Promise Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Strategic Planning’ Category

A new social media planning tool

Monday, December 5, 2011 —

I recently spoke at an event for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. The event, called Social Media for Nonprofits, featured Wayne Breitbarth, LinkedIn expert, and me; and although it was targeted at the nonprofit community in Milwaukee, much of what we spoke about can be useful to for-profit businesses.

My presentation focused on the results of our recent Social Media Survey of Nonprofits ( get the results here) , specifically what nonprofits value about social media, and the challenges nonprofits face in implementing social media tools for their organizations. Because the Business Journal was kind enough to ask me to speak at this event, I wanted to be sure to deliver some high quality content for them. The result of my prep for this event is a new tool we hope you’ll find useful in planning your social media strategy. We call it the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel.

One of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit is getting others involved in the effort, either from a participation standpoint or from an implementation standpoint. This is partially because most nonprofits (64%) do not have a social media policy guiding the people charged with implementing social media. If your organization doesn’t have a social media policy, be sure to download our template so you can fix this! A social media policy can help make it “safe” to build a team of people to get the work done, rather than relying on a single person (who often has other work to do).

The other challenge is finding time to plan a strategy. Although most of us would never think of spending advertising dollars without a plan or hiring a receptionist and not training that person on how to answer the phone, many people don’t think anything of just jumping into social media without a plan of action. We hope our new document, the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel, helps address the planning issue. When we created it, we wanted to be sure we recognized the following things:

Most organizations are already using social media in some way. It would be stupid for me to lead you through the perfect planning process for people that are not yet involved in social media. That process won’t work if you’re already participating because you can’t stop and undo what you’ve already done just to make a plan.
Planning is not a one time activity. You have to constantly reassess where you are at, look for new ideas, and pay attention to what is going on in the world.
The world doesn’t stop while you plan. You can’t take a vacation from interacting with your social media contacts while you think. You have to think and act at the same time.

The ongoing social media strategy wheel attempts to show this by using continuous circles. The inner circle illustrates the planning and reflection activities that most people forget. These activities are conducted internally and aren’t seen by the public, but they are very important because performing these activities will increase the effectiveness of the woare the public sees. The outer circle illustrates the activities that most people see. Both wheels are rotating constantly and at the same time.

We hope that this new document will help you continuously refine your communications on social media.

If you want to see the rest of the presentation from the Social Media for Nonprofits event (the ideas work for for-profits too), you can view it here:

Social Media for Nonprofits

View more presentations from Clear Verve Marketing, LLC.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Clear Verve, Communication, content marketing, Facebook, marketing, nonprofit, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Media Policy

Stop Using the Marketing Fast Pass

Friday, November 4, 2011 —

Every day in Walt Disney World, magic happens. I experienced this first-hand on a recent family vacation. I have long been a fan of Walt Disney, the marketing genius behind Disney and of all that Walt Disney World employees do to exceed customer expectations.

We can all learn from the genius of the Disney brand with their Disney Institute (training I had experienced through a past job which is AWESOME!) and appreciate the many brilliant marketing ideas they have in place. One of the many genius service ideas Walt Disney World has in place at all of their parks is the FASTPASS.

With a FASTPASS at Walt Disney World, you can cut your wait time down for most rides or shows using your park pass. You swipe your park pass on kiosks near the ride or show and receive a ticket with a set time to return at your reserved time to enter the ride or show.

This FASTPASS idea got me thinking about our roles in marketing. With so many tools available for marketing an organization, it is easy succumb to using a marketing “fast pass” and jump right into using tactics without making sure they tie back to a marketing strategy or objective. The end of the year is near and strategic planning is on the horizon for many organizations. Is your marketing plan in place? If not, don’t delay getting your planning underway before the year ends. If you are not sure where to start, we can help you navigate through the lines so you don’t have to use the marketing “fast pass.” Because while a FASTPASS may be great when you are trying to get on an amusement park ride as quickly as possible, if you are trying to build your business as quickly as possible, a marketing “fast pass” leads to disjointed efforts which really only slow you down.

Susan Schoultz is Design Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create, and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

Tags: Marketing Fast Pass, Marketing Planning, Walt Disney World

Walk in your client’s shoes : How ethnography can fit into your business

Friday, January 21, 2011 —

I recently attended a meeting of the American Marketing Society where the speaker, Jeanne Meyer, presented how GE Healthcare uses ethnography to help develop and market the company’s products. Ethnography is research in which a company immerses itself in their buyer’s culture. At GE Healthcare, this meant that the company spent four months studying the education needs of nurses in order to develop effective training solutions. The result, of course, was an extremely well thought out set of solutions that are likely to be well received in the healthcare industry.

Unfortunately, most businesses we know believe they don’t have the time or the money to do this type of extensive research, think it is not necessary, or that it couldn’t possibly apply to their business. None of those things are true. Need proof? The following challenges shouldn’t hold you back.

“I don’t have the time or the money.”
Ethnography doesn’t have to involve expensive research. One of Jeanne’s examples of ethnography in use occurs at Harley Davidson. All executives at Harley are required to attend motorcycle rallies. Spending time at rallies helps them relate to their customers and see their products in use. Try to see how you can spend time observing how your services are used in the real world.

“I don’t see how this applies to my business.”
This is an easy one, especially for companies like the ones we work with. Most service providers offer something that is either technical, government-regulated, or part of a lengthy process. If you’ve ever tried to explain what you do and had the person you’re talking to look at you like you’re speaking a foreign language, maybe you could benefit from spending some time with your clients. An ethnography mindset, even if you aren’t doing a formal study, can help you communicate without the jargon and gobbeldygook that consultants can easily end up relying on.

The next time you have a communications challenge or need guidance to help make a business development decision, try asking yourself, “How can I put myself in my client’s shoes?”

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Communication, customer experience, ethnography, Market Research, marketing, service marketing

To Discount or Not To Discount?

Thursday, June 17, 2010 —

Discounting can be tempting for businesses and organizations to consider. Especially with our current times. As with any marketing strategy, the need for discounting really depends on the situation and the type of business and organization. If you offer a product and need to push inventory out the door or sales are down, discounting may be necessary. If sales are going well for your company or organization then there is no need to discount.

To determine how best to provide a special offer, you have to understand what is going on in your organization and be on top of sales. Here are some questions to consider.

1). If your sales are down, make sure you have a good understanding of the internal and external environments for your business instead of jumping right into discounting. Here are a few things to consider: Do you have more competitors offering your product/service? Is something in your organization not going smoothly? Do people not have a need for your product/service as it currently exists?

2). Review and fine-tune your messaging. It is good to be consistent with messaging but if your offering is not well-explained in the first place, your prospective customers may not understand why they should buy. If customers don’t understand why they should buy, they may buy only because of the discount and not value the purchase. Especially in a service environment, this can lead to vendor shopping.

3). Consider the long-term effects of discounting over time. If you are always discounting, what is the perceived value you provide to your customers/donors? Will they ever be willing to pay full price? You may have devalued yourself to the point where customers don’t appreciate your offering and only buy because they need to and you are the cheapest.

4). Understand your customer and measure how they respond to offers. If you are looking for customers to purchase more of your product or services, test offers and consider a customer loyalty offering versus a discount each time they purchase. Customer loyalty offerings can allow you to provide special perks to those customers that purchase from you most frequently.

5). Make it easy for your customers/donors to work with you. Nothing can turn off a person more than bad service and the negative word of mouth that goes with it.

6). Test marketing channels for special offers based on where your customers are likely to see your messages. Know the demographics of these channels to make sure you are reaching the right audiences.

7). Instead of a discount, consider offering a gift with purchase or free initial consultation.

We hold on to some of our favorite articles and found these valuable on the topic of discounting.

Golden Practices Blog: Tired of Competing on Price

The Right Way to Offer Retail Discounts

Can your Brand Afford to Discount? from Marketing Profs

Do you have any other tips to share when it comes to discounting? Please share.

Susan Schoultz is Client Service Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

Tags: customer experience, Discounting, Strategic marketing

Remaining True to Yourself

Friday, April 23, 2010 —

Many organizations, both for profit and non-profit, struggle with finding ways to get their prospective customers, donors, or volunteers engaged in their brand. Since engagement with the audience is one of the key metrics for social media success, organizations are now finding that it is important to combine traditional tactics with social media campaigns in order to attract an audience so that engagement can begin.

At Clear Verve, we believe that combining marketing strategies is almost always a good idea. Using multiple communications channels allows your business to use different types of messages. As an example, you can use one tactic to get people’s attention, and another to say what you want them to know. However, it is important to remain true to your organization’s main goals when planning any promotion.

Yesterday, April 22, was the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day. The Sierra Club, America’s oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization (their words, not mine) launched an Earth Day sweepstakes in which people would pledge to do something good for the Earth in exchange for a trip. At first glance, this sounds like a great idea. People get excited about contests, the registration form gives the Sierra Club the chance to harvest your contact information (unless you uncheck the box), and it was a great opportunity to increase the size of their twitter followers, Facebook fans, and email list.

The problem, at least in our eyes, with the contest was the prize. A trip for two to Hawaii. Not that we have anything against Hawaii. We’ve heard it’s beautiful, amazing, and a bunch of other really nice adjectives. The problem is how you get there. Here is an environmental organization putting two people on an airplane in order to build their social media fan base. Even if nobody is exactly sure how much air travel adds to our carbon footprint, we can all agree it probably doesn’t help. It’s kind of like PETA giving away leather furniture or a fur coat to people who pledge to become vegetarians.

We hope the Sierra Club’s Earth Day promotion was successful and that they attracted many new fans. It would be interesting to know if they heard any backlash about the plane trip. We think taking advantage of Earth Day, and holding a sweepstakes was brilliant. We’re not so sure if they kept their organization’s overall mission in mind when they planned the promotion though. What do you think?

Tags: branding, earth day, marketing, nonprofit, Social Media

An Economist’s Take on Marketing

Monday, February 22, 2010 —

Recently, Dean Michael Knetter of the UW Madison School of Business gave a presentation to the Milwaukee Chapter of the American Marketing Association. Dean Knetter’s presentation focused on the current economy and what it means for business marketing.

First of all, Dean Knetter’s forecast for 2010 – slow and steady Gross Domestic Product growth of three percent – what he called a “sluggish recovery.” He felt that three things were really going to be important for marketing during this recovery:

1) People are trying to be more efficient and to do more for less. He sees more businesses using social media marketing because of the low cost of these tools and their ability to directly “harness the customer.”
Our thoughts: It is important to remember that although the barrier to entry for social media is very low and that many of the tools are free, the barrier to success and actual cost of implementing a good social media program is high. Social media can take a lot of time and time is money. In addition, many business owners make the mistake of jumping in to social media without a well thought out strategy and end up being disappointed with the results

2) There is no free lunch – people want a certain level of expertise when they make a purchase.
Our thoughts: Many of the strategies we often recommend; use of social media, newsletters, educational events, and public relations are excellent ways to demonstrate your expertise. However, it is important to be aware that there are more “experts” than ever, so you must be consistent and provide advice, not just sell when you communicate. Don’t be afraid to share what you know.

3) We are moving into a knowledge economy. People will buy your knowledge, and knowledge is also important when you are trying to sell your product or service.
Our thoughts: Social media makes understanding your current and potential customers and your competitors easier than ever. Even if you don’t use social media to market your business, it is worth taking the time to listen. You never know what you will learn.

There is no doubt that even if the recovery is sluggish, changes in marketing are not. Which leads to another point Dean Knetter made – that if people, whether a business or an entire country, try to hold on to the past and aren’t open to new ideas – they will be passed up by their competition. He saw it happen in Germany and says he sees it happening in Wisconsin. Don’t let it happen to you.

What Matters Now: Persistence

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 —

Seth Godin recently collaborated with 70 thought leaders including our friend Todd Sattersten with advice for 2010 in the ebook What Matters Now.

This is a fantastic collection of thoughts to consider as we approach 2010. Each entry in What Matters Now is focused around one word that we should remember in 2010, with an explanation on why and how that word matters to the thought leader that contributed to this project.

As we read this 82 page ebook (which is well worth the read) the one word we felt that was missing is persistence.

Ben Franklin once said, “energy and persistence conquer all things.” This quote speaks volumes about what we believe is important for 2010. We have found being persistent with growing our business can be challenging, especially since many organizations are cutting back. But by continually focusing on our goal of becoming the Promise Marketing^SM experts, networking, and strategically planning for tomorrow; we have been able to build our business and, like many people, have hope for the upcoming year.

We hope your business or organization is able to be persistent with your goals for the upcoming year. After reading this blog post and the What Matters Now ebook, what one word would you suggest organizations think about in 2010?