Straight to the Point

Volume 4, Issue 1

This Issue's Contents:

Do Something!
In our work at Kaszas we often witness the desire to “do something – now!” When sales aren’t reaching targets or when a company feels it should be doing better than it is, there is often a knee-jerk reaction to make quick changes to “low-hanging fruit”.

Success Story (Search Engine Optimization )
As part of our website optimization service, we’ve worked with a number of companies interested in boosting their online search engine performance. Recently, we were introduced to two companies who wanted to ensure that their sites would be visible on relevant searches performed online.

Lesson Learned (Problems, Not Solutions )
Typically, our business-to-business clients – and also many of our consumer-facing clients - like to focus on "solutions” in their marketing communications. A solution is a positive thing, and people want to hear positive messages, right?

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Marketing Communications Smarts from Kaszas Communications

Spring 2008

Do Something!

– by Maria Ford

In our work at Kaszas we often witness the desire to “do something – now!” When sales aren’t reaching targets or when a company feels it should be doing better than it is, there is often a knee-jerk reaction to make quick changes to “low-hanging fruit”. Change the media mix! Spend more on pay-per-click! Start a monthly newsletter! Deep down everyone knows that quick-fixes don’t work. But deep down we are also programmed to take action when business disappoints.

When we meet companies that know “something” isn’t working but can’t pinpoint exactly what, we have a luxury that they don’t: as an objective third party we are able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Success and failure can never be blamed on specific tactics – only on the strategy or assumptions that are driving the tactics. Tactics – such as media mix, graphic design, website content, direct marketing programs, etc. – should be logical outcomes of big-picture direction, ensuring that each tactic contributes in some way to the goals.

Without fail, our Audit services  have proven to provide the basis for effective, big-picture marketing communications strategy. Our combination of competitive research, customer research, and status-quo review have helped clients to confidently move forward with focused, integrated marketing communications plans and tactics that deliver results. Occasionally, our research has also uncovered flaws in a product or service’s offer model/packaging and positioning.

Following are just a few examples of how our Audit services, followed by strong execution, have improved sales and marketing for a variety of business-to-business companies.

Case 1:

The client was struggling with its messaging. They felt they had a good handle on their existing customers and why those customers continued to use their services and refer them to others. But, the client struggled to articulate that benefit and differentiation to new prospects. Through a combination of competitive and customer research we were able to pinpoint the core differentiation that the client’s best customers valued. An unexpected result of our research was discovering that the sector of competition the client had focused much of its energy on was, in fact, not the primary competition at all, enabling the client to avoid spending its marketing resources on the defensive (and inconsequential) positioning that it had planned. This work formed the basis of our messaging/positioning strategy for the client, as well as a new website, advertising campaign, and direct mail campaign.

Case 2:

This client felt it had tried everything possible to create market awareness and generate leads. Indeed, an audit of their existing marketing activities confirmed this – and, every marketing program they had tried they had executed well based on best practices. Despite this, and despite two re-branding/repositioning activities, the client felt it was not getting value from its marketing activities and that marketing was not helping with lead generation or sales. Through competitive and customer research we were able to determine that the client’s positioning was sub-optimal and that its existing marketing activities lacked integration and momentum. Our research led to a completely refreshed brand identity, messaging, website, and numerous other marketing communications vehicles – all designed to differentiate and deliver the right message to the right audiences. The client now more easily and relevantly articulates its services and value proposition to prospects and customers, leading to improved sales and seamless rollout of new services.

Case 3:

The client had a vast array of services, capabilities and expertise – more than 35 distinct offerings – and was struggling to effectively convey its value proposition and to differentiate itself within the market. We performed competitive, customer, and search engine research, the results of which led to a complete re-structuring of the client’s services and how they are offered, making it easier for prospects to understand the value proposition and how to engage with the client. The new services structure also makes it easier to convey and understand the company’s offerings and engage its services. It was a core element in the messaging/positioning and website strategy that we designed and executed for them.

In each case above, the client understood that “something” was wrong but was too close to the problem to accurately identify the underlying issue – even despite the fact that each of these clients had direct and frequent contact with its clients. If you find yourself spinning your wheels, take the time to step back and look at your overarching strategy before you dive into a new program or project. Better yet, have the professionals help you do so – contact us!

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Success Story

Search Engine Optimization

As part of our website optimization service, we’ve worked with a number of companies interested in boosting their online search engine performance. Recently, we were introduced to two companies who wanted to ensure that their sites would be visible on relevant searches performed online.

One, a real estate agent, was interested in boosting the search engine optimization (SEO) performance of its existing site, while the other, a children’s clothing store, wanted to ensure that its new e-commerce enabled website would place well in search engine results. Even though both companies were playing in very cluttered markets with respect to search volume, both were happily surprised with the quick, concrete results they saw after implementing the SEO updates we proposed.

Our real estate client, who specializes in the sale of condominums, found his website performing poorly on web searches relating to the sale of condos in his area. When Kaszas examined the results of relevant keyword searches, we found that his website’s search engine listings fell well below the websites of other real estate agents from the area. More critically, although the agent operates in a niche market, his site was also competing against traditional real estate brokers for online awareness and was losing the battle.

Our children’s clothing store client was launching its first e-commerce enabled site. It wanted to ensure that Ottawa residents looking for children’s clothing would be able to find the website, but it also hoped that searchers across Canada would be able to discover the site via search and place orders online.

Assessment and Implementation

Both companies had assumptions about which keywords best described their offerings and would be most commonly searched online. Our first task was to validate these assumptions. Using a set of sophisticated tools, we were able to determine the approximate volume of searches performed online for relevant keywords, and generate keyword variations based on our findings. In so doing, we discovered that many of the “best guess” keywords for both companies were rarely searched.

After analyzing the data, we developed a prioritized hierarchy of keywords and phrases that guided us in our development of web content and metadata for each site, as well as making the case for numerous changes relating to website architecture, functionality and implementation.

Near-Immediate Results

While we always caution clients that it is impossible to guarantee “first page” search engine placement on every desired keyword (search engine algorithms are complex and take into account a number of factors other than content), we began hearing positive feedback from both companies only a few weeks after our SEO recommendations were implemented.

The children’s clothing store reported that, for the first time, it had started receiving orders from across Canada. It attributed the orders in large part to its placement within the top ten search engine listings for one of its most important keywords.  The SEO changes were not only boosting the company’s presence in search engines - that presence was translating into tangible new business.

Our real estate client also saw rapid results. Prior to our optimization campaign, its site did not appear in the top 100 results for searches on condominiums in the agent’s selling area. Only weeks after launching its optimized site, it was appearing above the twelfth position on two key terms, and is consistently holding a first page result for another important key phrase uncovered in our search engine optimization research.

If you are disappointed with your current search engine placement and are interested in engating us for search engine optimization research/recommendations and implementation – contact us!

 

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Lesson Learned

Problems, Not Solutions

Typically, our business-to-business clients – and also many of our consumer-facing clients – like to focus on “solutions” in their marketing communications. A solution is a positive thing, and people want to hear positive messages, right? We want them to know that we have The Answer For Them, right? If we dwell on their problems we’ll never get the sale, right?

Actually, both problems and solutions must play a role in successful marketing content. One lesson we have learned over the years, particularly from examining online search activity of Internet users, is that people search for problems far more often than they search for solutions. In fact, one of the most common mistakes we see in business-to-business marketing communications strategies is an assumption that the customers know what they need.

Instead, we approach marketing communications in this way: we assume that the customer is the best voice for what the problem is, and we assume that our client is the best voice of the possible solutions. Then, we meld these two perspectives to ensure that BOTH viewpoints are represented.

This is particularly important as online searching claims ever-greater importance in companies’ marketing strategies. Although it’s nice to be able to focus marketing language on positive, results-oriented solutions such as what your product or service can do for the client, or the fact that you carry brand names X, Y, and Z, that’s not typically the best introduction that a potential customer can have to your offering.

It’s more likely that they have found you because they are concerned with and thinking about and searching on the Internet regarding a PROBLEM. Here are a few examples from some of our recent projects:

Problem Language (search term)	Solution Language
Help desk reporting Call center backlog	Help desk dashboard
GUI design Software development	GUI design consulting Software consulting
Fireplace stone How to replace vinyl siding	Arriscraft® stone Realstone® veneer

 

This general rule may not apply to all industries; we’ve recently worked on content optimization for consumer-oriented websites where different rules apply – for example:

• On a consumer retail e-commerce site, prospects were found to search for “winter coat” (a solution), not for a problem such as “winter chills.”
• On a real estate website, prospects were found to search for the property type + location, not for a problem such as, “need a house in Burlington”.

Probably the above two examples seem ridiculously obvious … and yet we find time and again that these “obvious” things do not get translated into appropriate marketing content strategies. In the case of the real estate website, it was obvious to everyone involved that certainly that is how the average person would search for a new home … yet the website had not been structured or written with that consideration. In the case of the retail e-commerce site, this was critical information that went into determining how the products would be presented on the website, which impacted to some degree how the e-commerce engine was implemented.

No matter what the target market is, we are always conscious of the importance of learning how the target customer base thinks about the subject matter before we begin to develop communications strategies and marketing content to speak to that customer. It’s a critical first step that many, many organizations overlook.

 

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