CaliberPulse

The key to marketing success is identifying target audiences that will be motivated by tailored messages and calls to action. For this purpose, accurate audience demographic information is crucial. The value in this information, however, lies in detailed segmentation of a specific audience group. Unfortunately audience demographics are unreliable for the “65+” segment, which represented approximately 40 million adults in 2010, according to the U.S. Census. To bundle everyone over 65-years-old in one “targetable” demographic is practically useless for marketing purposes.

Today, 95% of all email is considered spam. If you use email for your business, you must know the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act and how to protect your company from a violation. This act sets rules for how you can contact your current and potential customers by email and gives them rights for opting-out of future emails. If you don't follow the guidelines, you could face hefty fines for non-compliance – up to $16,000 per email.

To market effectively to a target audience, organizations must not only capture the attention of the audience, but do so with a message that resonates with their specific age group and characteristics. Every generation has its own distinct set of characteristics that are developed from their social environment in their prevenient years. Research has shown that each generational group has different values and beliefs regarding family, career, work/life balance, training and development, loyalty, gender roles, and expectations of a leader. Marketers should note that these generational preferences and social values influence purchasing behavior as much as common demographic factors such as income, education, and gender.

The Caliber team recently participated in a half-day virtual conference by Vocus, titled: “Social Media. So What?” One of the keynote speakers, Scott Stratten, gave an insightful talk reminding us that every employee is a marketer, and engaging with customers online improves your brand enormously. Stratten’s views on marketing inspired many industry professionals, including our friend and respected colleague, Abbie S. Fink. Today, we are happy to share her guest blog post, which provides some thoughtful insight on Stratten’s new book, “UnMarketing.”

Research on eco-marketing has shown that women and men receive “green” messaging very differently. For marketers promoting green products, it is important to note this key challenge to creating messaging. Let’s take a brief look at consumer perceptions on the “green movement,” and why marketers must make note of these major incongruities. According to a recent survey from Crowd Science’s Just Ask!, women are the primary household spenders (80-85 percent of retail consumer goods) and prefer to be spoken to as a caretaker concerned about the fate of their environment. Unlike most men, women are driven by product reviews, real life improvements, and what it means to them and their families to live a sustainable lifestyle.

At Caliber, we don’t let trends influence our creative. However, we do like to stay informed of what is going on in the creative world. As the years pass, design elements such as techniques, colors, and fonts change. One year, we’ll see a lot of red usage with serif typefaces; another year, we’ll see green in everything with san serif typefaces. 2010 seemed to be the year of re-branding and we foresee this trend continuing into 2011. As companies try to refresh their look to appear more modern or launch new advertising campaigns, here are a few new creative trends we may see and some existing trends that will continue.

Over the last decade, marketers have focused on moms as the primary shopper and decision-maker of most households. With the emergence of mommy bloggers and followers coinciding with an unabashed admission of female buying power, more marketing and PR professionals began focusing campaigns on these consumers. Where did this leave dads? Some dads report feeling ignored by brand ad campaigns. A recent Yahoo study about dad consumers is turning heads and should influence some retail marketers to expand their target audiences. Some of the misconceptions that researchers found about dads are: 1. Dads don’t do housework. 2. Dads aren’t interested in retail shopping. 3. Dads don’t sway spending on household products. 4. Dads don’t share brand choices with peers. 5. Dads don’t do brand research.

“Email is the original social media” according to social media scientist, Dan Zarella. Zarella, on behalf of Hubspot, presented findings from an analysis of 9.5 billion Mail Chimp emails, survey responses, and focus group information in a webinar that we participated in last week. We’d like to share the top six takeaways with you. Try using some of this advice on your next email campaign and give us feedback on the results.

In this age of web-enabled Smart phones and other “Smart” devices that are flooding the market, we here at Adworkshop have noticed that the number of “apps” (applications) and mobile sites being downloaded is skyrocketing. As a matter of fact, our advertising agency in upstate New York came across an eMarketer report on a recent survey conducted by Adobe which found that most mobile users prefer to get their content from mobile websites rather than mobile applications. The only categories that showed a higher mobile application download preference were games, music and social media.

I attended the BOLO 2010 conference organized by AgencySide. BOLO’s mission is to help agencies profit with new digital marketing technologies. I was as impressed by the attendees I met - mostly agency principals or management- as by the speakers and sessions that addressed many of the technologies our firm is now recommending to clients. The marketing and advertising industry will experience more change in the next 5 years than it has in the past 50 years. It is imperative to keep ahead of the changes while continuing to follow classic, solid business practices. Below are my top ten takeaways from the conference.

Are you sliding along the scale between traditional and digital marketing? Perhaps you are among the businesses still using only traditional forms of advertising that have been around for decades, such as outdoor, print, television and radio. Watch any Mad Men episode and you will hear these familiar tactics discussed. Traditional media were used back then, and remain the basis for many organizations’ marketing efforts. But there are many new tools at your disposal to help you reach your audience and garner results. If you haven’t already, start learning about and integrating new digital tactics into your marketing mix. We are not advocating abandoning traditional forms of advertising. Wise marketers are learning how to use all the new tools and including them when assessing what mediums will be used to reach a particular audience or to brand a specific product or service. Balancing the marketing options As with any marketing program, one size does not fit all. Each marketing mix needs to be tailored to the goals and objectives of the client. Don’t feel overwhelmed: You can start in small ways to integrate these new technologies into your marketing. Here are a few examples.

“There’s a app for that,” the simple, iconic tagline from the iPhone commercials, could apply to your business. An application — or an “app” when speaking Apple-ese — specific to your business or organization could be a valuable addition to your marketing cache. The iPhone app created for the Tucson Festival of Books gave a quick, concise look at the festival events with a flick of the iPhone. The festival, Arizona’s largest literary event held March 13-14, attracted an estimated 70,000-80,000 bibliophiles to the University of Arizona campus to meet and mingle with about 450 authors who spoke and signed books.