Yes – it’s Girl Scout cookie time again.

For a mere 6 weeks, card tables laden with Thin Mints, Shortbread and Caramel Delites pop up at strategic points of sale. Manning these are an army of usually vocal, sometimes shy, but always enthusiastic scouts and their supportive adult leaders.

The cookie sales season is a combination of simple yet effective marketing strategy:  Limited availability. A product proffered by a trusted cause. And a motivated sales force (and then some!) All equate to creating a fairly easy impulse buy, even at a higher price point than one might typically pay: $4.00 for a box of 15-25 cookies.

And now, to the surprise of no one, there’s even an app to help find the nearest cookie sales point.

A key ingredient of successful sales volume clearly is still location. I witnessed this first-hand while on a recent road trip. Like many highway jaunts with my wife as co-pilot, the inevitable bathroom break need arose. We exited the highway at a truck stop in a very rural area of Oklahoma. We’ve all been to one of these: Rows of 18-wheelers. Diesel pumps. Separate parking area for highway travelers. And in the midst of it all, the central facility proffering fast food, snacks and bathrooms.

As my spouse and I exited our vehicle, I noticed a hefty trucker heading back to his rig, carrying a stack of half a dozen boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Within minutes, several more travelers passed by, each of them laden with an equally ample supply. Intrigued, I located the source and found the young ladies you see pictured, stationed just outside the center’s main entrance. Their sales were quite literally non-stop. When I asked one of the adult troop leaders if this was a typical location for them, she replied, “Oh yes. This is our best spot and we come out every weekend during cookie season.”

An amazing lesson in how the simplest adjustments to a sales effort can reap remarkable results. Even on a chilly, blustery day in rural Oklahoma, these girls were taking full advantage of having found a prime location, and were cleaning up as a result. It would not startle me to learn they were among the leading cookies sales troops in that area, or even in the entire state of Oklahoma.

As we continued our trip north, I pondered what I’d seen. The take-way was a reminder on how effective marketing basics shouldn’t be overshadowed by too many layers of complexity:

Simple is often better – overly complex strategies and tactics can translate to nothing getting done. Adopt a “card table” mentality. Pick an initiative, dope out the best way to reach the desired audience, and make it happen. Build momentum on small successes, one box of cookies at a time.

Choose where you’ll be seen wisely, and align to the audience – setting up a card table to catch prospects at a mall isn’t a sales tactic that will work for every business. However, being “seen” means things like your website has to be readily found (think SEO tactics), and distinctive when a visitor drops by. Messaging with panache aligned with reputation = creating awareness your cookies are good, and they’re also easy to take home right now.

When seen, engage – no matter when the opportunity arises. If you get an opening to interact with a prospect (in person, via social media, etc.) take advantage of it. And be genuine and helpful while doing so. Multiple exposures and positive experiences create awareness, sales momentum and proliferation via referral. The Girls Scouts get this, and take full advantage of it. Having a young girl in a uniform suggest you really need cookies means you can’t say no without feeling a tiny bit guilty. You may not buy them the first time, but they’ll get you eventually.

We assuaged our guilt early this year. We bought our cookies and then had the Girl Scouts send them directly to our troops overseas for us. A double feel-good whammy.

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Burch’s brief reinforced that his brand was about speaking to women, so it would seem like the passion and insight of the all-female agency Womenk!nd would have an edge, right? And the fact that they discussed strategy as the underpinning for their creative concepts gave them an advantage, right? And their immersion in the brand by briefing their team at C. Wonder shop was spot-on, right? And the fact that their “Elements of Surprise” concept resonated in advertising as well as a wide array of other different delivery vehicles (social media, loyalty programs, the retail experience, the online presence, and more) should have catapulted them to the top, right? Well, not so fast.

During DIGO’s team briefing and collaboration, their female strategy director came up with “A Good Mood Can Change the World,” despite the founder’s obvious annoyance with her (asking the hard questions like, “What problem are we trying to solve?” So distracting when you’re trying to be CREATIVE!) And then when Burch surprised each team with “the pop-in” mid-week (OK, he did call about ½ hour beforehand), DIGO founder had the audacity to tell her not to attend. Which she did anyway and insisted on yelling like a 4th grader, “That was my idea!” Really?!

Ultimately, here’s how it played out. Womenk!ind presented an end-to-end campaign around “Elements of Surprise,” woven throughout their customer messaging, as well as all campaign elements. I thought it was thorough and awesome (and I will bet my DSW shoes Burch “leverages” some of those ideas). DIGO started with a “we’re cool” generic agency pitch but was interrupted by Burch to get on with it. So they presented their “Good Mood” concept, and Burch immediately shot down the word “mood,” but by the end of their weird animation clip and TV ad storyboard. he loved it.  They followed that up with more awkward “we’re selling ourselves.” Um, OK.

Anyway Burch decided that “Good Mood” represented a single, achievable concept and selected DIGO. Unfortunately Womenk!nd also had a single concept, but could have reinforced it a little more strongly throughout their presentation. Their exceptionally strong executional elements overshadowed their single concept, which really means it confused the client, even though it wasn’t that confusing. Sometimes it’s hard to believe this is an “unscripted” show.

QUESTIONS:

• It’s as closely split as any poll so far (45% Womenk!nd, 55% DIGO). What does that mean?
• C. Wonder at QVC? I didn’t see that in any of the pitches, and wonder how that fits into their retail and demographic strategy. Would you expect a guy with an ego like Burch to use the QVC route-to-market…?
• Do you think a rousing game of ping pong is the way to land a new client?

Up next – Episode 8: Marriott!

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But ponder the word “content” for just a moment. When one views a website, do you only see text? Of course not. A memorable website that truly achieves marketing goals is a careful balance of copy and pertinent, intriguing imagery. And just like the verbiage that makes up each page of a site, pictures can and should also be considered as an essential part of SEO targeting. The world of search engines is mammoth, and a website needs every piece of help it can get to lead viewers back to it.

Aside from the obvious stance on using images to design a more engaging page look, will they also really help with SEO? Definitely. However, careful optimization efforts are required. These are beneficial for several reasons:

• Image Search. Images drive traffic to the site by showing up at the top of a Google image search (or any image-based search engine). Optimization helps with higher rankings.
• Photo Sharing Sites. Optimizing images will help them show up on photo and social image sharing sites such as Flickr.
• Blended Search. Search engines such as Google try to incorporate different search results. Ensuring images shows up on top is an easy way to avoid competition yet still direct viewers to your site.

When someone finds your image within a search engine, that image is typically connected directly back to your website. A viewer who clicks on the image will be taken to your site and will ideally then peruse the text that accompanies the image.

So where does one start when optimizing site imagery for search engines? From the standpoint of a marketer (in other words, not from the designer/developer vantage point), here are suggestions to be planned with the web development team. Many of these are looked at as SEO Tactics 101 – they are similar to basic efforts used to optimize websites at large:

• Alt and Title Text – Adding alt text and title text will ensure that search engines understand what an image is about. Search engines don’t “see” the image, but they do see words in a piece of text. When you see a picture of a cat, you instantly recognize what’s depicted in the picture. This instant recognition isn’t possible for search engines. Alt text labeling helps the search engines understand and index site images.
• Size – Search engines actually care about image load times. Ensuring image file size is compact without degrading visual appearance needs to carefully balanced.
• File Name – This is easy yet very important. The way an image is named needs to be relevant to the site’s intent and ideally once again include defined keywords.
• Formatting – Proper image file formatting helps search engines index site imagery correctly. The most common format types for web use are JPEG, PNG or GIF files.
• Anchor Text – This is important when linking to images from text (like captions, hypertext links, etc.). Use of essential keywords in the actual link description will pay dividends in enhancing SEO stickiness.

In summary, investment of time into a defined SEO strategy must include optimization of site imagery for maximum effectiveness. The steps described are not cumbersome, and if done correctly, will add an extra measure of site magnetism to the search engines, and ultimately more eyes on pages within your site.

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Here are some interesting facts on mobile web use:

• The number of smartphone searchers doubles every two months.
• eBay sells something via a mobile phone every two seconds.
• Searching via mobile devices has grown 500% in the past two years.

Mobile views are increasingly important as more and more web searches originate from mobile devices. Google reports that 61% of visitors who visit a mobile-unfriendly website are likely to go to a competitor’s site. Other reports show that people who have a bad mobile experience on a website will not recommend that business to others.

Most websites don’t offer a mobile version for visitors. Instead, a smartphone user is forced to view your entire website at a fraction of its normal size. It’s almost impossible to click on hyperlinks or follow menu options without zooming in and scrolling around helplessly.

Invariably, if a website is not mobile-friendly then the smartphone user will likely just move along in search of a more convenient website to visit.

Things to consider when reviewing your website for mobile friendliness:

• Your current website displays correctly on smaller mobile screens.
• Your current site loads quickly on mobile devices.
• Visitors to your site do not have to do the “pinch and pull”. If they do they won’t stick around.
• A mobile compatible website will allow you to be listed on mobile search engines.
• Mobile websites allow mobile users to easily take action.
• Mobile searches are primarily for phone, contact and address details.
• 95% of current sites will not render properly on mobile devices.

Is your website compatible and easy to use on smartphones? If not you could be loosing out on website traffic and more importantly, conversions.

Depending on how your website is built, making it mobile friendly could range from an easy task to building a complete new website. If your site is built using one of the more popular content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, it should be fairly simple to make the site easy to use for your mobile customers. If your site is built using static HTML, then a full rebuild is probably necessary. This would have the added benefit of making your site look up-to-date, make it easier to update content, and probably increase your SEO.

Tips for making your website mobile compatible:

• Don’t use Flash.
• Don’t clutter your web pages. Simple is easier to read and use.
• Make sure video does not use a Flash based player.
• Buttons should be large enough to touch easily.
• Links should be spaced out enough to make them easy to touch without selecting the wrong one.

As you consider your web strategy and online presence for 2013, take the time to evaluate your mobile online presence. Web users are only going to get more mobile as time goes by and having an effective mobile presence could really set your business apart.

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We see four different types of sites and the online strategy and purpose is different for each.

The “Brochure” Or Validation site.

The strategy for this site is to validate that you are a real business and have real products. Your sales force calls on a new customer and they immediately check your URL to see that you are “real”. At Azure Marketing Communications, we have a validation site. You look us up to see if we are real – and we are. It gives locations, services, facts and figures – lots of information.

Strategy

• Not just a pretty face. Too many brochure sites are loaded with pretty pictures and no information. Make sure you have good relevant content
• Update it often – Nothing dates your site like old press releases and content that never changes. Add videos, pictures from the latest trade show, event or company recognition
• Link all your emails campaigns, blogs and newsletters to the site – Use your site to be the depository for your email campaigning. This keeps the site fresh and brings new visitors or old friends back to your “home”. Think of ways to encourage visitors to navigate your site.
• Add or change something on your site every week.

The Lead Generation Site

This is a site that does heavy lifting. The strategy for this site is to connect it to every part of your marketing activities. It is the home for all your information, products, and services. Users want to come to your site to get information, support and the latest news. It needs to be optimized for search engines (SEO) so that users can find your products.

Strategy

• You have great usability. Users can find information quickly and easily. They don’t have to drill down through five or six pages.
• You have updated current content upfront. You are constantly adding new white papers, blogs, newsletters, and events so that you are at the top of search engines.
• You optimize your content for those search engines. You use key words in all your content.
• Your customers can easily raise their hand and become a lead. You have a simple form enabling the user to give you their information. A nice short form that asks for name and email. You have good information on the site that makes the user want to give up their personal information for white paper or product information.

An Online Shop

Amazon is the best example of an online shop but there are plenty of strategies that contain small shops. At Azure, we do quite a few registration sites for events – trade shows or conferences. Users need to “shop” for hotels or conference sessions. They need to give credit cards and personal information.

In Online Shops, your strategy needs to be associated with ease of use and information. You also need to be well aware of privacy issues.

Strategy

• Usability –  it is  easy for the user to find information, sign up and buy.
• Works with a back-end. Behind the scenes there are interfaces with credit cards, hotels, shipping companies. Your site must work smoothly with all these various other computer systems.
• Verifies the purchase. The user should receive a purchase confirmation email as well as be able to get status updates.

Those Other Sites

I recently met someone who was developing a site to recruit new employees. That was unique to me but the basics still apply.

Why do you need a site?
Who will come to the site?
What information needs to be included?
How will the site work?

If you can define these items before you build the site, you job will be much easier.

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In a recent poll of its members by the Corporate Executive Board, 75% of respondents said they are already using tablet technology to support sales or plan to begin using tablets within the next 12 months.

Salespeople were quick to adopt tablets due to their high tech appeal. These early adopters found there was a limited supply of materials useable on the new devices. However, that has changed. As the tablet market has evolved, updated hardware and more sophisticated software have given designers and developers the ability to create high quality interactive sales tools.

Sales reps love tablets because they make life easier. Rather than carrying around 25 pounds of printed product literature on sales calls, salespeople can carry a single tablet weighing less than two pounds.

Tablets apps accelerate sales effectiveness. Salespeople have greater access to company content, presentations, and product/service information, enabling them to give more compelling demonstrations to prospects and customers. These materials can be updated frequently, enabling huge savings in printing and storage costs.

Traditional marketing materials can be transformed into rich, interactive content. White papers can have interactive features, video, or links to other resources such as technical drawings or instructions on how to use a product. Tablet presentations can be engaging and allow the customer or prospect to interact with the materials, thereby keeping their attention focused on its message.

Tablets are replacing more expensive laptops, and reducing print and distribution costs for sales materials. Being able to get on the “green” bandwagon is good for PR as well!

As you plan your next round of collateral or training materials, consider distributing them on a tablet to help increase their effectiveness and reduce your costs.

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No Really Blind Dates – In our digital age, you can easily check someone out before you meet them. You should also do the same for any agency. Check their website, LinkedIn profile, or other social media presence. Obviously, the website and company pages will put the best spin on their work – “we do great creative work that gets your message across” is the standard fare on most agencies websites. But they can also give you clues to those companies and services they deliver. Dig deep and find mutual friends you can contact ahead of your first meeting. Check out the people you’ll be working with to see their qualifications. You may save yourself a great deal of time by prequalifying the agency before the first meeting.

Be Open and Honest – Playing games and hiding information usually causes a bad breakup later. With agencies, it just makes it harder for the agency to perform at its best if you don’t provide the whole story about your goals, needs and concerns. I have worked at companies in the tech industry that hated sharing information about upcoming products, fearing that the agency would give out the big company secret. Get over it – the agency isn’t going to blow it. The agency doesn’t want to ruin a trusted relationship by blabbing. A simple step is having them sign a non-disclosure agreement. That’s standard practice here at Azure.

Start Small – Meeting for coffee or lunch helps to test the waters before you decide on a complete date night or running away for a long weekend. Do the same with an agency. Start with a small project – one with clear goals and a specific time frame. This gives you a chance to check if you are compatible. Your relationship can grow based on these small projects until you’re ready to make a commitment.

Walk on the Wild Side – It’s fun to date that person who looks at life from a different vantage. That also goes for marketing agencies that have worked with a wide variety of clients and services. We get RFPs from cities and companies all the time – each RFP specifies an agency that has done the same work for the same service/product and has a boat load of experience in the same industry. What you get with this approach is the same old stuff. Look for an agency that has breadth and depth across services and industries. These agencies will look at your goals in a different light – and bring new and different strategies to your project. A good marketing services firm knows how to interview and research. They can turn that information into a solid strategy for your company and leverage a new twist from a different industry.

Making new friends, finding a mate and committing to a marketing firm should always be about building trust and developing a solid relationship. None of it should be hurried, and should be based on honest interactions with shared goals in mind.

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Muse Communications from California and Bozell Advertising out of Nebraska went head-to-head in this episode, and demographically the two agencies couldn’t be more different. The only Caucasian I saw at Muse was a consultant, and I ONLY saw Caucasians at Bozell. At first glance, it seemed like the target audience of JDRF would be better reached by a more multicultural firm – or would it…?

The new guy at Bozell, Jerry (welcome to your new office, and comb your hair for the cameras please) wants to personify Type One Diabetes and creates the villain TOD – a way to put a face on the disease and rally people against it. But there is some skepticism from Bozell’s Director of Social Influence (yes, that’s really his title) about the difficulty in forcing something to go viral (agreed). He goes on to explain to us that he’s a strategy guy, not an idea guy, and needs facts, figures, and research to develop a campaign concept. Apparently, he didn’t get any of that (he didn’t appear to contribute to the creative process) but his negativity did spark a second concept around “Be the Voice of One” – another strong take on humanizing the disease. Bozell followed up with some basic execution in the form of visuals, a landing page, and the like – essentially a new brand under the JDRF umbrella.

One of Muse’s young guns, Marcus, took the lead on their concept. They came up with “One Less Prick,” meant as a double entendre referring to both the disease as well as actual blood sugar level tests. The concept was sound – donations enable small strides in combatting the disease, and may enable patients to have to test less often. They were fully aware that the language may have been off-putting (how often would you use the word prick at work?), but decided it was worth going big or going home.

I have talked a little bit about delivery influencing agency selection in a few previous episodes, but this one really brought it front and center. Muse brought in a communications coach to help Marcus with his delivery (stand still, enunciate, etc.) and during his pitch, he technically nailed a lot of the issues the coach had raised. But Jerry’s seated conversation with the JDRF team was much more compelling. Why? Jerry’s was filled with passion, indicating Bozell understood and shared JDRF’s goals.

JDRF decided that the best concept to fulfill their goal of a rallying cry that would raise awareness as well as money was Bozell’s “Be the Voice of One” – with an eye toward working TOD into the mix at some point. They understood Muse’s concept, but felt that they connected on a stronger level with Bozell, and that the Bozell concept had a much greater scope than they had hoped for. And the cool thing is – at the end of the episode, they flashed a screen saying, “To donate to JDRF, go to bethevoiceofone.com.” Wow!!!

QUESTIONS:

• Hurrah! This time we all got it right! Well, except for the 35% of people who felt Muse should have won.
• What do you think of rebranding Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to JDRF?
• Do agree with Marcus, that “There’s no crying in advertising!”?

Up next – Episode 7: C. Wonder!

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Much like an artist, an SEO specialist will start with a vision of what he or she would like to create. For an SEO specialist, this vision will help build a strategy. The strategy will answer such questions as: What are your goals? Is it more important to get visits or conversions (i.e turning visits into inquiries, leads and/or sales)? How are you tracking your SEO information? What tools will be available for your use? From this strategy the SEO impresario will create his or her masterpiece.

The first step is the research to determine what keyword or phase the target audience uses to search most frequently. Selecting only one keyword or phrase per web page (this will ensure the ability to best use the keyword), the content optimize begins. Content should include the keyword as much as possible—while remaining relevant and meaningful to the customer. Recently, content authenticity and relevance have become even more critical in the eyes of Google. Therefore, a keyword should never be used so often that it becomes obvious, repetitive or confusing to the reader. It’s best to use keywords at the beginning of the page as well as at the end, and to keep the content between 200 and 500 words.

If the SEO specialist decides there are other pages that need similar key words or phrases he or she will use their tools of the trade for help. These tools, such as the Google keyword tool, can tell you the competition level (how many other web pages are optimizing for the same phrase) for a given key word along with the number of monthly searches. They can also give recommendations for similar keywords. The ideal keywords to use will have low competition with a high volume of monthly searches, which is exactly what the SEO specialist looks for.

Now the SEO specialist will begin to add the finishing touches, framing the piece if you will. She or he optimizes the web page meta tags (tags within the code of the web page which allow additional information to be added) making sure the keyword or phrase is used in the title tag, as well as the description and keyword tags. The text in the title tag is what will display as the headline in a search engine listing.. The text in the description tag will often be the text below the headline. The H tags and Alt tags will be optimized as well to add that extra little something.

Finally, the SEO specialist will make sure his or her work speaks to the people—observing whether or not organic web traffic increases and using tools to continually monitor which keywords are most successful and where the pages they have optimized are ranking in search engine listings. This information will then be used to make adjustments, as needed, ensuring their work becomes more popular over time.

Just as I could paint a picture for the empty space above my fireplace, anyone can optimize for a search engine. But we all know, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. So, the real question is this: Will the optimization have impact? Will it meet your end goals? For my painting, the answer is no. I’m not going to create that work of art myself – I’m going to hire an artist.

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Topics discussed ranged from managing the demands placed on key marketing decision-makers these days to navigating the shifting sands of influencer audiences, as well as increasing hybridization of media options. As an aside, all attendees were in agreement that mobile marketing is a conduit that cannot be ignored—and is now starting to truly show its potential . . .but I digress.

However, the topic of presentation development and delivery was met with a resounding chorus of audible groans. All of these marketing pros shared that they are often tasked with crafting presentations for delivery— by themselves, their colleagues, and most unnervingly of all, by their superiors. Yet very few of these seasoned veterans expressed comfort in either their presentation development or delivery skills. Fascinating. These are people who make their living shifting perceptions of buying audiences, yet they get sweaty palms at the hint of delivering a presentation to a group. It seems that no matter how slick tools become, creeping paranoia regarding presentation delivery lingers.

The anxieties shared were all too common:  A sense of vulnerability. You’re up there alone. All eyes fixed on you. Ears tuned to every word you say. No place to hide. Fear of failure. What if I screw up, make a mistake? What if they don’t like what I say? What if they don’t like me? What if I look foolish?

And most oddly, worries surrounding successful delivery. Really? Yes. A successful presentation means people recall what was said and may share it with others. Gulp. Success brands you as an expert. And as such, you may be asked to speak . . . again. Double-gulp.

In reflecting on these points of angst, a few easy-to-implement suggestions quickly sprang to mind. These are at least partially based on a heritage of not only helping presenters “get through it,” but doing so with more confidence and vigor.

• Reset your expectations on audience attitude. Believe it or not, in most cases the audience is actually on your side. They want you to succeed. They will overlook any mistake in exchange for ideas you’re sharing. In the words of a theatrical director I worked with, “If you screw up, just keep going. Play it naturally and the audience will never know.”
• Keep it concise yet kinetic. Slide after slide to make a single point, or presentation graphics that take 15-20 minutes to wade through will ensure the audience is looking at their watches. Keep it moving – break up slides in your deck to control pacing and keep the audience focused on where you are right now, versus where you plan to take them.
• Make it pretty but with restraint. Because of a lack of comfort in their own presentation skills, some presenters resort to filling their presentations with a flood of graphic imagery in an attempt to add “sizzle.” Graphics are great – far better than a screen full of text. But if they don’t help clarify the core message, or if you’re not able to talk to them convincingly, it’s best to not go overboard. As noted German architect Mies Van Der Rohe said, “Less is more.” If in doubt, invest in some time with presentation pros. They are trained to craft stellar presentations—and to also provide a more neutral sounding board on content balance.
• Don’t just talk at the audience. Involve them as much as possible. The more interaction, the better they will recall what you shared. Get your audience talking by throwing out questions for them to respond to, or insert opportunities for open dialog.
• Know it – really know it. It’s pretty easy to spot the presenter who finished their content development the night before a pitch. He or she is the one with his or her back to the audience, largely reading their slides from the screen. To deliver a convincing presentation, drill into yourself ironclad familiarity with your information, so that if (God forbid) you arrived on site and had to deliver without any visuals, you could. Being well versed on your topic not only prepares you for anything, but it also helps you deliver with passion and conviction.
• Practice. A lot. If in doubt, present to yourself in front of a mirror. (Corny? Yes. But it really works.) Or rehearse your presentation with a friendly work colleague or a tolerant loved one at home. The more the words pass your lips before the “big day,” the more fluently they’ll emerge when they really need them. And while you’re at it, visualize yourself giving the presentation. Imagine yourself speaking, in a loud, clear voice, and prowling the stage as if you own it. Picture the audience clapping—it will further boost your confidence.

Ultimately, the alchemy of successful presentation delivery isn’t a complex formula. But it does require forethought, proactive effort and lots of practice. Invest time in solid content development and editing. Couple that with delivery fine-tuning and rehearsal. Then, really put yourself into the minds of your audience. The results will be grateful viewers—and dry palms.

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