When a business makes mistakes in their marketing communications, there are several problems:

• The business looks stupid.
• The business looks careless.
• The business’s marketing communications strategy to address the mistake is inevitably complicated, because there’s no good solution to the problem.

Recently, I received a series of mistake-ridden marketing emails that illustrate these points quite well. A local business sent me an unsolicited email that contained a devastating typo– they included the wrong phone number. Trying to atone for this mistake, they sent a follow-up missive:

My first thought was, “That’s what you get for sending me unsolicited email.” I definitely have a problem with email marketing that isn’t permission-based. My second thought was that customers won’t likely trust a business that can’t remember its own phone number.

My third thought was to notice that this email also contained a glaring typo.

While apologizing for the previous mistake, the business makes another mistake in their subject line – “Our Apologizes!” It’s a bit like the Internet meme, “All your base are belong to us.”

Despite their claim, I don’t believe the cold had much to do with their typo, since this marketing email was sent on the warmest January day I can remember (with a high of 62 degrees).

The lesson here for businesses everywhere is to take care. Details matter. Your marketing communications reach many people, and it’s important they tell the story of your business without distracting the customer with mistakes and typos.

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By letting customers try it out!

Lighthouse Carwash does this whenever they open a new car wash. For the first few days, all the washes are free. It helps them build a customer base by showing just how great the service is.

Busken Bakery in Cincinnati does the same with their business catering service. Their flyer promoting the service is pretty nice:

But it isn’t nearly as enticing as the free dozen donuts that accompanies it:

Who wouldn’t trust this bakery to cater their next business breakfast after tasting these delicious donuts? (My apologies to anyone dieting this January.)

Not only does giving samples allow customers to experience your product, it’s a much more cost-effective marketing effort than almost any other tactic. For instance, compare the cost of a free car wash or dozen donuts to the price of a radio commercial.

When you’ve got a great product you can sample, your customers get a delightful experience, and your business stays in the marketing budget. See why it’s the best?

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This year, the advertising squabble continues, with Busken’s retort, “Sorry, Big Boy, this pumpkin’s taken.”

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• Marketing Mix – The marketing activities that make up your marketing plan. For instance, e-mail marketing, pay-per-click advertising and promotional events.
• Target – The customers you are trying to reach with your marketing efforts (You’ve probably noticed that many marketing terms have militaristic origins. I think this is a terrible way to think about marketing, as I wrote in this article – “Marketing isn’t war on your customers“).
• Copy – The written content on a business’s website, blog, brochures, advertisements, etc.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimization. The ongoing process of making a website attractive to search engines like Google.
• SEM – Search Engine Marketing. This encompasses the marketing mix a business uses to market to users of search engines, both SEO and advertising.
• CPM – Cost Per Mille. In the advertising world, this is the cost per one thousand showings of your ad. Sometimes, it’s also referred to as Cost Per Impression.
• Impression – An impression is when your ad is visible to view. For instance, each time a banner ad loads on a web page it counts as an impression. But just because the ad is visible doesn’t guarantee a person is actually looking at it!
• PPC – Pay Per Click. This is the type of internet advertising made popular by Google and is used by all the search engines, along with Facebook. It means you pay for the advertising when someone clicks on your ad.
• CPC – Cost Per Click. How much each click costs in a PPC advertising campaign.
• Viral Marketing – Marketing efforts that are started by a business but grow and become controlled by groups of customers. For instance, you’ve probably heard of a video that has “gone viral.”

Have any other marketing jargon you’d like defined? Just post a comment, and I’ll be glad to help!

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The Bob Rohrman Auto Group has been producing their trademark, outlandish TV commercials for decades, and they’ve become a staple of Indiana television viewing. Rohrman has been Santa Claus, Superhero Zero, a king and myriad other fanciful characters (I swear I remember him donning a turkey suit, but I can’t prove it).

See for yourself:

So enjoy your marketing vacation. “You owe it to yourself,” after all.*

*Viewer discretion is advised. Don’t try these marketing stunts at the office.

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My good friend Laura Poland (who is a photographer, not a marketer) recently showed some serious marketing smarts. She told me how she caught on to Covergirl’s marketing tactics. A TV commercial claimed their Outlast Lipstain is the #1 selling lipstain. She speculates, “What is a lipstain? They’ve created a new category! My thinking is they’re the only ‘lipstain.’” She’s not very far off with her analysis. They are number one because they are almost the only one, with few competitors. A quick check of the Covergirl website shows the product isn’t very well-received, either– it only receives 3 of 5 stars from reviewers.

This example of a photographer picking apart a marketing campaign isn’t isolated. Everyday, customers evaluate your marketing messages for trustworthiness and believability. If they catch a whiff of “tactics,” their skepticism will keep them from buying from you. The best approach is to be honest with your marketing and sell a product you are proud to promote.

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In my travels, I’ve always taken an interest in the signs that businesses use to promote themselves. A sign can be a powerful motivator for a potential customer- either to buy from you or to pass on by. Or, a sign can blend into the landscape, escaping a potential customer’s attention altogether.

These nine great signs demonstrate what make a sign effective. First up, we have the St. Louis Science Center.

This sign mirrors the shape of the Science Center. It shows that design can incorporate both creativity and functionality- it’s beautiful and easy to read. Also in St. Louis is this dramatic and interesting zoo sign.

Everyone knows what a zoo is, so the designer had a little fun with the shape and presentation of this sign. However, most businesses should follow the Shrimp Factory’s example below.

This sign shows you exactly what you will get: a seafood dinner in a classy atmosphere. Another take on the restaurant sign is this Art Deco sign for the Signature Room at the Ninety-Fifth in Chicago.

Don’t you want to eat at such a cool place?

Next up, we have a little Hebrew for you.

I may not be able to read Hebrew, but I certainly know what a giant coffee cup and arrow mean. This 3-D sign perfectly describes what you can get at this business. When it really counts, though, signs should be multilingual.

Danger. Mines.

The clever building below is a carwash, which isn’t readily apparent at first glance, so the sign is essential. I really like this company, so you might want to learn more about their business model at their website, Lighthouse Carwash Solutions.

This British tube sign makes so much more sense than the American “Exit.” What could be clearer than “Way Out?”

And I’ll leave you with this interesting sign. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad, although it’s quirky. What do you think?

“We sharpen anything but your wits,” and “We fix anything but a broken heart” are certainly interesting ways to talk about the service commodities of sharpening, repairs and key-making. Does it make you want to be their customer?

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In the last few decades, car design has become uninspired, with all cars looking pretty much the same. But you wouldn’t know it from the marketing communication. Television, radio and print advertising are full of wildly optimistic claims about innovative, new styling that completely blows away the competition.

We all know the stereotyped commercials- a car zips around a contrived scene while a baritone announcer croons. More recently, auto companies have taken to introducing comedic spokespeople as well- the Ford guy, the cute, mop-headed kid touting the Toyota minivan. But underpinning the high production values is an all-too-apparent truth: these cars look boring. Take away the mountain hairpin curves, barren desert racetrack or sassy spokesperson and you’re left with a product that can’t be visually differentiated from its competitors and probably isn’t exciting anyone.

Marketers seem to be coping with this fact by simply lying- or deluding themselves, if you prefer. Check out these marketing descriptions and their accompanying promotional pictures. Try not to yawn.

Energetic, athletic stance with unique Z-shaped body lines

Sensible gets sensational with a bold, confident sense of style

Its sharp lines and powerful stance excite the senses from any angle

World-class design and superb level of craftsmanship

Car designers can do better. Cars used to be much more visually interesting. Look at these classic cars. Love them or hate them, they’ve got style and a definite design aesthetic.

So, c’mon, designers. Give us some unique and interesting cars that marketers can really work with. Until they offer a product that consumers are excited about buying, the auto industry will continue to stagnate.

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• You aren’t marketing to the right customers. The first step of any successful marketing campaign is to accurately identify the people who will buy your product or service. For instance, a private elementary school may teach children, but it shouldn’t advertise to children. Parents are the decision-makers.
• Place – You aren’t marketing to customers where they go for information about your product or service. Think like a customer. Where do they go to learn about your product or to buy it? No one is going to buy life insurance from a mall kiosk, no matter how many thousands of people walk past each day. Even if 50% of the passersby are in the market for life insurance, you just don’t buy it at the mall.
• Timing – You aren’t marketing to customers at the right time. This could be the time of day, day of the week or season of the year. Imagine a florist marketing Valentine’s bouquets in March. It would be ridiculous – no one wants to buy them after Valentine’s Day.
• Message – Your marketing message isn’t meaningful to your customers. Many marketers make the mistake of developing messages that appeal to their company instead of to the customer. Your message should address what is important to your customer. Why do customers want to buy from you?

Your next question might be, “How do I know which reason to address?” To learn the reason your marketing isn’t working, look at the results of your marketing efforts, such as calls, clicks or impressions. If you don’t have any results at all, you probably have a problem of marketing in the wrong place. If you are getting some results, but not closing sales, you might be marketing to the wrong customers.

To determine if your timing or message is off, you need to think like a customer – when are they looking? what messages are meaningful to them? If you can, ask some existing customers what they think. Most of the time, customers are glad to share their opinions to help you out. Ask them how and when they heard about you and what they like about your products or services. Use this information to craft messages that would appeal to them and potential customers like them.

It can certainly be tricky to determine why your marketing isn’t working and how to fix it. I find these problems very interesting and would be glad to talk to you about your marketing. Just call or email me: Amanda Cullen, 513.833.4203, amanda@zooinajungle.com

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Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising online can be a very cost-effective addition to marketing plans – most of us know that. But the world of PPC advertising is expanding into new opportunities. Lately, many business owners have asked me about different kinds of PPC advertising, with questions like, “What about Facebook?” or “Is Bing worth it?” It seems time for me to publicly address some of these questions for my readers.

Google PPC

Google PPC advertising is the must-have for any online advertising strategy. Google enjoys 65.4% market share of internet searches. Being on the page when your customer is searching for your product is incredibly valuable. To learn more about the general benefits of PPC advertising, read my article “Building Your Website Traffic.”

Bing and Yahoo! PPC

Microsoft manages the search results and PPC advertising for both Bing and Yahoo! through its Microsoft AdCenter. In February, Bing had 13.6% market share for online search, and Yahoo! had 16.1%. Combined, the search engines represent 29.7% of all internet searches. It is worthwhile to advertise to 30% of your customer base, and the strategies used for Google PPC advertising will apply to Bing and Yahoo!.

In my experience, you will face less competition advertising with Bing and Yahoo!, for two reasons. 1. Fewer businesses think of devoting marketing resources to these search engines. 2.The Microsoft AdCenter is difficult to use, and its reporting is much less intuitive than Google’s.

Facebook PPC

Facebook is a relatively new player in the PPC advertising arena, and their approach is quite different from the search engines’ way of advertising. First of all, you don’t have to pay per click; you can pay per impression. Paying for impressions is more traditional marketing language, so I believe Facebook offers the option to make marketers more comfortable. PPC advertising is attractive because you only pay when someone shows interest in your ad – not just if it showed on the screen. Here are some other ways Facebook advertising is different:

• Demographics instead of search. Facebook users aren’t searching for what they seek. Instead they list interests, post updates and engage in conversations. Facebook uses this demographic information to display ads they think might interest the user. Facebook allows advertisers quite a bit of granularity in choosing demographics like age, geographic location, sex and relationship status. Search engines simply don’t have all of this information.
• Interests instead of keywords. With a search engine, finding perfect keywords is crucial to a successful PPC campaign. But with Facebook advertising, it’s all about likes and interests. As an advertiser, you identify the interests of the people you would like to reach, and Facebook makes suggestions, as shown in the picture below:
  
• Facebook page instead of your website. You can send visitors to your Facebook page instead of your website.  I recommend creating and maintaining a page for your business if you are going to advertise on Facebook. Facebook users like to stay on the site, and you will receive more value from your ads if a visitor “likes” your page and receives your regular updates. It’s important to regularly update your business page, so people stay interested (but don’t update it too frequently, or people will “hide” you!). Many marketers might balk at sending visitors to their Facebook page instead of their website- don’t we want to increase our website stats? Website stats are important, but only because we hope to turn visitors into customers. The best way to turn Facebook users into customers is by engaging them on the site they visit every day.
• Ads and pages have to be associated with a personal profile. You need to set up a profile in order to set up a business page in order to set up an ad directing people to that page. Don’t blame me for the complexity; blame Facebook.

Do you have more questions about PPC advertising online? Send me an email – amanda@zooinajungle.com

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