Money in Motion

"A Federal Reserve Board survey earlier this year showed banks continued to tighten standards and terms on all major types of loans to businesses and consumers. A total of 30 percent of banks tightened standards on commercial and industrial loans to large companies, while 35 percent tightened standards on loans to small businesses."

This is from a recent Dayton Business Journal article about what local credit unions are doing to capitalize on an opportunity.

What are YOU doing to make sure you attract the most commercial and retail business in this environment of Money in Motion?

Click here for the rest of the story.

Thinking...

OK...I am in Minneapolis for a big meeting tomorrow and I am thinking.  Lots of times that is dangerous....give me too much time and I am thinking up new presentations, articles, projects....all really cool stuff!

So tonight I am thinking about 2010.  What will we do that leads us ahead?  What new projects will we undertake?  What exciting new clients will we have the benefit to work with?  What will we reflect back on next December that makes us smile?

The good news is that the answers to each of these are ahead of us...and we can make each of them happen and shape them as we like...with a little forethought and planning.

So that is my post tonight...spend time thinking about the possibilities and the potential and then put a plan in place to make them happen.  Think big!!

I have a favorite saying that I will share with you...."Expect the stars and accept the moon."  The morale of the saying-- think bigger and accept big.  You CAN make it happen!

Here's to charting your 2010...and having success and fun along the way!

Cheers!

Bruce

Branding vs. Direct Response: Which is right for you?

As I’ve written before … several of my real-life experiences influence my blog posts.

A colleague of mine asked how could he leverage a popular email list and drive them (consumers) to a retail store to purchase his product.

My explanation and recommendation led me to explain the difference between branding and direct response marketing.

You see, driving a consumer to a store to “take action” is more "branding". Branding is a form of marketing where a consumer sees or hears your message (albeit email, TV, print ad, radio) and then takes action. The action isn’t immediate (i.e. “direct response”) it typically involves going to a retailer to make the sale (or “convert”).

The marketer has to hope that once the consumer sees/hears the message they remember it. (Advertising studies show that the average consumer needs to see a message 7-8 times before it becomes familiar to them). Then, hope that consumer has enough loyalty or name recognition from that product that when they do go to the retailer to purchase, they don’t get distracted by other competitive products.

Branding is hard to measure. Usually, you tie into the timing of your campaign in to retail sales for the specific product during that same time period and make assumptions.

As opposed to “direct response marketing”, where there is generally one strong message with a compelling offer. One platform (i.e. an email, a newsletter ad, a direct letter, an online ad). You see, it's more controlled … you’re directing the consumer where to go next (i.e. “Click here now”) and your message will be the only one in front of them at that time. In addition, it's quantifiable … easier to measure … looking at metrics like open rates, click through rates, response rates, conversion rates. You can directly calculate your ROI (return on investment), which helps the marketer offset any advertising costs from the profits. Plus, typically direct response marketing overall is more cost effective than branding.

Branding efforts take time, as you have to develop your brand loyalty with the list first to help overall conversions (think of loyal brand followers of well-known products like Nike, GE, BMW, McDonald’s, etc ... these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on brand development). Branding is also not as accurate to measure.

For businesses – especially during the current economic environment – unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, the most reliable marketing method in my opinion is direct response marketing.

Goal Quotes

"The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them."

~Denis Watley

And then there's Yogi

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there."

~Yogi Berra

Before you jump into social media, ask yourself: Do you know who speaks on your behalf?

By Debbie Laskey

The topic on everyone’s mind these days is social media this and social media that. But, even before you get started and promote your company in this new online environment and create customized conversations with your customers and other stakeholders, you must consider who can “speak” on behalf of your company.

Do you know who is responsible for entering your company’s details on LinkedIn? Think about it. At this very moment, a member of your IT department is spending time that should be allocated toward infrastructure improvements on the LinkedIn site adding company information – information that might be confidential, or at the very least, not appropriate for worldwide distribution. Do you want the number of employees stated as well as which employees were terminated and which were promoted? Do you want your website included? What is the one sentence that best states your competitive positioning? Do you want all senior management names and titles listed? Should the CEO, COO, CMO, VP of Human Resources, or the marketing department be involved in making these decisions? And what’s more, how does a member of the IT department know the answers to these marketing questions?

Those were just some basic questions for LinkedIn – there are more in-depth questions that apply to the other social media marketing sites. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and several other sites provide a unique opportunity to build relationships with your customers – previously, one message was sufficient to promote a product or service. Today, customers are more brand-savvy and eager to learn how a particular product or service is a close fit with his/her preferences and needs. Welcome to marketing for the 21st century! Sorry if any offense is taken by the IT folks, but the marketing teams are the ones to lead the defense and implement social media strategies. However, the tech people do have a place in the social media realm. When employees start accessing Twitter, Facebook, etc., from their office computers, they open up company networks to viruses and other malware. Therefore, companies need to create and carefully monitor employee usage of these sites – or institute a policy to not access them during company time.

Marketing teams should be studying the nuances of each social media site (for example, Twitter has a 140-character limit for all messages, Facebook creates specialized content for “fans,” and LinkedIn provides people to connect through specialized “groups”) and then create unique campaigns to take advantage of the opportunities to reach existing and new customers.

In order to successfully utilize the new social media tool as part of a complete, and many are now calling it a “traditional” marketing strategy, senior leadership should involve all levels of a company. But either one person or a department needs to be in charge of creating and executing the company’s policy. Otherwise, your company’s genuine message will get shut out by all the clutter.

Debbie Laskey is a Marketing & Website Consultant in Los Angeles, California.

Welcome to Everything Technology Marketing

Welcome to the new blog "Everything Technology Marketing". As the title suggests, this blog will be about topics that are relevant and interesting to marketing professionals in high-tech industries - from software and IT to clean energy technologies. Topics will include go-to-market planning, branding, lead generation, campaign management, competitive analysis, marketing tactics, social media and more.

Sure there are already tons of blogs on marketing but few with a B2B technology focus. As with all my blogs, this is not a one-way blog where I write about my thoughts on tech marketing. Instead, this blog will feature contributions from a variety of authors and sources to generate a good mix of interesting content, and I hope this will stimulate interesting debates. Enjoy the blog!

Is the stock market rally real?

Recently, market analysts have talked about the amount of money parked in financial institutions that will move back into the stock market once investors are convinced that the current stock market rally is for real. A threshold that analysts feel is significant in determining if the rally is real is when the market goes back over 10,000. That could happen any day now! Now is the time to develop marketing strategies aimed at retaining a significant percentage of those new deposits that your institution acquired as investors got out of the market.