Gumas. Marketing Smart

Recent economic conditions may be fueling a new cultural shift in how consumers are making their purchasing decisions. Consumers that were once willing to make “compulsive” purchases are now shifting toward “considered acquisition” purchases. This simply means that consumers are becoming smarter buyers and are taking more time to research their options before making a final purchase decision.

These trends have been documented in a recent study that tried to determine which factors influence consumers when they are making a typical purchase. Although this study targeted consumer purchases, we feel that B2B marketers should be very cognizant of these trends for their business as well.

The following study results tracked the percentage of consumers who regard each of the following factors as “extremely important”:

- Brands that provide a better quality for the money:                  57%
- Brands that offer better quality:                                                    42%
- Brands that are longer lasting/more durable:                            40%
- Brands that simplify my life:                                                           34%
- Brands that offer a healthier option:                                             33%
- Brands that help me save time:                                                     33%
- Brands that are green:                                                                    22%
- Brands that are innovative:                                                            17%

As you look at these general findings, we believe it is important to notice the cultural trends occurring and how they may play into or affect your brand position moving forward. We believe the new opportunity for marketers is to better understand the true reasons your customers purchase from you so you can find a way to craft your upcoming promotional campaigns to take advantage of these cultural shifts.

Businesses spend most of their time, money and effort generating new customers. But the truth is, there are no hotter or more important business prospects than your current customers. They believed in you enough to try you once. Hopefully, they had a satisfactory experience the first time around.

It costs you 80% less to get an existing customer to purchase from you again than it does to generate a new customer. So how do you hold on to this crucial customer base?

What you need is a Customer Retention Program.

A Customer Retention Program is critical to the success of any company. Stay in touch with your customers. Reinforce that they made the right decision to work with you in the first place. Let them know what you’re doing and the new products or services you have to offer. In addition to keeping your current customers happy, they’re bound to tell a few friends about you.

If you’d like us to review your Customer Retention Program, please send us a one-page overview, and we’ll evaluate it for you.

Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. Many of our clients have been intimidated with the entire social-media scene, so the following are three things you need to know about social media:

1. Your entire company must work as a team
This includes management, sales, marketing, customer service and everyone else that may add value. A successful social-media program takes input from all employees and encourages them to contribute to the online conversation. You must designate a social-media leader and be sure your plan is properly integrated into your company’s overall marketing plan.

2. Management must be behind the plan
It’s critical that your top management embrace your social-media plan. Listening and responding quickly to what your customers are saying about you in the social-media space can provide great intelligence and allow your company to better interact with customers and prospects. But be warned: Along with this customer interaction must come the willingness to change based on this feedback. And this is why top management must be on board.

3. It takes time
You must view social media as part of your overall marketing strategy and long-term goals. You must work to engage your customers so they can become evangelists for your brand. This takes time, so if you start a social-media program, be prepared to continue it for the long term.

So how do you start?
Start with a small number of manageable goals for the coming year. These could include:

- Turning your company newsletter into a blog and encouraging all employees to participate.

- Establishing a social-media policy for employee participation while on company time.

- Setting up alerts that monitor your company in the social-media space and responding within 24 hours to any issues.

If you’re just starting out, don’t try to do all of these at once. Start with the strategies that you can realistically handle on a consistent basis. If you need any additional insight or would like to see a copy of our internal social-media policy, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

Can you afford to risk your company’s reputation, or its sales? That’s what you are doing if you don’t have a crisis communications plan in place. Any unforeseen event – accident, fire, flood, theft, a legal dispute, executive wrongdoing – can tarnish your company’s reputation overnight unless you are prepared. Having an effective crisis communications plan is your insurance policy against disaster. It’s your blueprint to communicate with the media, employees, customers, anyone who has an interest in your company, its products and its brand.

So why take the risk? Empower your executive team with a crisis blueprint that tells them who to talk to, what to say and how to say it so that they can mitigate the crisis rather than fueling uncertainty and fear. Make sure your executive spokespersons have media training so they know how to communicate with confidence and clarity. And make sure you have your game plan laid out in advance, before the crisis strikes.

Not sure where to start? Contact us and we can help. Just send an email to editor@gumas.com and let us help you develop a crisis communications plan that can be adapted to meet any possible disaster. It will be the best insurance you can have.

It’s hard to believe that the “New Millennium” has been underway for 10 years. It has been a time of great change, challenge and also possibilities. So, what are the “next big things” we as marketers need to be aware of? Following are five trends and predictions that we need to think about.

1) My Internet
The Internet will continue offering users more and more options for obtaining the information, services and products they need. Websites will transform into collections of web services and web applications that are easy to export, allowing users to use all the services they need at one central location (email, online collaborative platform, Twitter, etc). For brands, the key is to give consumers the ability to find and get information, products and services when they are most relevant.

2) “Go green” and mean it
Not so long ago, implementing the green attribute into your business and communication strategies gave you a premium product or competitive advantage. Good intentions are no longer good enough. Being green will become the new price of doing business.

3) “Exclusivity” is the new gold
What is your brand doing to offer customers “exclusivity”? If you don’t know, you’d better start thinking about an answer. In 2010, it will be about offering people new ways to experience their lives, as well as sustainable, authentic products that have a story. Products that are merely expensive will be meaningless (and embarrassing) unless they are backed by substantive “specialness.”

4) Tough consumers
Consumers will be more demanding, and their expectations will only rise. Brands will have to anticipate consumer expectations and start to build from these in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Are you thinking about how your customers are living today? How are you evolving to accommodate their needs more effectively? Is your website accessible on their smart phones? Are you contactable 24/7? How will you service these customers in the way they’ve become accustomed to in other parts of their lives?

5) Consumers are talking. Get in the conversation.
The amount of discussion in the online social space will continue to increase dramatically. You will not be able to control this. But you will be expected to participate via reputation management and social-media monitoring tools. With these tools, brands will have the possibility to measure their own online activity and identify patterns between online activity and sales. “Social-media ROI” will be one of the strong online marketing terms of 2010 and beyond.

From the Gumas Family to yours, here’s wishing you a very prosperous New Year filled with great branding campaigns and increased sales!!

You can write the most compelling copy possible, but if your final type is too hard to read, it will simply die on the page. Take a look at all of your marketing materials. Are you breaking any of the following rules?

• type that is smaller than 10-point
• more than two lines of centered type
• type that’s justified on both sides
• more than three lines of reverse type
• sentences longer than 15 words
• paragraph blocks that are more than six lines long

If you answered yes to any of the above, chances are you are losing readers. We do recognize that there are exceptions to the above rules, but if you want people to read your text, then make it easy to do so.

According to the latest reports, approximately 87% of companies still do not have a social-media policy. Whether you realize it or not, social media affects your company in many ways. In order for you to maximize your effectiveness, you must also control the “unofficial” social-media activity that goes on within your company.

Most likely, your employees are currently engaged in some form of personal social media while at work. This could include Facebook, Twitter, blogging, texting, etc. There is also a good chance that through their personal social-media activity they may be expressing personal thoughts on their working environment, making inappropriate postings, inadvertently divulging company or client information, etc.

So how do you harness the power of your employees’ social-media activity while protecting your company’s brand? Empower them with company guidelines and policies that will benefit and enhance your company’s online presence, while simultaneously discouraging inappropriate behavior.

Some of the topics you should address in your policy include your philosophy on work-time use of Facebook, Twitter, blogging, social video, online shopping, texting, email forwards, etc.

If you’re not sure where to begin, the following introduction from our own internal Social-Media Policy may help:

“The world has changed. We are a plugged-in people, constantly bombarded by friend requests, photo tags, status updates and links to videos. At Gumas, we embrace these changes and are working to harness these technologies for our clients. We also embrace the ability of individuals to leverage and enhance their personal brands through these social-media tools. At the same time, we recognize the challenges brought on by these changes. In order to address these challenges, we have created the following guidelines to inform team members’ proper use of social-media tools both in and out of the office.”

Social-media policies will vary depending on your company’s philosophy and needs. If you are having trouble creating your own social-media policy or would like to see our complete policy, just shoot us a note and we will be happy to share it with you. Of course, you’ll want to ensure that your policies are legally and industry compliant, so have your legal and HR departments review them first.

From all of us at Gumas, here’s wishing you and yours a very happy Holiday Season!

Brand advertising tells your target audience about your company, products and services.  Direct response advertising invokes a response.  Successful direct response advertising is the result of providing your target audience with a compelling reason to respond now, not later.

Your advertising should always create a well-rounded program that uses the right combination of brand development and direct response.  Always include a strong call to action.  Typically, prospects will respond if there is a compelling reason to do so.  Be sure to create a sense of urgency—you want to hear from your target immediately.

Having a marketing program that includes interactive strategies is critical for today’s marketers. As such, your goal should be to try to convert your marketing monologue into a marketing dialogue whenever possible. One of the most cost-effective ways to make this happen is through a blog.

But before you go off and start a blog, you and your company need to commit to keeping it up to date and relevant. And, importantly, it must reflect your overall marketing and branding strategy.

Here are ten suggestions to help you take your blog from good to great:

1. Be personal and conversational in tone.
2. Consistently deliver original and relevant content.
3. Ask questions and encourage feedback. The more you get your readers to participate, the more loyal and engaged they will be.
4. Configure your design and layout for SEO.
5. State the purpose of your blog in your header. Don’t force your readers to search to discover what your blog is about—because they won’t.
6. Don’t sell anything. The first time you do is when you begin to lose the trust of your audience.
7. Always lead with the most important “takeaway” of the post.
8. Be sure to provide links when talking about other people, companies, posts or websites.
9. Take the time to create the most compelling post titles. Great titles generate more traffic.
10. Engage your audience with interesting polls.

These are just some recommendations that will help improve your company blog. And always remember why anyone reads a company blog in the first place: to find information that they deem relevant, informational and/or valuable.

The predictable stock photo or, worse, the even more predictable (and often cheesy) clip art are so obvious that no one pays attention. And very often, they reflect a poor image of your company or product. Visuals are very critical components of your marketing messages. This is not the place to get cheap or lazy. This is the place to be creative and shine. Don’t allow the visuals to lessen the impact of your overall message.