Know Your Stuff: The Legalities of Marketing

There's nothing more frustrating & embarrassing than creating a drop dead promo or campaign only to have it shot down by corporate counsel for the simple reason that it is in violation of state, local, or federal regulations.

Or worse ...

Except, of course, if your corporate counsel is more familiar with patent law than FCC regs and the campaign launches without thorough and comprehensive review. When the regulators and various legal entities descend on your company, you can rest assured Counsel will pass the buck right to your office. And sleep very well that night too, thank you.

Integrate the Creative with the Practical -- You'll be Glad You did

Creativity is only part of campaign development. If you're not up on the legalities and liabilities that come with the job you're a prosecution waiting to happen.

Just like knowing your budget boundaries, you need to know your legal boundaries before planning a campaign. As such, you not only save time and $$, but you position yourself and your team as genuine, credible resources for your organization. Enhance your value and the value of your group and you will find it a lot easier to do your job without the second guessers, and dime-a-dozen arm chair marketeers.

If you haven't gotten around to drafting a Policies & Procedures manual for Marketing at your organization, this is an excellent way to educate yourself, educate your team and educate your organization at large.  In addition it consolidates your brand requirements, style guide and procedures for material requests.

Last but not least, it helps your company educate employees (and management) about way they can promote the brand most effectively, as well as avoid inadvertent brand damage (think Chrysler employee tweeting profanities about Detroit drivers last year ... make me wince just recalling it!)

What triggered this dire warning?

Oh, I was just getting caught up on some blog reading and came across the following post. I urge you to read it -- and anything else you find on PR, IR and Marketing-centric laws. Social Media Promotions and the Law: What You Need to Know | Social Media Examiner

More Resources

Here are a few additional online resources that will get your started:

• Internet & General Marketing Laws: http://marketingtoday.com/marketinglaws/usmarketinglaws.htm
• e-Mail Laws: http://marketingtoday.com/marketinglaws/emaillaws.htm
• FTC Div. of Marketing Practices: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/bcpmp.shtm
• CAN-SPAM: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
• Multiple News-related Topics: http://blog.ericgoldman.org

Got a Professional Organization?

Several are good sources for information about the laws and regulations that pertain to many facets of Marketing, including:

• AMA (American Marketing Assoc.) http://www.marketingpower.com
• DMA (Direct Marketing Assoc.) http://www.the-dma.org
• PMA (Promotion Marketing Assoc.) http://www.pmalink.org

Nobody Said This Was Going to be Easy

In fact, I've been known to remark that Marketing positions should be posted with a Surgeon General's Warning all their own.  But, for those of us who have found a real niche in Marketing, constantly learning and staying abreast of news and developments is one of the aspects of the function that make it dynamic and interesting.

These are the details that differentiate the professionals from the wannabes.  A Marketing professional thinks outside the box while also knowing the contents of the box like the back of his/her hand.

Can you recommend other resources?

We'd like to hear from you.  Please post a comment and refer us to your favorite resources and colleagues.

Thanks!

Social Media & Journalism: Arianna Heard From -- No Surprises

While a little light on money-making details (well, come on, her experience is more on the social side), Arianna Huffington did make a couple of points that bear repeating ... and repeating, and repeating, and repeating ...

First, the compelling nature of storytelling: Storytelling attracts and, importantly, retains readers/listeners/viewers.

Second, target your content and media to the audience. And how does one do that if one does not KNOW the audience well? Know your audience beyond the demographics -- develop a Buyer/Customer Persona and work from there.

In Brazil, Arianna Huffington Says Social Media Good For Journalism - Forbes

Minimalist Ads: Engaging, Memorable, & Relevant,

Whether the content is text or visuals, the trick is to first engage the eye, then the mind, and do so memorably and relevantly. This ad round-up is a pitch-perfect collection illustrating this eloquently.

14 Brilliant Minimalist Ads | Penn Olson - StumbleUpon

Most Effective Video I've Seen All Summer

Who says radio and video don't mix?  Not me -- and certainly not after hearing about this video while listening to NPR.

Featured on the Science Friday home page today, is this amazing video shot by marine biologist Roger Hanlon, of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.  The video itself is actually 10 years old, but proves the premise that excellent content is often timeless.

This is 5-star stuff -- you will be amazed whether you're a marine biology buff or not.

The video speaks eloquently to the work being done at Woods Hole without coming off as advertorial or promotional -- and, at the end, they even provide the code to embed it into your own site.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did -- have a great weekend.

Think Customer Back: Part 1, Got a Buyer Persona?

... demographics, schmemographics.  It's your Buyer Persona that will make or break your results.

PROLOGUE:  Know what I think about when I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall in Marketing?  I fantasize about running a beer and bait shop out on Molokai.  I tell you this because there were moments -- okay, make that days -- during the fact-finding for this posting that I spent a lot of time daydreaming about Molokai.  Yeah, it was demoralizing.


I thought I was going to be able to tell you about some best practices out there.  But --glass half-full -- it was also eye-opening.  Instead of best practices,  I became aware of a need -- an Information Gap, shall we say.  So, this posting will not be an anthology of best practices.  Rather, it is a "How-to."  And, in the end, maybe it will inspire a few folks to take action as a means to gain a leg-up in highly competitive market sectors.  Seize the opportunity!  And keep me posted on your progress.

Once upon a time, available B2C market data only included things like prospect age, gender, address, occupation and maybe credit ratings.  Today, market data can tell marketers the number and ages of your children, income level, reading preferences, health problems, college GPA, political party, and what you eat for breakfast. No, really -- what you actually eat for breakfast.

An ever-increasing number of B2C marketers rely on this detailed information to help them effectively target prospects, develop relevant messages and imagery, select optimal communications channels, and fine tune their timing.  And, they don't stop there.  Sophisticated practitioners take it a step or two further by then researching, extrapolating and analyzing behavioral profiles and characteristics of their prospects and customers.  The profile they end up with is called a "Buyer Persona."

So, what about B2B Buyer Personas?  Good question.  

Nine out of ten B2B marketing programs still develop their buyer "profiles" based on the limited company data from sources like D&B and Hoovers -- if they're developed at all.  This didn't make a lot of sense to me.  I mean, competition for every dollar is pretty fierce out there.  Why wouldn't B2B marketers seek out every advantage they can get?  So, I started asking around.  

I spoke with sales and marketing decision makers (i.e., VP-level and above), across several b2b market sectors (enterprise software, envirotech, IT consulting, and management consulting).  Each of these folks could accurately be described as well-educated, seasoned, successful, articulate and conscientious professionals.

Early-on, I began to see an distinct pattern in our conversations. In fact, every sales and/or marketing executive I spoke with said:

1.  What's a Buyer Persona?

2.  I don't see the added value -- we have focused our efforts and know our market very well.

3.  Of course, our lead gen results could always be better ...

4.  Everybody's conversion rates are way down -- we're not special in that regard.  (Okay, is that irony or coincidence?  I can never keep them straight).

Molokai was looking really good.  This was when I decided to talk about "How-to" vs. "Best Practices."

Why bother developing Buyer Personas?

1.  Relevance.  We all know about relevance.  The more relevant your messaging and content, the more your likely you will be identified with the solution to the problems/desires of your target market.  That said, if all you know is how large your target customer is, you can't address what keeps their decision makers up at night, let alone use tone and style that will create affinity.  In fact, you may not even being communicating with them through a means or media that they monitor.

EXAMPLE:  (I swear to you, this really happened).  Company X decided it needed to hold a sales event in the Bay area to beef up their west coast presence.  They got a big name keynote speaker, booked the ballroom of a prominent venue, flew in sales and marketing staff from all over the country, created and mailed both hard copy and e-invites, and rented lists from every tech publication that said it was read by IT executives.  In the end, Company X successfully attracted 300 attendees to its event.  In order to get their 300, they sent out over 60,000 invitations.  Why?  They never looked beyond the classification "IT Executive" -- were they corporate IT execs or developers from competitive providers?  Were they decision makers?  Were IT execs even really the customer?

2.  Budget.  We also all know about budget. If you're not targeting specifically enough, your paying for a lot of impressions that you'll never benefit from.

EXAMPLE 1:  If you send 60,000 invitations for an event that only resulted in 300 attendees, you paid for 59,700 names, invitations, and postage; as well as the man-hours required to invite and follow-up.  The cost of the event above was over $100,000 -- most of it spent on list rental.

3. Conversion Rates.  Leads generated by programs that are poorly targeted are unlikely to be qualified, let alone "hot."  Sales will burn more time and budget trying to sell to cool/lukewarm prospects with only marginal probability of success.  The whole process more closely resembles the Lottery than targeted sales and marketing.

EXAMPLE:  Company X sent 60,000 invitations, attracted 300 attendees, of which a grand total of 4 were new viable leads. Exactly 0 of the new leads were converted.

True story.  I mean, seriously, who could make this stuff up?!

So, what about your Buyer Persona?  Start by taking a look at your actual customers and start listing their characteristics individually.  From here, you can begin looking for patterns; i.e., commonalities between them.  This is your baseline.  From here it gets interesting.

Your target market is probably composed of several different Personas.  They may share common demographics, but once you start to really work on accurately identifying your Buyer Personas, you'll find some differences.  

Here are a few behavioral variables for you to consider, that comprise Buyer Personas:

• Familiarity with products/services in your space
• Level of business case needed to justify purchase
• Interests
• Motivation
• Expectations
• Decision making role
• Urgency
• Objectives
• Pain points

Makes sense, don't you think?  That said, I urge you to do more than sketch out your Buyer Persona single handedly, based on your own perceptions.  It takes some legwork, but the additional insight is worth it.

Next post:  Think Customer Back: Part 2, Doing the Legwork

What can "a Better Mousetrap" do for your brand? That depends ...

Just read an interesting article -- well written and very convincing.  All in all an excellent point, well made, re: the impact of quality product.  But, in the end, it was simply convincing enough to be ...  I don't know ... dangerous?


For that reason I felt compelled to respond, and did.  (You should feel free to do the same here!)


The original post I refer to can be found here:  http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/build_your_brand_apples_way.html


And my response appears below, but the mega-moral of the story is simply this:  Don't take everything you read under iconic mastheads (like that of the Harvard Business Review, et al), as gospel.  


"An excellent point, well made, re: the impact of quality product.  I would, however, caution your readers against taking your premise too literally.  Beginning  with the fact that the road to success is littered with the carcasses of failed innovators whose self-destructively naive premise that "a good product will sell itself" cost them everything.  

Building a better mousetrap will only insure that, at the end of the day, all you have is a better a mousetrap

There are several additional strategic and tactical considerations behind the outcomes you've described.

In addition, your theory is not generalizable across all marketplaces. For example, each organization cited and its products/services have a more-than-significant market base in the consumer sector (vs. pure b2b play) -- I have no hard and fast data on this, but [experientially] guess that the results would not be nearly as dramatic if their sales targets were strictly enterprise/b2b.

Another affecting common denominator is that each company cited advanced the perception of its product/service through early-on investment in PR (vs. advertising).  The age old wisdom that creating one's brand in the media, then later supporting it via other marketing channels (including advertising) is the most productive and durable approach.

Last but not least, I think it's important to clarify that Marketing does not equal Advertising.  PR is not advertising, thought leadership development (sometimes confused with "Content Marketing") is not advertising, direct is not advertising, events are not advertising ... the only things that are advertising are advertisements.  And any Marketing that consists purely of advertising is not only incredibly costly, but is also extremely risky in its potential impact."

The conclusion?  Building a better mousetrap will only insure that, at the end of the day, all you have is a better a mousetrap.

Outsourcing Social Media: "Go forth not blindly ..."

Business is serious about social media. So, we've naturally seen an uptick in mishandled social media situations.  How can you avoid being another poster child for Facebook faux pas or Twitter slips?  

Put the work in on the front end.  No excuses.  Learn about the media, create a strategy that integrates with your other programs (PR, direct, events, etc.), develop an operational plan, and work to help develop strong but reasonable policies and procedures for the organization at large.  Then and only the, you should consider outsourcing to a seasoned marketer who also happens to be knee deep in social media -- all social media.

If you don't know enough about the media to use it yourself, you shouldn't be messing with it for your business or client.  You also shouldn't expect that you'll be able to manage someone else who's messing with it.

Outsourcing in the name of focus on core competencies is Lean Business 101, Social Media in the name of reaching your actual market with relevant content, offers, and messages is both Green Marketing 101 and Marketing Communications 101.  But, when the two are combined and handed off to a third party with more expertise in Facebook than in business, well . . . all you get is this cartoon.  And, of course, a waste of budget and resources.

This gets to the question:  Which came first, the Strategy or the Tweet?  Social media presence with no integrated marketing strategy is just silly.

(BTW --I wish I was as clever as Tom Fishburne ... "Marketoons?" ... Brilliant!)

Enjoy Tom's talent, and have a great weekend!