Archive for the ‘Brand Visibility’ Category
Harvard Business Review Article Reinforces The Core of Custom Publishing
11 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
The new January 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review has a fabulous article called Rethinking Marketing. It is a must read article for all chief marketing officers but even more so for agencies who make their living by supporting marketing initiatives and have seen their traditional advertising business continue to erode.
The article correctly identifies a fundamental shift in marketing that custom publishers have benefited from over the past ten years. This trend has resulted more than ten straight years of increases in custom publishing spending by marketers while mass media advertising has fallen dramatically. The secret that custom publishing “gets” is that customers today expect to interact deeply with companies, and with each other to shape the products and services they consume. It is the customer who has the control to determine whether a product is successful and no amount of traditional advertising can change that.
In order to be successful, HBR points out that companies must shift their focus to building their long-term relationships with their customers rather than trying to “influence or push” customers to buy. Today it’s about understanding the complex needs of customers, nuturing them, cultivating them and retaining them for the long run. Smart marketers are shifting from measuring product profitability to measuring customer profitability. Just as importantly, traditional marketing goals like brand equity and market share are being replaced by new objectives like customer equity and customer lifetime value.
Customer, rather than product objectives have been the core of custom publishing for more than a decade. The essence of custom publishing has always been focused on building long-term relationships between marketers and their customers. The unique ability that custom content has enhance customer relationships and increase lasting loyalty is the secret to custom publishing’s stellar growth. Custom publishers have a ten year head start on traditional advertising agencies on understanding how to use content to build customer relationships. With the explosive growth of digital delivery channels giving customers instantaneous access to content as well as each other, custom content providers will continue to flourish as more and more marketers shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.
They’re Partners, Not Clients
24 Mar 2009
by James Meyers
Over the past several years, Imagination has come to understand the importance of customer relationships to insuring business success. During the early years of our custom publishing business, we successfully grew the company by focusing intensely on driving new business opportunities. While the strategy worked, we too often found ourselves needing to replace lost clients. In the newspaper business, we called it churn. Often times it was because the client’s budget was cut, or a personnel change at the client or they decided to try something new. Like the time a client decided to eliminate their very successful custom magazine in order to pay for sponsoring seat cushions at the Super Bowl. They did it one year and the custom magazine was gone, the Super Bowl sponsorship was gone, the great ROI was gone and soon after the CMO was gone too.
Occasionally, our intense focus on developing new clients caused us to underestimate the opportunities that we had with existing clients. Eventually, we realized that our best opportunities for growth came from clients where we had moved beyond a client/vendor arrangement to a valued partner relationship.
For years, we had used terms like customers and clients to describe our relationships but the reality was that they weren’t really relationships because they were based on “I need something and you can sell it to me” rather than a much more intertwined partnership. And it’s true partnerships with partners who understand, value and are willing to invest in custom content and publishing services that are they key to long-term success for both parties.
Like every company, we began 2009 unsure of the effects that the global recession would have on our business. We’ve seen some losses but we have more than made up for them with new business opportunities from existing partners and new clients who were seeking the full range of strategic custom content strategies that we provide. We take pride in the fact that many of our largest partner relationship have been in place for more than five years and that our business with them has consistently grown. In the end, isn’t that what a successful relationship is all about? The opportunity for both parties to grow by understanding each other’s needs and expectations while working together in a spirit of mutual respect and trust.
Business relationships don’t happen on day one. It takes time to develop and nurture a partnership so that both sides benefit from the relationship over the long run. We’re proud of our partnerships with some of the world’s leading companies and trade associations.
Hope is Not a Strategy
13 Mar 2009
by James Meyers
As I continue to travel around the country visiting with companies, associations and reading the business press, I continue to see two different attitudes.
One one hand, I see those that hope they can hang on, hope that they can cut enough to survive and hope that things will get better soon. Most of these, are frozen in place, unable to plan, invest, spend or move, even if there are wonderful business opportunities within their grasp.
On the other hand, I’ve found many for whom Hope is Not a Strategy!
They are the ones who know that this recession has created for them a tremendous opportunity to build their brand, their customer relationships and their revenues while their competitors are frozen in place. They see the opportunities to spend smarter, at a lower cost and to get a better return on their marketing investment. For them, it’s not about hope, but rather about action. A time to advance their strategic advantage over weaker competition.
These are the companies and associations who will come flying out of the gate as the economy recovers. The “hopers” will be left behind and realize that they missed their opportunity.
