Three steps to increasing your sales.

As an advertising agency, our job is to help our clients get better results from their advertising spend.

Here are three simple steps to increasing your sales that are a lot easier than they appear:

1. Change the packaging

2. Sell more

3. Build better relationships

1. Change the packaging.

Sometimes the simplest of changes make the biggest impact. In 2002, American paint company, Dutch Boy introduced a revolutionary, all-plastic, twist-and-pour paint container that featured a twist-off lid, side handle and pouring spout.

By changing their packaging from the traditional paint can they were able to change consumers’ perceptions about paint. Dutch Boy eliminated the need for screwdrivers or other tools used to open traditional paint cans, reduced drips and spills typically associated with traditional paint cans and gave consumers a more remarkable painting experience.

It was perfect for the vast majority of DIY users and aspiring interior designers. And what tradesman would say no to less mess at the end of a job? More importantly, consumers noticed the product on the shelves. Everywhere that consumers saw Dutch Boy, they saw it surrounded by outdated and boring competitors who didn’t understand what they wanted.

Did this change work? Definitely – the design allowed an eight percent increase in shelf space by accommodating more products in the same area and it tripled Dutch Boy’s sales in just six months.  

2. Sell more.

If only it was that easy. Well, sometimes it is. One of my clients operates in the animal health care industry, and recently changed the formula to one of their products. Unfortunately, the new formula didn’t quite have the effect on sales that they’d hoped for and no one seemed to know why.

The new formula was far more effective than anything else on the market; the product was competitively priced and came in a smaller 750ml bottle. The product in question is a production stimulant that is given to dairy calves that are afflicted with scours (diarrhoea in livestock).

Dairy farming is the biggest industry in New Zealand and the average dairy farm has 376 head of cattle on it. So the likelihood of a farmer only needing one bottle of drench seems unlikely.

Yet many manufacturers of oral drenches, including my client, have always sold their smaller oral drenches through vet clinics in inconvenient single units and this is a huge problem because farmers never buy just one.

The reason for this is that they often have a few calves afflicted by scours and this means they have to buy quite a few bottles at the same time. Now imagine you had to carry two dozen 750ml bottles from a vet clinic to your ute and then from your ute into your home, and after all of that you’d have to pack them away in the fridge. I’m certain that this is the purest definition of inconvenient. So why not make it more convenient to buy the product?

In fact, why not make buying a scours treatment as easy as buying beer? Not many people buy beers in singles from their supermarket or bottle store.

They usually buy a six-pack or a bigger box of 15, and the concept of convenience doesn’t factor into the decision on which brand to buy because convenience has always been there when it comes to buying beers. But in the animal health care industry, particularly with scours treatments, convenience is never high on the agenda.

So based on this insight we went ahead and designed a container that could hold four 750mL bottles of scours treatment.

With a well-crafted design that re-established familiar and relevant touchpoints similar to a six-pack of beer, such as an ergonomic carry handle and a strong focus on New Zealand patriotism, we created a cost-effective and convenient package that positioned our client’s starter drench at the top of every farmer’s list.

The truth was that no matter how ingenious the formula was in the product, it was the added convenience of being able to effectively carry the bottles that made this product fly off the shelves. The results? A 200% sales increase in two months.

3. Build better relationships.

The definition that marketing is about promoting and selling products and services applies to a very antiquated business model. Marketing is now all about building and maintaining relationships. And who is best suited to build relationships? People are.

People are your most powerful marketing tool. People decide the fate of every marketing message and, most importantly, people don’t do business with businesses, we do business with people. Relationships are simple - just look after the customer and really (no really!) try to give them what they want. The companies that understand this will reap the rewards.

Superbowl Musings

The Superbowl is big news in the good old US of A.

So big that it’s often the most-watched television event in America in the course of a given year. In fact, the 2011 Superbowl was the most-watched piece of TV in American history. It’s also very heavily watched globally, which is lovely for the players and the NFL but is likely of less relevance to the American advertisers who see the bowl as the annual holy grail of advertising. 

The Superbowl: advertising's most attractive lure.

Once a year, the big brands know that they’ve got a massive captive audience covering a wide variety of demographics, so they throw the whole nine yards at making as much of an impact as possible. Of course, the networks exploit this phenomenon as hard as they can because they effectively hold all the cards. If advertisers want to reach that captive audience, well then they’re going to have to open their wallets big time because Superbowl ads do not come cheap. Recent Superbowls have some freaky average costs per ad – try US$4 million for size. This obviously means that only the biggest brands can get in on the action, and once you commit to that kind of spend, you really need to do it right.

This brings us to the second complication of advertising during the Superbowl besides the cost – audience expectation. Some would say that the ads are as important to much of the audience as the game is. This is true to a degree – as big as the game is, only two teams are playing, which means that only a small portion of the viewers (the supporters) will have a deep-seated loyalty and the associated passion behind them. Many of the rest are watching simply because it’s the Superbowl in the same way that Kiwis would still watch a Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and Australia even if the All Blacks had been knocked out in the quarter-finals. But there’s also a large segment of the audience who are just watching the ads, so much so that there’s a USA Today live poll that tracks the response to the ads in real-time.

The problem with all this excitement and all the hype around the advertising is that a run-of-the-mill ad is going to be somewhat disregarded, falling far behind the really eye-catching ads in the minds of the viewers, soon to be forgotten.

So there’s an element of needing to absolutely pull out all the stops, which again pushes up the cost. These ads are also in ‘jump the shark’ territory – once you’ve created that amazing, big-budget ad that wows the viewers, what do you do next year? Anything less impressive will lead to disappointment and mutterings of “That GM ad was rubbish compared to the one from last year, but wow, did you see the Nissan ad?”

If your mega-ad does get totally trumped by the opposition, or even by an incredibly entertaining ad from a brand in a totally different industry segment, then was there any point in spending that money? Agency executives will argue that of course the ad had merit and reached people, even if it wasn’t particularly popular, and to an extent, they’re obviously right but both the agency folk and the clients would be cringing if their ad wasn’t well received. This is the gladiatorial arena of interruption marketing and there’ll be scant mercy for the losers when the numbers are tallied.

Does the question then have to be whether it’s worth jumping through these hoops once a year? Well regardless of what you do, it’s going to be something of a gamble but if you’ve got the money, the right product and the creative geniuses on hand to really give it your best shot, then it’s worth taking a punt because how often do you have the chance to blow away that many people across so many age ranges and demographics. Winners win big, losers get a caning but that’s the way of the business world.

On the other hand, what if you’re not one of the big gorillas with bottomless wallets? How on earth do you reach your key audience (and all the hangers-on and influencers too) without spending the earth? It’s a valid question especially for us in little old New Zealand, where the closest parallel would be the aforementioned Rugby World Cup final. Only a few brands get to be involved with that, so what about the rest?

Well, the answer is pretty simple, as it’s always been. To get results that are better than they were last year and the year before, you need to do something different than you did in the past. While the competition is treading the same turf, you should be exploring different ways to engage your customers instead of just yelling at them. Everyone will tell you they’re already doing something vastly different but they’re actually all doing the same damn thing, social, experiential, outdoor, and they’re still much of a muchness. Being innovative doesn’t need to cost a load of money but it can make your company a whole heap of cash if it’s done right. What choice do you have if you don’t have millions in the marketing budget? 

Four simple steps to end your year with a bang

We’ve passed the halfway mark in 2013 and many of you might already be looking for ways to elevate your sales for the rest of the year and even for 2014.

With that in mind here are four simple marketing approaches that will help you.

 1. Be honest with your customers.

People don’t do business with businesses; we do business with people. If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face. Our brains cannot relate to the over-perfected, over-Photoshopped advertising messages we see every day, so we are simply ignoring or deriding them. How many adverts have you seen that portray an ideal family environment that just doesn’t exist or match anything you’ve seen in your life? When was the last time you had a burger that actually looked like the burger you saw in the advert? How many ads have you approved that portray consumers using your products like they’ve just discovered a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? No one acts and behaves like that in the real world and the sooner you recognise and understand this the better.  Start to care. That simple word sums up so much. Have you ever been to a restaurant or a hospital where they genuinely care? You can tell, immediately. So can your customers.

2. Satisfy your customer’s wants.

We no longer buy products because we need them; we buy them because we want them. This is true because almost everything we can realistically imagine that we need has already been invented. There used to be a time when we had fewer choices but now we have an infinite supply. This wasn’t true just 20 years ago when we had a lot more time and a lot less choices. Our disposable income had far fewer ways to get squandered, so if a company came up with something really cool, like the mobile phone, we’d find a way to pay for it. But the game has changed and now we’re only interested in satisfying our wants so please start satisfying our wants.

3. You can’t be everywhere.

Start prioritising where you want to interact with your clients. When it comes to advertising, the media landscape is just too vast to reach everyone. Simply put, there are so many media alternatives that consumers can no longer be effectively reached by mass media such as television or radio. At the end of the day, every business has a financial target to reach and it doesn’t matter whether it takes 5000 or 100 customers to reach that goal, so why chase everyone? A woodpecker can peck once on every tree in a forest in the hopes that he’ll find what he’s looking for or he can concentrate his efforts on a smaller number of trees and get results.

4. Leave the centre of the market and aim for the edges.

Where's the meat? Cher used to think she was on the bleeding edge.

Every market has two parts: there’s the big, fat juicy centre and then there are the edges. For obvious reasons the centre appeals to more of us than it should (must be the Lizard-Brain at work) but it’s not a safe place because nothing remarkable ever takes place there. If we take a look at the music industry and compare Lady Gaga to Britney Spears it’s easy to see where their position in the market lies. When Britney decided to go to the edges a few years back she reworked her image, forgot her underwear and tried to reinvent herself but her audience rejected her, forcing her brand further back into the centre than it had ever been before. Lady Gaga on the other hand, started at the edge and the centre moved towards her. Now she can wear dresses made out of meat or ride a panda to the next Grammy Awards and it will all fit perfectly within the scope of her brand and (even better) people will accept it. The edge isn’t for everyone, but would you really want to market yourself as “more bland than the leading brand”?

Who’d want to work in Hell(ers)?

I stumbled upon this marketing image on facebook a few weeks ago.

What the Hellers is going on with the expiry date?

I assume it was created by the company’s Human Resources department. HR departments the world over are always super keen to dot the i's and cross the t's and make sure everyone knows where the lines are in Corporate Land. I wonder if the Marketing Department had any say in it? I assume so. Someone had to design it and lay it out in the correct corporate font and make sure it was framed in the correct colour.

The reality however is that from an internal marketing point of view this is a complete cock up. Who’d want to work in an environment where the company has to so blatantly state the obvious about what you should and shouldn’t be doing? I know that it’s fairly uncommon to see the human race using common sense but do Hellers really have to tell their staff not to be bullies and that they shouldn’t swear at people? And should this really have an expiry date? We’re talking about people here, not sausages!

Someone in a leadership position had to have authorized this when they should really have rejected it. There’s no way that this kind of corporate mantra will ever attract and keep top-quality staff. Could you imagine this sign at Google, Apple or Virgin? All Hellers are going to get here are Sheepwalkers. But I suppose that’s OK since all they manufacture is processed meats, and really, how much innovation can there be in that field?

Quite a lot I’d say. Consider that Todd Heller opened the first Hellers butchery in Christchurch in 1985 and in less than 28 years has grown the business to become New Zealand’s largest smallgoods manufacturer. You don’t get growth like that without innovation, especially from a marketing perspective. But now that they’re at the top I suspect they’re resting on their laurels a bit. Who could (and who’d want to) try and claim their throne?

As consumers, we never get to see behind the doors of big businesses like Hellers. We don’t know what happens in their boardrooms or what goes on at the production line. All we see is what they want us to see. The problem with that is it’s 2013 and far too often consumers get to peek behind the curtain and see what’s really going on.