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By Laurie Hileman

Well before the band Little Big Town scored Country Music Association’s 2012 song of the year with its smash hit “Pontoon,” Avalon and Tahoe Manufacturing—makers of luxury and affordable pontoons—understood the universal appeal of floating and boating on these unique pleasure crafts.

And, just as Little Big Town hit the big time with its smash single, Avalon and Tahoe Manufacturing are hitting the big time thanks to a combination of quality product offerings, superior customer service, and visionary leadership. Recently, the company wanted a way to clearly and consistently carry its brand message to its dealers around the world.

Background

Located in Alma, Mich., the company offers a diverse selection of pontoons, ranging from basic fishing styles to luxury pleasure craft. Selling under the brands Avalon and Tahoe, it ranks as one of the world’s five largest pontoon manufacturers.

Due in part to being one of the only vertically integrated manufacturers in the industry—meaning nearly all components of the boats are made and assembled locally at the company’s Alma manufacturing facility—the Avalon and Tahoe brands have experienced a consistent upward swing in sales in recent years.

The company now has nearly 175 dealers located throughout the United States and Canada, and as far away as China, South Africa, and parts of Europe.

Problem

“We wanted our image to match our size,” says Greg Knight, marketing consultant for Avalon and Tahoe Manufacturing.

Dealers spend a great deal of time at boat shows presenting various models of the two brands. While the boats offer a wonderful sensory and visual experience for prospective buyers, the underlying quality and desirable details that set them apart from other manufacturers were not floating to the surface.

“The brand itself was not getting the exposure it needed,” Knight explains. “The product was there [at boat shows], but there were not sales-type items there, if you will, that could draw attention to the product. The dealers would just do their own thing, rather than us providing them with a consistent plan or consistent presentation.”

Knight needed a way to help dealers near and far stay on the same page when representing all of the exciting features and benefits the two brands have to offer.

Solution

Knight worked with The F.P. Horak Company to develop a series of sales tools to help dealers highlight the beauty, performance, and versatility of Avalon and Tahoe pontoons.

The series includes hinged, three-panel, self-standing swatch boards that display samples of wall, carpet, furniture vinyl, and floor vinyl options. The boards lift options out of catalogs and into the hands of buyers, giving them the chance to feel and see subtle differences in texture and color.

Also, boat specification boards—25-by-26-inch boards with grommets along the top and a wing easel back for two different displaying options—offer detailed features and benefits of selected models. Two clear pockets are attached to each board: one for a company-designed spec sheet highlighting features and benefits, and the other for dealer pricing information.

For an arresting visual hook, X stands (31.5-by-72-inch tall banners held up by an x-shaped frame) highlight three separate benefit areas, including the company’s warranty plans, high performance package, and the Top 10 Reasons to Choose Avalon (or Tahoe) list. Three-sided tower stands rising 5 feet tall and 20 inches wide offer stunning visual displays viewable from all angles.

Finally, they developed a series of static clings that can be applied directly to boats on the showroom floor, drawing attention to notable features such as aluminum seat frames, power steering, electric wine racks, and interior mood lights.

Results

Today, Knight feels the dealers are able to present “a better image, a larger image, a consistent image, and that customers are getting information that they may not have gotten otherwise.” The collection of sales tools delivers a well-organized, common message wherever Avalon and Tahoe boats are displayed.

“The message didn’t jump out at the customer as it does now,” says Knight. And with the company poised for another record year, that’s certainly something to sing about.

By Martha Spizziri

Surveys that gauge customer satisfaction and explore their core concerns serve many purposes: They can help fine-tune your marketing message, provide testimonials for you to use in promoting your business, and aid in R&D efforts to improve your existing products and services—and help you develop new ones.

You may think you already know what your customers want, but a survey never fails to turn up a few surprises, says marketing expert Jeanne Hurlbert, CEO of customer-research firm My Survey Expert.

Types of surveys

Online surveys work best in most cases. They’re easy for the user to complete, and they save work for you in compiling results because no one has to type in data.

Paper surveys can help brick-and-mortar businesses to get on-the-spot feedback. The downside: The data tend to skew negative, according to market-research firm iPerceptions. It’s best to use this type of feedback tactically.

Social media conversations (for example, dialogue posted on your company’s Facebook page) can provide quick, free feedback. But the results can be hard to quantify, and you may not get a large enough sample to be meaningful, according to a blog post by Rieva Lesonsky, CEO and president of GrowBiz Media, on the U.S. Small Business Association website. And if you’re doing research to guide overall strategy, representative data based on random sampling is a must, says iPerceptions.

Should you offer incentives?

“Absolutely,” says Hurlbert. She suggests offering two: a free gift, such as a white paper, that each survey-taker gets immediately, and a chance to win a bigger reward. This could be one of a number of iPads or $50 gift cards offered, depending on your survey campaign budget.

If you’re seeking a simple, quick response from visitors who visit your website, an incentive isn’t necessary, says iPerceptions. If you do one, do so at the end of the survey to avoid biased results.

Use the data

Survey data should be used throughout the organization. That includes applying what you’ve learned to marketing and social media efforts, product improvements, enhancing customer service, and, internally, toward improving employee performance.
“Find the story in the data and use that story to solve problems and augment strengths,” Hurlbert says.

Plan to keep surveying customers over time to track improvements—and to report back to customers with the results. Show how you’ll use the information for the customers’ benefit, says Hurlbert. That will build customer engagement while increasing the odds they’ll respond to future surveys.

By Laurie Hileman

Yeah, me neither.

With the average American consumer available on seven—yes, seven!—different media channels (for example, landline and mobile devices, social media, email, direct mail, etc.), today’s marketers need to know how to cut through the proliferation of digital and print communications to ensure their brand is reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

Easier said than done. A recent study by Harris Interactive indicates consumers are bombarded with messages. It shows 82 percent ignore online ads altogether. They’re simply tuning out, overwhelmed by the sheer proliferation of digital communications.

“All marketers have to recognize and realize that marketing as we know it has changed,” says Joe Manos, executive vice president at MindFireInc, a worldwide leader of marketing intelligence software and services with headquarters in Irvine, California.

“Based on this change in consumer behavior, marketing automation becomes more important as a nurturing strategy to build the trust and awareness to engage the consumer in a more effective manner and on their terms,” Manos says.

The task of marketing in today’s digital age is a bit like eating an elephant. Where do you begin?
That’s where marketing automation comes in. The combination of technology and tactics helps marketers integrate and automate marketing across print, online, mobile, and social media channels. While the toolsets have been around in various forms for several years, the need is greater than ever before.

Here’s a closer look at how organizations use marketing automation to fuel customer acquisition, retention, and growth—and how you can, too.

DIGGING IN

Before making the investment, understand that marketing automation is not a silver bullet that will “automatically” make your job easier as a marketer. You don’t get to buy a few mailing lists, plug in your email database, press enter, and—voila!— new customers come popping out the other end. Like any new tool or tactic, the results you get out are directly correlated to the effort you put in.

Start first with a clear, manageable plan. Manos offers the following considerations when formulating a marketing automation program:

• What’s the No. 1 objective for your initial program?
• What’s the size of the team that will be working with the program?
• How much of their day will be spent working with your program?
• Does your sales and marketing process quantify lead quality?
• How do you pass leads to the sales team?
• Have you mapped the process for the different types of inquiries and responses?

Once you have identified some of the key objectives, Manos recommends finding a partner, such as a print or marketing services provider with proven experience in marketing automation, to help guide and coach you on the important launch activities necessary to achieve your initial objective.

In addition to the expertise that partners can bring to the table, they often bring another valuable resource: the technology. Unless your organization has the expertise and resources available to devote to successful, ongoing marketing automation initiatives, it may not be to your benefit to invest in the cloud-based software yourself.

Regardless of whether you elect to work with a partner or go it alone, investing the time and energy upfront to develop the right strategy with the right support is the cornerstone to success.

ENGAGE ON YOUR PROSPECTS’ TERMS

With your overall objective clearly defined, it’s time to start zeroing in on the individual components of the campaign. Successful marketing automation programs engage targeted audiences on their own terms. Therefore, you need to understand the right program design and the right processes for when you reach out to prospects and how you reach out to them.

“Today, the consumer is in control,” says Manos. “They can do much of their research before contacting a potential business [to inquire about purchasing their product or service]. As such, marketers have to become pro-active and start a dialogue with each customer or prospect, and build the trust, confidence, and awareness of how the company is a good fit for their needs.”

In the past, leads generated from direct mail campaigns and other marketing efforts were given directly over to the sales team when the prospects were, in many cases, just in the very early stages of researching what products or services might mesh with their objectives. “It’s a waste of time,” warns Manos. “Ninety-five percent of the leads that you create, those responses, they’re not sales-ready. If you’re giving non-sales-ready leads to your sales team, you’re wasting your marketing dollars.”

Companies are much farther ahead by aligning all individual marketing efforts in one coordinated effort that uses the marketing intelligence data gathered on prospects to the best advantage. Typical B2B marketing automation capabilities encompass email, web behavior tracking, landing pages, nurture campaigns, lead scoring, analytics, and social media marketing.

Prospects in the initial research phase may get a coordinated set of messages based on their immediate needs and the particular industry to which they belong, while other prospects farther along in the sales pipeline are getting more in-depth content and offers. “Keep in mind that today’s leading marketers are using four to five [communication] channels per program because the average prospect in North America is available on 7.2 [communication] channels,” says Manos.

“What you try to do is automate those repetitive tasks that marketers and sales organizations have, automate the marketing functions, and have a much more strategic and personalized, very targeted ongoing marketing engagement with your prospects and customers,” says Manos. “This increases the efficiency of the marketing organizations, reduces human error, and aligns marketing and sales processes for more effective program results.”

TEST, MEASURE, TWEAK, REPEAT

Overwhelmed by the possibilities? Don’t be.

“You don’t want to eat the elephant in one bite, right? You do want to start small,” says Manos, of an organization’s initial marketing automation program. Fortunately, a key strength of marketing automation lies in tracking and measuring results, allowing you to easily make course corrections to get even better results.

“The built-in tracking tools measuring response rates, click-throughs, and other actionable items make tweaking the process, content creation, and program design simple and effective,” says Manos.

Which email headline garnered the best response rate? What prompts the most click-throughs? By leveraging only the parts of each campaign that work the best, you can tweak the ones that offer modest gains, and dump the ones that aren’t working. You’ll want to take action and test. Again and again.

“This is the failing point of most marketers. They buy the technology, they don’t get their data out of silos, they don’t stop the silo marketing, one person’s sending emails, one person’s doing direct mail, [and] another person is doing social media,” Manos says. “They don’t align those functions into an integrated approach, and so that, coupled with [not having] aligned their sales and marketing processes, creates a real bottleneck from achieving the results they seek.”

So…grab a fork and knife and prepare to dig in. Once you’ve identified your ideal customer profile, know the attributes those ideal customers possess, understand how you can leverage those attributes, and engage with them on their terms. You’ll soon be well on your way to generating more qualified leads.

At the end of the day, the strength in marketing automation is in the nurturing and scoring of the leads part of the process. “That’s what the technology does,” says Manos. “You’re able to pass off to your sales team sales-ready leads, so they’re more productive. It reduces the days-to-sale for the sales team, which means the results are better and the return on investment for your marketing investment is higher.”

By Cynthia Drake

Personalized printing technologies, only imagined just yesterday, are now at the ready to boost campaign response. Tried-and-true marketing strategies still work, too. Sigh. With so many tactics available, what’s a marketer to use?

You need to stay focused on your customers, too, who it is you’re trying to reach. Young and old and in between, they’re consumer savvy no matter their age. Each responds differently to your marketing tactics, those used alone and those that work in tandem with one another.

Can your marketing budget be broad enough and deep enough to deploy all tactics and reach your multigenerational customers?

It’s both an exciting and a demanding time to be in the marketing field. As marketers aim to communicate their messages to audiences across multiple generations and platforms, they must assemble just the right mix of tactics, or “ingredients,” including traditional methods such as print and broadcast advertising, event marketing, and websites, and relatively newer marketing channels that include direct marketing, custom publishing, mobile applications, mobile-friendly websites, social media, and e-marketing, to create the perfect marketing pie.

And, because each customer generation responds differently to each marketing method, you must weigh all tactics, determining which should be used and what percentage of the “dough” should be spent on each. In effect, how big should each slice be? Dividing up the marketing pie through careful budgeting, all the while ensuring that a cohesive message is baked throughout every layer, is of the utmost importance. But how can you perfect that recipe?

We talked with several marketing professionals to get their take on how they are meeting this challenge, asking their advice for perfecting the pie.

Recipe instructions

Before you dive into a marketing plan or let yourself get too wowed by the latest technologies and clever tactics, remember that many of the good old-fashioned basics of marketing still apply, starting with getting to know your customer.

“Spend time to understand your audience and customers: who they are [and] how do they prefer to be communicated with,” says Magen Samyn, vice president of marketing and public relations for McLaren Bay Region, a health care system in Bay City, Michigan. “Develop your plan and keep it clean and simple.”

Know, too, that the nature of marketing technologies and tools is that they will always evolve. Maintaining a consistent brand throughout these evolutions can be a great touchstone.

“Don’t try to be everything to everyone,” says Jessica Gwizdala, director of marketing and training for United Financial Credit Union, with branch offices throughout mid-Michigan. “It helps if you have a specific brand image. Develop your logo, your colors, and your ‘look.’ This will help customers recognize you.”

And relax in knowing that as a marketer, you don’t have to be an expert on everything. There are support services available to help you stay up-to-date on the latest tools and trends—and what you should use and when.

Here are a few newer marketing channels to consider “kneading” into your mix.

Ingredient:

direct marketing

Direct marketing has evolved into a sophisticated tool that offers targeted communication to a variety of different audiences—segmented by the recipient’s geographical location, age, and interest—and even on an individual level.

United Financial Credit Union effectively uses a targeted direct mail strategy.

“We currently use a program that divides our audience into six different segments,” says Gwizdala. “This program is great for us to target our new members with a specific message at predetermined time intervals, and to deepen our relationship with them. By targeting based on the demographic, we can tailor the message on each [promotion] postcard [we send to members] to really capture their attention.”

Although United Financial has found targeted direct mail to be successful among all of its audiences, Gwizdala says her credit union has seen the best response from the 50-and-older age group.

“They enjoy getting mail and will take the time to read it,” she says.

Ingredient:

custom publications

Custom content, a company rethinking its brand through a narrative approach, whether that is a monthly consumer newsletter, a quarterly B2B magazine, or something other, is one of the fastest-growing marketing trends today.

“I love the personalization of content that custom pubs offer,” Samyn says. “We are able to speak directly to a targeted group with a message that is relevant to them. Our custom publications allow us to strengthen our relationship with community members who like traditional print media.”

Ingredient:

mobile applications

At first glance, marketers might assume that mobile applications skew more toward younger audiences. However, the professionals with whom we spoke found that this tactic allowed them to reach a larger base.

“Although mobile usage is higher for snake people than any other consumer group, other generations are catching up,” says Samyn, adding that McLaren Bay Region offers service-oriented mobile apps, from physician directories to class notifications. “The number of mobile app users is going to continue to grow as more users shift from desktop to mobile platforms.”

Gwizdala has also found that all generations benefit from mobile banking apps.

“Right now we currently have a mobile-friendly version of our website and a mobile banking app available for our membership,” Gwizdala says. “These are great tools for our members to be able to easily access their account while they are on the go.”

She says, “It really doesn’t matter the age anymore. It used to be the younger demographic that was into mobile and wanted it. But now every age group is requesting more mobile services and using what is out there.”

Ingredient:

social media

Although her team is fairly new to using social media, Barb Williams, director of marketing and business development for Saginaw Medical Federal Credit Union, of Saginaw, Michigan, says they have seen early successes.

Launching a Facebook communication strategy two years ago, the credit union has found that it engages its customers in uniquely positive ways.

“This past year we started to collaborate with charities and host contests, and it’s gone over huge,” says Williams. Recent collaborations with CAN (Child Abuse and Neglect) Council of Saginaw County and the Saginaw Rescue Mission, both mid-Michigan non-profit charitable organizations, have led not only to increased awareness, but to an emphasis on the organization’s community-based brand.

“It’s not always about the numbers—it’s about relationships, too. We wanted to get involved in the community and create brand awareness,” Williams says. “And, hopefully, they’ll (community members) think of us when they need financial advice.”

By Martha Spizziri

“Together, the ethnic groups make up a majority of top urban areas,” explains Lisa Skriloff, president of the marketing firm Multicultural Marketing Resources (MMR). And ethnic populations are growing outside cities, too, in unexpected places such as Nevada and Georgia. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau says ethnic communities will be the majority of the U.S. population by 2042. The largest ethnic group is Hispanics; Asian Americans are the fastest-growing.

“[Targeted marketing] is no longer just a nice thing to do, or a politically correct thing to do…it’s an ROI thing to do,” says Skriloff. It shows ethnic consumers that your company wants their business. Measures such as marketing in the customer’s native language boost response rates.

Marketers often try to appeal to all segments with ads featuring people of multiple ethnicities. But that approach can just fail to resonate with anyone. “It doesn’t say ‘this product is for me, this company cares about me,’” Skriloff says.

Yes, it can be tricky to market to ethnic groups; we’ve all heard anecdotes about translations gone awry. But one of the biggest mistakes is disregarding cultural differences, says Joseph Ofori-Dankwa, professor of international business at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU). For example, if you market to a Muslim audience on a Friday, your message might not be heard. Friday is a day of prayer for Muslims.

Getting help

All this may seem daunting, but there’s help. If you have limited resources, start by tapping into the knowledge of employees from different ethnic backgrounds, suggests Ofori-Dankwa. Other options: Some chambers of commerce are knowledgeable about the issue. Approach marketing professors at a local university and ask if students can do independent projects for you. Or try an economic development center, such as SVSU’s Center for Business and Economic Development.

There are also websites, LinkedIn groups, trade magazines, newsletters, and conferences (MMR has a list of meetings at www.multicultural.com). Find an agency specializing in multicultural marketing through member directories of groups like the Association of Hispanic Ad Agencies and the Asian American Advertising Federation. The most important thing, says Skriloff: “Just do something.”

By Laurie Hileman

Is your website working hard to deliver your brand experience, engage your customers with information they want to see, and drive your marketing and business goals? Or, is it hardly working: sitting out there on the Internet, gathering cyberdust, and resisting any improvement efforts, claiming they take too much money or too much time?

Sadly, for too many companies, the reality is their websites, to put it in HR-friendly terms, are not living up to their potential. In other words, they’re slackers.

And it could cost you. According to a recent survey*, 78 percent of Internet users conduct product research online, and 40 percent of U.S. smartphone owners compare prices on their mobile device while in a store, shopping for an item.

Even if your organization doesn’t rely on e-commerce, in today’s world, Google is the new business card.

Consider these startling statistics: 60 percent of small business websites don’t have a phone number listed on the home page, 75 percent are lacking an email link on their home page, and 66 percent don’t have a contact form to enable consumers to request information**.

Shocking, right? Fortunately, with a good website development team, turning an underachieving website into a superstar is within easy reach. Read on to see how two vastly different companies are using their new and redesigned websites to attract guests and build a better customer experience.

Getting a hand up on customer service

Magline, Inc.’s current corporate website, www.magliner.com, works as hard as the heavy-duty, light-weight hand trucks the company designs and manufactures.

Like so many early business websites, the original version of the Magline site did not sell the company’s products. Rather, it served as an online information portal that included basic company and product details.

“Material handling products aren’t complicated, but there are a lot of factors that go into what product is best suited for a customer’s specific application,” says Andrea Horner, marketing manager for Magline, Inc., the Standish, Mich.-based market leader in aluminum material handling equipment with a focus on route distribution.

In 2008 the company ramped up the site with the addition of an e-commerce function that allowed customers to purchase Magliner products at their convenience. Additional tools such as assembly instructions and product manuals were also added over time as means of extending customer support services.

Because of a very strong network of channel partners managing customers at the local level, less than 3 percent of Magline’s business revenue is generated through its website.  “While 3 percent is small from a strategic standpoint, that’s business and customers we may have lost without offering the ability to purchase online,” notes Horner.

Although the website is not intended to drive large amounts of revenue, the same commitment to quality and innovation that Magline brings to making hand trucks is brought to all aspects of their customer experience, including the online experience.

In the spring of 2012, following the successful launch of a new full-line catalog, the company opted to carry over many of the same successful elements to its website.

“We wanted a more intuitive, user-friendly site,” says Horner. “Our past site was good, but we navigated customers through multiple pages to get information on a single product.” For instance, visitors to the old site could review product info on one page, but would have to navigate to a separate section of the site to place an order.

The company reached out to Impress Horak Creative Group, which also designed and produced the catalog, for ideas on how to upgrade Magline’s look and customer experience. After Horner shared her objectives and project scope, the partners agreed to timing and budget, and began building the backbone of the new site.

Prior to the site upgrade, Magline had a fair amount of return requests based on customers ordering the wrong size or incorrect part number. Reducing the amount of returns was key to improving the site’s effectiveness, so they added more practical information to help aid the purchasing process—a task that required many hours of proofing and re-proofing for grammar, pricing, and technical errors, recalls Horner.

Additional upgrades included consolidating static information with the shopping cart, reorganizing product pages, adding an organized tab format within each product, enhancing Magline’s dealer locator, and adding an “Innovation Center.” “Our customers are a main pillar of our success. Helping them be more productive and efficient keeps them using our products and sharing their positive experiences with others,” says Horner of the newly added Innovation Center. Customers with an idea or route distribution obstacle can contact the company through the new online center to discuss how Magline can help make their job easier and more productive.

Now, that’s quality innovation.

Making a big splash

In an increasingly tech-savvy world, folks turn to the web to research their next vacation destination. So, when Soaring Eagle Waterpark and Hotel opened in the spring of 2012, management knew it needed a strong web presence to market the hospitality and entertainment complex to potential customers—and to compete for hard-earned, yet limited recreational spending dollars.

And, they needed it quickly.

The 45,000-square-foot indoor waterpark facility located in Mount Pleasant, Mich., was weeks away from completing construction when Jennifer Jones, marketing manager for Soaring Eagle Waterpark and Hotel, teamed up with Impress Horak Creative Group to organize, build, and launch a fully functioning site.
“Selecting the right creative design group was crucial to the success of the project due to our very tight two-month deadline. Out of the initial meeting came a decisive plan that included website organization, content building and management, and much more,” says Jones, who describes the process of building a site from scratch as “a very intense and time-consuming process that had to be executed in a very methodical way.”

From design concepts, copy creation, and photography to organizational structure, mobile capabilities, and back-end database functions, many decisions needed to be made promptly—yet always with an eye on the future. Some functions, such as a mobile site (included with the initial launch) and an e-commerce platform (built, but reserved for future launch), were more cost-effective to create at the onset, rather than trying to add on later.

“It’s kind of like finding a good real estate agent that’s going to tell you all you need to know when you’re a first-time homebuyer,” says Jones. “You need to find a website designer that you’re very comfortable with, that you feel like you can have that frank conversation about how much it’s really going to cost, or the potential cost. There is always going to be a few unexpected expenses, but you almost need to plan for that when you budget your website design.”

According to Jones, the overall goal for the site (www.soaringeaglewaterpark.com) was to create a personal connection with the customer through photographs and relevant messages.

“I believe that as a visual and fast-paced society, a personal connection with the customer needs to be created. The photos, legibility, information, and functionality of the website need to be reflective of the relevant messages we want to send to the customer,” says Jones. This included honoring the organization’s tribal history as part of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. Like the property itself, the tribal influence is woven seamlessly into the design of the website and other marketing materials.

Once a personal connection is made with a prospective customer, Jones and her team hope to drive traffic through the site’s reservations portal or to the hotel’s 1-800 number. Reservations made through the site are easily tracked, but it is too early in the process to determine how much the site delivers customers through the phone lines. The site also links to the organization’s Facebook, Twitter, and Google + accounts to tie into the waterpark’s social media marketing efforts.

As with every hard-working website, the Soaring Eagle Waterpark and Hotel site is a continually evolving marketing tool with new things being added regularly. Jones plans on adding more special promotions to the homepage and a database-driven link to let customers know how many day passes are available on that given day. The e-commerce element will also soon be available for gift shop and gift certificate purchases.

Whether your organization’s site needs a complete overhaul or simply minor adjustments to take advantage of emerging social and mobile media applications, consider giving your website a thorough performance evaluation to make sure it is working hard for you.

* From HubSpotBlog.com, 12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know by Marta Kagan
** From smallbusinesssem.com, Are Small Business Websites Really This Bad? by Matt McGee