Know Your Audience

The other day, I mentioned I was going to a convention to sell shirts.  The convention was PhenomeCon, a day-long event that featured the usual convention fare, speakers, vendors, etc.  My company, Progressive Design Apparel, printed the convention’s shirts and setup as a vendor at the event.  Ben, from our art department, created a great design for us to sell on shirts at PhenomeCon.  We printed 72 shirts on smoke, aloe, independence red, city green, and lake Anvil T’s.

Ben’s design incorporated various imagery from the paranormal world, angels, skulls, and ghosts.  It also had a Ghostbusters quote for a little humor–”Back off man, I’m a scientist.”  Instead of normal plastisol, we used discharge and water-based black.  For those that don’t know, plastisol is the type of ink most shirts are printed with.  It’s a plasitc-based ink and can be a little heavy.  Discharge is a chemical reaction that takes the die out of the fabric.  The reason you’d do this is twofold, 1) because it adds zero weight to the shirt, and 2) it allows you to add lighter, water-based ink without the dark shirt color bleeding through.  The combination of discharge and water-based black gives the shirts a light feel and an extremely soft hand.

Everyone loved Ben’s design, so I boxed up the shirts and headed south to Columbus, Indiana’s Crump Theater, location of PhenomeCon.  We knew our audience.  Or so we thought.  Turns out we got lots of compliments on the shirts there as well.  But we didn’t sell very many.  Why?

It wasn’t the price; no one tried to haggle.  It wasn’t the design; lots of people told us it was cool.  It turns out that there was a unique physical characteristic that the majority of the audience shared.  And this hampered our sales.  In fact, it entirely hamstringed our success.

Lesson learned?

Know your audience.

Don’t just know what your audience likes.  Know who they are.  Know why they like what they like.  Know why they don’t like what they dislike.  Knowing who your audience is and not just the perfect item to sell them will make sure you don’t end up like me, with a box of product and a convention of interest.

Marketing God

On my drive into work this morning, I saw row of yellow signs on the side of the road. “Why are we here?” “Does God exist” “Come in for answers.” So I have to wonder: what happens when you promise more than you can deliver?

Religion permeates nearly every culture that has existed in the past 5,000 years. How can that be? Faith, by definition, requires no proof to believe in something. So if you go into the church, I have no doubts they’ll tell you about God. But how do you sell God? How do you say, here’s a story, believe it or else?

Is it just because everyone else believes? Is church just peer pressure?

I’ll give you story and you tell me if it’s as believable as the God story:
A man who lives in the arctic loves kids. Once a year, he brings them toys he has his helpers make. He flies in a sleigh pulled by some herbivores and goes to each house to make his deliveries. Oh yeah, and he does it all in one night.

Why don’t most people believe that story? Probably because it takes a little more proof to pull off. For God to exist, there’s only one thing to believe: there is a god. For Santa to exist, you have to believe that reindeer fly and he visits every house in the world while leaving behind presents. You’ve never seen God and you’ve never seen Santa. Yet God is much more believable. We tell kids there’s more to the world than what you can see. Air, bacteria, wind; things we know exist without being able to see with a naked eye. Yet you can’t prove either God or Santa exist. So why is selling God so much easier?

I’m not saying I don’t believe there’s a God. I would just like to know what about God is so easy to sell. And please, atheists don’t shy away; I’d particularly like to hear from you as I don’t know any atheists. I’d love to go into that church for answers, but somehow I think asking a church about believing in God is a bit biased; kind of like asking a hungry tiger if his porterhouse tastes good.

Sink or Swim at Your Tradeshow

As I mentioned the other day, I attended a tradeshow last week. Now, most tradeshows are arranged so that you can look out over the floor and see a bunch of vendors at the same time. This means your (potential) customers or competitors can watch you; and you can watch them. Just like a predator can tell that its prey is weak, others at the tradeshow will be able to tell whether you’ll sink or swim. How you perform at tradeshow is indicative of how you run your business. I said in my last post that with everyone offering virtually the same product will make price easily the defining factor that separates you from your competition. But it’s really service that should be the big indicator. Taking it even further, in a word, what makes you a winner or a loser in business—or sports; or music; or life—is preparation.

When you show up to a trade show do you have all of your materials? Do you have samples or a demonstration model? Do you know your new products cold? If not, you’re in trouble. Someone will surely ask what makes the ’08 version better than the previous. Or they will think your spiel is great, but if only they could try one or take one with them to show the person who makes the decisions. If people stop by and you don’t have even some literature to show them, you’re just plain out of luck.

On Friday, everyone I met was knowledgeable about their product. That’s obviously a minimum requirement. Past that, there were some people who had a table full of samples; some who had a stack of catalogs and other information; some who had a big presentation setup. In a few cases, the company’s representative had all of these things. I bumped into many of my suppliers and it was easy to tell which ones would get an increase in business from me.

I’ve had one supplier that’s gone through the fire to get one of my jobs done and make my client happy. He was there. And you can bet he was prepared. We’ll call him “Adam;” because that’s his name. My coworker, Traci, came in with me to check out Adam’s setup. He had a giant presentation board with multiple samples of everything his company makes. And when Traci wanted to know if Adam made headphone clips, he filled her hands with samples for her to use. Adam knows it’s a two-for. If he’s prepared and does an excellent job, Traci and I will work with him again. But he also knows if Traci and I are knowledgeable and have samples of his product, we’ll get him even more business because we’ll be prepared.

So the next time you need to go to a tradeshow or send someone to a tradeshow, remember that you can’t fool people if you’re unprepared. Alex Rodriguez couldn’t succeed in the playoffs if he didn’t go to batting practice. And you can’t succeed in business if you aren’t prepared.

Insights From A Trade Show

On Friday I attended a trade show for those of us in the promotional products industry. It was here in Indianapolis, actually just a stone’s throw away from PDA. My fellow colleagues and I headed over, put on the obligatory name tag and began to circulate. Below are the take home messages from my latest trade show experience:

• Hosting a trade show in rooms of a hotel is incredibly aggravating. The rooms are too small to allow adequate flow in, around, and out of the set up.
• The promotional products industry is full of copy cats. Everyone seems to offer the same product, making the only thing that differentiates one company from another is price or service. Some clients will choose price, but in my experience service should be the clear winner. There isn’t enough money in the world to make you look good when you deliver an empty promise of a promotional product the day after an event.
• Despite what it seems like, there is more to the success of a promotion than just buying pens. There are lots of options; you just have to make sure your supplier isn’t lazy and will work to find the right solution for you. For example, there are lots of new and innovative products and ways of making products that might work for you. It just might be worth it for you to spend the extra x% and get your product sublimated.
• The trend in 2008, as I’ve mentioned before, is green promotional products. Pens made out of corn, travel mugs made out of potatoes, tote bags made with organic cotton, 100% biodegradable plastic Frisbees; eco is everywhere this year. I saw each of these items at the show on Friday and even got to take a few of them back to the office. Think about going green so that you’re seen as a leader in your industry and not just the next guy to jump on the bandwagon. You’ll then be able to say, you were green before green was cool.

Chick-fil-a’s Free Breakfast Model

If you’ve checked out my blog roll, hopefully you’ve already come across Übereye Marketing’s Seinfeld on Marketing series which runs on Fridays. Two Fridays ago, just before the Super Bowl, Übereye brought up an excellent Seinfeld moment when Jerry tries to give away Super Bowl tickets to George. Read the entire dialogue on Übereye and come back; I’ll wait.

The idea of giving away something for very little or nothing at all is not new. Obviously, by signing up for a new two-year agreement Verizon can afford to give you a phone for free. You’re probably going to be spending $60 a month with them for 24 months before you try to jump ship to get your next free phone from T-mobile. Using loss leaders is known as the “razor and blades business model” because it’s the model the Gillette company’s founder used. Ever gotten a free razor in the mail? If Gillette spends $5 sending you a razor and a blade cartridge (and you love the product) you’ll buy the high margin blades and Gillette makes more money.

Like George, I would see free Super Bowl tickets as a bill for $1500. Sure I’d save a few hundred, but that doesn’t mean I have $1500 in disposable income. So, when visiting Chick-fil-a for breakfast this morning I had to love their current promotion. To fully set the stage, I have to go back a few weeks. I was on my way to work and for some reason saw a Chick-fil-a cow standing on the side of the road in his pajamas holding a sign. I assumed it was something like “eat mor chickin” and looked over as I drove past. The sign said, “free breakfast“.

Too bad for me I already drove past the cow; maybe next time he should stand before the turn into Chick-fil-a, not after it. Somehow I ended up finding out that this wasn’t an isolated incident. Apparently every Wednesday for a few weeks (at least here in Indianapolis), each vehicle that stops at Chick-fil-a during normal breakfast hours gets one free breakfast entrée. They say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and that’s what Chick-fil-a is counting on. Every Wednesday more and more people are lined up in the drive-thru at Chick-fil-a to save maybe 3 bucks and get some delicious Chick-fil-a breakfast. How many people do you think just get the free entrée and move on? Not many, I’m sure.

Maybe someone buys a drink; maybe they get a drink and hash browns to complete the meal; maybe they stop with a car full of kids and feed them all. So Chik-fil-a is giving away all this breakfast, but they’re also doing two things, 1) they’re creating a buzz between people telling others where to get free breakfast and by people seeing the crazy line at Chick-fil-a which means they must be doing something right, and 2) they’re racking up sales that add on top of the free entrée: sides, drinks, and additional entrées.

When doing a marketing campaign, don’t just give away a promotional product or coupon. Give people something of value. Give it to them without strings, but have more to offer them if they like the freebie. In another instance of Chick-fil-a marketing, just last night I got a coupon for free breakfast from submitting my info online. They’re always happy to send me coupons and I’m always happy to get them… but who can argue with across the board free breakfast? Black, white, rich, poor, smart, stupid, healthy, or sick just show up and chow down

…just be sure to wash that down with a beverage!

Where Do Super Bowl Shirts Come From?

By now, you’ve probably seen Giants Super Bowl XLII Champions shirts. The Giants had their parade yesterday in New York and unless I’m the only one on the mailing lists of places like Champs, Eastbay, Dick’s, etc. you probably got an email trying to sell you one. You’ve probably wondered where all the shirts come from. If I had to guess, you probably think they come from a third world country where people get pennies on the dollar to hand draw each shirt in 30 seconds.

The good news is that’s not actually the case. Now, I am not a higher up in Nike, Reebok, or Adidas so I can’t tell you where all the shirts come from. But I can tell you some good news. Lots of those shirts come from right here in America. The company I work for, Progressive Design Apparel here in Indianapolis, not only does promotional products but also screen printing and embroidery. We do custom work, where you come in tell us about your needs and design apparel that meets your needs and contract work, where a company sends us product (shirts, hats, jackets, anything) and we either put their artwork on the product or we create the artwork and put it on the customer supplied apparel. Some companies do only one or the other kind of work, but we do both. One is only better than the other depending on a business’ goals.

Anyway, back to the Super Bowl shirts. As I said, many are produced by normal Americans like you and I. Actually, as a point of specification, the manufacturing of a t-shirt is usually not done in place like Indianapolis, rather the decorating. So the blanks may be made in Honduras, for example, but printing them with a Giants Super Bowl XLII Champs design is done here Indianapolis. At PDA (Progressive Design Apparel), the guys who print shirts are Dave and Jonathan (you can see the whole team here). So last week a truck-load of shirts were shipped into PDA and on Friday after the last job was done, the Super Bowl shirt screens were set up. (I’ll explain screens another day.) On Sunday after the game—which ended about 10:15 p.m. Indianapolis time—the crew came in and setup the Giants on the press. They put the first shirt on and let it rip.

Our shirt capacity is around 1,000 shirts an hour, so assuming at that time of night there’s no loss of efficiency you can easily figure out how long it took for our guys to pump out the 3,000 shirts we did. Aside: That’s actually a smaller number than in previous years, because for example last year when the Colts won, there was a greater need for shirts in the immediate Indianapolis area. With the teams being in New Jersey and Massachusetts, clearly demand isn’t as high if it’s a Super Bowl win by a team within a few hundred miles of here—which is actually a large number since Indianapolis is located within an 8 hour drive of roughly half the U.S. population. I didn’t get a chance to ask because everyone who came in on Sunday night got Monday off and yesterday they were back to working hard, but they probably didn’t get home until 1:30-2 a.m.

There you go: most Super Bowl shirts come from normal, everyday guys right here in (as Ned Flanders would say), “that space between New York and L.A. called ‘America.’” Actually we do more than just Super Bowl shirts; I remember seeing at least 3 of the NFL playoff teams getting printed here, plus I know I’ve seen a handful of NBA shirts done in the past few months. Who’s your favorite team? You may be wearing one of our shirts.

The Snow Day That Almost Was

In general the tone I try to take on Marketer Synergy is casual, but I also try to stay on the path of professional. So with the casual theme in mind, let me tell you about The Snow Day That Almost Was.

Indianapolis was supposed to get hit with roughly 8-10 inches of snow this morning. It was going to continue through rush hour, so a lot of people thought today’s commute was going to be miserable and a lot of kids expected to not have school today. In fact, I was hoping to have a day off too. I live and work on opposite sides of the north end of Indianapolis and in order to get to work I have to drive across town. In normal rush hour, it’s not a fun experience, but in icy, slick, snowy conditions it’s even dangerous. Now I’m from Florida, didn’t see a snow flake until a few days before my 21st birthday, and therefore have no idea of how to drive in the snow. I’ve slid across the street a few times in those low priority areas where a plow and salt don’t go (like neighborhood roads). So you can imagine I’d rather just work remotely today (I can log in to my work PC from home).

Well, little Marketer Synergy rex decided today was the day when she wanted me to get up at 4:45 a.m. and take her out (my wife’s out of town on business, so no dice on that option). So I try to get her to go back to sleep for at least a half hour without luck. When I do get downstairs and let her out, I find about an inch or two of snow on top of a layer of ice. I knew two things 1) we weren’t getting a snow day and 2) driving across town over a layer of ice was going to be horrible. Thankfully one 1 of those two was accurate. The temperature on my drive was actually about 34, so instead of ice, it was mostly slush and water. So here I am, at work, and safe. The morning got started off nicely, someone brought in Krispy Kreme and we had an Anvil rep come in and discuss his line and changes to the ’08 catalog. Hopefully the drive home is just as safe. If so, I’ll be back on Monday!

Corporate Blogging as Marketing

This afternoon I took part in an hour-long webinar on corporate blogging hosted by Chris Baggott, founder of Compendium Blogware. I’ve actually been enamored with the idea of corporate blogging since the moment I first heard of it. Compendium is based here in Indianapolis and I actually had some contact with Chris between the time that Compendium’s formation had been announced and the time Compendium went live. I would have jumped at the chance to work for him if for no other reason than I think his idea is so innovative, but all impressions that I’ve gotten are that he not only knows what he does, he’s a real good guy.

So Compendium handles the behind-the-scenes of corporate blogging. Blogging is an important way to be found for businesses—especially small businesses. Blogging is just the current (and one of the most effective) marketing trends. If your company wants to start blogging, but wants to only focus on the content and not hiring an IT guy just to run the blog, Compedium is the type of place you’d go. To give you an analogy, if you want pizza you could get all the ingredients and make it by hand or you could call the best pizzeria in town. Either way, you’d be eating good pizza for dinner, it’s just less hassle when you don’t have to make it yourself. (There are a lot of pizza examples here on Marketer Synergy, aren’t there?).

Long story short, keep an eye on Compendium’s website for the next webinar if you’re interested in the new wave of corporate marketing. I’m going to send my boss to the next one he offers, which based on their attendance today, will probably be again in the next month or two.

And with as much respect as I have for Matt Mullenweg, he offers a completely different product, so I don’t feel like they’re competitors at all. If I knew Matt, I’d probably have just as many nice things to say about him. And I do love me some WordPress!

Create A Successful Promotion – Part 3

In my first two installments of “Create A Successful Promotion” I introduced you to the 4 keys to a successful promotion: Promo-smart, PMRT, stands for:

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I covered the first 2 keys to a successful promotion, Product and Message. To ever so briefly recap, your product can’t just be a good product; it has to be the right product for the intended recipient and your message can’t be just your logo; it must make a call to action in order to be effective. Today, I’ll cover the next step in a successful promotion using Promo-smart (PMRT).

3. Recipient

As I said, in the first installment, you must know who you want to target. Wanting everyone to be your customer is okay, but how realistic is it that with only one promotion you can win over 100% of everyone who is not already your customer? If it only took one promotion, there wouldn’t need to be thousands of promotional product distributors and suppliers in the U.S. So in order to maximize the effectiveness of your promotion, you have to determine which group is the most likely to be interested in what you’re selling. Here’s an example:

Saf-T-Boot sells steel-toed boots direct and wants to run a promotion to cover the entire Indianapolis metro area. They decide on a good product and have a great message. In the mail goes the widget with the great message to 1,000 randomly distributed people in the Indianapolis area. Some of the people who get the promotion in the mail are accountants, teachers, salespeople, postal workers, photographers, and just about any other profession you can think of. You can bet accountants don’t have much use for steel-toed boots, so the response rate is pretty low—we’ll say 2% (which is considered a decent to good response rate on mass mailings).

Now, instead of picking 1,000 random people to send the promotion to, what if they would have focused on their recipient? Using the same good product with the same great message, this time Saf-T-Boot sends their promotion to every contractor, construction worker, and heavy machinery factory worker they can find. It’s hard to imagine that a good product and a great message going to such a specific, targeted group of people would have a low response rate. It could be 10% (5 times as much as the random mailing); it could be 20% (10 times more effective than the random mailing).

For its next promotion, Saf-T-Boot can target retailers of work shoes. Changing the product and/or the message makes the promotion entirely new to this second, targeted recipient. Again, response rate can be much higher than it would have been by randomly distributing the promotional products.

Who you target is just as important as what you say and how you say it. After making sure you target a specific audience for your promotion, there’s only one Promo-smart (PMRT) step left—Timing—and I’ll cover that tomorrow.

In the meantime, feel free to comment. Have you ever done a marketing campaign without thinking about targeting a very specific group and gotten a terrible response rate?

Create A Successful Promotion – Part 2

In my first installment of “Create A Successful Promotion” I introduced you to the 4 keys to a successful promotion and a nifty way to remember them. PMRT, or Promo-smart, stands for:

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I covered the first of the 4 keys to a successful promotion, Product, and pointed out that it’s not enough to have a great product. In addition to a great product you have to make sure your product meets the needs or otherwise reaches the specific audience you’re marketing to. Following Promo-smart (PMRT), here’s the next step in a successful promotion.

     2. Message

Many companies think that splashing their logo on a promotional product, whether a shirt, pen, magnet, hat, or any other kind of widget, is a good use of marketing campaign dollars. But it’s not. Do you recognize the following logos?

Unless you haven’t seen a television in a few decades, you instantly recognize Nike, Apple, and Pepsi. Nike, Apple, and Pepsi can put their logo on anything, but unfortunately for you, you’re not Nike, Apple, or Pepsi. These 3 can pull it off because they spent gobs of money on corporate branding so that when someone saw their logo they would know what it means. So, if you’re going to tap into the next biggest athlete the world has ever seen, ala Nike signing Michael Jordan, you’ll be able to stick your logo on anything and people will know you.

What Can You Do?

You need to focus on the M in Promo-smart (PMRT). Your message isn’t only who you are, but why someone should choose you. You need to induce an action. Let me give you an example.

A pizza place just moved into a great spot near a big university just outside of Indianapolis. They go to the quad and student union on a beautiful spring day with 250 Frisbees. They are white and imprinted in red letters, “Empire State Pizza.” Not bad. College students like Frisbee and would rather toss a Frisbee than sit through another discussion of The Canterbury Tales. But what has the pizza place gotten? Not much. They have no way to know if the message was a success.

Now, let’s say the message changes. This time, using 250 white Frisbees with red letters, they pass out the following message: “Empire State Pizza. Across from Dodd Hall, next to the laundry mat. Bring this Frisbee in by May 1st for a free slice when you buy a slice.” The words “Empire State Pizza” are now smaller because the same size space contains a lot more info. But, the message calls the students to action. The Frisbee says why they should eat at Empire State Pizza—because when they buy 1 slice, they get another free. Attracting new customers is much easier if they know where to find you, and Empire State Pizza told the students exactly where the pizzeria is located. Finally, the message called for a specific action, bringing in the Frisbee, and contained a deadline, May 1st. This makes the promotion timely and easy to track—all you have to do is keep a running list of the number of people who show you their Frisbee.

Using the right message is a vital component of a successful promotion. You might think that the right promotional product and the right marketing message is enough to ensure success, but there are still 2 more keys to success in the Promo-smart (PMRT) method. Next time we’ll discuss the Recipient.

In the meantime, feel free to comment. Have you ever done a marketing campaign using just your name or logo and felt it wasn’t a success?