Layout or desktop publishing is a primary task for many of us in preparing printed promotional materials. It’s often a challenging puzzle that tests our creative and communication abilities as we precisely weave graphics, photos, charts, pictures and text into an attractive page design that perfectly articulates our message. Normally, our job is done.
But what happens to that work if in addition to its domestic purpose in the U.S., you’ll use it in other countries – maybe a product brief for a trade show France, a request for information from a Japanese conglomerate or sales collateral for your reps located throughout Europe?
When faced with this dilemma, companies frequently turn to language agencies to get their pieces translated and laid out for their foreign audiences. It’s crucial that both the companies and agencies act in a single coordinated process.
Translation has the least impact the layout for Chinese and Korean. Their character strings are usually shorter and require less space than English. Japanese too can be shorter, though sometimes it can be longer than English if it’s a translation in a very honorific style.
The big challenges arise for European languages. German translations often require about 10 percent more space than English. Layout gets tougher in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, which take 20 percent more words to get the message across.
There are three solutions for these languages: build extra white space into the design; use a large English font to be replaced with a smaller, but still adequate, foreign font; or eliminate page-count restrictions. These scenarios afford ample space for language expansion, although the original English design may flow over onto additional pages.
What happens when the English page design is already tight? Or, when it just barely fits into the allocated two, four or eight pages? Now what do you do with the additional translated text?
In these cases, your language localization company needs to draw from a variety of skills as well as exercise some creativity. You’ll need to work closely with your agency to assure that the methods used still achieve your communication and graphic objectives.
Here are a few of the methods that our Auerbach team has developed over the years that you and your agency might add to your practices to avoid losing anything from your original design:
Reduce the point size of the type…as long as it is still legible.
Use a smaller or tighter font on the translated versions.
Reduce the top, bottom or side margins to expand the print area.
Reduce the kerning, the space between letters and lines.
Add an extra page or two. (Note that this can increase print costs and change the design.)
Shrink one of the graphics or pictures.
Eliminate one of the graphics or pictures, assuming that the words are more important.
If all else fails and the page count must be maintained as is, cut the extraneous English text by 10-20 percent, providing sufficient space for the translation to expand.
Conceiving the foreign layout in advance when you design an English template is just one of the many issues you’ll confront in a global business strategy. In future blogs, I’ll address more of these issues.
Are there some problems you’re currently wrestling with? Let us know with a comment below and I’m sure the combined know-how of the community can solve your problem.
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I showed you how to create a persona that reflects all of the pertinent traits of your ideal customer, and places to go to fill a list with lots of people just like that. I’ll finish this series today with some more proven sources that most people don’t think of.
4. Network to grow your target list. Joining organizations and attending lunches is a great way to add qualified prospects to your list. Social media enables you to network without ever leaving your desk. My first choice is LinkedIn Groups. It offers the benefit of networking on a sufficiently large scale, albeit virtually, in narrowly focused groups. Join the same groups as your persona.
There is one BIG difference between networking online and live. Most online groups are forums for sharing information, providing veteran advice to the novice, and discussing mutual problems and issues.
Working your elevator speech into the conversation will likely label you an opportunist. Never pitch. Instead, participate. Join in several days a week and comment whenever you can advance the conversation. You’ll become a valued member of the group. And when any members are looking for your type of offering, what trusted person are they going to call?
Trade shows promise access to new prospects. Yet, I’ve seldom found them successful. People go to learn, not buy, and the decision makers with the checkbooks are seldom among them. Nonetheless, if you are trading stress balls for business cards, devise one more step to qualify prospects and then follow up. That said, trade shows are an ideal opportunity to meet prospects face to face.
5. Don’t forget the obvious. Live personas walk through your door every day. Add the best to a special list and treat them well.
Now, with a solid list in hand, you’re ready to develop plans to reach those prospects with a high chance of success.
While homegrown lists pay off handsomely, they often involve a lot of work. Can any of you share tips for making the process easier? Also, I’m sure many of us would be interested in stories about list building gone wrong, so we don’t tread the same path. Anyone have anecdotes about things to avoid?
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to develop a persona, a composite, which we called Donald T., that reflects the pertinent characteristics of your target customer. Today, I’ll begin showing you how to find and contact all of those who exhibit the characteristics of Donald T. or any other persona.
When you’ve rounded up their contact information on a spreadsheet or customer relationship management program, you can communicate with them as if they were a single person, who shared the same needs, pain points, buying habits, budgets, etc. Armed with such a list, personalizing direct-mail or email marketing programs, for example, becomes a snap. More important is the vertical direction the line takes on your response-rate chart.
2. Begin your search online free. A friend’s father advised him, If their free, take two. Well, here are five places to start searching for specific people free. Simply apply the information from Step 1 in my previous blog. Popular resources include Jigsaw.com to find specific names and contact information, Manta.com to locate small businesses, and ZoomInfo.com for contact information of people and companies.
Yahoo! Directory is great for discovering websites for thousands of businesses by industry categories. LinkedIn enables you to search its database for individuals and companies (and what individual or company is not on LinkedIn?) according to a number of parameters. If you search about, you’ll find other free resources online.
3. When to buy a list. Man, this is a lot of work. Why don’t I just buy a list? The best lists are always home grown. Always. However, sometimes you have no other choice than to purchase a list. In that case, describe your customers’ persona very specifically. You want to buy a sniper’s bullet, not a shotgun shell.
Is your offering for businesses or consumers? City or zip code? Age range? Sex? Income or revenue? Job title? Industry? Car model? Own or rent? Belong to a club? A ballet regular? Address? Telephone prefix? You’re after a list targeted for the sweet spot. Be specific, but know when to quit. More criteria tighten the focus, but increase the cost. So, request only what you need.
In Part 3 I’ll take you from in front of your computer to research a couple of places that are often overlooked. You have a few days until then – yep, here comes the homework – during which to take the characteristics from your persona and build a list or two using at least two of the five online resources in Step 2. Then, share with us how it went and any tips you discovered.
If you already have experience in this area, consider becoming a guest blogger and share your know-how with the rest of us. If you’re interested, contact either of us.
Yesterday, I discussed some of the business benefits of becoming more eco-friendly. Today, I’ll show you how to reduce your carbon footprint in a big way and likely save you money as well.
We all know we should turn off lights and computers, print on both sides of the paper and recycle. Here are a few ideas that you may not have thought about.
Not only will they help save the environment and likely cut expenses, they’ll also help earn you a valid green reputation can pay major marketing and PR dividends.
A warning, though. It can be habituating. Others have followed this same green path, enjoying and benefiting from one green deed after another. Helpless to stop. If that happens, welcome! Here are a few ways to get started on a green habit.
1. Take a day off and spend some time reading under a tree. The Sierra Club devoted its book review section to books aimed at helping businesses grow greener. These aren’t tips-and-tricks books, but analyze the benefits of environmental sustainability against business realities cost-benefit analysis, employee health issues and customer satisfaction.
2. Don’t take “green” to necessarily mean “green.” It seems like every product is labeled “green” or “eco-friendly.” For the most part, standards don’t exist and you shouldn’t take claims at face value. As an example, I’ll use an ongoing debate within the printing industry.
Printers’ increasing adoption of recycled papers is one our industry’s most lauded contributions to the environment. Is that practice alone sufficient for a printing company to label itself green? What about chemicals, solvents and contaminated water that can be part of the process? You get the idea. Ask pointed questions when evaluating vendors.
3. Get involved in the green-business movement. Get involved with organizations, such as the Cleantech Open business accelerator and competition, that foster eco-friendly businesses. Not only will you help the eco-friendly market to grow and learn new ways to use green strategies to your advantage, but also you’ll also network with like-minded businesses and maybe meet some new customers.
4. Take advantage of technology to reduce the energy your computer systems consume. For example, wind and solar power are now mature alternative energy sources. You can buy such systems or subscribe to green energy providers.
Replacing old PCs with more energy-efficient and productive systems is another way to make a big difference, but keep going.
How about those big centralized computers that provide email and other services. Instead of buying new ones, install special software that makes one computer operate as if it were many. It’s widely available from VMware, Citrix, Oracle and Microsoft and others for companies of all sizes.
What other ways have you reduced your carbon footprints that aren’t commonly known? If you’re already involved in other eco-friendly activities, tell us how to get involved.
If you’re hooked on green in a big way, let us know. We’re always looking for guest commentators with opinions?
AirSprint Private Aviation increases business people’s face-to-face time with clients, colleagues and family members through fractional ownership of the firm’s fleet of Pilatus PC-12 luxury aircraft.
The promise of the 12-year-old Canadian firm is that business moves incredibly faster if you aren’t shackled to commercial airline schedules, long lines and plastic chairs as your workspace. Having made its success in Canada, two years ago AirSprint set up a U.S. head office in Scottsdale, Arizona, and expanded its operations into the American Southwest.
The problem they faced was how to appropriately deliver its key message that positioned AirSprint as the premier provider of business and personal luxury private aviation services that are exceptionally safe, secure, and convenient. This isn’t a market to be addressed with cold calls and coupons. Nor, would passive mass-market advertising programs catch the attention of busy C-suitors.
Direct mail might seem a surprising tactic. After all, AirSprint is selling a luxury aircraft experience, not supermarket bargains. However, using new computerized printing methods in conjunction with a database refined by the company’s sales staff, AirSprint could individually personalize letters, brochures and other collateral to achieve the right upscale look and feel.
To connect directly with decision makers, AirSprint needed to dodge the inevitable gatekeepers who might trash or redirect even the most personalized letter.
That trick was accomplished by sending a handsome personalized hourglass, alluding to the value of time saved with AirSprint’s solution, via a delivery service. While the hourglass and delivery charges cost considerably more than a letter-and-stamp approach, they won passage of AirSprint’s message directly to the decision makers’ desks.
The delivery service confirmed arrival of each package, setting the stage for salespeople to call the prospective execs the next day.
During follow-up calls, the AirSprint’s hourglass promotion earned “rave reviews.” Though still early, the program has netted 12 interested parties and six proposals are already on the table. That’s a pretty quick conversion rate when the initial cost for your share of efficient luxury business travel is $614,000.
How often do you get to shake hands with the decision makers the day after your first pitch? AirSprint demonstrates how focusing first on what success looks like, rather than the delivery vehicle, and then planning backwards gets incredible results.
The hourglass and delivery service worked well for AirSprint. What is your craftiest caper for getting past the gatekeepers directly to the person who writes the checks?
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In Part 1 of this series on PR planning I covered the first two steps in toward developing a successful plan — picturing success and conducting intelligence operations. Today, in step three of our five-step plan, I’ll show you how to create a “Key Message.”
Messaging is constantly discussed in direct marketing, but it’s seldom done effectively. That’s a major oversight because your Key Message is the most important element of your plan. The purpose for all of your PR and marketing activities is to instill that single message at the top of your customers’ and reporters’ minds and have them convinced that it’s true.
3. Develop a “key” message. A Key Message is the one thing (Yep, just one!) that customers, press and other stakeholders must remember about your product or service if they could remember nothing else. The purpose of a Key Message is to capture customers’ attention by portraying their world as it would look after your product or service has solved their single biggest problem.
By concentrating on the customers’ single, most longed-for desire, a Key Message is extraordinarily more powerful than the customary practice of flinging every benefit and company brag at customers and press the instant they step within range. That information isn’t forgotten, just subordinated until the targets catch their breath and are ready to hear more.
If it sounds tricky, it’s not. You just approach a Key Message as if you’re the customer. Describe the change in the customers’ world the product or service would make. To make cooking up a killer Key Message easy, I developed this recipe. Bon appétit!
Killer Message Extraordinaire
Ingredients (do not exceed 1 of each):
1 ea. Product or service name
1 ea. Most important desire in customers’ lives, described
1 ea. Difference in your offering from your competitors’
Blend ingredients in a single sentence until the essence of the message is persuasive and believable. Serve in a novel and memorable way that enhances the dish.
The balance of one of each ingredient is important. The objective is for everyone to have the same message top of mind. Too much of any ingredient, and reporters, for example, might write stories about the wrong message.
The Key Message’s presentation may differ depending on the audience, but it’s still the same message. For example, customers want to see how wonderful their world will be after your product has solved their problem. Reporters, on the other hand, are interested in “news.” For them, the message should be framed to emphasize what’s new.
Before concluding, let me tip you off to the two most common stumbling blocks in the Key Message process – democracy and sales leaders. Both tend to cause mass message proliferation.
In a democratic messaging environment, everyone gets to contribute messages, and you end up with a long string of messages packed onto a product brochure.
Sales heads have a solution to customers’ every “pain point,” and irrefutable responses to every objection. If they work on customers, they’re perfect as messages, right? Until you seize your audience with a compelling Key Message, you won’t be able to whet their appetites for this detail.
Here’s how usually work it out. Recruit a few colleagues with the right stuff for Key Message development. As Key Message creation begins, start educating those stakeholders on the pluses of the approach. The team creates the Key Message and shares the finished version with the now educated stakeholders.
What problems are you facing or subjects you’d like to know more about? Let us know. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Also, contact us if you have expertise that you feel would interest this community. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
A key imperative of good marketing is to “test, test, test!” When was the last time you tested the effectiveness of the principal brochure you give to customers, the one aimed at enticing them into a second conversation?
Here’s a quick, easy test that will alert that something may be amiss in that four-color, three-fold sales piece that you leave with every prospect, circulate at trade shows and hand out in seminars.
The next time you have prospects together in a room, place a trash can just outside the door. After everyone is gone, go through the trash and compare the number of brochures you find with the number you gave out. While not statistically valid, you’ll get a rough idea of how attendees valued it.
If you recovered the bulk of your collateral, evaluate it for the following common mistakes. Fix them and your next test should produce fewer brochures and more second conversations.
1. You targeted the wrong market. Take time to really know who your top prospects are and, especially, their pain points. No, you don’t sell to everyone. If you don’t have formal studies, talk to your sales people.
2. The face of the brochure doesn’t highlight your target’s pain points. This is the most common mistake I see. The front of the brochure should be devoted to capturing prospects’ – and only the prospects’ – attention. Most brochures begin by describing the product or service.
Imagine what’s running through the target’s mind when he’s worrying about the chief pain point. That’s what will jump out and snare the individuals attention – Is your old manual accounting system slowing collections and making you late paying your bills? Now, you’ve caught the target’s attention. It also demonstrates you understand your target market’s business.
3. Your brochure doesn’t address obvious objections. Does something unanswered in your copy beg an objection? Has your top competitor been harping about a shortcoming in your product? If it’s a major issue, something everyone is anticipating your response, then cover it briefly, supporting it with facts.
4. Your brochure substitutes facts and figures for a description of the solution. If your product is a watch that solves timekeeping deficiencies of other watches in outer space, explain that “this timepiece keeps perfect time in outer space.” Support it with just the two or three key points that will interest your audience Don’t water down your message with a recitation on the physics involved, even if you think they should be as excited about it as you.
5. There isn’t a call to action. Look over your brochure. Does it specifically instruct readers on what to do next? Or, does it assume that if people are interested, they’ll find your number at the bottom of the pamphlet. If your response is, “Yipe! I forgot both!” then it needs some work. Don’t trust the prospect to reconnect with you or your website. End with explicit instructions to fill out a form, sign up for a special offer or something similar that puts you back in touch.
6. Your case to buy lacks support other than you? It’s not that you’re not reputable, but supporting your argument with hard data can make it bulletproof. Collecting data is why they invented the Internet. Mine your trade association, online publications and professional sites. Often, a rock-solid pitch will seem to write itself.
7. You ignored or downplayed yourself and your company. Likely your self-consciousness caused you to eliminate the human element from your sales piece. Selling is human experience. Even online, the more personal you can make the experience, the more comfortable and trusting customers will be. On a printed piece, tell people a little about yourself and the company’s history. It will help assure people that you’re trustworthy, know your stuff and a nice person.
Those of you who have a hand in creating sales brochures, what’s your best piece of advice? What’s the secret behind the most effective brochure you’ve seen?
As always, Péllo and I are interested in the problems you’re facing? Let us know and we’ll respond. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Have a topic that will interest the group? Contact us. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
This year, organizations will turn up their emphasis on personalization strategies in their overall direct-marketing plans to increase sales, attract customers and achieve better return on investment.
I’m not talking about just filling first names in blanks in a form letter, but using what you know about your customers (you probably know a lot more than you think) to have relevant virtual one-on-one conversations with them about their problems and your products.
New methods and advanced technology – business intelligence analysis, data mining, uplift modeling, to name a few – enable you to slice and dice prospects into narrow segments, so narrow that they can be treated as “personas,” similar to what we discussed in the first blog in this series.
Finely diced lists, for example, high-potential prospects, also do away with the expense and low response of indirect mass mailings. As a result, your return on investment soars.
On a more practical level for many of us, some basic analysis of activity on your website, customers’ purchase histories and data from your customer relationship management program provides sufficient grist for “personal” chats.
At the risk of sounding like a spokesperson for a sci-fi channel, these new developments enable a virtual you to communicate as personally as the real you has always wanted to.
Advanced printing and typography technologies take personalization another step. Some of the latest systems can create notes, signatures and even complete letters that don’t appear just handwritten, but written with your hand. Even after a close examination, the recipient might easily conclude that such a letter means he’s held in high regard.
Well, he is, isn’t he?
When you begin planning your next campaign, work in a personalization strategy and see the incredible results of communicating virtually one on one with your customers. If you have any questions along the way, leave a comment. I’m sure one of us will have the answer.
What problems are you facing? Let us know. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Have a topic that will interest the group? Contact us. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
QR codes are everywhere you look. In 2012, expect them to be in twice as many places. Wow, that’s easy pickings, right?
Yes and no. QR codes — those black-and-white stamps that look like square barcodes — are a simple, fun, inexpensive way to reach prospects with your message — if used correctly. If not, exposed to QR codes everywhere, people will soon grow weary of them.
To attract interest, a good QR code should yield a surprise when scanned. Like any online content, they must provide value. Think of them as small gifts, like the favors that delight guests at parties. They need to create excitement and anticipation, and leave the recipient satisfied.
Without fulfilling those expectations, their charm will wear off and prospects will be peeved.
Luckily, QR codes just beg for novel implementations and creative ways to use them that meet those conditions are endless: make one from prospect’s business card and send it as a gift when you follow up, put them in ads linked to product demonstrations, add them to direct mail pieces connected to special offers, . . . this will take way too long. Instead, scan this (see below if you don’t have a QR-code scanner):
And talk about ROI! Standard QR codes are free to add to any direct-marketing piece, though some imaginative implementations may have a charge. ROI? If investment to create a QR code is zero (ignoring the sunk cost of what you place it on) and it leads a customer to a special offer where he spends $100, your ROI is, of course, $100. Nice job!
Now, for your homework. What, homework?! Yes, but this will be fun and so addictive you’ll spend the rest of the day doing it. To appreciate the big marketing potential of these little black stamps, you need to create one. First, invest in a QR-code scanner (Wait, they’re free too!). Many are available, but I find the i-nigma scanner to be topnotch.
Next, go to Kerem Erkan’s QR code generator (again, many other good ones are available). Again, you guessed it, free. Kerem provides a lot of easy-to-understand information and links to other resources to peruse later. For the moment, scroll to the form in the middle of the page. From the drop-down list aside Select a Code Action pick what you’d like your code to do. You’ll be requested for needed information (a red asterisk will mark the spot). Now, click the Generate Code button and, voila!, your code appears. Right-click and either save or copy it. That’s it.
To complete your assignment, send us your code and we’ll publish them with your company’s name in a future post – free, of course.
What other topics are of interest? Let us know and we’ll try hard to cover them, or get an expert to do it. We’re also eager to share this space with guest bloggers if you have something of interest to the group.
Direct mail will continue its resurgence of recent years driven its innate ability to slice and dice a market into almost “personal” target segments. In yesterday’s introduction to this series, “Incredibly Successful Trend #1,” I showed you how such bull’s-eye segmentation can create efficient, high potential strategies, a virtual personal letter to high-potential prospects versus an e-mail blast to the world’s population.
According to a 2010 InfoPrint/CMO Council survey, 91 percent of consumers were unsubscribing to email pitches. Why the desertion? Examining the contents of consumers’ daily dose of 200 billion emails, the same study found that 97 percent qualified as spam. So, lack of relevance seems one likely conclusion.
With not too big of a deductive leap, one also could reason that rather than being wooed, roughly 9 out of 10 recipients are actually annoyed.
One of you will undoubtedly argue that the 9 percent are the target market. They opened the emails, right? So, the tactic met its objective. If the 91 percent are annoyed, who cares?
Since this is an open forum, I’ll forego my opinions for the moment and open this question for comments from all of you. What do you think?
Is direct mail received any better? After all, it earned the title “junk mail?”
Yes. A study Experian Information Services conducted for the insurance industry found that 43 percent of 18 to 30-year-old recipients preferred getting information with a stamp on it while less than half that number liked email best. (Somewhat surprising, even to me, 15 to 24-year-olds came in second in their preference for printed over digital mail.)
You can clearly see the trend in a study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association. The DMA predicts that investments in direct-mail tactics will reach $2.2 billion this year in a comeback from $1.7 billion in 2007.
Of course, I’m not proposing that you scrap your entire promotional mix, even email, in favor of direct mail. A balanced approach is always best. Analyze it for yourself. Let us know what you find out.
If you can grab a moment, gives us your views on the question I begged above that asks if we should care about annoying 9 out of 10 email recipients if we connect with that one interested prospect?
What other topics are of interest? Let us know and we’ll try hard to cover them, or get an expert to do it. We’re also eager to share this space with guest bloggers if you have something of interest to the group.
