Archive for July, 2009
Use a product tracking system to optimize the product portfolio
Posted by: | CommentsCompanies like to launch new brands, lines, and brand extensions. These new product launches are usually created by using different package sizes, ingredients, flavors, etc. The strategy behind numerous new product launches is to capture more shelf space or to satisfy the tastes of consumers. As new products come online the product portfolio quickly grows and becomes unmanageable. It costs a lot of overhead to continue to manage large complex product portfolios and when companies find themselves in this situation they start eliminating whole sets of products at once out of desperation. Moves like this usually generate press and sometimes cost CEO’s and Marketing Leaders their jobs. After the product portfolio has been thinned the whole cycle starts again.
If a product tracking system was incorporated into the marketing plan the scenario described above could be eliminated. The system should simply track all products in the product portfolio and monitor each products percentage of overall revenue on a quarterly basis. These percentages can then be incorporated into the annual marketing plan allowing marketers to focus on the top brands and products of the company. By focusing on the top products the company is able to increase overall sales and profitability. This is a wise use of resources that directly affect the bottom line and it allows weaker performing brands, lines, and products to be reduced through sale, liquidation or simply eliminated much quicker.
Twitter difficult channel to control
Posted by: | CommentsTwitter, despite a lot of media buzz, is a difficult tool to utilize successfully to increase brand awareness and mindshare. Twitter is a social network that is all about a conversational stream. Marketers want to be part of the conversational stream and people and companies are searching for ways to successfully implement Twitter into their marketing plans. However, it is proving difficult to control and is much more luck than anything else.
Using Twitter as a tool to increase brand awareness and mindshare is a challenge for several reasons. First people are naturally resistant to being marketed too. People have trained their minds to recognize and tune out advertising and marketing messages. So if people resist your messages and you continue to push them out you actually are counter-productive and creating negative brand associations in their minds.
Add to the challenge that Twitter monitors the communication streams and they are very sensitive to their network being used for marketing purposes. They don’t like it and they try to prevent it. For example Twitter recently intervened in the middle of a successful marketing campaign that was organized by Moonfruit, a U.K.-based company that offers website building tools. They orchestrated a Twitter sweepstakes, giving away 10 MacBook Pro computers to Twitter users that included the #moonfruit tag in their Tweets. The campaign was so successful that #moonfruit was Twitter’s top trending topic and represented 2.5% of all Twitter traffic. So where is the problem with such a successful campaign? Twitter didn’t like it and booted it off their top trends list for no reason effectively stopping the momentum the marketers had started.
The lesson in this is that marketers need to realize that the messages they are creating are considered invasive by some and media pollution by others. They need to be sympathetic to this view point and find creative ways to be noticed without creating negative feelings. Twitter should continue to be considered as a viable marketing channel but marketers need to realize it is very tricky and difficult to control. Additionally, marketers run the risk of actually creating negative reactions to the products and companies they are trying to promote.
For more information read: “Twitter Campaigns: A Cautionary Tale for Marketers” by Elena Malykhina at: http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3i607dcf03868690e210321228d58f5709?imw=Y
Is aggregating content on the internet different than posting and distributing the content yourself? The internet is full of content. Much of this content has been posted in violation of copyright laws. Companies are driving traffic to their sites by aggregating content from other sources to bundle the content into premiere destination sites. As site popularity and its corresponding traffic increases, so does the amount of revenue the site is capable of generating.
More and more people are spending their free time online consuming content. So the question is if sites are aggregating content from sites, such as YouTube, and the content has been posted in violation of copyright are the sites also violating content. Aggregator sites will argue that they are not earning revenue from the content and they did not post the content and they are not hosting the content. But they are using the content to generate traffic and in many instances they are then “funneling” traffic to revenue generating sites.
Traffic funneling is using loopholes in copyright laws and they are absolutely using copyrighted content for financial gain. Copyright holders seem to have little leverage as copyright laws are outdated and inadequate to protect against the scenario described above as content aggregators have created a one-step funnel that seems to be exploiting content for financial gains.
Please read: Mike Shields article “Earlier Tests Hot Trend with ‘Kideos’ Launch”- http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i70172e607ddc1be9dbac26234eec4474
Use your website to shorten the sales cycle
Posted by: | CommentsSales prospects use company websites to research products before they make purchasing decisions. With prospects visiting websites, looking at your products, and comparing them directly against your competitor’s products, it is very important to make it easy for prospects to get the information they need independently of talking with your sales team.
Your website is one of the most important tools in your marketing program and should be looked at with a very critical eye. Company websites are now the primary marketing tool that consumers use to research products. This means that your website is your most important sales agent that is tasked with providing product information, answering sales questions, and highlighting differences between your products and those from your competitors.
You should visit your website with a very critical eye and make sure that prospects can find the information that is most important to them. Make sure that the product area is easy to navigate to and that product images are crisp, clear, and provide details that competitor’s sites do not. The goal is to get prospects familiar with your products and to answer as many questions as possible about the products and how to buy them.
To make sure that images are easily viewed for details make sure that the product photos are not too small and that they are appropriately sized. A good feature to incorporate is a zoom tool that allows site visitors to zoom into detailed areas of your products. Images also need to be optimized for web delivery so that their file sizes are not too large and too slow for web delivery. Large file sizes with slow download speeds cause people to click away and leave your site.
Finally, remember to include all contact information on every page. If site visitors want to contact a member of your sales team finding out how to do it should not be a challenge. Include information in a highly visible part of every page to make it as easy as possible for them to find.
The time and work spent on your site will help prospects by answering their questions and educating them about your products. It will allow them to better understand your products and help get them to making a buying decision faster.
Why brands matter to consumers
Posted by: | CommentsTo consumers, brands provide a convenient way of tracking companies and products that effectively meet their specific needs. Brands help consumers keep mental notes of who is producing the product or service and allows them a mechanism to assign responsibility in the market place. Consumers both subconsciously, and consciously, keep track of their past experiences with products and services. Ones that have met or exceeded their expectations are recalled positively. If brands perform well this will resonate and create a level of trust with consumers.
A brand can instill a level of trust that it will perform to a certain level or be of a certain quality. Consumer’s recognition of brands grows the more they have positive experiences with it. Positive experiences increase consumers recall and recognition of the brand. This recall helps consumers make purchase decisions quickly. Brands allow consumers to efficiently find and select products or services without having to conduct extensive searches for what will best meet their needs. Decisions can be quickly made based on past experiences and their knowledge about the brand, its quality, performance, characteristics, etc.
In essence a brand is a relationship between consumers and products. Consumers trust the brand and they reward that trust with brand preference and loyalty. Once a bond of trust has been established between a consumer and a brand it is difficult to break. Consumers are more likely to buy the brand they know and trust than the one they do not. For brands to keep this trust it is essential for the brand to continue to remain consistent to its brand promise. Breaking the brand promise will begin to impede consumers recall of positive experiences and the relationship will be broken.
A brand’s promise may not only be functional but it may also be symbolic. Brands allow consumers to project certain images. Brands find niches and become associated with these niches and are seen as being used by certain types of people. Consumers use these niche brands to project images to other people and to themselves. Brands function in this capacity like a club or team that people join for association purposes.
Brands become intertwined with consumers and they take on special associations. Consumers use branding to classify, recall positive experiences with products and services, and to associate with the image of the brand. The trust that consumers bestow upon products and services because of the psychological aspects of its brand will positively affect the consumer’s perception of it. Brands provide a convenient way to classify and retain information about products and services in a complicated world. The personal relationships that consumers develop with brands last a lifetime.
Turner Entertainment Networks using experiential marketing to cut through the clutter
Posted by: | CommentsNow more than ever media needs to be integrated and promoted across multiple delivery channels. With increased competition, advancements in internet content delivery, and the lowering of production costs, content production has exploded and it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out. To stand out from the clutter Turner Entertainment Networks has recently unveiled a creative out-of home campaign in New York’s Grand Central Terminal to promote the premiere of its new drama series Dark Blue.
According to Mediaweek, Turner worked with CBS Outdoor to strategically place nearly 100 pieces of creative, which includes column wraps, posters, banners, staircase signage, and video motion boards. Additionally, they wrapped the cars of the shuttle train that runs between Grand Central and Times Square. The creative team at Turner is going outside of the box to promote their new show and judging on the initial impact it is having with consumers I believe this will become more common.
I see a correlation between this campaign and spatial experiential marketing that theme parks consistently use. Theme park companies have used experiential design to improve ride experiences for decades. As media outlets continue to struggle with increased competition for eyeballs they will need to increasingly make their campaigns more dynamic and experiential to stand out. After seeing the images of the spectacular creative at Grand Central Station, I am now planning to watch Turner’s Dark Blue.
For more information: Read “Turner Brings Dark Blue Promotion to N.Y. Underground” by Katy Bachman at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/cable-tv/e3i38d17fe532245c82bb57858b583aca97
