As a marketing professional, I get a kick out of the cavalcade of corporate holiday cards that arrive in the mail each year.

For most companies, this is the only time of the year that they send their clients anything besides a product or an invoice. And for many of them, it pops up on the radar around November.

I can almost hear the internal conversations:
- let’s be religious…
- let’s be secular…
- let’s be funny…
and of course…
- let’s include a team photo

All of these are great topics to discuss, but there are two major problems with this scenario:
- it’s a month away
- they are discussing a ‘one-off’ marketing piece

Your clients are the lifeblood of your business, and even the very best Holiday card in the whole-wide-world can’t do it all. “Dear client, your business means a lot to us…and here is a bunch of other stuff you should buy…”

If you think you might fall into this category, here’s a suggestion; before the new year, make a resolution to create a marketing plan.

• Who were your best clients this year? How can I get more like them?
• How did you get their business? How do I repeat this?
• Consider industry events and seasonality when you plot the frequency and timing of your messaging.
• Make a budget.

It doesn’t have to be perfect (because it will most-likely change), but it does need to help you consistently deliver your message throughout the year.

Think about how you use email and networking. Write articles in industry publications, speak at events, try new tactics…but most importantly have a plan!

Then, next November…instead of panicking about a Holiday card, you’ll be improving your plan for 2011.

Update 6/11/2009: The video from KSDK appears at the bottom of this post

Dan was featured on “Today in St. Louis” on KSDK, St. Louis’ NBC Affiliate. Here are tips Dan shared for smart marketing in a bad economy:

1. Don’t stop marketing! Invest in marketing and grow market share.
   Most businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and the marketing budget is an easy short term target; don’t do it!  Invest wisely for the long term.
   1. Chances are your competitors are cutting their budgets, so it will be easier to stand out from the crowd.
   2. If print, TV and radio are your usual channels, this media has never been cheaper and today you can get greater reach with the same budget. Utilize this to again stand out from the crowd.
2. Know your customers. Listen to them and speak directly to them.Most large brands have a ‘mass media mindset’ and the giant budgets that go with it. This is great if you’re a big brand, but most likely you aren’t and you don’t have the budget to reach everyone, so you will need to focus on targeted marketing.If you looked around a room of 100 people chances are there are 2 or 3 qualified prospects that you need to reach. It would be much cheaper to talk to those 2 or 3 people directly than blast a general message to everyone and hope it finds the few people who care. Get to know who these potential clients are and deliver a message that is relevant to them.
3. It’s all about word of mouth. Especially in St. Louis.It seems everyone in St. Louis is connected by 1 or 2 degrees of separation. Word of mouth is the most authentic and affordable way for a person to learn about your business, but you need to make it easy for people to tell your story. I always use the line: ‘You haven’t told your story until someone else can tell it’.  To do this you need to learn to make your story unique, memorable and specific.It also helps to tell your story in several different ways – speak at events, write on a blog and use other social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc) as ways to share stories with others.  For example, I was at newly re-opened Chuy’s restaurant and posted on Facebook: “I’m sitting on the patio at Chuy’s enjoying fajitas and a margarita”. Within a half hour there was 10 unsolicited comments. This is a great example of word of mouth.
4. Everyone is online – but are they doing it right? Online marketing doesn’t just mean just having a website anymore, it means using it right – using search engine optimization, pay-per-click, blogs, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. These can be inexpensive, but they can also be time consuming and confusing.Business owners think they have to do it all at the same time, we like to tell our clients it’s better to do one thing right than do them all wrong.  You should focus, pick a tactic / strategy, master it and then move on to the next tactic.
5. This thing called guerrilla marketing Guerrilla marketing is the use of unconventional and unexpected tactics. To do them, you have to think differently. Take it to the street, right where your buyers will be. For example, our client ANY LAB TEST NOW does STD testing, they hire attractive women to go into night clubs handing out risque messages, promoting their STD testing services. And in this case they are reaching their buyers with a memorable (and inexpensive) message.
6. Have a plan
   Don’t go blindly into marketing. The typical business owner’s next tactic is often dictated by the last sales person that walk in their door.  We all know plans change, but going through the discipline of creating one makes it more likely to be followed.When you create a plan, create it with the thought the plan itself is a marketing tactic (this will help you actually finish it) and if you need a loan or are trying to raise money, a marketing plan will help show the decision makers how the money will be spent.

As I write this, the stock price of New York Times is trading below the cost of a weekly subscription. They’re losing money like it’s their job.

It’s no surprise that newspapers are dying, they report on it themselves fairly regularly. But…I’m really confused why they’re throwing gas on their own fire? Wherever I turn (actually, it’s usually when I turn to page 3) publishers are teasing me with story headlines, and then telling me to ‘read this story online…’.

Um. I’m holding the paper (paying for it, even). I don’t WANT to read your publication online.

I get it. It’s cheaper to publish some of the content online, plus the (hypothetical) ad revenue from the limitless pixels to pawn off might make web-only content alluring….but they’re wrong.

And they’re alienating their customers.

I like to read the newspaper…you know…the actual newspaper. Sure, I read news snippets and short articles online, but to really ‘read’ a story, I prefer the printed page. Heck, if there’s a long article online, I print it out to read (yes, I know that’s really stupid, and yes, I do recycle).

I’ve even proven to publishers that I’m willing to pay for the privilege of the printed word; we get 2 1/3 newspapers delivered weekly (I’m being charitable and counting St. Louis Post Dispatch as a third), and stacks of magazines.

Why then, do they force me online to read their content? I can barely tolerate the new format of the new Rolling Stone (a much, much smaller “more traditional” format rolled out Oct 30 of last year), but I like it a helluva lot better than reading online.

I guess I’ll have to learn to read online (like you). Or buy a better printer…

Great post from John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing about why you should start with the basics before you jump on the Twitter and other social media bandwagon.

Also a great summation by Ike:

This reminds me of an earlier post of mine about why you don’t need a blog – If you don’t have anything (or the right things) to say, don’t say it.
–
Quick Spoke update – We’re busy! Sorry for the lack of posts the last few weeks.  Look for exciting news about new clients and our Sprockets program soon.  Also, you may have seen our building on the cover of the St. Louis Business Journal recently, but don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere (and we didn’t and don’t own the building).

Cheers,
Brian

In a creative business like marketing, most projects you start are designed – pun fully intended – to end up with a creative outcome.  That creative outcome could be written (tag or copy lines, radio spot, etc), or visual, but it’s creative nonetheless. However, there are times when creative firms deliver a document, lacking in all creativity, the “brand position” or brand definition document. We just call it bull****.

Branding Background

Have you ever sat through exhaustive brand discovery meetings and listed adjective after adjective that describes you or your client’s business?  Me too and I’ve been on both sides of the aisle.

In a re-branding (or sometimes even in an agency change, or new campaign) those meetings are a necessary evil.  Business owners don’t spend their days focusing on what their brand is and how to describe it. They spend their days living it.

As marketers we find ways to get business owners to articulate their business and brand.  Often through goofy exercises: “If you were an animal…” “If you had to invite three people to a party…”

These exercises are tolerable because of cool stuff that comes as a result, the new logo and brand collateral, the new shiny website, or the big document detailing the brand…

Wait a minute, scratch that, that isn’t right.  The document detailing the brand?  That isn’t cool stuff!.  It’s boring!  That’s what comes in between me and a new brand identity, in between me and a new website, in between me and a new ad campaign.   Not only is it not cool, it doesn’t work.

How do we know it doesn’t work?
We’ve been part of it in past lives, but worse, we tried it with a client of ours.  We came in… learned about their business… got them pumped up… came back with a document… they loved it.  Weeks went by and we came back with cool names, but not cool enough… weeks went by and we tried again, and then again.  Snooze.  It took too long.  They lost interest.

I like to do discovery before I attempt to solve a problem, it’s in my nature, I’m a 9 on Kolbe Fact Finder.  I work best when I have all the facts, because I organize and present those facts, then solve a problem.  So naturally I’d be the type of person who wants to document a client’s brand and make sure it’s right before we go on.  Who wouldn’t?  So then what is the problem delivering a document that outlines the brand as a deliverable? Why doesn’t this work?

Two reasons: momentum and expectations.

Why Fluff Failed (and will fail nearly every time)

When most people deliver a brand defining document, it usually not very creative.  It is long and detailed and includes adjectives, elevator pitches and positioning statements.  These are important, but after everyone is excited to start a project with a newly hired marketing agency, then goes through exercises, the last thing they want to do is read a big document.  They want to see something visual.  They want action. That’s why they hired you, because you produce creative, not because you produce documents.

When you send a brand position document to a client, even if it is dead on, it’s dead on arrival and it kills all momentum you gained during the interviews and brand meetings.  Your document needs more, more story-telling, more visuals, more excitement.

Don’t just regurgitate facts, any hack can do that, give them more.  Give them strategy, give them the pitch (with tag lines) for a new campaign, the sketched designs of a new logo and show the creative thought that went into it.  Don’t give them a word document with their logo and your logo on it.

What we decided
We decided to promise ourselves – and our clients – not to kill another great campaign with boring fluff when we know our clients want cool stuff. As an agency, Spoke promises to not deliver a document devoid of creativity (unless it’s an invoice).  We’ve learned from our and our industries’ mistakes.  Every pitch we make, every client we take, even if we deliver brand facts, we deliver them with creative thoughts and ideas for future campaigns.

Our clients deserve this and even more, they want it.