Posts Tagged ‘West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies’

Push Versus Pull Marketing

Thursday, 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.

Daily Deal Developments

Tuesday, 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.

Google and Facebook Roll Out Daily Deals

Friday, 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.

2011 NFL LOCKOUT

Tuesday, 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.”

Innovative Promotion Helps Homeowners in Distress

Thursday, 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.

COMING SOON TO A MALL NEAR YOU

Friday, 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.

SPRING BREAK $$

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Marketers Welcome Generation Y

Marketers are salivating as the affluent Generation Y spring breakers descend upon the beaches from Florida in the east to Texas out west. What makes this group so appealing as consumers?

First, their sheer numbers – hundreds of thousands of them come to soak up the sun and fun in bikini land.

Second, this demo is almost exclusively 18-24 and a message can be highly targeted to make a strong impact on them. While this demographic has traditionally been resistant to traditional advertising, marketers have several factors in their favor. The students are on vacation, and when you are on vacation everything slows down and you become more receptive to advertising. Advertisers who manage to get their brand out in front of the spring breakers have the potential to create positive associations with their brand and the fun memories these students will carry with them back to school.

Most of the students who head south for spring break are trendsetters. They bring along their friends and involve them in their purchasing decisions.

Another reason this demo is so attractive to marketers is that they are impulsive. Combine this with the fact that mommy and daddy have lined their pockets with money that they aren’t likely to be taking back with them on the plane, and there will be spending.

Radio Advertising 101 cont. – PPMs

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Last week I explained how Arbitron measures radio listenership and produces ratings with the diary system. After years of criticism about the validity of data collected by diaries, they are being phased out in each market in favor of portable people meters (PPMs). The PPMs are beeper-like devises that pick up and record radio signals and transmit the data back to Arbitron on a daily basis when they are “docked.” Survey participants are required to carry them around everywhere they go, some up to 18 months. Meters must be worn on the outside of clothing and have motion sensors to detect movement (they can’t be stuck next to the radio all day on the dresser).

Whereas diary keepers were paid a few dollars per week, PPM carriers can earn more than a hundred dollars a month for each person in the household, depending on how much the motion sensors pick up movement. I read a recent independent research report from Broadcast Architecture that interviewed PPM panelists to get a feel for their habits. One women confided that her son tied the meter to a ceiling fan to get points (points are accumulated by motion and more points means more dollars).

Good for Goodness Sake, Part II

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Last week we explored Cause Marketing with examples of corporations contributing to better the world by joining forces with non-profits and charities, while at the same time increasing brand recognition and employee loyalty. These examples showed that people are apt to buy from companies that align themselves with causes they care about. Today’s blog will talk about practical ways for small business owners to incorporate Cause Marketing into their business model.

To begin with, be authentic. In order to be believable, choose a cause you are truly passionate about. Your compassion must be enough to energize the entire organization. Don’t join forces with your local animal shelter if you cringe every time a cat rubs up against you. At the same time, your cause must be a good fit for your company’s culture so that it can reinforce your brand. It must be relevant to your type of business while helping to further your business efforts. If you have a construction company, it would prove more beneficial to support a neighborhood revitalization project than a homeless shelter. At the same time, find a cause that matters to your target audience. They should be able to identify with your cause so they want to take action.

Now that you are being a socially responsible business owner and compassionate world citizen, brag about it. In a world crowded by misfortune and dismal economic news, people love to hear a feel-good story. Write about your cause on Facebook, make a video and post it on Youtube and write about it on a blog and link it back to your website. If you are a dentist who volunteers his services at a homeless shelter, call the local news station and have them meet you there. If you were looking for a dentist, would you choose the caring philanthropist you read about in the news or the one with the fancy overpriced practice? News agencies love to report about local businesses making a difference in the community. This can result in great free publicity for your company.

Infuse the cause into your business. Volunteer, serve on the board of directors, host events, donate a portion of your proceeds and encourage employees to become involved and reward them for it. Then communicate clearly to customers how and why your company is involved and how their purchase affects your efforts. Integrate this message into traditional advertising to get the word out.

You have probably spent years putting your heart and soul into making your business a profitable venture and it is a true reflection of the person you are. There is no shame in capitalizing from cause marketing if you are genuine. If more businesses had the same attitude the world would be a much nicer place. The more you give, the more you will get in return. In the words of Anthony Robbins, “Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”