When Creatives Go Bad.

Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston recently made this statement, "Two to five for each of them." He was talking jail time, but who is he talking about? Drug dealers? Spouse abusers? Bush and Cheney? Terrorists?

Nope.

According to a Bloomberg article, Boston had to close a number of it's bridges and evacuate a hospital building—not because of a terrorist threat—but because of a marketing campaign gone wrong. Cartoon Network's marketing folks thought it would be brilliant to leave a number of suspicious packages at key points in the city—as part of an effort to market Aqua Teen Hunger Force. These devices were part of an outdoor marketing campaign and put up in a number of other cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.

Now, as a marketer, I'm willing to go all out for my clients. Creative concepts, late nights, and hoops galore... but I draw the line at a jail time. Lesson to be learned—be innovative and get attention with your marketing programs, but use common sense, avoid causing panic and try to avoid programs that result in nearly shutting down a city.

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Nearly Free Advertising in Nashua Telegraph

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Nashua Telegraph in any way. I'm in the business of helping other businesses increase qualified leads and business, and here's an inexpensive and easy way I've found.

I moved a couple of years back from a 'burb of Boston to Nashua, New Hampshire. Being originally from Vermont, Nashua appealed to me because it is a nice halfway point between my folks who still lived in Vermont, and friends who lived in and around Boston. It was also a good move business-wise. I could still provide great marketing and design services to my Massachusetts customers—while the business owners here in Nashua have been wonderfully receptive.

I'd been looking for a way to promote my design studio in the area. As with all of my clients' campaigns, the one I created for my studio was multipronged: I wanted to increase search engine rankings, do some network marketing, conduct a direct mail campaign, and advertise in the local paper: The Nashua Telegraph. Now I didn't expect to get much—if any—work from my ad in the paper. I just wanted to start generating awareness of the business, so that when a prospect received my direct mail, did a search and found my web site, or met me out some where, they had at least a tickle of familiarity with the name of the studio.

So I looked at just plain advertising in the paper and guess what... of course it's expensive! For a small studio like ours, running advertising every week in the paper just for exposure... is pricey. I've also found a number of our clients feel the same way. They want to generate attention for their business, but they can't afford to dump hundreds of dollars a month into a newspaper ad campaign. And they realize there is extreme value in exposure that might come from such an ad.

So I dug a little deeper, and found that the Telegraph has a nice little insert in EVERY sunday paper. It features companies that are listed in the Telegraph online business directory. Listing in the directory is only $35 a month. This MIGHT seem like a LOT until you do the math.

First, an ad in the normal part of the paper is probably going to be designed by the newspaper design staff. Because they're just jamming out ads, all the ads tend to look the same and blend together. Case in point—see a recent Valentine's day issue. There's a page that is a sea of red. All the ads look the same. A business that ran a black and white ad on that page would have doubled their sales. That black and white ad would have jumped off the page. So if your ad doesn't stand out, it won't be seen or acted upon. (Always design your own ad or work with a studio that has experience in newspaper advertising—there's a reason newspapers design ads for free)

Second, a heck of a lot more folks read the Sunday paper.

Third, the Telegraph isn't a HUGE paper, but it's big enough that your ad might not be seen by the person you're trying to connect with.

Fourth, there's no online component with regular newspaper advertising. You create an expensive ad, and there's nothing online to support it.

Fifth, to run a decent ad that's going to get attention, you have to budget at least $400 a month.

All that said, newspaper advertising sounds like a tactic for just large companies with money to burn. Not true. With the online listing, you get listed on the Telegraph's web site directory, and you get a small ad in a special insert in the paper. This is BETTER than just running an ad in the regular edition. Why?

First, a heck of a lot of people read the sunday paper.

Second, few people have utilized this amazing service. When I started using it, I was one of about 20 advertisers.

Third, the insert is just that—an insert that sticks out. A couple of times they've printed it on heavy stock, which really helps it poke out from the normal paper.

Fourth, there's an online component. Search engines look at the referring site's ranking when determining how relevant your site is. Trust me, the Telegraph IS RELEVANT. By getting a link on their site, you're telling Google that your content is relevant. That's worth the $35 right there.

FIfth, it's only $35 a month. You probably spend more on coffee.

A couple of notes: the ads are small... about the size of a business card. More companies are signing up every day, slowly whittling away at it's exclusivity. There are a lot of real estate listings, so if that's your gig, I'm not sure that this is for you.

How has it worked for me? Well... I ran the ad for about 8 months. In that time I only received ONE project directly from it, but numerous people who've become clients have referred back to it. And it's hard to measure the impact of the link on my site, but I know it's helping. So I ran the ad for 8 months at $35 a month. The project I got out of it was worth around $10,000. I feel that's a reasonable return on investment—and it fits right in with my cross media strategy.

If you're looking at advertising in the paper, and have a web site, but feel that it's a little too pricey, give the web site directory a spin.

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pURL Campaign

Bill Schick Design recently conducted it's own pURL program. We've been doing them for clients, and thought we'd run our own in the Nashua area. Understand—design studios, especially small ones like ours—don't do a ton of direct mail marketing. So we focused on marketing direct marketing—and pURLs specifically. We sent out the mailer to 200 of the 1,000 members of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce who we thought would get some benefit out of pURLS, and who we wanted as a client.

We HOPED for a response rate of 2%, since the industry standard is about 1.8%. That would have netted us 4 leads. If we were lucky, we would be able to convert one of those into a new client.

That program ran 2 months ago. We're STILL getting responses, and currently we've received 23 COMPLETE responses. That's over 10% response rate. We'll update here when we close the program and provide stats on the program, including how many people started the program and didn't complete. And so far, we've converted 3 of those to paying customers, and we're working on 5 more.

Bill Schick Design, LLC is a graphic and web design studio with a focus on our clients' larger business and marketing goals. Some Design Firms TARGET Your Business. We Help You BUILD It.

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When It Comes to Your Logo and Brand, Trust in Yourself and Ask A Stranger

Huh?

Let me explain. We have a client now, Advanced Combustion Technologies, Inc. When we were hired to redesign their logo, web site, direct mail and sales collateral the client had a very solid idea of what their core business was. According to them, they designed and developed combustion systems for power plants. Now, in our current environment of ... well... environmental awareness... this idea had a slightly negative spin. This was reinforced by a logo that was slightly different on all marketing pieces, and a red and black color scheme that the client told us reflected their "red and black/fire and coal" target market. They were wondering why they were having trouble breaking into new markets.

After some discussion with their marketing team and senior management, and some research of our own, we found a key piece of information. ACT doesn't just develop components for power plants. They develop systems that help power plants reduce emissions by 85%.

Wow.

You don't get a bit of marketing information like that every day. To their credit, this information was in their marketing materials, but it was buried in poor presentation, harsh red and black colors, and only to be found somewhere under product specs.

We helped ACT develop an image that more accurately reflects what they do, their colors are now green and grey. Their new logo is a combination of technology and airflow, and all of their materials reflect this new look. To quote the client, "response to our new look has been amazing."

So, when developing your logo, look inside to the people who know the business, and look outside, to people who don't. Partner them up so that you can utilize both sets of strengths, and you're sure to get a logo that will really help you communicate.

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Combine Graphic Design with pURLs for Amazing Response

In a society buried in advertising for Wiis, iPods and the next high-tech gadget, and hot news topics like Saddam Hussein's execution, and the "New" European Union, we as marketers and advertisers are constantly seeking ways to get through the clutter and appeal to our audience—and get our message heard.

Well, we've found a way that helps businesses get the attention of their customers, and get them to respond to direct mail programs. This isn't marketing hype. Recently we've achieved 16% response with a direct marketing program, helped one client to double sales, and helped another generate $3 Million in sales leads. How?

A number of years ago Bill Schick Design, LLC started out doing Logo Design & Branding , Marketing & Direct Mail and Web Design & Interactive Communications for clients. But we approached it as a lot of design firms still do—each project as a separate entity and not taking a step back and looking at the big picture—or the larger business goals of our clients. Along the way, we realized that there was huge value to clients in providing a soup to nuts design and marketing solution, and we sought a way to really tie quality direct mail campaigns to internet presences—not just to build brands, but to increase response and ROI.

Since all of our direct mail programs are based on sound design and marketing—we started as a graphic design studio—that part was easy to continue. The hard part was integrating sound design with an online system that really achieved substantial benefit. It's one thing to put a form on your web site for recipients to fill out their information. But how do you track ROI? How do you know how many people visited but left before completing the process?

We found that by incorporating personalized URLs (pURLs), we were able to help clients (and ourselves) track programs better, more people responded, and we had more control over the programs. With pURLs every direct mail piece is personalized to the recipient, and the response mechanism is an online form where every step is tracked—allowing our clients to tweak their program and generate detailed ROI reports. With 30 to 50% of people wanting to respond to direct mail offers on-line it's a no-brainer. For some B2B clients, we're considering eliminating conventional reply card response. People live on-line these days, and who has 2 weeks to wait for a BRC response?

Here's an example of one success story. One client of ours, GlobalCerts, is an email security and encryption firm. Last year they produced a direct mail campaign in-house that generated literally—not statistically—0 response. They contacted us this summer to create a direct mail campaign using pURLS. We worked with GlobalCerts to target the right decision makers, develop the right message for 4 vertical markets, design creative that really spoke to each market, and design pieces that were customized to each recipient. We developed an offer that couldn't be refused, and put in place the personalized URLs and response mechanism. This was all completed in about a month. The program ran, and within 4 weeks, we had generated significant improvements in response over last year—the client had $3 Million in leads.

By coupling sound graphic design with a cutting edge technology to personalize direct mail programs, we're able to break through the clutter of conventional marketing programs and track the results of our programs and ROI. This helps our clients market smarter and faster.

Bill Schick Design, LLC is a graphic and web design studio with a focus on our clients' larger business and marketing goals. Some Design Firms TARGET Your Business. We Help You BUILD It.

Logo Design in New Hamphire

Dog Training in New Hampshire

Direct mail in New Hampshire

Secure Email Solutions

Graphic Design in New Hampshire

Construction Recruiting

Web design in New Hamphire

Dog Friendly Lawn Care

Critical Thinking

Ergonomic Consulting