Is Your Business Blooming?

It’s May. Is your business blooming?

Photo by Markusram CC BY-ND 2.0

Back in December, the Underwire Newsletter posed 3 questions related to business planning for 2011. Now it is time to see how things are going.

Did you work out how to answer yes to the 3 big questions?

1. Would you say your company is becoming more effective at meeting customer needs?
2. Have you recently implemented a large-scale innovative campaign or several small-scale innovative pilot projects?
3. Are you collaborating more with others outside your firm?

The most successful businesses we work with at Boxcar Marketing are those who do a comprehensive business review annually, as well as quarterly reviews that focus on a specific aspect of the strategy, such as a Customer Review, an Innovation Review, or a Partnership Review.

A useful planning cycle may look like this:

Setting aside time throughout the year to revisit the plan is an important factor in keeping your business on track.

At Boxcar Marketing, we are fans of the Plan-Do-Study-Act Model.

Before we try to solve a problem, we define it. Before we try to change a process, we understand it. Before we make any changes, we determine the most important issue or the issue having the biggest impact on the business. And then we get started. The process looks like this:

Plan
Involve team members affected by potential changes. Determine what data will be collected (how and when). Agree upon who will study the data and suggest recommendations. Plan a test.

Do
Try out the theory.

Study
Analyze the results.

Act
Based on the results, maintain the plan, modify the plan or add to the plan. i.e., go back to Step 1: Plan

When our small changes are successful, we solidify those changes by implementing them at a wider level, establishing systems to support the changes, or identifying ways in which further improvements can be made. In this case, process makes perfect!

How To Develop an Online Marketing Strategy: The 7-Sentence Marketing Plan

An online marketing strategy should be at the core of your online marketing and social media marketing activities. Guerrilla Consulting’s 7 Sentence Marketing Plan is an easy and effective method that focuses your strategy.

A 7-Sentence Marketing Plan answers the following questions:

• Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing?
• Sentence 2: How will you accomplish your purpose?
• Sentence 3: Who is your target market?
• Sentence 4: What is your niche in the marketplace?
• Sentence 5: What tools and tactics will you use to carry out your marketing?
• Sentence 6: What is your business identity?
• Sentence 7: How will you measure success and allocate time and budget?

Here’s the 7-Sentence Marketing Plan in further detail. You can use this template to create your own marketing strategy.

1. The purpose of our marketing is:
a. What are your goals? (Check those that apply OR add your own goals)

• Reach a new audience
• Promote an event
• Build excitement prior to event
• Get people to take a particular action (contest entries, voting, download file, buy, sign-up)
• Draw traffic to a particular URL
• Build your email list
• Build a community around an event/topic
• Get press coverage
• Get sales

b. Identify the top 3 goals. Tailor them to be specific to your client/project. Be as specific as possible (i.e, Drive people to FB page who will enter the contest and Like the page.)

2. How will you accomplish your goals?

• What are you going to do? (i.e, set up a Facebook page to host the contest, execute an outreach campaign by contacting bloggers and influencers…)

3. Client’s target audience (or audiences) is:

• Who are the people you want to reach?
• Create personas for them: what kind of people are they, characteristics, what social media channels do they use, how do they engage online? (see Forrester’s engagement ladder for how people participate online).

4. Client’s niche in the marketplace is:
Use S.P.H.E.R.E. acronym: (for more on S.P.H.E.R.E. read What Takes It Run a Successful Contest)

• So What:  Why does your client’s product/service matter? What makes your client different from its competitors? (list competitors - name, URL) Why do consumers choose your client over someone else?
• Personality: What are the adjectives that describe your client’s brand?
• Hook: What’s your client’s story angle? Use phrases that are easy to remember to helps to spread your client’s story via word of mouth.
• Ego: Who does your client need to engage with? Who can benefit from promoting the brand amongst their friends? Why do people want to engage with the brand?
• Relevancy: What is the relevancy between the audiences’ motivations and what your client is trying to do?
• Effort: What does your client need to do in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the campaign as well as after the campaign is finished?

5. Marketing tools we plan to employ are:

• List all the possible marketing tools or tactics that could be used to meet your desired goals. Use a variety.
• Pick the ones that align with #1 - your business goals, marketing purpose.

6. The client’s business identity is:

• Describe in as few sentences or words as possible the feelings, voice and tone the company/brand evokes, and the brand attributes you want it to convey. (i.e. warmth, friendliness, reassurance, comfort, excitement, caring, honesty, humor, professionalism, intelligence, sophistication, reliability, and trustworthiness).

7. We plan to measure success and allocate time and budget by:

• Align this sentence with #1 and #5 - looking at your goals how will you measure the effectiveness of your tactics? List the key performance indicators (KPIs)
• How much time and money will your client devote specifically to social media?

 

Defining Your Target Audience with Personas

Personas are a common marketing and design tactic that help to focus your marketing campaign or project. They’re character sketches of individual audience members that define who the website, product or service is for in order to bring the user into the project development process. Personas help marketers visualize their audience and better understand their needs in relation to the campaign.

Christina Wodtke, a usability expert, explanations persona development in her book Information Architecture: Designing for the Web. She refers to persona development as “playing Barbies.”

Just like when you were five years old and played Barbies by creating imaginary lives for Barbie and Ken, creating personas is about creating make-believe lives for your audience members.

Ultimately, personas help to move you away from what the project team wants and towards what the persona wants. Instead of saying “I like the colour yellow, so we should use it on our homepage design” you can say “Bob will have trouble reading yellow text and we should choose a colour that makes it easiest for Bob to complete the task.”

The persona process that we’ve developed is built from Wodtke’s book, Information Architecture: Designing for the Web, “Chapter 6: From A to C by Way of B.”

Preferably, a project will have both primary personas - common user types that are important to the business success of the project - and secondary personas - user types that are very different from primary users but whose needs still need to be addressed for the success of the project. This helps to ensure that all user needs are outlined.

We recommend creating 3 primary personas - common user types that are important to the business success of the project - and 2 to 3 secondary personas - user types that are very different from primary users but whose needs still need to be addressed for the success of the project - for every project.

Ideally, you should start with audience research. Take a survey, talk to your fans on Facebook, find any way you can to get to know your target users.

Once you have your primary data, begin creating your personas by starting with the user’s name, demographics and psychographics. This should include age, gender, location, family life, likes and dislikes, and his or her location in the adoption curve (innovator, early adopter, early majority, or late majority).

Build on this to develop the user’s professional and personal background (including job title, job history, role in the company, leisure activities, and hobbies); a quote that encapsulates the persona’s attitude towards your product or service; internet or technical profile (that is, how often they use the web and how comfortable they are online); and their favourite websites (this gives you an idea of what types of design they’re comfortable with and how they are interacting online).

Build your persona out further by outlining his or her goals with I need / I want statements. Goals are the crux of your personas because they determine what needs your project or campaign must meet.

When developing persons, don’t skimp. Building personas takes time. When we develop personas we generally allot 2 to 4 hours development time for each persona and we do this knowing that investing time at this stage will save us time in the end. The more real your personas are, the easier it is to develop a successful project or campaign.

Once your personas have been developed look at your project or campaign from the perspective of your personas. How would Bob interact with your product? What paths would he take through your site? What is easy to do? What’s difficult? Can Bob achieve his goals?

Sample Persona

Ruth > Publisher

Basics: 50-something, female, publisher of a mid-size press. She is a publisher with a huge amount of industry experience. She handles all of the long-term planning for her company, controls the purse strings and has various departments reporting to her.

Ruth says she understands the online world but needs to be convinced of new ideas. She says she wants to see the numbers when asked to part with her money, but it’s realy about needing to see credible sources and something she can relate to before she can learn something new.

Professional and personal background:
Ruth has a wide range of interests both professionally and personally. She is interested in books, magazines, art, design, interior decorating, traveling and staying fit. She likes to lead the pack and make recommendations to friends and family. While she used to be an early adopter, she is now part of the early majority.

Quote:
I want to spend my money on proven methods that I understand and I can’t afford to jump at every new opportunity. I’ve been working in the industry for over thirty years and while I understand that things are changing, to me, a book is still a book.

Technical Background:
She thinks she understands the web but only uses it at a basic level. She has email, visits news and book websites, and is aware of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook but has never used them.

Ruth uses/enjoys the websites:

• http://www.touchwoodeditions.com/
• http://booknetcanada.com
• http://www.nytimes.com

Goals:

• How do I choose well?
• Who should I read given limited time?
• Be my filter so I save time

I need / I want:

• I want to see case studies from companies I know
• I want to see value in where I spend my money
• I want to see reporting/numbers on where I spend my money
• I need credible sources that I can relate to
• I need to know how online fits in to the bigger publishing picture
• I want validation and an increased profile for my company
• I want to network at “C” level
• I need to quickly see if it is relevant or how it applies to my situation

Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Internet Marketing Strategy
Permalink

Online Marketing Best Practices for Newspapers

I was at Northern Voice two weekends ago and I went to a great session with the CBC’s Lisa Johnson and the Vancouver Sun’s Kirk LaPointe, on how journalists use social media. At the session, LaPointe argued that there is no news problem or audience problem in the newspaper industry; the problem is, in fact, a business one.

This got me thinking about how newspapers are adapting their businesses to the online space in order to succeed in a digital world. What best practices can we find?

After gathering notes from the Northern Voice session as well as comments from The Globe and Mail and The Texas Tribune here’s a list of best practices for the industry:

Online Marketing Best Practices for Newspapers

Your online presence should be different from your print presence. They are different mediums with different strengths - adapt to each one separately. According to Kirk LaPointe, the Vancouver Sun spent the last 5 years getting their newspaper as close as possible to their website and now they are going spend the next 5 years moving the newspaper away from the website. They’ve realized that differentiation is key.

Twitter is a great tool to use as a social scanner. Both the CBC and The Globe and Mail use Twitter to stay on top of what is going on so that they can respond quickly if something arises.

Twitter should also be used to connect directly with your readers. Use Twitter to have conversations with your readers. They can be a resources for stories, too.

Email alerts are important. The Texas Tribune uses email alerts to stay on top of things. Set up alerts with story keywords and you’ll get story ideas and sources delivered to your inbox. 

The topic, not the headline, is the centerpiece. Online, people search by subject so your subject matter is more important than a catchy headline.

Engagement is not a frill. You need a strategy of engagement with your audience. For example, the New York Times doesn’t have just one twitter handle. Instead, they have subchannels that personalize the feeds - like @nytimesbooks and @nytimesart.

Create communities. By engaging their audience in personalized ways, the New York Times has created communities of readers. The Globe and Mail has experimented with Cover It Live to build community. Cover It Live is a live-blogging/discussion tool that provides a platform for hosting live blogs and is easily embedded in a story page. The Globe and Mail has used it for their coverage of the budget, the CRTC hearings, a subway shooting and the Obama inauguration.

Customize delivery. While The Texas Tribune points out the importance of using social media sites as secondary distribution channels, the messages should be customized for the medium. The same content that works on your website does not work on Facebook. The same content that works on Facebook does not work on Twitter.

So how do you measure the success of your efforts? While most newspapers haven’t quite figured out how to make money online (LaPointe says that the Vancouver Sun dedicates 50% of their time to the web yet makes less than 5% of their revenue online) there are other factors to consider. The Texas Tribune recently looked back on what they’ve learned over the last 6 months and listed the important numbers for them. Namely, they are able to measure brand awareness, (number of unique visitors to their site and where they are coming from), loyalty (number of return visitors), and engagement (average length of time spent on the site).

What do you measure as indicators of online success with your newspaper?

Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Internet Marketing Strategy
Permalink

How to Get Marketing Budget from Your Boss

In tough times, it is even tougher to secure your marketing budget because most companies see marketing as an expense rather than an investment.

It is easy for managers to slash marketing budgets when they do not understand how marketing affects the health of their organizations. Your job is to build an understanding of what value marketing brings to the organization and how marketing affects the health of the organization.

How do you do this? You need to understand what type of manager you have.

Types of Managers

1. The German Shepherd.
Intent on business, these managers are direct. They defend their territory and state opinion as fact. They are responsible for the pack but can be impatient, demanding and blunt.
Approach: Be brief, be brilliant, be gone. This type of manager likes to win. You have to present alternatives so that he or she can make the choice. That said, you can guide them by presenting the alternatives clearly and the potential value or gain for each. Visuals and graphs work well for presenting the numbers. Show vs. tell, then get out of the way.

2. The Jack Russell Terrier.
Ready for adventure, these managers are friendly, excitable and animated. Entertainment is the key. They do not focus on details. They are more interested in the friendly chatter than getting down to business.
Approach: Schedule time for chatting and let this manager speak. High energy and being upbeat, even when presenting challenges, is key. This type of manager also likes to be the center of attention so show how your marketing ideas will help achieve popularity and recognition.

3. The Basset Hound.
Mild mannered, these managers like safety and status quo. They appear calm and do not get easily excited. New ideas make these managers uncomfortable. They like to blend into the group rather than stand out.
Approach: Ask specific questions to establish this manager’s true needs, then provide support. For those who prefer to endure, stubbornly sticking to the path of least resistance is the natural choice. You must figure out how to change the path and gently coax along other followers. Make sure you listen carefully and ask specific questions.

4. Border Collie.
Sharp as tacks, these managers focus on the details. They ask questions, study the implications and analyze information to the point of perfection. They can be standoffish.
Approach: Provide the facts and plenty of background detail. Avoid personal issues and feeling intimidated. Be calm and measured in your response to questions. These types of managers need all the information before being able to make a decision.

Stop Perfuming the Pig: Pragmatic Marketing

Stop Perfuming the Pig: Why “real” marketing is done before the product is created

“No amount of perfume can overcome the stench of a technology product that people don’t need,” by Steve Johnson.

Peter Drucker makes it clear that marketing isn’t a product promotion strategy; it’s a product definition strategy, that “marketing” is creating a product that sells itself, creating a product that people want to buy; creating an environment that encourages people to buy.

Over the years however, industries and agencies and marketing experts have worn away the original meaning of marketing and cheapened it. Marketing now means many things to many people but apparently not what Drucker meant. For most people nowadays, marketing means t-shirts, coffee mugs, trinkets, trade show trash, and tchotchkes.

Do you promote or do you market?

Johnson’s great article illuminates the problem with marketing is that we don’t focus on the problem. Instead we focus on promotion. And promotion is not marketing.

The first and most important consideration for any business is the market problem. It’s the problem that drives the product decisions, the message for positioning, and the key elements of selling—the placement strategy. Having identified the problem, the other Ps of the marketing mix become obvious.