Are You Ready to Evaluate 2010

 Evaluating 2010? Don't Just Follow the Revenues!
Connecting the Dots is as Important as Adding Up the Spreadsheet

It's that time of year when we pull out the spreadsheets to figure out if we're going to make our financial goals this year, and at the same time, develop our strategy for next year.

And while it's true that numbers don't lie, they don't always tell you the whole truth, either. They may answer the basic question of whether you made more revenue than last year, but they don't answer the broader questions of why or why not. In doing your year-end analysis, I'm sure part of your evaluation will focus on the effectiveness of your marketing program.

To help you determine the course you chart for the coming year, my recommendation is to look at all the marketing data you've collected, almost like dots on a page and ask yourself if you were able to connect them all.

What dots, you ask? Well, everyone has to answer that for themselves, but here are the steps to figure out what they are:

Your Message: Making your numbers is usually the result of you getting your message out to the right people, so you can maximize your sales. If you didn't make your sales projections, now is a good time to analyze that message. Why didn't it resonate with your potential customers? Was your message too "inside" your industry, making it difficult for others to receive? Or was it that you tried to water your message down so much for the masses that it ceased to have any relevance at all. Messaging is one part art, one part science, and your end result should straddle the edge between appealing to everyone and appealing specifically to your potential customers.
 
Your Customer: It's not enough just to garner customers; you need to know who they are so you can focus your efforts on people who fit that profile. One of our clients, Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage from Doubleday, (www.smartadvantage.com/), polled 3,000 CEOs to find out if they understood their customer base. Less than 5 percent accurately identified the profile of their primary customers. So, as you review this past year, look back in the files and take a look at who your best customers were and why.
 
Your Tactics: If you missed your projections, don't automatically fault your marketing strategy and your target audience. Don't be afraid to examine your tactics as well. While we don't advise our clients to avoid advertising, we also don't recommend a heavy concentration of it to the exclusion of other tactics either. The key thing is to balance your efforts across different forms of advertising and public relations, so that your different tactics will feed off each other. If you did make your goals, take a look at the tactics you used and see if you can determine which ones were more effective. Next year, you can redistribute your marketing resources to emphasize the tactics that worked best.
 
Your Web site: The Internet is taking on an essential role in just about every facet of communication, marketing and sales. Don't just examine your outreach, but also examine your website as a point of sale. If you didn't close as many customers as you wanted, take a look at the amount of traffic coming in and the number of visitors who turned into customers. The comparison of those figures is your "conversion rate," or the percentage of visitors who wound up making a "buy" decision after reaching your Web site. If the figure is less than one percent, then chances are something isn't clicking (no pun intended) between your customers and your Web site, and it's time to make some changes.
 
Your Outflow: One of the principles that I use faithfully in my business is the relationship between outflow and inflow. Outflow basically represents how much I reach out to my customer base via emails, articles in the press, columns that I email to my newsletter subscribers and social networking. Inflow is simply the response I get back. Outflow produces inflow! It's this one important principle that has contributed greatly to the success of my business. The corollary is simple, the more I reach out, the more I get back.
And that's what I mean by connecting the dots. You, your message, your customers, your potential customers and your business goals are all just dots on a page. Your marketing program is the line that SHOULD, in a perfect world, connect them all together. Whether you're an author trying to sell books or a company trying to increase sales - or an entrepreneur trying to compete in a crowded market - all of these principles can easily and directly apply to how you evaluate your marketing results for the year as you plan for 2011 and beyond.


Warm regards,
Marsha Friedman
CEO EMSI Public Relations 

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Exhibition of Various Artists: 10 Predictions for the Agency business for 2010

Exhibition of Various Artists: 10 Predictions for the Agency business for 2010: "As agencies start planning for the next year and beyond, here a few predictions about the future, courtesy Shoaib Qureshi.You may or may n..."

10 Predictions for the Agency business for 2010

As agencies start planning for the next year and beyond, here a few predictions about the future, courtesy 
Shoaib Qureshi.

You may or may not believe them. The Choice is yours!

1. Agencies will grow to new heights even if marketing spends go down: 2010 will be the year of the rebound of the agency business despite clouds of economic gloom still visible over the horizon which could curtail marketing spending. Many individuals and companies in the agency business will reset their meters (zero meter entrepreneurial mind-set) on their agency dash board, look at the challenges and opportunities with a fresh set of eyes, and be even more inventive or creative for their own survival and business than they have ever been before for any client of theirs, They will use the pent-up energy stored from the lows of the last year to springboard to new heights and surprise even themselves. As a result, 2010 should be a year to be more creative, aggressive and hence expect greater returns. Not a year to sit back and say that I am not doing well because the country is in economic trouble, there is no political stability and advertising business generally is down. 

2. Agencies will get out of MPD syndrome and come of age: In 2010, more  than half of the profitable agency`s revenues will go beyond the MPD (Media, Productions, Designing) - traditional areas that still continues to grip the agency thinking. Many old school agency owners will realize that companies in similar categories adopt similar practices over time. They begin to look, sound, think and act alike. In the advertising agency business, which is well over 100 years old, it shouldn`t come as a surprise that many firms are still stuck in a business model that has outlived its usefulness. smart agency owners will have to start searching for the new territory to operate because agencies have the mindset that they are only supposed to be involved with the soft areas of marketing-activities that revolve around brand awareness and preference creation. They think hard  marketing is the client`s domain-areas such as distribution, selling and even the product development itself .  but there`s third domain, a link between soft marketing and hard marketing. It`s the domain of evaluation and improving the consumer`s experience at all point of contact with the brand. Everybody talks about it, but in most cases, no one actually doest it. Which means that the role of the agency of the future is to move from helping clients create and place marketing messages to helping clients evaluate and strengthen the relationship that their customers have with the brand-at all points of contact. This is a much broader and more valuable role and similarly agencies will have to find and develop newer roles through proper understanding of clients other evolving needs.  And all these roles that I am talking about often have very little to do with traditional advertising functions such as media, productions and designing. 

3. 2010 will be the year of the client-agency fracture: Relationships will fracture a lot more often than usual this year as brands come increasingly under pressure form many external and internal reasons. also between what a lot of clients think they want from an agency (a vendor of services) and what they really need (a provider of ideas) is the middle ground where most agencies are today. And the middle-of-the- road is a dangerous place to be for anyone. Large advertisers, whether multinational or local, will either "dissolve or dilute" their longstanding relationships with their agencies or will flirt outside for all kinds of relationships (short-term and long-term) with people and agencies who are know to be idea specialists to increase the effectiveness of their marketing spend.

4. Disruption Marketing will start becoming the norm this year for brands: With an abundance of choice, products and services, there is an ever-growing need to be even more extraordinary to stand out and succeed. More attention and reward will be given by clients to those agencies who can find greatness within or outside marketing norms. Clients will be on the lookout for agencies that can possibly hit a "content six", as the days of taking "advertising singles" are over. Agencies that have the magic to create big and unusual ideas and make one million budgets look like ten million. The need to be more inventive will make creative destruction the norm rather than the exception. Consequently, effective change agents will be in increasing demand this year. 

5. True integration will be the client rage: While specialization will remain important, real value will be created by those people and agencies that can pull all the clients brand pieces together and reduce the duplications of resources. This has been the dream of the multinational client: but the reality, has often been very different. The need to collaborate and operate more quickly, effectively and with fewer additional resources will give rise to the " Integration guru" (from one of the many agencies-ALT, BTL, PR Media, Interactive etc-that the client already has on its roster to take this up for grabs role) and hence "truly" integrated results for the clients.

6. The agency commission and retainer systems will be critically reevaluated by clients: Recession and competition-bitten advertisers will probably be wary of a compensation model that still pays and rewards agencies based on a model tied to spending, rather than saving their money. Thus several new compensation models will emerge this year and be tested.

Many clients will cancel their long-term agency retainer arragements, option to pay by project. A lot of short-term contracts with new breed agencies will be put in place by clients as they search for magical solutions for their brands. 

7. Targeting will replace creativity as the top priority for agencies more marketing spends move from traditional television and print to the tighter confines of on ground internet and other mobile mediums to keep pace with the ever on the go consumer, agencies will have to focus more on better targeting than creativity to deliver results for their clients. There will be clear link seen by clients between better targeting and brand sales. Thus agencies will have to better understand the value of targeting which has traditionally been ignored as most advertising briefs target the same audience (women age 13-35).

8. Use of Data and Metrics will rise at agencies: Marketing decisions will increasingly need to be backed by data to reduce waste and downside risk for clients. The maxim will be that "whatever gets measured will get done" to whatever does not have measures will not get a budget.

Consequently, metrics and analytic should see resurgence at agencies to convince clients into spending money. consequently, what it means is that "gut feel" will see the gutter more often this year!

9. Grass-roots marketing thinking will accelerate at agencies: Business and creative plants for their clients will be filled with grass root marketing ideas this year. More attention will be given to influencer marketing to get fans for the grand and hence creative agencies will use this as a test for the creative ideas that they will present to their clients.

With clients and brands already going more and more to direct marketing at the grass root level in places where consumers live and enjoy their lives to better create a brand experience, hence agencies that can do the hard work in this area will be in business. 

10. More new agencies will be hatched out of old agencies:  Either the multinational agencies will be taken over by the local affiliate agency, or the local affiliate will be changed to step change growth in the market place. And last but not the least, new blood, sweat and energy will be inducted into the agency business, as many smart people currently working for these old agency in 2010. one thing in clear- a lot of moving and shaking will take place in the agency business. 

Shoaib Qureshy is Chief Strategy Officer,

                        Bulls Eye Communications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency

Evolution and Revolution in MARKETING

In the first of the series of two articles, 

Professor Dr. Matin A. Khan looks at the 

evolution and revolution in selling and Marketing

The reason for emphasizing evolutionary and revolutionary role in marketing has become important mainly because of continuous improvement in the technology of production, transportation and communication and greater development in sociology and psychology. Marketing today has become more important because of increasing competition among business organizations improved technology in manufacturing and increasing chance of global trade.

Now let us first clarify the meanings of the terminologies used:

Evolution: Gradual development of something to more complex form.

Revolution: A dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way of something works or organized.

The process of evolution has become important because of more educated persons working in business organizations who are trying to be increasingly innovative in managerial functions. As far as revolution is concerned, 21st century may have more revolution in manufacturing process, transportation, communication, mainly because of the availability of Internet, not only to the executives but also to workers. The distinction between evolution and revolution is essential to identify changes in the organization and its possible causes. It may also be stated that 21st century may have better evolution too, which may become effective for greater efficiency in the evolutionary process of business management.

In the context of strategic marketing there seems to be continuous improvement and that promotional activity would be more expensive for improving sales and increase consumer satisfaction, which is becoming more and more challenging because of greater experience and education of family consumers including children who may use internet for their purchases. It may also be pointed out that consumption among children is continuously increasing and good parents care more for improving the personality of their children. For improving evolutionary process there must be improvement in consumption research not only about male members but also on family consumers.  


The main reason for the success of corporations is continuity in overall improvement of the working system of the corporation, which we may be identified as development. To be specific, we may say that development of business organizations very much depends on continuous improvements, i.e. the result of systematized evolution. Systematization today, in my opinion, is the heart of success in business and gradual development. One may also think of good evolution leading to sudden, dramatic and wide ranging change that is revolution. One may predict that 21st century would have greater research for enhancing the performance of strategic marketing.
As we know strategic marketing forecasts for five to ten years  ahead and marketing people must realize that in future there will be products with greater sophistication mainly because of average customer will be more educated and some may even have technical knowledge as well. In the 21st century the number of various brands, especially in the area of family consumers goods are becoming more popular because of huge expenditure on promotion. These promotional activities are aimed at encouraging effective competition and would require more effective and efficient evolutionary process. It may be clearly stated that business organizations evolution processes will improve to meet the new type of competition from such firms, which are quite new and may adopt better policies for consumer. Revolution in marketing should also match with increased production facilities.For example in Germany some manufacturers are receiving orders in high quantities than their total production facilities. In other words countries like Germany are conducting research to improve their production methods.


On the whole, we can say that in 21st century there will be greater efficiency, and evolutionary process will continuously improve.


I have written this article so that marketing people may realize the importance of revolution in strategic marketing. As a matter of fact the future course in strategic marketing may be dependent up on effective evolution, semi-evolution as well increased evolution in manufacturing marketing and finance. It is difficult to predict about revolution in dynamic business organizations.


Evolution and Revolution in Selling / Marketing:
From the barter system, Marketing activities evolved towards personal selling, producing sales promotion advertising, direct marketing, credit sales, institutional basis of selling where customers buy products. Evolution in selling methods started with the showing of products/brands, final selection of product by customers, and then bargain about price.


In general bargaining methods continued for centuries and may still exist in some countries. However, retailing is becoming more systematized and one price policy is gaining as an advantage both to buyers and sellers. Consequently it has been saving time of both the buyers and the sellers. Bata shoe Company in the international market popularized one price policy in pricing distribution methodology. However it institutions, department stores, chain stores, super marking and retailers with lot of branches also emerged.


In my opinion direct marketing was a revolution. Marketing through Internet was another revolution. During 1950-2000, increased production forced manufacturers to promote their products through branding. The old brand technique was given greater importance and brand managers were inducted who were also given the responsibilities of advertising, sales promoting, product modification, packaging and research. However, the role and responsibilities of brand managers were not the same. Each brand manager was assigned responsibilities according to the canges, including the inroduction of some new products. 


In Pakistan quite a large number of brand managers were appointed both in Pakistani firms as well as in multinationals. Most of the brand played the most import part in enhancing the sales of Pakistani products like oil, ghee etc. Multinationals are well know for their marketing strategy. For example Unilevers have established themselves through a number of products like Lipton Tea, Lux Soap, Brook Bond Tea and several other brands. Branding strategy may be classified in two categories namely one brand name to all products of the company. some manufacturers give new brand name for each product like that of Unilevers. In the case of milk industry, (Nestle) they give only one brand name.