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In part 1 of this blog we look at the benefits of developing a competitive USP.

How to develop a competitive USP

Step 1a) Review business processes and key product and service attributes
This process is best done with the help of someone external to the business that can provide objective feedback. As a business owner or manager you can become so immersed in the business that it is often difficult to remove emotive opinions and you may suffer from blinkered perception.

Remember that you are trying to see your business offer from the customer’s point of view. What are the benefits they will receive from your company? What is in it for them – why should they care?

Not all businesses start with the customer in mind. Manufacturing based businesses can be very focused on the innovation and product development process. They can develop a new product because of a technology or process breakthrough rather than a direct customer requirement. The marketing and sales function is then tasked with trying to tease out the benefits and figure out how to sell the new offer.

Once you have defined the key benefits of your product or service offer then you can start to compare them with your competitors.

Step 1b) Review competitor businesses
Use the internet to review your competitors and other comparable businesses. Look for information about how the companies position themselves and how they promote their key benefits. How do they talk about their businesses? Look at things like tone of voice and writing style. What products and services are offered and what are their specialism’s?

Throughout the competitor review process you are focusing on two things; A) you are trying to understand the specific details of each individual competing business; B) you are trying to map out the industry or sector that you operate in and where your business is positioned relatively. These two pieces of information will help you determine what you need to say about your business to be different and how much competition you really have.

The business landscape is always changing, so the snapshot you are creating can become obsolete overnight. It pays to review your market at least once a year to see how it is developing. In technically fast moving markets you may have to build a continuous review process into your business to try and predict change and keep your business competitive.

Step 2) Outline clear competitive advantages
Once you have completed comprehensive competitor research and understand the comparative key benefits of your businesses’ product or service offer this stage should be relatively easy. Start creating a list of key aspects about your business that deliver customer benefits which are unique to you, which will establish you as a preferential supplier. This list of benefits will then become the foundation of your USP statement.

Step 3) Develop initial USP statement
You can begin to capture these on paper once you are confident you understand the unique elements of your business. A consideration when developing your USP is the application or when/where it will be used. You will often be required to list your business in directories or supplier lists, so having a great USP that is 30 to 40 words is very useful. The USP can be developed from a core version into several different length variations for when you have greater space to describe your business. Be mindful that you do not want to dilute the core powerful message of your statement by stretching it out too much.

When creating your USP statement you need to define the benefit statement in terms of the customer. Remember it is about your customer not your business – Use “you” and not “I” or “we”.

At Big Ed’s shoes we provide the biggest range of shoes in the southern hemisphere.

At Big Ed’s I know you will go crazy over the greatest range of shoes in Australasia.

At Big Ed’s you will find the biggest range of shoes in Australasia.
 

Following your initial analysis you could find that your offer is not unique or is at risk of being duplicated. At this point you may wish to go back to the drawing board to think about how to create new benefits or make your offer different. If your business model involves a discounting strategy or a volume based strategy, then differentiation may not be such a big issue as long as you can maintain your market

share.

Step 4) Review and amend
You can now compare your new USP against other competitor’s statements to see how it stands up. It is a good idea to get a range of opinions on your new draft USP. Try to get some neutral opinions as well as those from friendly customers and key staff. Ask them if this statement represents what your business offers its customers and does it capture all the key benefits you offer.

When creating a future orientated positioning statement which portrays your business as you would like to see it in the future, there may well be a shortfall in how people currently perceive the business. This practical difference in perception can be used to help define the actions required to close the gap between your future positioning and the current position.

Step 5) Finalise USP and positioning
Refine your statement and when you have finished pat yourself on the back as you have achieved what many small businesses struggle to do.

As a result of this process you will have:
1. Greater awareness of your market place
2. More knowledge of who your competitors are
3. Greater understanding of
-Your strengths and weaknesses
-What makes your business different
-Your key marketing and sales messages
4. Greater consistency in your marketing and sales communications
 
You will now need to start to planning your promotional activity and set your marketing plans for the coming year.
 
For further support in developing your USP or to develop an effective marketing programme contact us.
 
 

Sound planning is an important part of any marketing activity whether you are a small business or a large one. The adage “fail to plan – plan to fail” holds true for most situations. Good planning also removes most of the surprises when it comes to the execution phase of your campaign.

When you have a sales or customer support element to your operation it makes sense to consider the down stream implications for those staff when planning your marketing activity. Possible considerations include providing relevant sales support material or relevant campaign information and FAQs so the customer support team can deal with any likely issues.

Top 5 campaign points to remember:
1) Understand what your key objectives are
2) Remember to measure the results against your set objectives
3) Make sure there is enough lead time to do the job properly
4) Think through the possible campaign outcomes and implications
5) Be realistic about your expectations for the campaign
 
Planning

Time is always a precious commodity for managers and owners of an SME. Resources are often over stretched and the available time for planning and preparation of marketing and sales promotion is in short supply. This resource issue can lead to poor planning and preparation and potential promotional tunnel vision when choosing marketing methods.

Some of the key steps in planning a Direct Marketing campaign:
1 – Create a plan & calendar specific to your business activity
2 – Set up the process for your ongoing campaign
3 – Review your customer demographics
4 – Segment your customer data
5 – Develop your copy and creative style
6 – Development your key messaging
7 – Deploy your email or Direct Mail
8 – Review your campaign statistics and refine activity
 
Measurement

Being able to measure your success can be as important as achieving the goal itself. Setting up sound measurement means that you can make decisions about resourcing, procedures and investment based on some hard numbers. If you don’t measure then you’re most likely proceeding on a gut feeling rather than actual results.

Knowing what success looks like is a key step in the process of planning and choosing the right marketing methods. Different types of marketing methods are better suited to achieving certain types of results. The identification of success is an obvious concept but it is quite often poorly executed.

Remember your campaign objectives should be SMACO – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Clear and Ownable
Examples of this are:
Generate x number of sales leads
Increase number of sales calls by x% in y months
Raise customer awareness from x% to y%
 

For further information on campaign planning and measurement or to develop an effective marketing capability contact us.

Why should marketing be a key consideration for your business now? In the current economic climate it can be easy to justify holding the marketing purse strings tighter. However a downturn can be a great opportunity to give your competitors the slip and establish your business dominance for the future.

During a downturn customer retention is as critical as prospecting. Customers can be more sensitive to price promotions and may leave their existing brands for perceived value provided by a competing company, whether it is based on price or perceived features. Reassuring your customers of the value they receive from your company can be key to retaining your existing business.

In growth periods every company is likely to be advertising and promoting their products and services heavily. This increased spending leads to promotional saturation which can make it much harder and more expensive for you to obtain promotional cut through and impact. Therefore while others are currently holding back, promoting your business now is an easy way to obtain a competitive advantage.

Remember customers haven’t disappeared altogether. They may be buying differently but they are still there. Companies that continue to promote themselves are much more likely to remain in the customer’s consciousness and are best placed to offer their products and services in the future.

 
Find out how we can add value to your marketing efforts – see our website.
 
 

In the current economic climate it’s no surprise that Email marketing is riding a wave of popularity. The greater accessibility to Email campaign tools and contact data has meant SME’s have actively adopted this style of Direct Marketing. In fact people are so taken with Email as the panacea for business growth that Emails older cousin Direct Mail has taken a back seat.

Some people no longer view Direct Mail as a viable option. The general lack of understanding about the effectiveness of Direct Mail has resulted in its relegation to the marketer’s closet.

 
Should we retire Direct Mail as a thing of the past?
 

Research shows that Email and Direct Mail are actually effective in quite different ways, complementing each other when deployed together. Even though many businesses are starting to rely completely on Email as their preferred direct marketing tool, Direct Mail is still unbeatable for certain types of communication.

We tend to forget that Direct Mail still provides a direct route to the customer’s home or work place. When other media types are suffering from a proliferation of channel choice/saturation, fatigue and a lower share of customer attention there is still only one letter box.

Comparing Direct Mail and Email

The results above indicate that your communication effectiveness may be reduced by using only one channel in isolation. Combining both channels together seems to have obvious advantages. Royal Mail has spent considerable effort looking at the use of Direct Mail with other media types and has some great research available.

Are you looking to develop an effective Direct Marketing capability to engage new customers or maintain existing customer relationships? For a tailored made solution contact us.

The ability to create effective marketing collateral can be greatly improved with the knowledge of how we scan and perceive typography and copy. Making the right choice of type face, use of colour and layout is a key step to success.
In this post we again take a look at eye tracking research by Professor Siegfried Vogele of the Institute for Direct Marketing in Munich. To see our previous post on eye tracking and the use of imagery view here.

Typeface readability

Choose your type face wisely so that it enhances the readability and comprehension levels of your collateral or direct marketing piece.

Font communication

The choice of font styles can make a big difference to how people perceive your service offering. Create trust in a dentist’s abilities with a formal style while a relaxed font can create the perception of freshness.

Put these two styles in reverse and you get a completely different opinion of the product and service offering. Would you put your trust in this dentist?

Reversing out

When choosing whether to reverse out your body copy consider the following comprehension levels before using colour and moving away from black on white.

Content layout

Here are some basic tips to remember about visual priority when developing your layout and content structure.

Remember that:
- Short paragraphs over longer paragraphs
- Short words or lines over long words or lines
- Copy inside a border over open text
- Numbers over words

Avoid lines shorter than 20 characters because reading involves vigorous eye movement.
Avoid lines longer than 52 characters because readers will be turned off.

Colin Wheildon’s US research shows that copy which is left and right justified has a comprehension level of 67% while just 38% for left justified and 10% for right justified.

Effective letters for direct marketing

Research by Vogele into how we automatically filter the information in a letter can provide us with a much greater understanding into which elements are viewed first and how to avoid the waste paper basket. You can view this research here

Body copy

Using colour in body copy can have a real negative impact on your readability and comprehension. Give consideration to this when developing you materials.

The use of colour in headlines can also impact on the body copy readability and comprehension rates.

By combining this understanding of typography and copy style with effective use of imagery you have the ability to compete against your rivals and get your message across.

Find out how we can add value to your marketing efforts – visit our website.
 

For additional information on improving your typography for the web, visit Net Tuts+ 6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography

 
 
Read the rest of this entry »

The art of effective online and offline communication has benefited greatly from eye tracking research. The study of how the human eye registers and perceives visual communications has delivered some fascinating insights, especially on how we automatically filter the information. Research by Professor Siegfried Vogele of the Institute for Direct Marketing in Munich revealed that 100% of the individuals tested applied a common method of visual scanning. Vogele’s findings validated that a consumer’s focus could be affected by the placement of imagery and graphic elements. The results of this study have great implications for the design of effective marketing communication.

In my experience the process of commissioning new marketing materials through a creative agency seldom involves reference to valuable eye tracking research. How many designers out there are aware of Vogele’s research when they produce a design layout for a flyer, brochure, website or direct mail piece?

Some of the research findings:

In the case of a single page the human eye tracks top left to bottom right.

 
The hot spots where the eye will pay most attention are depicted by the orange circles.

 
With a double page the eye tracks top right to bottom right, via the centre of left.

 
The hot spots on a double page with a cold spot on the centre left.

 
To avoid cold spots use an attention grabber on the far centre left, this drags the eye over more of the page.

 
Locating an attention grabber in the wrong area can risk creating dead space.

 
Attract the readers attention using the following results:
Circles are better than squares.

 
80% of people will look at a vertical shape before a horizontal.

 
A colour image is more effective than black and white.

 
A group image is more effective than an individual.

 
A larger image is more effective than a small image.

 
Eye contact is more effective than everything else.

When cut-through is paramount in today’s information overloaded society – key research such as this has a big role to play when creating design concepts and layout that have maximum impact. Stay tuned for my next post where I cover typography and copy styles and its importance in creating effective marketing materials.

 
Find out how we can add value to your marketing efforts – check out our website.

Bridging the divide can deliver a range of benefits, potentially leading to innovation in business practices. Greater access to customer insights and an engaged sales force are just a two reasons for marketing and sales to work closely together (view the preceding blog).

When developing sales collateral and support materials the opportunity to bring the sales force into the design loop will have many benefits. Their buy-in and input into a project will give you greater certainty of market application and effectiveness. To develop effective support material you should consider:

•    Riding shot gun with a sales person to gain an understanding of their personal selling situation

•    Allowing sales to see that you are genuinely interested in their success

•    Creating user-centric sales collateral that is developed to fit the selling conditions

•    Gaining early political support
 
Empathy

Generating empathy for each others issues is a great starting point. Put your traditional prejudices aside as after-all everyone is in the same boat. With sales behind your marketing programme from the outset you can benefit. The sales team can be a great advocate for your efforts and provide amazing customer insights to further improve your campaigns.

 
Quality not quantity

It is amazing how many organisations are poor at launching promotions into the sales function and providing adequate support. Some companies seem not to have the time or budget to do it effectively. In some cases the marketing calendar is just too full, allowing marketing to use volume as a measure of success. It takes confidence to be able to stand your ground and fight the case that less is more.

Finally remember that it doesn’t matter how good the creative idea is and how well the concept has been developed, you must be able to deliver the message the final campaign mile and overcome the last sales hurdle.

 
We will help you deliver a successful sales campaign that gets results. – see our website.
 

The sales and marketing divide is often blamed for poor campaign performance and missed revenue targets. The inability of the two business functions to see eye to eye and work collaboratively can be a paralysing factor for any company. There are many external and internal factors that have an impact on a company’s culture and business practices. Identifying key issues at the source of the problem can be a difficult exercise. By rationalising these issues into two main concepts; perspective and process we can hopefully start to uncover some insights.

Perspective

An age old mistrust of the marketing function combined with internal political constraints can lead sales to believe that marketing does not always have their best interest at heart. Sales often view marketing expenditure as a waste of hard earned revenue, which is ineffective at supporting the individual salesperson. While marketing’s perception is that sales does not always see the big picture or understand the issues of resourcing and multiple commitments.

Marketing’s business view can be conditioned by high level reporting and a focus on the big picture. Their perspective is often shaped by market segmentation and how the markets are split operationally. It can be very difficult for marketing to get reporting at an individual customer level especially in very large markets. While marketing is looking at the big picture the sales view is an individual’s perspective. They have a personal relationship with the customer and may have a “what’s in it for me” attitude to your promotional activity.

The campaign

Sales can often feel unsupported as a result of poorly integrated marketing campaigns. Top-line branding or promotional activity is not always translated effectively into sales collateral. I have seen this in a number of cases within the corporate campaign delivery process. Sales collateral doesn’t win shiny awards, can be a low billable project and is often a low priority on a big agency’s list. When the budget is running dry there is generally little left for menial things like sales collateral.

Even though it is possible for a promotional campaign to be aimed at the level of an individual sales person (I have delivered one myself in the past), it is a very unlikely scenario. As a rule a campaign of this nature requires a supporting revenue model to warrant it.

Measurement

As much as reporting shapes your operational view, measurement can shape your actions. Sales and marketing aren’t necessarily aiming for the same business targets and therefore can have very different agendas. Sales are focused on their individual revenue numbers and growth of their individual accounts. Sales people are keenly aware of whether they are on target to meet budget numbers and are sometimes less concerned with the collective results.

Marketing’s focus is on the collective results of a campaign and they are often looking at combined sales results or market trends. After campaign execution they may have even moved straight on to the next campaign, trying to plan for the coming calendar and are preoccupied with short lead times. Some marketing departments can be measured on through-put and have such a full yearly promotional plan that there is literally no time to review the current or previous activity. It’s a case of quantity not quality.

Bridging the divide
So how can we overcome some of the issues of differing perspectives and business processes that help to polarise the sales and marketing view?

To bridge the divide see the following blog.

NB. My comments are made from the context of the individual sales person. Even though sales managers and senior sales staff have a market overview it’s still the individual sales person who has the customer interaction and ultimately decides how to apply promotional concepts.

 
Find out how we can add value to your marketing efforts – check out our website.
 

Creating an engaging direct mail campaign that delivers results should be a straight forward concept. Engagement many will argue is driven by great creative that is well executed. However others claim that quality customer data is the bedrock of a successful campaign. Logically you might conclude that both the creative and targeting data are equally important.

Another way of determining what creates a successful campaign is by using the direct mail concept of the three Rs. This approach is supported by Royal Mail as part of their mailing best practice. They conclude that addressing each of the three Rs is essential for creating an effective direct mail campaign.

RELEVANCE  emotional, creative and pragmatic
RESPECT        inherently acknowledging recipient’s intelligence and taste
REWARD        not necessarily tangible but inherent pleasure of receiving, opening & reading

Royal Mail also claims that any direct mail piece that doesn’t conform to the three R’s is likely to be rejected by the receiver.
 

So let’s take the concept of relevance and consider it in the process of campaign development, especially in the case of creative output and the management of targeting data. If you task an advertising agency to develop a direct mail campaign their activities will broadly fall into the following areas:

Campaign development timing

Planning
————-Creative Development
————-Data or media selections
——————————————–Print and Production
————————————————————————Despatch

This development process hides a potentially large thorn. Anecdotal research on the time spent on each campaign element suggests that relevancy is perceived less important than you might think. Finding and choosing the right target audience, developing great messaging and integrating a well timed campaign seem like reasonable priorities of a campaign.

 
Time spent—————————————————————————————>

Now I’m not suggesting creative is not important and is not critical to engagement, I am however indicating that there is an imbalance in the development process. In reality the time spent on creative is likely to be the highest out of all the elements.

 
Time spent—————————————————————————————>

So we may have some pretty amazing creative work coming out of this campaign with clever execution of the theme. But how relevant will it be to the receiving audience and how many relevant people will make up the target list in the first place. Was there enough time spent profiling the customer and creating customer data insights?

Now obviously data is less sexy than wowing creative and it won’t necessarily win marketing awards. But without a real focus on getting a great target list together, the first R of the three is going to be dealt a hefty blow. More often than not customer Respect will also be effected to as the receiver is left wondering why you are offering them an irrelevant product or service, adding to the perception that ‘junk mail’ is alive and well.

It’s worth considering the following the next time you are planning a direct mail campaign and engage an agency to deliver a cost effective result. That maintaining focus on the overall relevancy of your campaign output should not take second place to the creative hype. Whether you are using your own data or a commercial list, the real value that comes from direct mail is the one to one relationship you are creating.

 
Find out how we can add value to your marketing efforts – check out our website.
 

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