Our answer is yes. Over the course of the past 50 years, the advertising industry has transformed to encompass all new media that fall under the advertising umbrella. If you recently haven’t reviewed your marketing strategies and costs when working with an agency, you should. You might be losing a fortune.
I read an article today by a former head of creative at a major ad agency that read how he had witnessed a large amount of frustration by Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) caused by how their agencies charge for creative and account services. The author says he had an epiphany and that maybe charging by the FTE (full time employee) should be a thing of the past. He states, “the fact that agencies charge more money when they put more people (or say they do) onto a project,” is wrong. No kidding.
I have always felt that the standard advertising agency model he wrote about is broken. In this model, ultimately agencies are compensated greater when deadlines are not met or only sub-par work is delivered. I’ll explain.
Let’s say that your agency presents you concepts for a new campaign. Its employees have been working on storyboards, scripts and ads for weeks while billing you for the time. You take a look and see nothing you like and say to the agency, “I need to see more concepts.”
If the agency uses this standard model, ultimately, it just hit the lottery. Now it can go back and create additional campaigns and of course bill you more money. If the agency presented you great campaigns in the first presentation they lose potential income. The agency is being rewarded for delivering inferior work.
I’ve always wondered why CMOs put up with type of agency model.
Now you’re probably saying, “This isn’t the relationship I have with my agency. I would never agree to this type of arrangement.”
The truth is you might have a similar type of relationship but don’t realize you do. Are your invoices always much higher than the initial quote? Are hidden fees popping up each month? If you answered yes, let me tell you how Davis Advertising can help.
At Davis we can operate using a fixed pricing model to help businesses of any size. This model has our clients pay a locked-in price or a pre-determined monthly fee (not retainer) that covers all required services for the completion of a project or campaign. This fixed pricing model would penalize us for creating campaigns that were not accepted by our clients at the first presentation. At Davis Advertising, if our first presentation is not great we will not be compensated for future concepts. Clients are invoiced only once we get it right. Not only does this method make us work more efficiently, this method is fairer to our clients and saves them time. So when you ask your agency if it can fix your problems and save you money be sure to also ask which model is used.
By Andy Davis
After taking a good, long, honest look at your business’s online identity, you have come to the realization that it is lacking. Maybe the look and feel is reminiscent of an Atari game. The only emails you receive from your website are from Nigerian Princes or offers to rebuild your website. Even though your site is old and out of date, trying to load up your website on a Smartphone is an impossibility with all of the flash navigation you have on it. Not to mention, the name of your site is www.2beornottoB.net, for all of your Shakespearean needs. How do we fix this without completely starting from scratch?
First, we’ll conquer the domain name issue. Your domain name is a main part of your branding. If you cannot line up your business name with your web name completely, you’d better have something close. Buying multiple domains, and pointing them all at the same site, is one way to help organize this. Just for fun, type in www.coke.com. Notice, it brings you to www.coca-cola.com. Try www.cocacola.com. Same thing, right? If your name could be confusing, or if there’s a chance that someone will type it in wrong, go out and buy yourself some extra domain names, and point them all at your site. Do your best to make sure that you have all of the possible names customer’s may accidentally put when looking for your name.
Next, if your website design hasn’t changed in the last couple of years, you probably need an overhaul. For one thing, any pictures you have of people may seem dated, due to their outfits. Even something as simple as blue jeans and a T-shirt can appear dated. Colors have come and gone out of style. Even your font choice may cry out “New, Inexperienced Company Here”. Keep your site current, with new graphics and style cues. Hint: there’s more than 16 colors allowed on computers now.
If you’re trying to get email from your website, have a form, not just your email address posted there for the world to copy. A form will help to limit some of the junk mail. Understand, there are still desperate people that will go and fill out your form, trying to sell you things, but at least they have to do it on your website. They can’t simply copy your email address into their mass email program and pepper you over and over again. It also makes things easier for your customer. For example, if a customer uses a web-based email system, like Yahoo, they have to copy your email address and LEAVE YOUR SITE to contact you. Do you really want them going off, onto a different site to contact you? Or do you think that they could be distracted when they leave your site, and go to their email? Who knows, maybe that Nigerian Prince has contacted them, too...
In case you didn’t know, people don’t want to read about your business. How many “About us” categories does one business need?(about us, our history, our goals, what we do, how we do it, when we do what we do, our beliefs, meet our staff, meet our staff’s family, meet our pets, our pet’s history and goals, etc.....) The primary subject of your website is your customer. Your website needs descriptions of your products, FAQ’s on how to use them best, contacts for sales or customer service, and a limited amount of social proof. Your website is a sales tool, to either directly sell your product or service right online, or to increase off-line sales. Make sure the point of your website is one click away at most. If you are selling goods, make the sales process easy. Don’t force the customer to fill out 20 different forms before they buy, or they won’t bother.
Remember, it’s about ease for the consumer, not for you.
We’ll tackle mobile websites tomorrow.
 I went to a big box store the other day, looking for material and advice to replace a cracked shower tile. The problem was, I couldn’t find an employee anywhere. I don’t know if there was a meeting going on in the store, or if every single employee took the same break at the exact same time, but it seemed as though I wandered aimlessly for weeks before finding someone that could answer my question. Luckily for the store, I was there with the material in hand, with their closest competition fifteen minutes away. Otherwise, I may have simply stopped shopping there, and found someplace more convenient. Does this happen on your website? Do customers get lost page after page, desperately seeking an answer to a question before hitting, “Add to cart”? I know personally, if I am interested in making a purchase, but cannot get all of my questions answered online, I’m going to a different site. There’s nothing tying me to buying on your page. It’s not like I have a fifteen minute drive in between websites, so chances are, I’m out of there, fast. We’ll pretend you sell scissors. How many questions could a customer ask? Well, for starters, they may ask: • Do these work left handed, too? • How many sheets can I cut through at once? • Are the grips soft? • Can they be sharpened later, or are these pretty much disposable? • How well do these work on hair?” I know, some of these questions seem silly. Would you want to risk losing this sale, just because the question was silly? I know that if the customer was in the store, they wouldn’t have some of these problems. Now that people are buying more online they have more, shall we say, creative questions. So, what is the solution? Live chat. Imagine the live chat button on your website as an old-school bell on a countertop. When a customer has a question regarding a product, they ask right away, while they are still on the website. They don’t email you, and then go buy the product elsewhere on the Internet while waiting for a response. They instantly get their question answered, and make a purchase. I can already hear naysayers, “I don’t have time to sit in front of a computer screen, waiting for people to have questions!” If you have time to sit at a counter, servicing live customers, you have time to answer questions online. The same person can do it. They are both making a purchase from your store. It comes down to training your staff to help online and live customers. There are other huge advantages to live chat. If you notice someone wandering around your store, you can ask them, “Can I help you?” The same is true of live chat. If someone is on your site, you can ask them, “Can I help point you in the right direction?” You can see how many people are on your site at any time. You can watch what parts of your site are being visited most frequently. Want to look at this more in depth? Send us an email, and we can discuss this option for your business.
 There is a lot of competition for my business on my drive in to the office. I pass by 6 different coffee shops/restaurants that offer a drive thru service to sell me my coffee. That’s not including the 9 different mini-marts, of which 7 are attached to gas stations, that also provide freshly brewed coffee. All in all, on my half hour drive in, there are 15 different places that can earn my business. I’ve been to the majority of these places, and had decent coffee at all of them. Four out of five mornings, I stop at the same one. The one time I don’t, it is usually because I need gas, and I don’t want to stop twice. How did the one business win my business? They offer better service than the others. It’s that simple. When I drive up to order, they do not interrupt, and say, “Anything else?” while I’m halfway through my order. They let me finish talking. When i have completed my order, they repeat back the entire order, tell me the price, and ask me to pull up, please. When I arrive at the service window, they acknowledge my existence, even if my order is not ready yet. More times than not, the order is completed quickly. When it is taking a little longer, they tell me it will be a minute. Then, I am on my way, with a “Have a nice day!” Did any of this sound like phenomenal service? If you look at it on the whole, they did nothing that I would consider above and beyond. They let me order without interruption. They were courteous. That’s really it. Does that mean that the other places offer bad service? I believe it depends on your definition of “Bad”. To me, “Bad” service is any that leaves a bad impression. If you do not let me finish my sentence when I’m talking, I feel like you're not listening to anything I'm saying. If I drive up to the service window, and you look like you are avoiding me until the order is complete, you make me feel as though I am a leper. If you hand me my coffee and my change, and say, “Thanks” as the window is closing, I feel like I’m the one that provided you a service, not the other way around. You don’t have to spit in my coffee for it to be bad service. You don’t even have to be overtly rude for it to be bad service. This is good news for small start-up businesses. You don’t have to be a superhero. You don’t have to be the most innovative, and re-create the wheel. You simply have to make sure that your level of service is better than your competition’s service. I’m waiting for the phone call from the coffee shop willing to advertise, “We’ll let you finish talking before we ask, ‘Anything Else?’”
 Social Media can be scary. I know we have had conversations with clients that frown on this new communication idea. Of our clients and prospective clients that do not use social media, the number one fear is that use of Social Media will provide customers with a complaint platform to voice and discuss problems with potential customers, which could drive away business. I’m sure you know that if a tree falls in the woods, and you aren’t around to hear it, it makes a sound, right? Likewise, if customers complain, and you don’t hear it, they are still complaining. So listen for the complaints. Set up a tool to watch for any possible customer issues, and be aware of what is being said about you. Your first step is to publicly address any complaint. Use the customer’s name, and tell him or her that you want to help. Offer an opportunity to speak directly to this person. Don’t simply give a phone number to call. The customer has chosen to talk about this in an alternative manner, otherwise the complaint wouldn’t be on Twitter in the first place! A good example of a possible initial response to a complaint would be: @angrycustomer, We are sorry for your problem, and we want to fix it. Can you DM me your email, so we can make it right? The response is to the point, states you are sorry for the mistake, and that you want to fix the problem. What else can you say? Customers cannot DM (Direct Message) you unless you follow them, and unless they are following you. You always want to follow someone who is complaining about you. You want an email address, and any other contact information that you can get, but you should attempt to open the channel in a non public forum. Understand – You are planning on fixing the problem, and you want the world to know that you are trying to fix the problem. You do not need the world to see every step you take to fix the issue. Get out of the public eye while you are fixing the problem. After the matter is resolved, you can go back to the public domain, and ask the customer if he or she is happy with the resolution, but do not complete the entire repair out in public, for everyone to watch. Once the customer has contacted you in a private manner, you need to fix this problem as quickly as possible. Once again, the best way to handle this is to imagine the customer is in your establishment, not on the internet. How would you address this if it was happening in person? Once the situation is resolved, try and engage the customer one last time privately. Since you handled the problem, gauge the customer’s temperature in the resolution, before going back to the public forum. If the customer seems completely happy, ask something like, “Are you now 100% satisfied?” If the customer is still a little warm under the collar, maybe, “I’m glad we could come to an arrangement. Thank you for your business!” would work better.
The most important trend that we see in marketing today is the change in the consumer to the “ME” consumer. The collapse of the financial world in 2008/9 has had a major impact on today’s consumer. No longer were world financial issues a world away or someone else’s problems. Now they are my problems, or my family’s problems or my neighbor’s problems. The collapse of the real estate market, financial markets and the economy in general has had a direct effect on today’s consumer. It has made a substantial change in how they think, whom they choose to do business with and what services they expect. The days of blind trust in financial institutions are over. Today consumers wants to know first and foremost what you are going to do for them, followed closely by concerns for their community and society as a whole. Today’s consumer expects more from all those they choose to do business with. Banks today need to build trust through actions not just words. Today’s consumer wants to know what you’ll do for them today not what you did in the past. In June 2009, a KPMG study reported only 19% of Americans trusted the financial system. How you communicate with this consumer…the perception this consumer has of your bank is at the core of your bank’s future success. Today’s consumer is more serious, has more savvy, and is not willing to put up with poor service. Don’t expect loyalty from them, especially the younger demographics. They will leave you after one bad experience. That experience will soon be communicated to the hundreds of friends they have on social networks. Viewing this with today’s technology that single negative experience is likely to be multiplied by the hundreds. This consumer needs to know that they have a true friend in their bank. They need to be communicated with one on one. They need to know that they are your focus.
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