Tag Archives: marketing strategy

It’s Not Easy to be Green – Cause Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Cause Marketing DecontructedIt’s not easy to be green, or, for that matter, pink, purple, blue or red. These colors represent leading causes consumers care about: the environment, breast cancer, domestic violence, diabetes and heart disease; causes marketed by for-profit and nonprofit organizations alike. Hence, the term Cause Marketing, aligning business and nonprofit efforts for mutual benefit. Cause marketing is good business and for good reason. According to the 2013 Cone Communications Social Impact Study, nearly all U.S. consumers say that when a company supports a cause, they have a more positive image of the company. Cause marketing is a strategy and requires a thoughtful approach, plan, budget, tactics, monitoring and evaluation. It is more than donning a ribbon or making a donation. It’s about setting realistic goals, objectives and expectations, generating a return on investment and delivering meaningful value to internal and external stakeholders. Too many businesses get cause marketing all wrong. Here’s how your small business can get it right.

In 3 Keys to Authentic Cause Marketing, Benjamin Wald suggests the following:

  • Seek Resonance with Consumers. Often, companies are tempted to try to align themselves with the cause that appeals to the most people, without attempting to find any real resonance with their particular consumers, brand or products. In this situation companies are playing the wrong numbers game.
  • Create Alignment with Your Core Business.  The social mission you choose has to be aligned with your companies’ solution to the need in the market you address.
  • Partner. Donating products or profits isn’t a bad start, but it’s not enough. What sort of world could we create if more businesses were to partner with social entrepreneurs-;the experts in blending profits with purpose?

Read the original article at Inc.com

In 4 Things Cause Marketing Can’t Do (and What your Campaign Should), Alan Robinson’s suggestions resonate loud and clear for small businesses. Two in particular:

  • Support your overall marketing efforts with cause marketing tactics, fueled by your predeveloped consumer base. Integrating cause marketing into a general marketing strategy means keeping each strategy distinct, but codependent. Long-term cause-minded companies continue to promote their products and services while communicating their commitment to social and environmental sustainability, using the gains from one campaign to perpetually boost the other.
  • Demonstrate authenticity. …Be transparent with your audience about how you give back, and you’ll garner more backers willing to support your cause, and your brand.

Read the original article at cafegive.com

In Common Cause Marketing Mistakes, Joe Waters and Joanna Macdonald have these words of caution:

  • Companies that fail to choose the right nonprofit for their cause marketing campaign run the risk of building their program on a weak foundation.
  • While cause marketing certainly has a philanthropic objective, giving is not its primary focus. Companies engage in cause marketing to enhance their favorability with existing and potential customers. If their goals were strictly philanthropic, they could donate the money to causes and be done with it.

Read the original article at dummies.com

Is cause marketing a strategy you find effective for your small business? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post. In the meantime, we could not resist this ode to green from a favorite frog.

For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest.

Why Long-term Planning Must Be in Your Small Business Marketing DNA

Strategy, innovation and planning crosswordMarketing gets a bad rap. Really! What other business disciplines can lay claim to clichés such as spray and pray, throw enough mud at the wall and see what sticks? For small business owners, these clichés and fallacies detract from what should be a pillar of the company’s past, present and future. Marketing is a journey, not a periodic test. It is a process (read our previous blog post on committing to the process), not an intermittent attempt, wild guess, nor –pardon the cliché – is it a shot in the dark. Just as finances, operations, management and personnel require long-term planning, so too does marketing. A strategy tailored to building credibility, promoting products and services and connecting with target audiences is a dominant cell of a business’ make-up and marketing DNA.

In a Social Media Explorer post, Is Your Digital Strategy Designed to Fail or Designed to Deliver, author Nichole Kelly provides a long-term planning framework for corporate marketing teams, which small business owners and marketers will find of value too. Here are a few highlights:

To be successful, we need to put some real time and energy into strategic planning. At a minimum the plan should take 6-8 weeks, which allows time for research, feedback and in-depth brainstorming.

Teams should be building and modifying plans that focus on the next 36 months. Anything beyond that and the plan will include a lot of vapor. This allows the company to look at what they are building towards and creates room for more proactive initiatives. Further, the team can look and see where they are in achieving the goals for the 12-month plan and whether they are on track for future plans. …We wouldn’t build a business plan to focus on only the next 12 months and our marketing plans shouldn’t be any different.

If strategic plans focus on a technology solution or a specific channel, you know there is a problem. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the project will be implemented on Twitter or Facebook. What matters is that you are trying to engage your customers in social platforms. Those platforms may change before the plan is implemented and the plan needs to include room for modifications based on current trends. Tell your teams to stop focusing on the channels and start focusing on the objective. …A strategic plan must be a living, breathing document.

Don’t be scared to try something new. Instead, put parameters around how innovative ideas will be tested quickly and with a minimal investment.

Read the article at Social Media Explorer.

Is long-term planning in your small business marketing DNA? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest.

Marketing on Your Own Terms and Bootstrapping the Basics

How do you market your small business for success?

How do you market your small business for success?

Whether by design, default or budgetary restrictions, many small business owners pull double duty serving as primary marketers for their organization. Many will confess, privately of course, that as masters of their marketing fate, keeping up with new ideas, tools, consumer behaviors and the competition can be exciting, overwhelming, daunting and downright exhausting – all at the same time. For those who have no chance but to go solo or those who dare to be different, transform the challenges into opportunities; the opportunities into success on your own terms. Bootstrap the marketing basics, start with a plan and execute a marketing program that works for the business structure, target market and bottom line.

In an interview with Inc.com, business and marketing strategist and author of Business in Blue Jeans, How to Have a Successful Business on Your Own Terms in Your Own Style, Susan Baroncini-Moe succinctly summarized the importance of a marketing plan.

…a marketing plan is a critical component of success. If you don’t have a marketing plan, then you’ll be chasing strategies and tactics without a clear idea of why you’re doing those things. “It makes much more sense to develop a marketing plan that includes a comprehensive review of the climate of your industry, a clear description of your target market and the competition, and a blueprint for reaching your potential customers,” says Baroncini-Moe. And remember that a marketing plan shouldn’t be a static document, it must be flexible and fluid, evolving as the market changes and your business grows.

Read the original article at Inc.com.

Meet Susan Baroncini-Moe on the May 21, 2014, live episode of The Marketing Mojo Show. Tap into her treasure chest of professional and personal expertise to maximize your marketing momentum.

Tune in to hear and chat with Susan Baroncini-Moe

Catch author Susan Baroncini-Moe on The Marketing Mojo Show. Call-in to comment, log on to chat.

Do you march to the beat of your own marketing drum or is there a tried and true formula that guides your strategy? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest.

Classic Rules of Positioning – Six Steps to Success

ClassicRules1a

There are some throwbacks that you just want to throw away –  the picture of yours truly in a majorette uniform in a previous blog post immediately comes to mind. But the one below, my 20-plus year old paperback edition of Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, is not one of them.

GB's personal copy of this groundbreaking book.

GB’s personal copy of this groundbreaking book.

Many consider this 1981 bestseller by Al Ries and Jack Trout to be the holy grail of marketing strategy. The groundbreaking industry tome has had several updated editions, but the premise remains unchanged: Positioning is an organized system for finding windows in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances. BTW, 30 years ago, the authors described our society as overcommunicated. They must have had a crystal ball into the digital age and era of social media. All the more reason to revisit six “classic” steps for a successful positioning program (Chapter 21 of the 1981paperback), along with excerpts from the book.

1. Determine What Position Do You Own – Instead of asking what you are, you ask what position you already own in the mind of the prospect…You get the answer to the question “What position do we own?” from the marketplace, not from the marketing manager.

2. Determine What Position Do you Want to Own – Too many programs set out to communicate a position that is impossible to pre-empt because someone else already owns it…If you try to be all things to all people, you wind up with nothing.

3. Determine Whom Must You Outgun – It’s better to go around an obstacle rather than over it…Try to select a position that no one else has a firm grip on…spend as much time thinking about the situation from the point of view of your competitors as you do thinking about it from your own.

4. Determine Do You Have Enough Money – It takes money to build a share of mind. It takes money to establish a position. It takes money to hold a position once you’ve established it.

5. Determine Can You Stick it Out – You can think of our overcommunicated society as a constant crucible of change…To cope with change, it’s important to take a long-range point of view. To determine your basic position and then stick to it.

6. Determine Do You Match Your Position – Creativity by itself is worthless. Only when it is subordinated to the positioning objective can creativity make a contribution.

The most recent edition of this classic tome is available from Amazon.com. In the meantime, we stumbled upon this 2009 video, Positioning for the Small Guy, featuring Jack Trout.

GB O’Brien
Principal, LGK

For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!

Spice up Your Marketing Mojo: 4 Ingredients for Effective Messaging

MarketingMojoPotWhat is said, when it’s said, where it’s said and how it’s said are keys to effective communication. But too often we leave these keys in the glove compartment when it comes to marketing, choosing instead a “one and done” ride on a self-serving wing and prayer for immediate results. This week, we’re serving up suggestions in “marketing speak” to help you reach, engage and influence customers and clients.

When planning and budgeting for marketing programs and campaigns, add the following four ingredients in the mix to maximize your momentum.

  • Consistency: Find the right balance, channels and platforms to clearly convey your identity, brand/product promise and statements on an ongoing basis. Think long-term and plan for the long haul.
  • Frequency: A widely accepted rule of thumb is to “touch your target” or expose your audience to messaging a minimum of seven times to trigger a call to action response.
  • Repetition: Relentless use of the same message makes an imprint, builds “top of mind” awareness and reinforces brand/product positioning.
  • Emotional Anchors: Roy H. Williams, a well-known marketing guru, defines this term as implanting an associative memory. In other words, connect to the target’s needs, wants and emotional triggers; personalize the value proposition.

If you are a small-business owner, you can ill-afford to omit these ingredients in the marketing messaging mix. To do so will cost you time and money – resources in short supply for those pulling triple duty as chief cook, bottle washer and marketing officer.

What’s your messaging strategy? Stir this pot with what works for you and check out our previous recipe on focus to maximize your momentum. In the meantime, get your creative juices inspired by one of our favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tracks from the 2010 Mojo album.

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Spice up Your Marketing Mojo: 5 Suggestions to Improve Focus

MarketingMojoPotIf you’re the chief cook and bottle washer of your business, chances are, you’re the CMO (chief marketing officer) too. You are not alone. In fact, a small business survey by AWeber found that 88 percent of owners pull double duty as primary marketers. No surprise here, these owners have to be master multitaskers, for heating up the business and bottom line boils down to time and money. And success requires a key ingredient: focus.

This week, we’re serving up suggestions to improve your marketing focus. Assuming you’ve identified goals, determined strategy and outlined objectives, you need a plan to define what must be done. But here’s the rub. Many business owners know what they want but don’t have a plan, which is a recipe for disaster. A plan, be it merely a list or comprehensive document, holds you accountable and keeps you focused on using time wisely and spending marketing dollars most efficiently. Here are our top five suggestions to improve focus:

  1. Identify the Buyer Persona. In other words, switch places with your ideal customer/client. Who are they, what makes them tick, what motivates them to choose your business or service. Failure to identify the buyer persona will have you trying to be everything to everyone and that’s expensive, time consuming and, in many cases, futile.
  2. Develop no more than five actions based upon your buyer persona. For example, if your buyer persona is a 49-64-year-old commercial banker engaged on social media, why would you have a presence on a network that skews teens and why, oh why, post a selfie in a restroom (our new anti-obsession)?
  3. Do the work. Allocate time each day to work on each of your actions.
  4. Evaluate. Your actions should have measurable results and you should be monitoring them.
  5. Adjust. Based on your evaluation, an action may require a little more time each day or a complete makeover if results prove ineffective.

How do you maintain your marketing focus? Help stir this pot of marketing mojo with your suggestions. And check back regularly for updates as we count down to the debut of the Marketing Mojo Show a flavorful podcast and Twitter Chat series to stimulate your marketing senses. In the meantime, get your mojo working with this classic Muddy Waters concert clip.

For daily marketing communications news online, subscribe to LGK’s free MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!

 

Content Marketing is Where it’s At

Photo credit: promobiledj.com/Google under Creative Commons license

Photo credit: promobiledj.com/Google under Creative Commons license

If Beck had two turntables and a microphone, we have three useful stats and a video to point you in the right direction of marketing effectiveness and efficiency.

Building trust, generating leads, converting prospects are just three of many reasons why Stat #1: 91 percent of business-to-business marketers and 86 percent of business-to-consumer marketers use content marketing (Source: Content Marketing Institute). While the strategy is not new – its roots can be traced way back to the 1800s – five years ago, the term, its practice and bottom line benefit changed the way businesses and consumers connect and engage. In fact, Stat #2: 70 percent of consumers say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company (Source: Content Marketing Institute). The days of outbound tactics such as commercial advertisements are taking a back seat to inbound tactics that build meaningful prospect and client relationships, which favorably influence purchasing decisions. Which leads us to Stat #3 and a bonus: Content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing  and generates three times as many leads (Source: Demand Metric).

We thought you’d enjoy this informative video on the power of content marketing from the Content Marketing Institute. We also thought you’d enjoy a little Beck too.

For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!