Published on
April 4, 2006 in
design.
“Method goes far to prevent trouble in business; for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business pending, both what to do and what to hope for.”
- William Penn
No truer words have been spoken when it comes to getting your marketing & sales projects out the door. As a Certified Project Manager, I naturally gravitate towards method as opposed to chaos.
But too often people feel that momentum is more important than purpose. Hence another old adage, “haste makes waste.” And there is no shortage of waste in most large corporations. The funny thing is that most creatives will identify with the above passages as well as project or marketing managers. For a designer to really put her best foot forward for her client, she must truly understand the what’s and why’s of the project. Having a standardized process that pulls out that information at the beginning of a project is critical to success. I’ve read that you can tell whether a project will come in on time and on budget as early as 15% into the project.
Put some method to the madness. And maybe the madness will slow enough to become more effective.
Great post by Dale Wolf
Marketing managers have to embrace the data-driven side of life. Direct marketing is very effective and truly measurable. Given the state of 30 second TV spots, no wonder the finance folks have a hard time investing in marketing/branding.
The better you understand your customer, the better messages & offerings you can create for them. The more effective the message, the more likely your customers will act. Action is ROI and ROI gets budget dollars.
If you’ve ever struggled with how to anwser “What do you do”, then this will help you. It’s a great starting point. I recommend filling in the blanks and continuing to refine this until it’s conversational and easy to say.
ala Mad-Libs…
You know how some (target audience) experience (problem), which means that (outcome of problem)? Well, what we can do is (solution); and the benefit of that is (benefit). Would you like to know more?
“You can have innovation without branding, but you can’t have branding without innovation.”
- Sir Martin Sorrell
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the “Audience” section of a creative/project brief filled in with simply “purchasing directors” or “executives” or worse “customers”. While this may be accurate at the most basic level, it is far from enough information to base marketing/design choices on.
Much like the last post on creative briefs, the Audience section is more about why this project is important to the audience, not just their title. You should include demographics, psychographics, business concerns, and any other market research data you have available on this targeted segment of your audience. The more detailed the better.
Your message will be ignored if your message is not tailored to what your audience wants and/or needs to hear. Today’s consumers are too busy to take time to figure out how a particular product or service helps them.
Your marketing collateral needs to be:
- easily understood
- to the point
- laden with customer benefits
- easy to act upon the call-to-action
Don’t talk about you; talk about how your product will make their life easier, save them money, or make them a superstar. Put yourself your customer’s shoes. Figure out how they want to be communicated with (medium), figure out how often (frequency), and figure out what they need to hear in order to take immediate action (differentiated & benefit-focused message).
In order for your design team/agency to build effective collateral like above, your marketing staff needs to be able to clearly articulate more about the audience than their business title.
