Brand valuation reminder from Tom Fishburne

“If you act enough like a commodity, sooner or later consumers will treat you like one.”

Public relations marketing

Excerpt from On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans by Tim Berry and Doug Wilson

Public Relations involves a variety of programs designed to maintain or enhance a company’s image and the products and services it offers. Successful implementation of an effective public relations strategy can be a critical component to a marketing plan.

A public relations (PR) strategy may play a key role in an organization’s promotional strategy. A planned approach to leveraging public relations opportunities can be just as important as advertising and sales promotions. Public relations is one of the most effective methods to communicate and relate to the market. It is powerful and, once things are in motion, it is the most cost effective of all promotional activities. In some cases, it is free.

The success of well executed PR plans can be seen through several organizations that have made it a central focus of their promotional strategy. Paul Newman’s Salad Dressing, The Body Shop, and Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream have positioned their organizations through effective PR strategies. Intel, Sprint and Microsoft have leveraged public relations to introduce and promote new products and services.

Similar to the foundational goals of marketing, effective public relations seeks to communicate information to:

• Launch new products and services.
• Reposition a product or service.
• Create or increase interest in a product, service, or brand.
• Influence specific target groups.
• Defend products or services that have suffered from negative press or perception.
• Enhance the firm’s overall image.
• The result of an effective public relations strategy is to generate additional revenue through greater awareness and information for the products and services an organization offers.

Goals and Objectives

Good strategy begins with identifying your goals and stating your objectives. What are the goals and objectives behind your public relations strategy and can they be measured and quantified?

Each of these areas may reflect the goals your public relations campaign may seek to accomplish.

Press relations

Communicating news and information of interest about organizations in the most positive light.

Product and service promotion

Sponsoring various efforts to publicize specific products or services.

Firm communications

Promoting a better and more attractive understanding of the organization with internal and external communications.

Lobbying

Communicating with key individuals to positively influence legislation and regulation.

Internal feedback

Advising decision makers within the organization regarding the public’s perception and advising actions to be taken to change negative opinions.

Source: Articles on bplans.com

Essential contents of a marketing plan

Excerpt from On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans by Tim Berry and Doug Wilson

Every marketing plan has to fit the needs and situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can’t do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget.

• Situation Analysis: Normally this will include a market analysis, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and a competitive analysis. The market analysis will include market forecast, segmentation, customer information, and market needs analysis.
• Marketing Strategy: This should include at least a mission statement, objectives, and focused strategy including market segment focus and product positioning.
• Sales Forecast: This would include enough detail to track sales month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales by product, by region or market segment, by channels, by manager responsibilities, and other elements. The forecast alone is a bare minimum.
• Expense Budget: This ought to include enough detail to track expenses month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales tactics, programs, management responsibilities, promotion, and other elements. The expense budget is a bare minimum.

Are They Enough?

These minimum requirements above are not the ideal, just the minimum. In most cases you’ll begin a marketing plan with an Executive Summary, and you’ll also follow those essentials just described with a review of organizational impact, risks and contingencies, and pending issues.

Include a Specific Action Plan

You should also remember that planning is about the results, not the plan itself. A marketing plan must be measured by the results it produces. The implementation of your plan is much more important than its brilliant ideas or massive market research. You can influence implementation by building a plan full of specific, measurable and concrete plans that can be tracked and followed up. Plan-vs.-actual analysis is critical to the eventual results, and you should build it into your plan.

Source: bplans.com

Get your marketing mantra on

Small business owners get whacked around all day trying please the many forces that plot to take them off course.

Half the time you feel like you are making it up as you go. And that’s a great way to forget why you do what you do and who you are.

One of the most effective ways that I have found to stay on course is to create and use a “Marketing Mantra.”

First let me explain this mantra thing, according to Webster’s, just for context.

A sacred syllable or sequence of syllables (sometimes a name, a word, or a phrase) that is used in meditation (as in dhyana yoga), usually assigned by one’s guru, and believed to tune one into the divine ground of existence.

So, how does a small business owner apply something with such an obvious spiritual background?

You take the concept of a simple phrase, that you can use habitually, that allows you to remember why you do what you do, and you make it work for you.

Here’s what I mean.

I used to get in front of audiences to speak with some fear that I wasn’t going to be entertaining or that I wasn’t going to smart enough.

Or I would go on a sales call and think I had to have all of the answers.

Now, before I work with prospect or client or go before I go up in front of an audience; I repeat this thought to myself – “What am I here to give?”

It’s funny, but by simply repeating this phrase or mantra, I find myself moving towards the right frame of mind and staying focused on service and nothing else. Once I realized this, public speaking became much more enjoyable for me too. No, I don’t always deliver, but at least it helps me let go of all the stupid stuff.

It’s like an alarm clock and it serves to wake me up.

If you can develop something similar, something that helps you be who you are, your marketing and selling efforts will be greatly enhanced. Nothing sells like being real.

So, what’s your mantra?

Four print ad tips the pros use

On Friday I attended a very interesting luncheon event put on jointly by the Advertising Club of Toledo and the local chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design.

The speaker was Marcia Lausen, principal of Chicago’s Studio/lab and author and designer of the book Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design. Shortly after the 2000 presidential election debacle, she launched the Design for Democracy initiative which seeks to redesign the entire voting experience, from voter education to poll-worker training. If you think that information design isn’t important in elections, just ask Al Gore. A study by eight news organizations following the 2000 presidential election found that poor ballot design cost Gore anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 votes in Florida, enough to clinch the election.

Even though I found the entire Design for Democracy topic and initiative very interesting (and a little unnerving to tell you the truth), I thought I would share with you a few of her top election ballot design guidelines as I think they also can be applied with to small business print advertisements.

• Decide what’s most important and use clear, simple language- I’m actually combining two here. Marcia didn’t have either as her #1 guideline, but they are mine. I’ve talked about it in a previous post; the ability to determine the one thing that makes you or your business different and communicate that feature consistently throughout all of your advertising and marketing collateral is critical to your success. If you say more than one, maybe two things, you start to sound like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon.
• Use lowercase letters - Lowercase letters are easier for the eyes to recognize and, thus, read than ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. I’m not saying that you should avoid using capital letters in all situations. I think if used sparingly and in the right situation, they can be effective. I’m saying that if you use all capital letters in your print advertising it comes across like you’re yelling at the reader vs. emphasizing certain words. Using capital letters in headlines can be very effective, especially if the headline is long.
• Avoid centered type - All too often I see print ads with the headline, body copy, even the logo, call-to-action and contact information center justified right down the middle. Center-aligned text forces the eye to stop reading in order to find the start of the next line which is at a different starting point than the line just read. Left-aligned type is more legible to readers and isn’t the main objective of an ad to have it read? Right- or left-justified ad copy also seems to be popular in the design world and most good designers would cringe at a request to center-justify an entire print ad.
• Pick one sans-serif font and big enough type - Avoid using new fonts which require the eye to stop reading and adjust. Sans-serif fonts like Arial or Verdana have clean strokes and are easier to read than fancy script or serif fonts. Small type is hard to read and may intimidate or repel would-be readers of your ad. This is especially important if your target audience are older adults who may have difficulty reading what you would consider a “normal” font size. In this case, I would recommend using a minimum 12-point font.

The above guidelines may seem obvious but I’ve seen them not adhered to time-and-time again. In addition to a well-written, attention-getting headline, these guidelines are critical to getting your ad read and improving your advertising ROI.

Seven weeks of enlightenment

Well, it’s been 7 weeks since the birth of my daughter, Penelope.

It’s hard to put into words what she has brought to our lives. We tried for 4+ years to get pregnant, so we’re just enjoying every second we can with her. Yes, parenting is hard work, but we’re finding little moments when she sleeps or her fairly rare (at this point) smiles or giggles (hard to tell whether they’re gas or she’s happy to see us; my money is on gas) make up for the long nights and her fussy times.

It’s all part of the beautiful package named Penelope Lane.