Whether reading books, watching films or sitting in the pub, we love stories and have been telling them since cavemen times. Stories spark our imagination and connect with us on an emotional level, which is why they’re so powerful and why every brand needs one.

Stories sell

Stories shouldn’t just be kept in reserve for entertaining guests at product launches, but be an integral part of your marketing strategy, because your story can be the clincher in people’s minds between picking between your product or someone else’s.

People’s buying decisions are based on two triggers: their logical and emotional reasoning. Logical decisions are influenced by cold hard facts, such as the price, specifications and features, whereas emotional responses are driven by the intangible benefits of how a product makes them feel.

Unless you’re happy slashing prices, emotion is the trigger your marketing needs to focus its energy on, because stories are so powerful at influencing how people feel.

You need to weave a story which appeals to your audience’s attitudes and lures their sense of desire. A compelling story can humanise your brand, increase its value in the eyes of consumers and seduce them into wanting a relationship with your logo.

Creating your story

Your business’ story should tell people about where you came from, the purpose of what you do and your vision for the future. It should be entwined into your brand’s message and be reflected in everything you do, such as how your product’s created, the wording on your label and how you answer the phone.

Your story should also reflect the worldview and attitudes of your target audience. It should be a story they want to believe in, be proud to be associated with and happily share with others.

Perhaps most importantly, your story needs to be authentic and genuine. In a world of social media, online chatter and amateur investigators, if you’re found to be spreading myths to further your own gain then your real past will come back to haunt you.

So before you sit down to pen your history and dreams for the future, here are a few examples of businesses that have thrived from the art of storytelling:

Innocent fruit drinks

Adored by the marketing world and customers alike, Innocent is a business phenomenon because of how it has used its story and brand message to drive its rapid rise to domination.

Innocent’s story is the classic tale of three plucky upstarts abandoning being cogs in the city to pursue what they’re passionate about, and winning.

Their story unfolds a decade ago when they sold fruit juices at a music festival and placed bins marked ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for customers to vote on whether the trio should ditch their suits and pulp fruit fulltime. Within hours the ‘yes’ bin was full to the brim, whilst the other lay empty. The people had spoken, and Innocent was born.

Innocent’s success comes from the way its story is reflected in everything it does. Whether it’s the design of its packaging, the paintwork of its vans or throwing music festivals, everything Innocent does reflects its sense of fun, optimism and satisfaction at giving a bloody nose to the big boys.

Innocent now occupies 71% of the UK smoothie market and sells two million shakes a week. Not bad when you also consider its price tag.

Reggae Reggae Sauce

From the humble beginnings of a family recipe cooked at home and sold at Nottinghill Carnival to finding fame on BBC2 Dragons’ Den, the success of Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce is a master class in the art of storytelling.

When people buy his spicy jerk chicken sauce they’re also buying Levi. His authentic tagline of ‘putting music into food’, passion for his product and charitable connections has pushed a niche product into the shopping baskets of people who’ve probably never tried Jamaican food before.

People buy Levi’s sauce because they like him, his story and consequently they’re preconditioned to like his sauce as well.

Sainsbury’s expected to sell 50,000 bottles in a year; they currently sell that many in a week.

[You can listen to Levi telling the story of his rise to fame and fortune on this inspirational SmallBiz podcast]

Howies clothing

Howies is the creation of a husband and wife team who abandoned the city life to design and manufacture eco-friendly clothes for the masses. From starting with a few boxes of organic T-shirts, they now run their empire from a converted canteen in Cardigan Bay, Wales, and distribute their eco-friendly outdoor clothing and sportswear worldwide.

Howies’ popularity was given a boost thanks to threats by Levi Strauss to sue it for featuring a name tab on its jeans. The story of David standing up to Goliath helped distance itself from the cold corporate world and pushed its popularity from the extreme sports fraternity into the mainstream.

Howies also donate 1% of their profits to environmental causes, reflecting its story of a genuine love for the outdoors and being run on passion rather than balance sheets.

Stories enable emotion to override reason

As these examples illustrate, your brand’s story is integral to how people feel and respond to you. Your story needs to reflect your history, your beliefs and appeal to the worldview of your audience.

Emotion can often override reason, and people are attracted to brands that appeal to their attitudes and make them feel good about having a relationship with them. Feelings which telling them a great story can arouse.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

You might think the constant siege of inboxes by spammers has tarnished email’s reputation as a marketing tool forever. However, email still remains the workhorse of online marketing and integral to relationship building. Spam is merely its evil twin.

Email can start a dialogue, enhance your credibility and generate sales long after prospects have left your website. It’s even more potent when you’re smart enough to speak to recipients as individuals, rather than bellow the same speech to the entire crowd.

Relationship building

Capturing a customer’s email address when they visit your website should be your top priority. Because no matter how much flash animation and handpicked testimonials you throw at them, less than 5% (and that’s being generous) of visitors will be ready to buy on their first viewing.

So rather than hope they’ll come back on their own accord, you need to be able to maintain a line of communication with prospects long after they’ve left.

If you can capture their email address (e.g. in exchange for a free newsletter or eBook) then you can develop the sales process over time, because email can be a potent tool for relationship building and earning your prospects’ confidence.

Focus on the prospect

As any salesman will tell you, people like to do business with those they get to know and trust, which is exactly what email marketing campaigns are all about. Your strategy isn’t to force recipients into submission by mail bombing offer after offer, but to engage their interest with relevant messages that provide valuable and useful content.

Emails which offer to solve a prospect’s problems, help them sleep better at night and feel they’ve benefited from the interaction is how you can win trust, confidence and credit card numbers.

Rather than talking endlessly about yourself and how much profit you made last year, relationship marketing emails need to be focused on the needs of your prospect and how your product/service can enrich their lives.

As well as earning trust with valuable content, email can be used in many other ways to foster loyalty, such as invitations to live events, timely promotions (such as a birthday discount) and getting feedback on what your customers want from you.

Don’t blast, listen and engage

Perhaps the biggest impact of spam on email marketing has been the speeding up of the demise of lazily blasting the same message at every customer. People now receive so many marketing messages that if your email doesn’t appear to be relevant then you’re only a mouse click away from being deleted or blocked forever.

Simply repeating the same offer to every prospect in the hope of seducing a small number is no longer the smartest strategy. People now want and expect to be treated as individuals, and I’m not talking about just featuring their name in the subject line.

Modern tracking and analytics enables you to capture an endless stream of data on prospects. Along with their buying history and demographic profile, modern one-to-one digital campaigns utilising personalised URLs are able to record data on your prospects’ interests, preferences and desires. You can then segment and customise future messages pitched to appeal to each prospect’s personal triggers.

However, the process of fine tuning emails to be as relevant and personalised as possible never ends. Even after campaigns have been launched, you need to run A/B split tests on every adjustable element, such as the subject line, layout and the call to action at the end.

Watching how people interact with every email enables you to listen to what they’re thinking and how your message can be more finely tuned in the future.

Email is about one-to-one dialogue, rather than bellowing a single message

As with every aspect of marketing, the more relevant, timely and personalised your email marketing can be the more chance of provoking the right response, or as the popular mantra goes ‘delivering the right message to the right person at the right time’.

Delivering mass untargeted emails is now more likely to get you blacklisted than welcomed into people’s inboxes. However, modern email technology means we can now build and fine tune personalised one-to-one email campaigns which are pitched to match the desires of each individual prospect, leaving lazy email blasts to the spammers.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

‘If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.” – unnamed Coca-Cola Exec

A business’ brand is the set of thoughts and feelings people associate with it. More than just an eye catching logo, a brand can provoke positive emotions, such as excitement, trust and desire, which seduce people into wanting a relationship with it.

People prefer to interact with those they like and trust. So a business’ brand is its biggest intangible asset because of its influence on customers; if you can influence the way they think you can influence the way they behave.

People don’t buy Nike trainers because they feel more comfortable, but because they want to buy into the lifestyle promised on adverts and endorsed by some of the world’s biggest sports stars. When Nike’s customers see their ‘swoosh’ logo they see a status symbol and feel a set of positive associations which they want to be a part of.

“A great brand raises the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters” – Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)

It’s not always the best product which wins, but the one with the best branding

When people are in a shop choosing between two products they’re not merely pondering which has the most speed settings or loudest volume, but how the products make them feel.

People make buying decisions based on pragmatic and emotional triggers. So to encourage them to pick your box from the shelf, you need to make them feel good about you when they see your logo.

People are often happy to pay extra for a branded product because of the positive emotions triggered by the brand’s charisma (and advertising).

“Coca Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win.” – Bob Pittman (President of AOL)

Defining your business’ brand

When assessing what your brand should say about you and how it should make people feel, you need to consider:

• What’s your big idea – what makes you special? What’s at the heart of what you do? Ikea, for example, sells stylish furniture at affordable prices based on the big idea that well designed furniture should be available to everyone.
• Values – What do you believe in? What do you strive for in the service you provide? Easyjet’s brand is built on the values of easy and cheap.
• Vision – what are your aspirations and plans for the future?
• Personality – How do you want to talk to your customers? In a witty ‘Innocent’ drinks style or like a straight talking ‘John Smiths’ Yorkshireman?

These questions provide a blueprint for the thoughts and feelings you want your brand to communicate to your customers.

Communicating your brand

Once you’ve identified your big idea, values, vision and personality, you need to communicate your brand’s message through everything you do, including your business’ culture, customer service and advertising.

The tone, visual identity and appeal of your advertising must be consistent and carefully designed to reflect want you want people to feel when they see your logo. Whether it’s trust, excitement, reliability or prestige, the emotions triggered by your brand will influence how people respond to you and whether they’ll buy your products.

Selling bottled water is environmental insanity, with water being shipped half way around the world from Fiji and millions of barrels of oil used to make the plastic bottles.

However, the successful branding of bottled water as a purer, more natural and healthier alternative to what you can easily pour from the tap has seen sales increase 60% this decade and created a market worth £2 billion a year. This just goes to show that if you can influence how people feel you can influence what they’ll buy as well.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Aren’t digital video recorders great: they let you watch what you want when you want, and the best part is you no longer have to sit through tiresome adverts? Well, ITV certainly doesn’t think so, but its desperation to force ads onto viewers could easily backfire.

Now that people are fast forwarding through the ad breaks, ITV are eager to find a way of shoehorning ads into the programmes themselves, and are currently trialling a new ad overlay technology, which enables logos and messages to be embedded on blank surfaces (such as a wall, the sky or someone’s forehead) during programmes.

The risk for ITV is that is that in its dash for cash it damages the viewing experience, and people give it the thumbs down with their remotes.

Ultimately, ITV could be forced to import more US shows because, unlike the UK, American networks aren’t banned from using product placement for funding.

A brief history of product placement

Embedded marketing has been around nearly as long as broadcasted entertainment itself. Back in the 1930s, Procter & Gamble sponsored radio daytime serials to get housewives hooked on its soaps in more ways than one. P & G (along with Unilever) then went on to sponsor numerous ‘soap’ operas from the birth of TV, in the 1950s, right up until present day, with its household products getting as much camera time as the actors.

In the 1980s it was the film industries turn to get invaded by brands, with Ray Bans featuring in Risky Business (Tom Cruise helped increase sales 55%), breakfast cereals luring out aliens in ET and Marlboro trucks used as bowling balls in Superman II.

Brands and modern movies

Product placement is now becoming an integral part of how movies get marketed, with brands falling over themselves to promote their movie star endorsements. Audi’s concept car in iRobot helped generate 34,000 search engine hits, whilst Sex and the City was proclaimed ‘the Super Bowl for women’ as advertisers virtually bankrolled the film’s publicity for a share of the limelight.

The Bond franchise is a particularly juicy cash cow for studios: the films are almost guaranteed to fill seats and advertisers rush to buy time with the world’s most famous secret agent. After ‘Buy Another Day’ and the two hour Sony promo that was Casino Royale, you can expect Quantum of Solace to continue the tradition, with close ups of Daniel Craig planning his route on his Sony Ericsson before making a daring escape in a spotless Ford Ka.

Does product placement work?

Product placement can be effective because it’s embedded in the entertainment itself. Viewers can’t fast forward or ignore it, and it can bypass their subliminal anti-ad filters. A movie star seen wearing a particular brand is as good as a celebrity endorsement, helping to enhance a positive association and a desire to dress like the hero.

Last year US advertisers spent $2.9 million on product placements, which was a 34% increase on 2006, and this year it’s expected to be higher still. American TV networks are already switched on to the fact that people aren’t watching their ad breaks, so weaving brands into the script is now the only way shows are going to get made.

As the old adage goes ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t sell it’, so (along with their own private armies of trackers) advertisers ask 2.5 million people to fill out online surveys on whether they’d noticed the product, whether it improved their opinion or if they found it annoying.

It will be a while before sense can be made of the data on whether product placement is the future of advertising, but for the time being it’s the direction ad spend is pouring.

ITV’s quandary

Product placement works when it’s a relevant part of the entertainment and fits in with what the characters would wear and use, such as reflecting the materialistic lives of the Sex and the City girls. However, it can back fire if viewers think they’re being manipulated and advertisers are trying to trick them.

ITV’s problem is that it’s unlikely viewers are going to be as accepting of logos suddenly appearing all over Coronation Street as they are of the American Idol judges only drinking Coke.

As with all forms of marketing, if message are irrelevant, annoying and of no value then it will either be ignored or make prospects switch off altogether, which is the danger ITV faces.

Are you happy being average? Or would you prefer to stand out from the herd? That was the challenge posed by digital marketing guru Seth Godin in his popular book ‘Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable‘.

His book’s theme is that, with markets full to bursting, you have to be remarkable if you want to get noticed and pulled out from all the other businesses milling around for attention.

What is a Purple Cow?

Seth’s definition of being a Purple Cow is to have ‘products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say’.

So being a Purple Cow isn’t about being loud or quirky. It’s about finding a way to show that you’re more passionate, special and remarkable than your black and white spotted competitors.

What’s Purple Cow marketing?

Delivering superior products and services so amazing that people can’t stop talking about them can make you a Purple Cow. However, creating the perception that your products are exceptional can be equally as effective, which means your marketing needs to be superior instead.

A key theme in Seth’s ‘Purple Cow’ is that marketing needs to be remarkable because the ‘TV industrial complex’ is broken: people have been bombarded with so much mass targeted advertising that TV and print ads are failing to get noticed.

Whilst the effectiveness of traditional methods alone to launch a new product is questionable, TV and print advertising can still be effective for brand maintenance and keeping your jingle ringing in people’s ears whilst they’re browsing supermarket shelves.

However, for awareness campaigns targeted at specific sectors an integrated and personalised direct marketing campaign is the way to go.

How can I become a Purple Cow?

If you want your marketing to be remarkable, and stand out from the rest, then you need to think about how you can make your message more unique and special to your customers.

Here are a few ideas:

Promote your customer service as a differentiator – publish testimonials, case studies, reviews and feedback on your website. People look for the ‘social proof’ of a product by reading for comments in forums and review sites. Save them the effort and build trust in your credibility at the same time.

Start a blog – providing useful, insightful content helps build trust, gives your website a voice and can maintain contact with customers long after they’ve left.

Integrate your print and digital marketing – in surveys, the majority of consumers have said they prefer to receive offers in the post compared to email. Print is far from dead, and smart marketers know that integrating the two can make your marketing more effective, as well as remarkable.

One-to-one digital marketing – people like to be treated as individuals, rather than drones with credit cards. Delivering campaigns personalised to appeal to an individual’s interests enables your marketing to be more relevant and remarkable, compared to the lazy one-size-fits-all approach of your competition.

Purple Cows do exist

With so much average marketing in the world, it’s the Purple Cows that get noticed and rewarded. They haven’t become remarkable because their products are necessarily better, but because of the perception they’ve cultivated of being more unique, special and remarkable than the rest:

Innocent Drinks – witty copywriting on the packaging and the story of a small group of plucky upstarts taking on the multinationals won people’s hearts and sent their smoothies and fruit juices flying from the shelves. They now occupy 71% of the UK’s smoothie market, hold their own music festival and are launching a range of exotic vegetable snack jars.

Red Bull- launched a fizzy energy drink that’s as high in caffeine as it is in price. Its association with extreme sports and cool clubbers saw its appeal spread to the mass market. Buzz marketing and relevant sponsorship (Formula One and the Air Race World Series) has kept awake their global domination of the energy drinks market.

Riedel – traditional glass blowers with a long heritage of designing glasses to enhance the taste of any drink. Their story and the popular belief/myth that wine tastes better from a Riedel helped them sell millions of glasses to wine connoisseurs worldwide.

So what’s your remarkable story?

If you want to become a purple cow then start thinking about what’s unique, special or exceptional about you. What’s your background story? How can you make your product sound more noteworthy than the rest?

Once you’ve developed your remarkable story, start thinking about how your marketing can be remarkable too. How can you use the tools at your disposal to tell people an engaging story which will capture their interest, connect with them on an emotional level and be a tale they’ll eagerly share with others?

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Marketing is often seen as a business’ glamorous side. Glossy brochures, flashy advertising and fancy product launches can seem like a lot of fun compared to telesales and bean counting. Building brand awareness and luring customers away from the competition is an important duty to perform. However, marketing also has a defensive role to play.

Along with customer services and sales teams, marketing has a duty to actively engage customers, keep them happy and retain their loyalty, particularly when times are tough.

Retention offers the best return

With the economy continuing to nosedive, in a recent survey of 100 European businesses 34% said that retention was their primary concern. A plucky 8% said that chasing new customers was still the first thing on their mind, which is a big drop from 40% last year.

Although not carved into stone or approved by the office of statistics, the consensus is that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. When you also add their lifetime value into the equation it doesn’t take Carol Vorderman to tell you that ensuring your customers feel loved is the smartest way of spending your marketing cash.

Active customers are happy customers

Studies show that during a recession you should market more rather than less. Although the temptation is to guillotine budgets and bunker down, if you maintain a presence and engage with customers during turbulent times you position yourself to prosper once the storm has passed.

Active customers are happy customers, and running campaigns that reinforce the sense that buying your products is the smart thing to do is the best way of provoking them into retail therapy. Whether it’s rewarding their loyalty with discounts, sending them a newsletter or just a simple thank you card, actively engaging customers lets them know that you care about them, and stops them looking elsewhere for affection.

Knowing what to say and when to say it

Retention marketing isn’t a strategy led blindly by the heart. You know when your customers want you to talk to them simply by watching your database.

If you track your customers’ buying behaviour you’ll be able to see the warning lights when something is wrong. Then it’s time to send out the surveys to find out what you can do to make things right.

Ask your customers when they plan to buy again. If not, why not? And what can you do to change their minds. A customer survey can be a marketing campaign in itself, so remember to find a way to reward those giving you honest feedback.

Retention reminds customers you’re there

When you consider that your existing customers contribute 80% to your revenue, engaging with them and keeping them happy should always be on your mind. And with digital media, it’s easier than ever to run one-to-one retention campaigns targeted to appeal to the preferences, hopes and desires of every customer.

So whilst times are tough, don’t sit in silence praying for easier times, but continue to remind your customers you’re still around and that you love them because it’s what they’ll want to hear.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

The desire to feel special is a natural human emotion, and people want to be treated as individuals, rather than merely another target on a mass marketing bombing campaign. The problem with a lot of marketing is that it fails to make people feel special, but simply dumps the same message as wide as possible to hit as many targets as it can.

Simply pouring money into unrefined email blasts and bulk mailings is a clumsy and expensive approach, because we now have the technology to engage prospects in a one-to-one marketing dialogue that’s more relevant and personalised for each individual.

With a recession looming, the competition for customers is only going to increase.

So, to engage people’s attention your marketing needs to appeal more closely to their interests than the rest. And the evidence shows that integrating direct mail with digital is the best tactic for getting more personal with prospects.

Direct mail makes the introduction

Despite what some internet fanboys (might) think, print isn’t dead and will be the touch point of choice with most prospects for many years to come. In fact, a Pitney Bowes survey found that 73% still prefer to receive product announcements in the mail compared to reading them on a screen.

With this in mind, direct mail is the best medium for introducing prospects to online promotions. It’s effectiveness in launching a one-to-one campaign extends beyond merely the name on the label, because the website address it sends people to is personalised too.

People love to see their name in print, and few can ignore the curiosity of visiting a website featuring their name in the URL.

Personalised URLs look after the conversation

It’s when prospects visit their own personalised URL that the conversation really begins.

Not only does each mini site greet them by name, but also features products and services carefully arranged to match their interests. This customised approach already helps improve your chances of generating leads.

However, where a PURL’s power really lies is in its ability to listen as well as talk. Every mouse click and interaction is recorded and added to the feast of information stored on your database, ripe for future targeted marketing activity.

Cost effective, quick and a high response

In a recent BDA campaign for Siemens we experienced first hand how effective an integrated, personalised campaign can be.

A letter was sent to prospects promoting Siemens’ ‘A Meeting of Open Minds’ breakfast seminar along with their own personalised URL. On each individually addressed website, prospects could interact with a ‘cost calculator’, to see what savings they could make, and then book their place on the seminar.

Recording the interests of prospects, by how they interacted with the site, was estimated to save two weeks of telemarketing and generate leads at half the cost of conventional marketing activity.

The personalised one-to-one approach was also so effective in attracting interest that Siemens had to run two additional seminars to cope with demand.

Personalised campaigns get you closer to your target

The tracking provided by personalised websites enables you to get progressively closer to every prospect. From initial acquisition through to retention, with each subsequent campaign you can fine tune your offer to appeal to the interests of each individual.

Numerous case studies have shown that integrating direct mail with digital campaigns is the way to go. Recent research by the Royal Mail found that over half of consumers prefer a combination of the two, and that integrated campaigns could increase customer spend by 25%.

The technology is now available to deliver one-to-one campaigns that are relevant, targeted and provide a much better response from consumers.

So are you going to continue bombing your prospects with mass untargeted messages? Or are you ready to get closer with personalised URLs?

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Some marketers are beginning to worry, because people are ignoring them. People have been bombarded with so much irrelevant marketing for so long that they’re switching off the moment they hear the hint of a sales message.

So how are marketers going to persuade people to listen to them again? They have to be able to offer messages that are relevant and valuable to barter for people’s attention. The one size fits all style of mass marketing is dying and has to evolve.

Many claim that personalised, one-to-one marketing is the answer, in which your offer is moulded to match the preferences of each customer. Some believe that one-to-one could be marketing’s holy grail: the ability to pitch messages that resonate with the hopes and desires of each individual.

Or is one-to-one merely hype being peddled by digital marketers hoping it can save their budget from the guillotine?

Making smarter use of your database

Using a database to segment your customers is nothing new. However, with the dark clouds of recession gathering, pressure to make more effective use of customer data, and provide a better return on shrinking budgets, is building.

More marketers are realising that carpet bombing the same message to your whole database is dated, clumsy and costly. The smarter ones already know that you need to be able to deliver the right message to the right person in the right format.

Using your database to target messages at specific segments can improve your response rate, reduce the risk of losing customers and reward you with a much healthier ROI. Your database is your goldmine, and knowing how to drill and exploit it can determine what riches you’ll find.

We now have the technology to build it

The rise of digital means we now have the technology to partner the philosophy of one-to-one marketing, which marketers have been preaching for some time.

One-to-one’s philosophy is that of engaging consumers in a two way dialogue on their passions, interests and desires, rather than pelting them with one way messages. Consumers are now in more control of what content they want to receive and when. They’re no longer a captive audience happy to consume whatever information you choose to feed them.

If you’re not providing them with content that interests them then they can easily find it on websites and forums elsewhere. So marketing has to be relevant and offer valuable insight if you want it to be heard.

Digital provides the tools to be relevant

Digital provides the technology for dialogue: online surveys, interactive websites and email can all be used to learn more about your customers and fill your database with valuable nuggets of information.  What’s their budget? How many settings should your widget have? When will they next be shopping for an upgrade? Knowing about your customers’ interests, preferences and behaviours can then enable you gauge which offers to pitch and to whom.

Whether its email, a personalised web page (PURL) or good old direct mail, marketing activity can then be personalised and targeted at those who fit the profile of your ideal customer.

Amazon is the current poster child of one-to-one marketing. Users are given recommendations on books, CDs and anything else matching their buying behaviour. To the casual user Amazon is simply being helpful, but to the marketing mind Amazon’s website is database driven customer engagement at its best.

One-to-one marketing is simply smarter

On the web you’ll hear plenty of hype on the potential of one-to-one marketing to create lifelong loyalty and ‘turn customers into evangelists for your brand’. However, making smarter use of your database and harnessing digital to deliver personalised, relevant messages is just common sense.

The days of pouring money into hit and hope marketing are drawing to a close. The future is about being smart with your budget and delivering marketing that’s relevant, offers value and a personalised one-to-one dialogue with your customers.

Holy grail’s are allusive. But improving how you engage your customers with marketing that they’re happy to receive is a prize worthy of exploration.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With the dark clouds of a recession looming, marketing budgets are being slashed as businesses get ready to ride out the turbulent storm ahead. Whilst reducing spend wherever possible helps boost quarterly figures, when sales are becoming scarce quietening your voice in the marketplace makes little sense.

In fact, all the evidence suggests that you should be marketing more, rather than less, during a recession. Or as Proctor and Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley put it, “We have a philosophy and a strategy. When times are tough, you build share.”

Why you should be marketing more

Over the years research has shown that increasing your marketing during a recession puts you in a much stronger position after it has passed.

When comparing the figures of those who continue to invest with those who haven’t, it’s the businesses who continue to spend that gain market share from their competitors during tough periods and position themselves to prosper afterwards.

Some of the reasons why you should market more:

•    If your competitors reduce their marketing then there’s less noise to compete with, and your campaigns will gain a louder, clearer voice
•    Customers will be looking for those businesses who are still actively engaging with them, and delivering messages that are relevant to their changing needs
•    Lowering brand awareness loses market share that’s hard to win back
•    With customers spending less, every sale will be harder to win. Therefore it makes sense to market more rather than less

The problem is that some business decision makers see marketing as a variable cost that can be cut without immediately harming sales. However, the evidence shows that this is a short sighted view.

So how do you convince those too worried about their bottom line to invest in marketing?

You have to change its perception to that of a revenue generator, and an essential activity for survival and future growth.

Marketing is a revenue generator

Last month Experian (data services provider) released their report ‘Marketing success in a slowdown’ (report is free after registering on their website), which provides 12 steps for moving marketing from a cost to a revenue generator.

The report outlines how digital media is integral for marketing smarter than simply carpet bombing messages onto your customers in the hope of hitting a sale.

Marketing is at its most effective when it understands and responds to people’s individual needs and aspirations. You can achieve this by using digital media to deliver campaigns that more closely reflect your customer’s mindset and are more compelling than your competitors.

Digital media makes targeted marketing more cost effective than ever

When investment is tight you need to ensure you’re making the best use of your budget. With digital you can launch targeted, personalised campaigns that are more cost effective than traditional advertising and measurable to every click.

Websites and email campaigns can be tracked and data captured on your prospects’ needs, preferences and desires to help you understand what messages to deliver and to whom. You can then segment and profile your customers so that you’re able to deliver true one-to-one marketing that’s more relevant and precisely targeted to trigger a response.

The effectiveness of ‘one size fits all’ mass marketing is starting to wane. Customers now expect your messages to be relevant and personalised if they’re going to reward you with their time. And digital makes it easier and more cost effective than ever to run campaigns tailored to each individual.

Market smarter, rather than less

Based on the evidence and just pure common sense, a recession presents an opportunity to gain market share from your competitors if they have given in to the fear factor. And with digital you can now deliver campaigns that are more cost effective, measurable and targeted than ever before.

So before your budget gets guillotined, present the case for marketing as a revenue generator rather than a cost, and how you can use a downturn to gain customers from your competitors and a head start when the storm clouds pass.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

So you’ve just built a spanking new website with your company brochure recreated in pixel form. Now you’ve just got to wait for visitors to arrive before the sales start rolling in, right? Wrong. Selling your products and services online presents unique hurdles compared to the bricks and mortar world. Your website has to be able to build trust and confidence with visitors before they’re going to buy.

Make your website ‘sticky’

People search the web for information. Not advertising. And using the marketing language and sales spiel from your corporate brochure isn’t going to cut it online. Web users have the attention spans of goldfish, and will swim away in fright at the first sign of a sales message. 

The average website visitor will leave within the first minute. They might have a browse around if you’ve got an attractive landing page. But they’ll quickly leave and look elsewhere if they can’t find the answers they’re looking for. 

So for your website to be an effective sales generating machine it has to be ‘sticky’ and keep hold of visitors for as long as possible. Because the longer they’re in your store the more time you’ve got to prove why you’re the answer to their problem.

Provide ‘social proof’

The best way to engage attention is with content of value, rather than marketing messages. Before a visitor is going to place an order or pick up the phone you have to be able to answer any questions blocking a sale and earn their trust. You can achieve this through your content.

Providing case studies, customer reviews and testimonials will help to demonstrate the ‘social proof’ of your product or service. The social proof is the real world evidence that your product does what it says on the tin. 

People are increasingly sceptical of marketing, but they do listen to each other. So make sure you’re providing plenty of content from third parties to give concrete to the claims on your landing page.

Build rapport with valuable content

The old adage ‘people like to do business with those they like and trust’ has never been truer than online. Until we’ve developed virtual salesmen to talk to prospects one-to-one, you can use your content to build rapport with prospects. A popular vehicle for doing this is to use a blog, which is in essence a content management system with added bells.

Rather than posting rants on who never gets the tea, provide useful articles commenting on industry news, offering advice on how to use your product or giving examples of how you’ve solved a customer’s problem. 

If you’re providing information of value then prospects will either subscribe to your blog or keep returning for updates. Few people are ready to buy the first time they visit your site. 

However, if you’re providing ongoing content of value then you can build trust and confidence in your expertise over time. And with the right strategy in place you can even try and position yourself as a knowledge leader in your industry.

Google loves regularly updated websites

If it’s regularly updated, Google and other search engines will love your blog as much as your readers. The search engines rate sites based on the frequency with which they’re updated and the links pointing to them from other sites. 

If you’re content offers value, rather than shallow sales messages, then other websites will naturally link to you over time and boost your natural search engine ranking. 

Valuable content is a competitive advantage

With broadband now in most UK homes and businesses, an effective sales generating website has never been more crucial. 

So whilst your competitors struggle with their static online brochures, turn your web presence into a channel for engaging prospects with valuable content, and convert more browsers into buyers.  

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.