Frontline Perspectives

When the current hot item of the month is launched, the first thing people will react to will be the photography. You may have a great product with amazing benefits and capabilities, but if you can’t capture the audience with the photo or imagery first, how can you get them to read or want to know more about the product? Read more »

I got a speeding ticket on my way back from visiting my daughter at Indiana University. I was more than a little ticked when the officer pulled me over- as I was convinced that the “other” cars on the road were going faster than I was (which they were).

Before the officer handed me my ticket, he handed me the paper shown at left and waited for me to read it. “In the United States alone, there is a death related to a traffic crash every 12 minutes. That adds up to nearly 44,000 deaths a year.” I made the connection to my speeding – what if I had caused one of those fatalities? As I looked back at the officer, he handed me my ticket ($125). Read more »

Albert Einstein should have been in marketing. “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results.”

I think of this when I talk to marketing teams that are going to the same trade shows year after year and coming back with 40 leads, or placing print ads in the same publications that generate 0 leads, or using brochures that are five years old, or haven’t put new content on their Web sites in over a year….. Why? Why are you doing these things again and again when they obviously don’t produce tangible results? Read more »

Based on everything I’ve read and the discussions I’ve had with our clients, it’s going to be another difficult year. Some of us will see sales decreases, some of us will drag along the bottom, and a few lucky ones will start to see our bottom lines change from red to black.

2009 was a year filled with frustration, and for many, fear. The companies that proactively analyzed where to make changes (and invariably cuts) are in a much better position than the ones that chose a wait-and-see approach.  None of those were easy decisions, but making them also provided clarity as to the true strengths and weaknesses of an organization.

Many marketing budgets were cut deeply  for 2009. For 2010 we are seeing a mix of holding to the 2009 budget, 5% decreases and 15-20% increases.  The question I am most asked now is…where do we spend the marketing dollars this year? What will make the biggest impact? Read more »

I get a lot of questions about response rates when it’s time to talk about direct mail. The trouble with these questions is that response rates are not the most important consideration for direct mail lead generation.

The more important factor is quality of the leads, which is the real determinant of whether you’re getting a good return on your marketing spend:
1. What is an order worth to your company? (This is a short term value – your average new order size.)
2. What is a new customer worth to your company? (This is the life-time value – what the average customer buys in a year, and how many years they typically keep purchasing from you.) Read more »