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First, we are changing our name. Instead of Clayman Advertising, Inc., we are now Clayman Marketing Communications, Inc. There are a lot of reasons for this change. While we still specialize in advertising services, we really wanted a name that better reflects all of our capabilities, which range from website design to content development, social media, trade show graphics, and more. In reality, this change is long overdue! We will be changing our domain name to claymarcom.com effective Monday, December 3, so please make sure to update your contact information!

We also are moving to a new location on November 30th so while you are updating our website address and email addresses, you’ll also need to update our street address! Our new address will be:

Clayman Marketing Communications, Inc.

Sawmill Run

1245 S. Cleveland-Massillon Road

Suite #226

Akron, Ohio 44321

Our phone numbers will remain the same.

Needless to say, we are extremely excited about these changes, so we wanted to take this brief moment to share the good news with you. Thanks for listening!

As we discussed earlier this year, a key skill for anyone in the business world is listening. By listening we don’t mean hearing; we mean actually listening to absorb what someone else (say, a customer) is saying to us. With that in mind, we thought this survey from Industry Week was a good wake-up call as marketers continue to help companies plan for 2013. We all know that the economy is a concern for manufacturers (along with everyone else) as we discussed in this summary of the National Association of Manufacturers Survey. What are CEOs of manufacturing companies really contemplating as we end 2012? A new survey from Industry Week offers an overview.

• CEOs are worried about the “Wal-Mart” factor. People are making decisions based on price versus what the highest quality product might be. As companies strive to make the highest quality product possible, and as it becomes more expensive to do so, this becomes a significant problem.

• CEOs are worried about politics. In the group surveyed, the general consensus seemed to be that politicians were more interested in their own careers than in actually solving problems.

• Unfair wages are a concern for CEOs. They are aware of the gap between what they make and what their employees make. Consider Warren Buffet as one extreme example of this line of thinking.

• Customers are decreasing while the price of raw materials and freight continues to increase.

• Educational institutions are not properly preparing younger generations for manufacturing careers.

You will probably notice a distinct lack of commentary regarding marketing issues like, “Should we be on Facebook or not?”  This is not to say that marketing is unimportant to manufacturing CEOs, but these are the issues that come to their minds first when asked what they are worried about, not “How is my SEO?” Can marketing assist in dealing with these concerns? In some cases, most certainly. Educating the industry about high quality products is a potential answer. Partnering with educational institutions tied to manufacturing, networking with those groups on social media sites, and using PR to impress the importance of these issues all can help. But the first and most important step, as a marketer, is to really listen to what these CEOs are saying, and to understand the breadth of these concerns. These are not local or regional issues. These issues are global in scale.

Before you lose patience with a CEO who has not gotten around to your social media presentation or your advertising recommendations, remember these factors that are weighing heavily on their minds. Acknowledge that these are pressing issues, and that some of them are probably, in the long run, higher priorities than a Facebook page. Marketing is important, and it is necessary, but it is not everything.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hygienematters/5505283929/ via Creative Commons

Screen shot of Pulse on an iPad from the cited article.

We saw an interesting article in Advertising Age last week regarding the news reading app called Pulse. Like so many other platforms catching fire today, Pulse organizes content into a more visual system that makes finding and reading content easier. It is a competitor of the more commonly known Flipboard. Both companies, Flipboard and Pulse, are taking the bold step that so many internet start-ups have missed over the last decade – they are entering the game with a revenue plan. However, the two companies are approaching their money-making ventures in different ways.

Flipboard, according to the article, has gained some attention from advertisers because of the flashy magazine-type ads it sells. In fact, if you visit the advertisers section of the Flipboard site, you can see that they tout the availability of full-page ads that can also be fully interactive in a mobile environment. This is a fairly standard advertising/revenue generation model. Content is accompanied by flashy ads that hopefully are appearing in an environment that will garner them some interest. Print advertising has been working this way forever.

On the other hand, Pulse, despite the tried and true status of the paid advertisement model, is trying something different. Pulse executives are offering sponsored content opportunities instead of paid advertisements. This means that like an advertorial in a print publication, an article would appear that would be noted as sponsored content, and readers would have to pay to be able to access the content.

Why is Pulse moving in this direction? “The canvas is getting smaller, and brands are at their best when they are unshackled and can focus on being powerful storytellers,” Dmitry Shevelenko, Pulse’s head of monetization products, wrote in an email. “Skyscrapers, takeovers and other bombardment tactics popularized on the desktop web are largely irrelevant on intimate devices.” The article also notes that the kinds of “full page” ads Flipboard is offering just doesn’t work as well on the smaller screen. The impact is minimized, especially on a smart phone device.

Benefits to the advertiser

In many ways, sponsored content can be more attractive to advertisers than the ads of yore. Whether the environment is mobile or web, customers are becoming less patient with “interruptive” marketing. Tactics like flashing skyscraper banner ads have most certainly seen their day in the sun. “Roadblock” ads that you have to look at before proceeding to a website or to a new page are best categorized by most people as really annoying and disruptive to the overall experience. If someone is reading, whether it’s a print publication, a website, or articles via Pulse, what they’re most after is good content. Sponsored content is still content, and if it’s compelling enough, people will click it and read the full article. This is why text ads are one of most preferred email marketing recommendations. People don’t often click on a banner ad, but a block of content is much more attractive.

Sponsoring content also can help build the brand of a company as a thought leader. It can increase the likelihood that your company will be perceived of as a good resource for information, and it of course also indicates that your company is active in the industry.

The downside

In the case of mobile apps like Pulse, the biggest question right now is whether people will be willing to pay for content they used to get for free, especially if they see that the content is sponsored by a company (this would tend to make you think the information would be biased in some way). It will take awhile to move past the era of free content into the future landscape of increasing paywalls, but that seems to be the way  the publishing industry is headed. The interesting trend to watch will be whether publications will move towards the sponsored content model as they move their platform to mobile devices. Will B2C and B2B publishers continue to sell “full page ads” for iPad versions of their publications, or will we see a great decline in the use of banner ads in favor of more and more “pay to play” content?

What are your thoughts about this both as a marketer and/or as a consumer? Would you be willing to pay for content? Would you prefer that over seeing banner ads? And if you’re in marketing, what are your thoughts? Do you agree that sponsoring content is the wave of the future?

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

If you aren’t online much, you might never have heard of this cause. The basic idea is that for the month of November, men grow out their mustaches to visually show support for fighting prostate cancer and for prostate cancer awareness. Men can create donation pages where people can also contribute to help fight prostate cancer. It’s a fun way to raise awareness about a serious problem. Men can show pictures of their growing “mo”s or mustaches, and sometimes women even apply a digital “mo” to show support. All excellent news unless you’re a manufacturer of men’s razors. Or so you would think.

This year, according to the Ad Age article, Gilette is adopting more of a “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. The company has launched a new facial trimmer, so they have jumped onto the Movember bandwagon this month with a reminder that you can keep that growing mo looking nicely trimmed with their new product.

This might seem disingenuous on Gilette’s part, and you may even feel that they are perhaps demeaning the importance of the Movember message. However, social good is becoming something that companies in all industries need to begin to tune in to. An article from March 2012 published in the Huffington Post by Jon Carson (founder of BiddingforGood.com, a charitable e-commerce site) suggests that “the climate is ripe for social enterprises to be profitable while making great contributions toward social good.” He goes on to say:

Because right now many institutions face deep, universal funding challenges due to stock market losses, reductions in charitable giving, and lost government resources. There is no choice for them but to be innovative, either on their own or with the help of an outside company that can create jobs and benefits for society in the process.

Richard Branson, CEO and founder of Virgin Records (and then Virgin Mobile and Virgin Airlines, among other things) has been a proponent of businesses engaging in social good for years, as this article from the Guardian notes. In fact, that same article cites an Edelman study that says 73% of people polled would choose a company aligned to a good cause versus one with no social good affiliation.

What this means for you

Maybe your company isn’t as big as Virgin or Gilette. That does not mean that the opportunity to engage in social good is beyond your grasp. Especially with online communication, it’s easier than ever to align your company with good causes. These opportunities can also help “humanize” your brand or make people feel that you are more accessible. For example, perhaps one of your employees is currently fighting prostate cancer. Your company could update all of the pictures on your website’s “contact us” page to include a “mo” and to explain why you have done that. Add a link to a donation page and you’ve created a compelling message, a tribute to your employee, and, pragmatically, a reason to drive traffic to your website.

In addition to being a good thing to do, social good also creates a long tail of positivity around your company. It’s a way to affiliate your company with causes that people feel good about supporting. By extension, people feel good about affiliating with you. PR can maximize the impact of your good deeds so long as it does not get to the point of perpetual back-slapping. People can tell when you are being phony versus when you are actually trying to improve the world.

If you want to get the most “bang for your buck” out of all of your marketing tactics, investing in some social good, even locally, can be a great first step. If you have any experiences with this you’d like to share, or if you have any questions, please leave us a comment below!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6176064777/ via Creative Commons

Regardless of the cause, one of the most common reactions to uncertain times is make cuts in marketing until it’s more clear how the times are progressing. Marketing can be viewed as a luxury item, great when you can afford it but not a necessity. Factually, there are fewer times when marketing is more important than when the economy is hitting a rough patch. We preached this passionately when the economy took a major hit in 2008 and 2009. Many companies wanted to cut back on marketing before they even began to feel the impact of the recession. In the long-term, this is not always the best decision.

The Message Not Sending A Message Sends

Ultimately, marketing is a way for you to tell your story to your customers and your prospects. Here is your product, and this is why they should consider buying it. Here is the service you offer, and here is how it could benefit them. If you are not out there telling that story, the likelihood of someone else telling it for you is pretty slim. During uncertain or rough times, if you stop sending out your story, you will experience the old adage, “Out of sight, out of mind.” People may even assume that your silence means you went out of business. You will lose the opportunity to remind people you exist along with the opportunity to explain why what you offer is superior.

Lest you consider this advice self-serving on our part, see what others say:

The Emotion Factor: Companies don’t experience uncertain times in a vacuum. Your customers are experiencing the same thing. Back in 2009, Entrepreneur Magazine noted that when your customers are watching every penny, that’s the time when you need to really emphasize the value you offer. You need to remind your customers why they trusted you in the past and why they purchased from you in the past. Given a choice between trying something brand new or something reliable, people are more likely to gravitate towards a known factor.

Know What To Focus On: In 2008, John Quelch, a professor at Harvard Business School, wrote an article for Harvard Business Review noting that marketers should not cut back on marketing during a recession, but rather that marketers increase their targeting and determine what needs to be focused on most. He offers eight items to focus on in the article, ranging from a shifting of product promotion to emphasizing your company’s core values.

Mine for Gold: John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Commitment Engine, wrote a blog post in 2008 offering advice on how to dig out of a recession. Rather than cutting marketing, his advice leads companies towards focusing on existing customers, reconnecting with former customers, and creating a flawless process for winning new customers.

Set Your Budget, Set Your Priorities, Have A Plan

If ever there was a year to have a grounded marketing plan in place, 2013 seems to be it. There are more opportunities than ever to market your products or services; there are more competing messages reducing the amount of attention you can get, and the economy remains a point of trepidation. The advice some marketers give, which is to “try everything,” is simply irresponsible at this time. Too much revolves around every decision you make. Have a plan. Consider all of the options in front of you, but do not be distracted by “shiny objects.” The conversation should focus on corporate objectives and what tactics will most efficiently move you towards achieving your company’s goals. And measure – measure your progress, measure your ROI, measure what works and what does not. There is a difference between continuing to invest in a marketing campaign versus simply tossing money at your marketing department and hoping for the best.

It’s pure conjecture to try to determine if the same uncertainty would have existed had Mitt Romney been elected. Factually, the US economy and the world economy is still far from healed. Too many people still are without jobs, and as we have discussed before, the business world itself is changing dramatically. All we can know is the reality we’re in now, and that reality is marked by a lack of confidence. Approach your marketing with a clear head and clear goals in mind.

If you need help, feel free to download our free white paper offering advice on how to approach 2013, or leave us a comment with any questions or comments.

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Despite this apparently obvious truth, how many of us actually know what our customers think about us? As Jantsch writes, it can be a scary or even uncomfortable conversation if you decide to ask your customers what they think about you, but this conversation is key to everything else we have talked about in this series. For example, while having a big idea or a big purpose is great, if your customers are unaware of what motivates you, they will not be able to appreciate it or join you in your passion. If you want to build a corporate culture that your customers can feel comfortable in, it is essential to know first whether they are even aware you have a corporate culture. Do your customers know your mission statement? Do they know your story, or your “why?” Do your customers see the value you present them or are they with you because you offer the lowest prices?

Listening to what your customers have to say about you requires the perceptive listening we discussed earlier in this series. You cannot simply ask your customers what they think and then prepare with a defensive response. You really need to listen, and after listening, you really need to absorb what it is they said. Does their perception of your purpose stray far away from what you want your purpose to be? Does their perception of your company stand in stark contrast to everything you want your company to be? These are things that are unpleasant to hear, but knowing that your customer has these perceptions is the first step in improving your customer service and your customer relationships.

When we talk about customers, it is essential that we also talk about employees. We discussed how your employees now can interface with existing and potential customers more often and with greater ease than ever before thanks to social media. How you treat your employees will be reflected in how your employees treat your customers. Understanding how your customers feel about your employees is another acutely important step in improving your customer relationships.

This is not to say that you are unimportant in the equation, of course. Commitment to your customers must also mean a commitment to yourself. If you let yourself become too harried, too anxious, or so dedicated to your work that you are not able to tear yourself away, this can negatively impact your own life in addition to how you relate to your community at work. We hope this series has offered you some ideas on how to preserve your own sanity while letting your entire company’s community see and understand your commitment.

We highly recommend you purchase and read The Commitment Engine for yourself. It is a thought provoking book, and we’d love to hear your take on it. If you missed the previous posts in this series, just click here. We hope you enjoyed these posts!

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According to Jantsch, educating your community (which he defines as anyone who comes into contact with your company – your employees, your customers, or others in your industry) is the strongest way to differentiate your company in today’s business world. Why is a willingness to teach so important, though? There are several reasons.

– Teaching allows you to present your own perspective and your company’s “personality” while passing along objective, not promotional, information.

– A teacher/student relationship immediately puts your company in a position of expertise. If a person is deciding between your company and another company, your demonstration of industry knowledge may be the extra nudge that gets you the sale.

– Teaching shows you care. Anybody can promote a product. If you hand someone  a message, they can read it or present it convincingly enough. But if you demonstrate a deep well of knowledge that your community can appreciate, they will understand that you aren’t just promoting a product. Rather, you are building a community of employees, customers, potential customers, and peers who all care about the same issues.

– Teaching makes you more accessible. People do not always feel the doors of communication are open when you are in a promotional mode of communication. However, when you open your hands and show a willingness to share information, you become more “human.” You are easier to approach and easier to understand.

How do you teach? What do you teach?

Perhaps you work in an industry where you think this whole concept of educating your community would not work. Maybe you feel your customers are just as knowledgeable as you, or perhaps your hunch is that your customers are simply too busy to be able to sit down and talk to you about hypotheticals. Factually, there is always information that can be passed along, but to further this idea you need to be willing to accept some out-of-the-box thinking. An examination of The Referral Engine is a great place to start. There, Jantsch suggests some ideas that might sound crazy to you at first. For example, he suggests that if there is a significant issue plaguing your industry, you get together with a competitor and pool resources to offer a really valuable educational experience for the entire industry. While this might seem risky on the surface, the fact that two competitive companies would come together to assist everyone will do wonders for both brands.

Another important consideration is that you can teach your community about things that may not relate directly to your exact business. Jantsch talks about an insurance agent who built an impressive business not by teaching people about insurance but rather by teaching his customers and potential customers how to use social media to promote their own businesses. By earning their trust and by spending time teaching them things that did not seem to benefit him directly, this insurance agent gained a lot of trust and a lot of credibility. When the people he taught needed to talk about insurance, guess who they called?

Think about your community – your employees, your peers, your customers, your prospects – and the obstacles they may encounter on a daily basis. Do you know ways to help eradicate those complexities? Do you know someone else who does? If a lot of your customers are nervous about the economic forecast for 2013, consider partnering with a bank to offer a financial class. If your customers are struggling to meet governmental safety standards, consider hosting an open house and a seminar on those standards. People are looking for ways to make their work and their lives easier. No matter what you teach them, you will earn their appreciation. You will stand out.

A few quick pointers

Remember that when you begin to establish yourself as a resource, you still must maintain your transparency. Ultimately you are a company that sells a product or service, and ultimately you are hoping that your efforts will result in increased sales. This should not be hidden from the people you are assisting. Whether you are offering a white paper, a webinar, a seminar, or a blog series, your audience should be aware that you are not just an independent consultant offering classes.

Along those same lines, make sure that you do not just give information away without covering your own company’s needs. If you are hoping to build business relationships, people will not be shocked if you invite them to sign up for your e-newsletter or if they see a mention of your products amidst the educational material you present. As long as your information is valuable, and as long as you are not too promotional, educating your community can be a win-win for all parties involved.

If you are thinking about incorporating a teaching facet into your marketing next year but have questions, let us know. We’d be happy to help you!

Note: This is our eighth post in our series inspired by John Jantsch’s The Commitment Engine. To catch up on the whole series, just click here! 

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pburch_tulane/4295703067/ via Creative Commons

In The Commitment Engine, the latest book from Duct Tape Marketing author John Jantsch, talks about what he calls perceptive listening. He defines this as “I hear and interpret the words, but I also consider what the person is thinking and perhaps how they are acting as they say the words.” This is a key point, not just for offline communications but also, and perhaps moreso, for online communications. Take a moment and think about how we act online. We see something we like on Facebook, so we click a button that says, “like.” On Twitter, if we see something interesting, we click a button that says, “Retweet.” On Google Plus, the button we click is +1. On Pinterest, it’s “repin.” Our response mechanisms have become so predictable that we almost don’t need to fully consider what is being said. We like it enough to click a button or we don’t.

Jantsch points out that often, we “hear” but we don’t listen. I read another post recently that talked about the same thing – we may look like we’re listening, but really what we are doing is we are hearing words while at the same time formulating how we want to respond. Once we hit upon the retort we want to make, we probably stop listening even though we may still be hearing.

When we are talking to our customers or when we are talking to people we work with, it can be harmful to do anything other than perceptive listening. If we don’t truly take in what these people are saying, we cannot respond fully in the ways they are hoping for. Indeed, in a survey that Second Wind, an organization devoted to small marketing firms, conducted about five years ago, the most common complaint clients had about agencies was that agencies don’t truly listen. This might come as a shock if you’re a marketer, but there is a difference between hearing, listening with the intention of responding, and truly listening while absorbing what the other person is saying. No matter what business you’re in, to excel at customer service you must learn how to listen perceptively.

Jantsch offers a few suggestions that can help hone the ability to listen perceptively. For example, sit down with a customer and ask them some very pointed questions. For example, you could start by asking them what their favorite thing about working with your company is. Don’t listen with the intent of defending yourself or offering an alternative to what they say. Instead, watch them as they respond. Watch their body language. Does their face brighten with enthusiasm or do they squirm uncomfortably because nothing comes to them right away? The same exercise can be done with your employees or co-workers. Ask questions and pause to really listen. You might be surprised by what you learn.

There was at some point several years ago an experiment conducted on a college campus. A person went around greeting people the way we always greet people. “Hey, how you doing?” Inevitably, the response was, “Oh, hey, how are you?” The person doing the experiment responded with, “Eh, I have cancer.” More often than not, the experiment revealed that the other person was so far from listening that they would sometimes even respond with, “Oh, that’s great. Gotta run!” That experiment comes to mind while reading Jantsch’s section about perceptive listening. As a marketer, as a business person, we cannot afford to be so hurried in our responses. We must listen not just with our ears, but also with our brains.

Do you find that you hear more than you listen? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Note: This is our ninth post in our series inspired by John Jantsch’s The Commitment Engine. To catch up on the rest of the series, just click here!

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What Jantsch suggests is the creation of a hierarchical pyramid consisting of everything you need to accomplish for your work. Structuring a hierarchy helps guide you on a day-to-day basis by reminding you of what’s really important in the big picture versus what may be a task-oriented priority that is important but not essential. The pyramid looks like this:

Your Big Idea

At the top of your pyramid is your raison d’etre, your reason for being. This is what keeps you in touch with your big picture. Whether or not you work on this every day, it should always be front and center with everything you *are* working on.

Priorities for the Year

While many people focus on New Years Resolutions, Jantsch suggests that you focus on three or four goals for your business. Like your “big idea,” these may not be things you work on every day, but everything you do should fit into the context of those three or four big goals. If you need to decide what to work on next, working on things that will move you forward towards those goals should take top priority.

Goals within Goals

If you just set three to four goals and hope they happen, you’ll be setting yourself up for probable failure, which is why so many people fail to live up to their New Years Resolutions, too. When you establish your big goals for the year, you should also set up paths on how to reach those goals. Week by week, month by month, you can track where you are in progressing towards your ultimate goals for the year.

Projects

Projects probably seem like the lifeblood of your company. They are what you DO, after all. But all projects should connect in some way to your goals and your big idea. If you are in the enviable position of having too many projects, it may be time to start saying no. Knowing what to say no to can be guided by the upper portions of your work pyramid. If a project would be fun but doesn’t really fit into your “big idea,” that will be a likely candidate for cutting.

Tasks

It’s no surprise that tasks make up the widest portion of your pyramid, right? Tasks can be things that you really don’t like doing, things that don’t seem to matter by themselves. However, tasks also can be what take up most of our time. Cleaning out your email inbox can be a task. Cleaning off your desk can certainly be a task, but it’s important because you may find that file you were looking for three weeks ago. Filing is a task that can be boring but extremely important when you need to get your hands on something quickly. Jantsch suggests that in order to keep tasks under control, you should try to set up a rough schedule throughout your week where you focus solely on knocking out these unenjoyable tasks. Again, when it comes to prioritizing, tasks affiliated with projects that are key to accomplishing goals should come first.

As you can see, the visual of a pyramid helps you keep your focus on the really big ideas in your company while also helping you to prioritize your daily work. Of course, no plan is perfect and there will always be things that intrude on your best laid plans, but as a guiding structure, we think this would work well.

What do you think?

Note: This is our seventh post in our series inspired by John Jantsch’s The Commitment Engine. To read the rest of the posts just click here! 

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