With the addition of cable television, streaming video services, internet radio, podcasts, social media streaming platforms, Periscope, and a whole host of other choices, the media landscape for marketers has become crowded, fragmented and multi-fold – which is the good news! You now have a plethora of choices when making media selections that allow you to not only narrowly target your exact audience, but also get near instant feedback in terms of engagement and viewership in real time, and enrich your data stream for further refinement of your selections based on actual purchase or engagement levels. Miraculous!

So where does that leave Network television and terrestrial radio? Right there in the fight, according to special guest media expert Karl Minacapelli of CK Westbury Media in Towson, MD.

Learn about how:

• TV can narrow cast to your audience
• Radio can do real time feedback on day part and web engagement
• Cable can be a bargain if you want to laser focus your buy
• Radio can be a bargain if you want to own the category

The best 30-minute education on media buying available, right here from the doctor and his colleagues!

Think of your brand as a path.There are seven characteristics of brand that can be likened to a path in the woods – learn them and live them and your brand will flourish!

It seems that “Experts” are everywhere theses days. In the old days, to become an expert, one had to devote years to building credentials, through education, publishing, speaking at conferences, trade events, peer-reviewed ideology, and to show some success using your chosen theory or practice concept, to be an expert.

• How to get started
• What elements you need to put in place
• How to build a platform to launch your idea
• How to build a funnel to monetize your expertise
• How to scale up by extending the ideas you already have

Learn how to position yourself as a true expert in your field in less than 30 minutes!

For decades, psychologists, therapists and behaviorists labored under the mistaken impression that the brain was separated into two hemispheres, and each had a different set of executive functions. The continuation of the myth in marketing terms has lead to a field of study and application called “Right-Brain Research”.  More modern and sophisticated studies have debunked the myth, and it’s been accepted that both hemispheres control a variety of functions and that cross-over between the two is significant and intricate. So where does that leave marketers?

Right where they started, trying to find the emotional triggers that with prompt an action, a response to advertising, images, video, messaging and other inputs, that drive purchasing behavior. But all is not lost . . .

Good primary customer insight research, when well-designed and executed, can generate reams of relevant and useful data that can be studied, parsed and dissected to derive insights into the customers of your particular brand, product or service.

Listeners will discover:

• How to get inside the head of their customer and use the information to spur action
• How to set up and analyze the resulting conversational qual data
• How to use the results to make decisions on media, message, and imagery

Learn the secrets hidden in your customer’s heads, and how to use them to attract more buyers and boost your brand, in less than 30 minutes!

Ever wonder how product or service companies figure out what to offer, what products should look like, be called, feel like, or how much they should cost? Ever wonder how they know what you want in a product or service, or how they knew you’d appreciate a particular product or feature?

Primary research is the best way to get inside the head of the customer and find out their preferences, needs, wants, likes and dislikes. By gathering information and data directly from customers, potential customers, ex-customers, and other direct stakeholders, marketers can determine buying behavior, product features, and more, and turn them into best-selling products and services.

You’ll learn:

• What methods of primary research work best?
• How to analyze and present data that doesn’t yield numbers or graphs
• How big a sample do I need to gather significant data I can use
• How to use the insights uncovered to convert them into something I can use to improve my marketing

The fastest thirty minutes of insight available, The Marketing Doctor will answer your questions about primary research and how to use it to set your marketing program on fire!

The Marketing Doctor Podcast, Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot

The Value of Primary Marketing Research in the Planning of Marketing Outreach Campaigns.

Ever wonder how product or service companies figure out what to offer, what products should look like, be called, feel like, or how much they should cost? Ever wonder how they know what you want in a product or service, or how they knew you’d appreciate a particular product or feature?

Primary research is the best way to get inside the head of the customer and find out their preferences, needs, wants, likes and dislikes. By gathering information and data directly from customers, potential customers, ex-customers, and other direct stakeholders, marketers can determine buying behavior, product features, and more, and turn them into best-selling products and services.

You’ll learn:

• What methods of primary research work best?
• How to analyze and present data that doesn’t yield numbers or graphs
• How big a sample do I need to gather significant data I can use
• How to use the insights uncovered to convert them into something I can use to improve my marketing

The fastest thirty minutes of insight available, The Marketing Doctor will answer your questions about primary research and how to use it to set your marketing program on fire!

How the brand appears, how it’s used in advertising in print on television, or online, affects buyer perception of the product the company and the brand. It’s one of the reasons brand standards and usage guides evolved, to help maintain consistency of presentation from usage to usage, to give to structure and control flexibility of the various uses and appearances of the brand. That usage manual, in a perfect world, was also backed up by Neuormarketing science, the science of perception with regard to persuasion.

[pullquote align=”left or right”]That usage manual, in a perfect world, was also backed up by Neuormarketing science, the science of perception with regard to persuasion.[/pullquote]

Perception can be shifted based on a number of characteristics of the product the packaging and the brand usage. How the brand appears, where it appears, it’s placement in-situ for packaging, advertising and other outlets, and other factors. Here’s four ways you can make your brand more powerful using this brilliant perception science.

• Give It Weight – positioning of the brand on packaging and in advertising can affect the perception of the weight (both literal and figurative) of the product. Studies have shown that product logos positioned at the bottom of the page or the lowest part of the package are perceived as heavier than those where the logo or product squib is placed near the top of the package or the page. If you want to be taken seriously, let the weight do some work for you (if weight is a positive attribute for your product), and put your product logo toward the bottom.

• Let Color Work For You – Weight and credibility can also be inferred, and therefore manipulated, through the use of color. This one is more specific to product advertising, but many brands can take advantage of this attribute. Studies have shown that a lighter color can indicate a perception of lighter weight. How many times have you seen a product logo appear in one color for the “standard” product, and a lighter version of that same color appears on their “light” version (low sugar, low fat, low calorie, low density, low carb, low gluten, take advantage of this perception). Studies showed however that this only works on versions of the same color – putting your product in a black box won’t be perceived as any heavier than in a white one, but light red or pink is perceived as lighter than dark red or scarlet.

• Pay It Forward – The brand’s place on the perceived time continuum can be positioned for the purpose of creating a specific impression. English speakers and Romance language users perceive time as moving from left to right, while other languages and their users perceive time in the opposite direction (Hebrew, for example). If you want it to appear that your brand is older and more established, place the brand or product depiction on the left, and it will read as more traditional, nostalgic, or time-tested. Place the brand on the right side of the page, the closer to the right edge the better, and it will be perceived as fresh, modern, forward-thinking, high-tech. This effect can also be embodied in the brand itself. Logos that show motion or direct the eye to the right tend to be perceived as more progressive, skew younger and more active, more advanced. The NIKE swoosh moves to the right showing speed, advancement, direction, purpose, forward motion.

• Avoid Dissonance and Negativity – Sensory inputs should work in harmony for the best results, both in use of the brand, and in where it appears – context matters. Color, sound, small, ambient lighting, all play a part in the perception of the product, and these elements need to work together to get maximum impact from the brand. A bright colored package, with an astringent or citric aroma, with fast blaring music, will all work to create the perception of youth, vigor, action, engagement, high-energy. A pastel colored package viewed under diminished lighting, with soothing music and the scent of lavender will evoke relaxation, solidity, kindness and positivity. Mixing the elements creates dissonance in the mind of the buyer, and generates insecurity and indecision.

Additionally, negativity in imagery or brand context can drive down sales behavior. Studies have shown that uncomfortable situations or depiction of negativity or sadness, however brief, can cause an overall negative perception of the brand, enough to depress buying behavior. Keeping a fully positive outlook, use of positive and uplifting imagery has the opposite effect, engendering a sense of trust and wellbeing, and driving buying behavior upward.

Is your brand being used in its most powerful context to build the right perception? Test these four elements, and see if you’re sending the right message . . .

• Tighten the focus on the Core. While these folks are generally repeat customers, long-terms clients and loyal to a fault, they can always increase their numbers, frequency and volume, often by tightening and focusing messaging, narrowing media choices to those that are most effective, and “clipping the menu” of benefits, product offerings and services to those that they frequently enjoy.
• Uncover Opportunity Within The Fringe. Infrequent customers, on and off clients, low-volume buyers, those with a high browse-to-buy ratio, are where the greatest opportunities often lie. There is the largest potential for growth among this group, to bring them up to the level of the Core group and beyond, by tailoring the product, packaging, messaging, media selection, and benefit focus to their needs. Now you have to uncover those real needs and cater to them to beef up the volume and frequency of their behavior.
• Learn About Off-Label Uses From the Fringe. Occasionally, our research will uncover a related, but not fully realized, use for a product or service, one that the product wasn’t designed for, but that customers saw as a functional substitute for something else. Sometimes this warrants a small product or packaging change to accommodate and expand upon before offering it to customers. Sometimes this reveals co-packaging, or co-marketing opportunities previously not realized, which lead to whole new revenue streams. These can also present opportunities to bring the Outliers in closer and boost their volume using the new product usage as a lever.
• Call In The Outliers. Discovering the resistance points and friction points in doing business with you or buying your products often presents itself most readily when speaking with the Outliers. These folks bought from you or worked with you for one or a couple of several real reasons: you were the only game in town at the time; you were the least expensive; you were the most convenient to their current circumstances; they were pressed for time and didn’t want to make a conscious choice. These are targets of opportunity, but they will show up where your customer interface is weak, where there are barriers to convenience, obstacles to purchase, price sensitivity, weaknesses in package focus, product size, and a host of small deficiencies that these casual buyers won’t surmount to buy from you. Something as simple as a slightly smaller size for sale at convenience outlets, or a reduced service package for smaller customers, can boost sales noticeably at minimal cost, and keep margins intact.
• Find A New Sector. Within each of the other sector targets there will be clues as to a new customer sector that’s out there being ignored or forgotten, and they will reveal themselves through the conversations with both Outliers and Fringe customers. They answer questions about current behaviors beginning with “Well, I used to do ____, but now . . .” They refer to a previous reason to buy that may or may not currently exist with the current product or service, or that existed with another brand they bought before switching, and that’s where the opportunity lies. Ferret out those differences, those “old” reasons and see if they still exist, you might have turned off a whole sector of customers and didn’t know it by making a change earlier that you can now revisit and capture them back.

The name of the game is knowing your customer base better, segmenting your offering appropriately, and hunting for clues of things that turn them on and off and using that knowledge to your advantage in the marketplace to approach each group as efficiently and effectively as possible.

If you think your business can benefit from knowing your customers better for any of the above reasons, or something entirely different, you owe it to yourself to investigate further. The costs are far outweighed by the benefits in both the short- and long-term.

Agility is the biggest single advantage small business has over their larger industry-mates, and to give that up with layers of bureaucracy, rigid policies, staunch and robust process guidelines with little room for innovation seems counterintuitive. However, there is one area where acting like a bigger company can pay much bigger dividends – Marketing.

Most small companies suffer from a couple of similar ills when it comes to marketing themselves:

• Small companies typically focus on sales rather than marketing anyway, laboring under the misapprehension that if they can just sell enough widgets, software licenses, land enough accounts, find enough clients, the marketing will take care of itself. As a consequence, most underspend, in some cases drastically, on outreach marketing activities. Oddly, these are the exact type of investments and activities that will position them for the growth they so strongly desire. Most founders are so fearful of waste, or of appearing to make a mistake, that they play everything close to the vest, making only incremental advances, taking the safe route and only repeating the actions they “think” worked the previous year. This leads to small, defensive thinking and limits growth like a vice squeezing the business until it’s frozen in place.
• Spending on the “wrong” things. The old saw still holds that ”half of our advertising works, we’re just not sure which half.” In today’s data-rich, public-sharing society, there’s almost no excuse for not knowing which half of any activity drives revenue, some types of activities are just harder to connect directly to sales growth than others. With that said, businesses who have never advertised or done any real organized, planned outreach activity almost universally find a significant uptick in sales revenue when they decide to start. But that glow is short-lived, as they try different things on an ad hoc basis without a plan, and spend themselves out of all the revenue gains they made at the beginning.

Now What?

What to do? Modern marketing is about agile, “spend, fail, learn, repeat” cycles. You’re not going to hit the target on every activity the first time out, and there’s a learning curve for every business, regardless of how many consultants or agencies you engage. You’re going to fail at some point, better to accept it, get used to it, use it in a positive way and get past it. One now-famous CMO of a large consumer products company had a philosophy about how to “do” agile with a variety of marketing ideas – if you throw ten ideas at the wall, and 6 of them stick, you’ve broken even and paid for the bad ones. If you hit 7 or more, you’re up for the year. Take the education from the 4 failures and commit those resources to the other six, and double down. This creates a culture of upwardly-spiraling innovation, one that rewards success while negating the suppression and stigma of failure. Failing fast and cheap works in your favor over making big bets on untested ideas and misplacing resources at a loss.

Where small business can think like a bigger business is in their attitude toward spending on marketing activity. Small-minded miserliness is self-defeating. Do a quick cost-benefit analysis, allow founders to have the courage of their own convictions, and take a calculated risk on some outreach activity that’s informed by solid, hard-won research.

4-Step Process To Improvement

• Get to know who your customer really is, spend the time and money on research.
• Find the company’s “why” early on and use it like a weapon against your competitors.
• Differentiate the small business from their market-mates, and exploit the difference
• Designate a real, realistic portion of your sales revenue for marketing activity.

Once you reach that spending level, you’re done for the year, limiting your losses by putting a stop order on funding ideas that haven’t borne fruit. Now you have a system for testing ideas, limiting downside of investing in ideas that don’t generate revenue, and have a back-stop for using the education to apply toward the ideas that do work and drive revenue upward. This kind of test, fail, learn, repeat cycle is innovation-friendly, and can spawn all sorts of new ideas, new products, new angles, new customer segments, all of which lead to the type of rapid growth start-ups are known for.

You’ll be surprised at the benefits that the courage to innovate can generate in the long- and short-term, and the gains that can be had by simply thinking and acting bigger than you are as a company. Size does matter, most importantly, in the realm of perception.