David Young | Branding Blog - Marketing Advice and Advertising Strategy for Local Business Owners

Avery's run at 3M: Differentiate. Demonstrate. Directed Humor.

Avery (the label folks) are taking a run at one of 3M's core products...the ubiquitous Post-It note.

I like this campaign because the ads do a good job of differentiating the Avery products from the competitors, they demonstrate their use and advantages and the humor in the ads is directed in the right direction. That is, it reinforces the message rather than just being funny for the sake of funny. It's funny when the wife wipes out the guy's fantasy football board with the leaf blower and the Avery note is still firmly attached.

Sidenote: I'm growing weary of the male=doofus theme of our present society, but I'd better get used to it. Not sure what I'm talking about, start with this post from Michele Miller's Marketing to Women blog, Wonderbranding.

I think these ads, obviously targeted at women, will be enough to get people to grab an Avery product when they are displayed alongside the 3M product in a store.

Here's one of the Avery ads...the other two will be after the jump...

 

 

 

On Your Market: Open for Business

I've been working on a soft launch for a project that has been in the works for almost 2 years. The idea is to teach business owners some of the very same techniques that we use when helping our clients with their marketing strategy. I got some very talented colleagues to help out and now I'd like to invite you to have a look. We're giving some free samples and we have it priced extremely low because we're just testing things out right now. You're welcome to sign up for the free stuff and jump in with both feet if you like. It's called On Your Market.

Customer Engagement: A Kinetic Word of Mouth Technique

If you can get people involved in an experience with your product during the buying process, you'll go a long ways to cementing good feelings toward you. You'll also give your customer a reason to blab.

Chevrolet is now offering Corvette customers the opportunity to assist in the assembly of the very engine that will be put into their new ZR1 or Z06. The engine will get a custom plaque before it's shipped to final assembly in Bowling Green, KY.

Imagine if you will, how intolerable these Corvette owners will be in their insistence on telling you how they built their own engine. They'll want to show you the pictures. They'll offer to raise the hood to show you the plaque.

QUESTION: How can you offer a similar experience to your own customers? How can you involve them?

Free Reward for having an Awesome Interior

Google is going to start helping you spread the word about your awesome retail experience. They've launched a new service where they'll be essentially tying your Google Local results with photos from inside your store...and they are supplying the photographers!

I've been writing for a long time about the importance of your Personal Experience Factor. Your reward for getting it right is that you may qualify for being one of the first to be featured in this new service from Google.

According to this story from ReadWriteWeb, "The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future."

So, if your jewelry store promises the largest selection of engagement rings in Winnipeg on your radio ads, perhaps Google will step in and help you offer the proof via Business Photos.

My question: What about service businesses like HVAC, or plumbing or roofing? If you're busy roofing Portland, you probably don't have much of a retail presence. Wouldn't it be great if Google would jump in your service van with you and take some job site photos? Not very likely until after they've been inside every retailer. So, you'd better be doing it yourself. Just saying.

Here's the link to find out more about Google Business Photos.

Let's meet in Barrie, Ontario next week!

The next version of our Wizards On The Road event is next week in Barrie, Ontario, just a short hour's drive from the Toronto Airport.

Steve Rae is organizing the event and we've got 2 full days of Wizard of Ads teaching for you at the insanely low price of $145.

If you read Roy William's Monday Morning Memo this week, he mentions the Pendulum of Society. I'll be delivering the original presentation that we've been showing around the world for almost 7 years. If you haven't seen this unique view of society's generations, it's worth the trip. If you're scratching your head wondering about all the changes going on around you, this will make things clearer.

Check out all the details at www.WizardsonTheRoad.com or just go over to our signup page and we'll see you in Barrie!

Be a "Word of Mouth" Enabler

Sometimes delivering a great customer experience through amazing products, architecture or movement just isn't quite enough to trigger the chain reaction of effective Word of Mouth.

Think about the reasons that people might be hesitant to recommend. Perhaps I consider my experience too "private" to talk about...or don't want to share the "secret" of my success. Unless you ask someone for specific advice, you'll seldom hear them bragging about their top-notch dentist, plastic surgeon or medical specialist.

Loss of proximity is another reason Word of Mouth loses it's oomph. If I have an amazing experience on vacation, but don't have an opportunity to share it until I get home weeks later, the magic of the moment has already begun to fade.

If you are truly delivering the goods to your customers, you should work on techniques to help them share their experience in the moment or very soon after.

Even in the late 1800s, the big cruise lines knew how to enable Word of Mouth among the millions of immigrants tucked away in 3rd class. On White Star liners, where even the 3rd class guests were served food by waiters on tables set with linen, the menu cards doubled as postcards that could be sent home to friends and relatives.

I think back on some pretty amazing experiences I've had and not been able to share until well after the moment. A great example is the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. The system in place is a well-oiled machine for getting people rigged up, trained up and moved out into the superstructure to begin the ascent. Before you are back down, the digital photographs of your group have been loaded on monitors in the gift shop waiting for you to purchase them...which we did. On a CD, which sat in our bags until we returned home. Then, it sat on our coffee table for weeks.

Since you are not allowed to bring your own camera, these are the only pictures you can get of your experience and I'm sure that loads of people purchase them. How could they be turned into an instant Word of Mouth marketing tool?

What if the operators made the photos available on a kiosk, where you could just email a lower resolution picture to anyone you wanted, BEFORE you left the building. Yes, they might lose a few CD sales, but they would be enabling their customers to tell others in the excitement of the moment.

In this day of social media, they could take it a few steps further. Since most of their tickets are sold online, they could ask for some sharing details BEFORE people arrive and be ready to post photos and video directly to their Facebook, Myspace or Twitter streams DURING the experience.

What about your business? How could you enable people to tell others while the experience is still fresh?

Focus Your Share of Mind

Share of Voice is a local business' percentage of all the advertising done in her market for her category.

Here's an overly simplistic example: Jane owns a kitchen design company in a town where there are 4 other kitchen design companies. Each of them runs a weekly newspaper ad, 10 weekly cable TV ads and 10 weekly radio ads. That's 21 ads each for a total of 105 advertisements in the market for kitchen design. Each owner has a 20% Share of Voice.

Share of Mind is the percentage of all the people exposed to those ads who think of Jane first and feel best about her when the decision to remodel a kitchen comes to mind.

Let's make another simplistic assumption: All of their ads say just about the same thing in the same manner. They look and sound like average ads.

With these assumptions, you could make the case that NONE of these businesses will be getting much increased business from their advertising efforts.

WHAT IF Jane were to FOCUS her ads on one media? Let's say she decided to take her entire budget and run 20 ads per week on a single cable channel, only focusing on remodel shows in the evening hours. Even if her ads remained average, the frequency and repetition she would achieve with the fans of the remodel shows would make a difference in her sales.

When these people finally decided to shut off the TV and get busy in their kitchen, Jane would be the first phone call because she'd be the first business they think of and feel confidence in…simply because of the repetition.

Quit trying to "reach" your way to advertising success. Start putting your money into some smart frequency and it won't be very long until your focused Share of Mind begins to pay off!

Share of Voice x Impact Quotient = Share of Mind

That's the first sub-formula in the Advertising Performance Equation. If you want to learn more about the rest of the equation, just sign up for my email list. You'll be the first to know about an exclusive learning opportunity!

Is Your Store Smiling?

As a postscript to Monday's post on Sniffing for Market Share, it occurred to me that one more thing you could do when you evaluate the look (sight) of your business is to watch for smiles.

That's right...smiles.

Rolex has always required dealers to display their watches with the hands showing 10:10 because it looks like a smiling face.

The current TV ad for American Express drives it home as well. The first half of the ad is a bunch of everyday shots that we interpret as unhappy faces. The second half is full of smiles.

Can you make your storefront smile? Are any of you competitors smiling brighter than you?

Want to see more? Check out the Faces in Places Facebook page, this search on Flickr, or just do your own search.

What's Your Market Share? Do you really know?

How much of the market for your particular product or service do you own?

Car dealers, real estate companies and other businesses whose transactions are tracked by the government have it made. They know exactly where they stand. Some businesses have an industry clearing-house that collects such information and shares it with members.

For other local retailers or service businesses, this can be a rather difficult number to calculate with any degree of accuracy.

So, how to keep score?

If you've been in the market for long, you actually know more than you think. I hope these steps help you.

1. Write down every one of your competitors by name
2. Order them from biggest to smallest
3. Estimate their annual billing by your BEST GUESS (you're probably close enough to at least make this a useful exercise)
4. Write this number next to their name
5. Show the list to your sales staff, spouse or managers and ask them to add the competitors that you forgot
6. Place your business and your sales number in its proper place in the list
7. ADD up all the numbers…this is your estimate of Market Potential
8. Divide YOUR number by the TOTAL…this is your MARKET SHARE

If the Market Potential seems like a much smaller number than you thought it would be, you've probably missed a few competitors.

What's the lesson from this exercise?

Now, you have a scoreboard!

All of the businesses listed ABOVE your name are targets! Your goal is to be stealing market share. Study them and learn how you can be better than they are.

All of the businesses BELOW you are either potential acquisitions or potential threats to YOU. They see a target on your back. Don't ignore them.

Evaluating the Two Signs for Business

Right in the middle of a 2-part series on the importance of your signage, I managed to bring my blog crashing down. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Let's recap.

So, having looked at a Bad Sign for Business and a Good Sign for Business, have you taken action?

Have you at least looked at your business from the outside in? Make sure you ask someone else to give you their opinion. Be sure to ask for brutal honesty.

What did you find that you could improve TODAY in YOUR business? (anyone? anyone? Bueller?)