Are you targeting a specific audience in your marketing campaigns?

An interesting postcard showed up in my mailbox this week from a gym in my area. The headline and photos on the postcard advertised the gym’s child care facility where members can drop off their kids while they workout. Sounds like a great amenity that many people would want to take advantage of! There is just one problem- I don’t have any children. This postcard has no relevance to me as the receiver, so my first instinct is to throw the postcard in the trash.

With the exception of the kid friendly focus, the gym actually had a really great marketing piece. The postcard had wonderful graphic design and was aesthetically pleasing, it had a unique offer to use a temporary pass to visit the gym with no membership obligation, and it had a call to action that I needed to call a toll-free number to obtain my complimentary visitors pass.

The problem with this mailer is that it did not reach its intended target audience of a gym seeker with children. After further examination, I also noticed that the postcard was addressed to “current resident” which tells me that this gym has no clue who I am and is probably mailing to every address in my area.

The underlying issue is that this gym did not do their research. Without good data, and a good list, your great offer/messaging/design will fall on deaf ears. Even a really bad marketing piece sent to the right target market can earn results, but a great marketing piece sent to the wrong target market will earn no results.

Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target market is easy. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who buys from you?
• What do they buy?
• When do they buy?
• Where are they located?
• What are their buying habits?
• What are your customer demographics? Consider age, gender, lifestyle, family, residency, income level, etc.

Cookie Cutter Marketing Doesn’t Work

Don’t try to generalize you marketing to fit all of these demographics or assume that one type of marketing strategy will work for everyone (like the gym postcard). You need to market to all of these audiences differently as every audience has different needs and preferences.

Bianca Te Rito, contributing author for She Takes on the World, said it best when she blogged that, “It is a big mistake in online personal branding (or any branding for that matter) to try to be all things to all people.  If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”.

I agree with Te Rito that we cannot try to approach all audiences in the same. My experience confirms that many people try to create cookie cutter marketing strategies that can apply to everyone, but this just simply will not work.

Instead of sending everyone in the area a postcard advertising their child care services, this gym could have greatly benefited from three distinct mini campaigns.

One could have targeted parents of young children with the messaging and imagery that was in the original postcard.

Another could target young adults with photos of young, good looking, fit individuals and the gym’s state of the art equipment.

Another could have targeted active seniors by showing images of the diverse ages present at the gym and perhaps advertise senior friendly group fitness classes.

Cost

The first reaction I get when I suggest three mini campaigns to my clients is that it must be more expensive to do three mini campaigns than one campaign, but this is not necessarily true. It costs just as much to mail 3,000 of the child care post cards as it would to mail 1,000 child care, 1,000 young adult, and 1,000 senior target postcards. If you have customer data on file, and you probably do, than you might not need to buy multiple mailing lists. If the only design variations in your postcards are images and a headlines then the graphic design charges for three postcards will not be that much more than the one.

Target audience and good data are key a successful marketing campaign. Don’t just spray and pray for success. Having a clear marketing strategy target towards a specific audience will increase response rates exponentially.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

–So you have an amazing website-what do you want your visitors to do once they get there?

Are you funneling your website traffic into valuable sales leads?

Should your visitors know exactly what to do when they get to your site? In a perfect world yes, but they will be depending on your clues and navigation to guide them there.

Driving general traffic to your company website is great for brand awareness and conveying information. In his ebook, Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works, marketing guru Seth Godin states that the goal of a website goes further than brand awareness and its main purpose is to “turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer.” The trick is to figure out how to convert those visitors into sales leads. Not everyone will purchase your product online or pick up the phone and solicit your service, so you need to find an effective way to capture information from visitors for future marketing efforts.

Capturing information usually starts with obtaining the visitor’s email address to add to your email marketing campaign. Email addresses are typically the easiest information to get because it results in the least intrusive marketing efforts. However, in some instances it might be necessary for you to obtain a mailing address or phone number-but you might have to work a little harder to get it.

To get your visitors to turn over their valuable contact information you need to optimize your website to capture this information.

Use a call to action

Tell the visitor what you want them to do. Prompt their participation by letting them know what types of interaction you offer. Subscribe to us, share this, get our e-newsletter, etc.

Be sure the call to action is easy to find

Most sites feature their subscribe buttons and share buttons at the top right corner of the website. Internet surfers are accustom to finding this type of content here so make it easy for them to find by featuring your call to action in this area.

Screen shot from PIPtampa.com

I would also suggest that you duplicate this on every page so that if the viewer navigates away from the home page, and we hope they do, they can still find the call to action no matter what page they are on. We utilize this technique on our own corporate site to encourage visitors to subscribe, follow us, request a quote, and more. Check it out at www.piptampa.com.

Encourage sharing

Make your website visitors your extended marketing arm by making it easy for them to share, like, or tweet you webpage. Rather than going through the hassle of copying and pasting the link into their newsfeed, they can participate with a few simple clicks. Making these sharing tools readily available also encourages visitors to share when they might not have considered it on their own without your suggestion. This technique may not provide you with an email address but you can track these social media interactions in order to locate leads for social media marketing. See how Business Networking Life utilizes a social media sharing contest to incentivize sharing and capture leads.

Social media share buttons.

Add value

Be creative with your offer. Everyone these days seems to be offering an e-newsletter, so think outside the box. Offer a creative or valuable incentive for people to surrender their precious contact information. Notice that Busniss Networking Life offers a weekly email update for networking events rather than asking viewers to join an email list.

Subscribe box from BusinessNetworkingLife.com

Consider required vs. optional fields

The attention span of a website visitor is short to say the least. The best way to capture the necessary information you need with an opportunity to gather more information is to utilize opt-ins that offer required and optional fields. This way you get the information that you need such as email address and name, but give the options for visitors to provide more. Make sure you only require a limited amount of information to satisfy visitors who don’t want to offer as much.

Example of an opt-in box with optional and required fields.

Utilizing required and optional opt-ins also gives you the ability to use check boxes to request even more detailed information that the visitor might be interested in. In this case, what region the visitor is from. This gives you the ability to segment your data and get even more specific lists.

These are just a few general practice tips that will hopefully encourage your visitors to opt-in and share their contact information. I would suggest that you test one or more of these options on your own website and compare your opt-in conversions to your website’s analytics to measure your conversion rates.

You are certainly not limited to these suggestions as many sites utilize creative tactics to capture visitor information. Does your website have a different conversion tool that I haven’t listed here? Or have you visited a website recently that did a good job of encouraging you to supply your contact information? Please let us know!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Add marketing mantras to your daily business routine.

Every business has a set of strategies that they follow in order to be successful. There are standards in place in order to be sure that you meet all of your quotas, goals, standards, expectations, etc.

Do you apply these same strategies to your marketing efforts? If not, you definitely should.

Marketing is a key part of your business’s success. You need to market your business in order to create brand awareness, cross-sell/upsell, retain customers, reactivate dormant customers, generate new leads, and measure business performance. It is important that you address your marketing needs when addressing your business objectives. To help you get started I have provided a few of my own personal marketing mantras:

• I will create and update a calendar to specifically manage my marketing objectives.

• I will be in constant (meaningful) contact with my customers (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will utilize integrated marketing systems to market my business (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will update my website regularly with fresh content.

• I will use opt-ins and subscriptions to build my list online.

• I will have a gratitude strategy in place for customers who purchase.

• I will actively seek out new sales leads.

• I will keep my mailing list up to date and reach out to them regularly.

• I will participate in at least one networking event each month.

• I will analyze my marketing performance and measure my response rates (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will follow up on sales leads.

• I will utilize social media marketing.

• I will post to social media sites at least once a day with meaningful content.

• I will utilize free local search engine marketing.

• I will ask for customer testimonials.

• I will ask for referrals or run a referral campaign.

• I will utilize incentives to increase participation from my audience on offers that I make (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will respond to all interactions from my audience (social media, voice mails, emails, etc).

• I will be open minded to new marketing techniques.

Many of these mantras are very involved processes requiring different mediums, applications, and strategies. All of these mantras can be satisfied with aggressive marketing via print, internet, and social media-and all of them can be integrated to create a super marketing force to help you grow your business.

These are a few of my personal favorites that I try to abide by regularly, but you don’t need to limit yourself to these. Any action that you take to create brand awareness, cross-sell/upsell, retain customers, reactivate dormant customers, generate new leads, or measure business performance is considered marketing your business. If you are already fulfilling some of these mantras then bravo! If you are not, I would consider trying a new marketing avenue that you haven’t explored before.

What are your marketing mantras? Do you have any that I haven’t listed above? Please share.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

One of the biggest frustrations regarding QR Code usage right now is to find the best app to download for your mobile device. Choosing the best app depends on the Smartphone that you use. Some apps work better than others on different phones and many apps will not work at all on a phone that it doesn’t support.

This hiccup in the QR Code technology makes it difficult to suggest apps without having a discussion about phone models and app specifications. It has also been challenging for marketers who are using this new technology to market QR Codes without including an explanation in the text. Some marketers have opted to suggest the most popular QR Code app called i-nigma. Though I concede that an app suggestion is helpful, I insist that marketers refrain from suggesting just one app because it can limit response rates.

For example, if you suggest i-nigma to your audience and a receiver has a Blackberry the app will not work and the receiver may lose interest and dismiss the interactive technology.

I am really excited to share a great new resource for locating QR Code apps. We here at PIP Printing and Marketing Services in Tampa have compiled a few of the best QR Code apps and cataloged them at www.BestQRCodeApp.com. The website also features a free QR Code generator, detailed information about QR Codes, and creative QR Code samples.

Find the best QR Code reader app for your phone.

Visit the site and find the best app for you-it’s really that easy! We also are encouraging visitors to make suggestions about great QR Code apps that they have discovered. If you have an app that you think would be a good addition to the site let us know!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

You can imagine my surprise at seeing this subject line in the middle of January. Common sense seems to dictate that you shouldn’t be marketing a holiday product after the holiday has passed, yet this happens more often than you might expect. I immediately discarded the email without reading the offer, incentive, or product details. The company may have had an amazing product or offer, but it fell on deaf ears since it was the beginning of the New Year and I had no current or foreseeable need for the product.

Market in a Timely Manner

One of the most important aspects to keep in mind about your marketing materials is the timing of your message or offer. You want your marketing piece to reach your target audience at a time when your product or service is relevant, and when they might be in the market to buy.

A few things to consider when contemplating the timeliness of your marketing:

• Does your marketing piece or offer correspond with a holiday? Whether it is a specific date or a holiday season, be sure that you marketing piece arrives before the holiday.

• Does your offer include and expiration date? If so, be sure that your message is received in advance so that the offer is still good and the prospect has an opportunity to take advantage.

• Is your product or service seasonal? Be sure to market your company during peak buying times. For example, it would do you no good to advertise tax preparation in May.

• When are you most likely to reach your target audience? When marketing with T.V., Radio, Internet, or email, identify when your potential customers are tuning in and reach out to them then. There is no use in advertising a cereal for children during late night CNN.

• Are your marketing messages automated? Automated marketing via the internet, email, or social media is a real time saver, but be sure that your automation is timed correctly.
  

Think ahead when planning your marketing strategy. If your marketing piece is time sensitive you need to start preparing in advance. I advise many of my clients to flip ahead in their calendars to identify future marketing opportunities like a Christmas card mailing or a big summer blowout sale over Labor Day weekend. Then, mark your calendar at least a month ahead of the event (for a printed marketing piece) which will give you ample time to brainstorm, create, produce, and distribute your marketing materials. Keep in mind that if you intend to create a multimedia marketing campaign, distribute large quantities, or allow time for follow up, you may need to begin preparations more than a month in advance.

A mistake concerning the timeliness of your marketing may seem insignificant but it can affect your company’s credibility. It will be obvious that you did not prepare in advance. It may also appear that you have little concern for your product or customer if you didn’t care enough to give them adequate time to digest and react to your marketing piece. Some companies intentionally distribute coupons or offers that leave receivers with little time to take advantage of an offer-this just frustrates the receiver and hurts the company’s credibility.

I cant stress it enough when I say check the relevance, check the relevance, recheck the relevance of  your marketing pieces! When in doubt, think about it from the receiver’s perspective. Would this be timely relevant to you if you received it? If not, shelf the idea and use it when the time is right.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

The Latest Mobile Marketing Application

Today, your customers and prospects are becoming more mobile and depending on their smart phone devices more and more as sources of information. Utilizing a QR Code in your marketing materials will give you an opportunity to reach out to your mobile customers and prospects in a new and efficient way!

What is a QR Code?

A QR Codes is a two dimensional bar code that can be printed on any marketing materials to link printed materials to mobile and Internet marketing efforts. QR Codes can be easily programmed to communicate several types of information. After the receiver scans the QR Code with their smart phone, the bar code will automatically prompt the user‘s phone to launch a website, play a video, automatically enter contact information into contact list, send an email, send a text message, or make a phone call. QR Codes are completely customizable and the possibilities are truly endless. Most importantly, they are trackable and we are able to see how many individuals scanned a specific QR Code and when. This trackability makes QR Codes a valuable (and affordable) response tracking mechanism for all marketing materials.

How does it work?

1. Use a smart phone with Internet access.
2. Download a free bar code reader app (see bottom of article for app suggestions).
3. Scan or take a picture of the QR Code with the reader app.
4. Phone will automatically launch the code’s message or feature.

How to use a QR Code

What can QR Codes do for you?

QR Codes are basically an image, just like any other graphic, and can be placed on any and all marketing materials such as: business cards, fliers, brochures, promotional items, t-shirts, car wraps, signs, posters, direct mail, print ads, and more! They can be used alone to drive traffic to a website or along with a personalized URL or coupon offer to increase response rates. They allow you to:

• Increase response rates (almost anyone who knows about this technology finds it difficult to resist scanning the bar codes).
• Measure the effectiveness of your campaign; different QR Codes can be generated for each individual project and tracked.
• Integrate print, mobile, and Internet marketing with three “touch points” in one printed item.
• Plus, you will be on the cutting edge of a marketing strategy that is still relatively new in the United States.

More Information:

For more information use your smart phone to scan the QR Code at the top of the page (if you need to download an app see the suggestions at the end of this article). If you do not have a smart phone but are still interested in learning more, just click on the QR Code at the top of the page.

Go ahead, give it a try!

QR Code Reader Suggestions

(all apps are free and linked to the image, just click the logo)

iTunes App Store (our favorite is i-nigma)

Your marketing efforts can make it rain money...

I spoke with a young lady today who spends a considerable amount of money on marketing every month. When I asked her why she invests so much in her marketing efforts her response was:  “you have to market in order to grow your business.”

Great answer! I then asked her what her response rates were on those marketing efforts-but she didn’t know. I asked her what the conversion rates were from prospects into customers -again she didn’t know. Finally, I asked about her return on investment (ROI)-she had no clue!

Does this sound familiar? Many businesses spend their limited marketing budgets on campaigns while having no idea if their efforts are paying off.

“Marketing without efforts to determine what is working is no different than throwing a bunch of pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. Defining your returns and ratios are critical in your success,” says Joe Malinowski, of Business Networking Life.

To dissect the ROI of your latest marketing campaign ask yourself the following questions:

• What campaigns or initiatives generated the most leads over the past two years?
• What is your conversion rate for leads to customers?
• What campaigns generate the most revenue for dollars spent?
• Was your marketing successful? Did you conduct a ROI analysis?
• If so, what was your return on investment?

Analyzing your marketing performance can turn your marketing efforts into an investment, rather than an expense. How much is one new customer worth to you? Is that profit worth your investment?

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Proper email etiquette can work wonders...

Email marketing is a fast growing trend. It is quick, easy, and generates a substantial response rate when utilized properly. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing produced the absolute highest response rate for users seeking to generate leads.

While many marketers are jumping on the email blast band wagon, some still opt for a plain old fashioned email written personally. The latter can be just as effective as a professionally written and flashy email blast, if you mind your email etiquette.

I received two emails this week that caught my attention for two drastically different reasons. The first was from a job applicant who was submitting a resume. Although my company has no job openings right now, I opened the attachment because his email was so well written. The applicant had perfect grammar, spelling, addressed me personally, and took the time to do some research on my company. As I read the email, I felt as if this job seeker knew me, my business, and what I was looking for in an employee. Unfortunately, I do not have a position to offer him but you can bet I am keeping his resume.

The second email was forwarded to me by a friend and actually was a marketing email from a competitor of mine. I have never seen a more unprofessional email. The email had purple font, grammar mistakes, spelling issues, illegal use of ellipsis, capitalization mistakes, random poetry-like indentations all over the place, and exclamation point abuse. My first impression was that I would never do business with this person.

Good email etiquette can be very handy in trying to get your message across. I’m not suggesting that you need to write like Mark Twain but a few tips can help:

• Use a subject line that is interesting and pertinent. You reader should be enticed to open it.
• Use a professional font, color, and signature. Anything too cute will be seen as unprofessional.
• Personalize the email, especially if you want to get the reader’s attention. If you can’t afford expensive email blast services then send the same email to all of your contacts but perhaps personalize the opening sentence.
• Use proper grammar. You don’t need to sound like and English professor, just utilize simple rules you learned in grammar school. Mistakes are fine (no one is perfect) but avoid obvious mistakes such as punctuation or capitalization.
• When in doubt-Google your question. A useful grammar sight can be found at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
• Spell check is your friend, but do not rely on it to catch misused words or grammatical errors. For example, if you are trying to say “whether or not” and you spell it “weather” the spell check will over look it and your receiver will think you want to discuss the recent cold front.
• Reread your email for mistakes. I can’t stress this enough!
• Do your homework. Find out about the company and include some of that information in your email. Looking at your target’s website is a great way to learn their mission statement or business objectives and incorporate some of those key words into your email. The receiver will unwittingly get a sense that you mesh with their company.

Remember, this email could be your first and last communication with a prospect. Emails are easy to ignore and easier to delete, so make your email worthwhile and professional.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Are you measuring your response rates?

When I ask about response rates or conversion rates all too often my customers convey that they have no idea what types of responses they are getting to their marketing. This is counterproductive to their marketing efforts.

If you don’t know the response rates to a marketing piece, you don’t know whether or not it is effective. If you don’t know whether or not it is effective, then you don’t know if it is a worthy return on your investment. If you don’t know if it is a good return on your investment, then you are just blindly pumping money into your marketing.—does any of this make sense?

Response mechanisms can come in many forms that can apply to different marketing pieces and different budgets.  Personalized URLs, generic URLs, landing pages, and online surveys can all be used to capture who is responding to your call-to-action (register to win an iPod touch before September 1st at www.XyZ.com).

These online response mechanisms are very effective, very impressive, and generate more response rates but they are not fitting for every project or budget. Some response mechanisms can include a toll free number, calling a specific salesperson, or sending an email to a specific address, all of which can be measured.

Another alternative is to use your marketing piece as your response mechanism. Perhaps your campaign includes a coupon/voucher with a serial number that must be redeemed for the incentive. At the end of the promotion you can calculate how many vouchers were redeemed and determine who responded by the serial number.

Sometimes a response mechanism will generate no response. Although unfortunate, this is still very useful feedback. It may be time to rethink the before mentioned elements of your marketing piece and uncover why it isn’t effective. Remember, no feedback is good feedback!

Analyzing your marketing performance is key to successful marketing efforts. This is the most important step of the entire marketing process. It will help drive better results and your marketing performance depends on it!

Aim for your target market!

Your marketing will fall flat if it is not reaching the correct person, so knowing your target audience is key to any marketing campaign.

A few questions to consider: What are the attributes of your best customers? What is the demographic like? Do they have any buying habits or patterns? Be sure to tailor your messaging to identify with this customer.

Data is often overlooked, but it is essential to an effective marketing strategy. Be sure that you are utilizing your current customer list properly. The list can be segmented to identify specific demographic characteristics such as location, gender, age range, income level, and purchase history.

You already know who they are and what, where, when, and how they buy so it is possible to customize your marketing to reach them specifically. A personalized marketing piece is much more effective than a generic  one. Perhaps you would prefer to purchase a new prospect list. These are also useful and can be segmented accordingly so you can market to them specifically.

This segmented data is extremely useful for appealing to your target market. For example, consider a gym who might want to advertise its new babysitting service that will watch kids while their parents are working out. The gym’s target audience may be women from their mid twenties to mid thirties with children. A list can be acquired with their addresses but most importantly the creative can be customized to appeal to the consumer. A postcard with a buff body builder lifting weights might not be as appealing as an everyday mom next-door on a treadmill.

Identify you target market and utilize your data to customize your marketing.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com