Reach Your Specific Ideal Client

The world of marketing has changed significantly over the last number of years as we’re more and more selective about the messages we’re exposed to.  Because we now have the ability to tune out a good deal of the messaging we’re exposed to, we see a shift from outbound to inbound marketing efforts, and advertising as a form of lead generation has lost a good deal of its attractiveness.

Despite the fact that email marketing is relatively low cost, Facebook pages are free, Twitter as an outreach tool is free, and advertising costs money.  Because of the invoice that comes along with advertising, and the fact that most don’t know how to get results, people tend to discount its impact.

To produce results with advertising today, you must:

1. Be extremely focused on a specific ideal client.  I always ask business owners about their experience using advertising for lead generation.  And, in many cases, they respond back to me saying advertising doesn’t work.  And usually their ads haven’t produced results because they weren’t targeted at a specific client.  Business owners frequently get caught up with image advertising that the big brands do and that just doesn’t work for small businesses.

2. Use valuable content along with a call to action to create awareness.  Part of our job as marketers is to make your prospects better consumers of your industry and that’s where the value of content comes in.  Valuable and educational content is what helps create trust among your prospects.

3. Diligently measure leads and conversion rates.  If you’re not measuring leads and conversion rates for your existing lead generation activities, how do you make better decisions as to where to spend time and budget?  In order to defend your marketing budget and improve your results, it’s more and more important to establish and track metrics and conversion rates.

Following these three rules for advertising success is necessary for survival.  And with the trend moving away from mass media advertising and more targeted advertising in new media, I think you’ll find better opportunities to reach your specific ideal client.  New media also allows for improved opportunities to measure and track results.  Based on the details above, how will you change the way you advertise?

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There’s no question that daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social have become all the craze lately.  So much that they are literally everywhere – originally for consumer deals, and now we’re starting to see them pop to offer business to business (B2B) deals.

A good opportunity for you and your business?

Deal sites are essentially a form of advertising.  The merchant works out an offering that the site operators believe will sell.  The deal site then publishes the offer and pushes it out to its customer list.  And the idea here is that the deal site is then driving loads of traffic back to the businesses site where the purchase can be researched or redeemed.

The offers are these deal sites, however, are different from the usually coupons merchants frequently offer as the expectation is that the deal is typically a very steep discount – usually more than 50% off.  For merchants, the advantages are that there are no upfront fees and they are only paying to get actual customers.  For example, if the deal fails to sell, the merchant has only invested his or her time in setting this up.  The drawback, however, is that the merchant pays a hefty price for the customer, as they get less than 25% of the full-price face value of the product or service.

And this is where you have to carefully weigh whether or not this is a good opportunity for you and your business. And the answer is – it depends.

There are 5 things to carefully consider before lunging into the world of daily deals and huge discounting:

1. Carefully understanding your variable vs. fixed costs.  If your deal is very successful, are you making any money on it?

2. Insure you have the capacity to manage the volume of traffic that could be generated.

3. When the deal is sold, you don’t own the customer contact details of those who purchase the deal – the deal site does.  You need a plan to overcome this.

4. Ensure you have an up-sell opportunity to create an even better and more memorable experience with those who buy your deal.

5. Once you get people in the door with this deal, how do you plan to capture them as repeat customers?

While there is an opportunity to create a flood of customers, a decent cash influx, and great buzz and visibility, you have to do your homework and plan this promotion carefully.  I would even advise doing a practice run with a smaller deal site to ensure you haven’t made any critical mistakes and you’ll see some ways in which you could even improve your process.

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Earlier this week, Abercrombie and Fitch decided that MTV’s reality show, “Jersey Shore” offered to pay the cast to never where its’ clothes on air again.   In a news release , the company reported that “This association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans.”

Brand Disassociation or a PR Stint?

Interestingly enough, in a case like this, the owner of the brand could try to prevent the show from airing A & F’s intellectual property without their permission.  Logos and labels fall under fair-use law, he said, and shows have to get approval from the owner of the intellectual property to use them.  And that’s why, in so many low budget shows, the labels are often blurred.

And that’s why this whole story, seems like more of a PR stunt than anything else, and a good one at that.  The initial story came out a day before the company was scheduled to release its earnings t along with an analysts conference call.  And on the call, the head of A&F, Michael S. Jeffries even inquired as to whether anyone was going to bring up the “Situation” on the call.

A well-planned PR stunt?  I think so.  Especially if you consider that this event puts the company top of mind as parents and teen-agers shop for back-to-school fashions.  Still, Abercrombie’s stock fell more than 8 percent on Wednesday, dropping $6.15 a share to close at $64.87.  But so did a lot of other stocks fall considerably that day.  A decent PR stunt I would say.  What do you think?

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