AMiable Solution #69: Making a Good Impression

Humility is a great quality. It makes people and organizations likeable and approachable. No one likes a braggart, especially a company or organization. I’ve rolled my eyes more than once at a commercial or ad for a company’s blatant boasting.

Creating brand awareness and sharing your organization’s special accomplishments should be part of your communication strategy, but how can you do it without looking like a jerk?

Let others help tell your story.

Instead of speaking to your market directly through your channels, let a third party tell your market through theirs. Hearing about your organization through a non-biased, separate company gives your organization more credibility and the opportunity to celebrate its successes without looking or sounding arrogant.

How can you generate good publicity? You have several options:

• Write a press release and distribute it to organizations, publications, and news outlets in your market. Be sure to include facts, not a sales pitch. Reporters know the difference between news and marketing hype.

• Contact the producers of local radio and television news stations and offer the expertise of one of your top employees.

• Host or co-host an event, whether it be a charitable fundraiser or a community-wide conference about local issues.

• Distribute general-interest information, like top-10 lists or tips about a particular subject, based on your organization’s expertise.


Building your organization’s name recognition and reputation doesn’t have to “take a village,” but it does help.

AMiable Solution #68: Unforgettable

When you’re trying to make your organization’s name memorable, there’s one surefire thing you can do to ensure your prospects, members, donors, or customers won’t forget you: mislead them.

        

Upsetting your market and turning your customers and prospects against your organization is scarily easy. The most obvious way to mislead your customers is through false advertising, over-hyping or over-claiming your product’s or service’s benefits or capabilities.  It seems that no one is immune to the temptation.  Just last year, the Federal Trade Commission required the makers of Oreck vacuum cleaners and air purifiers and Reebok shoes to refund money to consumers after challenging claims made by those companies about their products.

But false advertising is not the only way to get your organization a bad reputation.  Failing to follow-through on an offer or providing poor customer service when you promise customer satisfaction can lead to doom for your organization.

Think we’re being overly dramatic?  How many times have you looked elsewhere after having just one bad experience with a company or organization? 

Oracle, a company dedicated to “simplifying IT” by creating hardware and software that links the cloud and a company’s data center, released a report last year that quantified the importance of a good customer experience.  In the report, “Why Customer Satisfaction is no longer good enough,” Oracle said that 70% of its surveyed shoppers stopped buying goods or services from a company after experiencing poor customer service, and 81% were willing to pay more for a better customer experience.

So how do you ensure a good customer service experience and encourage lasting relationships?  Give your customers and prospects the respect and recognition you hope they’ll give to you.  They’ll not only remember you positively for your efforts, but they’re likely to spread the word, too.

AMiable Solution #67: The Same Game

What makes your company or organization memorable?  What makes people want to establish or build a relationship with you?

You don’t have to have a Super Bowl ad-sized budget, a celebrity spokesperson, or a national endorsement to gain recognition in your market.  Sure, those things would be great, but they’re just not feasible for most companies or organizations.

The answer is actually not only easier, but it’s also much cheaper.  To help build relationships and establish your organization’s presence in your market place, you need consistency in the way you present your organization.  In everything.

That means you need your writing, design, and formatting to express the same message and image marketing-wide and organization-wide.  In the information you share about your organization.  In the logos you use and the way you refer to your organization.  In the placement and content of your contact information on your marketing materials.  In the location of your order form and the order of information requested.  In the way you format press releases, articles, announcements, and catalogs.

The beauty of consistency?  No surprises.  When a layout looks and feels familiar, your customer, client, member, or prospect instantly recognizes the communication as yours and knows how to navigate through it to quickly find the information needed.  When that happens, you increase your odds of getting the response you want now and down the road.

One of the best ways to ensure that everyone in your organization presents the same image in the same way is through a style guide.  If you haven’t looked at it lately, blow the dust off of it, review it, and encourage others to do the same. 

Don’t have a style guide?  Create one.  Start with a standard style guide (The Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, or The Gregg Reference Manual) and then make your own adjustments, addressing writing (“web site” or “website,” whether or not to include a common after the second item in a series, em dash or en dash), design (use the black-and-white logo on this but the colored version on that; use the tag line here but not there), and format issues (indent/don’t indent the first line in each paragraph).

But getting your target audience to recognize your brand is just the first step.  See next week’s blog to find out what else you can do to encourage lasting relationships.

AMiable Solution #66: The Hazards of Summer

Summer brings unique joys and opportunities, but it also brings season-specific hazards and dangers.  Heat stroke.  Heat exhaustion.  Ultraviolet radiation.  Pesticides.  Natural hazards like lightning and flooding.  Biological hazards like mosquito and tick bites. 

                              

Your members, donors, or customers--the runners, construction workers, farmers, office workers, first responders, professors, stay-at-home parents, and more--will spend more time outside than usual these next few months, facing potentially harmful summer situations. 

Show your concern for their health and welfare by integrating a summer-safety theme into your next campaign.  Even if your organization doesn’t offer applicable products or services, you can still offer industry- or situation-specific summer safety solutions as part of a customer safety announcement.

Integrating audience-focused--not sales-focused--copy adds value to your mailpiece, email, newsletter, etc., and helps create a connection between you and your audience.

And that’s something you’ll both appreciate year round.

AMiable Solution #65: The Funshine of Marketing

Summer marketing, like summer itself, tends to take itself less seriously than marketing in other months.  After all, the days are longer, the weather is warmer, and the action is happening outside.  Who doesn’t want to get through the daily requirements and enjoy all the perks of summer?

The good news: you have more opportunities to have fun with your marketing.  The bad news: you may have even less time than usual to capture your audience’s eye and get your mailpiece opened.

To keep your marketing light while also drawing attention to your offer, try incorporating a little play on words.  For example, you could

• Have a summer “pull” party, encouraging donors to band together for your cause
• Celebrate the stars in your catalog and detour customers around common problems with “roadblock busters”
• Invite members and clients to a feast on a “bookout” or “pick”nic, offering the season’s best books, journals, or other essentials

Some word play will require more visual backup than others, but all graphics should support your text and your offer.

Regardless of your approach, be sure to have fun.

AMiable Solution #64: Give Substance to “Hot” Offers

This time of year, marketers often turn to traditional summer terms in their marketing.  The advantage of this is familiarity: recipients know exactly what they’ll find in a mailer dressed with a “Hot Sale,” “Sizzling Savings,” or “Scorching Discounts” teaser.

                                   

Although there is instant recognition with such an approach, it sometimes falls flat when your summer reference is just that: a reference made on the envelope or mailing panel.  To really make the summer theme relevant in your campaign, and to make your campaign stand out among other summer-based mailers, turn your seasonal reference into an emotional hook.

How?  Think about your offer.  What benefits do your products or services provide?  Can your “hot” sale literally help someone beat the heat of summer or take the heat off someone at work?  Will your “cool” fundraiser make it possible for a family to pay its electric bill or find relief from the summer temperatures? Can your campaign “block party” benefit a community somewhere?

By giving your summer teaser substance, you’ll not only make a time-relevant reference, but you’ll also create a connection that generates the results you’re looking for.