L&S Unscripted

The downturning economy doesn’t mean that your customers will stop spending money – they’ll just start spending it smarter.

Here’s some smarter ways to reach them:

1. Research.
The better you know someone, the more likely you are to be able to reach them.  Now is the time to find out as much about your customers as you possibly can. 

• Monitor the online conversation and research what people are saying about you and your competitors.
• Implement online surveys – they’re cost effective and provide guidance for deeper exploration.
• Double down on user and focus groups to stay in tune.

2. Digital Strategies:
With $4.00 gas, it’s safe to say that people will be utilizing online tools to research and shop, meaning it’s probably time to reevaluate how you are using technology. 

• Update your web site copy to focus on value and trust. Make sure that your search engine optimization is consistent with current events.
• If you don’t have an email database, build one. E-mail marketing is inexpensive and measurable.
• Dive into social media and be a part of the conversation – it’s free. 

3. Public Relations.
PR is one of the most affordable and effective tools in the marketing mix. Consumers are looking for assurance and guidance from the companies that they choose to do business with. Make sure you are telling your story effectively.

• Get involved with your customers through experiential marketing and invite dialogue with promotions, events and sponsorships.
• Develop a cause marketing campaign that shares a mutual interest with causes that matter to your customers.
• Give the media insights into your industry and how you are helping people during uncertain times.

If you’d like to talk through how you could implement these into your marketing plan, give us a call.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Green Conference hosted by Ad Age in NYC. It was a treat to hear CMOs from majors including McDonald’s, Conservation International, Burt’s Bees and Patagonia share their perspective on environmental marketing. A few snippits:

- Don’t wait until you are doing all you could to share about your organization’s successes in green; Celebrate and communicate your small successes.

- Perfection is not the goal; it’s more about encouraging progress and improvement; Simple changes make a difference.

- “Responsible consumption” is a term or idea consumers seem to grasp and are not intimidated by;  Encourage quality vs. quantity, refills, upgrades, etc.

- Keep to your own brand’s style and personality when tackling environmental innovation and communication. i.e. McDonald’s ties in movies like Saigon Panda in their Happy Meals and web applications designed to show kids and families the importance of preservation and enviro-responsibility because they are about kids and families.

- “Green fatigue” is real these days- consumers have seen enough of the expected babies, earth and flower images; instead communicate primary benefits. i.e. Yes, the Toyota Prius is better for the earth, but the primary benefit is that it’s a quiet ride and provides fuel economy.

I have a thousand more notes and hope to share more at an upcoming Food for Thought lunch presentation. Hope to see you there.  Until then, Ad Age did a nice series on Green Marketing recently available here so check it out if you’re into it.  http://adage.com/greenmarketing08/

For many, the official company website is positioned as a tool to communicate information about new products and services.  And with many of our clients, we are asked to ensure that our marketing efforts drive consumers to the website to register for e-mails, free coupons, prize promotions, etc. 

Many times, the target customer responds to marketing and registers valuable contact information on the website, only to never hear from the company again – it’s a black hole phenomenon.   What happens to those e-mail addresses? 

Here’s where a CRM solution could help.  Instead of floating around in a black hole, those e-mail addresses can be stored in a simple database solution, of which there are many, and be available for on-going customer communication.  Many times when we throw around the term CRM, people’s eyes start to glaze over. People hear terms like dataflows, applications, source codes, business process and all of a sudden, CRM can sound scary or complicated, and expensive.

CRM can be simple.  Our team likes to define CRM as “organized” communication with others.  Some real world examples that people use everyday are Microsoft’s Outlook, your rolodex, or even your Christmas card list.  Somehow, people gave you their contact information with the expectation that you would communicate with them in the future. 

CRM can eliminate the black hole phenomenon. Instead of letting your customers’ e-mail addresses sit in a file somewhere, use them to communicate with people who want to hear from you. 

A CRM tool, like Listrak, can help make it easy to do and easy to manage.  The best CRM tools provide solutions to help your company manage data, or in this case, e-mail addresses. By starting to communicate with your customers, your company can begin to understand, as well as anticipate their needs today, and in the future.

Simply CRM’ing

Billie Jo

Search engine spiders, defined: Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It’s called a spider because it crawls over the Web. Another term for these programs is webcrawler. Source: www.webopedia.com

Can search engine spiders ‘see’ your web images? With the emergence of Google images and other image search engines, the importance of indexing the images on your web site has become all the more important. While you should be adding ALT tags (defined: The ALT tag is meant to serve as an ALTernate if the image source does not exist, or if browsers have images disabled) and descriptions to your images for organic search engine ranking purposes, the only way for the image search engines to find your images (and furthermore, link to your web site) is by adding information that allows the spiders to see you.

For example:

Non-Optimized Image:	Optimized Image:
What you see:	What you see: Mount Rushmore, Black Hills of South Dakota
What the spider sees:	What the spider sees: ALT=Mount Rushmore TITLE=Mount Rushmore, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota Caption= Mount Rushmore, Black Hills of South Dakota

The saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” doesn’t hold true for search engines unless you tell the spider what it’s supposed to see. A fully optimized image includes the following elements: ALT tag, TITLE tag, thumbnail (version shown on the web) with a link to a larger version or additional content, and a descriptive caption beneath the image. Additionally, the file directories should be named similar to the topic.

Example of optimized image code (applies to the example above):

<a href=http://www.travelsd.com/_images/placestogo/rushmore/rushmore.jpg><img src=”/images/placestogo/mount-rushmore/mount-rushmore.jpg” alt=”Mount Rushmore” title=”Mount Rushmore, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota” /></a><br />

Resources: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_IMG.asp or http://www.htmlquick.com/reference/tags/img.html

Organically optimizing,

Robin

Dear Jane Sample came up with the Brand Timeline Portrait, but many bloggers are jumping on the bandwagon because it’s a cool idea. It’s basically a visual representation of the brands that you use, that you have a connection with and feel loyal about. This timeline can be helpful to Planners as it gives a snapshot of their target in a new way and it could have media implications.

As I looked at the various timelines posted by bloggers, I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s definitely a work in progress because even as I write I this I see brands that I forgot. For instance, as I look around my desk, there’s Kleenex, Papermate, Scotch etc. It starts to hurt my head. Luckily, there’s Tylenol in my drawer.