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Mixing tactics is vital in business promotion

Have you made a commitment to making new business opportunities? If you go to just two networking events a year, buy some ads in journals and wait for the phone to ring, the answer is no.

If you want to grow a business in this challenging economy, you need to create awareness about your company and what you do.

In order to be successful, you must promote to your potential customers at multiple touch points. That means more than mailing a letter once a year. It needs to be a combination of initiatives so that you are the person or company that they think of when needing your product or service.

Looking for likely contacts

Networking with the right groups is your ground war. Since time is precious, be selective. Meeting people in industries likely to do business with you is the key.

Many people often look in the wrong places. Usually, business-to-business groups, like chambers of commerce, are best for business networking. But hopefully, you'll find time to join a local volunteer organization, too.

The personal approach is key

Networking that makes it rain for your business also means not working a potential customer over at an event. People are usually taken back by networkers being too aggressive at functions.
Use good etiquette: share what you do, learn about what they do, exchange cards and follow up. Most of all, here's your opportunity to make a personal connection with a prospect. Try doing that over the phone — it's not as easy.

Creating multiple touch points means providing your networking and sales efforts with air cover. Get some advertising out there, along with targeted direct mail. Write press releases to attain third-party news stories which will give your message credibility.

The level of awareness that you raise will soften your knock at a prospect's door.

If you are too busy running your business, or want to enhance the professionalism of your effort, consider hiring a professional marketing agency or employee dedicated to sales. Making this commitment will ensure that somebody is thinking about new business development for you — all the time.

How often have you been buried with work for weeks and nobody in your organization is out there trying to make the phone ring? If you want success, make marketing and sales a priority.
Your ground war is networking and sales. Advertising and publicity is your air cover. You need both to win.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.

GM takes its image issue head-on in new campaign

General Motors knows it has an image issue. The company has long been embattled with perceptions about reliability when compared to imports, and until recently, has been below the curve on fuel efficiency. The recent bankruptcy headlines haven't helped, either.

When you have a crisis or image issue, the last thing you want to do is pretend it doesn't exist, especially when consumers, in general, are very skeptical by nature.

GM's marketing team gets it, and is not pretending that the big elephant in the room (poor consumer perceptions of GM) doesn't exist. In the company's latest TV spot, Ed Whitacre, GM's new chairman, admits he "had some doubts" about the company before recently taking the job. That's a good move and helps Whitacre immediately connect with viewers.

Then Whitacre, as the TV spot's narrator, rolls out the automaker's most innovative program to date: Buy a new Chevy, Buick, GMC or Cadillac, and, if you're not 100 percent happy, GM will take it back within 60 days, as long as vehicle has less than 4,000 miles on it.

Wow. GM's new 60-day satisfaction guarantee is the company putting its money where its mouth is. Whitacre says in the spot that he knows that if you get in one of his cars "you'll like what you see," especially when compared to the competition.

Talk about overcoming image issues; remember when everyone thought a Hyundai was an unreliable piece of junk? It was actually a very unfair perception. Hyundai needed to step up and back up its cars if the quality was as good as the automaker knew it was. In 1998, Hyundai announced an industry-leading 100,000-mile factory warranty at a time when you were lucky to get 36,000 miles from its domestic competitors. For Hyundai, it worked, and revolutionized its market share. The warranty was enough to soothe any concerns of consumers. Now you see
Hyundai vehicles everywhere.

Now GM's campaign takes its image issues head-on. The company says it's rebuilding from the ground up. This includes more fuel-efficient vehicles and simply reinventing itself (although not so simple a task). GM knows its cars are good, and when it says may the best car win, it is putting a lot on the table to woo back customers.

In a crisis or dealing with poor image issues, most circumstances call for dealing with it head-on and countering the negatives. In some cases, it could backfire and further spread a virus that was not as prevalent as you might have thought. In GM's case, may the best car win.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.

Networking media helps to get your message out

One thing is for certain: You can't be at every networking event or meet all the right people you need to succeed without a little help. But you can leverage social media to meet and stay connected with the right people.

In addition to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the largest social media outlets making networking for businesspeople easier.

LinkedIn, for example, allows professionals, via the social network, to make connections with people they know directly and indirectly through connection requests or mutual friend introductions.

LinkedIn is your hype-man

LinkedIn is your personal hype-man. The Web site puts your work experience, current projects and desire for future opportunities all at the click of a mouse for your connections. Many members get recommendations from their LinkedIn connections that are posted to their profiles. What better endorsement than adding reputable third parties to your online profile that share their high opinion of you. These endorsements are a great way to build buzz about your professionalism and enhance your company's reputation. Since the network also allows you to see who your friends are connected to, it is a fantastic vehicle to meet new people.

Facebook is one of the most visited Web sites in the world and the reigning king of social media. You might be surprised who is on the network. In fact, one of Facebook's fastest-growing segments is adults 50 and older — a lot of the people who are decision-makers at businesses.
Facebook allows you to create a profile, share video and photos and provide status updates to your friends throughout the day, among many other capabilities. Facebook makes it easy to connect with family and friends, and yes, keep tabs on your business contacts. While Facebook is loaded with settings to protect privacy and control who sees what on your Facebook profile page, many professionals have a friends and family profile, and then a business profile. While your friends might get a kick out of seeing photos of you in compromising positions, you might not want to share your night out on the town with your head outside the sunroof of a limo to the people you are trying to do business with. So having a business-connection-only profile, or just making a rule to keep everything rated PG, are good practices to choose from for the professional.

In the end, you have to get out of the office and network, but social media is a terrific method to show off your work, share ideas and make new connections. Most of all, LinkedIn and Facebook help you stay top of mind with the business people you want to have remember you.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.

Now's the perfect time to expand marketing

Yes, it seems like the worst is over. Experts say we're climbing out of the recession and better days are ahead.

Although I predicted that companies who kept up their marketing heat during the recession would make the most gains when the economy turned around, here's a column for those companies that crawled into the fetal position.

You know who you are. Times get tough, and the first thing you cut is marketing. It's OK; no judgment here.

But things are getting better, and most of the talking heads on TV say we're almost out of the recession. So I hope you are getting back into the game.

The first thing to do when launching a renewed marketing program: evaluate who you want to market to and how to best reach them.

But do this with a fresh perspective. Dead air with your marketing program for an extended period of time is an excuse to hit the reset button.

Don't just go back to running ads in the same papers or on the same radio stations where you used to advertise. In addition, which market segments offer the most growth and profitability?
Do your research and leverage the data in your decision process.

Explain who you are, what you do

Your options are many. Newspapers, trade magazines, business sections and journals, radio, direct mail and pay-per-click advertising are just a handful of ways to market your company. Plan your advertising buys around media which most efficiently reaches the consumers you want.

If your advertising has been silent, remind your target audiences you're still here.
Branding ads that creatively grab attention, while outlining your company's core competencies, are on message with a re-launch of advertising.

Explain who you are and what you do. That message needs to be conveyed over and above any pretty pictures or designs (although that helps, too).

While accountants, attorneys and other types of professional services should probably avoid doing catchy offers, like buy one hour, get the second free (for obvious reasons) — many businesses, in particular those in retail, can maximize the impact of a new rolled-out advertising campaign with discounts and offers.

As long as the offer is easy to understand and provides real value, this tactic will increase sales and help you track your advertising's effectiveness.

If you have been sitting by the sidelines, now's the time to get back into the marketing game. Be targeted with your resources, be on message, and even throw in an offer to get people talking about you again. These steps will get you back into people's minds.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. Reach him at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.

Make the most of your budget for marketing

No matter who you are, no business has unlimited resources to spend on advertising. That's why you've got to make every dollar count to get noticed.

There's always the one philosophy that some businesses try — at least the ones with deep pockets: throw a bunch of crap on the wall and see what sticks (I think there is another way of saying it — but we're PG-rated here). But for most of us, we've got limited resources. So we have to make our marketing dollars really work hard for us.

Pinpoint your audience

The first step in making your advertising budget count is to know your audience.
You would be surprised to learn that many companies struggle trying to figure out who they want to sell to and which customers we give the greatest return on investment. That makes sales efforts unfocused.

Common-sense questions to guide your decision process:

• Who are the customers you want?
• What is the most targeted way to reach these new customers?

For example, if you're a business-to-business company or mostly sell to targeted industries, the best likely dollars spent are with trade magazines, business sections or publications, and direct mail. While there are exceptions, I am willing to bet that cable TV to general audiences would probably not make sense.

Or what if you are running a sports complex geared toward teens and families? Your best chance in driving trips is to talk to the teens directly.

Plus, let's not forget who most research points to as family decision-makers — the moms. Selecting from advertising on the local Top 40 radio station, parent and lifestyle magazines and a handful of the cable TV networks can pay big dividends with the right audiences.

When you select which media will work best, ensure that your message is compelling. When being forced to compete with so many other messages, make your advertising stand out. Many companies leverage the idea and creative capital of professional advertising agencies or marketing consultants of the various media outlets.

In the end, nobody knows your business like you do. But always ask yourself: Who do I want as customers, and what is the most efficient way to communicate with them? Then you'll be well on your way to effective use of your advertising resources.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.

Use newspapers, cable to reach 55-plus crowd

Here's a dirty little secret: While there are exceptions, most broadcast stations don't program for the age 55-and-older crowd. The 25-54-years-old demographic is the most lucrative consumer spending group. Thus, it's understandable that most radio and broadcast TV stations program to that audience so as to be attractive to advertisers seeking that demographic.

It's nothing personal. It's just that statistics point to people doing most of their spending in the years before 55. So advertisers want the 25-54 segment as customers, and media wants those advertisers as clients. That's why one of the only places you can hear a Frank Sinatra song is on your iPod or subscription-based satellite receiver.

By the way, I'm 34 and love Frank!

What about the 55-plus crowd? Let's face it, 70 is the new 60. We're living longer and are more active than ever. Plus, talk about being savvy. If you are older than 55, you're part of one of the fastest-growing demographics plugging into online and social media like Facebook.

Where do casinos, health-care organizations and political campaigns — examples of advertisers whose models depend a lot on the 55-plus demographic — advertise if most broadcast outlets are programming toward younger demographics?

Newspapers' broad audience

Newspapers are the most widely used vehicles to market to adults over 55. That's where you'll find hospitals, senior communities, estate lawyers, banks and specialty medical practices spending much of their advertising budgets. While newspapers are dealing with the challenges brought on by technology, there still remains no better place to reach large and broad demographics, including persons 55 and older. Oftentimes, it's a daily newspaper in a market that trumps the other media with the biggest single audience for advertisers.

While broadcast has its limits, there is no shortage of varied programming on cable television, enabling advertisers to supertarget audiences by age and many social-economic aspects. Many of the stations are big wins in marketing to the 55 and older crowd. If you make a media buy on CNN, Fox News and the History Channel, just to name a few, you'll get some nice penetration with mature audiences. Cable television offers the biggest menu in demographic targeting opportunities, particularly when going after the 55-plus group.

As a former broadcaster, radio is one of my favorite mediums. Regardless that most stations program for audiences younger than 55, many radio outlets still do very well with the more mature demographics. The genres of rock, classic hits and adult contemporary often perform very well. If you are interested in marketing to the 55-plus crowd with radio advertising, ask a radio station sales representative for ratings of persons 35-64, to get a barometer of performance.

The 55-and-older audience matters, and for advertisers who don't pay a lot of attention to them, they should. While online advertising to them is viable, radio can work, but the best money spent, depending on your product and goals, is likely in print and television.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.