GRAPHIC ADVISOR ISSUE TWENTY ONE
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Just in Time. Marketing Strategies to Keep a Watch On. Smart Marketing in a Recovering Economy What Motivates Your Customers? About Spot Colors
MARKETING ADVISOR ISSUE TWENTY ONE
Your logo here
Just in Time.
Marketing Strategies to Keep a Watch On. Smart Marketing in a Recovering Economy What Motivates Your Customers? About Spot Colors
It’s tempting to slash your print marketing budget as you scramble to make immediate, hard-dollar expense reductions in today’s
uncertain economy, but now is the time to do exactly the opposite. The more visible your company is, the more confident your customers and prospects are that you will be around in good times and bad. When you stop inviting them to do business with you, you open the door for your best customers to become your competitor’s best prospects. Even astute marketers who appreciate print marketing’s role as a revenue-producing venture might face the reality of budget cuts during an economic slowdown. Delivering a value-driven message to high margin customers is a surefire way to reap returns from your marketing investment. N Target your marketing campaign based on
N Exploit the weaknesses of the competition. Your best
current customer data. Clients who have purchased
marketing campaign is worthless if the competitor down the street
from you recently know who you are. They just need a simple
is closing the sale. Design print materials to persuade prospects
reminder, such as a postcard or sell sheet, to give them a reason
to not only buy the product or service you’re offering, but to buy
to buy from you again. Pay particular attention to retaining
it from you. Determine what your competitors are doing—or not
customers with the highest profit margin, and then target
doing—that you can use to position your company, product or
prospects in similar companies with the presumption that you
offer more favorably.
will be able to serve them profitably as well.
N Give prospects a reason to buy today. No matter how
Smart Marketing in a Recovering Economy
N Get inside your customers’ minds. Marketing must be
magical your marketing message is, fewer people will likely respond
meaningful and relevant to your target audience. You can only
in a recessionary period. Spur prospects to action with a limited
satisfy buyer motivations if you understand what your prospects
time offer, such as a discount or complimentary service. Recognize
love and hate—their hearts’ true desires and what keeps them
that fear is a part of the buying decision. Guarantees are an
awake at night. Have sincere dialogue about what they want and
effective way to ease buyer doubt.
why they want it. The time spent developing this relationship will pay off in repeat sales and quality referrals.
Companies that market superior products and value prevail in times of both prosperity and recession, while those with inferior products
N Craft your message from a position of strength.
and exaggerated marketing claims fail. Whether it’s branding,
During rough economic times, people don’t stop buying; they just
prospecting or customer retention, make smart decisions today,
become more selective. Establish yourself as a strategic business
and enjoy a vastly stronger market presence when the economy
partner, who offers the most relevant products at the greatest
bounces back.
value, based on quality and performance. Add credibility to your message with customer testimonials and other sources of validation,
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such as certifications and awards.
Companies that market superior products and value prevail in times of both prosperity and recession 4
Your Customers Have a Secret Needs
needs, wants, desires and fears.
impact of your graphics and marketing message,
is logical. You pour marketing dollars into promoting how
affect your target audience. Change your strategy
you have the best-smelling scent on the planet, but you have pallets of unsold bottles in your warehouse. Why? Because we
are things you think you must have, such as medicine
the promise that you can satisfy at least one buyer
often make purchases for emotional reasons, such as acceptance
when you’re sick. This is the premise of traditional
motivation.
and association, then justify them with a rational explanation. The
Thread your marketing promise into every element,
challenge for marketers is to unearth those secret reasons for making
including product image, advertising and promotion wants
a purchase.
are things you can survive without but would like to have
strategy, product packaging and display and even
anyway—like candy or a new shirt.
pricing strategy. Design and copy should lead the reader
In the cologne example, the hidden impetus is that your product
quickly to how you can meet a need, want, desire or images that are harmonious with your copy. Color is an
desires necessarily expect to get but serve as very powerful
product will fulfill the purchaser’s desire to be alluring. By matching what you have to offer with the true
important emotional trigger, but you should select it carefully
motivators—wealth, fame, romance, adventure.
makes the wearer feel more attractive. Change your marketing pitch from how good the cologne smells to how your
fear. Graphics will have better recall than words so choose
Desires are things you dream about; things you don’t
as every shade has both a positive and negative connotation. fears
cologne, and 90% of customers say that they purchased your product because it smells good. That
from marketing features and benefits to marketing
marketing; find a need and fill it.
customers do want is an answer to one of their basic psychological motivations—
these psychological factors, along with the psychological
are things you don’t want to happen, such as the fear
Red as the dominant color might successfully evoke an image
someone else will try a new product first or that you’ll
of love and passion, but it might also tap into the darker
make a bad choice. Buyers balance needs, wants and
feelings of rage and violence. Green can stimulate thoughts
motivation of your customer, you create a win-win marketing strategy.
of money and self-actualization, but greed and envy are
desires against fears in the final purchasing decision.
associated with this hue as well.
You can create print marketing that is welldesigned and well-written, but that still fails miserably if it’s not credible. Pair a good product or service with a focused marketing strategy based on an understanding of what truly motivates your customers, and you will dominate your market.
photos ©iStockphoto.com
to buy your product or service. What your
Imagine you are a manufacturer of
You can strengthen your market position by learning how
What truly motivates your customers? here’s the hard truth: No one wants
CASE STUDY
Subhead needed here, me thinks
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Various studies of direct mail over the years have repeatedly found that using color instead of black-and-white can:
increase response rates BY AS MUCH AS
80%
increase reading comprehension BY AS MUCH AS
73%
“Color” in these studies often refers to full color printing or process color printing. However, even using spot color printing can have the same beneficial effects on direct mail response. In process
abou sp t
i d t s o bo o t y a w e et effectiv
es r l i a m t c re
. e s pon
BY AS MUCH AS
14%
BY AS MUCH AS
Swatches palette menu. In the New Color Swatch dialogue box, change Color Type from Process to Spot. From the Color Mode pop-up menu, select the spot color library you wish to use. We recommend using either Pantone
four transparent inks (cyan, magenta, yellow
Solid Coated or Uncoated. Coated or uncoated
and black) in various combinations to produce
refers to whether we will print the job on
inks,
in
coated or uncoated paper. Select Pantone Solid
contrast, are opaque, and we do not combine
Coated to bring up all of the available spot
them. We specify a desired color using a unique
colors. Highlight the one you want, and click
number.
the Add button. The spot color appears in your
So, in process color printing, if you want
Swatches palette.
green, we overprint cyan and yellow inks. In
It’s important that
spot color printing, if you want green, you
you not edit a spot
specify, for example, Pantone 370, which refers
color swatch, as
to a specific, standardized shade of green.
this will defeat the
Many logos and corporate colors are
whole purpose
spot colors because it’s easier to maintain
of specifying spot
color consistency across a variety of printed
colors by number!
documents and print providers by using a
Your monitor might not display the spot
specific spot color. Additionally, the CMYK
color exactly the way we will print it. For best
color gamut is a fairly small one, and some
results, consult a printed PMS swatchbook. Spot color can be a simple yet effective
process colors. Spot colors can fill this gap. We
way to liven up a document and boost the
can also use spot inks to print white.
effectiveness of your direct mail campaigns.
Specifying spot inks can be as simple as
It also bears mentioning that if we print your
picking a desired shade and noting its “PMS”
documents on a digital press, the spot/process
(Pantone Matching System) number. There are
color issue can be a gray area. Please let us
other color swatching systems, but Pantone’s
know if you have any questions or concerns
is the most common. Adobe InDesign and
with regard to using spot colors.
QuarkXPress define spot color swatches the
INSTEAD OF BLACK AND WHITE, UP YOUR NEXT DIRECT MAIL CAMPAIGN!
78%
color, select New Color Swatch from the
shades are impossible to reproduce using
CONSIDER ADDING A SPOT COLOR. IT CAN LIVEN
BY AS MUCH AS
increase payment response
In InDesign, for example, to specify a spot
we overprint
the gamut of reproducible colors. spot
same way that any color swatch is defined. photos ©iStockphoto.com
A si mple y
l o c t o
s or
color printing,
increase retention
colored text was recalled more than bold text
Both of these programs have built-in spot color libraries.
8
30%
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NOT ALL CUSTOMERS ARE CREATED EQUAL. Some customers buy more
than others. Some buy less, but they buy higher margin products. Some customers buy less, but they buy frequently and give you a steady cash flow. Some buy so little that keeping them actually costs you money. Do you know which customers are which? Why not get the greatest “bang for the buck” by spending it on the customers who bring the greatest return? How do you find out who those customers are? In-House and Under-Utilized?
Boost the Impact
With a little training, you can utilize the
Once you are focusing on your most
software you likely already have. You can use
valuable customers (the definition of “most
Microsoft Access and Excel, for example, or free
valuable” will vary from company to company),
solutions like MySQL, to create pivot tables that
you can boost the impact of that targeting with
will do simple sorting (most dollars spent, most
personalization. Side-by-side tests repeatedly
frequent purchases) and create cross-tabs to
prove that not only are customers more likely
understand your data better.
to respond to well-produced, personalized
With additional training, you can create more
communications, but when they do respond,
sophisticated tools, such as customer lifetime
they order more than those who received non-
value (CLV) models and recency, frequency and
personalized communications.
value (RFV) models that will help you profile,
Once you begin profiling your customers, you
sort and “score” your customers in even
can really begin to cultivate those relationships.
greater detail.
If you know your highest volume customers,
If you don’t want do this yourself, there
you can encourage them to purchase more
are small, affordable outsource solutions
frequently. If you know your most frequent
providers who can do it for you. There are even
customers, you can encourage them to
companies that have created Internet-based
purchase in higher volumes.
data mining interfaces that allow you to upload
Save Money, Shed a Customer
your data and work with it on a “software as a service” (SaaS) model. With a little extra effort, you can focus on the ones that are the most profitable to you.
These days, customer loyalty and customer retention are hot topics. After all, customers are more valuable than ever. But are you looking to retain every customer, regardless of their value to your company? Believe it or not, this isn’t the best route to improve profitability.
After all, retaining customers is valuable. But retaining and then cultivating relationships with your most profitable customers is even better.
Four Steps to Profitable Customer Retention
A good customer retention program should include these four elements:
photos ©iStockphoto.com
SORT by behavior
1
Identify the most profitable behaviors
2
Select and Personalize target the the content most profitable segments
3
4
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