Consider the Entire Marketing Funnel

Since the proliferation of digital analytics, many marketers have become obsessed with last click attribution and bottom of funnel activity. And one can easily see why this has become the new marketing addiction.

The downside of a sole obsession at the bottom of the funnel, however, is that many marketers can become myopic and singular in their approach and marketing budget, at the expense of creating brand preference and brand awareness (Top of Mind Awareness--TOMA) funnel growth and lead generation at the top of the funnel. I have witnessed too many brands spiral downward as a result.

The only sustainable model is a growth strategy that requires a full funnel and integrated marketing approach manifested in a comprehensive and balanced strategy that includes top of funnel content to educate, differentiate, and create brand preference through value and thought leadership. Followed by generating opt-in leads as a result of offering great information for those who are very early in the research phase of the problem they seek to solve, or the benefit they seek to gain. 

If we only focus on those who are ready to make a purchase at the bottom of the funnel, we have given-up the vast majority of potential sales by default of not having captured their hearts and minds much earlier in their awareness and research process. And this is where brands lose their growth potential, and two major issues arise:

1. They become too fixated on their existing email database to grow the business, so they tend to abuse the list with an oversaturation of email blasts. As more people in the list opt-out, or ignore the emails, revenue from an over-used list diminish, and the marketer resorts to even more emails and steeper discounts to stimulate sales, which diminishes the value of the brand, and net profits. As topline revenue and net profits decline, the marketer is left with fewer resources to get back to a growth strategy, and the downward spiral continues.

2. If new prospects are not aggressively pursued at the top of the funnel, the prospect pool never expands, and growth becomes nearly impossible. Top of funnel strategies includes PR, quality content creation and promotion, brand building campaigns, experiential marketing, events, sponsorships, speaking, publishing, community relations, etc. And though these marketing and awareness activities are not always directly attributable to a sale, they are responsible for generating the brand awareness and preference from the beginning, which creates the branded online search and activity at the bottom of the funnel.

As marketers, we owe it to ourselves and our brands to fully understand and execute a comprehensive strategy designed to build brand awareness, brand preference, sales, and repeat sales if we are to grow the brand.

It has been my experience both academically and professionally that the number one reason that brands lose focus on the entire funnel, is that they become siloed, and overly obsessed with the last click vs. full-funnel attribution, and therefore a true appreciation for the value of creating positive brand awareness and engagement, and opt-in email lists way ahead of a purchase decision. And as a final note, we cannot forget the art, science, and value of lead nurturing if we want to convert those early email opt-ins to customers or brand advocates. 

Is Your Advertising Naked?

When it comes to local retail advertising and promotion, sometimes referred to as “price and product advertising” or "call to action" vs. branding campaigns, you need to consider the following ad components to be effective and persuasive.

"Naked" advertising is stripped of the critical elements that cause prospects to notice, engage, respond, and buy.


1. Does your ad have a compelling headline that does one or more of the following:
 States a problem and provides a solution?
 Introduces news of a breakthrough, an exciting new product, a new solution, or new use or application for an existing product?
 Offers a major benefit?
 Offers an incredible price, savings or discount?
 Asks a compelling question?
 Provides “how to” information?
 Addresses a specific audience i.e. “heartburn sufferers”
 Announces a major event?

2. Is your headline supported with a sub-head or a short opening sentence that supports the headline?

3. Does your ad start with the biggest and most exciting benefit you can possibly offer?

4. Does your ad clearly and simply state your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

5. Is your USP so compelling and powerful that it clearly makes you the obvious choice?

6. Do you support your USP, headline or offer with quantifiable and verifiable facts and logical, believable reasons why you can make such a claim or offer?

7. Does your ad copy contain specifics, examples, test results, testimonials, awards, endorsements?

8. Does your copy contain action verbs and proven “power words” of effective advertising?

9. Are you speaking directly to your audience in a direct, personal and friendly tone? Does it sound like you’re speaking directly to a friend?

10. Does your ad have an emotional appeal? Does it stir one or more of the following emotions:
 Love?
 Fear of loss?
 Ego?
 Status?
 Fear of embarrassment?
 Vanity?
 Power?
 Respect?

11. Does your ad provide specific prices or payments?

12. Does your ad offer a savings of time and hassle? Does it offer a major convenience factor? If not, does it offer huge savings of money?

13. Does your 30-second TV spot or 60-second radio spot contain no more than two offers or products?

14. Does your ad offer something free to responders, such as a free booklet, free trial, free report, free sample, or a free gift?

15. Does your TV or radio ad have a catchy jingle that supports your USP, includes your company or product name and is clear, simple to understand, easy to remember and sing along with, and memorable?

16. Does your ad provide a very specific solution or benefit to a specified and targeted niche segment of the population? (“The largest selection of ground cover plants and bulbs in the county”). Or does your ad provide a very specific solution or benefit to a fairly large group (“The largest Ford truck dealer in Atlanta, with 247 new models in 27 colors, and 196 used Ford trucks to choose from in every price range from $3,500 to $43,000. We guarantee that if we don’t have exactly what you’re looking for, we’ll buy you a fabulous lunch for 2 at Mills Rib House).

17. Is your ad part of an on-going, long-term campaign with a central theme and message?

18. Does your campaign maintain continuity in look and feel, sound, voice or camera talent, music bed, graphics, colors, and fonts?

19. Are your compelling sales message, USP, and core benefit integrated into all of your advertising, printed collateral, Internet site, signage, merchandising, point of purchase and sales presentations? Is every customer contact point with your business delivering a consistent and predictable message that is “on-strategy” with your campaign?

20. Is your TV or radio schedule providing greater frequency than your nearest competitor who is also advertising on the same station, dayparts or programs?

21. Does your advertising schedule provide a 3 frequency against at least 70% of the station audience per week, every week of the year?

22. Does your ad give a specific and compelling call to action?

23. Do you offer a guarantee, warranty, or a risk reversal? Is your guarantee the best in the business? Do you make it easy for the consumer? Do you stand behind your guarantee? Is your guarantee full of loopholes, exceptions, hurdles, roadblocks and fine print?

24. Do you have a built-in mechanism to track, log and document the responses to your ads?

25. Do you build a database of customers, prospects and responders for future follow-up, referrals, re-selling, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities?

26. Do you mine your database with personalized, timely, specific and compelling offers?

27. Are your ad budget and schedule sufficient to reach your sales goals? Is it realistic? Is it based on a percentage of current sales, or last year’s budget, or what is average for your industry? Or is your budget and media schedule proactive, and therefore based on where you want to be, and what you want to accomplish?

28. Do you have a long-term focus on growth and a commitment to your campaign and advertising schedule?

29. If you were not you, and instead an ordinary citizen and a prospect for your company, what would you think of your ad? Would you believe it? Would you be motivated by it? Would you remember it? Would it push any of your emotional hot buttons? Would it give you specific and compelling reasons to shop or buy?

Would it make you feel totally and completely confident that you will not be disappointed, cheated, taken advantage of or unhappy if you bought the product? Would the guarantee of satisfaction totally remove your hesitation to buy? Would the offer remove all risk from you, the customer?

30. Are your print ads arranged with a photograph at the top, a headline below the photograph, and a sub-head or support copy below that?

31. Is your print ad copy long enough to tell your story, and sell your product? Long copy sells better than short copy.

32. Do your print ads have black or solid colored copy on a white background?

33. Do your print ads make the mistake of having the copy on top of the photograph, or printed on a colored background?

34. Do your print ads use a serif font like Times Roman or Century?

35. Do your print ads have a response mechanism built into them?

36. If you have additional photographs in the body of your print ad, do they have captions below them to explain the benefit or the sales message?

37. Is the photograph in your print ad showing your product in use, or the result of using your product, preferably with people that the targeted audience can relate to?

38. Do your print ads have enough white space surrounding your headline to make it a clean and obvious central focus point?

39. Is your overall print ad layout simple and clean to look at, and easy and inviting to read?

Do you have to struggle to figure out what the main selling message and benefit is, and what the copy says, what the offer is, how to respond, and what the photograph means?

The more of these questions you can sincerely, honestly and objectively answer in the positive, and with strong conviction, the more effective your advertising will be.

Emotional Advertising to the Universal Human Desires

Today more than ever, we need to maximize the impact of our advertising dollar. So keep your message focused on solving one or more of the three universal human desires:

1. To be wealthy and powerful
2. To be attractive and desirable
3. To be youthful and healthy

Which two basic desires does this Brylcreem ad hope to provide?

Always be thinking of the basic human desires, needs and problems of your prospects or your buyer personas, and how your company can solve them.

Once you have an emotionally charged ad, think of ways you can make it super easy and convenient to do business with you. Think of Zappos Shoes, and their no hassle returns, with free shipping both ways. Remove as many barriers to the decision process as possible.

And finally, never underestimate the impact of frequency and repetition of your value proposition to drive brand recall and preference. 

No Emotion, No Sale

My friend and creative partner Daryl Stevenette and I were recently talking about advertising, and what makes some ads effective and others flops.

We naturally came back to the topic of music. Songs are usually written to tell a story, a story filled with hopes, dreams, love, romance or adventure. And this is why songs and music are such a large part of our culture.

People love messages contained in songs, accentuated by the music and the beat, as they elicit feeling, emotion or memory. They can make us feel sad, happy, reflective, hopeful or energized, and they can bring us to another place or time.

And why do we turn off those “yell-sell” screamer ads? To begin with, they are insulting, abrasive, and intrusive. But they also lack everything we like about a good ad. They lack creativity, class, cleverness, wit, and the element of surprise. And they lack the rhythmic melody of a good music bed or jingle.

Good advertising sticks in the mind in a positive way. And good advertising includes those mechanisms that allow it to stick:

• Emotional appeal or connection
• An element of surprise, cleverness or a unique twist
• A catchy and memorable tagline or slogan
• Enough frequency, longevity and continuity to break through the clutter
• Usually a good jingle, music bed or stinger to help carry the message into the subconscious mind like a power line carries electricity

Think about bringing back creativity and jingles to make good advertising and branding work again. Because I believe that good music works on the senses and creates permanent brand recall.

I was at a concert recently, and after watching the crowd being emotionally moved, motivated to dance, sway, clap, scream and sing, all charged by song, video screens and lights alone. Going to a concert is actually a lesson in the power of music to persuade.

The theme of the tour, the set and the video screens were Caribbean beaches and tropical destinations. In fact I have coined a new term for Chesney’s music style; I call it “Caribbean Country.” And people seem to love it. Which is yet another testament to my theory that people seek and appreciate mental escapism and good music as an easy ticket for a cheap mental trip.

Pent up Demand--and Where the Economy is Working

If ever there was a time in the past 4 years to advertise those things that the average consumer has been putting off buying, this is it. And that includes automobiles, RVs, vacation travel, homes, appliances, remodeling services, and furniture.

Most people have put off these big-ticket purchases until they felt the economy was more stable and predicable, and their job was mostly secure. With unemployment rates down, home prices coming back up, interest rates at an all-time low, and the stock market very solid, people are finally replacing those worn-out products and cars, and selling the home they have been stuck in for 4-5 years.

As spending increases, and the stock market creates more wealth, more products will be purchased, and more jobs created. But the recovery is not, and will not be equally felt across every state, in either the speed of recovery, or the depth of the recovery.

If the current trends hold, we will see Texas, Utah, North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Virginia lead the pack, based on lower tax rates and more pro-business climates. In addition, Texas and Utah both enjoy robust growth in the high-tech sector. There are other pockets of high tech growth that will certainly help support the host state, such as San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Seattle, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Florida and Nevada are also beginning to see significant improvements in development, home values and job growth.

Why Do My Ads Under Perform In A Recession?

Lately I hear business owners tell me that their ad campaigns under perform based on their expectations, or based on the results they received a year or two ago. I would like to discuss some of the reasons why this may be so, some of the reasons I have found to cause the problem, and how to fix the problem.

1. To begin with, if you are comparing today's expectations against results from two years ago (2008) using the same gross rating points or target rating points, and you are using the same basic offer or call to action, you probably are getting fewer responses.

Why? because in a deep recession there are fewer people in the market for most goods and services. In other words there are fewer fish in the same sized pond. So what to do? Get yourself a bigger net and cast it further into the pond. This will allow you to reach more buyers by purchasing more audience share or rating points. And why not, the rates are lower now so you can afford to buy more rating points, more reach and more frequency for the same budget you spent in 2008. It will take more fire power but there always people in the market if you can simply reach more people.

2. Check your offer lately? What you offered before may not be the same bait the fish want today. In other words, when the market is slow, consumers are looking for greater value, savings, service, warranty and guarantee protection, and overall more inducement to part with their money. Recession advertising requires that you give them more bang for their buck.

3. Get creative, and look for ways to solve problems that people are facing today. It may be creative financing, bundling of services or products to provide greater value, or creating a new service that people need to stretch their budget, create income, find a job, feel better, learn a new skill, etc.

4. Make sure you are selling what the market wants to buy. If you have a new car dealership your new car sales are down by 30-50% over 2008 based on the triple blow of the recession, tightened credit and manufacturer bankruptcies. So what to do? Focus on selling and leasing used car models at price points that people are buying and can afford to pay. Look at a buy-here-pay-here and a rent to own business model on older used cars that does not require bank financing, which fewer people can qualify for today.

Here is an example of one companies experience. In 2006 they had tremendous response to a radio campaign. So much so that they literally stopped advertising due to the residual sales and income. In 2009 the bottom fell out of the market and their sales revenue was cut in half. In January 2010 they brought me in to start advertising again, hoping to repeat the success of the campaign in 2006, of which I was not involved.

They did not get even close. Why? I asked them what was different if anything about their offer and message in 2006 vs. 2010? They could not think of anything that was different. After conducting some research into their only competitor I discovered that the competition was busy, very busy. Why? Because the competition started offering what the client company used to offer, but abandoned because of their own success.

It turns out that the client used to offer a guarantee and Saturday hours. Both of which they dropped in 2007, but because the market was so hot they did not feel the impact.

It also turns out that the competition continued to advertise in good times and bad, creating confidence, top of mind awareness, and brand preference, which consistent advertising does, while the client was in and out of the market with no consistency or continuity.

To make it more interesting, I also built a new website for them with analytics to measure traffic volume, sources and visitor patterns. What I discovered was that the radio campaign was in fact a great success. Why? Because we had nearly 1,000 unique visitors to the site in 6 weeks, 70% of whom came as a result of direct type-in or searching for the keywords we used in the radio ads. They also viewed over 3 pages and spent nearly 4 minutes each on the site, which is a long time. But fewer than 100 requested more information. This tells me they were looking for something they did not find, which is what lead me to investigate, where I found what they were looking for was no longer offered except by the competition.

So there you have it: cast a wider net, check your offer, get creative, solve problems, and give them what they want to buy.

Proven Principles Work

Effective advertising today requires adhering to proven principles:

• Always build from a well produced and researched Creative Brief. This will keep your message and creative on strategy and consistent
  
• Your ad creative and offer/copy must grab the attention of the target audience
  
• The ad must be fresh and new, unless it is part of an ongoing branding campaign. Even then, you need to freshen it up while sticking to the brand and creative standards
  
• Your offer, unique benefit and call to action must be easily understood
  
• The copy and benefit must be relevant to your audience in today's market conditions
  
• Your creative and branding must stand out from the competition and be original
• Always sell the benefits that your target audience wants, not products and features