“I don’t know what else I should do.”

July 29th, 2010

This buddy of mine runs a digital printing business. Let’s call him Ken (not his real name). Inside the digital print industry, Ken is a bit of an anomaly, particularly for his aggressive and progressive views on marketing.

Ken, you see, is one of the very few digital printers who actually conduct marketing campaigns. And the campaigns typically include a heavy dose of social media.

If you know anything about marketing, that may sound strange. Huh? He’s one of the “few” who market? The fact is, many digital printers came from the world of conventional printing, where marketing was mostly an afterthought. The rules of selling print were pretty simple: befriend any and all print buyers, earn their trust, provide excellent service, offer the best possible deals — end of story.

Many printers built pretty successful businesses selling to print buyers. As long as sellers could negotiate with buyers and their “lowest cost per piece” mentality, a lot of conventional printers made a good chunk ‘o dough.

Then came digital. There went the chunks ‘o dough. Many bought into digital printing as the “next big thing” — but most of them don’t know to sell it. Problem is, a lot of them aren’t keen on or comfortable with changing their once lucrative business models.

Ken learned early in the game that simply schmoozing print buyers was just not going to cut it for digital printing. Not if he was going to reach beyond the print buyer and into the minds (and budgets) of marketers and agencies.

Long story short: Ken has embraced social networking like it’s a long-lost twin brother. He has a social media marketer on staff who makes sure that Ken’s company appears regularly on social networks and offers relevant information — not simply self-promotional messages. Almost daily, you’ll find Ken’s company on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. He also uses nicely-produced video clips of his business to share online and add some personality to his company.

Are Ken’s social marketing efforts paying off, i.e., turning the press drums and selling more print? He cites a pretty decent new job from a greeting card firm, which originated with a social media connection. He’s made new contacts with ad agencies — relationships that could evolve into co-marketing partnerships. His sales force is active in social network chats and dialogs with potential clients. His online “followers” and “fans” serve as a focus group for product ideas.

While he would always like to hear more kaching in the cash register– and wouldn’t we all — Ken still feels good about jumping early onto the social media bandwagon. “It gives me something unique to talk about on sales calls,” he says. “It gives our brand a reason to stand out in a very competitive market.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what else I could do.”

Clearly, social media is proven tool for making new connections and engaging constituents. (Ask Barack Obama.) But, is it the Holy Grail, the answer to all our marketing challenges? Who really knows for sure? The real question is, what ELSE are you going to do? Do you have a better idea?

Posted in Video Production

KDD: The Silent Website Killer

July 19th, 2010

First in a series.

Is this happening to you?

Your homepage doesn’t appear anywhere near the top of search engine listings.

Your beautifully designed website attracts little if any traffic.

Visitors to your site leave within a few seconds.

If you’re experiencing any of these situations, you could be suffering from KDD:

Keyword Deficit Disorder.

You don’t have to live with the agony and social embarrassment of KDD. You can fight back.

It won’t be a quick fix. There is no magic pill. The road to website recovery isn’t nicely paved – and, sorry, there are no automated toll booths.

But if you’re still up to it, here’s a place to start:

  • Research and identify the keywords that will work best for you and your website. These are the words and phrases that customers and prospects put into search engines – like Google, Yahoo! Bing – to find the type of services and products you offer.
  • Make sure your keywords appear visibly (i.e., in HTML text) on your homepage, as well as in the coded meta data areas for “keywords,” “titles,” and page “descriptions.”
  • Apply your keywords to the page’s headlines, text, image tags and captions. (Remember, search engines can’t “see” images.)

In future articles, we’ll show you how real people with real websites have overcome the ravages of KDD.

Until then, be strong.

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Posted in Blogs, Clog, Cole Creative, Keywords, Marketing, Online Advertising, Search Engine Optimization

Is Your Customer a Hero?

July 9th, 2010

A lot of companies talk and talk about being customer-focused. But can they really walk the walk?

Here’s the deal: If your customer doesn’t feel like a hero … doesn’t feel happy or smart or comfortable or just wicked awesome to be doing business with you … or can’t wait to tell other people about you, then no, you’re NOT actually customer-centric.

Sorry to break the news.

Before you spend one more dime on marketing, do yourself a favor and listen to the people who buy your stuff. Listen to them and watch them.

Written surveys and questionnaires have their place for “yes/no” or “on-a-scale-of-1-to-5″ questions. But there is simply no replacement for spoken sentences and body language to get honest opinions and input.

You would be blown away by the power, energy and information when sellers and buyers come together in well-managed, open, candid environments. Below are several customer-focused activities that companies are using today to get the unvarnished truth about their brand equity, market perceptions, product strengths (or weaknesses), and competitors:

Customer advisory councils. Convene a group of customers and/or prospects at a decent meeting area or destination for a day or two. Serve them some good food and a decent bottle of wine. Let them know that their input really matters to you. You’ll be amazed how forthcoming someone will be — even among competitors — when someone asks for their opinion. Surprise, surprise. It makes them feel important, which they are.

Taped customer interviews. Make it a habit to visit, listen to and/or watch as many customers as possible. Guess what happens when you sit them in front of a video camera. They feel special! With proper direction and interviewing techniques, they invariably offer up incredibly valuable insights about your company and brand.

User groups. Many companies bring together large numbers of customers to environments where they receive relevant education and training, network, get fresh ideas, hear the latest industry scuttlebutt. They mingle freely with you and your company colleagues. Bring your service team, engineers, company marketers, the CEO. Throw a good party. Have some fun. Customers will remember it … and you!

    Trade shows? They’re okay for networking and making big announcements, but trade shows are typically not conducive to in-depth, fact-finding conversation.

    The benefit for you is that the answers you get and the information you gather could well help you refine your approach to the market … or perhaps confirm what you already thought. Either way, it’s a beautiful thing.

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    Posted in Blogs, Clog, Cole Creative, Marketing, Personalized Direct Marketing

    To make a strong brand statement, there are no stock answers.

    July 6th, 2010

    If your company needed a new logo, would you just copy the logo of another
    business? (If you hesitated a single nano-second in answering, stop reading
    right now and just go away.)

    Would you use the exact same brand colors or slogan of, say, a competitor in
    your particular industry? We can hear you snickering from here. (And, we
    know, you’re starting to wonder if you should keep reading.)

    But wait! Since most sane marketers wouldn’t copy the look and feel of its
    competition, why do they so often use the exact same images, footage and
    graphics in their literature, websites, presentations, or corporate signage?

    You know what I’m talking about: stock images. You don’t use stock, you say?
    Good for you! You get a pass straight to the next article.

    However, many of you do … and you know who you are.

    Look, we’ve got nothing in particular against stock agencies and their very
    fine products. We’ve used them before and will use them again. They
    can be so darn affordable when you only use an image once.

    However, if you want to use images multiple times and have the advantage of building an archive that you can use over and over again, shooting your own becomes a much wiser investment.

    For example, take a look at TE SubCom, a provider of undersea fiber optic cable.

    In the midst of a re-branding campaign (they changed their name from Tyco Telecommunications) SubCom elected to create a significant content library of stills and video, which would uniquely represent them in a range of new collateral, web and video materials.

    Could they have used generic stock images of beautiful ocean scenes,
    R&D facilities, crewmembers, and fiber optic cable? Yes, but off-the-shelf video and images would not have been of THEIR state of the art cable ships, or real-life project managers, or proprietary technology, or installation sites— i.e., the things that customers actually need to see and hear in order to feel good about spending millions of dollars on a submarine cable network.

    TE SubCom took the strategic step of developing brand spanking new content—
    with an emphasis on brand. They amassed image rich content which is 100% unique to them. They created a resource, which will be available well into the future. AND, they don’t have to reach for the credit card every time they want to use an image.

    Reinforcing its brand, however, was just the beginning of the payback for
    SubCom. By mining and re-purposing its mother lode of new content assets,
    the company produced a broad, integrated communications program consisting
    of:

    * 9 fresh, new video programs promoting its varied offerings and
    capabilities

    • A high quality, printed corporate view book (printed digitally and
    • on-demand a week before the trade show)
    • Multiple pieces of new product literature
    • A massive library of new image assets, all tagged for easy retrieval
    • Stunning trade show graphics
    • A multi-media touchscreen demonstration kiosk
    • A series of visually stunning PowerPoint sales presentations
    • Pages upon pages of new content for its website
    • Rich, relevant images for trade media requests
    • Future sales tools, such as handheld and mobile devices

    By leveraging new images across so many vehicles, TE SubCom realized economies of scale that would not have been achievable through stock sources.

    (And by the way, do you share our nagging suspicion that worldwide netizens
    are getting hip to stock imagery? Is that smiling young woman with the
    headset phone really going to answer my call?)

    The moral of the story? Your brand is unique. Don’t let it be watered down with stock images and content. Use your brand assets to reinforce your differentiation. And DON’T fall into the “stock is cheaper” trap without looking at the wider spectrum of your image’s applications.

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    Posted in Clog, Cole Creative, Marketing, Video Editing, Video Marketing, Video Production

    RIP: B-to-C

    February 7th, 2010

    Quick thoughts while optimizing my scrambled eggs with tabasco sauce:

    The Internet has claimed yet another paradigm. Back in the day, if a business marketed its products either to end users, or to other businesses, we applied the respective acronyms of B-to-C or B-to-B. (If you were really cool, you used “B2C” or “B2B.”)

    Looks like those halcyon days are over now that the consumer is king (and queen). With the blogosphere roiling with end-user product reviews — not to mention the occasional brand-humbling UGC (see/search, “United Airlines, Guitar”) — seems like the new acronym could actually be stated: C-to-B, or perhaps B-to-C-to-B -and-back-to-C.

    And that’s not a bad thing. For that matter, neither are these eggs. Ciao.

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    Posted in Marketing

    The Democracy Muscle

    November 9th, 2009

    I sat in for a recent speech by Al Gore at Harvard to hear him talk about - big surprise here - the environment. 

    One fact he tossed out, however, was a real shocker: Americans watch 5 hours of television each day. Over the course of an 80-year lifespan, that adds up to about 17 years of TV viewing. 17 years!  Mr. Gore suggested that if we were to spend 17 years doing some physical activity – playing tennis, skiing, riding a bike, exercising – we’d have developed a great proficiency at that activity, along with some pretty strong muscles.

    Mr. Gore’s point was NOT that television has made us flabby and unhealthy; that argument has been made elsewhere. His point is that, most every politician, Democrat and Republican alike, relies heavily on TV advertising to get elected. Starting from their first day in office, national officeholders need to raise about five thousand dollars every single day to buy enough TV advertising time to get re-elected.

    Where do you suppose all that money for TV ads has come from?  Perhaps a few bucks have come from simple folk like you and me. But the really BIG cash comes from special interests – companies and lobbyists and political action committees that naturally expect to have their political contributions translate into support for their particular special interest agenda. 

    Mr. Gore calls this phenomenon as nothing less than the “hijacking” of our democracy. What we have today does not remotely resemble the vision of the Founding Fathers for a participatory form of government. Our “democracy muscle,” as Mr. Gore calls it, has atrophied.

    Mr. Gore then asked how many  people in the crowd use the Internet for their news and information. A sea of hands sprang up, followed by Mr. Gore’s contention that the Internet – the ultimate interactive communications channel – is going to be the modus operandi by which coming generations will rebuild the country’s “democracy muscle.” 

    Campaigns have re-allocated an increasing share of media buys away from TV and onto the Net. We are voting with our clickthroughs, sending electronic messages by the millions to our politicians, and actively participating in the process at the grassroots level in a way that’s not possible via television.

    The same transformation must also be said for commercial communications. Online media is the unquestioned game-changer for marketing and advertising. It’s taking brands and relationships between buyer and seller to a level we’ve never conceived.  

    For Baby Boomers, the change has just begun. But for Gen X-ers, Millenials, Gen Y-ers, and unlabeled generations to come, the expanding use of the Net will completely transform our politics and our commerce, not to mention our culture, arts, science, and spiritual life — in other words,  all of society’s critical muscle groups.

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    Posted in Blogs, Clog, Cole Creative, Marketing, Social Cause Marketing

    Two Lives

    October 31st, 2009

    Had a not-your-typical call this week with a fellow named John Hogan. As Director of Safety and Security for the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, John has the unenviable job of, among other things, reporting to scenes where people have jumped in front of oncoming trains to take their own lives. Most of us don’t even want to imagine the gruesome scenes that John has witnessed hundreds of times in his 25 years on the job.

    Not surprisingly, the tragedies along those tracks take a deep emotional toll on the railway engineers and employees, in addition to the victims’ families.

    So, what does this have to do with marketing?

    John Hogan and I were talking because Cole Creative recently produced a pro bono advertising billboard campaign for The Samaritans, a group dedicated to preventing suicide. The billboards, posted throughout the Mass Bay Commuter Railroad and Mass Bay Transit Authority system, urge people to call the Samaritans if they’re suffering from desperate, depressed, suicidal urges.

    John says he’s heard of two specific cases where people who were contemplating jumping in front of trains saw the posters and instead called the Samaritans hotline for help.

    “We know for a fact that we saved two lives,” says John.  In his often-grim line of business, it doesn’t get better than that. 

    But perhaps it can.  The MBCR and MBTA contributed the billboard space as well as the cost for printing the posters. Soon after the campaign appeared, John’s peers and colleagues around the country took notice. “People in DC, LA, New York, Chicago, even the Federal Railroad Administration have asked us the about the program,” says John. An article about the issue of railway suicide and the Samaritans campaign recently appeared in Passenger Transport, the official magazine of the American Public Transportation Association (http://tinyurl.com/yjyrped).

    The word is getting out. These tragedies may be averted.

    Here’s the bottom line: If you’re an agency or a corporation or simply someone in a position to support these efforts, please do. Call it what you want — pro bono work, social cause marketing, a write-off, or just the right thing to do. You can call us (617-236-4699) or the Samaritans (617-536-2460) to see how you can help.

    You just never know what your charitable contributions will accomplish. They might just save a life.

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    Posted in Social Cause Marketing

    The Clog is Open

    October 17th, 2009

    Welcome to the Cole Blog, aka The Clog:  News of note, marketing tips, the latest trends — some hot, some not —  the wit and (occasional) wisdom of your friends at Cole Creative. 

    We humbly promise to do our level best to provide truth, justice and beauty in whatever we say and do in The Clog. We also plan to do it with brief, concise, digestible bits. And of course we invite your feedback and commentary.

    Thanks for dropping by The Clog. Hope to see you again.

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    Posted in Blogs, Clog, Cole Creative