With a tip of the hat to Halloween, I thought I would write about something so scary that it makes many marketers hyperventilate and shake uncontrollably.

Can you name the four words that strike fear (or at least shuddering yawn attacks)  among marketers worldwide?  The four words can cause sweaty palms and shaking limbs, and can make even the best and most enthusiastic professional marketers look for the nearest wooden stake to bury into the heart of the beast.

Copious and Detailed Research

Say those four words, and you can almost feel teeth chattering and hands shaking.  Those words chill us to the bone because, frankly, not that many of us care for doing research, especially “creative marketers” who want to stretch their brain cells on ideas, not numbers.  Yet it is research, fact-based research, that is most effective in determining where and how to spend your marketing dollars.  And that’s all about marketing smarter!

Years ago, before Northwestern University seemed capable of recruiting a “real” college football team, the Wildcats’ fans would stand in frustration near the end of yet another blow-out loss and shout:

“Laugh now.  Someday you’re gonna work for us!”  The implication was obvious — they didn’t have much of a football team because they were actually students and smarter than the jocks.  They would have the lower score after four quarters, but they’d win in the game of life and careers.  Being “smarter” can still work to your advantage.

You can defeat the big guys by competing and marketing smarter.  Here’s how we at Johnson Direct employ the “smarts” to help clients achieve remarkable results while spending less.

Too many companies attempt to market their products without using real data as the basis for decisions.  I submit that as marketers, our responsibility lies in guiding our clients through a sophisticated approach that yields real knowledge of their core markets.  What do they absolutely need to know to achieve the greatest degree of success?

We take fact-based research and combine it with our own proprietary approach, Direct Branding ™, to achieve unparalleled market penetration and success.  It takes a little longer to do the research, but pays big dividends in the long haul.

Companies need to understand their own customer base, what their customers look upon as the company’s brand “promise,” and, importantly, which markets to spend money in.  These are key factors that will influence messaging down the road when it is time to communicate with customers and potential customers.

Outsmarting the competition requires perseverance, courage, patience and wit.  If you’re ready to face this battle, be prepared to sink more time, resources and intellectual blood, sweat and tears into a new, smarter and more competitive game plan.

Our philosophy is to provide fact-based analysis that helps managers to answer the questions that make or save money by more effectively and efficiently allocating resources based on relative market potential.

For one client, we used highly detailed techniques in the data collection process, including where, geographically, the best potential existed to sell their products.  They had been attempting to sell in 49 states; yet our research revealed that they were drawing 80 percent of their sales in only 23.  Nine states, alone, were yielding more than 50 percent.

We examined all 3,141 counties in the US and determined that our client had 12 heavy concentrations  of sales in the country.  Based on that “copious and detailed research,” we recommended that they utilize layered decision-making to allocate their resources to those areas where there was greater profit probability and potential.  As a result, they suspended marketing activities in six states all together.  Fifteen states were chosen as having a very high chance of generating strong response to marketing efforts and another 14 were identified as having a high chance.

Consequently, this client has experienced a response-to-conversion rate that has increased from 5% to 8%.  That may not seem like much on the surface, but given both dollars from current sales and continued lifetime purchases, this client is looking at millions in new revenue.  They are able to compete aggressively with larger companies that outspend them by as much as 50 percent by marketing to areas where they now know people are most likely to want and buy their products.

Creative played an important part in communicating to those people, of course.  But no creative would have been successful at selling the client’s products if it wasn’t relevant to the customer.  And only fact-based research makes that degree of relevancy possible.

Remember, while this approach is greatly effective and certainly the hallmark of Johnson Direct, there are new ways being developed every day to compete smarter.  Be open to them.  Don’t be afraid to try something new.

Copious and Detailed Research

Now, that isn’t that scary, is it?

Grant Johnson

Johnson Direct LLC

800-710-2750

Get ready. This hasn’t happened since 1993, but according to Advertising Age, it’s about to be resurrected.

“It” is the Sears holiday “Wish Book” catalog, appearing soon in a mail box outside your home. And it won’t just be Sears sending catalogs this year, of course.

How can this be, you ask? Aren’t catalogs too expensive and old-fashioned? Only if you fall victim to the misguided thinking that the new media is a death blow for tried and true marketing techniques. Unlike the day “Video Killed the Radio Star” introduced MTV and music videos, catalogs today have too much going for them to succumb to a stake through the heart from overly enthusiastic “new media” denizens.

Why? Because catalogs offer great targetability and a less intrusive approach which, along with their testability and ease of using unique URLs, make them the perfect partner to the new media.

Catalogs can make the experience of online shopping easier and more comfortable for users. Almost any on-line shopping site is easy to use IF you know exactly what you’re looking for. Catalogs are effective in driving buyers to websites already armed with the knowledge they need to quickly find – and buy – what they want.

I’ve always stressed the importance of measurability in any kind of marketing. A catalog combined with a unique URL is an incredibly easy tool to measure.

Old-fashioned? Success never goes out of style.

Grant Johnson

Johnson Direct LLC

800-710-2750

… so are the days of our marketing lives!

I recently blogged about the upstart virtual worlds like Second Life and their potential use in advertising campaigns. Well, just like that, along comes a Wall Street Journal article about how Second Life has fallen on hard times as experimenting marketers have delayed, cut back, or just plain abandoned their involvement with the virtual world.

Not all feel that the virtual world craze is going south, however, pointing to the continuing growth of other, newer virtual reality sites. There are at least a dozen other virtual worlds out there in cyber space, and marketers are watching closely to see who is going where. The sudden explosion of these homes for one’s alter-ego has marketers struggling to keep pace with lightning fast changes in consumer preferences.

What’s happening to Second Life? Some theorize that it’s due to the need to use special software to create that alter-ego. Others feel it’s because Second Life fails to provide enough to do to keep a “resident’s” interest.

On the other hand, word comes that Microsoft has invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook for the exclusive right to sell advertising that is targeted to the social network’s denizens. Microsoft beat out Google for this apparently highly desirable right. Astoundingly, the deal values Facebook at $15 billion (with a “b”)!

Where is it all going to end? No idea. The only thing we can know for sure is that no matter what you call it … new media, web 2.0, or even web 3.0, the internet is a tremendously exciting place to experiment. But whatever you happen to call it, it is our responsibility not to thrust it upon our clients just because it’s new, but to test constantly to see if the opportunities of the web are relevant to the targeted goals we hope to achieve.

Grant Johnson

Johnson Direct LLC

800-710-2750

Direct mail marketers may not always put the topic of story telling at the top of their to-do list, but they should. “Storyselling,” as I call it, is the art of telling an emotional and compelling story in direct mail to effectively convey a call to action that sells a product or service, or gains a donation from the recipient.

A good story is something the recipient can read easily and which effectively touches that something inside of them that urges them to take action. Let me give you an example.

We work with an important non-profit agency in southeastern Wisconsin that provides multiple social services to a wide variety of people. When we first became partners in direct mail campaigns with them, they were spending $25,000 per year on direct mail, and receiving about the same amount in return. Notwithstanding the potential lifetime value of the donors who made the gifts, this is still not the kind of return an agency executive wants to see.

We have been working with them for eight years now, and each of the direct mail pieces we have done for them has focused on an emotional, factual story of one element of their programming. Of course, we have done considerable work in finding the right lists to target.

In those eight years, they have increased their annual direct mail expenditure to about $185,000 … with an annual return of more than $1 million! Now that’s a return a non-profit exec can get behind!

I had the privilege of doing a pod cast on the topic of storyselling at the recent DMA Convention in Chicago for Target Marketing Magazine. Here’s the link. Please take a listen and don’t hesitate to contact me with questions or comments … or if you’d like to explore a direct mail partnership.

Grant Johnson

Johnson Direct

Depending on your age, some of this may be going back too far for you. But I can remember sitting on the floor of my first apartment playing Pong and being transfixed by the fascinating game taking place on the television screen. I can remember walking down the aisle at Target and gazing at a Commodore 64 sitting tantalizingly on the shelf. “Hmmm,” I thought. “Should I? Do I really need a computer? Or are they just a fad?”

I even remember watching the first video on MTV (”Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles), back in the days when MTV actually played videos.

And now, suddenly, it’s today, and virtual worlds are taking hold. Destinations such as Secondlife.com and There.com have not just sprung up tentatively … they’ve boldly taken hold with hundreds of thousands of members who are living an unusual sort of double life. They exist in the real world, and they also live in a virtual world where they can pursue anything from business opportunities to real estate and recreation.

To some, this may sound just too far out. Virtual worlds? But to smart marketers, it should sound like opportunity. The web may be the greatest tool in marketing history, and we must investigate fully its ability to help us converse with our customers in the manner most likely to appeal to them.

Virtual worlds, then, are about relevancy. They may be the most relevant way to communicate with some segments of your audience. I urge you to look at virtual worlds and test them as measurable marketing tools. Don’t think it’s not happening already. Nissan, Evian Water, Scion, theaters and more are finding at least some of their target audiences living in virtual worlds.

The important thing is to remember that you must respect these individuals and their desire not to be bombarded with traditional advertising. The times are changing, and it you can find a way to their virtual hearts, you might find a way to success.

Grant Johnson

Johnson Direct LLC

By the way, thanks to Target for resurrecting one of my favorite songs in their commercials: “And when tomorrow is today, the bell may toll for some, but nothing can change, nothing can change, nothing can change the shape of things to come.”