Marketing Archives - Thoranna.is

Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

Do you measure effectiveness of your marketing? It’s a cliché: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” But clichés are clichés for a reason. And the reason is more often than not because they are true.

How do you know whether something is working or whether it’s not?
Can you afford to waste time on something that it isn’t working?
Can you afford to waste money on something that isn’t working?
Is there any reason to be doing things that aren’t working for you?

First of all, every time you do a specific marketing activity or put something in place like when you set up a Facebook page, do a Google AdWords campaign, put an ad in the paper or whatever you are doing, always think about why you’re doing it. What do you want that specific marketing activity to achieve?

Think about the Marketing Process – you can read all about that here. Are you doing this for awareness, to gain interest, build likeability and/or trust, give people a taste of what you offer, to push for the sale, get more sales [Read more…]

Patience Is A Virtue in Marketing

It is highly important to realize that marketing takes time. Nothing happens overnight. It’s not just a question of one big ad here or there or one promoted Facebook post. People need to go through a certain process and you have to reach them a number of times before they’re going to be ready to buy from you. If you want to know more about that marketing process, check out this blog post here.

According to sales guru Brian Tracy it takes five sales calls before the customer is ready to buy. Those are sales calls and a very expensive way to sell. You have an expensive employee going there and they’re spending time with the customer at their office. They’re in the same room, they’re speaking to them face to face for at least a few minutes.

So if it takes five of those sales call for the customer to buy, you can imagine how much more often you reach your prospects through marketing methods before they’re ready to buy. (You may think that makes marketing less effective, but trust me, it doesn’t. Marketing can be scaled much more affordably than sales calls ;)

I’m going share one of my favourite marketing quotes with you to illustrate this point.

This one is from Thomas Smith:

The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
The second time, he does not notice it.
The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
The fifth time, he reads it.
The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
The seventh time, he reads it through and says “Oh brother!”
The eight time, he says “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such thing a long time.
The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it someday.
The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.

This underpins what I have been saying about “repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat”. People have to see you a number of times before they’re ready to buy. What is even more interesting is that Thomas Smith wrote this in 1885!!! So this is not new.

Marketing really does take time. Thomas Smith realised this ages and ages ago!

You need to repeat yourself, you need to be consistent and you need to be talking about the same things to start filtering through and owning that place in the prospects mind.

Are you repeating yourself enough – or have you perhaps given up too early? ;)

Repetition

In a previous blog post I have discussed how we need to identify each and every touchpoint with our brand to examine how we can use them to build it, and how we need to make sure that we consistently deliver the same brand experience through each of those touchpoint. This is not enough though. You also have to remember to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat again.

It’s Great to Be Bored!

Repetition is absolutely key in marketing and I can promise you that if you are doing your marketing right, you will get bored. You will get bored of your brand identity; your colours, fonts, images etc., you will get bored of your marketing materials; your advertising, messaging etc. You’ll get bored with the whole thing. Absolutely, you’re going to get bored!

But the thing is, you’re always working with your brand, you’re always looking at it, thinking about it, it’s always there. However, you’d be really lucky if the people you are trying to reach see 1% of what you are up to. So you must remember that it’s not about you. It’s about them. You’re going to get bored but you have to pull through it and just stick with it!

The thing is if you start changing things up, changing your messaging, changing the look of what you are sending out, whether it is advertising, brochures, stuff on social media, blogs or whatever it is, you end up at square one again.

We all know how many things are there out there vying for people’s attention each and every day. So when you start changing things up they’re not going to recognize you. You’re going to have to start building awareness and recognition all over again. However if you stick with it and you stay the same, you’re going to be strengthening their memory structures of you in their minds and they’re going to end up sticking.

Snakes and Ladders

It’s a bit like a game of snakes and ladders. [Read more…]

Branding: Brand Touchpoints

Brand and branding, the act of building that brand, are at the core of marketing. It is what makes you different from the rest and, if built well, appeal to your target groups. As I’ve discussed in other blog posts, you need to determine what your brand is today, what you want it to be and then go about building it in a focused and effective way.

So let’s say that you know exactly what you want your brand to be. You have a clear brand core (know which drawer you want to be in ;) You know what you want people to think and what you want them to feel. How do we take those brand associations and the characteristics that we know we want for our brand and actually build them up in the minds and hearts of the customers?

There are two key points here: [Read more…]

Marketing is branding

One of the reasons I fell in love with the subject of marketing was that when I did my MBA I quickly realised that marketing is the very heart of every business. Without marketing there can be no business. Non-marketing people often hate it when us marketing nerds harp on about how “business = marketing”. The thing is though, it’s true.

I cannot stress this enough, so I figured it would be good to enlist the help of two of my favourite business gurus in management and marketing in the last century: Peter Drucker and Al Ries, to drive home the message of just how important marketing is.

Peter Drucker says “A company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services, which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence. Other responsibilities, e.g., to employees and society exists to support the company’s continued ability to carry out its primary purpose.”

This is at the core of marketing. Serving your customer. Because it always has to be all about the customer. You have to see things from their point of view. You have to realize what they need and what they want and that’s what you need to be giving to them. So, that’s the primary responsibility. Try to flog junk they don’t want or need and you won’t get anywhere.

Peter Drucker also says: [Read more…]