WHILE 2008 WILL likely go down in history as the year many marketers went into a defensive crouch as hey waited for the credit crunch tsunami sweeping over the U. S. and world economies to pass, the time for defensive, reactive measures is over. Marketers today need to go on the offensive and look for ways to not only prove, but also increase, the value of marketing by finding and exploiting opportunities to grow business.
“Our philosophy has always been [that] when business is down, market more,” says Steven Hattem, vice president of marketing for CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. a cruise travel agent franchiser in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. While competitors are cutting marketing spending, Hattem plans to boost his 5% to 10% this year.
Rob Reif, president of Media Networks Inc., a division of Time Inc. that sells targeted packages of print, digital and mobile advertising, plans to increase his marketing spend 30% this year compared with 2008. “Marketers can’t go away, they need to continue talking to their clients,” he says.
The road to accomplishing more with marketing doesn’t have to begin with bigger budgets, of course, but rather using dollars more productively. That requires knowing customers better. Once you truly understand what they want and how they want it, the next imperative is to do a better job crafting and targeting messages to them. Hypertargeting, one-on-one marketing, behavioral targeting—these terms will be heard more this year, marketing pros agree.
As you work to get the right message to the right individual or group, you’ll also need to re-examine your marketing mix and make changes in which marketing tools you use or how you use them.
Given its comparatively low cost, e-mail marketing is likely to become a bigger piece of many companies’ marketing mixes this year, marketers say. But it won’t be old-style blast e-mails sent to millions of people with the same message. Rather, it, too, will becoming increasingly targeted, say e-mail advocates. Another e-mail targeting issue deals more with form than substance—namely how to reach people e ectively with e-mails read on mobile devices such as phones, notes Luc Vezina, head of marketing for Campaigner, an Ottawa, Canada-based e-mail marketing solutions provider. E-mails which include orders, coupons or other visual elements increasingly have to take into account the graphic abilities of iPhones, Blackberrys and their other mobile brethren, he advises.
Online advertising as a part of the marketing mix is maturing to a point where it, too, can be better targeted, says Joe Apprendi, founder and CEO of Collective Media, an online advertising network based in New York. “Behavioral targeting is certainly one of the fastest growing segments of ads online,” he says. Behavioral targeting observes consumer Web site visit patterns to determine where a given ad is most likely to grab that consumer’s attention.
Reif says digital marketing will be an important part of his mix this year, as will an increased use of trade shows to maintain his company’s visibility as competitors pull back.
Internal branding also will be key in this economy, contends Don Schultz, a Marketing News columnist and professor (emeritus in service) of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. With budgets tight, it becomes even more important to use every employee as a brand Ambassador to customers, he explains. Marketers “think they are doing marketing, [but] marketing is going on all around them and in many cases they don’t know about it,” warns Schultz.
Increased use of public relations also can be a highly cost-e ective approach to enhancing brand image and getting clients to make purchase decisions, contends Dusty Rhodes, vice president of marketing for PlatformOne, a human resources outsourcing company based in suburban Atlanta.
Whichever tools you use, it’s time to get your head back in the game. “You start with overcoming fear. A lot of people over the last few months have just been operating out of fear,” says Steve McKee, a business consultant and author of When Growth Stalls. “Challenge No. 1 for marketers both in their own minds and in dealing with their senior management is to get over this culture of fear we’ve all been dealing with.”
Know Your Customer
Reif, who’s also president of Time’s Targeted Media Inc., doesn’t just preach customer focus, he practices it. He emphasizes to his sales people that “they need to make sure that they’re much more customer focused and oriented,” he says. Late last year, he reorganized his sales and marketing stats, having them report to the same person for the first time rather than to two different people, to increase marketing’s focus on clients, he says. Under the old arrangement, “marketing people felt sales reps were their clients. e reality is it’s not what the sale rep wants, it’s what the customer wants,” he says.
In response to customer requests, Targeted Media, which also sells targeted ad packages, changed some packages of publications it offers, Reif says. “You can’t just sell the same product in this environment. We’re sharpening what we offer,” he says.
When Danielle Lee joined Watson Wyatt Worldwide’s Washington, D.C. regional staff last July as head of marketing communications, she set out to show how marketing there could be more than simply event planning, which was the role it had prior to her arrival.
She spent her first six months on the job researching not only what the company’s goals and major business issues are, but also analyzing the customer base to identify clients with the greatest new revenue potential for Watson Wyatt, clients she terms “stars.”
“The majority of my marketing efforts will be [focusing] on the stars,” she says. As she identifies these stars, her marketing will focus on “how do we get them to the next level in the buying cycle,” she says.
Her efforts demonstrate two truisms for marketing in this economy. First, existing customers are important to retain and can also be good sources of new business. And second, those customers will be taking a lot more time making buying decisions, so marketing needs to focus on moving them along that decision chain.
In b-to-b, sales teams are offering customers such incentives as free trials of equipment and services, and extended warranties to spur buying. On the consumer side, retailers are having cocktail parties for specific target audiences trying to get them to buy, observes Glenn Omura, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University.
Whatever the incentive, marketers need to ensure the message gets to the target, Omura advises. So if your marketing e orts focus on customer acquisition, it is now time to rethink your program. Says Mark Klein, CEO of Loyalty Builders, a predictive analytics rm in Portsmouth, N.H.: “Customer retention is the new acquisition. We’re seeing companies putting more attention into win-back campaigns” for former customers. He’s also seeing more requests from his clients for calculations on the future value of individual customers rather than generic calculations on customer value, another indication of one-on-one targeting, Klein adds.
Adjust Your Marketing Mix
With key customers identified, the next challenge becomes reaching them in the most cost-effective manner. A marketer not comfortable talking about ROI in this economy had better get comfortable, fast.
“In a recession, marketers should always be looking at ROI. In 2009, people will really look at it,” predicts Seth Lieberman, CEO of Pangea Media, a Watertown, Mass.-based provider of online quizzes and targeted advertising. “Any [marketing] avenue where you can show return will benefit.”
For Rhodes, showing ROI has meant relying on public relations and client endorsements to bring in new business. “Our whole focus is on credibility marketing. Credibility to us means we don’t tell the world how great we are, our clients do,” he explains. Rhodes monitors PR services, such as Profnet, daily to find reporters writing about HR issues. He pitches them client success stories. He also puts client success stories on the company Web site. Sales people are trained to inform potential clients that once they begin working with PlatformOne, they will be approached as possible case studies. They also can expect calls from potential PlatformOne clients. “People who are in our target market don’t buy from us unless they talk to at least three clients,” Rhodes notes. Exhibiting at trade shows and industry analyst relations are other key tactics for PlatformOne.
In 2008, CruiseOne cut its print advertising spending 98% to account for how consumers search for cruise information, Hattem says. Newspaper travel sections once were the No. 2 place, a er travel brochures, where consumers looked for cruise information, Hattem says. Today, the Internet has become the major source of cruise information. As a result, CruiseOne is doing more search-related online advertising. It also maintains an aggressive one-on-one direct mail campaign. Former and potential customers get a personalized magazine three times a year that includes the name of a local CruiseOne-affiliated travel agent and calls to action, Hattem says. People who have booked a cruise hear from CruiseOne on a regular basis via e-mail up until the cruise date. They also hear from CruiseOne when they return, asking them to rate their cruise experience. Contact continues for two years after the trip.
This economy certainly has its challenges for marketing, but that means it is no time to be timid. Says Lewis: “Some companies are going to do very well in this environment. is is as much an opportunity as [it is] a risk. It may be a great risk to sit tight and hold onto your bucks as it is to prudently spend them.”