MStique Marketing... Reaching Women One At A Time

The Picture Does Matter

Sometimes technology grabs our attention and we tend to forget about some of the tested and other powerful means of marketing. But when it comes to sending a concise message to a targeted group of people, direct mail is still a hands down winner. With an approximate open rate of around 80% (DMA studies), the ability to highly target mailing lists and direct mail’s ability to drive consumers to do many different things, direct mail is still a huge bang for your marketing dollar. It is not only measurable but it’s also interactive. When creating a marketing campaign for a client, I will almost always choose direct mail over television. I see the benefits outweigh other traditional media in campaign after campaign.

 But a new study from Creating Results shows that to get great results from direct mail, good design is important. By a margin of 2 to 1, adults gravitate to ads and direct mail that have one, vibrant image as opposed to a collage or series of photos. People with expressive faces beat out more sublime faces and bright colors trumped cool colors. And the older the consumer, the more they preferred to be able to identify the person in the photo.

 Women also preferred to see more lifestyle photos instead of product photos.

 When breaking down a direct mail campaign, the targeted mailing list is by far the most important component to any strategy. But the second is design and keeping the results of this study in mind as you decide on a concept will help insure that your investment gets opened.

 

MStique Marketing's Diane Shannon and Mary Wilkinson have over 30 years of successful direct mail experience between them. Direct mail is a powerful tool and can be used to drive cume, create loyalty and increase sampling. To find out more, call Diane at MStique Marketing at 888-707-4441 or visit us online at 

www.mstiquemarketing.com.

 

 

 

 

Corn In a Bag?

I recently had the pleasure of having lunch with Kim Lavine, owner and President of Green Daisy. Kim is a remarkable woman. She took a simple idea and became a self made millionaire in just over 4 years. Her idea? To sew corn kernels into a cloth bag that you can put in the microwave. That doesn’t sound very exciting or appealing does it? 

But what if I told you Kim created a beautiful product that when heated, became a warm and moist spa treatment to help relax your tired back? The packaging was made from beautiful material and the scent was wonderful, like lavender and vanilla? It sells for $25 dollars at upscale department stores like Saks and Parisian. And her product has a name that says nothing about the ingredients, it’s called a Wuvit. I hope you would say “how brilliant!” 

What can we learn from Kim? Kim’s marketing mantra is “Don’t say something when you can make them feel something. The surest way to a consumers’ wallet is through their heart, not their head.” It’s a reminder we all can use when marketing our product to women. What are you saying to your audience? Are you talking about ingredients such as artists, number of songs in a row or lite rock and less talk? Or are you selling your station through emotion? If you’re selling corn in a bag, you’re missing the boat. 

Ingredients are not a brand. Creating a brand for your radio station is developing an entire marketing strategy that focuses on how you want your listener to feel when they turn on your station. What is the overall mood? When your listeners see you out and about, how do you look? Does your printed material convey the same feeling? And how are you taking that mood and making your website reflect the strategy? Is your email communication consistent? 

This type of marketing does not require lots of money. It only requires a commitment to understand your audience, then appeal to them as a product, not a list of ingredients. Are you a warm and moist spa treatment or corn in the bag? Think about it.

Is That A Cow On My Plate?

Why is it that we all think we possess this magic power to understand what others want? That we can use our own experiences to project our wants and needs on to others and then expect them to be correct assumptions? As humans, it is a mistake I see over and over again.

Let me relate a story from a luncheon I recently attended. This might seem like an “Oh Duh” moment to some of you, but it happens in radio more than we would all like to admit.

I belong to a business women’s networking group in the town I live in. It is a group of women from bank presidents to small business owners. We get together once a month to share successes and help each other network and solve problems. It is a great group. And this month’s luncheon was held at a very nice restaurant in a very nice hotel.

So imagine this. There are about 100 women sitting at their tables when they begin serving lunch. And on the plate are 3 stalks of asparagus, a mound of mashed potatoes and a piece of roast beef the size of a softball. What a great lunch for the construction guys working out front. But this was so far off target for this group… it was all they talked about for the rest of the luncheon.

Comments ranged from “there’s a whole cow on my plate” to “now I‘ll need to nap at my desk.” Plate after plate went back to the kitchen with most of the roast beef still sitting there. If the chef had a dog, they are having a huge doggie day.

And in the kitchen, I could see the young chef looking at the plates in wonder. Wondering if it was not good, did he mis-season the beef and what is wrong with his fabulous mashed potatoes. When actually, everything tasted great. But the choice was so off target and he just didn’t see it coming. He was so used to doing lunch for the Rotary and golf groups that he projected their likes onto our group too. And believe me, this group will probably not choose his restaurant again for our luncheons.

You may be thinking, what an obvious mistake. But I see it happen in radio all the time. We project our likes onto those we want to listen without any basis other than it’s worked in the past. Or worse yet, I like that so I assume everyone else does too.

I recently heard just a mistake. A smaller market female based CHR who’s devoting a huge amount of airtime giving away baseball tickets to a major league team’s games. Not a home team but a team that is over 200 miles away.

They are doing remotes from bars during day games, giving out baseball scores on the air and acting like they are all excited about the team. But because the tickets were free (their AM runs the games) and the owner thinks it’s a good idea, that is what they are doing. If they would have asked 20 18-30 year old women if they wanted to win baseball tickets, tickets that required them to spend another $150 on gas and parking just to use them, what do you think the answer would be? But someone projected their desires on a group that they do not come close to identifying with and then will wonder why it doesn’t work.

Once again, it might seem obvious. But think about how you make marketing decisions. Do you project, guess and ask the Magic 8 Ball, or do you really know? You wouldn’t think about playing a song in power rotation without the data to back it up. But we do it with marketing everyday. Need some help that doesn’t include the Magic 8 Ball? Give us a call.

3.7 trillion dollars! Wait until I see my VISA bill.

It is not just your imagination. Women control 80% of all consumer spending. 80%! That’s 3.7 TRILLION dollars. Women are the primary household decision makers, making 95% of household decisions. To further break it down, they make 70% of all travel decisions, 57% of all consumer electronic decisions and buy 50% of all new cars. They are by all definitions, the purchasing agents for the world.

If your radio station is targeting the female audience… join a huge crowd that is vying for their attention. Virtually every television network has an interactive channel aimed just at women. Martha Stewart has just kicked off a shopping portal to offer her huge female consumer base to other “like minded” retailers. Last week, Yahoo launched a women focused site called Shine. Yahoo said that advertisers were asking them for more ways to reach women. The women audience is the power audience… but are you really embracing that power?

Many times I will discuss a marketing strategy with a program director or general manager and they will balk at making their strategy focused strictly to women. They always ask “But what about the men in our audience?” To which I reply, “Who cares?” How many rock stations worry about the women in their audience? And if women control the purse strings, that is who your advertisers want to reach. So who cares if 25% of your audience is men? They really don’t matter if you are a female-targeted radio station.

ESPN knows that. They created a whole network aimed at men. They super serve them with everything you might ever need to know about sports. They offer many ways for you to interact with them from fantasy leagues, online NCAA pools, branded products, cross channel marketing like ESPN The Magazine and superior programming. And their sales materials? They only talk about their men ratings. No mention of women.

Using the ESPN model, take a moment and look at your radio station. How is your positioning? What about your visual image? Your logo? Your website design? What are you doing to be interactive with your audience? What are you doing to connect? And most importantly, how are you positioning your valuable female-based audience to your advertisers? How are you offering those listeners to them? Best Buy has changed their whole advertising focus to appeal to women. Instead of talking about 55” TVs or how many speakers you can hook up to your home theater, they are showing families being together watching that big TV.
Next time, we’ll look at some real world examples of how to use your radio station to deliver that 3.7 TRILLION dollar audience. And if you have a great story to tell, let us know. We love to share ideas.

Direct Mail... The Top Ten Reasons It Still Works

It’s a question we hear over and over again… “Does direct mail still work?” Never mind that your mailbox is still full of direct mail from leading marketers like Best Buy, American Express and the airlines. Radio in general seems to be attracted to what is shiny and new. If we did it once, we have to do something new… an attitude that has caused many a marketer to fail.

Yes… direct mail still works and in fact, is still one of the best ways to reach radio listeners. So here is my Top Ten of Direct Mail.

10) The cost per impression is still very inexpensive. The average direct mail campaign MStique Marketing produced last fall cost around $.40 each.

9) With virtually everyone you know on the Do Not Call list, telemarketing has become the equivalent of sticking bamboo shoots under your listeners’ fingernails… that is the ones you can actually reach. With direct mail, you can reach almost anyone and they won’t scream at you for interrupting their dinner or busy day at work.

8) Unlike TV, direct mail can be used for multiple strategies from brand building to creating direct interaction such as visiting your website and listening to the station at certain times… also known as appointment setting.

7) Direct mail is tangible. One quick view of a well designed direct mail piece can give potential listeners a snapshot of your station. And instead of being distracted during your TV spot, or even more likely, surfing to see what is on Food Network, direct mail hangs around. It is not 30 seconds and gone.

6) Direct mail has an open rate of 80%, according to the latest information from the Direct Marketing Association. It provides great response recall in virtually all media studies.

5) Direct mail offers direct response. Through sending listeners to join your listener club online or an old-fashioned snail mail reply card, you then have a tangible body to add to your direct marketing response strategy. And we all know, it is much easier to get more listening from someone who has already found your station.

4) E-marketing is cheap, but it has limitations. The average e-mail campaign has around a 40% open rate. That is half of what direct mail can produce for you. And with email… if you do not have a relationship with that person, it is spam. Purchased email lists are almost worthless for radio.

3) Targetability. Using your database, MStique Marketing can create a targeted mailing list that resembles your current listeners by demo and lifestyle. There is no other form of marketing that has more ways to accurately target your potential listener. TV and billboard are full of waste, more people miss your message than see it. More people could care less than think it appeals to them. With direct mail, you can limit that waste.

2) Measurability. You cannot accurately measure return on investment with TV or outdoor. TV has ratings, but with over 40% of people channel surfing during your spot, how do you really know who is seeing it? Traffic counts on billboards only tell you who drove by, they have no way of telling you who saw your board and turned on your station. But with direct mail, you have a call to action that shows immediate response. For client after client, we see web registration go through the roof as soon as the mailer lands in listeners’ mailboxes.

1) Tight budgets require efficiency. With direct mail you can reach everyone you need to reach much more economically than any other medium. (Except your own air of course.) And with direct mail, you know who you reached and if they responded. That is efficient ROI all the way around.