While it’s clear now that the country is gradually emerging from the economic crisis, the strength of individual regions and business sectors is still decidedly mixed. As small and mid-sized businesses look out into this environment, it can be tough to make critical and/or prudent decisions. No one wants to be the last business returning to market, and few are willing to be the first.
The Growthwire would like to help. We’re inviting the Growthwire community to take a 6-7 minute online survey to help other subscribers make more sense of what economic life is like on Main Street today, including strategies for growth in specific regions and business sectors. When compiled, the survey will help you, and businesses like yours, understand how local businesses are working through our current economic conditions and even finding growth opportunities.
All we need to make this happen is YOUR HELP. Please take a few minutes to contribute your views (all 100% anonymously) – we will post all data online and analyze specific trends in future Growthwire newsletters. We will mail you an invitation later this week, but if you’d like to take the survey now, you can find it at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BSZCN9J
Thanks in advance! We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your insights.
We spend a lot of time thinking about ways to ‘make’ our product or business better. Don’t forget to think about how you can make people ‘think’ you’ve done the same. Here’s a wry presentation by IPA’s Rory Sutherland on the importance of brand’s intangibles…
There’s a free software tool available to small and medium sized businesses (SMB) today that can quickly transform your business into a savvy, high ROI digital marketing operation. This tool was originally created to help some of the world’s most sophisticated web marketers and ecommerce sites understand who was using their websites, opening targeted communication, and interacting with different parts of the operation. It allows these firms to actually track individuals, their interests, and their response to differing marketing exposure – a web marketer’s dream.
Until recently, this type of solution has only been available to larger companies that had enough electronic marketing and web-based activity to merit the monthly investment. The good news is that this is no longer the case.
One of the leading providers of lead management software, Loopfuse, is now offering a free version of their solution (it’s called FreeView) to businesses that focus on lead and customer groups of fewer than 2500 people – in other words, the average local business like yours. Should you give it a try? Answer these 3 questions to find out:
Do you think that your staff needs to care more about the quality of their work? Do you need people to show up on time and respond to customers in a more timely, positive manner? Do you need your sales team to pay more attention to their most important accounts, or do more prospecting? Do you need to stop paying too much attention to things that don’t directly grow your business?
These improvements represent needs for CHANGE.
Change can be a scary thing. We all know (from first hand experience) that most of our hard-wired behaviors, habits, and beliefs work in direct opposition to change, no matter how profitable, healthy, or enriching that change might be. But most of us aren’t quite sure why. We try carrots and sticks to effect change, but most of the time, these changes don’t stick. Sometimes we look at employees and think ‘they can never change, I have to replace them.’ Other times we just take bad situations as a given and work ourselves to death running around the obvious problem… Our lives would be so much simpler if we could actually master change when it’s needed most.
The latest book from Chip and Dan Heath (the co-authors of best-seller Made To Stick) may just provide the answer. Switch demystifies change and presents a very simple framework for understanding and solving a wide-range of changes. Unlike most business books, Switch is relevant and compelling from cover to cover and is extremely readable. Their cases, examples, and frameworks will stimulate so many thoughts about your own change needs that your biggest problem may simply be finishing it! It’s easily one of the best business books written in years. Give it a shot. It’s available in most bookstores and on Amazon/Kindle. The Heath Brothers also have a website that discusses some of their content (though to be honest, it doesn’t do the book justice).
Here’s the second in a series of simple tips to improve the quality of your advertising. This month, we focus on the power of emotion and the appropriate use of facts and logic. As much as you’d like to communicate all of the things that make your business special, your best message is one that makes your strongest differentiator undeniably clear. If you can express this difference in emotional terms – specifically as a benefit that has emotion at its core, you’ve got it made. Remember, for every charming gecko, memorable slogan, or unforgettable jingle, thousands of businesses advertise very effectively by being authentic, direct, and adhering to a couple of simple ideas. You don’t have to be a creative genius to use advertising effectively!
When we think about the types of businesses that benefit most from strong consumer marketing effort, categories like retail, entertainment, and automotive usually come to mind. This month’s exceptional marketer, Dr. Carmen Kavali, illustrates how professional services – even medical practices – benefit significantly by building market-wide brand awareness.
Dr. Kavali has built a strong brand around an emotional idea: a metamorphosis for body, mind, and soul. Her logo, website, and on-air radio marketing work together to reinforce this idea. She’s even branded one of her practice specialties “The Mommy Makeover” around this holistic idea of change and growth.
The emotional thrust of her marketing distinguish her practice in a marketplace that is extremely competitive and, like most other sectors, feeling the impact of shrinking consumer spending. The branding is tasteful, relevant, and creates desire (while remaining well within the bounds of medical marketing canon). Her radio advertising, which is targeted toward her adult female client base, is a powerful and cost-effective tool for bringing this emotion to life on a daily basis. It’s built broad market awareness that other local practices can’t match.
Dr. Kavali’s proactive growth strategy has yielded enviable success. As a recent letter to Cumulus put it, “In a few short years, my brand has become something bigger than just me.” — a key point for all professional practices, medical and non-medical, alike.
Each month, Access Points highlights a way for businesses to creatively and cost-effectively reach the large communities of radio listeners in their markets. This post pertains to several specific types of businesses: primarily the restaurant, golf, ski, and spa categories.
When someone hears the term “no cost” advertising, his or her first reaction is usually skepticism: you can’t get something valuable for free. (Their next reaction is often to wonder, as in “can I get some?”)
Yes, there really is a way to get valuable, high-reach, high-impact marketing for your restaurant, golf course, or several other specific businesses for no incremental cost. The program is typically called “Half-Off” (while it is free to the business, half-off is the value proposition for the end-consumer).
It works very simply: the business buys an advertising promotion from the station using gift certificates instead of cash. The radio station then resells those gift certificate to it’s audience via its website – at HALF OFF. $50 gift certificates for the business, for example, which would sell for $25 online, are typically sold out just minutes after they become available (these programs are immensely popular). The customer then redeems the certificate at the business and enjoys a great meal, round of golf, or massage.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal this week, the board of Zales Corp fired it’s CEO and two other top executives over poor performance, particularly during the 2009 holiday season. One of the major issues, according to The Journal, was CEO Neal Goldberg’s decision to shift most of it’s broadcast advertising budget to internet marketing. This strategy clearly backfired as Zales’ prime competitors, heavy users of broadcast media, posted strong results.
Consumers are obviously using the web with increasing frequency as their source of entertainment and social connection. Marketers should take caution, however, before they assume that this shift in attention equates to a shift in digital marketing effectiveness.
For all its promise, the web has yet do demonstrate an ability to influence desire and intent to purchase. In fact, most web commerce is dependent on those triggers occurring before Google is searched, a banner is clicked, or a merchant’s site is opened.
The desire and brand choice that drives market share — online and offline — are still being created by effective terrestrial advertising. This is particularly true for emotion-driven purchases like diamond jewelry, as Zales can now sadly attest.
Bottom line: Make sure that you’ve built the desire for your brand with effective offline advertising before you expect consumers to look for it online.
2009 was a great year for Wendy Harris, of Team Harris Realty, despite the horrible macro environment for realty businesses. While many of her peers reacted to the real estate downturn by reducing or eliminating mass-marketing, Wendy moved in the opposite direction with spectacular results.
Wendy recently wrote to share her story: “Thanks to Cumulus radio, I outsold every resale Real Estate agent in Fayetteville and continue to increase my business!”
Wendy took advantage of radio’s unique ability to deeply inform potential clients as part of the mass-reach/high-frequency branding process. She differentiates her business with a unique listing proposition: a guarantee to sell the house at a specified price by a specified deadline and backs her guarantee by agreeing to buy the home if she doesn’t hit her goals. By breaking this concept down into several explanatory radio commercials she quickly communicated this program to anxious sellers. “The phones started ringing the first week I started.”
October’s economic reports are giving us encouraging signals, but we expect a rebound in consumer spending to lag anywhere from several months to several more quarters. Your competitors are likely to remain on the sidelines, until clearer signals emerge, leaving the field wide open for a once-in-a-generation growth opportunity.
A large, consistent body of business research conducted on the recessions of the 1970′s, 1980′s, 1990′s and early millennium suggests that firms that start advertising aggressively now should be rewarded by above-average growth during the remaining downturn and, depending on how long they are advertising while competitors aren’t, above-average growth after the downturn ends.
While it’s clear now that the country is gradually emerging from the economic crisis, the strength of individual regions and business sectors is still decidedly mixed. As small and mid-sized businesses look out into this environment, it can be tough to make critical and/or prudent decisions. No one wants to be the last business returning to market, and few are willing to be the first.
