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M anaging Marketing Media Strategies and Insights for the Non-Marketer Who Has to Do It All P r i n t | W e b | Ta b l e t Phone: 434-847-5561 | P.O. Box 10936, Lynchburg, VA 24506 | www.beBETTERdoMORE.com About the Author: Victor Clarke Victor has owned the company since 1996. Back then it was called Central Litho, but it has since evolved into Clarke Inc and gone through many changes along the way. We are now so much more than inkon-paper. Victor personally handles many of our accounts and coordinates everyone’s efforts. He also is an expert at finding suppliers for every job, no matter how unusual. Table of Contents: Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Campaigns vs Ongoing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Insourcing or Outsourcing Your Marketing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Scheduling, Budgeting and Measuring Results . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Managing Print. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Managing Digital. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Our Favorite Media Management Tools and Systems. . . . . . . 20 Managing Marketing Media Introduction An organization must first establish who its clients are, why they need its products and how the marketing message is going to be disseminated. Sounds simple and obvious, but ask yourself, have you really done this? • Have you really researched your demographic base? • Can your sales people name your target market? • Can your sales people immediately explain your product’s benefits? That is, what is the product of your product? If the answer to these questions is no, this eBook is for you. While this eBook can’t help you with your product target market and sales training, it can help you with your branding and getting your message out. First, a bit of advice. Unless you have lots of free time on your hands, get some professional help. You need to spend your time on the $100/hr part of your job which includes running and managing your business. Let others handle the $10/hr portion of your business such as producing marketing media. • What’s your most effective marketing strategy? Page 4 Managing Marketing Media Branding You likely already have a brand and your challenge is the proper production of it. You must have a logo that is universally compatible across many mediums. It’s a good idea to have a style guide and standards when working with a marketing media supplier. Here are a few things to consider when creating your style guide and standards: Printing – The colors on your monitor WILL NOT match the colors printed by a printing press. Does your graphic designer know how to generate a proof comparable to a printing press? Quality – Did your designer save your logo and other images in a format that can be reproduced as a quality logo? Hint: don’t use images found on the internet. They are too low resolution for printing. Color – Choose colors that are within the color gamut. A desktop monitor can display 16.7 million colors. A printing press can print approx. 5000 colors. Silk screening and embroidery even less. Small Printing – Can you scale your logo down and still read it? Cost – Your budget may not always allow you to print your logo in full color. Make sure your logo can be reproduced in one or two colors and still look awesome! Promo Items – These items are typically printed using silk screen or embroidery technology. Lots of colors in your logo? Forget about using these techniques. For more information on designing a great logo download the eBook “Things to Consider When Making a Logo Universally Compatible” Page 5 Managing Marketing Media Content Many people are more familiar with the term “message” rather than the term “content”. Helpful content is the way a company can demonstrate its value. Informative content is also what customers prefer when researching a business. Marketers used to speak of creating a marketing message. It’s now about creating useful content such as answering frequently asked questions, offering eBooks and slide presentations, etc. Your content needs to be about your client’s needs. It’s not about you, it’s about them. It needs to be about “propinquity”. The definition of propinquity is, “nearness of place or time, proximity”. Your marketing content must create collisions naturally. Keep in mind that your content must be displayed in both passive media like ink-on-paper and in active digital media like websites, blogs and apps so that your customers can share it with others thus creating propinquity. And don’t forget it needs to be projected using both campaigns and ongoing marketing strategies. Page 6 Managing Marketing Media Campaign vs Ongoing What is the difference between the two? The simple answer is campaigns are short bursts of marketing initiatives to push a certain product or a sales event for a certain time of year. Ongoing marketing, or drip marketing, is a continuous process that constantly reminds your clients of your value and presence. Most small businesses only use campaign marketing when ongoing marketing would be far more valuable and lucrative. Plus, it’s easier to budget. For example, a holiday season may be coming up and a company will create a campaign to sell its seasonal items. Direct mail, email blasts, radio and TV ads, billboards, posters and banners, business events, trade shows, etc. could be used to create excitement. Sales of the seasonal items are temporarily boosted and the cash register rings for a short burst of time. Campaigns absolutely should be included in your marketing strategy to take advantage of a holiday season, over-stocked items, etc. But once the campaign is over the marketing message goes silent until the next burst of campaign marketing energy. More importantly, a portion of your marketing budget should be used to create an ongoing marketing strategy. This can be advertising based on using traditional marketing media so that the business remains top-of-mind with its customers. Today however, most ongoing campaigns are done online. You need to begin producing FAQs, blogs posts, eBooks, YouTube videos, etc. for an effective ongoing marketing strategy. Advertising based ongoing marketing campaigns are most familiar to small businesses. It’s the way it’s been done since the invention of the printing press, radio and television. If a business has a big enough budget it can continue to pound away at its customer base. This may still work with a certain demographic, but it also can annoy another demographic. There has been a tremendous shift in the last decade regarding the way customers can receive, or ignore, marketing messages. The birth of the internet, websites, TiVO, satellite radio, etc. allows customers to choose the messages they want to receive. In fact, the CEB Marketing Research Page 7 Managing Marketing Media Campaign vs Ongoing Council states that customers are 57% down the buying path before they ever engage directly with the brand. So, if traditional marketing is becoming less effective what’s a small business to do? Answer: Help based marketing. Help based marketing is based on providing as much self-help, self-service information as possible. It is marketing that, according to Jay Baer, author of Youtility, is so valuable people would be willing to pay for the content you developed based on what you learned in the “content” portion of this eBook. Customers now only talk to a sales person as a last resort, not a first step. Once they recognize they can’t accomplish what they would like on their own they will call you because of the virtual relationship you have established with them. Put your message out there in any, and all, mediums so your clients can find answers on their own. Find the right balance between campaign marketing and ongoing marketing, and the correct balance between advertising based and help based marketing. Page 8 Managing Marketing Media Insourcing or Outsourcing Your Marketing? Let’s talk about the pros and cons of each solution. Insourcing: What’s your marketing IQ? Do you, or people in your business, have the skills to design your brand, write the content and create campaigns and ongoing marketing strategies? If the answer is yes, great! The obvious benefit to insourcing is saving money. But, do you have the time to manage your marketing media while you manage everything else in your business? For a small business with a small staff this may be a daunting task. All small businesses have good intentions and believe they can handle these tasks on their own. Unfortunately, many have been reminded of the old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as they try to in source manage their marketing media. These businesses find they are being taken away from the portion of the job that makes them money. The con to insourcing is that ultimately businesses become disillusioned and abandon their marketing strategies. Outsourcing: If you don’t have the expertise and time to manage your marketing media you may want to consider hiring professional help. The con to outsourcing is that it’s going to cost you some hard earned money. However, the purpose of marketing is to gain more business and dollars. Wouldn’t you be willing to spend a dollar to make two dollars? The benefits of regaining your time and acquiring new clients on a regular basis far exceed the negatives if you hire the proper marketing media services provider. How do you know if you are hiring the right media company? Page 9 Managing Marketing Media Insourcing or Outsourcing Your Marketing? Consider this: • Is the media services company interested in your success, or are they interested in the creative awards they will try to win using your money? • Does the media company understand your budget and goals, or is it more about an inflated image of themselves? • Do you get billed by the hour every time you make a phone call to them? Or do you get a set scope of work estimate? For more information check out the eBook, “How to Choose a Marketing Media Provider” • Does the media company let you speak directly to the folks doing the work for you, or do you have to go through an account manager just to get a simple question answered? Page 10 Managing Marketing Media Scheduling, Budgeting and Measuring Results Scheduling: Yes, you need to allow appropriate time to create and distribute your marketing media, but you also need to allow time for it to work for you. You cannot try something once and then abandon it for something different next time. You must repeat your strategy on a regular basis over an extended period of time. Typically allow 6-12 months for your marketing to begin to work. It takes time to develop a following for your ongoing marketing message. Building a following via the internet takes a little bit longer. Patience, grasshopper! What many small businesses fail to schedule for is…success! Your marketing media is working! Have you scheduled time for your sales people to follow up on all those qualified leads? You need to be measuring your results the whole time while making adjustments to improve your results. There is nothing worse than spending time, money and effort and then not following up with prospects to close the business. However, if after repeated attempts, with some tweaking here and there over a period of at least 6 months your marketing is not producing results then it’s time to re-consider your content, marketing media used and maybe even your media services provider. What’s the definition of crazy? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time. Budgeting: Money! Everyone’s favorite topic is how to keep it, and make more of it. Don’t underfund your marketing. The US Small Business Administration recommends spending 7-8% of your gross revenue on marketing. You need to set a return on investment budget to determine if you want to continue, tweak or discontinue your marketing plan. Your ROI budget should factor in not only revenue and profit, but also the cost of customer acquisition including the cost of marketing reach, the cost to generate qualified leads, and the cost to close leads. More importantly, you need to budget for the lifetime value of your newly acquired customers. Don’t forget the old axiom that it costs more to acquire a new customer than maintain an existing customer. Part of your budget needs to include marketing to current customers so that you can continue to delight them. The more delighted your customers are, the more likely they will refer you to others. Page 11 Managing Marketing Media Scheduling, Budgeting and Measuring Results Measuring: Here are some formulas to consider when measuring your marketing success: Marketing Reach - Refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance ‘TV households’, ‘men’ or ‘those aged 25–35’). Sales Goals - Are calculated using the following: • How many calls do I need to make to generate one prospect? • How many prospects does it take to generate one sale? • How long will each prospecting effort take? • How much time do I need to devote to new business development every day? • How many sales do I need each month to attain my year-end financial goals? Qualified Leads Generated Goals – Are calculated by: • Conversion Rate or the percentage of leads that turn into qualified leads • Fit Rate or the percentage of qualified leads that turn into a proposal opportunity • Win (Closing Rate) or the percentage of proposals that result in sales Revenue Goals – Sales Goal / Average Revenue per Deal /Lead Conversion Cost of Customer Acquisition – It is recommended that your CCA be equal to, or less than, four months of client revenue. This number will vary according to your industry. Lifetime Value of a Customer – This is defined as the amount of gross revenue you would expect from that customer over the course of your entire relationship. LTV = Net Profit / Number of clients acquired over a period of one year. Page 12 Managing Marketing Media Managing Print The printing process can be accomplished in basically three different ways: offset, web or digital. The printing processes are different for each and it’s important to understand these differences as it will affect your scheduling, budget and how you measure your results. Let’s take a look at each of them. copying, to electrophotography, to inkjet technology. It is typically used for smaller print quantities of 1000 or less. Over the years the quality of digital printing has improved to the point that it is virtually indistinguishable from offset and web printing. It is perfect for quick delivery projects too. Offset printing uses printing plates to put down ink on large sheets of cut paper. Offset presses are typically used to print multiple images of the same thing on the cut sheet paper for large quantities of flyers, stationery, pocket folders, booklets, etc. They can print single colors, multiple colors and process colors. If you are printing promotional items or banners and posters your vendor will likely use an inkjet printer. These printers can print across wide or uneven surfaces. They are not fast, but the technology is advancing every day. Web printing uses printing plates too, but the ink is put down on a continuous roll of paper. A newspaper printing press is a good example of a web press. Web presses print many of the same things as an offset press but in much longer runs. If your project requires print quantities ranging from hundreds of thousands to the millions it likely will be produced on a web press. Digital Printing is the little brother of offset and web printing but is growing rapidly in popularity. Digital printing can be as simple as color Other Types of Printing: If you are planning on printing on garments your vendor may use a screen printing process, heat transfer, sublimation printing or embroidery. To learn more go to, “What You Need to Know About the Screen Printing Process When Ordering T-Shirts”. Planning: Offset and web jobs typically take 1-2 weeks to produce so start working backwards from your due date, particularly if it’s an event that cannot be moved. Allow your vendor a few days to get a proof back to you. The proof can be an electronic PDF or a hard copy proof. If your job Page 13 Managing Marketing Media Managing Print is color critical always insist on a hard copy proof. Please review our blog post, “What Graphic Designers Need to Know About Production and You Should Too”. PDFs are completely unreliable for color correctness. The next time you go into your local electronics retailer look at all the color differences on the television screens. That’s an example of a PDF proof. You may also need to allow a few days for you, and your staff, to review the proof and make corrections. Once the proof is approved you need to allow time for the printer to schedule your project on the press. This likely will take a few days as many printers run multiple shifts. If you are working with an out-of-town printer don’t forget to allow a few days for shipping. Budgeting: Depending on quantities and the printing process, your project costs can run from a few dollars to thousands of dollars. Keep in mind there is not a dollar-for-dollar trade off as you increase or decrease your print quantity. This is because printers have high fixed costs. It costs the same to proof and prep a print run of one copy as it does thousands of copies. Imagine a printer as an airline. Whether a plane has one passenger or a full load they still use the same amount of fuel and require the same number of pilots and flight attendants. Therefore, the more pieces you can print at a single time, the less the cost per piece will be. Budget to run enough pieces to last you approximately 12 months, but don’t run more than you need either. Keep in mind that some printers may charge you up to 10% for over runs if you don’t specify exact quantities. They may also deliver the job up to 10% short. If you ordered just enough and don’t have enough to fulfill your project it will need to go back on press and it will be very expensive. Going back to the comments on proofing, please never, ever use the printer’s proof to make corrections if you don’t have to. It gets expensive to work this way as you will be charged for each new proof generated. Sometimes, your printer will make an unintentional error. It is still your responsibility to catch it; however you should not be charged to fix it. To learn how to prevent unnecessary changes to your proof read our blog post, “The Ultimate Printing Checklist” and “How to Prepare Files for a Printer”. Other things that will affect your cost include ink types (e.g. fluorescent Page 14 Managing Marketing Media Managing Print and metallic inks cost more), paper types and finishing that is done on a different piece of equipment. If your project requires folding, stitching, die cutting, 3-hole drilling, etc. your cost will go up. The same fixed costs that apply to setting up a press apply to setting up bindery equipment. Unless you have professional finishing equipment it is rarely a good idea to do your own work. Nothing ruins a great printed piece more than un-professional finishing. Measuring results: You can measure the ROI of your print marketing by using something as simple as unique phone numbers or phone extensions to measure response activity. However, there are many new ideas such as QR Codes and Augmented Reality that can link the printed world to the digital world and allow you to measure results. QR Codes have earned a bad reputation recently. Unfortunately, they have been mis-used and have declined in popularity. When used correctly they can be a great resource to measure results. If you use a QR Code make sure that it’s customized with your company logo and colors and it links to something useful like a discount offer or You Tube video that is mobile friendly. Never link a QR Code to your website home page. That’s boring and useless. Users download a QR Code reader app to their smart phone. Once your customers start scanning your codes you can begin to track the data. You can learn the best day to send your printed piece, as well as the best geographic area to send it. You can also get customers to opt-in on your email list so that you can gather names and addresses. If your customer likes your offer they can also share it with other smart phone users. QR Codes are awesome if you use them correctly. And the best part is QR Codes are free to generate and print! Augmented Reality (AR) is another way to link ink-on-paper to the digital world, albeit it comes with a cost. Sometimes a very high cost. AR works the same as QR Codes by downloading an app to your smart phone that Page 15 Managing Marketing Media Managing Print users will use to scan a printed piece. Augmented Reality takes the user into a virtual world through their phone within your printed piece. You can imbed video and graphics to play within the AR app. The best example of AR everyone is familiar with is the yellow first down line television networks impose on the screen during football games. The mechanical process of placing tiny dots of ink on a substrate can be very complex. Years ago a position on the organization chart titled “print buyer” roamed corporations. That position has gone the way of the dinosaur. Now companies must rely on non-marketers to handle their print buys. The positive side is that more and more companies realize they can actually save money by hiring marketing media providers that know the printing process rather than relying on non-marketers to handle the print buys. Page 16 Managing Marketing Media Managing Digital Using pixels rather than ink to market your business is relatively new. Johannes Gutenburg invented the moveable type printing press in the 1400s. Al Gore invented the internet in the early 1990s. The three most popular types of digital media today are websites, mobile websites and mobile apps. As in print it’s important to understand these differences as it will affect your scheduling, budget and how you measure your results. Let’s take a look at each of them. Websites: Rule number one – your website should not be an electronic brochure. It is no longer the 1990s when everyone got a website because your friends told you it was necessary to succeed in business. So you used one of those free website generators and presto, you had a website. And you haven’t updated it since! We have put together a list of great site examples in our “2 Minute Boot Camp on Creating and Managing Small Business Websites” for you to review. Rule number two – your website should be a living, changing daily thing. Do not “set it and forget it”. Your website must be updated on regular basis. It is recommended that images, text, pages, etc. be updated and refreshed at least once a month. Even better, you should be writing a blog post at least once per week. Can’t write or hate to write? Hire a blog writer. They are inexpensive, easy to work with and crazy fast. Rule number three – your website must be full of useful content (see rule #2). Give your customers and prospects a reason to visit your site on a regular basis to gather information to make informed decisions. Rule number four – your website must develop credibility for your company (see rule #3). Use your website to prove yourself a reliable and trustworthy vendor by publishing great content, customer testimonials and FAQs. Mobile Websites: These sites should be designed specifically to operate on mobile devices such as phones and tablets. Just because you have an awesome desktop version of your site that’s full of great content and helpful information doesn’t mean a user can view this version easily on a mobile device. If the type is too small, or you have to push text around to read it, you are losing business. Did you know 50% of all local web searches are done on a mobile device now? If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load because your website Page 17 Managing Marketing Media Managing Digital graphics are too large, you are losing customers. Make sure you have a mobile optimized website for all those growing mobile users. Read our blog post, “Pros and Cons of Using a Responsive Template for Your Website” to learn more about what you need to include in your mobile website. Typically mobile users are on and off your site quickly. They are looking for quick information such as your phone number, address, discount coupons, etc. It must be quick and easy for them to find that information. You should be “Driving Your Business to New Heights with Mobile”. Mobile Apps: Yea, there’s an app for that. In fact there are thousands of apps available for download on mobile devices. So why should you create an app that’s just another in a crowded app world? Because more and more mobile users are searching using apps. Mobile websites are still very important, but mobile website searches are going down while mobile app searches are increasing. Read “Best for Mobile Usability – App or Website?” and “Comparison of Mobile Website v. Mobile App – What’s Best for You?” to learn more. Businesses need mobile websites for quick searches and they need mobile apps so customers and prospects can linger and search your site. When they download your app it’s free advertising on their phone every day. In addition, you can send push notifications, similar to text messages, advertising sales, updates and helpful information. Scheduling and budgeting: The time and cost to develop a new digital site depends on its size and complexity. If you hire a professional designer expect 3-4 weeks to develop your site. Rates typically run from $50 to $100 per hour. If you do it yourself double the professional’s time and add two more weeks. Plus add the cost of your time and the cost of business lost while you design your site. The following will affect design time: • Number of pages • Number of images • Links to other sites • eCommerce capability • GPS features • Content development • Converting a desktop site to a mobile site • Video and audio links • Waiting for approval from Apple and Google to add your app to their respective stores Page 18 Managing Marketing Media Managing Digital Measuring: The benefit of digital media is that it is much easier to measure your results than it is with ink-on-paper. This is the reason the digital media marketing budgets are growing and traditional media budgets are falling. Free products like Google Analytics, Klout, Hubspot Marketing Grader, etc. make it easy. These products will show you where your visitors are coming from, what their favorite information is and how long they are staying on your page reading your information. They will also give you insights where you need to improve and where your website ranks compared to your peers and competitors. The drawback is that you may need an expert to interpret the information. Sometimes the nomenclature may be odd or the way the data is displayed is difficult to read. Sometimes it is just so much information it’s like taking a drink of water from a fire hose and you will need an expert to boil it all down for you. In conclusion, you may be unsure whether to use ink or pixels to produce your marketing materials. To help you make an informed decision, and avoid the ever growing “greenwashing” phenomenon, we offer this link to a great infographic, “To Print or Not to Print”. Enjoy! Page 19 Managing Marketing Media Bonus! Here’s a list of our favorite media management tools and systems: List Managers: Mail Chimp Constant Contact AWeber iContact Website Analytics: Google Analytics Google Webmaster Tools Hubspot Marketing Grader SEOlytics Web Design: Kissmetrics Canva File Transfer: Drop Box High Tail Group Collaboration: Basecamp Google Docs Images: iStock Shutterstock Getty Images Pixabay Morguefile Freepixels Openphoto Imageafter Freeimages Books: Youtility The Invisible Sale Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook Page 20 Managing Marketing Media THANK YOU for Reading! Go to our website www.bebetterdomore.com and click on the Resources and Blog tabs. We have lots of free downloads for you. You’re welcome! Join us on our LinkedIn page for more great stuff! Visit our Facebook Fan Page and be sure to “LIKE” us so we can continue to interact! Follow us on Twitter and be sure to follow and re-tweet to the #clarke_inc hashtag! Don’t forget Google+! Please pass this eBook along to your network and pay it forward! P r i n t | W e b | Ta b l e t Phone: 434-847-5561 | P.O. Box 10936, Lynchburg, VA 24506 | www.beBETTERdoMORE.com Page 21