When All You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail
August 5, 2005 - By John M. Bomarito

Do you remember your Junior-High Shop or Home Economics class? Two critical components we learned were 1) Plan Your Project 2) Use the right tools or ingredients to achieve your purpose. You might be able to use a butter-knife as a screwdriver in a pinch, but the final outcome may not be pretty.

Following is a high-level blueprint (or a recipe depending on your preference of metaphors) to achieve a successful marketing campaign. As you walk through these steps, put your plan in writing. This will help you fine-tune your strategy as you learn and adapt.

Everything Starts With the Customer

Who is your ideal customer? If you were going to create a personal ad for your prospect, how would you describe the qualities of the person you are looking for?

There are two basic ways to identify customers. The first is demographics. These are the quantifiable things that describe someone such as age, income, gender, homeownership, family status, whether they own a dog or a car etc. The second is psychographics. This is a description of intangible attributes. For example, does the person value quality over price when purchasing the products or services you offer? Are they image-driven? Do they view themselves as traditionalists? How do they typically shop for the products or services you offer?

Where do 85% of your ideal customers live? What are their shopping patterns? For example, will they travel north to south? Are there any imaginary borders such as county lines? What zip codes do they live in? Take out a map and draw boundaries around this geography you just identified.

When first starting out, stay very focused reaching your core audience. There will be time to go after the fringe areas, once your cash flow and profits are healthy.

One of your advantages over your larger competitors can be how well you know your local market and how you position yourself to appeal to them.

Create the Budget

Marketing is an investment that creates customer traffic and sales, by communicating to your best prospects how you can solve their problems and serve their needs. If you don’t budget for ongoing advertising, you will find yourself fighting with sales cycles that spike and drop as you jump in and out of advertising. More importantly, you will never build the momentum that can push your sales past that magic tipping point to higher sustained sales.

Depending on your business, any one of these methods may be better than another.

Percent of sales or dollars per unit sold method: Take your gross sales and multiply by a consistent percent or allocate x-dollars per unit sold. Advantages: ensures that your budget will continue to grow with your business. Disadvantages: new businesses may find that sales are not sufficient during start-up to fund an appropriate level of communications.

Annual budget amortized over time: This is the simplest method of budgeting. Advantages: allows you to plan for the year. Suitable for businesses with a very predictable business model; new start-ups; or seasonal businesses. Disadvantages: may become insufficient, if it is not evaluated and updated to reflect the current marketplace dynamics. It is too easy to justify cuts, unless you fund it up front.

Look for co-op advertising opportunities. For example, if you own a heating and cooling company, some furnace manufacturers will reimburse a portion of your ad cost, if you use their logo and theme line in your ad. Find out what the rules for reimbursement are ahead of time, to avoid disappointment. It is worth asking the question, if you are purchasing branded items for re-sale. This is an easy way to augment your marketing investment.

Media Allocation

The basic rule here is to reach as many of the prospects you identified in step one, as efficiently as possible. There is no right price for the wrong solution. If the first question you ask a prospective advertising seller is “how much?” you are headed down the wrong path. Who cares if it is cheap, if the audience is wrong?

The decision whether you should be on cable TV, radio, newspaper, outdoor, Internet or direct mail, goes back to the audience. Determine the method that gives you the best chance to reach your target customer on a frequent enough basis to leave a lasting impression of your message. The people in your local community, who sell media, should be able to provide with a definition of the audience they reach and provide insight to understand whether you can afford sufficient frequency to gain share of mind.

What do people find when they Google your business? If you don’t know you better find out. Today’s marketplace dictates that you have some sort of web presence, particularly if you market to people under the age of 45.

Don’t forget to take advantage of grass roots marketing opportunities. This can be media such as the high school football or band program. Put yourself in the minds of your target market and think about the different events they attend. These can be great ways to let your prospects know that you are local and support the community.

There is not one magic silver bullet here. Generally it is important to have a blend of different media, to reach your targets in different ways. It also helps reinforce your key message, when consumers see you at different times in different media.

Marketing communications are cumulative. The more ways you can get your message across consistently the better chance you have of achieving top of mind awareness with your target market when they are ready to buy.

Consistent Message and Image

If you do not already have a logo and a theme line, get one. Your look and feel should include consistent typeface, color scheme, style, etc that you use in all your communications. This will be your corporate identity that signals to the public that the message is coming from you. The smaller the budget, the more critical this factor is in success.

What makes your business unique? Why should a consumer choose you over the other competitors who may be cheaper, bigger or more conveniently located? The answers to these questions should be consistent with your mission statement and should be reinforced in all your communications. Remember that all purchase decisions are always linked with emotions.

Keep your message tightly focused. Consumers have short attention spans and your message must grab their attention quickly, by appealing to their emotions and how you can solve their problems

Determine the three or four critical elements that should appear in every ad. For example, these may include your logo, toll-free number, web site address, photo and locator map.

Measure and Evaluate

Advertising works over time. Make certain that you capture from both your new and existing customers how they learned about you. Do not rely solely on counting coupon redemptions. Not everyone brings in a coupon, but they always act upon a message that fulfills their needs. Use this data to fine-tune your plan throughout the year, but resist the temptation to react too quickly. It takes time to determine how specific media is performing. Good or bad performance from an ad that runs one time does make for a trend. Also, evaluate your message or offer. The media might be right, but perhaps your message is not resonating with your target market’s needs

Summary

Marketing communications are the foundation for how your prospects view your business in the marketplace. Put time & effort into developing strategy and tactics that differentiate your business and give consumers a reason to choose you over the competition.

John Bomarito has over 20-years of marketing experience and owns Money Mailer of North Macomb. John can be reached at 586-726-0297 or jbomarito@moneymailer.com. You can also visit his web site at www.moneymailer.com/macomb

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