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There are two legitimate marketing uses of billboards. One, getting drive by traffic immediately to your location and two, building name recognition that will eventually drive traffic to your business. The tricky part comes into play when deciding where to place your billboards based on your company type as well as the purpose of your billboard.
I was recently driving home to Illinois from South Dakota and noticed a string of billboards along I-90 for a furniture store. Not really that unique right? I’m sure we’ve all seen furniture store billboards. What struck me with these particular billboards though, was where they were. For anyone who hasn’t driven across South Dakota, it is beautiful but relatively unpopulated, with 100 miles or more between “major” cities. Most of the billboards are for services appealing to the people driving by (restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, the occasional repair shop). The billboards are meant to get people to come in once they hit that exit, because most of the people driving these somewhat desolate roads aren’t driving by on a regular basis. In short, the billboards on this strech of road aren’t going to do a very good job at building name recognition since people won’t see them day after day like they would on a well traveled urban commuter route. Since most people driving the 50 miles between the billboards and the town where the furniture store is located aren’t going to decide on the spur of the moment to buy furniture, these billboards also aren’t going to do a very good job at serving the other possible purpose of driving immediate traffic to the business. Basically, these billboards are most likely an expensive waste of valuable marketing dollars.
Does this mean that furniture stores should never use billboards? No. It just means this business owner should reconsider where to place their billboards. When customers do decide to buy furniture, the name recognition of the furniture store will play a key part. Therefore, this furniture store should be advertising where people will repeatedly see it, not out in the middle of proverbial nowhere.
All of our businesses need to consider carefully not just the type of advertising we are doing, but also where it is placed. Do you have examples of advertising you’ve seen in an ineffectual place?
I recently got a phone call from a local Wheaton company looking for business cards. They had gone to a larger local printer and had initially gotten good service, but it had been several weeks and they had had to contact the printer several times to even get a draft of their card, yet alone get anything finished and printed. Either the printer’s employee was just someone who didn’t provide good customer service, or the company didn’t think it was a large enough project to merit their attention. Either way, this client needed to go elsewhere.
Well, it turns out that this “little” business card project was actually only a very small part of what this client really needed. They also needed letterhead, a new website and potentially a mailing campaign in the near future. Additionally, they were in the process of creating a spinoff company. And this spinoff company needs all of its marketing materials, a logo, business cards, letterhead, website, brochures, postcards and vehicle wraps. And because this bigger company didn’t think they were a large enough client to merit their attention, who do you think gets to do all that work?
So whatever business you are in, remember the next time that “small” project comes in that it deserves just as much of your attention as your dream client, because the reality is that little client could in fact be your dream client.
There is an old adage for business dress – “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. The idea is that if you are already looking the part, it is easier for people to take you seriously and perhaps help you move along that corporate ladder down the road. Appearance plays a big part of how people in the business world are evaluated, and your dress goes a long ways towards how professional you appear and how seriously people take you.
The same basic principle applies to the look of your company’s marketing materials. If you are a one person operation that wants to land larger, more lucrative clients (or increasingly even some of the smaller clients), you need to do what you can to look the part of a professional organization. You don’t need to spend thousands on overly fancy corporate brochures, but the materials you do put out definitely need to be clean, well organized and professional in appearance. Handing out something that looks like you put it together at home doesn’t help the appearance of your company and it can actually hurt when you’re trying to land that client.
Your marketing materials, just like your wardrobe, should reflect the company you want to be.
I love the studio intros that movie companies have put together at the beginning of movies. You know… those little movie snippets with the various company names on them evolving out of some nifty graphics. Usually revolving around a logo. Some of the newer movie companies have truly come up with some great artsy and creative intros, which do bear looking at. But for the sake of today’s post, I want to focus on those of the older, more established movie companies.
(For a look at a variety of these intros, check out the following on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PtpALF_3w&feature=BF&list=PLD25EE797D1D52470&index=6
If you’ve been watching movies for any length of time, you can probably recognize the intro to most of the main studios: MGM, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Dreamworks, Lions Gate, etc. And you will most likely continue to recognize these intros almost immediately, regardless of how much these intros have in fact been updated over the years. The reason for this is that even though these “video logos” have evolved – adding animation here, updating to new sharper graphics and colors there – the basics of the logo are still intact. Dreamworks, for example has taken the static picture of the kid fishing on the moon and added animation. Disney’s iconic castle logo has evolved into a flowing movie intro following a train to the castle, which is now beautifully done in 3D. Even the old MGM lion now actually roars and moves. The evolved intros are decidedly modern, and for the most part don’t look like they are up to 50 or more years old, but they are definitely rooted firmly in their iconic past. And thus, their brand recognition continues to build. (These intros are, in fact, so recognizable that as I was looking at the various intros on youtube, my four year old recognized them from across the room and could name various movies associated with each.)
For anyone looking to update their existing logos, it doesn’t hurt to take your cue from these movie giants. If you have an existing clientele who recognizes your logo, but still feel the need to update it (either to enter new markets or simply because it’s becoming dated), make sure it is really an update, but still maintains the brand recognition of your existing logo.
What are your favorite movie studio intros/intro updates?
The last couple months saw news stories about two major companies’ adventures in changing their corporate logos. One (GAP) didn’t go over so well and the company ended up scrapping the new logo and going back to the tried and true old one. While Starbuck’s new logo seems to be going over well. So what’s the difference? Apart from the actual designs of the logos, the biggest difference seems to be the reasons behind changing the logo.
For GAP, it appears the logo change was meant as a way to garner attention and bump up lagging sales. While a new logo can get your company new attention, it isn’t necessarily worth it just for that reason. The result of GAPs logo change was the customers and critics jumped online to pan it. Turns out it wasn’t the old logo that was hurting sales. In fact, people liked and were attached to the old logo, and turned off by the attempt to modernize the timeless, classic existing logo.
For Starbucks, the logo change is meant as a way to not only update the recognized siren logo, but actually give the company the ability to expand beyond just coffee. By updating the existing logo and taking out the text, the company is making the logo more versatile. And although the new Starbucks logo has its own critics, there isn’t nearly the uproar as there was for GAP. I think the reason why, is that in this case it’s a logo change that makes more sense. The old logo isn’t completely gone (it’s a revamp). And there’s a real logical reason for the change.
So what is the lesson for us small businesses who do not have huge marketing staffs and budgets to figure out when to change our logos? One, make sure it’s a really good reason. Two, make sure that your clients aren’t super attached to the existing logo. You don’t want to alienate current customers. And three, don’t completely scrap the old logo if you do decide to change. By keeping elements of the old logo, you can help minimize upsetting current customers.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/companies/gap_logo/index.htm
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10964054/starbucks-new-logo-sleek-or-bleak.html
I was recently driving from Howell, MI to Wheaton, IL and heard what has to be one of the worst radio ads I’ve heard in a while (and there are some bad radio ads out there). The ad was for a job board, where companies could post their openings – in theory to get quality applicants. The problem with the ad was that it was trying to be funny by using this annoying ditsy woman speaking in “likes” and “uhs” as the main speaker. I’m sure someone thought it would be memorable or funny, but all it made me think was ditsy. As a business person (who will hopefully one day be big enough to need to hire), I don’t associate ditsy with quality job applicants.
The moral? Be careful with humor in your advertising. Even if you (or even someone else seeing the advertising) thinks it’s funny, does it make an association you don’t necessarily want to make.
What are some of the humorous, yet really ineffective ads you’ve seen or heard?
What do you do? What do you sell? Seems like an easy question, but really it’s more complicated than it would seem. If you sell widgets, you might say, “I sell widgets”. But that’s not really what you are providing.
One of the sections of my “Down and Dirty Marketing Plan” involves spelling out what good or service you provide your customers. And when it comes to answering this question, you need to dig a little deeper. You have to know not only what literal good or service you provide, you need to know what your customers actually get. Do your customers get a widget, or do they get what the widget does?
Once you can frame what you do in terms of what your clients actually get, it becomes a lot easier to market yourself. Once you know what your clients get from you, you can better speak to the benefits of your product or service, rather than the features. Because when you’re marketing, discussing benefits always has a better impact on your potential clients than features. Example… which would you be more interested in… a widget with 3 splurgity gurgs and 200 whatchamacallits, or a widget that makes it easier to clean your bathroom?
So what do you do?
There’s a billboard I regularly drive by that is virtually unreadable. There are a few reasons, including the fact that there is too much text for a billboard you’re passing at… well let’s just say a bit over 70. But beyond that, an even larger problem is that you literally can’t see some of the text. The reason – the color. It’s got a tanish background, with a bunch of pale yellow or cream text on it. Were this a print piece, you might be able to work at it and read it, but in this large-scale, it’s not realistically doable. And in any case, who wants to have to work to read your message?
The moral… pay attention to the color of your text in relation to the background. If you’re using a light color for your text, make sure there’s enough contrast between it and your background. If there’s not, change the color. Or add an effect such as drop shadow (in moderation) or an outline. The same applies to dark text. If your text is dark, don’t put it on a dark background without some sort of highlight or outline.
While most of the ads or print pieces you put out won’t have the ability to cause car accidents as speeding motorists squint to try to decipher your text, you still don’t want to make it any harder for your potential customers to read your message.
What are some problems you’ve seen with billboards or other materials making them hard to read?
There’s a lot of marketing jargon out there, and most of it is really pretty meaningless. The exception to this is the SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis involves writing down your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And it’s a vital part of your marketing and business plan – one that is often overlooked and underutilized.
Why write out your SWOT? I would argue that the SWOT analysis is the most important component of your marketing plan. It gives a down a dirty version of the strengths you can build your marketing around. It provides the weaknesses you can either try to fix or do your marketing in such a way as to minimize their influence on customers. The opportunities show you who or where to focus your marketing on and the threats let you know which marketing path to take to minimize them.
If you don’t have time to write out a full marketing plan… at least take the time to write out your SWOT.
Do you have a SWOT analysis?
“I want my company to succeed” is not a goal or objective. It’s a vague hope that you can never really quantify or know if you’ve achieved it. When you are putting a marketing plan together, you need to identify real, quantifiable objectives.
Not measurable… “I want more clients”… Better, “I want 3 more clients per month”
Not measurable… “I want to make more money”… Better, “I want to bring in $20,000 more revenue next year”
Why is this important? In order to know if your marketing efforts are actually succeeding, you need to have a real goal you’re aiming at. You need a target. Additionally, having a real quantifiable objective focuses your efforts. Rather than floundering trying to figure out how to “get more clients”, you can figure out the steps you need to take to get 3 more clients per month.
What are your objectives? Are they quantifiable?
