10 Survival Tips From NEMOA
During a session at the Sept. 16-18 NEMOA Fall Conference in Mashantucket, Conn., a panel of marketers offered up more than 60 rapid-fire pointers and questions on how to survive in “a risky economy.” The panelists included Jean Giesmann, executive creative director for Stony Creek Brands; Chris Bradley, president of Cuddledown of Maine; Sharon Dunn, president of Duncraft; and Glenda Lehman Ervin, vice president of marketing for Lehman’s.
Below are 10 tips from the session that can be easily implemented by readers.
1. Define your brand. What do you have that no one else has? “There has to be a reason you do what you do,” Ervin said. “If you can’t define that and know what it is, I guarantee you your customer doesn’t know what it is either.” She suggested asking the following: Are you the biggest? The best? The most responsive? “My dad founded Lehman’s in 1955 based on private-label branded items,” she said, “and yes, there is a ‘Lehman,’” which the company makes very clear to customers.
2. Take photography in-house. It’s a time savings and flexibility advantage in terms of being able to shoot at the last minute without having to hire somebody for the day, said Giesmann about her experiences with Stony Creek’s Uno Alla Volta and Cooking Enthusiast brands.
Bradley noted that Cuddledown had some extra space in its building so it set up a photo studio there. “We’ve saved a tremendous amount of money doing it in-house; it’s more affordable with digital photography and not all that hard,” he noted.
3. Give customer service reps (CSRs) the ability to see inventory in your retail stores. Earlier this year, Cuddledown began to integrate the inventory in its two outlet stores with its catalog system. “Now we have the ability for CSRs to see on the phone if there’s a SKU that matches in the store,” Bradley said. “Every day we ship products that don’t show up in our warehouse inventory but are in our stores.”
4. Why use social media? Lehman’s uses Facebook as a real-time, free focus group, Ervin said. “Whenever somebody posts, we can respond right away,” she noted. “We can get new product ideas and establish a dialogue with customers.”
5. Establish a continuity program. Duncraft offers one in which customers can dictate ship dates and quantities, and receive 10 percent discounts on any orders in the programs or other orders. “These have turned out to be our platinum buyers,” Dunn said.
6. Calculate the return on investment of every product. Cuddledown has educated its merchants to look at ROI. “We track ROI by every single product for each of our books,” Bradley noted. “We went a little further and deal with terms — define the terms and label every product ‘great,’ ‘good,’ ‘close’ and ‘bad.’ Speak that same language with your merchants; ROI is a great discipline for everybody to have.”
7. Data is your friend. With so much data available today, Ervin suggested that marketers obtain only the data they’ll act on, and not “just because it’s interesting.”
8. Buy the right software at the right time. Ervin noted that web years are “like dog years, and you don’t want to fall behind.” On the other hand, she added that you don’t want to spend big bucks on programs you won’t be able to fully integrate.
9. Affiliate marketing works, but not for everyone. Although affiliate marketing works well for Duncraft, it doesn’t work for Cuddledown. Bradley suggested that affiliate marketing works when there’s a passion for a specific sport or hobby, such as gardening. “Something where you can reach out to customers through an affiliate,” he said.
10. What should you test and how? Duncraft tests almost everything, Dunn said. “When we did a recent postcard mailing, we tested variable printing, having customers’ names on the card and not having the names on the card. Now we’re testing various landing pages, checking the format of our landing pages to see if we can improve them,” she pointed out.
While Ervin suggested that marketers test “anything you want an answer for,” Bradley offered that anything in circulation should be tested, as well as new product categories and business models. “Try to think about bigger things being tested,” he suggested.
