I suspect that most of you have heard the story about the drunk man and the lamp post. One version goes like this:
An inebriated man loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a street light. A policeman comes over as asks what he's doing. "I'm looking for my keys," the man says. He points to a spot about twenty feet away and says, "I lost them over there." The policeman looks puzzled and asks, "Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?" "Because the light is so much better over here," the man replies.
Unfortunately, I believe that some marketers may be falling into a mindset that is similar to the one illustrated in this story.
For the past several years, marketers have faced growing pressure to prove the value of their activities and programs. As a result, they are placing greater emphasis on measuring the performance of marketing channels, tactics, and programs. Some marketers are allocating budgets and basing investment decisions on marketing performance measures.
Overall, this is a positive development. It's hard to argue that marketers shouldn't track and measure the performance of their campaigns and programs, and use performance measures to guide marketing investments. Common sense says that this approach should lead to better marketing decisions.
The problem arises when measurability becomes the primary criterion for using a particular marketing channel or tactic. For example, the ability to measure the results produced by many digital marketing tactics, such as e-mail and paid search, is frequently cited as a major reason to use these tactics. In an environment where proving the value of your work can mean the difference between keeping or losing your job, marketing methods that are easily measured can appear to be the safe choice.
The problem is, the measurability of a tactic or program is not directly proportional to its effectiveness or impact. Some marketing activities that are highly effective and valuable are also difficult to measure. In fact, it can be nearly impossible to calculate an accurate ROI for some of these activities. This doesn't mean, however, that such activities should be excluded from your marketing mix. If you take that approach, your marketing efforts may not be as effective as they could be.
The primary responsibility of a marketer is to create and execute marketing programs that maximize profitable revenue growth for his/her company, not merely to execute programs that can be easily measured. One way to keep this idea in mind is to remember a saying usually attributed to Albert Einstein: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Friday, February 8, 2013
M3F Registration is now open
Registrations for the M3F are rolling in and now is the time to register for the forum! If you register before February 28, you will save $100 off the first registrant. You get a two day learning forum that will give you an impressive working plan when you head back to the office Monday morning.
April 18 & 19, 2013
Radisson Hotel Cincinnati Riverfront
Cincinnati, Ohio
This action packed two day forum will cover topics that are going to help you and your financial institution differentiate itself from everyone else in your market. From dynamic speakers to working round table discussions, this is definitely an event you are NOT going to want to miss.
You can click here for a closer look at the two day agenda or click here to register and save $100!
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Tell the World Your Goals to Hit Them.
Any runner will tell you, "If you want to stay motivated to train for a big race ... tell everyone your goal."
What's true in running is typically true in life. And what's true in life is almost ALWAYS true in business.
We weren't happy with simply posting an internal goal and measuring, we wanted the world to know. So, on January 1, we bought ads telling the area that we were lending ... In a time when big banks were perceived as reining-in their approvals, we were lending ... In a time when the economy was beginning to recover and larger purchases were once again an option, we were lending.
Through the entire year, we carried the $100,000,000 theme. If we talked about an auto loan, we mentioned our goal. When we touted our mortgage expertise, we mentioned our goal. Whether we talked to new members or old, we mentioned our goal. One thing was bluntly clear to the community, our members and staff ... come what may, we were going to lend $100,000,000 before the end of December 31!
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| Tell the world when you set it, tell the world when you hit it! |
And this year, through refined targeting and improved processes, we expect to do even better!
How did they accomplish what so many institutions are vying for? Consistency!
- A consistent and clear message to staff
- A consistent message all year to the community and members
As marketers, we too often feel a need to change up creative with every single media buy. This case proves just the opposite. Pick a message and run with it! Month-after-month; day-after-day.
Tell the world your goal this year and watch it happen!
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With more than 177,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog. If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing. We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.
MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Creating Community Momentum
I am sure you have heard of synergy and the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, right? Its when the results outpace the inputs...and that is what community banking is all about!
To me...that is the SINGLE GREATEST impact of a community bank and credit union.
While many people call it creating community momentum...I call it "THE TURN." In technical economic terms, its called Monetary Velocity.
Let me explain...
Three customers...with only $50 between them, are both customers of a Community Bank or a Credit Union.
- Customer "A" deposits $50 into the bank
- Customer "B" borrows that same $50 from the bank
- Customer "B" purchases $50 worth of good and services in the local community
- Customer "C" a local business, who sold the goods and brings in a $50 deposit
We effectively turned $50 into $150 of economic power for the local economy and local community. That ladies and gentlemen is the power of the turn!! We created velocity and true impact!
Now...imagine that same $50 is actually $20,000,000. The Turn is a powerful and compelling force of economics. That $20,000,000 could become $60,000,000 worth of economic impact. THAT is a compelling story to share with customers, tell the local media and important information to educate staff. The Turn is the primary advantage a community bank and credit union has in local communities and one that we rarely, if ever, calculate and promote!
Here are three steps to increase your TURN:
- Generate more deposit dollars
- Acquire more small businesses customers
- Generate retail and small business loans with your local customers
Simply another way of improving the local economy and helping ourselves to grow by helping our local community!
Cheers
Bruce
With over 175,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog. If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.
We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.
MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.
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MarketMatch is a marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community. We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the right story that will generate the greatest MOMENTUM and prove the best RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
The Subscription Equation (and other tactics)
Probably the most frequent question I am asked is if I believe subscriptions are dying. And if you would have asked me five years ago, I would have answered in the affirmative. I, like many others, believed the subscription model was outdated--a worn out old chestnut that needed to be replaced. I even had data to prove it. From our peak in 2002 until 2007, Arena Stage had lost 40% of its subscriber base! I was convinced we had held onto a failing business model for far too long, until I started testing alternatives.
In 2008, working with Shugoll Research, we developed several focus groups with specific target audiences, including current subscribers, lapsed subscribers, multi-show buyers and single ticket buyers. During these focus groups, we presented several alternatives to the traditional subscription, many of which had been recently introduced by other theaters, and to my complete horror, none of them tested anywhere near as well as the traditional subscription. Even if I wanted to abandon our subscription model, I didn’t have any attractive alternative. Then the realization came – if our customers still want subscriptions and our subscriber base is rapidly declining, then the way we sell, market and promote subscriptions if fundamentally flawed (it should be noted that we also tested satisfaction with artistic product and found that was not a challenge for us). In short, we were killing subscriptions.
As our 2012-13 season comes to a close, I’m happy to report that we have experienced significant increases in our subscription base for four consecutive seasons, almost achieving a record high number of subscribers and since 2008, have increased our subscription revenue by 115%. Even more surprising, the turnaround started to occur in 2009 at the height of the global economic crisis and a full 1.5 years before the opening of the new Mead Center for American Theater.
If I were to articulate the formula of our success, it would look like this:
great artistic product + best seats + best price + outstanding customer service = more subscribers
Artistic Product: Whether we like to admit it or not, the most important of the 4Ps of marketing is product. If your customers are not satisfied with the artistic product of your organization, you will not see an increase in your subscription base.
Best Seats at the Best Price: Being able to get the best seats in the house at the best possible price is a powerful value proposition for subscribers. If you have a robust subscription base, often times the only way to get the best seats in the house is by subscribing. Make sure to message that in your sales materials. Also, be very careful of undercutting your subscriber average ticket price, particularly at the last minute. A substantial last minute discount may provide a lift to an under-performing production, but the long term side effects could be much worse.
Outstanding Customer Service: Let’s be honest – customer service usually sucks these days. So it’s the perfect opportunity to shine. Steward your subscribers like development does their donors. Be proactive in finding ways to provide exceptional service. For example, if inclement weather is coming, instead of waiting for subscribers to call you to exchange their tickets, why not send them an email alerting them of the inclement weather and offering to make the exchanges on their behalf? And if you don't already, find ways to thank your subscribers throughout the year. For example, there is a theater on the west coast that partners with a winery each year to give their subscribers a free bottle of wine when they renew their subscriptions as a way of thanking them for their support.
Beyond the formula, below are a couple of significant strategic changes we made that made all the difference:
Lengthen the Subscription Campaign: Prior to 2009, Arena Stage would announce its season in March and would continue to sell subscriptions until October, providing for an 8 month subscription campaign. These days we begin our subscription campaigns in January and sell through March of the following year, thereby lengthening our campaigns to 15 months. Avoid delaying the start of your subscription campaign at all costs. Each week you lose will be very costly, and you cannot replace lost weeks.
Don’t Forget About Upgrades: When I was taught how to market subscriptions, I learned to break a subscription campaign into two parts: renewals and acquisitions. Today, we have an additional focus on upgrades. Our goal is no longer just to renew our subscribers; we want to upgrade them as well year after year. Primarily we focus on getting subscribers to increase the number of plays on their subscription, but you can also have them upgrade into better seats, add parking to their orders, or increase their annual fund donation. This year we are even experimenting with add-ons for café meals to great success. In FY13, almost ten percent of our subscription base upgraded into larger packages, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider that amounts to roughly $175,000 in additional revenue. On top of which, full season subscribers have a renewal rate 25 percent points higher and give donations that are 4 times larger than partial season subscribers.
Speak to Subscribers Like You Know Who They Are РBecause You Do: Gone are the days when you can create one beautiful season brochure that speaks to all of your patrons, and then mail it over and over again until you beat people into submission. Subscription renewals and solicitations should be highly targeted. You know what types of productions each patron likes and on what nights they like to attend. If you sell caf̩ meals and parking through your box office, you even know if they like to park and what they like to eat. You know if they are a full price or discount buyer, how many shows they attend a year on average, and how many people are usually in their party. So why are we still wedded to one size fits all solicitations? Our job is to get the right offer in front of the right prospect at the right time. And we have all the data we need to accomplish that.
Develop a Sales Pipeline. Even up to a few years ago, we would mail subscription solicitations to traded lists. Then we started to look closely at our response and tracking reports. Guess what – we found that list trades were not working, not even close. It would have been just as effective to drop season brochures out of a helicopter over the city. And this was considered a “best practice” that every major arts organization in the city bought into. However, we were not measuring efficacy. The failure of these campaigns is easy to understand. In short, we were asking people to marry us before we went on a first date. Most of these targets had never seen a show at Arena Stage. Why would they invest hundreds of dollars when they had never stepped through our front doors? We changed tactics and concentrated our efforts on developing a sales pipeline. We would trade lists for single tickets, primarily to our most popular productions. This in turn would create an influx of new single ticket buyers. Once they had their first experience at Arena Stage, we would send them an offer to return to a second show. Once a patron had seen two or more shows, the likelihood that that would then respond to a subscription solicitation quadrupled. Don’t waste time and money mailing to poor prospects. Instead concentrate your resources on developing more multi-show buying patrons as those will be your best leads in your next subscription campaign.
Testing and Failing. The only way to succeed is to fail. The key is to succeed on a grand scale, and fail on a small one. Aggressively measure the success of every campaign, no matter how small. And test something new at least every week. Tactics will change from year to year, and you’ll need to adjust in order to maximize return on investment. As we doubled our subscription revenue over the past four years, we actually started to spend less as we grew more efficient. For example, I like to test new offers in our telesales room. Over the period of a week, we may have three or four offers in the telesales room. By the end of the week, after a thousand or so calls, we usually have a clear winner among the offers tested. That offer is then rolled out in an email solicitation, and if it responds well, then we’ll include the offer in a large direct mail campaign and then test it against the current control package to see if we achieve a better ROI.
If you are currently experiencing less than stellar results on your subscription campaign, before throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I’d encourage you to examine each of the variables in the subscription formula above, and then vary your tactics to see if you get better results. Sometimes it isn’t the model that is dying, it is how we apply the model that is responsible for our underwhelming results. At least it was in our case.
Why Marketing Content Must Both Convince and Persuade
In a blog post last November, Seth Godin described something that occurred in connection with the publication of his new book. It seems that a copyeditor changed each usage of persuade in the book to convince. Godin says he had to change all of them back.
Godin explained why he thought this was necessary: "Marketers don't convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade. Persuasion appeals to the emotions and to fear and to the imagination. Convincing requires a spreadsheet or some other rational device. It's much easier to persuade someone if they're already convinced, if they already know the facts. But it's impossible to change someone's mind merely by convincing them of your point."
Seth Godin is one of the most insightful marketing thought leaders around, but I disagree with him slightly on this point. In the B2B world, marketers must be prepared to both convince and persuade. Let's look first at the need to convince.
The Need to Convince
Survey results by IDC have revealed that, on average:
Marketers have traditionally believed that B2B buying decisions follow a rational, step-by-step process and that emotion has little effect on the process. We now know that this view is, at best, incomplete and that B2B buying decisions are far less rational that we like to think.
The reality is that emotions - particularly fear, uncertainty, and doubt - are part of every significant B2B buying decision. In The Buyersphere Project, Gord Hotchkiss wrote, "B2B buying decisions are usually driven by one emotion - fear. Specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by eliminating risk."
In an earlier post, I discussed why it's important for marketers to have content that directly and intentionally addresses fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The main point I want to make in this post is that B2B marketers must be ready to address both rational and emotional issues.
The bottom line? To succeed at B2B demand generation, you need marketing content and sales enablement tools that will both convince and persuade.
Godin explained why he thought this was necessary: "Marketers don't convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade. Persuasion appeals to the emotions and to fear and to the imagination. Convincing requires a spreadsheet or some other rational device. It's much easier to persuade someone if they're already convinced, if they already know the facts. But it's impossible to change someone's mind merely by convincing them of your point."
Seth Godin is one of the most insightful marketing thought leaders around, but I disagree with him slightly on this point. In the B2B world, marketers must be prepared to both convince and persuade. Let's look first at the need to convince.
The Need to Convince
Survey results by IDC have revealed that, on average:
- Ninety percent of companies require quantifiable proof of economic/financial benefits for most potential investments.
- Almost two-thirds of business buyers (65%) say that they do not have the knowledge or tools they need to perform business value assessments and calculations.
- More than four out of five business buyers (81%) expect prospective vendors to quantify the business value of proposed solutions.
- White papers or eBooks that describe how your solution creates value and explains how to calculate the value delivered
- Online assessment tools that enable prospects to obtain a preliminary estimate of the financial benefits your solution will provide
- ROI calculators that your sales reps can use to provide credible proof of the value your solution will deliver
Marketers have traditionally believed that B2B buying decisions follow a rational, step-by-step process and that emotion has little effect on the process. We now know that this view is, at best, incomplete and that B2B buying decisions are far less rational that we like to think.
The reality is that emotions - particularly fear, uncertainty, and doubt - are part of every significant B2B buying decision. In The Buyersphere Project, Gord Hotchkiss wrote, "B2B buying decisions are usually driven by one emotion - fear. Specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by eliminating risk."
In an earlier post, I discussed why it's important for marketers to have content that directly and intentionally addresses fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The main point I want to make in this post is that B2B marketers must be ready to address both rational and emotional issues.
The bottom line? To succeed at B2B demand generation, you need marketing content and sales enablement tools that will both convince and persuade.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
How Much is a Marketing Asset Management Solution Worth?
Pressed by senior business executives to maximize the return on marketing spend, astute marketers are aggressively seeking ways to boost the productivity of marketing operations. They now recognize that increasing the efficiency of marketing operations can be a powerful way to stretch limited marketing budgets.
In response to these demands, many marketers are turning to marketing asset management solutions to streamline and enhance the productivity of the marketing supply chain. MAM solutions can enable companies to eliminate costs, significantly reduce obsolescence waste, and expand the use of customized, more relevant marketing messages and materials. For companies with distributed marketing models, MAM solutions can also enhance the marketing efforts of sales channel partners.
Despite these powerful benefits, however, many marketing and financial executives don't have a clear picture of how valuable a marketing asset management solution would be for their company.
How Marketing Asset Management Solutions Create Value
For a business organization, the value of any product or service is ultimately based on how it affects bottom-line financial performance. The best definition of value in a B2B setting is the total monetary worth of the benefits that a company obtains by purchasing and using a product or service. Essentially, this means that a product or service can create value for a business in three basic ways. It can enable the business to reduce existing costs, avoid future costs, or increase revenues. The value of a marketing asset management solution is based on these same factors.
MAM solutions will provide two broad types of benefits for most companies. One group of benefits includes those that improve the efficiency of the marketing supply chain. These benefits create value primarily by enabling a company to reduce existing costs or avoid future costs. The second group of benefits includes those that improve the effectiveness of a company's marketing campaigns and programs. These benefits create value primarily by enabling a company to increase revenues.
To estimate the value of a marketing asset management solution for your business, you'll need to identify the benefits you'll obtain from the solution and then quantify the value of each benefit. The diagram below shows some of the marketing value chain benefits that companies typically obtain by using a marketing asset management solution.
I've just released a white paper that describes the benefits that a marketing asset management solution typically provides and explains how to measure the value of these benefits. If you'd like to obtain a copy of this resource, send an e-mail to ddodd(at)pointbalance(dot)com.
In response to these demands, many marketers are turning to marketing asset management solutions to streamline and enhance the productivity of the marketing supply chain. MAM solutions can enable companies to eliminate costs, significantly reduce obsolescence waste, and expand the use of customized, more relevant marketing messages and materials. For companies with distributed marketing models, MAM solutions can also enhance the marketing efforts of sales channel partners.
Despite these powerful benefits, however, many marketing and financial executives don't have a clear picture of how valuable a marketing asset management solution would be for their company.
How Marketing Asset Management Solutions Create Value
For a business organization, the value of any product or service is ultimately based on how it affects bottom-line financial performance. The best definition of value in a B2B setting is the total monetary worth of the benefits that a company obtains by purchasing and using a product or service. Essentially, this means that a product or service can create value for a business in three basic ways. It can enable the business to reduce existing costs, avoid future costs, or increase revenues. The value of a marketing asset management solution is based on these same factors.
MAM solutions will provide two broad types of benefits for most companies. One group of benefits includes those that improve the efficiency of the marketing supply chain. These benefits create value primarily by enabling a company to reduce existing costs or avoid future costs. The second group of benefits includes those that improve the effectiveness of a company's marketing campaigns and programs. These benefits create value primarily by enabling a company to increase revenues.
To estimate the value of a marketing asset management solution for your business, you'll need to identify the benefits you'll obtain from the solution and then quantify the value of each benefit. The diagram below shows some of the marketing value chain benefits that companies typically obtain by using a marketing asset management solution.
I've just released a white paper that describes the benefits that a marketing asset management solution typically provides and explains how to measure the value of these benefits. If you'd like to obtain a copy of this resource, send an e-mail to ddodd(at)pointbalance(dot)com.
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