Yes, it’s the month for Valentines, but at JMS Marketing, it’s also a celebration of Groundhog Day. Why? Because the movie from Columbia Pictures, Groundhog Day, was one of our first clients.
This popular movie became an iconic hit thanks to the creative collaboration of Danny Rubin and the late, great Harold Ramis. And once the production company settled on the midwestern town of Woodstock, Illinois for filming (after scouting more than 60 towns), the founder of JMS Marketing, Jean Marie Saidler, was hired to assist their locations department in developing communication campaigns for the local merchants and residents who would experience the realities of filming a movie. It was a fascinating project, and Columbia Pictures made a genuine effort to deliver clear, credible information. This small, Midwest town was about to turn into a movie set. Because of this, they knew that communications needed to be one of its top priorities during production.
Fast forward over 30 years and it’s enlightening to see how both the production company and the movie’s main protagonist, Phil Connors, realized the value of being genuine and authentic. Open, honest communication with local businesses and residents helped move production along without too much disruption. Additionally, Phil discovered the value in being genuine. He became sincerely interested in the town which provided the solution to ending the curse of living the same day over and over…and over again.
Today, genuine, authentic marketing communication, void of hype and hyperbole, is more important than ever. Yet it’s easy to fall back on cookie cutter marketing techniques, stock graphics, and canned marketing jargon when pressured by increasing cost reductions, slow revenue growth, last-minute order changes and/or incessant supply chain issues that impact sales.
There is a solution.
Companies who want to strike a chord with their customers can position themselves as genuine solution providers with credible resources such as case studies.
Yes, we’ve heard all the objections from sharing trade secrets to exposing valuable production data. Yet by keeping case studies short and positioning them more as success stories, the details can be positioned around how you met the client’s challenge rather than getting into sensitive data details. Besides, most B2B prospects understand the nature of proprietary information. They accept this as a normal practice and will admire that you respect it.
If your challenged with developing case studies, consider the following:
“Success Stories”
Success stories capture the client’s perspective. Offer information on what you were asked to do and how you were able to accomplish the task. Going into details about how you met the challenge helps you respect your client’s proprietary info. Did you accomplish the project on time? Did you deliver additional value or spot additional efficiencies and value for the client along the way? Did you experience budget challenges? How was that accomplished?
“Use Case” Option
This type of B2B content describes how customers can use your product or service to experience results they wish to achieve. You can share specific products and benefits and their key characteristics by describing their use in an existing situation.
For B2B prospects, sales are much more of a process. They include longer sales cycles and multiple levels of approval. That’s why genuine communication is so important. Think in terms of your prospects’ needs rather than your product. Obtain a deep understanding of your targeted audience and what motivates them to make decisions and you’ll both get your jobs done.
After all, even when Phil broke the curse, the first question he asked Rita (Andie MacDowell) was, “What can I do for You?” It wasn’t about him anymore. It was about another’s needs.
Are Results Part of Your Marketing Plan?
We’re well into another year. And if you’re responsible in any way for marketing within your business, it’s the time to finally embrace today’s new marketing model as part of your plan. In order to properly capture data and protect one’s investment in marketing, a skillful blend of both digital and traditional marketing methods will be required.
It’s no surprise that the increase in new channels and technologies have dramatically changed marketing. Yet the speed in which this is taking place continues to increase. In order to keep up, companies now need to leverage the full scope of their marketing capabilities and analyze the results so that proper targets can be identified, the correct resources allocated, and marketing budgets are controlled. Without doing so, marketing efforts could generate nothing more than noise and expense rather than promotion and profits.
According to a Chief Marketer Poll, over half of marketers expect their budgets to increase in this new year, but many still don’t feel they are optimizing their marketing strategies…in particular, digital strategies. While Business to Business (B2B) brands tend to use metrics such as return on investment (ROI), Business to Consumer (B2C) marketers have traditionally used key performance indicators (KPI’s) to gauge the success of their marketing.
We consider the increase of digital strategies a blessing. It has clearly unveiled the importance of our mission as marketers: to build data for future sales and reduce wasted spend. Yet many companies continue to feel threatened by digital marketing strategies. This is to be expected. After all, it’s difficult to allocate internal resources with all the necessary skills required to keep up with the constant updates and new technologies evolving in marketing. Additionally, building a marketing structure in a way that interacts with other business functions, as well as traditional marketing elements, can be a real challenge due to the constant demands of daily business.
Today there are new competencies and capabilities required when marketing. Expertise such as data development and analytics, customer experience, content, multichannel and personalization are seldom properly understood, nor being met. Although we all acknowledge this change in the marketing industry, it’s been challenging for businesses to reflect this change within their company structure.
We invite you to embrace change and collaborate this year. Bring marketing to the table when identifying target markets. This will help ensure that the necessary competencies and capabilities are addressed in creating an efficient, effective plan for your marketing strategy. Help your team function within your company in an effort to improve how marketing works both within itself and with other business functions within the company. Don’t hesitate to contact us should you have questions. We’re here to help your company realize the full potential of your marketing.
Marketing Disasters: A Recovery Plan
Your company has been hit by a disaster, either a natural or a man-made one -how you respond to it could make or break your business. According to the disaster recovery firm Agility Recovery a shocking 90% of businesses will fail within 1 year if they have not resumed operations within 5 days of a disaster! While the type of devastation recently seen in Texas is rare; man-made disasters are far more common.
The best-case scenario, would be that you planned for such an event. You and your company spent time to look at possible disasters, put a marketing plan in place and can quickly implement it. However, if this was always on your “To Do” list, but never really got it off the ground, now what?
Your first plan of attack should be to take a look at your near-term plans. Look at what you already have in the pipeline scheduled to be released in the next few days and few weeks. If you had a blog scheduled about the wonderful management of your CEO and it was just discovered that he was misappropriating company funds, you will need to cancel it. Elementary, right? However, with everything that is happening, sometimes it is easy to forget about items you scheduled months ago; as example Air BNB sent an email1 out just 2 days after the devastating floods in Texas promoting a Floating World vacation. Look at what advertising is already scheduled with national and local outlets and will you need to pull back an ad?
Make sure to stay flexible in your messaging. After making sure that there is nothing scheduled that may appear inappropriate, next look at your marketing plan as a whole. Will the messaging still be appropriate? How will the public perceive the message? If your warehouse was devastated by a fire, your marketing plan focusing on a product that was stored in the now burned out warehouse might need to be adjusted. Can your current marketing plan shift focus to a different product or service?
Communication is key. Your customers will want to know if their orders will be shipped, far more then they want to know about a success story your company had recently. Write a blog about the company recovery efforts, use social media to keep customers updated on current happenings – make sure to keep communicating. Let customers know how long full recovery may take and the efforts that are being made in returning to business as usual.
Communication internally is important as well. Your employees need to be kept in the loop on what is happening, so that rumor does not become (false) fact. Make sure that there is one central point of contact that messaging is coming from. You do not want employee speculation to become front-page news! Let employees know who to contact if the media calls, how long recovery may take, and how they can help. Depending on the scope of the disaster, employees will be concerned about their jobs and future of the company; keep communication as transparent as possible – let them know that there may be issues that cannot be discussed with them, especially if litigation is involved.
Take time to look at the full scope of the disaster. Is this a long term or short-term problem? If your company has been hacked -the hack maybe a short-term issue, but what about the long-term effects? What information might have been stolen and how will you be able to deal with it. Start by making a list of all the possible ramifications, then narrow it down to the most likely issues. Using this list prepare your messaging and keep updating the message as new information becomes available.
The keys to disaster recovery are flexibility and communication. Keep your current marketing plan in place if possible, but be flexible to add, delete or update your message as needed. Make sure that the message that was on target yesterday is still on track in light of this disaster, if not update or change it wherever possible. Make sure to keep your stakeholders – customers and employees updated on events. Keep your communications as transparent as possible, do not over or under promise. Trust can be a key to your recovery, pretending as if nothing has happened, will not instill trust in you or your company, make sure to keep communications lines open and let the storm pass.
For more information on recovering from a marketing disaster, check out these posts:
- Communicating in a Crisis: Creating a Disaster Response Marketing Plan (BizFilings.com)
- How to Create a Disaster Plan for Your Business (Entrepreneur)
- Disaster Recovery Plan vs. Business Continuity Plan (Cron.com)
- Email Marketing Daily, August 29, 2017. “Airbnb Sends ‘Floating World’ Email Amidst Harvey Destruction”.