C Notes Newsletter Issue 8

Chasing Your Tail?

Too many companies seek to stretch their marketing budgets by parceling out to the lowest bidder bits and pieces of their projects and campaigns. In this way, they hope to save a bit of money here in printing costs, a bit more there in design fees. The savings might initially look great on paper, but was a bargain really had? The answer is almost always no.

The time investment alone in juggling the details of vendor bids and material pricing is usually enough to offset any savings to be had from line-item pricing. Factor into that the level of quality you can expect from the lowest bidder, and the conclusion is inescapable. The perceived value in parceling out your marketing on a “project” manner is an illusion.

Instead, permit yourself to trust the knowledge, experience and resources of your marketing communications group. They have the breadth of expertise to bring you real value for your marketing dollar. While they might not always engage the least expensive printers on your behalf, you can be assured that they are engaging the best. And their ability to coordinate every aspect of your marketing endeavors—with minimum disruption for yourself and your staff—only serves to complete the real value.

Chasing down value doesn’t have to be like chasing your tail. Just let your marketers work their magic, and the chase will already be won.

One Chance To Make A Good Impression

A poor first impression in business is particularly distressing, especially when its roots can be traced to a misguided advertising or marketing campaign. It’s expensive, too. The company that has just spent their advertising dollars to create an injurious impression, must now spend a great deal more on the uphill battle to reclaim those lost opportunities. Economy alone demands a more sensible approach.

The sensible approach—indeed, the only approach—is to safeguard the first impression your company makes to identified prospects…before it’s ever made.

How is that done? By carefully evaluating all the avenues by which new prospects might come to know your company. These can include advertising, web presence, signage, and public relations initiatives. Next, place yourself in your customers’ shoes. How might they perceive these elements? What impressions are wrought? It should be obvious right away that a direct correlation exists between the quality of your marketing elements, and the type of first impression they create. Cut-rate advertising and design (or worse—overused templates from secretaries) might cost less in the short term, but might very well position your company itself as cut-rate (or mediocre).

These principles, applicable to all business scenarios, are much more acute when we are speaking of new, unexplored markets and industries. Pioneering companies have no competition to be compared with. The first impression they create can set the benchmark for the industry. While this might sound like an easier marketing environment, the opposite is actually true. Succumb to the lure of cut-rate marketing, and you are sure to be leapfrogged by the first competitor to arrive on the scene. Conversely, if you market with the goal of creating the best possible first impression, you simultaneously create an intimidating “cost of entry barrier” for your would-be challengers. They’ll now be marketing on your terms.

The inestimable value of the first impression is something that most of us understand instinctively. We know that a first impression is hard won, harder to erase, and can mean the difference between doors that are open and doors that are closed. In business, the stakes go even higher. Forge a strong first impression in your market, and the market is yours. Fail to do so, and forever follow the leader.

If Your Not Driving Traffic To Your Website, There's No Reason To Be On The Information Highway

The day is here at last…your web site is going live. Months of planning, thousands of development hours, untold resources, all have led to this point. Your content is brilliant, the technology impeccable. The hit counter is zeroed out…and that’s where it remains.

A web site whose development did not include planning for traffic might just as well not exist. It’s a little like posting a billboard on road that no one travels. The more blood, sweat and tears that has gone into its creation, the worse the unrealized investment.

The answer, as always, lies in the planning. Your scheme for driving traffic must coincide with the earliest phases of your web development. Your options are endless. There are as many tactics for snaring Internet traffic as there are businesses themselves. Conventional means, radical means, even guerrilla tactics can be deployed; which is right for you is largely dependent upon your style of business and your comfort level. But whether you’re driving traffic through promotional CD-ROMs or hiring skywriters to stream your URL high above the Astrodome, the planning must begin early. A flashy, catchy campaign to drive traffic toward a straightforward, no-nonsense e-commerce portal is worse than confusing. It smacks of the sort of corporate schizophrenia that keeps buyers away in droves.

Avoid pitfalls like these through simple foresight. From the first day of your web planning ask yourself questions like, “Who do I want to visit my site? What do I expect of them once they’ve arrived. How are they to know it exists?” The answers to these questions will guide how your site is constructed, how it’s marketed and how it’s implemented.

The promise of the World Wide Web is that of unlimited marketing potential. A little planning will help to ensure that the road to your company’s site is well traveled.