Marketing collateral does not come cheap. Costs associated with textual content, graphic design, and production quickly add up. Obviously, you want to get an appropriate return on your investment. This article looks at seven common mistakes, or "sins," made when developing marketing collateral for the software industry. The sins discussed consider such concepts as targeting your market, lowering costs, and making it convenient for your potential customers to use your marketing collateral. Also considered are the various forms of marketing, such as hard copy, electronic, and e-mail. Finally, we consider the cost of changing marketing collateral and its reproduction.
However, before we start confessing our sins, we need to state the obvious. Marketing collateral must be tailored to your marketplace and products. To sell a car, you probably would emphasize miles per gallon, passenger accommodation, and maintenance costs. Applying these same metrics to software may not make a lot of sense or demonstrate the strengths of your software products. While it may go without saying, never lose sight of the obvious—know your marketplace. This simple statement is not considered one of the deadly sins because if you are committing this grievous offense, you need to go back to the basics and seriously rethink your marketing plan.
The good news is that committing one sin may not condemn you to marketing hell, but committing enough of them surely will. So, grab your holy water, prayer beads, or whatever your religion provides for protection, and let's proceed.
Sin #1. Hiding Your Message
Have you ever gone to a web site that is plastered with customer testimonials, but with either no indication of what it is selling or, at best, with its products or services written in small print? It's like lighting a candle and covering it with a basket. You need to tell your audience what you are selling, what services you offer, and what support you provide. Tell them up front that "We offer software designed for the process manufacturing industry," "We cater to the food and beverage industry," or "Our software was developed to support the field services industry."
To avoid the "hard sell" approach, it may be helpful to ease into the description of what you have to offer. Consider the example below for the food industry.
They say that "it's the ingredients that make food taste good." However, in a rapidly changing marketplace, it takes a lot more than ingredients to compete effectively and efficiently in the food industry. Our software is designed to take care of the production and operational issues of the food industry so you can focus on the freshness of the ingredients.
Don't assume that your audience already knows what you do. If they did, they probably would not need a marketing brochure in the first place. In creating marketing collateral, assume that the reader is seeing your company and its products for the first time. Stating the obvious is not a bad thing. With marketing collateral—hard copy or electronic—readers already familiar with a particular content can simply read on or scroll down.
In the case of the cluttered web site, consider your own buying practices. If you were buying a car, would you start by finding out what current customers say, or by finding the car that meets your needs? Your next-door neighbor may be enthusiastic about his truck, but you're hauling kids, not lumber. Marketing collateral, which includes the web site, must clearly state what you are about and leave no room for doubt. When developing a piece of marketing material, remember that this is probably a prospect's first introduction to your company and its products and services.
When driving down a highway late at night on a business trip, looking for a place to stop, does the bright neon sign say in big letters "Free HBO" and in small letters "Motel"? Of course not. Likewise, if your marketing material emphasizes effective formula management before you mention that you cater to the chemical industry, you may want to reverse the order.
Sin #2. Swerving off Course
Too often we give up before the finish line is in sight. We become impatient if the results of a marketing campaign are not immediate. Here are some simple facts. Getting more than a 1 percent hit ratio for a marketing campaign is considered a success. So, if you send out a mailer with a response card to 100 prospects and 1 responds, don't give up. It usually takes between eight and ten contacts before you can expect to get your foot into your prospect's door. Accordingly, when planning a monthly e-mailer campaign, make sure you have enough material for at least eight months, hopefully avoiding repetition. Think about your reading habits. If you are extremely busy, you probably push unsolicited mail into your wastebasket and e-mail into your "deleted items" folder. On those rare occasions when you have time, you may actually peruse the mail, if only briefly. This is why success takes so long. The mail habits of your prospects are not much different from yours. However, if you incorporate consistent, eye-catching graphics, the chances are better that visual recognition will kick in a little sooner than normal.
Constantly changing directions confuses your prospects. Let's say your most recent sell was to a computer manufacturer. Now you want to switch to the discrete manufacturing space, when all along you have been proclaiming software development for process. Sure, make the sale, but don't let it change your focus—at least not after the first sale. Constantly changing your marketing plan destroys your credibility. Trying to be all things to all prospects is a bad business plan—and a worse marketing strategy.
There was a local dentist whose slogan was "We cater to cowards." On every piece of literature he sent out, the slogan was prominently displayed. Now, he did not have the advertising budget that most companies have, but after three years, whenever someone mentioned his name, the response was "Oh, the dentist who caters to cowards." Staying the course does pay off.
Sin #3. Failure to Create Reusable Material
Being able to use a piece of marketing collateral for multiple purposes can significantly reduce your overall marketing costs and time to deployment. If considered from the onset, this is not a difficult objective to achieve. If not, there could be a lot of redundant effort.
However, before we start confessing our sins, we need to state the obvious. Marketing collateral must be tailored to your marketplace and products. To sell a car, you probably would emphasize miles per gallon, passenger accommodation, and maintenance costs. Applying these same metrics to software may not make a lot of sense or demonstrate the strengths of your software products. While it may go without saying, never lose sight of the obvious—know your marketplace. This simple statement is not considered one of the deadly sins because if you are committing this grievous offense, you need to go back to the basics and seriously rethink your marketing plan.
The good news is that committing one sin may not condemn you to marketing hell, but committing enough of them surely will. So, grab your holy water, prayer beads, or whatever your religion provides for protection, and let's proceed.
Sin #1. Hiding Your Message
Have you ever gone to a web site that is plastered with customer testimonials, but with either no indication of what it is selling or, at best, with its products or services written in small print? It's like lighting a candle and covering it with a basket. You need to tell your audience what you are selling, what services you offer, and what support you provide. Tell them up front that "We offer software designed for the process manufacturing industry," "We cater to the food and beverage industry," or "Our software was developed to support the field services industry."
To avoid the "hard sell" approach, it may be helpful to ease into the description of what you have to offer. Consider the example below for the food industry.
They say that "it's the ingredients that make food taste good." However, in a rapidly changing marketplace, it takes a lot more than ingredients to compete effectively and efficiently in the food industry. Our software is designed to take care of the production and operational issues of the food industry so you can focus on the freshness of the ingredients.
Don't assume that your audience already knows what you do. If they did, they probably would not need a marketing brochure in the first place. In creating marketing collateral, assume that the reader is seeing your company and its products for the first time. Stating the obvious is not a bad thing. With marketing collateral—hard copy or electronic—readers already familiar with a particular content can simply read on or scroll down.
In the case of the cluttered web site, consider your own buying practices. If you were buying a car, would you start by finding out what current customers say, or by finding the car that meets your needs? Your next-door neighbor may be enthusiastic about his truck, but you're hauling kids, not lumber. Marketing collateral, which includes the web site, must clearly state what you are about and leave no room for doubt. When developing a piece of marketing material, remember that this is probably a prospect's first introduction to your company and its products and services.
When driving down a highway late at night on a business trip, looking for a place to stop, does the bright neon sign say in big letters "Free HBO" and in small letters "Motel"? Of course not. Likewise, if your marketing material emphasizes effective formula management before you mention that you cater to the chemical industry, you may want to reverse the order.
Sin #2. Swerving off Course
Too often we give up before the finish line is in sight. We become impatient if the results of a marketing campaign are not immediate. Here are some simple facts. Getting more than a 1 percent hit ratio for a marketing campaign is considered a success. So, if you send out a mailer with a response card to 100 prospects and 1 responds, don't give up. It usually takes between eight and ten contacts before you can expect to get your foot into your prospect's door. Accordingly, when planning a monthly e-mailer campaign, make sure you have enough material for at least eight months, hopefully avoiding repetition. Think about your reading habits. If you are extremely busy, you probably push unsolicited mail into your wastebasket and e-mail into your "deleted items" folder. On those rare occasions when you have time, you may actually peruse the mail, if only briefly. This is why success takes so long. The mail habits of your prospects are not much different from yours. However, if you incorporate consistent, eye-catching graphics, the chances are better that visual recognition will kick in a little sooner than normal.
Constantly changing directions confuses your prospects. Let's say your most recent sell was to a computer manufacturer. Now you want to switch to the discrete manufacturing space, when all along you have been proclaiming software development for process. Sure, make the sale, but don't let it change your focus—at least not after the first sale. Constantly changing your marketing plan destroys your credibility. Trying to be all things to all prospects is a bad business plan—and a worse marketing strategy.
There was a local dentist whose slogan was "We cater to cowards." On every piece of literature he sent out, the slogan was prominently displayed. Now, he did not have the advertising budget that most companies have, but after three years, whenever someone mentioned his name, the response was "Oh, the dentist who caters to cowards." Staying the course does pay off.
Sin #3. Failure to Create Reusable Material
Being able to use a piece of marketing collateral for multiple purposes can significantly reduce your overall marketing costs and time to deployment. If considered from the onset, this is not a difficult objective to achieve. If not, there could be a lot of redundant effort.
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