Local Marketing and Media

The Twilight saga continues! It's true fellow Twihard admirers; the new teaser trailer of the third book, "Eclipse" was released to the public yesterday.  The vampire series continues to captivate and totally annoy the nation. The one-minute-and-thirty-second clip that arrived online dabbles into the not too surprising events about what we'll see in the upcoming movie.

Watch the trailer below and let's break it down, shall we? When the music begins instant goose-bumps occur and Edward’s hypnotizing voice mesmerizes all enthusiasts. We all know that Bella and Edward love each other but for all you Jacob fans we believe that Bella should choose the irresistible Jacob (sorry Team Edward I’m loyal to Team Jacob). “The Vulturi do not give second chances” and Bella has to change from a human to a vampire but Edward is hesitant with the consequences to follow. Jacob will fight for Bella (shirtless) until “her heart stops beating” showing off his hunky, muscular figure. A new Victoria, with her firey red hair, is back to obtain her vengeance.  Rest assured I will be standing in line alongside the die-hard fans to purchase my ticket for the midnight opening showing.

After reading the very popular Stephenie Meyer books, people of all ages (yes not just girl teeny boppers) eagerly search for the new trailer and click on whatever sight pops up first. Local businesses are utilizing the effective and affordable local internet marketing by posting these clips to generate demand to their sites. Local store marketing is taking advantage of the hype utilizing POS materials to drive sales of the last video which will release the 20th, even Volvo saw significant lift in their sales when the movie was released!  By using co-op advertising and local marketing ideas, stores are placing Twilight posters, wall hangers, and selling fan gear to effectively drive brand awareness. This movie has spent significant marketing dollars developing and nurturing their name which has proven successful. Twilight set the opening-day box office record taking in $72.7 million on the first day and grossed $258.8 million! New Moon pulled in $26.3 million just on the midnight showings and broke the record for the most pre-sales for any movie! Let's see what Eclipse has in store for us.


 

Many moons ago I wrote of an epic Balihoo vs. Wild journey into the depths of the Hells Canyon Wilderness. At the end of that article, I promised our loyal blog roll that I would keep them abreast of Balihoo’s next expedition into the wilderness. At the time, there were quiet murmurs of a First Annual Winter Yurt Trip. I sadly report that such a journey never took place and is still a coming of age tale. Several of our large outdoor apparel/gear sponsors backed out at the last minute due to ‘unexpected market conditions’ leaving us without sufficient financial backing to commence our research-driven exploratory journey. I personally think those sponsors could have weathered the economic storm had they taken advantage of Balihoo’s Local Marketing Automation platform but that’s neither here nor there and is best conveyed in one of my previous blogs titled, Outdoor Adventures in Co-op Advertising.

So while the Yurt Trip never took place, I am pleased to announce that we did manage to recently dawn our sub zero degree down jackets, resembling the fearless infantry of the 10^th Mountain Division circa 1943, and hit the slopes at our favorite alpine skiing venue. To those of you who don’t reside in the Treasure Valley, Bogus Basin may not mean much to you. But for those of us who call this area home, well… we look at Bogus Basin as 'The Matterhorn of the Boise Alps'. A group of eleven Balihoo winter-sport extraordinaires impressed bystanders (Caribou, Wolves, Grizzly Bears and even a Yeti) with a dazzling display of 360 Helicopters, Daffys and Backscratchers. Après Backscratcher, was greeted with delicious nutrient enriched hot toddys at BaseCamp to cure our aching muscles, halt frostbite and reduce the side-effects of our early-stage Pulmonary Edema (a medical condition most commonly developed at high altitudes).

All-in-all, it was another stunning display of the can-do and will-do mindset of Balihoo’s team and an even further testament to what makes this place so unique. Its the people folks. We’ve got great people.

Please stay tuned for the next Balihoo vs. Wild journey coming this Spring. Planning for a record-breaking cross-country bicycle trek are already in the works.
 

This post, Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know, was originally written and posted by Shane Vaughan on our old blog on 7/14/09.

Balihoo recently penned an article for one of our favorite sites for franchise news - Blue MauMau.  Article can be seen here, or you can read the full article below!  

Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know 

If you’re a franchisee, you’re probably already doing some local marketing — even if it’s just listing your business in the local Yellow Pages.  Think additional advertising will cost too much?  Think you don’t need an online presence?  Or does “online presence” seem to be the opposite of “local media”?

In fact, every company, no matter how large or small, can benefit from using local media effectively.  And it doesn’t have to break your budget!  Here’s a list of the Top Ten things you need to know to make Local Marketing work for you. 

1.  Know Your Target Audience.

First, last, and always:  Pay attention to your target market!  If you’re not focused on your customers, you cannot hope to win their attention — or their business. 

Be specific about who you’re trying to reach.  Men?  Women?  Retirees? Mothers?  Sports Fans? Chinchilla owners?  People with other particular interests?  Other small businesses, such as real-estate firms?  Dental offices? 

Now that you’ve clearly defined your target audience, consider what marketing messages will resonate with them.  What problem does your product or service solve for them?  Think carefully about where you should position your communications so your target audience will see, read — and act on them.

If possible, develop a “profile” of your target customer.  Give them a name to easily refer to them, let’s use “Katie” for an example.  Where does Katie work?  Is she married?  Kids?  What does she do in her free time?  What is Katie’s household income?  The more specific, the better. 

2.  Measure, Measure, Measure. 

There’s an old saying, “Half the money you spend on advertising is wasted, and you don’t know which half.”  Unfortunately, this is true in many cases, but it doesn’t have to be.  Careful planning and – most importantly, measurement, ensures your advertising is working hard for your business.    

It’s all about ROI — Return On Investment.  This may sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty easy to calculate.  Simply take the benefit you receive from an investment, and subtract the cost of that investment.  Divide the result by the cost of that investment.  (Benefit - Cost)/Cost. 

You can apply this to any business investment, including marketing campaigns.  And you should.  ROI tells you if a given effort is providing a net benefit to your bottom line, and if so, the size of the gain.  You’ll want to get the highest ROI possible from your marketing dollars, and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.   

3.  Buy Media; Don’t Be Sold

Strategically buy your media, don’t allow yourself to be “sold.”  Make sure you evaluate all options, across all communications channels, not just whoever happens to knock on your door.  And evaluate them in terms of their effectiveness for your target market, not necessarily in terms of your personal interests!

Also, make sure that any reps who call on you know you’re considering other placement; they will probably sweeten their rates.

4.  Integrate Your Marketing Messages.

Don’t spend all of your marketing dollars on a single medium.  Why not?  Because multi-channel marketing efforts perform better.  In one study, over a few years multi-channel customers spent at least several hundred dollars more in comparison with single-channel customers.  Multiply that difference by your total number of customers, and you can see there’s real value to be had.

As you venture into multi-channel marketing, be sure to integrate your marketing.  You’ll need to convey the same message across all channels.

And don’t forget some powerful experiential channels that many small franchises overlook.  Your storefront or office, your signage, your employees, and your product are all sending messages of their own.  Are those experiential messages consistent with your advertising messages?  Are they consistent with the message you want to send?

5.  Relations With Local Media.

The thing to remember about local media is that when your business is down, so is theirs.   Just like you, your local media want long-term repeatable revenue in a down economy.  They want to keep your business!  This means now is the time to renegotiate your contracts.

This is especially true of local print media.  Understand the downward pricing pressure exerted on these media by the power of the internet:  In 2008, print classified ad spend was down to about half what it was in 2000!  Blame Craigslist, Google, and Yahoo — then put this knowledge to work for you.

6. Newspapers Are Still a Valid Option.

Although readership is shrinking, newspapers are still a valid local advertising option. 

Particularly in smaller markets, newspapers carry more weight with the local audience. 

Older readers in particular continue to rely on newspapers, especially for local info.

But make sure you supplement ad placement in the print version with placement on the newspaper’s own on-line presence.  In 2008, newspapers actually accounted for over one-quarter of all local online advertising!

And consider writing up a press release announcing your company’s opening, refurbishment, website, sale, or upcoming special event — anything that could be seen as “news.”  Get it out to your local papers.  They may not take it, but they might if they need to fill a spot in a hurry.   

7.   Digital Works Locally.

You say you don’t think of interactive or online media as being “local”? 

In fact, local online advertising is expected to grow 6% in 2009, to a total spend of $13.3 Billion.  In a broader sense, local digital media includes things like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and online yellow pages.  These are growing too.

Local search is also a powerful tool, increasingly replacing printed Yellow Pages.  People used to “let their fingers do the walking;” now it’s the mouse!  Local search is when a potential customer uses a search engine to find your kind of business, adding the name of your city or town.  When that happens, you want that customer to see your company’s link — front and center!

8.  Build Your Online Presence — Beyond Your Own Website.

Local search will work more effectively for you if you have your own website — and get it on the first page of search results.

To rise in the search rankings, your site needs to have relevant keywords but not appear “keyword-stuffed” — containing nothing but keywords and no useful knowledge.

A single website is not enough; keywords are not enough.  Search engines also take into account how many websites have links to yours.  This is an indication of how useful and relevant your content is. 

You can build links to your website from your own Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter pages.  This will help you rise in the search rankings.  But it means you need to have a strategic plan for your online presence, and commit resources to implementing it.

9. Build a Relationship.  

Attracting a new customer costs about 5 times as much as keeping an existing one.  To control your customer acquisition costs, therefore, you need to build an emotional connection between your customers and your brand.  (And yes, all companies have a brand, even if they don’t realize it!)

To do this, foster a relationship with your customers outside of the buying interaction. 

Direct mail, email, social media, blogs, and Twitter can all contribute.

10.  Email Marketing Is Your Friend.

Once you build up a solid email list, email marketing is relatively inexpensive and highly targeted.  If done right, you know you are communicating a relevant message to motivated customers who want a relationship with you.  That’s a marketer’s dream!

How do you build your own email list?  Offer a “membership” campaign on your website.  Give something of value exclusively to members (i.e., discount coupon, etc.) in return for their email addresses.  Make sure you respect their privacy and take care in how you use customer contact info — and tell them about your privacy commitment.

• Don’t spam your customers.  Use a “preference center” on your website that will allow customers to tell you how often they want to hear from you, and on what topics.
• Frequency:  Daily; Weekly; Only when there’s a sale? 
• Potential Topics:  Arrival of new merchandise; Monthly newsletter containing tips & how-to advice; When you have an event just for “members;” Only when you’re about to have a sale? 

Then, respect that preference!  Nothing is more annoying to a customer (and therefore destructive of the relationship you’re trying to build) than when they’ve told a company their preferences — and then that company ignores them. 

There you have it:  The Top 10 Things You Need To Know About Local Franchise Marketing.  It isn’t just the Yellow Pages any more!

I am a self-professed magazine fien. I currently subscribe to (gasp) 11 magazines (Real Simple, Runners World, The Week, Glamour, Shape, US Weekly, Women’s Health, Bon Apetite, Outside, Self, and Cooking Light). I pay between $7.99 and $64.95 for each subscription.

Over the past month, I have been amazed at some of the deals that have arrived in my mailbox. It seems that almost all of my subscription fees have been drastically cut. So a few weeks ago when I saw this AdAge article, it didn't really surprise me. A whopping two-thirds of the 344 magazines analyzed have dropped their per-copy subscription prices. Even more interesting – the price choppers are continuing to lose subscribers.

The less money magazines generate from subscribers, the more publishers depend on advertising dollars. Only, as anyone in the advertising world knows, print advertising dollars aren’t as easy to come by as they once were. In addition, the less a reader has to pay to obtain the magazine, the less they may value the magazine (and thereby the advertising brands that they are exposed to). It isn’t clear though, whether a subscription purchased at a drastically reduced cost provides as valuable of a reader for advertisers as a subscription that is actively sought out.

If single-copy purchasers, subscribers AND advertisers are all less willing to ante up and both single-copy sales and subscriptions are down, what should magazines do?  For many, they are turning more attention to their websites. For example, Runners World, Real Simple and Cooking Light have fantastic websites (I know because I have all three bookmarked). I spend more time online than I do reading, watching television, listening to the radio, etc. If your target demographic includes someone like me, turning to local internet marketing would be a good bet.

While I love my magazines, they more often than not fuel my love of the internet - I often "get my chef on" (as my husband calls it) with a recipe I pull from one of my favorite magazine's websites AFTER perusing my coveted magazine collection. With the economy in its current state, affordable, effective local marketing ideas are a necessity, it comes as no surprise that more and more neighborhood businesses are amping up their local advertising efforts. If you are a local business owner and haven't changed your local advertising strategy in ages, take another look at your online options, you might be surprised at who is online and how affordable it is to get in front of them.

On the heels of our recent successful on-time launch of the next version of our Local Marketing Automation platform, I though I would go back and revisit what we have accomplished over the past few months and some of what lead up to this initiative.

From a macro perspective, it might actually be considered almost textbook SaaS (Software as a Service)development: Build and prototype quickly, get customers early, get feedback, drive to early revenue, continue iterating the product features and re-architect the technology in a just-in-time fashion.  Then, of course add in your typical startup constraints - budget limitations, resource constraints, just to spice things up!

Let me first take you back to the dog days of summer in August 08 when we launch what might now be called the beta release of our Local Marketing Automation platform (although we resisted the convention of actually calling it a beta) with our first set of customers.  The application showed immediate value, and our user base grew quickly.  However, by December of 2008, it became obvious that from an operational and scale perspective we had a few issues that might get worse given our current trajectory.  Additionally, aggregated customer support call data indicated a number of recurring themes, in addition to feedback from the field with potential clients showing some leading indicators of potential cracks that might become problematic when our growth track continued.  All of these diverse data points were indicating a need for a larger revolutionary overhaul over the current evolutionary development model.

January 2009: In addition to our standard ongoing iterative development process, we began brainstorming ideas for how the application could be redesigned to make a revolutionary leap forward.  We did this with a user-centric approach, starting at the user interface and worked backwards into more of the technical aspects of the design.  Even though our product falls under the B2B application space, our focus was to designing it for a B2C user from a design and usability perspective.  We wanted to make the application intuitive and usable, without the need for extensive training.  We first looked at other sites that were popular on the web that had related functions and worked well in the consumer world.  We then took these design concepts, mixed them with our domain expertise and applied them to our product.  This first produced a few hand drawn mocks, followed with some more functional screen flows put together in PowerPoint.

Next, we shopped these around to our all teams internally - sales, marketing with a deep focused on the groups that interacted with the app and our customers directly (inside sales, account mgmt, support).  They were our best window to our customers without the time or luxury for extensive market research.  Along with this, we presented the conceptual flows to our current client base.  From here, we moved forward by presenting the concepts to a select set of actual end-user customers identified by our account management team.  Looking back at my files there were at least a dozen major revisions through these prototyping exercises with many many more minor tweaks.

Now that we had a good idea of where we were going, the next step was to engage our creative team, who then gave the life to our wire-frames as they would appear in the real application.  This also served as an exercise in breaking down our interface into named visual components to support a common language when talking with our technical team.  This turned out to be a critical factor in ensuring we could develop the solution at breakneck speed.

So, to give some perspective - we did all of the above over a 2.5 month timeframe through Mid-March as a side project, while we still continuing to do iterative development to enhance the existing product (being extremely careful not to develop things that would likely be thrown away with the upcoming redesign).

In March we started working with our technical team on design to see what the new concepts would mean to the underlying architecture (data and business logic).  It indicated large changes - but for the better.  We would be able to throw out a lot of things and build new structures that would support our customers more effectively.  (In the end 80+% of our data structure and code base would be rebuilt).

In April we started the first of two formal development sprints with stabilization periods between each that would span a total of approximately 12 weeks.  In that periods of time, the product and development teams (with the support of the rest of the company) carried out a Herculean effort of rapid design and development - making constant adjustments as new issues arose.

About 4 weeks into the effort we locked down our release date to June 15.  This was critical to support ongoing sales efforts and work with clients to support their internal planning.  Due to the large number of dependencies and the scope of the change, about 6 weeks in, we had to start managing the overall effort with more of a ‘traditional software project management’ technique to incorporate all of the other pieces required for a release of this magnitude (customer transition & training efforts, outbound communication, cross company testing etc.)  However, at the core we continued to follow agile development principals, and the agile mind-set.

The cut-over was planned on a weekend, to give us the most time to react to any issues with the deployment.  We used almost all of the hours in that weekend to upgrade, convert customer data and validate to ensure a successful go-live on Monday morning.  On Monday June 15 the latest release of our Local Marketing Automation platform went live! … breath.

In retrospect, here is what I would consider to be our 5 key success factors for this redesign:

• Relentless focus on the customer, and letting form drive function
• Domain knowledge backed up with real world experience from the beta allowing us to design/build rapidly and make fast decisions
• Fanatical focus on prioritization to time-box the effort
• A passionate product and engineering team with a ‘lets getr done’ attitude
• An all hands on deck mentality across the company to support the product release where and when needed

Within days of launch, feedback has started rolling in from the our support team and through our customer transition/training webinars being held.  Here is a quote our support team received on day 2:

“I just wanted to say thank you for what you’ve done with the tool.  I had a list of things that I wanted to see changed, and this new version has covered almost all of them.  I really appreciate the changes you’ve made.  It is a lot more user friendly.”

Of course you can never sit on your laurels for very long as constant improvement is a must to stay competitive, but at the end of the day this is really what product development is all about. A satisfied, excited customer.

It’s an idiom the advertising industry has tossed around for years: grab the low hanging fruit.  These are the people already looking for a particular product or service, they know what they want, they’re familiar with an established company, and all they need is a little nudge to get them walking in the door to spend money. 

But what about the high hanging fruit?  The people content with the status quo who aren’t looking to try something new or different.  Appealing to this group is particularly challenging for service companies that must rely on their prospective clients to proactively reach out in order to engage with a new company.  

I’m going to throw myself in the category of the high hanging fruit.  I’m quite positive I’ve stuck with the same handful of companies my entire life that are providing crucial services including tax preparation, financial planning, and insurance.  In order to prompt me to try a new company, I would need to be convinced that what I’ve been doing for the last 10 or so years is not the best option, that it would be worth it to schedule an appointment in my already packed schedule, or that I actually need a new service I’m not currently utilizing.

Many of the service companies actively looking for new clients are running national campaigns that have done well to establish their respective brands as household names.  As an average Jane consumer, I enjoy watching the Aflac duck risk his life on a daily basis, I’m charmed by the Geico gecko, and I think the Fidelity green line is ingenious.  These memorable campaigns are great at keeping their brands top of mind and may be enough to attract the low hanging fruit, but I would argue that a more aggressive approach is sometimes needed in order to attract the consumer base a little further out of reach. 

To bridge the gap between advertisements that I, as a consumer, perceive as sheer entertainment and those that will influence my behavior, these companies need to complement their national campaigns with advertising strategies that deliver a more personalized touch.  Their services need to be presented as tangible and easy to obtain, I need to feel like a qualified potential client, and most importantly, I need to be assured that there is a real person behind the catchy message who wants to meet me and is waiting just down the street to be my new agent, advisor, or consultant. 

People in the high hanging fruit category like me don’t want to call 1-800 numbers and talk to someone across the country who doesn’t know us.  We’re perhaps a little too timid to walk into an office without a friendly invitation, and we might not even realize there is a local branch of a well-known company in our area.  Through local marketing efforts, these national companies can give me a map to their office, a picture of a person to meet, and phone number that will be answered by someone in my same county, let alone continent. 

National companies can equip their local affiliates with the tools and resources they need to complete the challenging puzzle of local advertising.  Witty campaigns are a great start, but co-op programs, locally customized advertising material, and a smart media planning strategy are what it takes to fill in the missing pieces.  These local marketing ideas can transform amusing ads into influential ads that will, (to continue with the allegory), give a tree a good shaking to knock the top fruits from their secure holding and bring them falling into the net below.

• According the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated a ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. 
• Epsilon reports that email drove an average of $.14 in revenue per delivered message.
• In general, email is considered the top-performing tactic from a ROI perspective in a marketers toolkit