The Dog Days of Summer: Reflect and Revive Your Marketing Effort

Summer is coming to a close. The days are getting shorter, the kids are buying school supplies, and it won’t be long before you’ll be carrying a rake, some gloves and a box of garbage bags.

Now is the perfect time for some calm reflection – that final sigh before September.

Spend a few moments reflecting on your current marketing efforts and make sure you’re still on track. What are you communicating to your clients? Is your message consistent? Is your brand image the one you’re trying to project? Is your budget realistic and bringing you the desired results? If so, good for you! If not, now is the perfect time to sort out the good kernels while throwing away the chaff.

Below are some tips on how to reflect on and revive your marketing efforts.

Performance Anxiety Assuaged

No one likes to hear the word “audit,” but a marketing audit is the key to making sure your business’s communication strategy is on track. A proper marketing audit will provide a thorough review of your strategy’s objectives, activities, budget and results. The Web site of Copernicus Marketing Consulting, a U.K.-based marketing agency, provides a list of factors that should be considered when a marketing audit takes place. Here are a few key ones:

• Key factors that impacted your business (good OR bad) during the year.
  
• Satisfaction (based on research) of your target markets.
  
• An ROI of the performance of advertising, promotion, sales force, and marketing research programs.
  
• Whether the marketing plan achieved its objectives within the set budget.
  
• Which aspects of the plan failed to meet objectives with specific recommendations for improving next year's performance.

If time is an issue, a proven marketing firm like corecubed can assist in setting up criteria as well as conducting an annual (or more frequent) audit for you.

Consistent and Potent Messaging

No one understands the importance of communicating a consistent, potent message more than politicians running for office. Whether the message is “I Still Like Ike!,” “A Chicken in Every Pot! A Car in Every Garage!,” “All the Way with LBJ!” or “Change You Can Believe In!,” politicians – and their clever teams – are adept at crafting slogans that reach into the hearts of voters and meet some kind of need or demand.

It’s true that business and politics are two different animals, but many of the principles that govern the creation of a good political slogan and the crafting of an effective marketing message are the same. Joe Garecht, a writer for LocalVictory.com, explains that good campaign slogans are created by following three rules: 1) Staying true to your message, 2) Keeping it short, and 3) Using emotions. The same can be said for business messaging.

Convey Your Message Through Speaking

Speaking in public, whether it’s in the form of a television interview or a speech at a local targeted association meeting, is a great way to communicate your business message, if you have it distilled to a point that interests others. Michael Sheehan, a communications coach for some of America’s top CEOs and politicians, specializes in keeping speakers on-topic and well branded.

Jennifer Reingold interviewed Sheehan for FastCompany.com and came away with this key point:

“If it’s about a sweater, don’t bring a lamb. We are overwhelmed by information, so conveying a message that sticks is tougher than ever. If you can synthesize what you want to convey into a few key points, there’s a better chance that those points will make it through the clutter.”

I am fond of saying that you will get tired of your marketing messages long before they have reached maximum effectiveness. You also, however, have to make it INTERESTING in order to make it effective when speaking.

Make Certain Your Message Is The Right Message

Imagine that you wake up one morning only to discover that your company’s Web site is no longer online. You rush to the phone and call your Internet Service Provider only to learn that the host server crashed. But it’s okay, the customer service rep says. After all, the server was old and needed to be trashed anyway. Now how does THAT make you feel?

That’s exactly what happened to Christina Kerly, a blogger who covers marketing-related topics. Kerly says she was infuriated by the experience, but it taught her one significant lesson about marketing: When the message is wrong, it doesn’t matter if you’re true to your message. And remember that only one or two folks will tell others about good experiences with a business, but 10 to 20 will tell others if the experience was bad.

“I’ll be sure to keep ‘on message’ too,” she continues. “And that message is this: The company doesn’t care about its customers; but it sure does care about disclaimers.”

So be aware that your service and product need to meet the customers’ expectations and your message needs to fit with what you are indeed delivering.

Let Us Help!

Summer is a great time for reading. But in between skimming the latest John Grisham or James Patterson thriller, make sure you set aside some time to re-read your Web site, presentation and all marketing material. Does the content truly convey why someone should do business with you and not others? Is it still who you are and what your company is all about? Can the consumer recognize your business’s value by skimming your home page?

At corecubed, we stand ready to assist you to a) get the right message and b) get it out to those who need to hear it. It is just possible that you have a lot to offer your customers, if they only knew what. Together we can show them what you’ve got. Act now before you get into that fall rush and reap the rewards of a productive August!

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