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BY
BY   MICHELLE FITZGERALD
Accountability, resourcing and the make-it-happen-
fast-yesterday mentality of marketing is a unanimous
challenge across any organization, of any size. But
the principle of “do more on less” is the everyday
mantra for small business owners.

Get Scrappy is a pared down, practical guide
about how to incorporate marketing into the
heart of your business plan. In a short, three-step
process, Get Scrappy breaks down how to create
meaningful, brief marketing plans, outlines the
tools and resources available to getting it done
and describes how to leverage marketing to learn
more about your business.

Packed with expertise from Fortune 500 marketers
and SMB consultants, Get Scrappy provides real-
life examples on how organizations, even those
on less time and money, can make seemingly
tactical objectives become strategic initiatives that
generate results.

Do more on less. GET SCRAPPY.
Author’s Note

My goal is to empower you by making it simple, not
to confuse or overwhelm with fancy marketing lingo or
20-step check-lists. Thus the highlighted “scrappy” tips
and step by step instructions. Copy, paste (or post) and
go do it.

My vision is to combat the statistic that 1:3 small business
owners close their doors within five years because few
knew they even existed. Best product, best service—
foiled by not having an actionable, sustainable marketing
plan. This book is part of a larger movement to change
just that, to empower the small business owner.

My mission is to flatten the communication barrier
between SMBs and Fortune 500 level organizations
and help expedite “in the trenches” expertise about
how to create marketing programs that are effective for
any organization. Just because Starbucks has a great
go-to-market story, doesn’t mean you can’t too.




                                                               i
AckNowledgemeNts

Special acknowledgments to all the people who inspire
me and make life in the fastlane more manageable: The
Fitzgerald clan, the Kahlows, Christa Cordova, Dan Eyman
(the fabulous designer for this book), Sarah Hethcoat,
Cristina Torres, Sandra Ponce de Leon, Chris Anthony,
the Moveo team, the extended Chicago family, the many
other entrepreneurs out there building businesses to
improve our world, and all my contributing authors.

Content contributions from Hubspot, Exact Target, iLoop
Mobile, Communicate Value, Swanberg Associates, and
Davis Group Marketing. For more information about
the authors, check out the About the Authors section
of this book.




                                                           ii
Contents
Intro ....................................................................................................................... 1

Step 1 .......................................... Applying the Fundamentals ............................ 5

Step 2 .......................................... Breaking it Down ........................................... 10

Step 3 .......................................... Getting to It ................................................... 52

About the Authors ............................................................................................... 54

Related Resource Links ........................................................................................ 60




                                                                                                                                  iii
Intro
Small business owners are scrappy by nature. If you started your own business,
you likely remember the early days—cold calling, knocking on doors, selling
off wireframes, and not sleeping. All-in-all, pounding pavement to get your first
clients. Scrappiness gets the job done in oh, 18 hour days, 7 days a week.

Marketing though (whatever be your definition at this point) is often underplayed
by small business owners. Not intentionally, by most, but because it requires
time, skills and information that not every entrepreneur has. A small business is
the epitome of survival and survival tomorrow is often more about balancing a
P&L for a prospective investor, ensuring a product or service doesn’t break, that
something made it into the mail before 7PM, or developing a pricing strategy…
not a marketing plan.

The challenges of a small business owner are not nuances to larger organizations;
they are just felt more poignantly. All businesses must plan and execute. The
difference is the size of the team getting it done.

So before marketing gets lost on your to-do list, consider these three over-
arching themes to getting scrappy.

1. Take Time to Apply Fundamentals. The principles of marketing don’t
change—what it is, what it’s designed to do for your business. But how and what
you execute on should be tailored to individual business goals.




                                                                                    1
› Start by defining what marketing means to you and everyone else
 involved. Is it a bunch of fliers, is it a highway billboard, or is it an
 email campaign? How will you reach your product or service’s target
 audience? Now cross-reference that with a quick look-up on Wikipedia
 for the definition of “marketing”. It’ll quickly tell you—marketing is a
 communication process. This definition (or principle) also provided by the
 AMA (American Marketing Association), will go on to tell you that it’s a
 process by which you persuade others, be it groups or individuals, to buy,
 think or become an advocate of whatever it is you’re marketing. Is (or was)
 that your end objective when you added “marketing” to your checklist?
 Will fliers get the job done, or a highway billboard? If marketing is the act
 of communicating, are you telling someone something or nothing?

› Start with the basics. If I query your business name, do I get a website?
 If I do a Yellow Pages look-up, will I find your contact info? These are all
 pulse-check moves that any organization, of any size should be doing
 and yes, a website and local listing is marketing. If you can’t find yourself
 online through a simple query, no one else can either. So begin with the
 basics of “find ability”. From there build your brand, your message, your
 niche to establish yourself as a business who means business, long-term.

› Start acting on insights—past, present and future—to evaluate and
 execute against the marketing programs that are best for your business.
 Again, common principles apply to marketing efforts at organizations
 of all sizes, but not not every marketing tool is relevant to your business
 objectives. As a marketer at the LA Times and CareerBuilder.com




                                                                                 2
I always considered three things. Would the marketing program provide
       adequate Reach, Relevancy and Results. The insights I gathered were the
       foundation for developing a specific action plan that had rationale behind
       it, versus “I think we should be doing this”. Take the time to get to know
       your target audience. Without information about current or prospective
       customers, you will fly blind and waste valuable time and energy. And that
       is something no small business has time for.

2. Crowd Source to Simplify the Workload. As the saying goes, “no man lives
on an island”. Collaboration is the mother of success. This book, itself, is an
example of crowd sourcing. There is always someone out there who knows more
than you and is willing to lend a hand, a voice of reason, or perspective based
on real-life experiences. I also find this exercise valuable in my day job at Yahoo.
(Yes, I’m admitting I’m not all about original ideas.) The point is that there are
many times I don’t have answers and I must reach out and find someone who
does. You learn, I learn, we all move one step forward in our education process.

Jumpstart your crowd sourcing efforts by taking advantage of online how-to-
guides on sites like About.com. If time and resources are ridiculously scarce,
go straight to a Q/A format on Y! Answers, Twitter or LinkedIn. The beauty of
a digital age is that you can also create your own web-friendly information…
you can start your own questions, your own forums. It’s also a very smart, cost
effective way to build recognition amongst peers and prospective clients. (See
the Online Marketing—Social Media section of the book.) Crowd sourcing, in
many ways, is your R&D department from afar. Focus your crowd sourcing efforts
by joining online groups and communities with shared interests.




                                                                                       3
3. Scale for success. The pyramids didn’t rise out of the desert in a day.
They were constructed day by day, brick by brick. That’s your plan, your
mantra… do more each day, on less. Be deliberate, be selective in how you
resource for marketing. It’s a valuable asset for your business, but there’s also
a reason that marketing has a stereotype of demanding ungodly investments
with little insight into how something performed or what’s repeatable. It’s
because many individuals get caught in what I’d call the “Mad Men” syndrome.
They idolize the magazine advertisement, the pat on the back to “see, that’s
my billboard” and really have no sense of how their investment will pan out.
In my experience, as marketer, I err on the side of caution, unless I know I can
measure response rates and have bandwidth to do it again (or easily transition
it to someone).

Never forget that Marketing is about creating promotions to meet the needs of
your end audience. It’s the response mechanism to what others have to say about
your product or service category. (e.g. I need small business web design services.
Who has it and how much will it cost?) It’s also your ability to creatively provide
an ongoing dialogue with the rest of the world. Marketing, very simply put, is
your voice, your elevator pitch on paper or online. Have you found your voice?




                                                                                      4
Step 1

ApplyiNg the FuNdAmeNtAls
(stop. thiNk. plAN.)
Marketing means many things to many different people, as communication
styles vary from person to person. On a personal and professional level I
might use Facebook and Twitter to engage people, while others would prefer
phone or email. Why? Because we identify with certain ways of connecting with
people, and those that give the greatest sense of satisfaction. For me it’s about
time (what takes the least amount of it) and how quickly I can reach a broader
audience (phone or email won’t get me there).

How does this relate to the small business owner? It’s the concept that as
communication styles vary, so does the integration process of marketing
(your larger communication strategy) into every day affairs. And don’t let the
supposed, and sometime very real, complexities of marketing stop you from
doing something. Let’s begin to break this down.




                                                                                    5
get scrAppy tip 1: deFiNe your Niche.
The biggest challenge to getting started is lack of clarity on what marketing
efforts will mesh against larger goals, especially when the goals can be moving
targets. But do take a few minutes to cultivate your go-to-market around what
audience is most important to your business and where you have the strongest
value proposition, the greater story to tell. That’ll give you the momentum to
do most any Marketing program because you have found your voice in
a specific marketplace.




get scrAppy tip 2: deFiNe whAt’s FeAsible to get
doNe iN 30 dAys.

Avoid the shiny object that will take months to implement! And certainly avoid
anything that will require a skill set you simply don’t have or don’t have resources
to support. This can be disappointing if you wanted to create a TV ad; but
believe me, even large organizations with much larger budgets turn down ideas
and programs. There are also countless programs that give marketplace traction
without costing you a dime. No matter what your size or budget is, it has to be
come down to what’s turnkey and essential to getting the word out quickly.




                                                                                       6
get scrAppy tip 3: doN’t Forget the bAsics.
Website. Phone number. E-mail address. Done. Well, not entirely, but you’ve
laid the foundation to have somewhere to direct all inquiries to. You would
be surprised how many times Marketing efforts move forward without
ensuring the essentials, “find ability”, are in place. (Read more on this in
Step 2—Breaking it Down.)




get scrAppy tip 4: doN’t liFt A FiNger oN more
costly items uNtil you cAN justiFy your iNvestmeNt.

This is about defining and creating accountability. You never want to make
Marketing a business liability. Marketing, even in larger organizations, is often
the first budget to get cut when things get tough. Why? Because few know
whether ad programs deliver real results. And wasted resources are costly.

That said, here are a few rules of thumb that I have used to simplify the
selection process.

     › Create budget and message parameters to identify what programs are
       out of scope. Establish an 80/20. 80 percent of your budget (and time)
       goes to ROI-specific efforts to drive revenue. The other 20 percent goes
       to testing new programs and building brand awareness, which is always
       more challenging to measure unless you have access to user engagement
       studies from third party sources.




                                                                                    7
› Be prepared to create accountability for your marketing efforts by going
      the extra mile and creating response tracking mechanisms in virtually
      everything you do—your website, newspaper ads, an online banner ad,
      or email campaign. Creating unique email addresses or phone numbers,
      including custom URLs for website links, and having promo codes are
      very simple ways to monitor your success and manage expectations.
      The response rate to each, assuming you can track for each, will indicate
      what programs should be repeated, optimized or scratched from your
      master plan.

I happen to be passionate about capturing proof points for my work, so here
also are some cost-efficient ways to identify if your program’s resonating with
your target audience.

     › Create surveys. Send to an approved, opt-in only email list (or some of
      your closest friend and colleagues) to ask questions about your product
      or service. Keep it under ten questions and allow those being surveyed to
      take it online or via a pre-paid comment card they can drop in the mail
      or leave behind at your business location.
      [Resources: Zoomerang, Survey Monkey]

     › Create downloadable whitepapers to generate opportunities to collect
      leads during the download process and valuable information about the
      people visiting your site. These papers can be free, but allow you to build
      industry credentials as an “expert” in the sector you service, versus simply
      promoting your product.




                                                                                     8
› Use website analytic tools. We will talk further about this in the “online
       marketing” section of book, but those offered by Google and Yahoo allow
       you to identify you how people find you, whether that’s social networks
       such as Facebook or Twitter or the search keyword. This will come in handy
       when you try to build a frame of reference around your customer base.




get scrAppy tip 5: hAve A coNteNt strAtegy to drive
repeAt eNgAgemeNt with your product or service.

Spend time sorting out—“what’s the point?” What do you really want others to
get out of spending five seconds, two minutes or a few days following and/or
learning about what you offer?

In larger organizations, this is a full-blown content strategy inclusive of white
papers, advertorials and such. For smaller organizations, this can be as simple
as dedicating yourself, or someone on your team, to consistently post articles
to your site about your business, manage a blog or alert the large internet
population via Twitter when new blog posts are available.

Content is the element of making yourself indispensible to consumers. They can
appreciate your ongoing dedication to meet their needs by engaging with them.
Seek their opinion on topics, just as often as you push out your own.




                                                                                    9
Step 2

breAk it dowN.
(leArN. leAN. execute.)
Tactics are undeniably the fun part of marketing. The things we get to do after
all the planning and finagling over what business priorities are. All organizations
will likely agree on one thing though—the devil is in the details. Here is where
taking even a few days to plan pays off.

So, roll up your sleeves and create space for a checklist in your daily planner,
notebook or self-identified work space to outline what marketing programs will
be most useful in the next 30 days. Let’s cut to the chaise and prep you to make
decisions based on two premise points:

     › How much time will it take?

     › How much will it cost me?

Now stretch, maybe take a quick break, and buckle up for a roller coaster ride
through today’s Marketing toolkit so you can start taking action.




                                                                                      10
***
If you’ve seen an episode of Mad Men, you’ve most likely noticed that
advertising has evolved since the 1960s. We now have a multi-channel
advertising powerhouse fueling the economy at $500 billion plus in thousands
of shapes and sizes. And the larger the marketing industry has grown, the more
confusing it is—a cross-section of creative and communication tools.

It’s no wonder that marketers, especially those wearing multiple hats like small
business owners, find it challenging to figure out which marketing tactics will
help them reach their monthly goals. So let’s break it down, like true marketers,
into two buckets of advertising opportunities—offline and online media.




                                                                                    11
Offline Media
The Toolkit


                Print
                Radio
                Television
                Outdoor
                Events/Tradeshows


What is it?
Besides including the above items, offline media is an effective brand
awareness tool because it reaches in masses. It’s creatively effective, but
it is more challenging to track for success.

Tell me more.
Typically defined as “traditional media” (yes, Mad Men era marketing programs)
these advertising vehicles allow the largest window for creative liberties, the
razzle-dazzle affect, to allow consumers to see and hear the essence of your
brand. Offline media also allows you to call attention to your online marketing
channels, thus crafting a multi-media marketing approach and increasing your
audience reach.




                                                                                  12
Scrappy marketers should realize the opportunities within each bucket of the
offline toolkit and budget accordingly. Costs can vary significantly for each
depending on a) popularity (consumer reach) and b.) whether the media is
purchased nationally or locally. Be practical and informed about what it will take
to do any of the following. That said, read on to learn more about what assets
you will need, how reach is measured and what resources you will need to
execute against each.




                                                                                     13
priNt mediA

Newspaper › Scrappy Rating: 3

When you think newspaper—think local! As part of a marketing plan that
includes online and offline media, newspaper advertising helps reach local
prospects in a targeted, geographic area with minimal effort. Ad space in
newspaper dailies and weeklies is often inexpensive and can be an effective
vehicle for announcing retail store openings, celebrating business anniversaries,
promoting special sales, and launching new products.

Buys on a local or national level are available run-of-newspaper (Remnant) or
by section. Readership demographics can also vary if you buy only by section,
so be sure to ask questions to verify it’s a good fit against your target audience.
For example, if the Chicago Tribune Finance section is attracting predominantly
men aged 25-54, placing an ad targeting men aged 18-34 isn’t likely to give you
stellar results.

Buys in national publications can also be tailored by county or zip code, if the
publication is printed regionally. Although you will probably want to start locally,
you can also purchase newspaper advertising nationally (Wall Street Journal,
New York Times). This is more expensive, but the reach is much greater. Sunday
print ads are often preferred due to higher readership than daily.




                                                                                       14
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Creative (the ad itself) in the format required by newspaper (usually digital). Check with your

 target publications for their standard ad specs. (e.g. New York Times)

• Commitment to a Media Schedule (e.g. 1/8 page ad at 4x month for 3 months) if your budget

 will allow it.



 REACH METRICS

 Daily or Weekly circulation and/or readership (readership is approximately 1.5 times

 circulation).



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• Creative Brief that clearly articulates your company product benefits and unique selling

 proposition.

• Copy Writer and Graphic Designer who can work quickly and inexpensively.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Have a call to action! Not only does it provide measurability (number of phone calls, number

 of site visits), but it also incents your reader to DO something.

 › Do you want customers to call you?

 › Visit a store that has your product?
 › Do you want to improve your brand image?

 › Promote a special event?




                                                                                                    15
• Ask if there are print/online advertising packages to also run your ad on the newspaper’s

 website for a discounted rate. Yes, you’ll need to create banner ads too, but you will save

 costs if the newspaper’s online audience is a significant size. (Note: For many newspapers,

 their online readership is in high growth mode and equal to or greater than their offline

 readership numbers.)

• Keep the ad short and sweet! Print advertising is 90% visual, so create an interesting

 visual—and connect the headline to it. 50% of readers can remember a short caption (think

 <140 characters), and less than 10% read beyond the first sentence in the copy. Some of

 the most effective ads also utilize white space to create more impactful focal points—the

 copy, the graphic.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

• Check the publication to make sure your ad runs. Monitor ad effectiveness on a regularly—

 weekly, monthly. Ask your customers, “Where did you learn about my product?” See if you

 can link a sales increase to the ad schedule by providing a measurable call to action (a unique

 phone number, website URL promo offer code) that’s specific to your newspaper ad(s).

• Make sure your response mechanisms work. Is there a dedicated 1-800 number? Test to

 verify calls can go through before the ad was submitted. Is your website up and running and

 able to take on any traffic surges, should the ad spark an overwhelming response? You risk
 losing credibility if a prospect can’t respond without complications.

                                 Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates




                                                                                                   16
Magazine › Scrappy Rating: 4

Effective magazine advertising can help create brand awareness among a more
niche psychographic and/or demographic audience. Although many magazines
are struggling or going out of business, a specific publication may be worth
considering as an advertising vehicle, particularly if the demographics of the
publication are a good fit for your product. (e.g. Pregnancy and New Moms)

The advantages of magazines are that they can be:

     › Targeted at a certain demographic.

     › 4-color and glossy/non-glossy formats all provide an excellent avenue
      to communicate brand image and brand benefits.

     › Magazines have residual staying power; issues tend to stay around
      longer and are passed on more often than newspapers, which are usually
      recycled or tossed after only one day.

The disadvantages of magazine advertising include:

     › High costs based on placement fees and creative production.

     › Long lead times (e.g. creative is usually due two months in advance)
      so you have to plan ahead.




                                                                                 17
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Media Kits for each magazine describing the standard ad sizes and costs. Costs depend on

 frequency of insertion, though discounts may be available. Always ask, particularly if a first

 time customer or frequent buyer.

• Compelling creative in the right size for each magazine and a commitment for a media

 flight schedule.



 REACH METRICS

 Circulation, which depending on the publication can be daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

 You can factor in a 1.5 pass-along value for each reader. (e.g. 1 reader becomes 2.5 readers)



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• Similar to newspaper advertising, a Creative Brief that articulates your company, product

 benefits and unique selling proposition.

• Copy Writer and Graphic Designer who collaborate on the project.

• Reader statistics of any magazine. You must confirm the average reader is your target

 audience. For statistics, start out by reading the magazine’s Media Kit and look it up on ABC

 (Audit Bureau of Circulation).



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Get a sense of what ad type runs well (and effectively) in xyz publication and use it

 as a model for your ads. Review the target publication(s) thoroughly before designing

 your ads. You might even want to post competitive ads on a wall board and see how your

 proposed ad looks in a side-by-side comparison.




                                                                                                  18
• Check to if there’s discounted media space right before the closing date of ad commitments.

 Ad sales departments may be willing to give you a special deal for last minute placements,

 assuming you have the right creative easily available.

• Do “vanity mentions” on your website, email campaigns, etc to draw more attention to

 your magazine advertising efforts. Maximize the mileage of your ad placement and let a

 prestigious publication rub off on your brand. Be sure to tout it! (“As seen in Inc. Magazine.”)



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

• Try to get synergies with your PR efforts. Publications always need items for their “New

 Products” listings and other editorial content.

• Get permission to make copies of the magazine ads for other marketing efforts and/or

 “vanity mentions”.

• Ask for discounted and/or free copies of the publication your ad ran in. It can become great

 sales collateral and/or an office memoir.

                                 Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates




                                                                                                    19
Direct Mail › Scrappy Rating: 4

Direct Mail is possibly one of the most precise and creative of all offline media
types. It’s precise because of your ability to target and measure recipients’
response rate by demographic and geo-economic variables. It’s creative
because the direct mail piece is tangible. Depending on the product, the piece
can be 3-D, eye-catching, sent in a tube, and/or can include sample products,
coupon books, or other memorable materials.

Before integrating Direct Mail into your larger marketing plan, you should test
a variety of offers, creative executions and mailing lists with a subset of your
target population before rolling out a full-scale program. Be prepared to test
and measure by creating a simple Excel workbook, unless you have access to
more sophisticated tracking tools.

The key items you should monitor to assess your success rate:

     › Response Rate (# of inquiries / # of individuals this was sent to); Note:
       2% is considered excellent.

     › Cost per Sale (costs /sale)

     › Average Profit per Transaction (total revenue/ total # of transactions)




                                                                                    20
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Mailing lists from various publications or organizations.

• A designer to provide one or multiple creative executions, with different variables to test

 prior to full-fledged rollout. (e.g. alternate offers)



 REACH METRICS

 Quantity of households/individuals, as per your mail list information.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• List broker to obtain lists. Bonded Direct Mail house to send the mailing to the lists.

• A creative designer to develop compelling copy and offers.

• Add a quantitative expert to your team, if testing and measuring is not your thing!



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Keep it simple! Direct Mail programs can include postcards, coupons and flyers in

 bulk mailings.

• Keep it local! Check out Money Mailers for localized solutions.

• Expensive, more complex Direct Mail pieces usually only work for high-margin items.

• Take advantage of online printers for lower costs.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

• Don’t get too attached to your “favorite” execution of a Direct Mail piece. Instead, listen to

 the test results!

• Watch out for high production costs in DM pieces, especially for low-margin items.

                                    Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates
                                                                                                   21
RADIO › Scrappy Rating: 3

Whether a brand or direct response campaign, radio is a great way to reach your
target audience. It’s particularly beneficial if your marketing campaign needs the
“hear” aspect to bring your messaging to life.

Radio also has mass appeal. In regions where there’s high volume drive-time
commutes, it provides great reach for your investment.

The most common spot times are 30 and 60 seconds. In addition, 15 and 20
second spots are available and most commonly used to increase awareness for
your campaign. Spots of 120 seconds are available, if your message requires this
additional time. However, a well written 60 will satisfy almost any message.

Spots can be produced dry (no music background) or with music. Sound
effects can be a good way to paint a picture for the audience. Common spots
types include:

     › Straight reads

     › “Slice of life” (back and forth dialog)

     › Monologs (the talent portrays a character)

     › Jingles (musical overlay to script read)




                                                                                     22
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

 Scripts, Voice-overs.



 REACH METRICS

 GRP (Gross Rating Points), a calculation based on the percentage of users listening to xyz

 radio station and the frequency by which they do it. The higher the GRP, the higher the cost
 of the radio buy will be.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 A copy writer, recording designer, music mixer/DJ (optional), and voice-over talent (optional).



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Stick to your marketing objectives and provide a call to action. What number should they

 call? What website should they visit for more information?

• Drive-time spot buys are your most costly, but often the most effective given the higher

 likelihood of reaching your target audience.

• Tap the radio station and/or local college copy writing programs to get help producing a

 spot at little to no additional cost.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR

• Don’t proceed, unless you can do it well. A good spot will repeat your business name and call

 to action at least twice.

• The website or phone number mentioned should be repeated at least three times to

 resonate with the listener.

• Keep your message simple and to the point.

                                         Contributing Author: Bill Davis, Davis Group Marketing

                                                                                                   23
TELEVISION › Scrappy Rating: 5

The television today is still one of the most powerful ways to communicate your
brand. You can potentially reach millions of viewers in a single ad and dependent
on the channel, the show, the time of day, you may be able to target a large
percentage of your target audience in a single TV spot (“ad” in marketing lingo).
Though television has changed over the years, with now hundreds of channels
to choose from and public vs. cable, it still remains one of the most powerful
marketing tools.

As eluded to above, television, as an advertising medium is available on multiple
levels—local and national and network vs. public or independent. Spots are
traditionally available for 15, 30, 60 or 90 seconds. The more popular buy is :15
or :30 due to costs—of the spot itself—and creative production.




                                                                                    24
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

 Scripts, Voice-overs.



 REACH METRICS

 Viewership broken out by GRPs and segmented by daypart—6-10am, 3-7pm (Drive Time),

 10am-3pm (Mid-day) and 7-12 midnight (Night). Also segmented by Weekday vs. Weekend.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 Copy writer, recording designer, music mixer/DJ (optional), and voice-over talent (optional).



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Take advantage of lower national/local TV spot costs when big advertisers are cutting back.

 Many networks will offer large discounts to small and midsize business media buyers. Take

 advantage of the opportunities to “get in the game.”

• Consider teaming up with a professional media buying agency for television buys. They

 typically have experience working at television stations they’re now buying fro. This is one

 area where hiring an experienced partner really does beat trying to do it yourself.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

• The direct response rate (e.g. sales lead generation) is softer and for most it’s still pretty
 expensive, making ROI calculations harder to justify.

• TIVO/DVR user preferences are limiting real-time television with expected (and viewed)

 commercial breaks.

• Don’t go big before talking to others in your industry. Are TV ads working for them?

 What is their primary purpose for doing this beyond the glam and glitz of being able to

 say “As seen on TV?”


                                                                                                   25
OuTDOOR › Scrappy Rating: 5

Outdoor media, also known as “Out of Home”, comes in many forms—roadside
and building billboards, local festival sponsorships, sporting event signage,
airport signage, public transit signage, etc. If planning to make a big splash, this
is a great media channel to explore, but be aware of the upfront creative costs.




  MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

  Signage to scale by outdoor venue (indoor vs. outdoor, billboard vs. poster).



  REACH METRICS

  Viewership varies by form; weekday and weekend drive-by estimates would apply to

  billboards, average number of attendees for sporting event signage. For some formats,

  viewership is calculated based on estimated daily foot traffic, while others there is some

  assumptive “extended reach” factors (e.g. televised games and placement pick-up potential

  of signage, such as home plate signage in baseball).



  RESOuRCES NEEDED

  Copy writer, graphic designers, print production.




                                                                                               26
SCRAPPY SECRETS

• For fear of sounding like a broken record, have a call to action! Yes, Outdoor is largely

 about brand awareness, but can also incent readers to do something if you include a

 response mechanism.

• Make it big and easy to read. If you try to cram too many words into your creative, you will fail.

 Similar to a newspaper ad, leverage white space.

• Make your contact information visible and choose one contact method. Outdoor isn’t the

 place for all of the following—your business name, website, phone number, email address,

 business address and store hours. Yes, it’s been done, and no, we didn’t remember any of

 it for more than a few seconds.

• Keep it local for added relevancy to your target audience.



 WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

• Production costs and comparative ROI. This particular marketing channel can hinge on

 becoming sunk costs, unless creatively tied into online marketing channels. Both design and

 print production costs are steep and unless there’s a direct call to action, there will be little

 measurement attached to the effort.

• Focus on outdoor when a.) you have budget to spare beyond dollars committed to direct

 response/leads and b.) if you’ve got a great connection on the design or production side of

 things. Having purchased these items in the past, we can ensure you that it can (and will) cost

 thousands.




                                                                                                       27
EVENTS › Scrappy Rating: 3

Marketing in this format, similar to TV and Outdoor, is memorable. Let’s face
it. It’s an experience that a marketer of any organization can create and even
maintain beyond the event itself.

It’s a valuable branding and engagement tool because it’s hands on. At an
event your potential customers/clients will see, feel and hear first-hand what
your organization is all about. Events allow you to create deeper relationships
with your target audience by providing the opportunity to connect and
personally meet and greet.

Some of the more popular events include industry tradeshows, but tradeshows
have evolved into smaller venues. Examples of such include niche topic-
specific seminars (e.g. email marketing), brown-bag networking events, speed
networking, and vendor-less educational workshops. And as many seek cost
efficiencies, many also integrate offline events with online webinars.




                                                                                  28
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• A strong project planner to coordinate event agendas, travel schedules (if the event’s out–of-

 town), venue bookings, onsite management, registration materials, event website or custom

 landing page within existing website, email templates, printable event brochures, graphic

 designers for onsite marketing material (agendas, signage, badges, post event survey slips).

• Advertising creative, specific to provide the above assets.

• Significant budget. Though Events are valuable marketing assets, most are costly and

 time intensive.



 REACH METRICS

 Totally dependent on access to mailing lists—offline (direct mail) and online (email,

 blog network).



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 Copy writer, graphic designers, print production, logistics and trade show services.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Crowd source for additional contacts to market to. Extend your outreach to other industry-

 related channels that you may have relationships with.

• Adhere to the old adage “plan your work and work your plan.” In other words, don’t plan up
 to the tradeshow and stop. Event marketing itself is the true test of a marketer because it

 engages every cylinder of your marketing plan to engage users, attract attendees or build

 sales leads from industry tradeshow booth walk-ups.




                                                                                                   29
• Plan everything—from start (booth design) and pre-show outreach to finish (how you’ll follow

 up with customers and prospects when the event is done). Coordinate everything related to

 the event.

• Have fun with it! Create a “summer retreat” in the dead of winter in a warm destination.



 WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

• Don’t forget to educate your end user. Avoid it becoming all entertainment, and be sure to

 offer some actionable information.

• Tradeshows still have their place, but smaller events strikes deeper engagement. The

 more intimate the experience, the higher likelihood of a return audience because of its

 memorable nature.

• Never, ever let an event stand on its own. Follow-up with every person you meet and do so

 quickly, within a week of time.




                                                                                                 30
Overwhelmed yet? It can seem so much simpler to talk “Marketing”, until
it’s time to start “doing”. Right? Never fear. This is a common tripping point,
regardless of business size.

Here are some highlights to take with you, along with others you may have jotted
down. Look for more Scrappy insights at the end of this guide.

Tip 1. Don’t over-estimate your skills. Hire someone, if budget permits, from
the get-go of any effort. Offline marketing is incredibly reliant on copyrighting
skills, branded messaging prowess and creative design. The sooner you loop in
other talent, the easier it will be to move forward.

Tip 2. Monitor your competitors’ level of visibility in offline channels.
If you’re in a tried and true industry environment (e.g. children’s books), follow
the lead of others. Trends do say something about what works and bucking it
doesn’t always pay off.

Tip 3. Start small. You’ll burn out very quickly by taking on too much at once. If
having an offline presence is necessary to reach your target audience, do so, but
pick one and cling to it by taking the time to prep and optimize along the way.




So now that we covered offline, traditional media channels, let’s move on to the
world of online (digital/emerging) marketing.




                                                                                     31
Online Media
The Toolkit


                Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
                Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
                Display/Banners
                Email
                Webinars
                Social
                Mobile
                Events/Tradeshows


What is it?
Without doubt, online is the “new black” of marketing for reasons such as cost
efficiency, accessibility to measuring tools and shorter go-to-markets. If time
isn’t on your side, I highly recommend allowing online marketing to carry most of
your 30-day marketing plan.

Tell me more.
Again, trends talk about what works or not. There’s something to be said that
online marketing has attracted high profile celebrities. Ashton Kutcher, Oprah,
and Ellen have some of the largest online followings on Twitter. And President
Obama was named 2008 Marketer of the Year. A political personality!




                                                                                    32
Why? First, because Obama created a rave by recognizing that the majority
of his target audience spent most of their time—online. Not watching TV,
not listening the radio—but online. And second, he facilitated a one-on-one
conversation for Obama “fans” via tools that allowed voters to express their real-
time interests in his political opinions. Now that’s called building engagement in
mass and well, it proved itself with a win for Presidency.

Let’s break it down again for Online Marketing.




                                                                                     33
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) › Scrappy Rating: 3

The backbone of online marketing is creating and maintaining a website.
This is the “basics” in action in a digital age. Without a website, the online
experience is non-existent and users have no-where to learn more about your
business, other than calling you. And it goes without saying that no business
owner would want to rely on inbound calls to grow a business, particularly in
a time where comparison shopping starts online because of accessibility.

SEO is the effort to improve what we’d call “find-ability” (ranking high in web
search result pages) and on site usability (the user navigational experience)
of your website based on the integration of keyword tags—your header, your
footer, the opening content of your site, etc. If you hope to grow your business
by being “found” on the web, this is a critical piece that once set-up can run
on its own for a period of time. More frequent updates can vary if you are in
a competitive space and other, similar, websites crop up commanding the #1
rank on a results page.

Why is SEO valuable to your business? It’s good for both branding and direct
response. The key with SEO is that you rank high for the keywords you have
chosen to represent your business’ brand. When consumers search for a
particular service, you want them to see your company information first. It’s then
they are most likely to click through to your site. High search rankings also create
a perception of high visibility and can improve your audience’s outlook on how
serious your business is.




                                                                                       34
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

 Web developer, creative designer (layout, branding and messaging).



 REACH METRICS

 N/A; SEO is increasing your ability to grow organic traffic to your site.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• Pick up some related “how-to” guides or go online for SEO tips, if not hiring someone to do it.

• Y! Small Business web hosting, Hubspot, Google Analytics, and Yahoo! Web Analytics.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Determine what keywords are critical to your business; think about how your audiences might

 find you and describe the need they are looking to fill.

• Develop of a list of key terms you want to rank high for and work with your web developer to

 create more strategic content decisions.

• Take advantage of your networking skills to have other businesses link to your site. It will help

 your standing in the search engines’ eyes and it’s free.

• Don’t be afraid to create your own content in the form of a blog which will also help your

 “find ability”.



 WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

 Invest in SEO, but don’t let the intricacies of doing so halt you from stepping a toe in the

 water. Keep it simple by focusing on a short list of keywords that are critical to your business.

 Then take it from there over time.




                                                                                                      35
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) › Scrappy Rating: 1

Plain and simple, SEM is where your online and offline marketing efforts
intersect. Some of the most affective programs on Yahoo! involve a paid search
campaign and offline marketing channel to surround the end audience with
messaging wherever they are in a given day. SEM provides very distinct benefits
and is often where the online conversation begins.

Why? Over 69% of the internet community is online and searching. To leave
Search Marketing out of your marketing mix, especially as a small business,
would be short-sighted given search engines are where consumers spend
a significant amount of their everyday lives.

What is SEM? SEM is a keyword-based ad buy with text links. The campaign
is centered on what keywords a user (your target audience) selects in a search
query. It can also be geographically targeted, making it incredibly relevant to
specific audiences.




                                                                                  36
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

 Creative copy for the title, description and identification of keywords.



 REACH METRICS

 Varies by keyword buy and budget allocation to each (more you invest, higher share-of-voice

 you’ll obtain).



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, eBay Adcommerce, and The Long Tail by

 Chris Anderson.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• SEM is great for driving traffic to your site and converting sales—a keyword search often

 signifies intent to purchase—be there to capture those warm leads.

• Leverage interactive media college students to get you started. SEM isn’t difficult to deploy,

 but it is time consuming at the get-go. A student in interactive advertising comes in handy

 when working within tight budgets.



 WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

• Don’t ruin the campaign with a poor landing page experience (where the user goes when

 they click on your ad); have your website ready for prime-time, or have a custom landing

 page created to xyz marketing effort to monitor performance specific to each initiative.

• Get up to speed (or have someone else do so) on your campaign performance reports.

 These are free, but don’t forget to read them, draw learnings and optimize for future efforts.




                                                                                                   37
DISPLAY › Scrappy Rating: 4

Banner advertising is one of the oldest forms of online marketing. It launched
shortly after the .com boom of the 90s, but despite having a bad rap for being
those “annoying” pop-up ads, it still has its place.

Why? Because it’s a proven branding tool. The formats have also evolved
dramatically over the last ten plus years, allowing marketers to extend their
offline marketing initiatives to a larger online audience (e.g. in-banner video
is ideal for distributing TV spots online). There also are numerous targeting
methods offered that can get you that much closer to your target audience.
Geo-targeting and demo-targeting are the most common added benefits,
though behavioral targeting is also leveraged to serve more relevant content
(ads) based on user content preferences.




                                                                                  38
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

 Graphic designer familiar with flash and/or rich media content, business branded content

 (logo files) and landing page for user click-through (website).



 REACH METRICS

 Impressions, the number of times a user sees your ad online (a near 1:1 relationship with
 page views).



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• Creative copy for the media, graphic designer(s), and file formats to accommodate guidelines

 for various sites. It’s always better to serve light than with too much flash or animation that

 gets rejected by a site and/or end user.

• Audience insights regarding the users on the sites you’ll be serving ads on. If there’s any

 misalignment with your target audience or the website is too large to achieve a palatable

 share-of-voice (SOV) with your budget, bypass and focus your energies on SEM.

• Small Business-Friendly Ad Platforms: Ad Ready/Yahoo! (>$25,000/campaign).



 WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

 Because only 16% of display ads are ever clicked on, marketers must be vigilant about their

 creative messaging (help, don’t interfere) and placement relevancy (if you are promoting pet

 products, you are less likely to see click-through on your ads by buying placements on

 a cooking website).




                                                                                                   39
EMAIL › Scrappy Rating: 2

Email use among internet users is almost universal. Be it for personal or
professional use cases, many of us can’t live without it. Even as alternative
communication tools (social networks, text messaging, and RSS) gain momentum,
consumers still spend more time reading and interacting with email than any
other channel in the marketer’s toolkit. Email is also where nearly three-quarters
of online consumers want to get marketing communications, so it is definitely
worth your time if working within scrappy confines—limited time and budget.

There are two big things to consider as you develop an email program.

     › What should you send?

     › How should you send it?

Email is more than just newsletters. In fact, if your only strategy for getting
people to sign up for your product/service is to offer a “FREE Newsletter,” you
may have a tough time. Specifically think of how email can be used to extend
your website to keep people coming back. And ask for email addresses on
your site, when they purchase product or just express an interest, so you can
provide future messaging about offers, educational insights, etc to deepen the
relationship
with your audience.




                                                                                     40
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• An email service provider, such as ExactTarget or Constant Contact, that can provide email

 templates, a good industry reputation and therefore good delivery rates.

• List management and tracking tools to monitor open rates, clicks, and other important metrics.



 REACH METRICS

 These are your own, dependent on your ability to build and grow a permission-based email list.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 Content such as articles, product information, promotions, photography, and landing pages

 to convert clickers into customers.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Email works best when used for lead nurturing, gaining repeat purchases, and asking

 for referrals.

• Seek to educate and inform to drive repeat open rates and referrals.

• Develop messages and tools that keep them engaged by personalizing to their needs

 and interests. An easy way to “know” what they want is by including a check-list of what

 topics most interest them when subscribing to your e-mail list. (e.g. News, Updates, Events,

 Keyword interests).

• Quality is better than quantity. Hitting everyone who “might” have interest in your product/

 service isn’t guaranteed to deliver results. Not to mention you might find yourself weeding

 through mass volumes of “please unsubscribe me” if you don’t know who you’re sending

 things to.




                                                                                                   41
• Add an email list signup link to all websites and to your email signature. Ask for an email

 address and permission at every contact point. Trade value for information.

• Have a plan for multiple communications and a measurable objective. When you send an

 email, the majority of your audience will not be ready to buy for one reason or another.

 You’ll have to communicate an average of 7 times to get a sale so you need to plan 7-10

 communications that fit together and keep people interested during the buying cycle.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

 Spam.

• The US CAN-SPAM Act technically allows you to send unsolicited messages to consumers so

 long as recipients can easily opt-out; getting unsolicited emails delivered is very difficult.

• Use a permission-based list or you’ll risk losing your ability to get your emails delivered. Don’t

 send emails to total strangers.

• Email doesn’t work very well for prospect acquisition due to the sensitivity of consumers

 to spam.

                                           Contributing Author: Morgan Stewart,ExactTarget




                                                                                                       42
Events (Webinars) › Scrappy Rating: 1

Note I call webinars “events” within the online marketing toolkit. That was
intentional! Never has having a virtual event been made so easy. Many
organizations find this to be a great (digital) outlet for fostering relationships
with prospects and existing clients, while also spending a fraction of the costs
needed to create a live event.

Webinar can serve multiple purposes: educating, demoing new products/
services, allowing virtual panel discussions, etc. Combine this with the pre/post
sales and marketing efforts of email, SEM, even offline promotions and you’ve got
an integrated marketing program with legs that live well beyond the event itself.

A webinar can also provide incremental revenue streams, if you have a strong
following and programs that incent participation (celebrity involvement, unique
insights/data to share). In most cases though, make it free. Keep it simple, and
easy to access for all participants.




                                                                                     43
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Online demo materials.

• Power Point presentations with fewer than 20 slides (KISS—keep it simple stupid!).

• Conference lines that can support larger groups.

• Purchasing system, if charging for attendance.

• Event invite tools.

• Access to web-based document sharing platforms.



 REACH METRICS

 Not applicable; varies based on promotional tools used to gain interest and sign-up rates.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 WebEx, Adobe Connect, Facebook, EventBrite, Dimdim.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Try to use free tools! Don’t waste money if you don’t need to. (e.g. Dimdim provides a free
 service for up to 20 attendees, a decent number for a first-time scrappy webinar planner.)

• Add qualification questions to the registration form so that you can ensure the right people

 are attending and to prioritize your sales follow-up based on interests.

• Leave the phone lines open during the presentation, or allow a period of time for them to be

 open. There is nothing worse than a one-ended conversation and silence on the other side.

• Ask questions, provide follow-up surveys and allow your content to be downloaded from

 within the event page.




                                                                                                 44
WHAT TO WATCH FOR?

Don’t force users to “go find” the presentation materials. They are there for a reason—to

learn or be entertained. There is also viral value in making your documents accessible to the

larger public once users have attended a webinar. Nothing’s better than to see your materials

being posted to blogs and later surfaced in search result pages by relevant keywords due to

unadulterated “access” to your content.




                                                                                                45
SOCIAL MEDIA › Scrappy Rating: 1

Do you have a DVR on your TV that you use to fast forward through ads? Do you
use caller ID on your phone to screen sales calls? Do you block unwanted email
with spam filters? If so, then you can empathize and should act accordingly. Scale
back on outbound marketing techniques that interrupt your prospects and craft
a more personal marketing approach with social media.

What is social media?
In short—it’s uninterrupted, conversational, permission-focused inbound
marketing and a few centralized online tools for such. Over 300 million people
use Facebook and over 50 million business people used LinkedIn, both examples
of social networks that allow you to reach new customers based on their
interests—personal or professional.

What’s the secret to social media marketing?
Be yourself! Just like a real life cocktail party or networking event, you want to be
a helpful resource to potential friends. It’s socially “aware”; it listens to others and
doesn’t start the conversation by asking for an order.

How to get started?
Join one or two networks, then find a group or discussion related to your
industry and listen to the conversations. By doing so, you will get a good sense
for what types of questions people ask, and what types of answers people
respect most. Become a follower or friend of a few of the people in a group and
make connections. Once you are comfortable, take the plunge and ask questions
of your own, or offer your opinion… you may be surprised how much fun you
end up having, and how many business leads you get.


                                                                                           46
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Time to create helpful content, answer questions and network online—create some blog

 articles, e-books or other resources to reference on your social media outlets.

• Creative (corporate logo, photos, online presentations) to brand the experience your friends

 and prospects have.



 REACH METRICS

 Track your number of fans, friends and followers. As these numbers grow, so will your audience.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

• Free accounts on social networks websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

• Free tracking tools like Google Alerts, BackType and Buzz Grader or paid tools like Radian6,

 ScoutLabs, DNA13 or HubSpot.

• Get help, if this is your first time, in the form of a Social Media coach or attend webinars

 about the topic.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Make sure you have something interesting to say. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you don’t

 still need a content strategy to answer questions or have blog articles that you can talk about.

• Ask your friends and followers for feedback. It’s not about you, it’s about them! The more

 you can engage your audience, the more they will tell their friends about you. (Yes, it’s kind of

 an online popularity contest.)

• Listen to the community and get a vibe for what other people talk about and how they

 interact—it will help you fit in when you are ready to join the conversation yourself.

      (Contributing Authors: Mike Volpe, Hubspot; Christine Gallagher, Communicate Value)


                                                                                                     47
MOBILE › Scrappy Rating: 4

An online marketing overview would be incomplete without touching on mobile
and how it’s used within the practice of marketing. Mobile, with its myriad of
wireless devices and networks, has become the most ubiquitous communication
and media enablement channel out there.

As of 2009, over 232 million people in the United States carry a mobile phone
and/or a wireless-enabled device (e.g. iTouch, Kindle). This is a staggering
number when you consider the declining usage rate of offline media channels.
Mobile adoption even outstrips Internet growth trends. Mobile is the future,
and the future is here.

The mobile phone is more than a tool to talk. Technology now enables the
consumer to multi-task through a single device, similar to the PC movement
of the 90s. Mobile devices enable us to hold conversations, exchange text
messages (billions daily), socialize via Facebook and Twitter, generate and
consume content (images, videos and stories), check sports scores, local
weather, query store locations, get coupons, browse the Web, buy goods,
products and services, be entertained, read the news, and respond to in-phone
marketing advertisements.

A benefit of mobile marketing is that it encapsulates many consumer activities,
allowing marketers to provide an extension of their social media plan, print
media calls-to-action (e.g. “text iLoop to 47201” invites them to visit your mobile
web site), a content strategy, etc. Marketers can provide deeper engagement
with their target audience by using one or many of mobile’s marketing




                                                                                      48
channels—text messaging (a.k.a. SMS), multi-media messaging (e.g. Display/
Banner ads, Search ads, mobile Internet (e.g. creating an Internet experience
uniquely tailored to the consumer’s phone model, there are literally thousands
of variations possible), Applications (e.g. software download to the iPhone,
Blackberry, Palm, etc.) and proximity channels like Bluetooth and Wifi
for local alerts.




                                                                                 49
MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED

• Short, mobile-friendly creative messaging for ads, promotional codes and/or branded

 calls-to-action.

• If creating a marketable mobile App(lication), engage a designer familiar with such projects

 and plan accordingly with your budget.



 REACH METRICS

 Varies by provider, but the national breakdown per Nielsen 2009: 232 million on voice

 services, 138 million via SMS, 60 million via mobile Internet, and 20 million via Applications.



 RESOuRCES NEEDED

 One or more application partners to support text messaging, mobile Internet and related

 mobile capability needs. Check out Go Mo News for a helpful list of players.



 SCRAPPY SECRETS

• Take time to invest in an intern or marketing professional to help educate you on preferred

 marketing channels (display/banner ads, search, text and applications). You can learn mobile,

 but the rules can be daunting and the technology elusive.

• Read up on legislative governances before you commit to anything. Mobile marketing

 legislative and technological environments are changing on a daily (if not hourly) basis. Start

 by checking out the Consumer Best Practices at MMA Global.com.

• As with any marketing channel understand your consumer, be sure your core audience is a

 mobile user. Request user statistics from the provider you purchase advertising from and

 check out websites like iLoop for additional industry insights.




                                                                                                   50
• Be prepared to measure your success by integrating unique call to action phone numbers,

 email addresses and promo codes.



 WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR?

• Don’t get too fancy. Start with text messaging and a mobile web site landing page, which

 gets you the best bang for your buck.

• Whatever you do, do not message someone without getting their permission first.

                                         Contributing Author: Michael Becker, iLoop Mobile




                                                                                             51
Step 3

gettiNg to it.
(just do.)
My hope is that you now are more educated, better equipped to take a
step forward (or fine-tune existing programs) and enabled to create turn-key
marketing programs. My goal is your goal—to create marketing programs that
work, that are scalable and produce best-of-class results on small budgets.
And don’t forget, the learning doesn’t stop here.

     › Join online discussions about topics that matter to you on the Get
      Scrappy Fan Page on Facebook.

     › Participate in Linkedin Groups focused on small business owners and
      entrepreneurs.

     › Network with Fortune 500 marketers. They tackle the same issues of
      a small business owner—building brand and growing revenue—and
      apply many of the same principles to their work.


So go out there, get scrappy and share your story with others.




                                                                               52
get scrAppy:
 Rank, by level of difficulty, what marketing programs you can (not might) invest in.

 Factor in contextual relevancy of the marketing program to your target audience and

 product offering. (e.g. If your product offering is a new radio device, then

 a Radio-based offline marketing program is right up your alley)




 Minimize risks. Start small, over deliver.

 Focus on marketing efforts that can be deployed in 30 days. If it can’t be executed in 30

 days, hold off. You’ll be adding way too much to your plate and only become discouraged

 and overwhelmed. No one said you need to boil the ocean.




 Tailor your decisions to what programs reach your target audience, in the least

 amount of time.

 Don’t lose sight of creating sustainable marketing programs. If you can’t manage it, or find it

 too complex to even transition to others, you’re in over your head.



 Fail forward. Allow yourself to stumble, but apply those learnings to your next

 round of efforts.




 For more information about how to apply “scrappy” techniques to your marketing efforts,

 case studies and much more, follow us on Twitter at get_scrappy.

 To work with the book author, contact mfitzgerald@unscripted-marketing.com.




                                                                                                   53
About the Authors



priNcipAl
Michelle Fitzgerald is an Ad Solutions Manger at
Yahoo and currently manages the media programs
of several key Yahoo properties—Local, Maps, Small
Business and Travel. Ms. Fitzgerald has a diverse
marketing background with expertise in local online
marketing, strategic planning, B2B/B2C campaign
development and product analytics. Michelle
previously held marketing positions at the LA Times
and CareerBuilder.com. In addition to her work at
Yahoo, Michelle has a B.A. in Business Economics
from Wheaton College. Follow her on Twitter
and LinkedIn.




                                                      54
coNtributiNg
Christa Cordova is a marketing consultant based in
the greater NYC area with experience in marketing
campaign execution and business strategy
development. Christa currently owns her own small
business, Cordova Consulting, and has previously
worked for General Electric and ACE Hardware in
various marketing functions. Christa has a B.A. in
Journalism from the University of Kansas. Follow
Christa on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Morgan Stewart is the Director of Research &
Strategy at ExactTarget, an email marketing platform
leveraged by leading brands such as CareerBuilder.
com, Microsoft, Pier 1 Imports, Home Depot and
many more. Morgan is well respected in the industry
for his insights about email marketing, his strategic
thinking and consultative approach with many
Fortune1000 companies. He is regular contributor
to the ExactTarget blog. Connect with Morgan
on LinkedIn.




                                                        55
Michael Becker provides thought leadership in the
mobile marketing industry, assuming the roles of
industry entrepreneur, volunteer, and academic. Mr.
Becker is the VP of Mobile Strategies, Mobile Labs,
at iLoop Mobile, Inc. Mr. Becker sits on the Mobile
Marketing Association North American Board of
Directors (2004-2009), is founder and Co-chair
of the award winning MMA’s Academic Outreach
Committee and founded and co-editor of the
award winning MMA International Journal of Mobile
Marketing. Mr. Becker is a contributing author to
Mobile Internet for Dummies and co-author of Web
Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, which includes
a mini-book on mobile marketing. In addition, he has
authored over 60 articles on mobile marketing and is
an accomplished public speaker on the topics. In his
spare time, Mr. Becker is pursuing his doctorate in
Mobile Enhanced on the topic of Mobile Enhanced
Customer Managed Interactions at Golden Gate
University. Visit Michael’s profile on LinkedIn.




                                                       56
Bill Davis has over 30 years of marketing and
entrepreneurial experience and provides advise
to large and mid-sized businesses. Bill created the
Davis Marketing Group in 2005, with the single goal
of helping businesses grow. Mr. Davis’ corporate
experience includes sales and marketing roles within
organizations such as Beatrice Foods, Hinckley &
Schmitt (a Division of CGE), Suntory Bottled Water
Group and 7Up. Bill’s emphasis is developing
marketing programs which result in a maximum
return on investment and has been recognized for his
work on repeated occasions. For more information
about the Davis Marketing Group, connect with Bill
on LinkedIn.




                                                       57
Jan Swanberg is an in-demand marketing consultant
and speaker with over 25 years of experience, helping
organizations connect with their consumers through
development of integrated marketing programs.
She’s launched new products for clients including
Apple, Hooked on Phonics, LeapFrog, Digital Praise,
Paramount, HP, Xerox and others. Jan is the sole
proprietor of Swanberg Associates and has a MBA
from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Connect with Jan on Linkedin.

Christine Gallagher is an Online Marketing and
Social Media Consultant, Trainer and Coach. She
teaches small business owners how to conquer the
overwhelming aspects of online and social media
marketing to increase business and maximize profits.
To find out more, visit her blog or connect with her
on LinkedIn.




                                                        58
Mike Volpe is the VP of Inbound Marketing at
HubSpot, an Internet marketing software startup,
where he leads the company’s lead generation
and branding strategy through inbound marketing,
including blogging, search engine optimization,
video marketing, and social media. Mike is a cutting-
edge B2B inbound marketer who speaks at numerous
conferences including Inbound Marketing Summit,
SEM for SMB Conference, and the Harvard Business
School Marketing Conference. Mike also hosts
a weekly live marketing video podcast, HubSpot
TV, and blogs frequently. Mike is an MBA graduate
of the MIT Sloan School of Management and
received his B.A. in Economics and Government,
summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. He is a
Co-Founder and Director of the Boston Scholars
Program and a former Director of the Alumni Fund
at Bowdoin College. To learn more about inbound
marketing best practices and Hubspot, follow Mike
on Twitter and LinkedIn.




                                                        59
Related Resource Links



    MARkETING TOOLS                 Facebook
                                    EventBrite
    Direct Mail:
                                    Dimdim
    Money Mailers
                                    Social Media:
    Search Engine
                                    Slideshare
    Marketing (SEO):
                                    LinkedIn
    SEO tips
                                    Twitter
    Y! Small Business Web Hosting
                                    Google Alerts
    Hubspot
                                    BackType
    Google Analytics
                                    Buzz Grader
    Yahoo! Web Analytics
                                    Mobile:
    Search Engine
                                    Go Mo News
    Marketing (SEM):
    Google AdWords
    Yahoo! Search Marketing         OTHER
    eBay Adcommerce                 Recommended Books:
    Display/Banner Ad:              The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
    Ad Ready/Yahoo!                 Statistics:
    Email:                          # of Search Engine/Portal Users
    ExactTarget                     % of Banner Ad Clickers
    Constant Contact                General Definitions:
    Webinars:                       GRP (Gross Rating Points)
    WebEx                           Social Media
    Adobe Connect




                                                                      60

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Get Scrappy A (Small) Business Owners Guide To Marketing On Less

  • 1. BY BY MICHELLE FITZGERALD
  • 2. Accountability, resourcing and the make-it-happen- fast-yesterday mentality of marketing is a unanimous challenge across any organization, of any size. But the principle of “do more on less” is the everyday mantra for small business owners. Get Scrappy is a pared down, practical guide about how to incorporate marketing into the heart of your business plan. In a short, three-step process, Get Scrappy breaks down how to create meaningful, brief marketing plans, outlines the tools and resources available to getting it done and describes how to leverage marketing to learn more about your business. Packed with expertise from Fortune 500 marketers and SMB consultants, Get Scrappy provides real- life examples on how organizations, even those on less time and money, can make seemingly tactical objectives become strategic initiatives that generate results. Do more on less. GET SCRAPPY.
  • 3. Author’s Note My goal is to empower you by making it simple, not to confuse or overwhelm with fancy marketing lingo or 20-step check-lists. Thus the highlighted “scrappy” tips and step by step instructions. Copy, paste (or post) and go do it. My vision is to combat the statistic that 1:3 small business owners close their doors within five years because few knew they even existed. Best product, best service— foiled by not having an actionable, sustainable marketing plan. This book is part of a larger movement to change just that, to empower the small business owner. My mission is to flatten the communication barrier between SMBs and Fortune 500 level organizations and help expedite “in the trenches” expertise about how to create marketing programs that are effective for any organization. Just because Starbucks has a great go-to-market story, doesn’t mean you can’t too. i
  • 4. AckNowledgemeNts Special acknowledgments to all the people who inspire me and make life in the fastlane more manageable: The Fitzgerald clan, the Kahlows, Christa Cordova, Dan Eyman (the fabulous designer for this book), Sarah Hethcoat, Cristina Torres, Sandra Ponce de Leon, Chris Anthony, the Moveo team, the extended Chicago family, the many other entrepreneurs out there building businesses to improve our world, and all my contributing authors. Content contributions from Hubspot, Exact Target, iLoop Mobile, Communicate Value, Swanberg Associates, and Davis Group Marketing. For more information about the authors, check out the About the Authors section of this book. ii
  • 5. Contents Intro ....................................................................................................................... 1 Step 1 .......................................... Applying the Fundamentals ............................ 5 Step 2 .......................................... Breaking it Down ........................................... 10 Step 3 .......................................... Getting to It ................................................... 52 About the Authors ............................................................................................... 54 Related Resource Links ........................................................................................ 60 iii
  • 6. Intro Small business owners are scrappy by nature. If you started your own business, you likely remember the early days—cold calling, knocking on doors, selling off wireframes, and not sleeping. All-in-all, pounding pavement to get your first clients. Scrappiness gets the job done in oh, 18 hour days, 7 days a week. Marketing though (whatever be your definition at this point) is often underplayed by small business owners. Not intentionally, by most, but because it requires time, skills and information that not every entrepreneur has. A small business is the epitome of survival and survival tomorrow is often more about balancing a P&L for a prospective investor, ensuring a product or service doesn’t break, that something made it into the mail before 7PM, or developing a pricing strategy… not a marketing plan. The challenges of a small business owner are not nuances to larger organizations; they are just felt more poignantly. All businesses must plan and execute. The difference is the size of the team getting it done. So before marketing gets lost on your to-do list, consider these three over- arching themes to getting scrappy. 1. Take Time to Apply Fundamentals. The principles of marketing don’t change—what it is, what it’s designed to do for your business. But how and what you execute on should be tailored to individual business goals. 1
  • 7. › Start by defining what marketing means to you and everyone else involved. Is it a bunch of fliers, is it a highway billboard, or is it an email campaign? How will you reach your product or service’s target audience? Now cross-reference that with a quick look-up on Wikipedia for the definition of “marketing”. It’ll quickly tell you—marketing is a communication process. This definition (or principle) also provided by the AMA (American Marketing Association), will go on to tell you that it’s a process by which you persuade others, be it groups or individuals, to buy, think or become an advocate of whatever it is you’re marketing. Is (or was) that your end objective when you added “marketing” to your checklist? Will fliers get the job done, or a highway billboard? If marketing is the act of communicating, are you telling someone something or nothing? › Start with the basics. If I query your business name, do I get a website? If I do a Yellow Pages look-up, will I find your contact info? These are all pulse-check moves that any organization, of any size should be doing and yes, a website and local listing is marketing. If you can’t find yourself online through a simple query, no one else can either. So begin with the basics of “find ability”. From there build your brand, your message, your niche to establish yourself as a business who means business, long-term. › Start acting on insights—past, present and future—to evaluate and execute against the marketing programs that are best for your business. Again, common principles apply to marketing efforts at organizations of all sizes, but not not every marketing tool is relevant to your business objectives. As a marketer at the LA Times and CareerBuilder.com 2
  • 8. I always considered three things. Would the marketing program provide adequate Reach, Relevancy and Results. The insights I gathered were the foundation for developing a specific action plan that had rationale behind it, versus “I think we should be doing this”. Take the time to get to know your target audience. Without information about current or prospective customers, you will fly blind and waste valuable time and energy. And that is something no small business has time for. 2. Crowd Source to Simplify the Workload. As the saying goes, “no man lives on an island”. Collaboration is the mother of success. This book, itself, is an example of crowd sourcing. There is always someone out there who knows more than you and is willing to lend a hand, a voice of reason, or perspective based on real-life experiences. I also find this exercise valuable in my day job at Yahoo. (Yes, I’m admitting I’m not all about original ideas.) The point is that there are many times I don’t have answers and I must reach out and find someone who does. You learn, I learn, we all move one step forward in our education process. Jumpstart your crowd sourcing efforts by taking advantage of online how-to- guides on sites like About.com. If time and resources are ridiculously scarce, go straight to a Q/A format on Y! Answers, Twitter or LinkedIn. The beauty of a digital age is that you can also create your own web-friendly information… you can start your own questions, your own forums. It’s also a very smart, cost effective way to build recognition amongst peers and prospective clients. (See the Online Marketing—Social Media section of the book.) Crowd sourcing, in many ways, is your R&D department from afar. Focus your crowd sourcing efforts by joining online groups and communities with shared interests. 3
  • 9. 3. Scale for success. The pyramids didn’t rise out of the desert in a day. They were constructed day by day, brick by brick. That’s your plan, your mantra… do more each day, on less. Be deliberate, be selective in how you resource for marketing. It’s a valuable asset for your business, but there’s also a reason that marketing has a stereotype of demanding ungodly investments with little insight into how something performed or what’s repeatable. It’s because many individuals get caught in what I’d call the “Mad Men” syndrome. They idolize the magazine advertisement, the pat on the back to “see, that’s my billboard” and really have no sense of how their investment will pan out. In my experience, as marketer, I err on the side of caution, unless I know I can measure response rates and have bandwidth to do it again (or easily transition it to someone). Never forget that Marketing is about creating promotions to meet the needs of your end audience. It’s the response mechanism to what others have to say about your product or service category. (e.g. I need small business web design services. Who has it and how much will it cost?) It’s also your ability to creatively provide an ongoing dialogue with the rest of the world. Marketing, very simply put, is your voice, your elevator pitch on paper or online. Have you found your voice? 4
  • 10. Step 1 ApplyiNg the FuNdAmeNtAls (stop. thiNk. plAN.) Marketing means many things to many different people, as communication styles vary from person to person. On a personal and professional level I might use Facebook and Twitter to engage people, while others would prefer phone or email. Why? Because we identify with certain ways of connecting with people, and those that give the greatest sense of satisfaction. For me it’s about time (what takes the least amount of it) and how quickly I can reach a broader audience (phone or email won’t get me there). How does this relate to the small business owner? It’s the concept that as communication styles vary, so does the integration process of marketing (your larger communication strategy) into every day affairs. And don’t let the supposed, and sometime very real, complexities of marketing stop you from doing something. Let’s begin to break this down. 5
  • 11. get scrAppy tip 1: deFiNe your Niche. The biggest challenge to getting started is lack of clarity on what marketing efforts will mesh against larger goals, especially when the goals can be moving targets. But do take a few minutes to cultivate your go-to-market around what audience is most important to your business and where you have the strongest value proposition, the greater story to tell. That’ll give you the momentum to do most any Marketing program because you have found your voice in a specific marketplace. get scrAppy tip 2: deFiNe whAt’s FeAsible to get doNe iN 30 dAys. Avoid the shiny object that will take months to implement! And certainly avoid anything that will require a skill set you simply don’t have or don’t have resources to support. This can be disappointing if you wanted to create a TV ad; but believe me, even large organizations with much larger budgets turn down ideas and programs. There are also countless programs that give marketplace traction without costing you a dime. No matter what your size or budget is, it has to be come down to what’s turnkey and essential to getting the word out quickly. 6
  • 12. get scrAppy tip 3: doN’t Forget the bAsics. Website. Phone number. E-mail address. Done. Well, not entirely, but you’ve laid the foundation to have somewhere to direct all inquiries to. You would be surprised how many times Marketing efforts move forward without ensuring the essentials, “find ability”, are in place. (Read more on this in Step 2—Breaking it Down.) get scrAppy tip 4: doN’t liFt A FiNger oN more costly items uNtil you cAN justiFy your iNvestmeNt. This is about defining and creating accountability. You never want to make Marketing a business liability. Marketing, even in larger organizations, is often the first budget to get cut when things get tough. Why? Because few know whether ad programs deliver real results. And wasted resources are costly. That said, here are a few rules of thumb that I have used to simplify the selection process. › Create budget and message parameters to identify what programs are out of scope. Establish an 80/20. 80 percent of your budget (and time) goes to ROI-specific efforts to drive revenue. The other 20 percent goes to testing new programs and building brand awareness, which is always more challenging to measure unless you have access to user engagement studies from third party sources. 7
  • 13. › Be prepared to create accountability for your marketing efforts by going the extra mile and creating response tracking mechanisms in virtually everything you do—your website, newspaper ads, an online banner ad, or email campaign. Creating unique email addresses or phone numbers, including custom URLs for website links, and having promo codes are very simple ways to monitor your success and manage expectations. The response rate to each, assuming you can track for each, will indicate what programs should be repeated, optimized or scratched from your master plan. I happen to be passionate about capturing proof points for my work, so here also are some cost-efficient ways to identify if your program’s resonating with your target audience. › Create surveys. Send to an approved, opt-in only email list (or some of your closest friend and colleagues) to ask questions about your product or service. Keep it under ten questions and allow those being surveyed to take it online or via a pre-paid comment card they can drop in the mail or leave behind at your business location. [Resources: Zoomerang, Survey Monkey] › Create downloadable whitepapers to generate opportunities to collect leads during the download process and valuable information about the people visiting your site. These papers can be free, but allow you to build industry credentials as an “expert” in the sector you service, versus simply promoting your product. 8
  • 14. › Use website analytic tools. We will talk further about this in the “online marketing” section of book, but those offered by Google and Yahoo allow you to identify you how people find you, whether that’s social networks such as Facebook or Twitter or the search keyword. This will come in handy when you try to build a frame of reference around your customer base. get scrAppy tip 5: hAve A coNteNt strAtegy to drive repeAt eNgAgemeNt with your product or service. Spend time sorting out—“what’s the point?” What do you really want others to get out of spending five seconds, two minutes or a few days following and/or learning about what you offer? In larger organizations, this is a full-blown content strategy inclusive of white papers, advertorials and such. For smaller organizations, this can be as simple as dedicating yourself, or someone on your team, to consistently post articles to your site about your business, manage a blog or alert the large internet population via Twitter when new blog posts are available. Content is the element of making yourself indispensible to consumers. They can appreciate your ongoing dedication to meet their needs by engaging with them. Seek their opinion on topics, just as often as you push out your own. 9
  • 15. Step 2 breAk it dowN. (leArN. leAN. execute.) Tactics are undeniably the fun part of marketing. The things we get to do after all the planning and finagling over what business priorities are. All organizations will likely agree on one thing though—the devil is in the details. Here is where taking even a few days to plan pays off. So, roll up your sleeves and create space for a checklist in your daily planner, notebook or self-identified work space to outline what marketing programs will be most useful in the next 30 days. Let’s cut to the chaise and prep you to make decisions based on two premise points: › How much time will it take? › How much will it cost me? Now stretch, maybe take a quick break, and buckle up for a roller coaster ride through today’s Marketing toolkit so you can start taking action. 10
  • 16. *** If you’ve seen an episode of Mad Men, you’ve most likely noticed that advertising has evolved since the 1960s. We now have a multi-channel advertising powerhouse fueling the economy at $500 billion plus in thousands of shapes and sizes. And the larger the marketing industry has grown, the more confusing it is—a cross-section of creative and communication tools. It’s no wonder that marketers, especially those wearing multiple hats like small business owners, find it challenging to figure out which marketing tactics will help them reach their monthly goals. So let’s break it down, like true marketers, into two buckets of advertising opportunities—offline and online media. 11
  • 17. Offline Media The Toolkit Print Radio Television Outdoor Events/Tradeshows What is it? Besides including the above items, offline media is an effective brand awareness tool because it reaches in masses. It’s creatively effective, but it is more challenging to track for success. Tell me more. Typically defined as “traditional media” (yes, Mad Men era marketing programs) these advertising vehicles allow the largest window for creative liberties, the razzle-dazzle affect, to allow consumers to see and hear the essence of your brand. Offline media also allows you to call attention to your online marketing channels, thus crafting a multi-media marketing approach and increasing your audience reach. 12
  • 18. Scrappy marketers should realize the opportunities within each bucket of the offline toolkit and budget accordingly. Costs can vary significantly for each depending on a) popularity (consumer reach) and b.) whether the media is purchased nationally or locally. Be practical and informed about what it will take to do any of the following. That said, read on to learn more about what assets you will need, how reach is measured and what resources you will need to execute against each. 13
  • 19. priNt mediA Newspaper › Scrappy Rating: 3 When you think newspaper—think local! As part of a marketing plan that includes online and offline media, newspaper advertising helps reach local prospects in a targeted, geographic area with minimal effort. Ad space in newspaper dailies and weeklies is often inexpensive and can be an effective vehicle for announcing retail store openings, celebrating business anniversaries, promoting special sales, and launching new products. Buys on a local or national level are available run-of-newspaper (Remnant) or by section. Readership demographics can also vary if you buy only by section, so be sure to ask questions to verify it’s a good fit against your target audience. For example, if the Chicago Tribune Finance section is attracting predominantly men aged 25-54, placing an ad targeting men aged 18-34 isn’t likely to give you stellar results. Buys in national publications can also be tailored by county or zip code, if the publication is printed regionally. Although you will probably want to start locally, you can also purchase newspaper advertising nationally (Wall Street Journal, New York Times). This is more expensive, but the reach is much greater. Sunday print ads are often preferred due to higher readership than daily. 14
  • 20. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Creative (the ad itself) in the format required by newspaper (usually digital). Check with your target publications for their standard ad specs. (e.g. New York Times) • Commitment to a Media Schedule (e.g. 1/8 page ad at 4x month for 3 months) if your budget will allow it. REACH METRICS Daily or Weekly circulation and/or readership (readership is approximately 1.5 times circulation). RESOuRCES NEEDED • Creative Brief that clearly articulates your company product benefits and unique selling proposition. • Copy Writer and Graphic Designer who can work quickly and inexpensively. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Have a call to action! Not only does it provide measurability (number of phone calls, number of site visits), but it also incents your reader to DO something. › Do you want customers to call you? › Visit a store that has your product? › Do you want to improve your brand image? › Promote a special event? 15
  • 21. • Ask if there are print/online advertising packages to also run your ad on the newspaper’s website for a discounted rate. Yes, you’ll need to create banner ads too, but you will save costs if the newspaper’s online audience is a significant size. (Note: For many newspapers, their online readership is in high growth mode and equal to or greater than their offline readership numbers.) • Keep the ad short and sweet! Print advertising is 90% visual, so create an interesting visual—and connect the headline to it. 50% of readers can remember a short caption (think <140 characters), and less than 10% read beyond the first sentence in the copy. Some of the most effective ads also utilize white space to create more impactful focal points—the copy, the graphic. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? • Check the publication to make sure your ad runs. Monitor ad effectiveness on a regularly— weekly, monthly. Ask your customers, “Where did you learn about my product?” See if you can link a sales increase to the ad schedule by providing a measurable call to action (a unique phone number, website URL promo offer code) that’s specific to your newspaper ad(s). • Make sure your response mechanisms work. Is there a dedicated 1-800 number? Test to verify calls can go through before the ad was submitted. Is your website up and running and able to take on any traffic surges, should the ad spark an overwhelming response? You risk losing credibility if a prospect can’t respond without complications. Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates 16
  • 22. Magazine › Scrappy Rating: 4 Effective magazine advertising can help create brand awareness among a more niche psychographic and/or demographic audience. Although many magazines are struggling or going out of business, a specific publication may be worth considering as an advertising vehicle, particularly if the demographics of the publication are a good fit for your product. (e.g. Pregnancy and New Moms) The advantages of magazines are that they can be: › Targeted at a certain demographic. › 4-color and glossy/non-glossy formats all provide an excellent avenue to communicate brand image and brand benefits. › Magazines have residual staying power; issues tend to stay around longer and are passed on more often than newspapers, which are usually recycled or tossed after only one day. The disadvantages of magazine advertising include: › High costs based on placement fees and creative production. › Long lead times (e.g. creative is usually due two months in advance) so you have to plan ahead. 17
  • 23. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Media Kits for each magazine describing the standard ad sizes and costs. Costs depend on frequency of insertion, though discounts may be available. Always ask, particularly if a first time customer or frequent buyer. • Compelling creative in the right size for each magazine and a commitment for a media flight schedule. REACH METRICS Circulation, which depending on the publication can be daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. You can factor in a 1.5 pass-along value for each reader. (e.g. 1 reader becomes 2.5 readers) RESOuRCES NEEDED • Similar to newspaper advertising, a Creative Brief that articulates your company, product benefits and unique selling proposition. • Copy Writer and Graphic Designer who collaborate on the project. • Reader statistics of any magazine. You must confirm the average reader is your target audience. For statistics, start out by reading the magazine’s Media Kit and look it up on ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation). SCRAPPY SECRETS • Get a sense of what ad type runs well (and effectively) in xyz publication and use it as a model for your ads. Review the target publication(s) thoroughly before designing your ads. You might even want to post competitive ads on a wall board and see how your proposed ad looks in a side-by-side comparison. 18
  • 24. • Check to if there’s discounted media space right before the closing date of ad commitments. Ad sales departments may be willing to give you a special deal for last minute placements, assuming you have the right creative easily available. • Do “vanity mentions” on your website, email campaigns, etc to draw more attention to your magazine advertising efforts. Maximize the mileage of your ad placement and let a prestigious publication rub off on your brand. Be sure to tout it! (“As seen in Inc. Magazine.”) WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? • Try to get synergies with your PR efforts. Publications always need items for their “New Products” listings and other editorial content. • Get permission to make copies of the magazine ads for other marketing efforts and/or “vanity mentions”. • Ask for discounted and/or free copies of the publication your ad ran in. It can become great sales collateral and/or an office memoir. Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates 19
  • 25. Direct Mail › Scrappy Rating: 4 Direct Mail is possibly one of the most precise and creative of all offline media types. It’s precise because of your ability to target and measure recipients’ response rate by demographic and geo-economic variables. It’s creative because the direct mail piece is tangible. Depending on the product, the piece can be 3-D, eye-catching, sent in a tube, and/or can include sample products, coupon books, or other memorable materials. Before integrating Direct Mail into your larger marketing plan, you should test a variety of offers, creative executions and mailing lists with a subset of your target population before rolling out a full-scale program. Be prepared to test and measure by creating a simple Excel workbook, unless you have access to more sophisticated tracking tools. The key items you should monitor to assess your success rate: › Response Rate (# of inquiries / # of individuals this was sent to); Note: 2% is considered excellent. › Cost per Sale (costs /sale) › Average Profit per Transaction (total revenue/ total # of transactions) 20
  • 26. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Mailing lists from various publications or organizations. • A designer to provide one or multiple creative executions, with different variables to test prior to full-fledged rollout. (e.g. alternate offers) REACH METRICS Quantity of households/individuals, as per your mail list information. RESOuRCES NEEDED • List broker to obtain lists. Bonded Direct Mail house to send the mailing to the lists. • A creative designer to develop compelling copy and offers. • Add a quantitative expert to your team, if testing and measuring is not your thing! SCRAPPY SECRETS • Keep it simple! Direct Mail programs can include postcards, coupons and flyers in bulk mailings. • Keep it local! Check out Money Mailers for localized solutions. • Expensive, more complex Direct Mail pieces usually only work for high-margin items. • Take advantage of online printers for lower costs. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? • Don’t get too attached to your “favorite” execution of a Direct Mail piece. Instead, listen to the test results! • Watch out for high production costs in DM pieces, especially for low-margin items. Contributing Author: Jan Swanberg, Swanberg Associates 21
  • 27. RADIO › Scrappy Rating: 3 Whether a brand or direct response campaign, radio is a great way to reach your target audience. It’s particularly beneficial if your marketing campaign needs the “hear” aspect to bring your messaging to life. Radio also has mass appeal. In regions where there’s high volume drive-time commutes, it provides great reach for your investment. The most common spot times are 30 and 60 seconds. In addition, 15 and 20 second spots are available and most commonly used to increase awareness for your campaign. Spots of 120 seconds are available, if your message requires this additional time. However, a well written 60 will satisfy almost any message. Spots can be produced dry (no music background) or with music. Sound effects can be a good way to paint a picture for the audience. Common spots types include: › Straight reads › “Slice of life” (back and forth dialog) › Monologs (the talent portrays a character) › Jingles (musical overlay to script read) 22
  • 28. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Scripts, Voice-overs. REACH METRICS GRP (Gross Rating Points), a calculation based on the percentage of users listening to xyz radio station and the frequency by which they do it. The higher the GRP, the higher the cost of the radio buy will be. RESOuRCES NEEDED A copy writer, recording designer, music mixer/DJ (optional), and voice-over talent (optional). SCRAPPY SECRETS • Stick to your marketing objectives and provide a call to action. What number should they call? What website should they visit for more information? • Drive-time spot buys are your most costly, but often the most effective given the higher likelihood of reaching your target audience. • Tap the radio station and/or local college copy writing programs to get help producing a spot at little to no additional cost. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR • Don’t proceed, unless you can do it well. A good spot will repeat your business name and call to action at least twice. • The website or phone number mentioned should be repeated at least three times to resonate with the listener. • Keep your message simple and to the point. Contributing Author: Bill Davis, Davis Group Marketing 23
  • 29. TELEVISION › Scrappy Rating: 5 The television today is still one of the most powerful ways to communicate your brand. You can potentially reach millions of viewers in a single ad and dependent on the channel, the show, the time of day, you may be able to target a large percentage of your target audience in a single TV spot (“ad” in marketing lingo). Though television has changed over the years, with now hundreds of channels to choose from and public vs. cable, it still remains one of the most powerful marketing tools. As eluded to above, television, as an advertising medium is available on multiple levels—local and national and network vs. public or independent. Spots are traditionally available for 15, 30, 60 or 90 seconds. The more popular buy is :15 or :30 due to costs—of the spot itself—and creative production. 24
  • 30. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Scripts, Voice-overs. REACH METRICS Viewership broken out by GRPs and segmented by daypart—6-10am, 3-7pm (Drive Time), 10am-3pm (Mid-day) and 7-12 midnight (Night). Also segmented by Weekday vs. Weekend. RESOuRCES NEEDED Copy writer, recording designer, music mixer/DJ (optional), and voice-over talent (optional). SCRAPPY SECRETS • Take advantage of lower national/local TV spot costs when big advertisers are cutting back. Many networks will offer large discounts to small and midsize business media buyers. Take advantage of the opportunities to “get in the game.” • Consider teaming up with a professional media buying agency for television buys. They typically have experience working at television stations they’re now buying fro. This is one area where hiring an experienced partner really does beat trying to do it yourself. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? • The direct response rate (e.g. sales lead generation) is softer and for most it’s still pretty expensive, making ROI calculations harder to justify. • TIVO/DVR user preferences are limiting real-time television with expected (and viewed) commercial breaks. • Don’t go big before talking to others in your industry. Are TV ads working for them? What is their primary purpose for doing this beyond the glam and glitz of being able to say “As seen on TV?” 25
  • 31. OuTDOOR › Scrappy Rating: 5 Outdoor media, also known as “Out of Home”, comes in many forms—roadside and building billboards, local festival sponsorships, sporting event signage, airport signage, public transit signage, etc. If planning to make a big splash, this is a great media channel to explore, but be aware of the upfront creative costs. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Signage to scale by outdoor venue (indoor vs. outdoor, billboard vs. poster). REACH METRICS Viewership varies by form; weekday and weekend drive-by estimates would apply to billboards, average number of attendees for sporting event signage. For some formats, viewership is calculated based on estimated daily foot traffic, while others there is some assumptive “extended reach” factors (e.g. televised games and placement pick-up potential of signage, such as home plate signage in baseball). RESOuRCES NEEDED Copy writer, graphic designers, print production. 26
  • 32. SCRAPPY SECRETS • For fear of sounding like a broken record, have a call to action! Yes, Outdoor is largely about brand awareness, but can also incent readers to do something if you include a response mechanism. • Make it big and easy to read. If you try to cram too many words into your creative, you will fail. Similar to a newspaper ad, leverage white space. • Make your contact information visible and choose one contact method. Outdoor isn’t the place for all of the following—your business name, website, phone number, email address, business address and store hours. Yes, it’s been done, and no, we didn’t remember any of it for more than a few seconds. • Keep it local for added relevancy to your target audience. WHAT TO WATCH FOR? • Production costs and comparative ROI. This particular marketing channel can hinge on becoming sunk costs, unless creatively tied into online marketing channels. Both design and print production costs are steep and unless there’s a direct call to action, there will be little measurement attached to the effort. • Focus on outdoor when a.) you have budget to spare beyond dollars committed to direct response/leads and b.) if you’ve got a great connection on the design or production side of things. Having purchased these items in the past, we can ensure you that it can (and will) cost thousands. 27
  • 33. EVENTS › Scrappy Rating: 3 Marketing in this format, similar to TV and Outdoor, is memorable. Let’s face it. It’s an experience that a marketer of any organization can create and even maintain beyond the event itself. It’s a valuable branding and engagement tool because it’s hands on. At an event your potential customers/clients will see, feel and hear first-hand what your organization is all about. Events allow you to create deeper relationships with your target audience by providing the opportunity to connect and personally meet and greet. Some of the more popular events include industry tradeshows, but tradeshows have evolved into smaller venues. Examples of such include niche topic- specific seminars (e.g. email marketing), brown-bag networking events, speed networking, and vendor-less educational workshops. And as many seek cost efficiencies, many also integrate offline events with online webinars. 28
  • 34. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • A strong project planner to coordinate event agendas, travel schedules (if the event’s out–of- town), venue bookings, onsite management, registration materials, event website or custom landing page within existing website, email templates, printable event brochures, graphic designers for onsite marketing material (agendas, signage, badges, post event survey slips). • Advertising creative, specific to provide the above assets. • Significant budget. Though Events are valuable marketing assets, most are costly and time intensive. REACH METRICS Totally dependent on access to mailing lists—offline (direct mail) and online (email, blog network). RESOuRCES NEEDED Copy writer, graphic designers, print production, logistics and trade show services. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Crowd source for additional contacts to market to. Extend your outreach to other industry- related channels that you may have relationships with. • Adhere to the old adage “plan your work and work your plan.” In other words, don’t plan up to the tradeshow and stop. Event marketing itself is the true test of a marketer because it engages every cylinder of your marketing plan to engage users, attract attendees or build sales leads from industry tradeshow booth walk-ups. 29
  • 35. • Plan everything—from start (booth design) and pre-show outreach to finish (how you’ll follow up with customers and prospects when the event is done). Coordinate everything related to the event. • Have fun with it! Create a “summer retreat” in the dead of winter in a warm destination. WHAT TO WATCH FOR? • Don’t forget to educate your end user. Avoid it becoming all entertainment, and be sure to offer some actionable information. • Tradeshows still have their place, but smaller events strikes deeper engagement. The more intimate the experience, the higher likelihood of a return audience because of its memorable nature. • Never, ever let an event stand on its own. Follow-up with every person you meet and do so quickly, within a week of time. 30
  • 36. Overwhelmed yet? It can seem so much simpler to talk “Marketing”, until it’s time to start “doing”. Right? Never fear. This is a common tripping point, regardless of business size. Here are some highlights to take with you, along with others you may have jotted down. Look for more Scrappy insights at the end of this guide. Tip 1. Don’t over-estimate your skills. Hire someone, if budget permits, from the get-go of any effort. Offline marketing is incredibly reliant on copyrighting skills, branded messaging prowess and creative design. The sooner you loop in other talent, the easier it will be to move forward. Tip 2. Monitor your competitors’ level of visibility in offline channels. If you’re in a tried and true industry environment (e.g. children’s books), follow the lead of others. Trends do say something about what works and bucking it doesn’t always pay off. Tip 3. Start small. You’ll burn out very quickly by taking on too much at once. If having an offline presence is necessary to reach your target audience, do so, but pick one and cling to it by taking the time to prep and optimize along the way. So now that we covered offline, traditional media channels, let’s move on to the world of online (digital/emerging) marketing. 31
  • 37. Online Media The Toolkit Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Display/Banners Email Webinars Social Mobile Events/Tradeshows What is it? Without doubt, online is the “new black” of marketing for reasons such as cost efficiency, accessibility to measuring tools and shorter go-to-markets. If time isn’t on your side, I highly recommend allowing online marketing to carry most of your 30-day marketing plan. Tell me more. Again, trends talk about what works or not. There’s something to be said that online marketing has attracted high profile celebrities. Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, and Ellen have some of the largest online followings on Twitter. And President Obama was named 2008 Marketer of the Year. A political personality! 32
  • 38. Why? First, because Obama created a rave by recognizing that the majority of his target audience spent most of their time—online. Not watching TV, not listening the radio—but online. And second, he facilitated a one-on-one conversation for Obama “fans” via tools that allowed voters to express their real- time interests in his political opinions. Now that’s called building engagement in mass and well, it proved itself with a win for Presidency. Let’s break it down again for Online Marketing. 33
  • 39. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) › Scrappy Rating: 3 The backbone of online marketing is creating and maintaining a website. This is the “basics” in action in a digital age. Without a website, the online experience is non-existent and users have no-where to learn more about your business, other than calling you. And it goes without saying that no business owner would want to rely on inbound calls to grow a business, particularly in a time where comparison shopping starts online because of accessibility. SEO is the effort to improve what we’d call “find-ability” (ranking high in web search result pages) and on site usability (the user navigational experience) of your website based on the integration of keyword tags—your header, your footer, the opening content of your site, etc. If you hope to grow your business by being “found” on the web, this is a critical piece that once set-up can run on its own for a period of time. More frequent updates can vary if you are in a competitive space and other, similar, websites crop up commanding the #1 rank on a results page. Why is SEO valuable to your business? It’s good for both branding and direct response. The key with SEO is that you rank high for the keywords you have chosen to represent your business’ brand. When consumers search for a particular service, you want them to see your company information first. It’s then they are most likely to click through to your site. High search rankings also create a perception of high visibility and can improve your audience’s outlook on how serious your business is. 34
  • 40. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Web developer, creative designer (layout, branding and messaging). REACH METRICS N/A; SEO is increasing your ability to grow organic traffic to your site. RESOuRCES NEEDED • Pick up some related “how-to” guides or go online for SEO tips, if not hiring someone to do it. • Y! Small Business web hosting, Hubspot, Google Analytics, and Yahoo! Web Analytics. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Determine what keywords are critical to your business; think about how your audiences might find you and describe the need they are looking to fill. • Develop of a list of key terms you want to rank high for and work with your web developer to create more strategic content decisions. • Take advantage of your networking skills to have other businesses link to your site. It will help your standing in the search engines’ eyes and it’s free. • Don’t be afraid to create your own content in the form of a blog which will also help your “find ability”. WHAT TO WATCH FOR? Invest in SEO, but don’t let the intricacies of doing so halt you from stepping a toe in the water. Keep it simple by focusing on a short list of keywords that are critical to your business. Then take it from there over time. 35
  • 41. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) › Scrappy Rating: 1 Plain and simple, SEM is where your online and offline marketing efforts intersect. Some of the most affective programs on Yahoo! involve a paid search campaign and offline marketing channel to surround the end audience with messaging wherever they are in a given day. SEM provides very distinct benefits and is often where the online conversation begins. Why? Over 69% of the internet community is online and searching. To leave Search Marketing out of your marketing mix, especially as a small business, would be short-sighted given search engines are where consumers spend a significant amount of their everyday lives. What is SEM? SEM is a keyword-based ad buy with text links. The campaign is centered on what keywords a user (your target audience) selects in a search query. It can also be geographically targeted, making it incredibly relevant to specific audiences. 36
  • 42. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Creative copy for the title, description and identification of keywords. REACH METRICS Varies by keyword buy and budget allocation to each (more you invest, higher share-of-voice you’ll obtain). RESOuRCES NEEDED Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, eBay Adcommerce, and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. SCRAPPY SECRETS • SEM is great for driving traffic to your site and converting sales—a keyword search often signifies intent to purchase—be there to capture those warm leads. • Leverage interactive media college students to get you started. SEM isn’t difficult to deploy, but it is time consuming at the get-go. A student in interactive advertising comes in handy when working within tight budgets. WHAT TO WATCH FOR? • Don’t ruin the campaign with a poor landing page experience (where the user goes when they click on your ad); have your website ready for prime-time, or have a custom landing page created to xyz marketing effort to monitor performance specific to each initiative. • Get up to speed (or have someone else do so) on your campaign performance reports. These are free, but don’t forget to read them, draw learnings and optimize for future efforts. 37
  • 43. DISPLAY › Scrappy Rating: 4 Banner advertising is one of the oldest forms of online marketing. It launched shortly after the .com boom of the 90s, but despite having a bad rap for being those “annoying” pop-up ads, it still has its place. Why? Because it’s a proven branding tool. The formats have also evolved dramatically over the last ten plus years, allowing marketers to extend their offline marketing initiatives to a larger online audience (e.g. in-banner video is ideal for distributing TV spots online). There also are numerous targeting methods offered that can get you that much closer to your target audience. Geo-targeting and demo-targeting are the most common added benefits, though behavioral targeting is also leveraged to serve more relevant content (ads) based on user content preferences. 38
  • 44. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED Graphic designer familiar with flash and/or rich media content, business branded content (logo files) and landing page for user click-through (website). REACH METRICS Impressions, the number of times a user sees your ad online (a near 1:1 relationship with page views). RESOuRCES NEEDED • Creative copy for the media, graphic designer(s), and file formats to accommodate guidelines for various sites. It’s always better to serve light than with too much flash or animation that gets rejected by a site and/or end user. • Audience insights regarding the users on the sites you’ll be serving ads on. If there’s any misalignment with your target audience or the website is too large to achieve a palatable share-of-voice (SOV) with your budget, bypass and focus your energies on SEM. • Small Business-Friendly Ad Platforms: Ad Ready/Yahoo! (>$25,000/campaign). WHAT TO WATCH FOR? Because only 16% of display ads are ever clicked on, marketers must be vigilant about their creative messaging (help, don’t interfere) and placement relevancy (if you are promoting pet products, you are less likely to see click-through on your ads by buying placements on a cooking website). 39
  • 45. EMAIL › Scrappy Rating: 2 Email use among internet users is almost universal. Be it for personal or professional use cases, many of us can’t live without it. Even as alternative communication tools (social networks, text messaging, and RSS) gain momentum, consumers still spend more time reading and interacting with email than any other channel in the marketer’s toolkit. Email is also where nearly three-quarters of online consumers want to get marketing communications, so it is definitely worth your time if working within scrappy confines—limited time and budget. There are two big things to consider as you develop an email program. › What should you send? › How should you send it? Email is more than just newsletters. In fact, if your only strategy for getting people to sign up for your product/service is to offer a “FREE Newsletter,” you may have a tough time. Specifically think of how email can be used to extend your website to keep people coming back. And ask for email addresses on your site, when they purchase product or just express an interest, so you can provide future messaging about offers, educational insights, etc to deepen the relationship with your audience. 40
  • 46. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • An email service provider, such as ExactTarget or Constant Contact, that can provide email templates, a good industry reputation and therefore good delivery rates. • List management and tracking tools to monitor open rates, clicks, and other important metrics. REACH METRICS These are your own, dependent on your ability to build and grow a permission-based email list. RESOuRCES NEEDED Content such as articles, product information, promotions, photography, and landing pages to convert clickers into customers. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Email works best when used for lead nurturing, gaining repeat purchases, and asking for referrals. • Seek to educate and inform to drive repeat open rates and referrals. • Develop messages and tools that keep them engaged by personalizing to their needs and interests. An easy way to “know” what they want is by including a check-list of what topics most interest them when subscribing to your e-mail list. (e.g. News, Updates, Events, Keyword interests). • Quality is better than quantity. Hitting everyone who “might” have interest in your product/ service isn’t guaranteed to deliver results. Not to mention you might find yourself weeding through mass volumes of “please unsubscribe me” if you don’t know who you’re sending things to. 41
  • 47. • Add an email list signup link to all websites and to your email signature. Ask for an email address and permission at every contact point. Trade value for information. • Have a plan for multiple communications and a measurable objective. When you send an email, the majority of your audience will not be ready to buy for one reason or another. You’ll have to communicate an average of 7 times to get a sale so you need to plan 7-10 communications that fit together and keep people interested during the buying cycle. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? Spam. • The US CAN-SPAM Act technically allows you to send unsolicited messages to consumers so long as recipients can easily opt-out; getting unsolicited emails delivered is very difficult. • Use a permission-based list or you’ll risk losing your ability to get your emails delivered. Don’t send emails to total strangers. • Email doesn’t work very well for prospect acquisition due to the sensitivity of consumers to spam. Contributing Author: Morgan Stewart,ExactTarget 42
  • 48. Events (Webinars) › Scrappy Rating: 1 Note I call webinars “events” within the online marketing toolkit. That was intentional! Never has having a virtual event been made so easy. Many organizations find this to be a great (digital) outlet for fostering relationships with prospects and existing clients, while also spending a fraction of the costs needed to create a live event. Webinar can serve multiple purposes: educating, demoing new products/ services, allowing virtual panel discussions, etc. Combine this with the pre/post sales and marketing efforts of email, SEM, even offline promotions and you’ve got an integrated marketing program with legs that live well beyond the event itself. A webinar can also provide incremental revenue streams, if you have a strong following and programs that incent participation (celebrity involvement, unique insights/data to share). In most cases though, make it free. Keep it simple, and easy to access for all participants. 43
  • 49. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Online demo materials. • Power Point presentations with fewer than 20 slides (KISS—keep it simple stupid!). • Conference lines that can support larger groups. • Purchasing system, if charging for attendance. • Event invite tools. • Access to web-based document sharing platforms. REACH METRICS Not applicable; varies based on promotional tools used to gain interest and sign-up rates. RESOuRCES NEEDED WebEx, Adobe Connect, Facebook, EventBrite, Dimdim. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Try to use free tools! Don’t waste money if you don’t need to. (e.g. Dimdim provides a free service for up to 20 attendees, a decent number for a first-time scrappy webinar planner.) • Add qualification questions to the registration form so that you can ensure the right people are attending and to prioritize your sales follow-up based on interests. • Leave the phone lines open during the presentation, or allow a period of time for them to be open. There is nothing worse than a one-ended conversation and silence on the other side. • Ask questions, provide follow-up surveys and allow your content to be downloaded from within the event page. 44
  • 50. WHAT TO WATCH FOR? Don’t force users to “go find” the presentation materials. They are there for a reason—to learn or be entertained. There is also viral value in making your documents accessible to the larger public once users have attended a webinar. Nothing’s better than to see your materials being posted to blogs and later surfaced in search result pages by relevant keywords due to unadulterated “access” to your content. 45
  • 51. SOCIAL MEDIA › Scrappy Rating: 1 Do you have a DVR on your TV that you use to fast forward through ads? Do you use caller ID on your phone to screen sales calls? Do you block unwanted email with spam filters? If so, then you can empathize and should act accordingly. Scale back on outbound marketing techniques that interrupt your prospects and craft a more personal marketing approach with social media. What is social media? In short—it’s uninterrupted, conversational, permission-focused inbound marketing and a few centralized online tools for such. Over 300 million people use Facebook and over 50 million business people used LinkedIn, both examples of social networks that allow you to reach new customers based on their interests—personal or professional. What’s the secret to social media marketing? Be yourself! Just like a real life cocktail party or networking event, you want to be a helpful resource to potential friends. It’s socially “aware”; it listens to others and doesn’t start the conversation by asking for an order. How to get started? Join one or two networks, then find a group or discussion related to your industry and listen to the conversations. By doing so, you will get a good sense for what types of questions people ask, and what types of answers people respect most. Become a follower or friend of a few of the people in a group and make connections. Once you are comfortable, take the plunge and ask questions of your own, or offer your opinion… you may be surprised how much fun you end up having, and how many business leads you get. 46
  • 52. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Time to create helpful content, answer questions and network online—create some blog articles, e-books or other resources to reference on your social media outlets. • Creative (corporate logo, photos, online presentations) to brand the experience your friends and prospects have. REACH METRICS Track your number of fans, friends and followers. As these numbers grow, so will your audience. RESOuRCES NEEDED • Free accounts on social networks websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. • Free tracking tools like Google Alerts, BackType and Buzz Grader or paid tools like Radian6, ScoutLabs, DNA13 or HubSpot. • Get help, if this is your first time, in the form of a Social Media coach or attend webinars about the topic. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Make sure you have something interesting to say. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you don’t still need a content strategy to answer questions or have blog articles that you can talk about. • Ask your friends and followers for feedback. It’s not about you, it’s about them! The more you can engage your audience, the more they will tell their friends about you. (Yes, it’s kind of an online popularity contest.) • Listen to the community and get a vibe for what other people talk about and how they interact—it will help you fit in when you are ready to join the conversation yourself. (Contributing Authors: Mike Volpe, Hubspot; Christine Gallagher, Communicate Value) 47
  • 53. MOBILE › Scrappy Rating: 4 An online marketing overview would be incomplete without touching on mobile and how it’s used within the practice of marketing. Mobile, with its myriad of wireless devices and networks, has become the most ubiquitous communication and media enablement channel out there. As of 2009, over 232 million people in the United States carry a mobile phone and/or a wireless-enabled device (e.g. iTouch, Kindle). This is a staggering number when you consider the declining usage rate of offline media channels. Mobile adoption even outstrips Internet growth trends. Mobile is the future, and the future is here. The mobile phone is more than a tool to talk. Technology now enables the consumer to multi-task through a single device, similar to the PC movement of the 90s. Mobile devices enable us to hold conversations, exchange text messages (billions daily), socialize via Facebook and Twitter, generate and consume content (images, videos and stories), check sports scores, local weather, query store locations, get coupons, browse the Web, buy goods, products and services, be entertained, read the news, and respond to in-phone marketing advertisements. A benefit of mobile marketing is that it encapsulates many consumer activities, allowing marketers to provide an extension of their social media plan, print media calls-to-action (e.g. “text iLoop to 47201” invites them to visit your mobile web site), a content strategy, etc. Marketers can provide deeper engagement with their target audience by using one or many of mobile’s marketing 48
  • 54. channels—text messaging (a.k.a. SMS), multi-media messaging (e.g. Display/ Banner ads, Search ads, mobile Internet (e.g. creating an Internet experience uniquely tailored to the consumer’s phone model, there are literally thousands of variations possible), Applications (e.g. software download to the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, etc.) and proximity channels like Bluetooth and Wifi for local alerts. 49
  • 55. MARkETING ASSETS YOu WILL NEED • Short, mobile-friendly creative messaging for ads, promotional codes and/or branded calls-to-action. • If creating a marketable mobile App(lication), engage a designer familiar with such projects and plan accordingly with your budget. REACH METRICS Varies by provider, but the national breakdown per Nielsen 2009: 232 million on voice services, 138 million via SMS, 60 million via mobile Internet, and 20 million via Applications. RESOuRCES NEEDED One or more application partners to support text messaging, mobile Internet and related mobile capability needs. Check out Go Mo News for a helpful list of players. SCRAPPY SECRETS • Take time to invest in an intern or marketing professional to help educate you on preferred marketing channels (display/banner ads, search, text and applications). You can learn mobile, but the rules can be daunting and the technology elusive. • Read up on legislative governances before you commit to anything. Mobile marketing legislative and technological environments are changing on a daily (if not hourly) basis. Start by checking out the Consumer Best Practices at MMA Global.com. • As with any marketing channel understand your consumer, be sure your core audience is a mobile user. Request user statistics from the provider you purchase advertising from and check out websites like iLoop for additional industry insights. 50
  • 56. • Be prepared to measure your success by integrating unique call to action phone numbers, email addresses and promo codes. WHAT’S TO WATCH FOR? • Don’t get too fancy. Start with text messaging and a mobile web site landing page, which gets you the best bang for your buck. • Whatever you do, do not message someone without getting their permission first. Contributing Author: Michael Becker, iLoop Mobile 51
  • 57. Step 3 gettiNg to it. (just do.) My hope is that you now are more educated, better equipped to take a step forward (or fine-tune existing programs) and enabled to create turn-key marketing programs. My goal is your goal—to create marketing programs that work, that are scalable and produce best-of-class results on small budgets. And don’t forget, the learning doesn’t stop here. › Join online discussions about topics that matter to you on the Get Scrappy Fan Page on Facebook. › Participate in Linkedin Groups focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs. › Network with Fortune 500 marketers. They tackle the same issues of a small business owner—building brand and growing revenue—and apply many of the same principles to their work. So go out there, get scrappy and share your story with others. 52
  • 58. get scrAppy: Rank, by level of difficulty, what marketing programs you can (not might) invest in. Factor in contextual relevancy of the marketing program to your target audience and product offering. (e.g. If your product offering is a new radio device, then a Radio-based offline marketing program is right up your alley) Minimize risks. Start small, over deliver. Focus on marketing efforts that can be deployed in 30 days. If it can’t be executed in 30 days, hold off. You’ll be adding way too much to your plate and only become discouraged and overwhelmed. No one said you need to boil the ocean. Tailor your decisions to what programs reach your target audience, in the least amount of time. Don’t lose sight of creating sustainable marketing programs. If you can’t manage it, or find it too complex to even transition to others, you’re in over your head. Fail forward. Allow yourself to stumble, but apply those learnings to your next round of efforts. For more information about how to apply “scrappy” techniques to your marketing efforts, case studies and much more, follow us on Twitter at get_scrappy. To work with the book author, contact mfitzgerald@unscripted-marketing.com. 53
  • 59. About the Authors priNcipAl Michelle Fitzgerald is an Ad Solutions Manger at Yahoo and currently manages the media programs of several key Yahoo properties—Local, Maps, Small Business and Travel. Ms. Fitzgerald has a diverse marketing background with expertise in local online marketing, strategic planning, B2B/B2C campaign development and product analytics. Michelle previously held marketing positions at the LA Times and CareerBuilder.com. In addition to her work at Yahoo, Michelle has a B.A. in Business Economics from Wheaton College. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn. 54
  • 60. coNtributiNg Christa Cordova is a marketing consultant based in the greater NYC area with experience in marketing campaign execution and business strategy development. Christa currently owns her own small business, Cordova Consulting, and has previously worked for General Electric and ACE Hardware in various marketing functions. Christa has a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Kansas. Follow Christa on Twitter and LinkedIn. Morgan Stewart is the Director of Research & Strategy at ExactTarget, an email marketing platform leveraged by leading brands such as CareerBuilder. com, Microsoft, Pier 1 Imports, Home Depot and many more. Morgan is well respected in the industry for his insights about email marketing, his strategic thinking and consultative approach with many Fortune1000 companies. He is regular contributor to the ExactTarget blog. Connect with Morgan on LinkedIn. 55
  • 61. Michael Becker provides thought leadership in the mobile marketing industry, assuming the roles of industry entrepreneur, volunteer, and academic. Mr. Becker is the VP of Mobile Strategies, Mobile Labs, at iLoop Mobile, Inc. Mr. Becker sits on the Mobile Marketing Association North American Board of Directors (2004-2009), is founder and Co-chair of the award winning MMA’s Academic Outreach Committee and founded and co-editor of the award winning MMA International Journal of Mobile Marketing. Mr. Becker is a contributing author to Mobile Internet for Dummies and co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, which includes a mini-book on mobile marketing. In addition, he has authored over 60 articles on mobile marketing and is an accomplished public speaker on the topics. In his spare time, Mr. Becker is pursuing his doctorate in Mobile Enhanced on the topic of Mobile Enhanced Customer Managed Interactions at Golden Gate University. Visit Michael’s profile on LinkedIn. 56
  • 62. Bill Davis has over 30 years of marketing and entrepreneurial experience and provides advise to large and mid-sized businesses. Bill created the Davis Marketing Group in 2005, with the single goal of helping businesses grow. Mr. Davis’ corporate experience includes sales and marketing roles within organizations such as Beatrice Foods, Hinckley & Schmitt (a Division of CGE), Suntory Bottled Water Group and 7Up. Bill’s emphasis is developing marketing programs which result in a maximum return on investment and has been recognized for his work on repeated occasions. For more information about the Davis Marketing Group, connect with Bill on LinkedIn. 57
  • 63. Jan Swanberg is an in-demand marketing consultant and speaker with over 25 years of experience, helping organizations connect with their consumers through development of integrated marketing programs. She’s launched new products for clients including Apple, Hooked on Phonics, LeapFrog, Digital Praise, Paramount, HP, Xerox and others. Jan is the sole proprietor of Swanberg Associates and has a MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Connect with Jan on Linkedin. Christine Gallagher is an Online Marketing and Social Media Consultant, Trainer and Coach. She teaches small business owners how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. To find out more, visit her blog or connect with her on LinkedIn. 58
  • 64. Mike Volpe is the VP of Inbound Marketing at HubSpot, an Internet marketing software startup, where he leads the company’s lead generation and branding strategy through inbound marketing, including blogging, search engine optimization, video marketing, and social media. Mike is a cutting- edge B2B inbound marketer who speaks at numerous conferences including Inbound Marketing Summit, SEM for SMB Conference, and the Harvard Business School Marketing Conference. Mike also hosts a weekly live marketing video podcast, HubSpot TV, and blogs frequently. Mike is an MBA graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management and received his B.A. in Economics and Government, summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. He is a Co-Founder and Director of the Boston Scholars Program and a former Director of the Alumni Fund at Bowdoin College. To learn more about inbound marketing best practices and Hubspot, follow Mike on Twitter and LinkedIn. 59
  • 65. Related Resource Links MARkETING TOOLS Facebook EventBrite Direct Mail: Dimdim Money Mailers Social Media: Search Engine Slideshare Marketing (SEO): LinkedIn SEO tips Twitter Y! Small Business Web Hosting Google Alerts Hubspot BackType Google Analytics Buzz Grader Yahoo! Web Analytics Mobile: Search Engine Go Mo News Marketing (SEM): Google AdWords Yahoo! Search Marketing OTHER eBay Adcommerce Recommended Books: Display/Banner Ad: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson Ad Ready/Yahoo! Statistics: Email: # of Search Engine/Portal Users ExactTarget % of Banner Ad Clickers Constant Contact General Definitions: Webinars: GRP (Gross Rating Points) WebEx Social Media Adobe Connect 60