There are so many negative stories in the news right now. Sub prime lending crisis. Home values crashing. Foreclosures up. Jobs falling. Oil soaring. Dollar down. Food costs rising. February retail sales drop. Recession.
 
What's a brand to do during uncertain economic times like these? Predictably, cutting the marketing budget is a first line of defense. But clever marketers realize, and history demonstrates, that this is a mistake. After all, with your not-so-clever competitors cutting budgets this can be a better time for your brand to stand out from the crowd and grab more attention.

Since repetition is key to making your brand more memorable, altering your brand's promise to reflect the changing economy doesn't seem like a good idea. However, adjusting messaging to show customers and prospects that you understand their situation, essentially dialing up the brand’s empathy attribute, can help forge a better emotional connection with audiences.
 
On 3.13.08 at 11am ET, there were 506,000 Google results for "brands during recession."  So why not add this one  to the list? You may want to check out the brand debate at brandchannel.com. I also like David Murphy's blog on "Building brand value during a recession."

Posted by Todd Baird at 05:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a general rule of thumb the more complex the technology and the more expensive the investment, the more players that are involved in the decision making process.  Not many companies empower one person (or even department) with exclusive decision and purchasing authority.

What does this mean for marketers who are trying to influence this long and complex decision?  First, you need to understand the people involved in the decision and each of their roles’ in the process.  Talk to your sales team, talk to your customers, utilize syndicated research (Marketing Sherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark is a great resource), sponsor a brief survey…find out what your up against, find out what makes them tick. 

For example:

• Senior staff may be charged with the brunt of the groundwork – researching the solutions available to solve their problem.  How do the solutions interact with legacy systems?  These folks may be more impressed with the technology than others.  They want to understand how your solution will improve their life (and I don’t mean personal life)…

• The CIO on the other hand, will be more concerned with how the solution advances the business goals of the organization.  Marketing Sherpa notes that in many cases they’ve seen the CIO come in at the last minute and often overrules a senior staffers recommendation.

Once you understand who they are, then you can develop targeted communications that address each of their individual needs.  This can mean slight tweaks in messaging as well as the offer.  Test and refine, test and refine.

Increasing awareness across all individuals involved in the decision making process (combined with a solid solution) will increase your sales. Try encouraging dialogue between the involved parties – incorporate refer a colleague functionality in to your communications.  Give the decision makers and influencers something to talk about.

And test and refine, test and refine.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Live for today. Live for tomorrow. Which one are you?

On the surface it may seem pretty easy to describe a customer segment using these labels. After all, you could use account balance data (savings, checking, retirement, investments, debt, etc) and basic demographic data (age, marital status, household income, etc) to paint a behavioral picture. You could even conduct surveys, interviews and focus groups to determine rational, emotional and social motivations to overlay attitudinal detail. You would have a pretty good portrait of these groups based on all of this, but consider the following. 

On any given day, I know I can make a purchase decision and spend a little more based on a live for today attitude. At the very next purchase decision, however, I tend to spend less based on a live for tomorrow motivation. Did guilt over the previous purchase influences the next purchase? Absolutely. But the guilt merry-go-round doesn't end there, because on the next purchase decision I'll tend to spend a little more. Feeling the guilt over acting cheaply. Guilt is a complex emotion. The point here is that emotional motivations tend to have more influence over our purchase decisions than we tend to admit (especially in a research setting where we want to appear smart).

So where does this leave us? I think the conclusion here is that these attitudinal labels -- "live for today & live for tomorrow"  -- are not set in stone. Instead, they represent two ends of a continuum. One where people are likely striving for a balance in their behavior. So it's likely that you are both living for today and living for tomorrow.

For financial service marketers rich with behavioral data, beware the emotional and social motivations of your customers. It may not always appear to be what it seems.
   

Posted by Todd Baird at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the ultimate mind bend – here’s a special report on whitepapers?  Okay it’s called a “special report” but you and I know this is a whitepaper on whitepapers.  Does this signify a cosmic event? The end of the universe as the comedian Louis Black would lead you to believe because there’s a Starbucks on all four corners of an intersection?

No, it reinforces the value of whitepapers and the need to write a good one in order to stand out in the sea of whitepapers. They are valuable content in the technology industry – particularly when a prospect is in decision making or buying stages.  Here are three tips to help increase downloads, content, and pass along and separate your paper from the masses.

1. A smart title. Keep it to the point (not funny or trite).  Try testing whitepapers names to see which receives more downloads.  Michael Stelzner author of the book “Writing Whitepapers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged” and founder of www.whitepapersource.com suggests trying numbers in titles.  For example, “Ten things you need to know about compliance”.  The title is one of the most important factors on whether your paper is read, not an afterthought or something that should be left to a technical writer.
2. Keep it short and relevant.  While a short whitepaper sounds like a contradiction, we all know how hard it is to find the time to read a 25-page paper.   Instead try 4-6 pages and make it’s direct and easy to scan online.
3. Use key words. Using the right key words in your abstract/paper summary will help ensure your paper can be found via search engines and within your site.  You wrote this great content – you want it to be easy to find and determine whether it’s relevant for them.

Keep in mind that whitepapers are a valuable marketing tool and should be given the same attention and care that a high profile ad campaign warrants.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)