Here are a few lessons learned from some of my recent observations:

• Being a sports enthusiast, I watch a lot of Red Sox baseball and cable TV runs mostly local business TV spots. The quality of TV ads on local cable is really bad. I’m sure this statement comes as no surprise to you, however, one of the most annoying commercials is a car dealer whose ad is impossible to understand. The ad leaves me with the feeling that I wouldn’t trust them.The lesson: If your business warrants using cable TV as an advertising medium, hire the expertise of an agency who knows how to develop a quality finished product to make sure you always put your best image in front of your prospect.
• Music and images can become associated with another company if they are used within their advertising. Recently, Amstel Light has been using music within its commercial that was previously used in a Viagra commercial. As the commercial started, I thought I was about to see the latter, but boy was I fooled. So unless you want to intentionally associate yourself with another product, do some research.The lesson: I’m sure most of our us are not going to advertise on national TV, but when choosing web, brochure or local print advertisement images, check to see what others are using before you make your selections.
• Your eyes can see things differently than intended. In a TV advertisement, Dodge listed their 800 number as 800-FOR-DODGE. The way it was presented in the commercial, my eyes saw “800-FORD-ODGE”. Hm, not sure if I was the only one that saw that, but it certainly didn’t send the message their marketing agency intended to send.

  The lesson: Review your marketing materials with an eye for anything that could reduce the impact of your marketing message.

The moral of the story is study what others have done to become aware of the small things that can hurt you in your marketing. Not marketing your business hurts your chance of success since your prospects don’t know about you, but bad marketing can send prospects to your competitors.

Advertising comes in all shapes and sizes and has many different features and price tags. One common myth is that you have to be rich to advertise! If you do it wrong, that is certainly true. But if you have a game plan, your business can afford to include advertising in the marketing mix.

Should You Advertise?

First the why. When you take your company and stack it up to your competitor based on merit alone, what have you? Most likely you have two really good companies that equally deserve business. Unfortunately, life and business don’t work that way. You have to fight for the business to come to YOUR door before it goes to your competition. One of the best weapons is advertising. With advertising, you can promote the reasons why people should do business with you rather than the other guy, increase awareness of you to your audience, and promote special incentives to your target as a “call to action.”

Then the who. When making a decision to advertise as part of your marketing mix, to ask yourself the following questions:

• Are my primary customers are the consumer?
• Do I need to reach a very large audience regularly?
• Am I new to the community and need to ensure that they are familiar with my business?
• Does my business require me to obtain a high volume of customers?
• Is my sales cycle relatively short, i.e. can I see an immediate return on investment?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are a prime candidate for including advertising into your marketing plan. But even if you answered no to these questions, do not necessarily rule out advertising as an effective way to reach a large population very quickly.

Cost verses Value in Advertising

You’ve decided that advertising can benefit your business, but ohmygoodness, it costs so MUCH! When faced with this problem, some companies skip it all together, which may be a big mistake. Others use the “spaghetti strategy” where they throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. Or, minus the metaphor, advertising intermittently in whatever looks like the least expensive publication (thinking any advertising is better than
none) and hoping something brings in business – another big mistake.  Tsk, tsk. 

The smart companies build a strategy and put it into action. The advertising they do is RIGHT for them, they can afford it, and they have made a way for it to happen. These companies target the right publications, which will have the highest return on investment. This is the category you want to be in.

Developing Your Advertising Strategy

Companies that successfully drive business through advertising and get the most from their advertising dollar
develop a strategy. We are assuming that you have developed an overall marketing plan for your business, and advertising has been identified as a marketing program that you want to include in your marketing mix. If you have not already developed your marketing plan, refer back to the article “Build a Solid Marketing Foundation”, as much of the information you will need should be developed in that plan.

However, if you have a marketing plan, the following additional information will help you develop your advertising strategy.

• First you need to develop your advertising objectives. Are you trying to raise awareness or generate qualified leads? Are you looking for an immediate response or are you cultivating new prospects?
• Once you have your objectives, you need to define your value in both logical and emotional terms. Rational value is cost, location, or features. Emotional value includes how a client will feel, look, or be perceived.
• Now you need to identify your target audience from the perspective of what media this audience is most likely to read. By understanding the habits of your target audience, you will be able to choose the media that will reach the greatest number of prospects.
• Next comes your choice of media products including print, broadcast, Internet or items like billboards, buses or taxis. Your budget and your target audience will determine the mix. Pick the media products that put your company directly in front of your audience.
• Once you have identified these, only then can you develop your creative message that grabs your attention, makes you interested, makes you desire the product and has a clear call to action/purchase.

How to Afford Advertising

Now here’s the best part: there are ways to execute your advertising strategy that is affordable. Once you have selected the media products that fit your business, you can determine a series of advertisements and the placement fees that are associated with the plan. Most publications have varying fees based on size, color and frequency. You don’t need to do a full-page color ad to be effective. Don’t spend outside of your means. Start small, but with frequency. You will begin to see some results even from a small ad.

For example, if you have decided to advertise in the local business journal, the cost to run in their publication for a six-month term for a ¼ page ad with no color is $10,000 (round number). If that is too steep for your budget, try to get something slightly different. If this is the right publication for your business, do not pass up the chance to capitalize on it. Here are some options for keeping your costs aligned with your budget:

• Never be afraid to ask for a discounted rate. They may say no, but they may also say yes.
• Run your advertising campaign for a year instead. Although your total budget will be higher, your per-issue rate will be lower and you will extend your exposure to your audience. Most publications bill you monthly so your cash flow will benefit.
• Go with a smaller ad, but use color to ensure visibility. Most publications like business journals are black and white but provide a single color option.  Color attracts attention first, not size.
• If advertising is important to you, look for other ways to save and use the money for marketing. Go back through your budget and look at your expenses carefully. Are there ways that you can trim some fat? Check other expenses that are truly expenses and see if there is a way to save.

If none of these options work, resort to plan B. Here it is. Slice and dice the budget you DO have into alternative
advertising methods that work for your target. Perhaps a Chamber of Commerce newsletter that has a similar demographic and circulation might be the right thing to do for you. It would cost less and does not come out as often, but you would be hitting the same target.

Getting Outside Help

Advertising is one area we stress getting some professional help. Normally we support businesses doing things for themselves when it makes sense, like for sales tools, web sites and collateral development. However, advertising is an area where you probably do not benefit from doing it yourself.

The major reason is that the media venue pays advertising agencies for the placement to encourage more volume from the agency. You still pay the same rate as if you went to the publication directly, but you don’t need to pay the agency for the media buy. There are other benefits of working with an agency:

• The advertising agency may offer to create the ad for you if they do the media buy and place the ad. In other words, for the price of the ad placement, you get the ad created for you by the agency. Not all of them do this, but always check.
• Getting your message across in an ad is difficult. How do you make the prospect understand why they should do business with you in such a small space? Using outside agents to help develop the ad can be beneficial.
• A poorly created ad is a waste of money. Doing it for yourself may look unprofessional and low budget. Getting an expert to come up with the creative will make your ad stand out from the crowd. They have experience in working with the various publications and understand all the guidelines that need to be
  followed so that your ad gets placed properly.
• Given the large number of potential target publications, you may want to get unbiased help from someone who has access to all the different media kits and can help you determine which are the best publications for your business.

One final word of advice for all you happy advertisers out there in business-land – do NOT give in to solicitations that haunt you by phone promising “It’s only $199! …Limited time offer!”  Unless that venue is on your list of what is right for you, hang up.

Why do businesses overlook this excellent opportunity? Many small business owners hate to talk about themselves and their business because they feel as if they simply don’t have anything that is newsworthy. Business owners are not the best judge of what is newsworthy because they are too close to their business. Things that seem relatively unimportant to them could be something that everyone else finds interesting.

Marketing and Public Relations

Many people don’t understand the difference between marketing and public relations. Although public relations is very much a part of your marketing strategy, the focus of these two disciplines is quite different. Most marketing activities focus directly on your target customer. If you execute a direct mail, email, or advertising campaign, you select venues that align with your target audience. Your campaign tries to reach the prospect directly, providing compelling messages that encourage these people to check out your products and services.

Public relations, on the other hand, reach your target audience through the media, analysts, organizations and other constituents that can influence the behavior of your target audience. Public relations can ensure that your products or services are visible in the publications your ideal clients read and the communities in which they participate. Public relations can influence editors, analysts, and organizations that offer you the ability to reach your target audience. Public relations can manage your company’s reputation and find opportunities to get your company in the public eye.

Types of Public Relations Activities

Public relations is about influencing different audiences. For most small businesses, the main public relations activity is getting visibility for your business, products, and the owners in the various types of media. The activities that are associated with public relations include announcements, speaking opportunities, analyst relations, media relations, investor relations, bylined articles, customer stories and case studies. The mix of activities that you use for your business will be dependent on the type of business you are in and what you are trying to accomplish through your PR activities.

The press release is the mechanism to get your newsworthy information out and should be written to convey what you did, why you did it, when you did it, and how it benefits whomever. The more informative and useful the information, the more likely it will get the attention of the media and possibly get published.

In addition to the press release, most companies benefit from having articles published or getting speaking opportunities for the principals in your company. This is additional exposure to the right markets which can shape the public’s opinion of your business.

Should You Hire a PR Firm?

Depending on the amount of publicity you are interested in achieving, you may be able to do some PR for yourself. The one benefit of doing the PR yourself is that if you do get coverage in the appropriate media, it is a very low cost way to market your firm. But if you are not good at doing the PR yourself (and most of us are not), then you should opt to hire a public relations specialist to help you get the word out. A skilled PR resource can advise you on how you should approach the media, what will work for your business, and will be relentless with their follow up to ensure the media heard what you had to say.

For most businesses, an independent PR specialist is a smart investment that augments your marketing activities. Working with your marketing consultant, they can ensure your messages consistently get to the right audiences. Working together, your marketing and public relations consultants can develop a strategy that works seamlessly together and execute their respective activities in parallel.

Part of an Overall Marketing Plan

Public relations is another piece of a well defined marketing strategy. If you are serious about marketing your business, you should consider combining strong marketing activities with a continuous public relations effort. Why only drive your message to your target directly? Get to your target market through both marketing and public relations activities. By influencing the influencers, you can get your message in the hands of your ideal customer more often and with more credibility because it appears to come from someone other than yourself.

• Adjective: having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness or understanding; perceiving all things
• Noun: God

Wow, interesting message. Was this a “tongue in cheek” message or do they really think they know it all over their competition?

If you are writing the copy for an advertisement or any other marketing piece, besides using vocabulary that can be understood easily, there is a formula that you need to follow to get the best results:

• Captivate – get the attention of your Ideal Client
• Connect – appeal to them emotionally by understanding their issues and challenges
• Educate – build trust and credibility
• Motivate – give them a reason to take the next step in the process
• Move – get them to take some action

Writing copy that talks down to your audience may get their attention, but it certainly doesn’t connect with them or give them reason to do business with you. Having to look up a word in a dictionary certainly didn’t give me a warm and welcome impression of the company. I did learn what omniscient is although that’s not what is meant by educating the reader. How do you build trust and credibility when you are saying you know everything?

Writing needs to connect with your target audience. You get their attention if you write about something they care about. Whether it is a brochure, ad copy, blog post, article or whatever you are using to market your company, you need to make sure your writing speaks to them.

Once again I turn to Drew’s Marketing Minute for a great post about developing “personas” when you are writing your marketing materials.

The Marketing Lesson

Determine what really interests your audience and you will connect with your reader.

The topic of print verses online publishing is something that many marketing folks are pondering at the moment when it comes to spending their advertising dollars. For many of my technology clients, print advertising is not a factor. Most have embraced online advertising in some form and if we do a print ad, it is usually for a conference guide or some very targeted publication.

What is happening in the media industry for high technology is just the beginning. A post by Tony Hung, Print Publishing’s Death Knell?, points out some interesting facts about IDG Publishing’s revenue mix between online and print. IDG is a media company focusing on the IT industry. According to Colin Crawford’s post, The transformation of IDG, the absolute dollar growth of IDG’s online revenues now exceeds the decline in their print revenues. This change in their revenue mix and higher margins from the online businesses have resulted in them being more profitable than before. So it is no surprise that InfoWorld (an IDG publication) announced that it would be discontinuing its print publication in order to focus its efforts online. According to another post by Colin, since print is no longer the major product line at InfoWorld, closure of the 27 year print publication is a natural step in a plan that was put into place 2 years ago.

The future of print in the technology industry is transitioning. Other print publications already have disappeared or have been repurposed into online publications. More will follow suit. And truthfully, in an industry where change happens so quickly, I would prefer to get all of my information online.

But is this the case in all industries? If print advertising is part of your marketing strategy, it may be a good time to do an analysis of your industry and target market to determine whether a shift from print to online is happening and how you can distribute your advertising efforts to take advantage of this trend.

Rapid7 Booth

This conference is a large IT security conference with over 15,000 registered attendees and over 300 exhibiting vendors. I was planning on blogging from the conference, but after 8-10 hour days on my feet, I had all I could do to read my email to stay up to date on what was happening with my other clients.

I did manage to walk around the exhibit area and check out other vendors and their booths to see what was in vogue in tradeshow decor and attire. Polo shirts, button down oxfords and tee shirts all adorned with the various company logos were everywhere. Booth layouts were interesting – some very simple and others extremely elaborate. Many spent money on “models and rapsters for hire” to attract people to their booth. The question is did these antics do anything to attract the right person to their booth in order to achieve a satisfactory ROI on the show?

Tradeshows and conferences are great places to meet prospects and start building business relationships that are critical to a company’s success. People get to see the product, hear first hand what it can do and meet people from the company. They can begin to form opinions about the company from how they are perceived at the show. Although you need to put your best image out there, it does not have to be expensive and trendy.

Like everything in marketing, a tradeshow appearance needs to project the brand, be professional looking and attract the right audience. We spent approximately $10 – $15k total for the show. Our simple 10×10 booth with a contest to win an Atari Wii managed to attract over 350 people who stopped, took literature and entered the contest. Of those, I suspect about 50 are truly interested in our product. Close a couple of them and the show more than pays for itself.

For software companies, synergistic relationships with complementary solutions providers, system integrators and consulting partners are critical to your expansion in the market. Done properly, benefits of having alliance partners far outweigh the investment. Quality, revenue-generating partnerships can lend credibility to your software solution, expand your market into areas where you may not have expertise, and provide an extended sales force without having to add resources. A network of skilled partners with technology, integration and implementation expertise helps your customers solve business problems by bridging the gap between disparate products and real business solutions.

In addition to creating the alliance program with the usual categories, benefits and materials, you should first address the following four key challenges that can sabotage the success of your program.

There Must Be an Alliance Strategy

Conceptually, most managers agree that an overall alliance program strategy is necessary to focus your resources on those alliances that make the most sense for your business. Signing up as many partners as possible is not a strategy. Signing up partners because they brought you one deal is not a strategy. Without a clear understanding about where your alliance program should take you, and what you want from a partnership, you can overextend your resources and set yourself up for failure.

Once you have established a program strategy, then each alliance needs to be backed by a business strategy. The individual strategies can be driven for many reasons, such as vertical expertise, integration services, a strong sales force, or credibility in a complementary technology, such as XML or Java development. The true value of any alliance is measured in terms of its contribution to your strategy, not solely on the costs and revenues of the collaboration.

Even knowing this, companies will still take on partners without really understanding why. This is due in part to the business development manager seeing the alliance itself as the goal. By ensuring your business development managers clearly understand the overall strategy and how individual alliances fit within the strategy, they will be able to better assess which partners are critical to your success and eliminate those that are ineffective.

The Product Must Be Solid

Before you try to recruit system integrators and consulting partners, be sure your product is at the point where you feel confident that they will see its value. In the early stages of your product, you should target complementary technology partners that extend your product and a small number of consultants and system integrators that you utilize as advisory partners as you develop the product. Nurture and invest in these companies by training them, getting feedback from them on product requirements, and having them accompany you on a customer implementation. Turn these consultants into product evangelists who lend credibility to your product. You will be far more successful recruiting larger, more influential system integration and consulting partners if you already have outside references that can speak with prospective customers, partners, industry analysts and press. Trying to recruit these partners without a solid product that meets their expectations, and customer and partner references that support your product strategy, could seriously damage your product’s reputation.

Business Development is Not the Same as Sales

Many companies confuse business development with sales. Business development, the recruitment and management of alliance partners and alternate sales channels, is an integral component of strategic marketing. Your sales organization is a day-to-day activity that brings in the revenue. To effectively acquire and retain quality alliances, business development managers need to be goaled on the strategic relationship. The alliance should bring you revenue opportunities, but that may be a secondary goal. If your strategy is to establish an alliance because they have credibility within a key vertical market, then you should measure that relationship on how effective it is in getting you customer opportunities within that vertical. One you get the opportunity, closing the sale is your sales organization’s responsibility.

Another reason for this distinction between business development and sales is that your alliance partners need support from you in order to be successful – something your sales organization cannot afford to provide. Your alliance partners need the tools, such as training, collateral, demos, and joint sales opportunities, to promote your product and the confidence in the product to effectively represent it to their customers. By investing in these tools to help your partners establish a successful practice around your product, you enable the partner to drive revenue not only for their company, but also for yours.

Build the Relationship, Not Just the Business

A signed contract does not make a relationship. Before you venture into a relationship, make sure you have the resources you will need to service the partnering agreement – business, technical, and administrative. Once the contract is executed, it is imperative that your business development manager understands the spirit of the alliance agreement and the reasons for entering into an alliance in the first place. They must nurture the relationship to keep your product foremost in your partner’s minds.

To build a successful alliance takes time. If companies are to succeed in the competitive markets in which they exist, they must build partnerships on trust and mutual respect and ensure that they can work together effectively. To do so means that both parties be able to function with an attitude of what is best for the partnership, resolve conflict quickly and effectively, solve business problems jointly, give as much as they get, and communicate openly. Only then will the partnership mature and reach the results you had envisioned.

Effective Alliances Extend Your Reach

Alliance programs are being revamped to focus strongly on business strategy, go-to-market plans and mutual value propositions. A software product benefits by having a wider sales channel communicating this value to the customer. By creating a strategic business development plan and focusing your resources on its effective execution, you can acquire customers that you would normally not reach, and help your company grow to its desired level of revenues.