospect’s first action is typically to look you up online. We will discuss the LinkedIn profile further in upcoming posts, but in the meantime, if you need any help getting started, just reach out to your PROSAR Strategist today!

How Consistency Improves Your Branding – 5 ways to help your brand reach its potential

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The purpose of branding is to go beyond simply creating awareness, with the intention of nurturing a trusting and loyal relationship. It’s a comprehensive undertaking that requires consistent use of your branded identity, in all of its forms. It’s no easy task to maintain consistency among myriad print, digital and broadcast touchpoints: letterhead, business cards, ads, billboards, brochures, website, blogs, social media accounts, emails, ebooks, posts, videos, TV, radio… Reputation manifests in everything that represents your organization, including the experience of dealing with your organization.

In our ever-changing digital world and increasing communication channels, consistency is an increasingly critical aspect in successfully establishing a trusted and sought-after product, service or organization. This article focuses on the role that consistency plays in successful branding. Here are five important considerations that relate to your brand consistency, and your ability to build a strong brand.

 

  1. Start from the Heart

It all stems from your mission, vision, value statement unique selling proposition, any guiding principles for your organization. Ensure that they are authentic and aligned. A thorough understanding of what drives your organization and what it has to offer is the starting point. Your brand is the essence of what your market thinks of your organization; so consider what it is destined achieve, and what its brand should represent.

A full appreciation of your target market, their expectations and desires is also key. In order to be successful, you’ll need a receptive market; resonating with your audience paves the way to acceptance. Essentially, your brand should relate directly and explicitly to the belief system of your organization and that of your market.

  1. Set the Foundation

Even small companies can find it difficult to ensure that everyone treats branding aspects in a consistent manner. Add to the mix associates, freelancers, consultants, suppliers, advertisers, etc. and the task of maintaining a common front becomes rather formidable. Create a Branding Style Guide (this is often done when a new Corporate ID is created).

A branding style guide doesn’t need to be a monumental tome with excessive rules and regulations, but should cover all typical print, digital and broadcast uses. It should also be reviewed and updated periodically (at least every 3 years) to ensure it is relevant to the media and technology you and your industry are using.

It identifies all items used in presenting your organization and sets guidelines for their use. Graphic and presentation components typically include logos, icons, colours, fonts, specific photos and illustrations, etc. People have a strong and lasting connection with graphics and colours, which explains the importance placed on logos and their use.

Content components incorporate tagline, slogan, lexicon, tone, etc. What you say and how you say it can provoke tremendous impact and evoke strong emotion. In order for your audience to learn to trust your organization, they need to identify with what you have to say. The vocabulary used and tone of corporate content can help to position your organization as genuine, knowledgeable, caring, expert, as a go-to source that can be relied upon. Note that having a consistent corporate tone doesn’t mean that all your content needs to sound the same. Individual voices and characters within your organization add depth and can help to attract targeted segments or personas.

  1. Plan the Journey

Knowing where you came from and where you want to go makes it more likely that you’ll actually get there. To keep you, and the rest of your team, on track, plan how content and graphic identifiers will be used to build and support your brand. How will it get in front of your target market? What format will it take? When? Use an Editorial Calendar to ensure strategic, relevant and scheduled content.

Content generation provides many options (web pages, blogs, emails, social posts, ebooks, brochures, whitepapers, etc.) and is an influential means of attracting and reaching out to your audience. Consistency in template designs as well as voice/tone help build a strong foundation for your brand (keep that style guide close at hand!).

An editorial calendar maps out what content will be written, by whom, how it will be published, and when. It allows a strategic approach (ensuring consistency in both frequency and focus) and overview to ensure you are creating content that is of value to your audience as well as supporting your brand.

Chose your social media carefully, there are a lot of platforms, and just because they are cool or popular doesn’t mean it is a good fit for your organization. Also, consider the resources required to maintain an active and strategic presence.

  1. All Aboard

Having the components, a guide and a plan put you ahead of most companies. But to make it all work successfully you need buy-in from your organization. Your brand may not be a strong rallying force of motivation (it should be!), but it must be embraced by all. The entire organization needs to understand and support your branding initiatives.

In order for your team to be part of the successful implementation of your branding plan, they’ll need access to info and files. All graphic components, the branding style guide and editorial calendar should be easily accessible to anyone who will be publishing and presenting on behalf of your organization.

  1. Stay the Course

A brand strategy requires ongoing monitoring and attention. It’s part policing and part propping. You need to ensure that your team is adhering to the style guide and maintaining the image and voice to properly position your organization. You’ll also want to identify where the brand is weak and might require additional support.

Don’t be overzealous or near-sighted in your regulation. In these fluid times, acknowledge that things change and your brand strategy and implementation will need to evolve to stay current and relevant.

Do you have any thoughts on brand consistency or other considerations that could be added to this list?

Image Credit: mindscanner / gettyimages

3 Considerations to Improve Marketing and Sales

Align your marketing strategy and sales development for greater success.

Sales is an integral aspect of any organization: manufacturers, service providers, member-driven associations, small business, bureaucratic enterprises… All organizations rely on a steady source of revenue to survive and grow. It is understood that marketing is an important aspect of creating awareness, positioning a brand and essentially creating a positive environment for sales to occur. Unfortunately, how marketing strategy and sales development successfully work together is often not fully considered.

The relationship between marketing and sales has long been a troubled one. Whereas they should be working together in synergy with the common goal of securing relationships to strengthen the organization, they are often actively at odds with each other, oblivious to each other, or embroiled in a cold war of secrecy and subterfuge.

The digitization of the business world and its business development processes has helped bring these two disciplines closer, and many software tools approach the two coherently. However, many organizations still seem to cling to the old ideology that promotes two separate silos with little connection.

To reap the rewards of harmonized marketing and sales efforts, keep the following three aspects in mind.

 

Marketing and Sales are Distinct Functions

Although I am stressing the importance of integrating them, it’s important to appreciate that marketing and sales have different functions. One focuses on creating awareness, positioning a brand and developing interest. The other is tasked with capitalizing on that interest and closing the deal. Some feel that marketing spends money and sales makes money. Admittedly, it takes resources to mount a successful marketing campaign, but marketing should be a strategic investment. (And, it is getting easier to monitor and track your ROI.)

The difference in approach may often be subtle, but worth respecting. Trying to sell to new leads will probably annoy and scare them away; whereas a well nurtured lead may always be a prospect unless you provide a timely and appropriate buying opportunity. Understanding the difference between the two disciplines guides the role each should play and how they can successfully work together to improve your business development efforts.

 

Marketing and Sales Should be Aligned

Although marketing and sales are distinct, they should not be isolated from each other. The old corporate structure had separate departments, often with little communication between the two. Internally it was more of a competition as to which department was most valuable to the organization. Fiefdoms and bureaucracy may have been affordable then, but with leaner teams and higher expectations in today’s fast-paced and cost-efficient business world, it is essential to have an aligned and harmonious process that attracts leads and nurtures them to be satisfied customers.

To align your marketing strategy and sales efforts, it makes sense to work backwards. Determining your sales goals and forecasted breakdown is a good way to start. From their you can better identify your target audiences and flesh out buyer personas. Understanding who you will be selling to provides a good foundation for determining your marketing strategy. Where and how will you engage your audiences, what are they interested in, how will you effectively communicate your advantages and benefits, what aspects of your brand will resonate with them… Key marketing decisions that will guide your content and creative start with considering the final sale.

Structuring how leads transition from marketing to sales, with a communication/feedback loop, will allow a seamless journey for your prospects and returning customers. There are many good software tools that assist you in structuring, implementing and monitoring the process. Many (e.g. SharpSpring) help you to automate the process and identify opportunities — making the process itself an active part of the solution.

 

Integrate Marketing strategy and Sales Plan

You’re no doubt aware that a smart strategy with SMART goals is a smart way to proceed — plan your work, then work your plan. Most companies have a sales plan, it may simply be targets, but they at least have a clear objective to aim for. Many SMEs have a budget for marketing, but fail to have a detailed marketing plan. And I’d wager that an exceptionally small minority actually have an integrated sales and marketing plan. So, how is an organization expected to develop sales and grow with little or no structured guidance?

Sustained growth is achieved and maintained with goals, processes and tactics in place. Defining the strategy and ongoing tactics to reach your goals, and then putting the processes in place is what separates successful companies. Going the extra step to create a joint marketing and sales process will distinguish you even further.

The simple solution to growth is marketing strategy and sales working in harmony with a coherent strategy. The successful implementation is not so simple — it requires a good deal of knowledge and a lot of work, on a consistent and ongoing basis.

Branding for a multilingual market

 

Being aware of your audience is one of the key aspects to successful branding. And, in today’s ever-changing market base, which has become so diverse, we can no longer expect that a one-tier cultural brand marketing approach will effectively connect throughout. In fact, without even realizing it, you may be ignoring an entire group of clients.

In 1969, leading car manufacturer Chevrolet came out with a new car, the Chevy Nova. There was one tiny problem: “no va,” in Spanish, literally translates to “it doesn’t work.” No surprise here, for many Spanish communities this came across as a joke and stopped people from considering buying it.

Obviously, it’s not just about having a cute brand name or slogan but you need to check how a more diverse population is going to react to it. This is where an inclusive approach to branding comes in. Brands have an opportunity to create meaningful connections with clients, and make clients feel welcome.

As we’ve said in one of our earlier blogs, “branding is an essential part of a marketing strategy, which is where it should all begin.” (I Have a Website, Why do I Need Branding?). If you have a business that caters to a multilingual demographic then inclusive branding should be fully considered from the start.

What can happen when your company makes additional efforts to relate to a specific community? Let’s take Starbucks as an example. Starbucks coffee shops across the country have recently started to teach their employees basic American Sign Language and some stores have even enabled drive-through webcam software so that deaf people can place an order. Using an inclusive approach with language, Starbucks’ unique branding approach has managed to successfully win over an entire community.   

Including specific audiences opens more doors

No matter what language you speak or how well established your business is, you will benefit by focusing your efforts and expanding your customer base. Fostering a multilingual inclusive approach to your branding and appealing to a new audience has great advantages.

It is critical to know your audience and to choose which area of brand marketing you want to focus on. Using language correctly attracts your market and engages them so they are ready to listen and will actually hear your message. Going further, once you have their ear use the language effectively to convey your messages in a way that they will understand. Avoid any mistakes or pitfalls that could actually cause rejection or harm your brand.

Poorly constructed brand names, slogans and badly written text slam the door on the business of some clients

So, you have a chosen a brand name that expresses the value of your organization, your client base trusts your brand and believes in what you stand for.  Pay close attention to the language you use, this will reinforce and maintain your brand positioning. Firstly, if your brand has a negative image you may consider changing your company name and look, if you do, check the spelling and pronunciation in the languages of your target audience. And secondly, make sure that it does not have any silly or negative connotations.  

Here’s a prime example, when Coca-Cola introduced their brand to China, it was at first pronounced “ke-kou-ke-la,” which means “bite the wax tadpole.”  Even coming from a huge conglomerate that sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?

When you have an established brand name, slogans/taglines are good way to market your brand to diverse groups. Be sure to adapt your slogan rather than straight translation. It may, at first, seem smart to hire a translator, yes and make sure that your translator knows your target cultures and market goals. That is why your best approach may be to pick a combination team with translators and marketers. A good marketing team shows respect to the client by having a knack for languages, target cultures, and is aware of today’s diverse market. Whatever you do, do not simply use translation software. This seems obvious, but many prospective clients have been lost that way.

Photo By: CreativaImages/gettyimages

3 Considerations for Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla soldier with thumbs up and sign that says Going Guerilla PROSAR.

We deal with a lot of small and medium sized businesses, and many are looking for the magic rocket that will quickly propel them to recognition, fame and fortune. They’ve heard of some fantastic event or promotion that made a start-up company a household name and driven 500% growth, and they want that. Who wouldn’t? Here are three important questions to ask when considering guerilla marketing.

 

How Does it Fit Into Your Marketing Plan?

Unfortunately, creating an Internet meme or popular guerilla marketing tactic is not likely; and not a realistic goal on its own. I certainly don’t underestimate the potential power of such a tactic, but the chance of being successful is remote… really, really remote. Before you start playing the marketing lottery, I suggest you invest in a good strategic plan. It sounds boring in comparison to a viral video or flash event, but it will focus your marketing efforts on tactics that will steadily move your company forward.

The advantage of a plan is that, well, its planned. It takes into consideration your current position, resources, your goals and where you want the company to be down the road. Growing your business successfully relies on planning your route to get there, and a strong brand [For more on Branding, check out: I Have a Website, Why Do I Need Branding?; Is Your Brand Relevant?] with structured marketing will accelerate that. True, some wild guerilla marketing would add an octane boost, but without the plan and marketing foundation, you might find yourself out of gas and coasting to the side of the road just as fast.

The benefits of a good marketing plan are numerous:

  • Build or support your brand
  • Clearly communicate what you stand for
  • Expand your market
  • Engage new audiences
  • Support sales goals
  • Improve the user-experience of dealing with your organization
  • Strengthen relationships with customers and leads
  • Provide measurable results to keep you on track

These are all important aspects in building a strong marketing foundation for your company. They allow you to project a professional image and provide targeted, clear communication to engage with your audience. They help customers to feel good about dealing with you and prompts referrals. They position your organization for growth and stability. And, they just might deliver a run-away successful tactic in the process.

 

How Much Can You Invest in Guerilla Marketing?

It may seem like success just happens miraculously, and all it took was a simple video. That can happen, but when it does it is a fluke. And, since no strategy is built around it, it is quickly forgotten when the next wave of cool videos and memes flow along the Internet current. Hard to ride the wave if you aren’t prepared for it.

On the other hand, companies have wasted large budgets on carefully crafted, wittily worded, and slickly sequenced videos and “impromptu” events that have gone no where. So budget alone does not determine the likelihood of success. Other than luck, the most important aspects are strategy and understanding. Strategy is main thrust of this article; understanding relates to your audience, social and societal considerations, the chosen media and communication. It’s a lot to understand and requires a team to gather the intelligence, decipher its relevance, integrate this knowledge and align it with your strategy and goals, design, develop and implement the magical event/video/meme that goes viral. Fortunately, both strategy and understanding are inherent in a good marketing plan.

It is a significant commitment of people, process and time, so don’t waste resources on trying to develop the rocket that will propel your brand to stardom, until you have your growth planned and a marketing strategy to get you there. It’s certainly possible that one of your planned and measured tactics designed to move you further along your structured marketing plan may go viral. And it makes sense to try to create such a tactic — as long as it is part of comprehensive plan and budget.

 

Besides Popularity, What is the Goal?

So, how would you leverage the popularity garnered from a run-away viral hit? Would it dovetail into your existing plan, or would you need new online workflows (landing pages, forms email campaigns, etc.), sales team strategy, PR campaigns, etc., to take advantage of this boost. If you’re fortunate enough to find success, don’t let it plummet away from you.

Be ready to respond promptly and positively. Popularity is wonderful, but usually fleeting. You’ll need to connect it strategically to your brand, processes and sales pipeline to successfully sustain your growth efforts. Again, it’s that boring plan that truly propels you to success, otherwise you simply have a really cool video that everyone watched for three days.

Planning is the key to business and marketing success. The better prepared you are, the more in-tune you are with your audience, media and environment in which you play, the more likely you will succeed. This gives you a strong foundation for sustainable growth, and makes it even more likely that a guerilla marketing tactic could work for you. But if it doesn’t, your organization is still progressing towards achieving its goals.

Guerilla soldier with thumbs up and sign that says Going Guerilla PROSAR.

Photo Credit: MichealJay/gettyimages.com

Manage Sales Costs With Marketing

Paying Travel Expenses

Sales calls fact – it’s damn hard to get in to see anybody these days.

 

I recently spoke to a business owner about sales travel. He replied that his sales people were travelling less these days. It’s hard to get suspects and prospects to commit to appointments. Past customers are not interested in the latest and greatest unless they actually need something. Factor in the high cost of travel and the sales’ regular road trips are often not viable.

 

Paying Travel Expenses
Gettyimages/ Ridofranz

Willie Loman would die an early death in today’s markets.

 

Still, business relies on a constant supply of new customers and new business. Although the specifics vary by business and industry, the cost of acquiring new customers is multiple times the cost of retaining customers. There are resources and costs required in both efforts.

 

Business owners and sales managers have a dilemma. How to manage resources effectively between acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers?

 

Marketing can help with managing the costs of both obtaining new customers and keeping existing ones.

 

In many cases, a majority of sales come from existing customers. The satisfaction of existing customers and ongoing “staying in touch” are obviously very important in retaining customers.

 

Focus on acquiring new customers is equally important in keeping the sales pipeline full and fuelling company growth.

 

Marketing Qualified Leads

 

One aspect of marketing is to cast a wide net for new business opportunities.

 

Marketing can do much of the ”leg work” of qualifying leads before the expense of sales people are required. Marketing can reach many in an instant, much faster than even your speediest inside sales star or your heartiest cold caller.

 

The Internet has made marketing more focused and effective by allowing for very specific targeting, yet on a broad scale.

 

Marketing can filter the wide catch of prospects into those that you actually have a chance of doing business with. Filters like company size, geo location, and simple questions determining needs can qualify prospects before assigning to sales.

 

Marketing to Existing Customers

 

Another aspect of marketing is retaining existing customers and loyalty.

 

There is a lot of work to satisfying customers and showing the appreciation that you really care about them. It’s delicate staying in touch with people while respecting their reluctance to talk to sales people when not they are not in shopping mode. Sales people often feel they are banging their heads against a wall.

 

The Internet plays a large role in marketing effectiveness. Engagement is the key and in today’s world often public. The public nature of social media, reviews, and commentary is well serviced by the marketing dept. This takes some of the heat off of sales staff in not getting mired down in trying to do everything for existing customers.

 

Marketing techniques and marketing automation service existing customers until they are ready for sales assistance. Again, “leg work” is provided until valuable sales people need to get involved.

 

Managing Sales Costs

 

Having marketing help manage sales costs can make a big difference in profits:

 

  • Marketing can bring down the costs of acquiring new customers by qualifying suspects into prospects. Marketing qualified leads can be passed on to sales. Sales can then do what they are hired to do – work with legitimate prospects and close them.

 

  • Marketing can bring down the costs of customer retention by delivering consistent messaging and managing customer engagement. Satisfied customers become repeat customers. The lifetime value of repeat customers should not be underestimated.

 

Managing sales costs in today’s markets is a challenge. Marketing can help by doing the “leg work” of getting your message out in the widest distribution possible. Marketing qualifies the interest generated to ensure precious sales staff only focus on potential opportunities. Marketing maintains the message that your customers are important and your organization is always a part of the conversation.

 

 

Is Guerrilla Marketing Still an Option for Smaller Companies?

Guerrilla marketing can be a surprisingly effective means of gaining awareness and strong brand positioning. The benefits of a successful campaign or event include:

  • Position your brand with impact
  • Gain instant awareness, hopefully even go viral
  • Motivate staff and encourage a cohesive team
  • Strengthen recruitment and attract like-minded candidates

So the allure is obvious, but is guerrilla marketing still within the arsenal of small and medium-sized business?

From Wikipedia: The term “guerrilla marketing” is traced to guerrilla warfare, which employs atypical tactics to achieve an objective. In 1984, the term guerrilla marketing was introduced by Leo Burnett’s creative director Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Advertising.

Levinson was a brilliant marketer, and perhaps his interest in such tactics stems from the late 1960s with John Cleese appearing in a bikini saying “And now for something completely different.” Cleese turned a typical and boring “And now a message from our sponsors” message on its head with drama and comedy. In three seconds he cut through both the noise and monotony to earn your rapt attention. (Marketers can learn a lot from watching Monty Python.)

But guerrilla marketing is not simply shock and/or awe, there needs to be a strategic intent. On YouTube, there is a limitless supply of testosterone addled young males willing to do stupid stunts à la Jackass. Slapping a corporate T-shirt on someone as they ride a bicycle off a 20’ cliff into a children’s pool filled with Jello has limited value. The key consideration is not just being noticed, but associating your brand with a positive experience or outcome. Simply getting people’s attention isn’t branding.

Here is a smart example of positioning a brand or concept; who wouldn’t want to check out the Copenhagen Zoo after seeing this bus in downtown Copenhagen? Check out creativeguerrillamarketing.com for many examples of effective, fun and incredible in-your-face and experiential marketing.

Copenhagen_Zoo_Guerrilla_Marketing.jpg

 

By definition, guerrilla marketing employs atypical tactics. And may seem more difficult to successfully pull off a stunt today, with the public’s sense of awe dulled by years of reality television and YouTube binge watching, but some still rise to the challenge.

Remember when flash mobs were popular? Seemingly, out of nowhere strangers started dancing and joining a choreographed number. The public was typically mesmerized and overcome with joy at having stumbled into a Bollywood moment. Marketers and corporations were quick to see their value and dreamed of long-lasting brand attention with viral video play. Originally associated with low cost and a one-time or short-lived event, once corporations jumped on the band wagon these attributes went by the way-side — big budgets, slick production and involved campaigns replaced sweat equity.

Planning and successfully implementing guerrilla marketing is not easy It requires an out of the box or novel idea, great creative and coordination, superior planning and logistics… a truly talented team is required, and the finances to pay for it. But, if you have the resources and you can pull it off, the effect can be tremendous.

Perhaps Coke launched the biggest guerrilla marketing blitz yet with their campaign for Coke Zero, which (uncharacteristically for guerrilla marketing) uses virtually all forms of advertising (albeit interactively). A very sophisticated, technologically advanced, and expensive marketing campaign that is most definitely unexpected. (Check out their YouTube overview.)

These days, with higher public expectations, and the need to support with a large media buy and significant logistics to navigate, it seems that only large corporations have the financial strength to play with the guerrillas. Perhaps smaller firms can take advantage of social media to even the playing field a bit, and the PROSAR team will explore that in a future blog article. For now, what are your thoughts on the use of guerrilla marketing by smaller companies, or better yet, do you have an example of how it has worked for your company?