Measure Performance and See Success

George loves fantasy football. He began playing a few years ago while still in college and has continued throughout the beginning of his professional career. Fantasy football serves as a fantastic escape for him -- a great way to relax and dive into the sport he's loved since childhood. It's also a great way to bond with many of his colleagues, since there's a football league right in his office. The group spends many lunch breaks together, studying the latest football stats from the weekend's games and determining how those stats will impact their own teams.

If you were to ask George what the secret is to a successful fantasy football season, he would answer, "statistics." You need to have a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each player. You can use this understanding to see how performance metrics can dictate how the fantasy team performs. After players perform in real games, their every move is broken down and analyzed to determine how they would have performed according to the setups of the fantasy team. Performance metrics are an incredibly important aspect of any fantasy team.

If you've ever participated in a fantasy team, you've also been exposed to the importance of statistics and performance metrics. This fun game can provide you with incredible insight you can use to improve your marketing efforts. Here are just a few lessons you can learn from fantasy sports teams that can be transferred to marketing.

Performance Metrics are Everything

As any sports fan knows, performance metrics are continuously analyzed for every athlete. Whether batting averages, average distances thrown, or the typical number of points scored, the actions of every player are regularly scrutinized.

In marketing, performance metrics are equally important. While it can be tempting to run marketing campaigns based solely on best practices -- and best guesses -- these types of campaigns will have limited value for your brand. To be successful, a campaign must be perpetually monitored to see how well the different aspects are performing.

Performance Metrics Should Be Used to Guide Decisions

On the sports field, coaches will use statistics about players to form their starting lineup and opening plays for the next game. In football, for example, it's common for coaches (and players) to study film of their upcoming opposition to determine the weaknesses they can exploit in the other team. Coaches will also use the statistics of their own team to see who's at the top of their game and who needs to sit the game out in an effort to create the optimal lineup.

In marketing, you should regularly make adjustments and tweak your marketing efforts to reflect what your performance metrics tell you. If the metrics tell you your direct mail campaign or your email campaign is not having the desired impact, you need to examine why that may be and what you can do to better reach the intended demographic. By perpetually measuring the success of your campaigns, you'll be able to see how well your changes perform and continue to refine your campaign. This will help you avoid spending unnecessary money on unsuccessful campaigns, while also better reaching your intended audience to bring in more customers.

As anyone who loves fantasy football (or any other fantasy sport) knows, statistics and performance metrics are critical for developing a successful team. This lesson also translates well to marketing, where perpetually measuring customer behavior will help you refine your efforts and boost your bottom line.

Bill

inkimages.com

The Millennials: How to Use Print to Capture the Attention of the Technology-Driven Generation

Officially, a person is a millennial if they reached young adulthood sometime around the year 2000. Also commonly referred to as Generation Y, these are people who are just now becoming the age where they matter most -- at least as far as marketing demographics are concerned. They're starting to break out on their own, live their own lives, and spend a great deal of money. Historically, they've also been the most difficult to market to for one simple reason: technology.

Chances are, if you happen to see a young person who can't be bothered to look up from their smartphone or tablet for a single second to take a look at the world around them, you're looking at a millennial -- or at least a stereotypical one. In reality, it's actually pretty straightforward to market to millennials, as long as you go about it in the right way.

Be Relevant

By far, the absolute best way to market to millennials is the same way you market to anyone -- by being as relevant as possible. Go out of your way to understand Generation Y. Discover how they think and -- more importantly -- what they're looking for. You can try all the flashy gimmicks you want or sink a huge amount of time and effort into social networking and similar bits of technology in an attempt to gain a foothold in this ever-important market, but none of it will mean a thing if your message is completely irrelevant to the people you're after.

It's Print's Time to Thrive

Print marketing is actually one of the most powerful techniques you can use to attract the attention of the millennial generation for a very simple reason: it's difficult to ignore. Whereas baby boomers have decades of experience sifting through direct mail and advertisements in general, it's still something unique to the younger generation. This makes it more impactful, giving you a competitive advantage over those who forgo this route.

You can also make your print and digital campaigns work together. Use a QR code on your direct mailers, for example, to give millennials the opportunity to begin the conversation in print and finish it online where they feel most comfortable.

Personality Talks

Each new generation tends to be a little more informal than the one before it, but not necessarily in the way you might think. What this trend really means is that each new generation embraces a true sense of personality more than the one before it. Millennials are after a sense of fun and a company that represents a hipper image that they want to be part of. While injecting as much personality as possible into your mailers might not work for that 50-year-old housewife, it will absolutely capture the attention of a millennial.

With each passing year, the millennial generation becomes more and more important. They're already poised to overtake the baby boomer generation in spending, sooner rather than later. Now is the time to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. By going after the millennial generation now, you'll begin to amass an army of loyal followers ready to spend money on your products or services for decades to come.

Bill

Ink Images

Rebranding: What It Is, How You Can Do It, and What It Can Do For You

Even the strongest brands eventually go through some type of an identity crisis. Maybe the audience you've been targeting for all these years no longer needs the product or service you offer. Maybe you suffered a bit of a setback from a public relations perspective and are looking for a way to start fresh. Rebranding involves a whole lot more than just putting a new coat of paint on an old house -- it's about getting rid of the old so you can make way for the new in the freshest and most impressive ways possible. If you're in the process of rebranding or are even considering it, your marketing materials will always play an important role in the proceedings.

What is Rebranding?

At its core, rebranding involves starting out with a new marketing strategy that differentiates your current company identity (or the one you hope to have) from the one you had in the past. A brand new symbol, design, visual aesthetic, and even name can all be employed to help accomplish this goal.

How Can I Rebrand?

To begin the process of rebranding, you must first answer the question, "why are we doing this in the first place?" Once you've come up with a concrete answer, you need to always keep that in mind as a goal you hope to achieve. Your answer will dictate every decision you make from here on out.

Are you rebranding in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience? Your marketing materials, the logo you're using, and even your design need to reflect that. Remember that your marketing materials were originally created with your brand in mind -- every element, right down to the font being used in direct mailers, was picked because it accurately reflected the brand you were trying to present to the world at that given moment. If your brand is in the process of changing, there is no element of your marketing too small that won't need to change along with it.

What Can Branding Do For You?

If you want an example of exactly what a successful rebranding campaign can do for your business, look no further than one of the biggest companies on the face of the Earth: Apple. It's hard to remember a time when Apple as a corporation was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. That period wasn't too long ago, however, and Apple was indeed in dire straits as recently as 1997.

Their successful rebranding took the world by storm when they went from "just another electronics company" that put out products many people considered overpriced, to the hippest, most forward-thinking tech company around. Apple's rebranding campaign got rid of all the complicated terminology in favor of a simplistic campaign that reflected the products themselves. They focused on rebranding themselves as a company that put out reliable and endlessly classy products that "just worked" and have benefited handsomely from that decision ever since.

Look at rebranding for what it is: an opportunity to start fresh. There's nothing wrong with rebranding -- it is not an admission of failure or defeat. It's a true chance to reaffirm your corporate identity with your goals and take the world by storm in a way more meaningful and more impactful than ever before.

Bill

www.inkimages.com

Writing Thank You Cards and Keywords

Remember as a child, sitting at the kitchen table, writing thank you notes following the holidays or your birthday? The adults in your life likely had high standards for these notes as well. They wanted to see notes that expressed your gratitude and showed just how much you appreciated the gift. Those extra sentences about how you planned to use those gifts were always important as well.

Did you ever struggle to find the right words for those little notes? You wanted to find words the reader would understand that would communicate how much you liked the gift. You searched for vocabulary that would speak to the reader and resonate with them.

When you create content for your marketing efforts, you're doing the same thing. You want to find language and vocabulary that correctly expresses what your potential customers want to hear. When you learn to speak the language of your customers, you'll have far greater success in reaching them and convincing them to use your products and services.

The Importance of the Right Vocabulary

When drafting marketing materials, your customers want to know you understand their individual issues. They want to feel confident you understand their problems and have solutions. When you speak in language that doesn't resonate with these customers, you risk losing the connection with them. They won't be able to internalize your message as well or relate to your advertising campaigns. Choosing the right vocabulary helps to ensure a positive response and a stronger relationship with prospective customers.

Vocabulary in Digital Advertising

In the digital world, selecting the best words goes even further than your connection. It determines if your content will be seen at all. Search engines work to match queries to content based on keywords. Using the same vocabulary as your customers allows you to promote your content naturally. The closer your content matches your potential customers' queries, the higher it will rank and the easier it will be to find.

The key to using keywords correctly is to use them naturally and focus on producing high-quality content. When people click on your content, they want to find valuable information that answers their questions and helps them solve their problems. If you only produce low-quality, keyword-stuffed content, people will click off your page as soon as they open it. This will lower your click rate significantly because your page won't have any engagement.

Instead, focus on writing information people will want to read and will find helpful, while also naturally adding in keywords as they fit. This will help your content get found, while also engaging your audience. As more people are attracted to what you have to say, your content will continue to rise in the search engine results, attracting even more viewers.

When you wrote those countless thank you notes all those years ago, you probably had no idea you were preparing for your future in marketing. This was actually a valuable experience in finding the right vocabulary that resonated with your audience. Check your vocabulary to make sure you're using words your potential customers are most likely to respond to, and get started improving your marketing strategies today.

Bill

inkimages.com

What a Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Looks Like Today

For small business owners, guerrilla marketing tactics have long been one of the best ways to get noticed in a crowded marketplace without breaking the proverbial piggy bank. The term "guerrilla," in this instance, refers to a small team of professionals who are using unconventional or irregular tactics in their marketing campaigns, especially when compared to what larger organizations are doing.

At its core, guerrilla marketing is a way for businesses to promote themselves in a way that's both unique and cost effective. These campaigns aren't focused on shouting a marketing message from the highest rooftop. Instead, they're designed to boldly attract the attention of customers in a way that's hard to ignore.

The Definition of "Unconventional" is Constantly Changing

While guerrilla marketing, in general, has been around almost as long as traditional marketing, the form these campaigns take changes every so often. In the early days of the Internet, when most of the homes in the United States still had painfully slow dial-up connections, even just putting a video online would have been practically unheard of. Businesses that were able to get in on the viral video craze from the ground floor, however, experienced a tremendous amount of success. Of course, putting out a video on YouTube and hoping your audience discovers it is hardly grounds for a guerrilla campaign today. To truly stay in line with the spirit of the unconventional nature of these promotions, you now have to think bigger and more unique.

The Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns of Today

Modern guerrilla marketing campaigns are every bit as unconventional as their predecessors, but they generally take bigger and bolder risks when it comes to being noticed. Perhaps one of the most successful guerrilla campaigns of the last several years came during the promotion for the film Cloverfield. Directed by J.J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard, the film featured a mysterious monster of unknown origin ravaging New York City in the style of Godzilla movies from decades past.

What made this guerrilla campaign so notable, though, was its seeming lack of promotion at all. The film was ushered into theaters with an incredibly simple teaser trailer that didn't even feature the title of the film. It only contained the release date - 11/18/08. Beside the fact that it starred a cast of unknown actors and featured a monster doing something in a city that had yet to be identified, almost nothing was known about the film prior to its release in theaters. Beyond the title, it initially wasn't even clear if Abrams himself was even the director or if he was just attached in some way as a producer.

In many ways, the complete lack of marketing for Cloverfield actually BECAME the campaign. People were so desperate for answers that the only solution became, "you have to see the movie to find out." Suddenly, a cheaply produced fake documentary with almost no marketing dollars spent became one of the most talked about (and successful) movies of its age, at least as far as total revenue is concerned.

The spirit of guerrilla marketing will always be one of the biggest weapons small businesses have in their quest to get noticed and spread brand awareness. By remembering that "unconventional" is key, and that you don't have to spend a war chest filled with cash in order to attract the attention of both new and existing customers, you'll find that guerrilla campaigns can provide exceptional value for your marketing dollars - regardless of the type of business you happen to run.


Bill

inkimages.com