May 17th, 2012
Every major advertising campaign you’ve ever experienced as a consumer or executed as a marketer has required media planning. Obviously, an advertiser’s budget isn’t limitless, and with the multitude of media options that are available, there needs to be a great deal of analysis prior to the deployment of that budget. Media planning is the course that is set for that budget. It includes the establishment of marketing goals, the selection of media appropriate for attaining those goals, and the allocation of dollars across those media. Effective media planning is the invisible stitching that pulls together a successful ad campaign.
When setting marketing goals, the most elemental questions need to be answered first. Our product and audience should already be known at this phase, so the questions become:
- What kind of favorable response to advertising can we realistically expect from our audience for this product? Awareness or action?
- What kind of message is best suited to attaining this response? Branding or call-to-action?
- What forms of media are best suited to reach this audience and attain the desired response?
- What is our budget, for both our initial roll-out and our monthly advertising expenditure?
Once we’ve answered these questions, we can to select the media and then produce creative that falls in line with those answers. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for your local Army/Navy store to air radio ads on your town’s easy listening station whose primary demographic is women ages 35 to 59. It is equally unrealistic to expect a product such as a soft drink to illicit a response of hordes of people simultaneously invading your local grocery store the instant they see the television commercial. The market has already been set, and competing products are out, established, and available, so it would not make sense to advertise this product with an immediate call-to-action. Awareness, recognition, and branding are attainable long-term goals for this product if the message is carefully crafted to suit the audience.
Continuing with our example of a fictitious soft drink, television advertising historically has been the choice for branding sodas. But will just any television station, network, or programming suffice? Not in most cases, and especially not if your target demographic is more narrow than mainstream. If you are unveiling a new soft drink that combines crisp orange flavor with a vitamin-infused caffeinated energy supercharge, you’re probably looking at a male demographic, ages 18 to 34. Your local nightly news is not the best choice to reach this audience. The Daily Show on Comedy Central, on the other hand, might be.
As a counterpoint to that example, if you are marketing a product that, let’s say, attaches to the cap of your soft drink bottle so that the beverage never loses its carbonation, that might be a product you could advertise on television with a call-to-action. It likely even has a completely different demographic than our energy-charged orange soft drink example.
In most cases, an ad campaign will call for multiple forms of media. Once those have been determined and your creative produced, fleshing out the dollars spent across those media can occur. Is this a product with a television, radio, print, or outdoor emphasis? Should it require an even mix of all? Are we judging effectiveness by phone calls, cost-per-lead, or gross rating points? It is with the help of an experienced and talented ad agency that you can maximize those dollars. An agency with relationships with media contacts often has the leverage to negotiate bottom dollar ad rates.
Strategic Marketing is such an advertising agency. With over 20 years of success managing brands, producing creative, developing media plans, and tracking results, you can be assured your brand will be in good hands with the staff of Strategic Marketing. Call them at (561) 688-8155 to see how they can help you successfully bring your next product to market.
Tags: Ad Campaign, Advertising, Advertising Campaign, Advertising Expenditure, Air Radio, Army Navy Store, awareness, branding, call to action, Competing Products, Desired Response, Easy Listening, Favorable Response, Hordes, Initial Roll, Listening Station, Local Grocery Store, Marketer, Marketing, Marketing Goals, media buying, Media Options, media planning, Multitude, Product Awareness, Radio Ads, Radio Advertising, recognition, Soft Drink, Television Advertising, Term Goals, west palm beach advertising agency, Women Ages
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April 16th, 2012
Cause marketing is not necessarily a new tool in the marketer’s toolbox, but it has taken on a more prominent role in businesses’ marketing plans in recent years. With the advent of social media and the continuous growth in the functionality and flexibility of websites, cause marketing is being brought the masses–and kept in front of them–more effectively than ever before. It can be a powerful way to distinguish a business from its competitors.
Cause marketing is when a “for profit” business partners with a “nonprofit” organization for mutual benefit, even though their goals may differ. You may have heard the expression “to do well by doing good”; that succinct but potent statement was coined by Bruce Burtch, the brains behind one of the first cause marketing campaigns on record, the March of Dimes’ partnership with Marriot in 1976. In preparation for the opening of its brand new family entertainment center in Santa Clara, California, Marriot–with the March of Dimes–unveiled an advertising and public relations campaign to raise funds for the charity while bringing attention and publicity to Marriot’s new entertainment complex.
To do well by doing good requires a synergy between the cause and the business. The cause has to be one the business can truly rally behind, and, for the purpose of credibility, it should have some relevance to the business and its regular activities. For instance, since Cheerios breakfast cereal is advertised as being low in cholesterol and heart-healthy, it makes sense for the makers of Cheerios to team with the American Heart Association to bring awareness to heart disease and good heart-healthy breakfast options.
With today’s technology, websites can be developed specifically to bring a cause marketing partnership to the forefront. Through the site a connection can be made between the business/charity partnership and the public, and donations can be made online with the click of a button. By combining the website’s functionality with the business’s online analytics, the cause marketer can gather a clear picture of the campaign’s effectiveness in real time.
Marketing is a vital function of virtually every business, but with cause marketing you can successfully separate your brand or business from the competition. Contact Strategic Marketing to learn more about how cause marketing can help you do well by doing good. Call us at (561) 688-8155.
Tags: Advent, American Heart Association, Brains, Breakfast Cereal, Breakfast Options, Business Partners, Cause Marketing, Cheerios, Click Of A Button, Continuous Growth, Cus, Family Entertainment Center, Good Heart, Healthy Breakfast, Heart Disease, March Of Dimes, Marketer, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Plans, Marriot, Mutual Benefit, New Entertainment, Nonprofit Organization, Profit Business, Public Relations Campaign, Publicity, Relevance, Santa Clara California, Synergy, Technology Websites
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March 22nd, 2012
Today you often hear the phrase “Push/Pull Marketing” used to describe how traditional media differs from newer, digital forms of media, but it is a phrase that’s been used by and amongst marketers and marketing executives for decades. Push Marketing and Pull Marketing may be two sides of the same coin, but the opposite connotations that are usually applied to them often spur contentious debate amongst marketing professionals.
So what is “push” marketing? Between the two, it is probably the easier approach to identify and describe. It is most commonly described by marketing pros as the marketing firm using mass media to “push” the message of its product or brand out into the marketplace. It employs the use of the obvious and traditional forms of mass media—television, radio, print, and outdoor—as well as online advertising such as display ads. Simply stated, the purpose of this approach is to bring awareness of the product to the consumer. Once embroiled in the push vs. pull debate, detractors of push marketing often label it a “shotgun” approach, or even a “poorly-aimed bazooka”. The marketer has a target audience, but the question becomes whether or not it can effectively reach that audience when using mass media to push out an unsolicited message. And if the answer is yes, can it be done cost-efficiently?
These questions have become daunting in the age of digital media. Online marketing professionals en masse have declared that the rise of social media signifies the death of traditional push marketing. But consider the curious case of the Dos Equis brand of beer. Up until 2006, Dos Equis was thought of as just another Mexican brew—an also-ran next to Corona. Then the brand introduced its new campaign—first on a regional level and then in ’09 on a national level—based around a character called “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” Raise your hand if you haven’t seen the spots on television, heard them on the radio, or seen the ads in print. The old-school methodology of push marketing pushed the brand out there into the consumer’s consciousness to the tune of doubled revenues from 2006 to 2011.
If “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign is a good example of successful modern push marketing, what defines “pull marketing”? A good description comes from Debra Murphy of Masterful Marketing: pull marketing consists of “marketing activities that encourage your prospect to seek you out and find out whether you have something of value to offer them. Pull marketing uses the law of attraction, incorporating all the components of your personal brand to attract and retain these people as your biggest fans.” Shennandoah Diaz of Brass Knuckles Media describes pull as a “well-baited hook”. That is a fair way of depicting pull marketing, but how is it executed? The hook doesn’t bait itself, so to speak. This is the nebulous world of pull marketing, where definitions of the approach are as varied as the opinions.
Pull essentially entails that the consumer is actively searching for a good or service and finds the marketer during the course of this search and brings its product into consideration. But the consumer doesn’t find the marketer by mere divine intervention; the product, message, and brand has to be put into the marketplace in a way that can easily be found by the target audience. Those of us over the age of 25 have each at some point used the oldest form of pull marketing—the Yellow Pages. In the age before the search engine, if someone needed a good or service but didn’t know where to go or who to see to get it, he or she consulted the Yellow Pages. Whether it was a simple listing or a display ad a full page in size, the Yellow Pages had an answer. But the marketer’s ad didn’t magically appear in the book, it had to be bought, created, and placed in there under the appropriate heading. It is the same with today’s modern equivalent—Google. A marketer’s website, blog, or third-party site has to be designed, placed, and optimized to compete for space on the front page of a search for relevant keywords. Like in the Yellow Pages, the consumer is on Google looking for something specific—a solution to a problem, and when the marketing company’s site or page appears, it has an opportunity to be taken into consideration immediately. But think about how much greater of a chance the marketer has of successfully receiving that consumer if it used push marketing to favorably brand the solution in the consumer’s mind prior to him or her seeing the listings on Google.
Pull marketing today can be thought of as the consumer pulling the marketer into consideration. Consequently, it should utilize social media, blogging, podcasting, and any other means of getting in direct contact with the consumer; however it can’t be done without considerable effort, and assistance from the social public at large. Online reputation has a huge role to play in how successful a marketer will be in this kind of referral business, and having a push marketing campaign to set the tone and lay the foundation for the brand and its image can be invaluable.
Push and pull marketing are two sides of the same coin, not two coins of a different currency. And with their knowledge of successful offline and online marketing techniques and strategies, Strategic Marketing can help you turn that one coin into many, many more. Contact them today at (561) 688-8155.
Tags: Advertising, Advertising Agency, Billboards, Connotations, Consumers, Contentious Debate, Corona, Curious Case, Decades, Detractors, Dos Equis, Forms Of Mass Media, Google, Interesting Man, Marketer, Marketers, Marketing Firm, Media Television, Online Marketing, Push Pull, Radio Advertising, Regional Level, Shotgun Approach, Target Audience, Television Advertising, Television Radio, Unsolicited Message, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
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July 26th, 2011
It’s been a while since my last blog on daily deal sites. Noteworthy of late are two new niches that have cropped up in this growing industry. For those who have bought daily deals on impulse and then later regretted their decision, you are not alone. According to Daily Deal Media, twenty percent of deals go unused. There’s now a convenient way to dispose of your deal along with your buyer’s remorse. Resell them on resale sites that broker between those who bought vouchers and no longer want them and those that missed out on a deal. Some of the sites gaining in popularity are Lifesta.com, Dealsgoround.com and Couprecoup.com.
Another new development is daily deal mega sites that aggregate daily deals from many different deal sites and put them in one convenient location. Instead of signing up with many different deal sites, you sign up with just one that pulls all the deals from the different sites. Some of the more popular aggregators are Yipit, DealGator and Dealsurf. On Yipit’s website, for example, they claim that they are pulling deals from 482 deal sites in Miami, Fl.
Tags: Aggregators, Blog, daily deal, Deal Developments, groupon like websites, Impulse, Miami Fl, New Deal, Niches, Popularity, Remorse, Vouchers, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
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June 10th, 2011
What’s the best way to increase customers and create brand loyalty without spending a dime? Positive word-of-mouth.
There are many different mediums today for people to express their opinions, and more often than not, people look for advice from trusted sources before buying something.
Here’s how you can maximize ROI and easily create positive word-of-mouth for your business:
1. Thoroughly research your target market. The more you know, the better you can serve potential customers.
2. Regularly monitor and listen to customer feedback and make improvements based on their recommendations.
3. Use social media to keep in contact with customers regularly.
4. Give your customers something to talk about. Give free samples of your product, coupons, host contests, write entertaining articles and blogs (e.g. The CDC’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” blog), etc.
5. Always provide excellent customer service. The goal is to create valued and lasting relationships with your customers.
6. Only hire exemplary employees who are team players.
Tags: Blog, Brand Loyalty, Business Research, Cdc, Customer Feedback, Excellent Customer Service, Free Advertising, Free Coupons, Free Samples, Host Contests, Improvements, Lasting Relationships, Media Contact, Mediums, People Express, Preparedness, Product Coupons, Target Market, Word Of Mouth, Zombie Apocalypse
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May 13th, 2011
The daily deal market is about to become considerably more crowded as two giants elbow their way in. It’s hardly surprising that they would be hungering for a piece of the pie in this explosive industry. Until now, the innovator Groupon, (the fastest growing company ever) has dominated the market with Living Social coming in a distant second along with hundreds of copycats trying to grab at the crumbs. Facebook Deals went live on April 25th in five cities while Google Offers recently launched in Portland with three more cities on the way.
Facebook will be playing to their strengths and integrating deals for social events such as wine tastings, concerts, and exercise classes onto its site through its news feeds and also by email. Facebook’s entry into the market will be facilitated through its existing 500 million users, many of whom spend time on the site on a daily basis. Rumor has it that contrary to others in the market, Facebook will be charging an advertising fee rather than taking a 50% cut of the proceeds from each sale.
Google, on the other hand, still reeling from Groupon’s six billion dollar snub, is rolling out its version of what so far, appears to be a Groupon/Living Social clone, sending out a daily email to its database with a deal that can be purchased within a predefined time period. Unlike its competitors, Google will offer tools to help businesses measure and track their return on investment from deals.
Tags: advertising agency west palm beach, Clone, Copycats, Daily Basis, Daily Email, Elbow, Exercise Classes, Explosive Industry, Facebook, Giants, Google, Google Facebook Daily Deals, Innovator, Piece Of The Pie, Predefined Time, Proceeds, Return On Investment, Sending Email, Six Billion, Snub, Time Period, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies, Wine Tastings
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May 3rd, 2011
Technically, the court’s decision this week ended the NFL lockout. While the NFL licks its wounds and drags its feet, deciding how to proceed, there are unfathomable sums of money on the table, and most agree that the show must go on. The National Football League produces the most revenue of any sports league in the world. Just thinking about the possibility of no football season this year has had a lot of people quite worried. I am not talking about fans worried about how to fill their Sunday afternoons. I’m referring to the reverberations that would be felt through the entire economy.
The television advertising industry is one that will be especially hard hit. These are estimates of advertising revenue at stake for the big football broadcast networks:
- Fox – $975 million
- NBC – $850 million
- CBS – $825 million
- ESPN – $175 million
If this stream of revenue runs dry, it leaves a Sunday vacuum that nothing else can quite fill. The NFL remains an anomaly in a media landscape that is increasingly fragmented because their ratings continue to go up. No other type of programming can capture as many viewers on Sunday.
President Obama chimed in and was quoted as saying, “I’m a big football fan, but I also think that for an industry that’s making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way.”
Tags: 2011 NFL LOCKOUT, Advertising Revenue, Anomaly, Broadcast Networks, Espn, Football Fan, Football Season, Media Landscape, National Football League, Nbc, Nfl Lockout, Obama, Reverberations, Sports League, Stake, Sums Of Money, Sunday Afternoons, Technically, Television Advertising, Vacuum, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies, Wounds
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April 15th, 2011
You finally opened your own business. Mazal Tov.
Since you are going to have a ton of start up costs, you are going to need to cut corners whenever possible. Before you can even order business cards, put up a sign or create a website, you will need a logo. Why pay a graphic artist when you can save hundred or even thousands of dollars and design it yourself? A logo is a visual representation to aid and promote instant public recognition of a brand. It is used to gain credibility, recognition and visibility – basically, the very foundation upon which all future marketing efforts will be built upon.
Before you make a determination, consider the ramifications and perceptions about your brand that a bad logo can create:
An identity crisis – if your logo is not coordinated and consistent throughout all aspects of your marketing efforts
Unprofessional – if your logo looks great on paper, but horrible on an eight foot sign or a car wrap or if the graphic quality of your logo is not compatible on the web, your business will be perceived as amateurish
Unreliable – if your logo does not have a professional quality about it, people will perceive the same about the quality of work your business provides
Confusing – if you did not take the steps to completely think out your logo, it will start out as something and have to be changed to something else
On the other hand, a good logo will impart stability and reliability.
In closing, one of the first and ultimately, the smartest investments you can make in your business will be a professionally created and designed logo.


Tags: Business Cards, Car Wrap, Company Logo, Credibility, Foot Sign, Full Service Advertising, Future Marketing, Graphic Artist, graphic design company west palm beach, Graphic Quality, Investments, Marketing Efforts, Own Business, Palm Beach Advertising Agency, Perceptions, Professional Quality, Public Recognition, Public Relations Agency, Ramifications, Reliability, Thousands Of Dollars, Tov, Visibility, Visual Representation, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
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April 7th, 2011
Maybe you are having trouble paying your mortgage and your home’s curb appeal is not what it used to be? You are not alone. How would you like it if you could have your mortgage magically paid until you get back on your feet and have the exterior of your house painted to boot?
The fairy godmother has arrived in the form of Adzookie, a mobile advertising company out of California that will pay your mortgage for anywhere from three months to a year and paint your house – twice!
First you need to ask just how strong your relationships are with your neighbors because the magical wand is going to turn your house into a domestic billboard. Since launching the promotion on Tuesday, Adzookie has received over 3,000 applications.
Tags: Advertising Company, Adzookie, billboard, Curb Appeal, Fairy Godmother, Having Trouble Paying Your Mortgage, Magical Wand, Mobile Advertising, Neighbors, Relationships, Three Months, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
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March 18th, 2011
Facial Recognition Technology
Remember this 1984 Rockwell song?
I always feel like
Somebody’s watching me
And I have no privacy
I always feel like
Somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me is it just a dream
OK, so maybe not a person watching, but what about a sign? In Japan, marketers have rolled out billboards that capture your image, analyze your features and react intelligently by offering an ad targeted to you based on your approximate age, gender and ethnicity.
They have also installed vending machines that will suggest a beverage based on your age, gender and the weather conditions.
The first ad employing this facial recognition technology was displayed at a bus stop in Hamburg, Germany. The anti-abuse campaign by Amnesty International featured a smiling couple, but when you looked away it turned into a picture of a man hitting a woman.
Here in the US, American Eagle has employed this technology in some of their stores to let children interact with their brand during the shopping experience. It takes a photo of the child, who can then see themselves as they “try on outfits,” interact with animated branded characters, print photos and even swipe their loyalty cards for special offers and prizes- all through the interactive touch-screen displays.
The marketing implications for zooming in on your target as this technology becomes more sophisticated are mind boggling. So you don’t like that ad, frown – and the image will change with another offering. You need a new dress for a party this weekend. All you have to do is pull up the retailer’s website, stand up and virtually “try on” different fashion choices.
Tags: American Eagle, Amnesty International, Approximate Age, Billboards, Bus Stop, Different Fashion, Facial Recognition Technology, Fashion Choices, Hamburg Germany, interactive advertising, interactive marketing, Interactive Touch, Loyalty Cards, Marketers, New Dress, Rockwell, Shopping Experience, Swipe, Target, Touch Screen, Vending Machines, Weather Conditions, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
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