Dear Reader,
New York City has put on its holiday finery to greet the colder winter temperatures.
Wrapped in tiny white holiday lights, the bare sidewalk trees guide us through the dark night.
It’s definitely not the same feeling as the stately 14-ton Norwegian Spruce in the middle of Rockefeller Center. It stands 82 feet tall and spreads its branches 50 feet wide.
This Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition dates back to 1933. Last Wednesday, November 30th, the 50,000+ led lights were lit during a special televised ceremony.
The last change to the tree:
Daniel Libeskind’s three-dimensional Swarovski star. Weighing about 900 pounds, the star has 70 spikes encrusted with 3 million crystals.
How do you select the perfect tree for this place of holiday honor?
For the past 30 years, Rockefeller Center’s head gardener, Erik Pauze, has scouted for the perfectly shaped Norwegian spruce to spread joy for visitors to the landmark site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sGn9yKVQDU
As a child, I remember my parents taking us to visit the main stretch of Fifth Avenue to see the tree and the amazing store windows.
Worried about the environment?
Don’t be! Since 2007, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has been milled into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity.
Table of Contents | Volume 10, Issue 49
- Marketing Lesson of The Week – How To Plan Your Marketing For 2023
- Voice Notes – Voice Marketing Extends Beyond The Voice Assistant
- New York Marketing Minute – Do Your Holiday Greetings Do Double Duty?
- Mark Your Calendar
► Pantone 2023 Color: Inspired By The Metaverse And Nature
I’m tickled pink with Pantone’s 2023 Color of The Year, Viva Magenta.
Pantone describes the 2023 color, Vive Magenta, as “… brave and fearless, and a pulsating color whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration[.] … Viva Magenta welcomes anyone and everyone with the same verve for life and rebellious spirit. It is a color that is audacious, full of wit and inclusive of all.”
Often Pantone’s color of the year pulls together a number of underlying themes across cultures and markets. Some of the downtown stores are filled with variations on Viva Magenta.
Why Is Color Important To Marketers?
Because color has the power to influence and make a connection with people, whether you do this as an individual or a brand. More broadly, color aids recognition and helps to make a statement that stands out.
Marketing Lesson of The Week
► How To Plan Your Marketing For 2023
Given the rollercoaster of this year’s global events, it’s difficult to make plans for 2023.
While few executives like budgeting, it’s a necessary part of business. Sales forecasts are needed to determine your organization’s need for raw materials, employees and marketing. This includes times when customers feel nervous about what’s happening in the broader market.
Unfortunately, people tend to buy products and services based on their perceptions of what’s happening in the greater environment as well as their personal situation. As a result, they cut back on their spending across all types of purchases. Alternatively, they may switch to less expensive options
For marketers, this can be scary.
Why?
Because marketing is one of the first areas senior management looks to cut budgets.
While this isn’t rational, it happens despite the fact that most businesses must continue marketing to stay top of mind with their audience.
The best thing that you can do is to prove how each of your marketing campaigns, projects and technology assets contribute to your organization’s ROI (aka return on investment). To do this, translate your results into financial terms your c-suite understands.
Actionable Marketing Tips
Get the best data you have to determine the following:
- Assess your sales to date compared to the past few years. Have customers changed the mix of products and services they’re buying?
- Determine your cost structure. If you’re lucky, this analysis gets done by a finance or accounting function. That said, it’s your responsibility to make sure costs are allocated appropriately to your area.
Consider where your products and services can stand out.
- Can you use the excess marketing budget from this year to create next year’s marketing?
- Can you improve your onboarding process to ensure that your products get used and paid for? This can be as short as 30 days up to 90 days. Where possible, re-envision existing content to answer key customer questions.
- Can you create additional services to make your products stand out? For example, Uniqlo hems new jeans for free while making them unreturnable.
How can you make your marketing budget more efficient? Realize that this may involve working across departments.
- Use social media listening to support social media customer service. According to Brooke Sellas of B-Squared Media, this helps businesses prove ROI.
- Improve onboarding across products and services. Where possible, determine if you have areas that cause end-users, who may not be buyers, problems.
- Work with customer service to improve your processes where possible.
Recommended Reading
Voice Notes
► Voice Marketing Beyond The Voice Assistant
Recently, a number of people in the voice space have been having a “Chicken Little Moment” (aka the sky is falling). They’ve written and posted about Amazon and Google reducing their resource allocations to their voice assistants.
That said, the installed market of voice assistant owners remains sizable. Further, many of these owners regularly use their assistants to perform a variety of functions. (Source)
Other devices also provide voice functionality such as computers, tablets, and—Dare I say it?—landline phones.
The big difference:
Based on habit many people use these devices with their hands instead of their voices.
Lastly, there’s the most popular voice device, the smartphone. People have it near them at all times. It contains their favorite apps and other information. Also, it lets them communicate via phone, text and email as well as other voice and video options.
For marketers, voice must be a key element of your marketing mix. Because it provides information to your audience when, where and how they want to consume it.
Post-pandemic, people’s daily schedules and routines have shifted. As a result, so has the context of when and where they consume information. Often, this is defined by the device they have with them and the content format they choose to use.
To enter shoppers’ consideration set, make your information findable and discoverable across formats. Providing quality voice and audio content expands your brand’s ability to get found and consumed on your audience’s schedule, not yours.
Don’t take my word for it!
McKinsey’s research shows that about a third of B2B buyers use voice options. This translates to video conferences, web chats and phone calls. While this data is for B2B buyers, their purchase behavior is becoming more like B2C.
Note: Remote human actions are voice actions.
Actionable Marketing Tip
- Assess how to provide your content across different formats including voice and audio to reach your prospects where and when they want it. Bear in mind–many shoppers check competitive sites while they’re in a retail establishment.
New York Marketing Minute
Do Your Holiday Greetings Do Double Duty?
Living in Manhattan, we regularly get direct mail pieces from real estate people, many of whom we don’t know. It’s not surprising since there’s lots of construction and conversion from commercial to residential across the city and it’s difficult to gauge when someone will be “in the market” to rent, buy or sell their apartment.
Unlike the suburbs, where people tend to buy homes in the spring so their children can start school at the beginning of the school year, city dwellers buy and rent property all year round.
So it was unsurprising when we received an oversized postcard from a real estate agent we didn’t know.
Why do I mention it?
Because it’s a great example of how to get people to pay attention to your marketing.
One side of the card read, “Happy Holidays, Compass.”
If that was all, it would have been quickly destined for the shredder.
In addition to his email and mobile number, this real estate agent (or perhaps his whole office), added a message that answers many apartment dwellers’ biggest question during the month of December: “How much do I tip the staff of my building?”
Unfortunately, no one tested the QR code.
Oops! It requires the recipient to have an Instagram account in order to view the video. Instead, it should have linked to content on the real estate company’s website or YouTube.
Why is this a good marketing tactic?
It gets the recipient to take another step to know the agent by viewing the video, even if you’re not in the market to sell your place.
Unlike retailers and the hospitality industry, real estate agents don’t have a product with a holiday tie-in. So this card does more than say “Hi I’m here if you need me.”
How do you apply this to your marketing?
- Figure out what type of information your target audience would find useful that’s related to your products or services.
- Develop and edit a video, podcast, or another piece of useful content and post it on your website. For example, my favorite glasses store sent an email reminding me to use my healthcare spending account before the end of the year (More than once, I’ve bought glasses to use up my healthcare spending account.)
- Create a holiday greeting, direct mail, ad, or email to spotlight the information as a QR code to your website or YouTube channel.
Recommended Reading
Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar
► Marketing Planning Friday Forum — December 9, 2022, 11:30 am ET
MarketingProfs presents Pam Didner, Lauren Sisneros and Samantha Stone.
Virtual and free with registration.
► Live Review: Webpages, Keywords and Contents — December 14, 2022, 5-6 PM CT
An Orbit Media presentation with Andy Crestodina. Virtual and free with registration.
(BTW–You can submit your own material for review!)
► Digital Book World – January 16-18 in New York City
The annual gathering of the publishing industry returns to New York City after six years.
► Are you hosting an event that you’d like us to add to the Marketing Calendar?
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Event For AMG Newsletter Calendar.
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Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: Want Heidi Cohen to contribute a quote or other commentary to your next article, presentation, video, research, or book? Then hit reply to this email and ask.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter? Previous newsletters can be found in the AMG Newsletter Archive.
