Print Ad Builder

 Are you a local advertiser who is trying to figure out the most efficient way to drum up more business?  A few years ago when asked about local marketing, a small business owner may have expressed the kind of frustration this cat is feeling:



It was kind of hard and frustrating, especially with no opposable thumbs.  And, as in the case of a color blind cat, it was difficult to really understand the effectiveness and results of your efforts.  That was then.  Now local store marketing is something a little more akin to this:


You'd think that it would be getting easier, right?  I can reach out to individual consumers with all this new whiz-bang technology, right?  But with all of the fragmentation of publishers, and new complexity that sits between them and the advertiser it can be a pretty daunting task to just understand the landscape, let alone achieve tangible results.  We're talking about agencies, ad servers, media buying platforms, creative optimization, analytics, data suppliers and aggregation, data optimizers, ad exchanges, ad networks, performance analysis, print ad builders, yield optimization, social tools, publisher tools, etc.  How do you make sense of all of these puzzle pieces and get them to work together seamlessly?

At the end of the day you simply want more people to spend more money in your store.  It would be really nice if it were handed to you like this:


Ok, nobody is going to hand you a completely solved marketing solution.  Every business and market is different, there is no perfect one-size-fits-all solution.  But the tools and expertise to help you get there are available.  Check out our white papers and cases studies to see how Balihoo, the premier provider of local marketing software and services, can help you solve your local marketing puzzle so that you can spend more time chasing mice and playing with balls of yarn.  Oops, I got my analogy a little mixed up.

Long before there was the internet, cable or broadcast television, even print, there was out-of-home advertising.  Almost elegant in its simplicity, it's tended to be static, 2 dimensional, and downright polite in its lack of intrusiveness.  In recognition of those features, us media planners have rewarded its contribution to advertising by paying comparatively low rates for your highway billboard and bus bench...a fault that the outdoor advertising industry has somehow spun into a virtue.

Ah, but then it occurred to them to plug in the billboards.  Digital Out of Home (whose acronym gets a second 'O,' robbing us of the pleasure of a D'OH) consists of the Times Square "Spectaculars" pictured above and the LED billboards on the side of the highway, but also includes the closed-loop TV screen you see in your local coffee shop, pharmacy, and super market. 

It's also one of those few media that has continued rapid acceleration in the face of the past few years' economics.  Leading U.S. DOOH network, Adcentricity, recently published it's 2010 Outlook white-paper, and sees revenues jumping from $3B U.S. this year to $4.5B by 2013, an enviable growth curve in a sluggish economy.

So why are those of us charged with allocating your advertising media dollars flocking to this emerging media?  Here are a few good reasons: 

• Reach: While it pales in comparison to the nearly half-million billboards that line America's highways (sigh), DOOH now exceeds 150k screens nation-wide, and reaches 2/3rds of the population.
• Location, Location, Location: Only 150k screens? Yes, but many of those are in places where we're better able to distinguish the audience's mindset.  At the gym?  Perhaps you'd like a sports drink?  At the doctors?  You might like some aspirin.
• Interactivity: Remember that part about OOH being static?  So much for that.  DOOH's pictures are not only moving, but interactive.  As dated as it is, this brilliant example from Nike through agency R/GA still gets me excited about the potential of a huge glowing wall.

What's this have to do with you and your local marketing efforts?  I'd like to tell you we'll be recommending a giant interactive billboard in Time Square with every media plan, but let's take this one step at a time.  DOOH is a great local advertising tool, allowing you to select from multiple venues, and, unlike broadcast, allows you to choose a relatively precise geographic footprint for your ads.  Speaking of which, even if you don't have a 90 foot electronic billboard loaded in our ad builder software, we can work with your existing television and OOH creative to find new and more select audiences.

If you'd like to talk about the future of what local DOOH can do for you and you're one of our co-op or franchise marketing partners, check out how Balihoo can help with your local media planning.  If you're still looking for a Local Marketing Automation solution, make sure to check out our demo.

Being in the dental implant marketing space, we at Balihoo are often asked how to gain more qualified leads in local advertising. There are many consumer barriers to overcome with dental implant marketing. How much will this cost? Is it painful? Will it take a long time before I have functioning teeth?

These questions can be answered in a free-to-the-public education seminar. Now the doctor has the ability to speak in great detail to a captive audience of consumers, and they can ask questions in a comfortable setting where they are surrounded by people who also suffer from the discomfort of missing teeth.

Many dental clinicians - specialists in particular - run education seminars for general dentists to open a channel of patient referrals for dental implant procedures. These prospecting patients call the implant specialist's practice with a fairly knowledgeable understanding of the procedures available, obstacles and costs. The office staff is used to this "qualified" lead. Now try running a strong :30 second TV campaign like we do for many of our clients, and your staff is suddenly hit with an influx of prospecting consumers who have many questions about the exciting procedure they saw marketed while watching Oprah. Simply put, a :30 second TV spot cannot qualify a dental implant patient on its own.

In our integrated marketing plans, we often include such an education seminar in the annual strategy. The one medium that has proven most successful is...drum roll please...newspaper ROP. This "dying" medium is still highly read by our target demographic in most markets. My anecdotally-based theory is that consumers are value or event-shopping newspaper's advertisements. They can physically hold onto the paper, read your ad in detail and cut it out and post it on the fridge to remind them of the date.

One of our local clients held a patient education seminar last week. Running an integrated approach of newspaper, network TV and online advertising, they had a great turnout of 14 consumers. Nine of them scheduled personal consultations that evening. Needless to say, that client found their answer in seeking more qualified leads.

Download our white paper here to learn the three cardinal rules of dental marketing.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

"It's not about elections, sanctions, proliferations, he-said, she-said, my land, your land, no man's land; it's not about the stock market, black market, orange alerts, green homes, hope, change, fear or loathing; it's not about Communism, Socialism or Capitalism, war or peace, love or hate...this is about the one month every four years when we all agree on one thing: 32 nations, one world watching; 2010 FIFA World Cup."

Watch ESPN's 2010 FIFA World Cup "United" television commercial here:



You know that moment when you find yourself lazily flipping channels on TV, lacking inspiration to settle on a program when you find yourself pause on a commercial. Something about it - the music, the vibrant imagery, the inspiration of the voice talent - grabs your attention. You want to be a part of that brand - buy their product, join their event, watch their program. Watching ESPN's "United" commercial for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, I felt goosebumps spread across my body. I was ready to buy tickets to South Africa just to stand outside the stadium.

In our dental marketing efforts with Nobel Biocare partner clinicians, we often talk about telling a story. Every advertiser has a story. Dental implants are no exception. The dental professionals with whom we work talk passionately about the life-changing effects of the fixed prosthetics they offer patients. We provide a number of creative themes that tell the story of renewed confidence, restored comfort and enjoyment of foods forbidden to denture-wearers, which all leads to feeling younger, feeling good about yourself and embracing age.

Sure, something like direct TV begs for infomercial-style product marketing. We all remember Billy Mays fondly as the infomercial king of such products as OxiClean and Liquid Diamond. Our dentist clients often ask about testimonial-style commercials or demonstrations of how dental implants are placed, however, we have had the best return on investment from our :30 second spots that tell a story. The consumer watches the TV and feels a connection - this doctor understands my issue and has a solution.

Do you run a dental implant practice and want to learn how to tell a story with your brand? Contact one of our consultants to learn about our local marketing ideas.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their brand identity and customize the messaging.)

Everyone knows the old adage, You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours. This colloquialism rings true for many of the dental specialists who engage with us in direct-to-consumer local advertising of dental implants. These specialists want to maintain their General Practioner (GP) referrals that have fueled a majority of their business over the years, but they fear advertising will appear to "skirt around" their GPs. What is the solution? I give you the reverse referral.

The reverse referral works such that a specialist begins marketing to the local consumer base through our integrated media plan. They begin drawing new patients from the local market who have not seen a general dentist in years and sometimes decades (typically due to dental phobia). These patients often have several missing teeth or are fully edentulous. They are therefore great candidates for the Nobel Biocare All-on-4 or related procedures. Our specialists then collaborate with GPs to send the patient to their practice for restoration of the fixed prosthetics. Everyone wins.

One such oral surgeon specialist who uses our local advertising platform held a dinner for his top 20 GP referrals to openly announce his advertising efforts and product launch marketing of the All-on-4 procedure. A few months passed when he sent an advertising-driven All-on-4 case to a GP in his building for restoration. This GP had never seen an All-on-4 case and was not well versed on the topic before the surgeon's dinner. This GP has since sent the oral surgeon four patients who accepted treatment for the All-on-4. You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours.

Download our white paper here to learn the three cardinal rules of dental marketing.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

In addition to ad builder software, local advertising, and co-op marketing, Balihoo folks share a passion for the great outdoors.  Likewise, a commitment to the environment is core to Balihoo culture.

Here are a few of our Earth-friendly practices:

1. Reduce: No employee is without a glass, metal, or recyclable plastic water bottle, and a fully-stocked kitchen ensures that disposable utensils are a rarity.
2. Reuse: Following the remodel of our current office space in 2009, Balihoo received a Building Excellence Award for our "Green Upgrade."  Original wood paneling, electric wiring, 2" x 4"s, doors, and more were re-purposed throughout the office to limit waste.
3. Recycle: Several months of insistence finally prompted our building to implement a recycling program, to which we are the largest contributor.
4. Walk and ride: A central downtown location affords Balihoo folk the luxury of walking most everywhere: to lunch, to run errands, to meet clients, to grab supplies, and to stake out a happy hour table.  Those who live nearby are rewarded for exchanging their parking passes for a spot on the bike racks.
5. Eat local: No drive-thru bags here.  Balihoo employees are loyal patrons of restaurants, grocers, and farmers markets that offer locally grown products.
6. Take the bus: Don't let two dozen of your closest friends drive 175 miles to the nearest casino; charter a bus and ride together.  Alex and Brian can elaborate.

*Please consider the environment before you print this awesome blog post.

I recently had a client tell me that we have the Bentley of Ad Builder software and offer it at Volvo pricing. I thought, "How nice to be regarded as such a great value." I began to think about what made our Balihoo Solution fit this analogy. Is it the world class print ad builder itself or is the pieces of the solution that surround it? Is it the focus on local marketing automation or the co-op marketing solution that make it great? Does the local media buying bring more value to the client or is it the one-stop-shop platform with over 17 integrated media vehicles that really meets the client's needs?

I eventually arrived at a conclusion. It is all of the pieces of the Balihoo Solution that make it great. Though we may not have the heritage of Bentley as of yet, we share two pivotal characteristics that drive our brands. Passion and dedication. We both embrace modern technology while ensuring commitment to ambitions of quality and engineering. Many different elements are combined to produce strength of function and performance in a product that upholds that standard. Every day an entire team focuses to build on that brand and product to make it better. Trying to be both revolutionary and evolutionary in a time when value is important and your commitment to the valued customer is even more important. If we can continue to deliver a quality product that meets and exceeds clients' needs, we will be successful for a long time.

Here at Balihoo, we work with several clients whose local advertising strategies are heavily print-focused.  When deploying our solution for a new client, Balihoo's crack design team goes to great lengths to ensure that our print ad builder incorporates the appropriate fonts for the brand we're servicing.  Though this process can be laborious, it speaks to the core of our offering as a business; fonts are a critical brand component, one that sets the tone for a company's local advertising efforts.

It's no accident that we choose Cambria for business reports and Lucida Calligraphy for Christmas cards.  Like any creative element, fonts provide context for our messages; they give your written voice the timbre that readers "hear" as they process your message.  Bold, blocky letters sound aggressive; round, uneven letters sound youthful; ornate, elongated letters sound luxurious. 

Think of your font as the theme song in the background of your opening scene print ad.

Given this importance, you can imagine my dismay when a prior blog post was somehow published in a clunky, disagreeable Calibri.  I personally prefer a more subtle Arial, but would settle for a classic Times New Roman.  When limited patience and knowledge of the blog platform prevented me from quickly making a change, I lost sight of my goal and broke the cardinal rule of messaging: I shrugged my shoulders and sent it into the world, knowing it didn't quite reflect what I hoped to communicate.

The devil is in the details, and this is overwhelmingly true for a local advertiser.  Your words inherently invite scrutiny - not just what they say, but when, where, why, and how they're said.  For a franchise organization seeking national consistency, a state-of-the-art print ad builder ensures that every detail is communicated exactly as you intend. 

Your font is one subtle detail of many that create and preserve your brand.  Balihoo's ad builder software and professional support ensure that the message delivered is the message intended. 

Don't let your Courier degrade into Wingdings.  Contact us for a consultation.

Love them or hate them, the Paris Hiltons of reality TV - famous for having a famous name - can teach us something about branding. Sure, they are clogging our news racks and cable networks with their ridiculous drama, but we must give them credit for staying top-of-mind and creating a recognizable brand. And when I say "brand," I mean face. For these celebrities in the business of being famous, their faces are their brand identity.

Advertising Age commented on how the E! network created stars from scratch with "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" in a February story: "E!'s highest-rated show in network history attracted 4 million viewers a week in its fourth season. It also banked $18.4 million in measured-ad spending during the first 11 months of 2009."

For many of the dental surgeons for whom we plan local advertising and perform local media buying, their name is their brand. Some dental clinicians feel uncomfortable with putting their own face on an advertisement, which is understandable. But they need to build brand awareness with some sort of consistency, like their logo and tag line.

Few dental clinicians who use our local advertising services understand the importance of branding in their media campaigns. They want to run advertisements that make the phone ring. Again, understandable. However, if we can learn anything from the Kardashians, it's that branding efforts provide the long-term benefits of name-awareness where lead gen can be short-sighted.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

Last year we attended our first IFA Convention without an idea of really what to expect.  We were still fairly new into the market with our franchise marketing software and were still trying to explain exactly what Local Marketing Automation was. 

I've been to a lot of tradeshows in my day, but I have to say that the IFA show was probably in the top-3 I've ever attended.  The biggest difference I found was the engagement-level of the attendees.  The show floor was incredibly active with franchisors of all sizes actively looking for solutions.  In my industry in particular, I was surprised by the amount of companies looking for ad builder software - particularly a print ad builder.  Social media marketing was also a hot topic. 

This year, we expect the show to be better than ever.  It starts Feb 5 in San Antonio and we're looking forward to it!  Are you going to be there?  Let's catch up at the show, find us in booth # 627.

Premature optimization is a topic that most software developers have heard about, but I've recently been thinking about how applicable it is to other disciplines.  I'm not going to try and explain the connection to your line of work - as a practitioner in your own field you are best suited to do that yourself.  I'll just toss a few words at you to get you thinking about it.

A long time ago (in computer industry years) Donald Knuth warned that "premature optimization is the root of all evil".  Software optimization is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources.  Some lazy programmers use this statement as their maxim to justify writing slow, resource hogging code that never gets improved until someone else does it for them (usually after they have moved on to another project or company).  They entirely missed (or ignored) the point.

Optimization itself is not evil - doing it too early is what gets us in trouble.  If you haven't yet proven the relevance, usefulness, correctness or marketability of your application - you should be developing it in prototype mode until those things have been confirmed.  Most people would be surprised at how much code gets tossed out or at least heavily refactored as a product matures.  The first iteration is always a prototype, wether you are willing to admit that or not.  If your software team isn't tossing out code then I guaruntee that you have a lot of nasty legacy code and your product is evolving about as slowly as a fossil.

I used to work for a guy that was so hung up on performance and memory optimization that he was willing to sacrifice correctness and maintainability in order to eek out a couple more milliseconds and bytes of savings.  I don't think he conciously decided that those extra tidbits were worth messing up one thousandth of a penny in a treasury bond pricing model (which is a big deal when your talking about many large transactions).  He was just so focused on performance that everything else (correctness, maintainability, time to market) became secondary.  He was too proud of his code's performance to see the obvious flaws.
Franchise Marketing - Channel marketing software - Local internet Marketing
This principle is magnified at a startup.  You don't have the time, human resources or capital to try and perfect a product or feature that has never been tested in the market.  You have to learn to identify "good enough (for now)".  You have to get it in front of real users who really use it - or at least figure out why they refuse to us it.  For example, our print ad builder has been through countless iterations.  The first version wasn't too pretty, fast, or even very well thought through.  The fact that it kicks the tail of every other local marketing platform out there is because we were willing to admit that we wouldn't get it right the first time.  We have relentlessly refactored and modified it.

Think about how this principle applies to you and feel free to shoot me some comments (especially if you disagree with me on any of my points).

If you have a franchise marketing solution or run a co-op advertising program, chances are that you also use some sort of ad builder software to manage the customization of your creative assets for local advertising and marketing. 

Is your ad builder software as effective as it should be?  Here are 4 questions to ask yourself and your business to evaluate your ad builder software:

1. What is your adoption rate?  That is, of your affiliates, what percentage have accessed and used the ad builder software in the last 3 months?  If it's less than 50%, you have a fundamental problem. 

2.  How many mediums does your software address?  If you just have a print ad builder solution, you're leaving your affiliates on their own to manage other mediums, which significantly decreases the likelihood they'll use your one-medium solution.  Push for a cross-medium solution. 

3.  Is it easy to use?  This is a bit objective, but there's a simple litmus test here.  Grab a co-worker, friend, spouse or anyone who is not a marketing professional and ask them to use the tool to customize an ad or in-store piece.  If it takes them more than 5 minutes from start to finish, you need to work on the usability of your solution.

4. Is it ONLY ad builder software?  Or, are using the opportunity to help your affiliates be successful locally by providing a true local store marketing solution?  Providing just a simple tool is not the answer, you need to deliver end-to-end development and implementation of local marketing ideas.  Also, it's critical that you deliver local marketing strategy to help the affiliates be successful.  Marketing software tools are valuable, but without the applied local marketing strategy, they are useless. 

Certainly this list is not comprehensive.  However, I strongly believe that if you answer these questions honestly, and modify your program based on the answers, you'll end up with a solution that is more effective for both you and your affiliates. 

I spent part of today putting some slides together around our print ad builder functionality and I thought it would make sense to share some of my thoughts here. 

Although our ad builder software works across all mediums, many of the customers we work with come to us with a need for a print ad builder. 

The below is a basic example of our print ad builder in action.  In this example, the manufacturer (in this case Columbia) is allowing the retailer to change a fairly wide variety of variables for this specific ad.  The interesting thing here is that the manufacturer can drive a fullly brand-compliant ad to the local retailer that they can customize for their needs.  When the reseller selects the product they want to promote, the headline, background, product details and copy all automatically generate.  Plus, the retailers logo and contact information is automatically inserted.  This makes it quick and easy for the local reseller to put together marketing materials to support any given product.   

To take this to another level, the manufacturer could even intetgrate their co-op advertising program into this print ad builder.  For example, the above template could be co-opped at 50% for the local reseller.  However, a second template that gives more real estate to the local reseller could be co-opped at 25%.  This gives the local reseller the flexibility to promote the products they feel are most applicable to their market, however they are incented by the manufacturer at a varying level based on the product focus. 

As a national brand, as you look to implement a print ad builder, make sure you consider how template flexibility impacts your overall local marketing solution. 

Sales promotion marketing, using co-op advertising funds, has typically been a very promotional-based type activity.  The brand builds the ad, in which the retailer plays a minor role, then a print ad builder is used to customize it for the retailer. 

However, as suggested by this Ad Age article, Walmart is taking a unique spin on these ads.  They're focused more on the product itself, with the retailer taking the back seat in terms of visibility.  It suggests that because Walmart has established a positioning of low-price leader, they're able to run these more brand-based (or product based) ads without the need for a heave dose of sales promotion marketing messaging. 

While interesting in and of itself as a general trend, I think it's important for product manufacturers to consider how this could play out in their co-op advertising programs.  Specifically, manufacturers need to consider the role their creative and creative templates play given this information.

Our recommendation to clients of our co-op marketing solution is that they need to develop creative templates that allow for a spectrum.  At a very basic level you can create two versions of your product ad - one where the retailer plays a starring role and one where the retailer plays a minor role.  Then, fund these templates at different levels (for example, 25% co-op for one version and 50% co-op for the other).  Approaching it in this fashion allows the retailer to implement their sales promotion marketing efforts in the manner the best suits them and they're rebated at a level that is comfortable to the product manufacturer. 

Of course, this approach assumes that you have a print ad builder (or other mediums) implemented in your co-op advertising program that can manage this level of specificity.  Balihoo's channel marketing software can handle that, I hope yours can too.   

 

Tags:  Channel Marketing Software, Co-op Advertising, Co-op Marketing Software, Co-op Marketing Solution, CRM Marketing Automation, Retail Marketing, Sales Promotion Marketing, Trade Promotion Marketing

Happy to report that we made some good progress with updating many of our materials this month. We've recently moved to a new logo and slightly different color scheme and that was the impetus for the revise, but it's great to dig into all your old collateral and realize how much your strategy and thinking has changed since the last revision. Some of the key updates we've made over the last week include:

• New flash demo of our Local Marketing Automation solution
• New Balihoo Datasheet
• New web content addressing the medium-specifics component of our solution:
  • Direct Mail Ad Builder Software
  • POP/In-store materials solution
  • Print Ad Builder
  • Television Ad Builder Software
  • Radio Ad Builder
  • Online Display Ad Builder
  • Search Pay Per Click solution
  • Email Marketing solution

It's an exciting time here at Balihoo and we continue to develop materials that help to explain the value we're delivering to current and future clients. Would love to hear any thoughts you have on any of these materials!