Holiday Messages Make an Impact

Christmas is a magical time for children. A recent promotion I received reminded me about the innocent wonder of children as they wait for the big day. The e-mail promotion offered an official, personalized letter from Santa for a mere $19.99. Santa’s letter would also include a list of who was on Santa’s “nice” list, reassuring the youngsters that there would be presents under the tree.  I’m sure that even though the letter was unexpected, the message made an impact.

Thinking about Santa’s letter made me wonder how may B2B customers look forward to your messages during the holidays.  B2B marketers often reduce their efforts during the holidays because they believe executives and purchasing decision makers will be distracted by family celebrations, end-of-the year planning and similar events.  Some recent research by Eloqua casts a new light on that thinking, at least as far as e-mail marketing is concerned.

As you would expect, B2C e-mail marketing jumped during November and December, while the number of messages declined for B2B.  What’s surprising, though, is that the B2B messages are more effective during the holidays. The number of page views for those messages takes a 13% jump in November and December when compared to the rest of the year.  It’s a good reminder that a properly focused message can have a great deal of impact when you’d least expect it.

3 Tips for Branding Success

Branding is a very hot topic.  It seems like everywhere you turn, marketing and communications media are talking about the importance of branding for companies and individuals.  Yet with all the emphasis on ways to build a strong, successful brand it’s amazing how a few common mistakes can quickly destroy your brand.  I was reminded of this fact while reading a recent article on Ragan.com, “25 ways to screw up your brand,” by Shanna Mallon.

Reading the many blunders she describes, several common threads emerge. A slip-up in any of these key areas can destroy your brand as easy as 1, 2, 3.  Here are the three major elements of branding success.

Be Distinctive

Branding is the way you define your company or product.  Creating the proper perception is critical, and is affected by everything from the brand’s name to what market segments you pursue.

Be Consistent

Once you’ve identified what makes your brand distinctive, communicate that message consistently to internal and external audiences.

Be Responsive

The rapid growth of social media has made it more important than ever to be responsive to customers.

For more details on how these elements affect your brand, see the Viewpoint article “Brand Destruction is Simple as 1, 2, 3.”

Does Your Brand Really Matter?

Many B2B companies or service businesses struggle with the concept of their brand.  Some organizations think of their brand only at the most rudimentary level – as a combination of logo, colors, design and taglines that they might use on their website or printed materials.  Others may have a deeper understanding that branding extends to the company’s personality, price, service and customer interactions. 

But however they consider their brand, many B2B organizations think that branding is something that’s only important for well-known, nationally advertised consumer products.  Granted, major consumer products companies can invest a lot of marketing dollars to reinforce their image.  But even without that advantage, companies should pay careful attention to their brand.

That’s because in one sense, perhaps the most important sense, a brand is a promise.  As Lois Geller explains in “Why A Brand Matters,” (Forbes.com, May 23) when you think of some top brands, such as McDonald’s Coca Cola or Apple, you immediately know what they promise.  The combination of a brand’s attributes creates an impression in the customer’s mind.  For instance, Geller says, when think of Volvo, your first thoughts are probably going to be something like “well built, comfortable, Swedish” and, most of all, “safety.”

The good news is that you don’t have to be a major company to create your own particular brand attributes.  In some respects, reinforcing a set of brand attributes for a B2B company is easier because you have a much more focused customer base. The other advantage is that you probably have more direct contact with customers, making the role of employees in reinforcing the brand vitally important. 

Employees should know what your brand stands for and what their roles are in supporting the brand. This is particularly true as social media and other communications methods have given customers methods to share their experiences – both good and bad – at light speed.  A failure to live up to a brand promise, whether through a poor sales experience or a faulty product, can quickly snowball into a full-fledged crisis of confidence among customers.  Studies by the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs show that a dissatisfied customer may tell as many as 11 people about his or her experience,
and each of them will tell others.

If your company needs to work on defining your brand’s promise, here are some questions we use with NMMC clients:
• What is your company's mission?
• What are the benefits and features of your products or services?
• What do your customers and prospects already think of your company?
• What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Answering these questions about your brand will pay big dividends.

Social Media No Longer a Novelty for Business

It’s hard to ignore the impact of social media on the way we communicate.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other platforms have provided tools for almost instantaneous communication and feedback about products and services.
Initially, social media activity was associated with college students connecting via Facebook™ and celebrities Tweeting about their latest adventures … or misadventures in many cases.  Now, however, use of social media is increasingly important for business.

If you have any doubt that social media has a place in business, here are some statistics that should change your mind. SocialMediaB2B.com notes 60 percent of B2B marketers already have implemented a social media strategy, or will in the next year; 53 percent of B2B companies actively participating on Twitter; and 47 percent of them active on LinkedIn. If these statistics alone aren’t enough to convince you about the power of social media, here’s a statistic that will – Dell sold $3 million worth of computers on Twitter!
This information is part of an article I recently wrote for OfficeLine, a bi-monthly publication produced by United Stationers, a long-time NM Marketing Communications client.

In addition to citing the growth of social media, the article provided a number of tips from experts on how to begin implementing a successful social media strategy.  Among the tips are blogging regularly to increase traffic to your website and finding ways to create meaningful engagement with your customers.

These are just some of the ways to incorporate social media into your B2B marketing.  If you’d like to discuss ways to begin or enhance your social media strategy, give me a call - 847.657.6011.

Effectively Handling E-Mail Bullies

I recently received a rather rude e-mail. It made me wonder what makes certain supposedly professional business people turn into contemptuous, mean-spirited bullies when they get on their e-mail account?

Part of the problem may stem from the ease of writing and sending an e-mail. It’s simple to react quickly, especially when emotions or a challenging or complicated situation come into play. If you’ve ever been scatter-bombed with hostile, demeaning, or demanding e-mails from a boss, a client, or a business associate, you know what it’s like, but what you probably don’t know is how to respond.

Here are some ways to handle rude, accusatory and mean-spirited e-mail:

• Report threats or vulgar language to the ISP. These violate the Terms of Service of ISPs. Send the e-mail to abuse@ the ISP.

• If you receive a rude, over-the-top e-mail or one that makes personal attacks on you, wait before responding. Wait until the next day or two. Think hard about whether you really need to respond.

• If the e-mailer is misinformed, you can try to correct the misinformation. Don’t reply in kind. Do your best to take the high road and be courteous.

• Reach for the phone. In many cases, the best option may simply be a phone call. This is especially true when dealing with clients or colleagues, since it will probably eliminate misinterpretations and help you get to the heart of any issue.

And finally, when writing your own e-mails a good common sense rule to follow is the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

Is Funville the Right Place for Disaster Info?

The January 13 accident of the 4200-passenger Costa Concordia cruise ship is worldwide news and a public relations black eye for the ship’s owner, Carnival Corporation.

As this is being written a few days after the incident, the grounding and capsizing of the giant vessel seems to be a case of severe human error. According to many news reports, Captain Francesco Schettino deliberately steered off course so that he could show off the ship to residents on the island of Giglio, Italy, home of the giant ship’s headwaiter. After ripping a hole in hull of the $450-million vessel, the captain fled the ship before many of the passengers.

While it’s hard to anticipate a ship’s captain going rogue, it seems that an appropriate crisis communications plan should be in place, regardless of the cause of the crisis.
Of course, Carnival has a communications plan in place, using time-tested crisis communications procedures for getting out as much info as quickly as possible. However, there seems to be a significant disconnect between the messages and the way many of them are delivered.

Despite having numerous promotional messages, banner flashes and other catchy elements on the homepage of their website, there is nothing directing readers to more information about the Costa Concordia.

If you search, you can finally find the information on the blog page, called Funville. I’m sure the irony is apparent to many website users.

Facebook, Twitter and a company’s website are all valuable means of quickly communicating with customers. However, cruise lines are in the business of selling fun. The bright colors and promotional messages that dominate the Carnival Cruise website certainly send mixed signals when dealing with a serious topic such as passenger safety.

A more appropriate crisis communications response might be to set up a temporary landing page for information about the incident. That would be a service to travelers, families and other interested parties. It would make the information easier for them to find while separating the promotional content for customers who weren’t concerned about the Costa Concordia.

That would be a better plan, because I think we’d all agree this doesn’t look like Funville.