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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

6

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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About Us

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One or two small paragraphs

Programs used: InDesign CS Illustrator CS Photoshop CS

about you and your company.

One or two small paragraphs about you and your company. One or two small paragraphs about you and your company. One or two small paragraphs about you and your company. One or two small paragraphs about you and your company. One or two small paragraphs about you and your company. One or two small paragraphs about you and your company.

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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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