Red Frog, Inc.

(from "How to Profit in a Down Economy" by Josh Barinstein, Copyright 2004)

Let's go into putting your money where it makes the best sense. And I want to make one of those big relief-type statements that smart marketing, the phrase I used early on, does not equal big spending. I'll repeat that: smart marketingto us does not equal big spending. You can spend money in a smart way, not a lot of it, and if it's marketing that's carefully thought out, you're going to get big results.

And that I think is incredible news.

Companies feel there's a sense out there that if you advertise for a billion dollars, that just the exposure will get you what you're after. And we all think along the lines of what Coke is doing. Well, the fact is that a lot of things in advertising don't work, turns out. But smart marketing, in the end, if it is thought out as steps that you can follow, does not mean big spending dollars.

The key when it comes to marketing at any time is to put money where it's going to work best for you. This is completely obvious, I realize that. The focus needs to be on getting measurable results for your money. So, if you're doing that, you're fine. You need to choose the right channels that make the best sense for your company that lead to your growth. If you don't, obviously here, you're wasting money. And that is, by the way, what many companies are doing. They're just spending… it's amazing. I've done a lot of reading on this, and companies will budget advertising… millions in advertising, because they feel that they have to because it's been done for the last hundred years. And that is not necessarily the best way to go.

So, what you don't want to find yourself doing is relying blinding on these traditional methods, for marketing and for advertising, that may or may not be working for you. You want to be constantly looking for alternative methods that yield results. And I'll throw a couple your way to get you thinking. Internet based initiatives. The Internet is a powerful medium that if used smartly can yield a lot of results. Viral marketing, which is easier on the Web now, and even beyond the Web, when things go viral... look out! People just go nuts over your product or service. And you can sort of inject your audience with that and have certain people speak up for you.

These are two areas I won't be spending any time on because they're outside the scope of the conversation, but I wanted to give you a couple of examples that are worth pursuing. So, it would be no surprise if I said to you that you should still be spending marketing dollars during a down time. This is not the time to stop. It is the time to spend, but wisely.

So, let me go through some practical ways, I want to make sure I get through some actual things you can do that would be, I think, very worthwhile investments. And this is in the form of a cross-media approach. So I'll cover three key areas to sort of move things along. I have valuable information coming from Yankelovich Partners and Harris Interactive. They did a media study not too long ago. I'm also bringing in elements from B2Bimc.org… very interesting website. It's one of a family of sites that I think might interest you. And I have my own ideas woven into this as well.

The first area for implementing the cross-media approach is business-to-business magazines. If you're going to be putting the word out in a magazine, these are incredibly valuable. Executives in all sorts of industries trust information that's published in these magazines. And I'm sure you all as professionals turn to these magazines. In the area of design [addressing Participant], I'm sure you read How or Print magazines. I’m sure you turn to those, or related publications for the latest on what's going on in the industry. If this is a medium (magazines) that can lead to results for you, you want to look at your own strategy, your own gameplan. Focus on high-frequency and high-impact exposure. You don't want to be spreading yourself too thin, and publishing in too many places. That is not going to be as effective as being focused on a few key publications.

Another thing you want to do is clearly understand who's reading. Who in your market is reading that magazine, that publication? And that you can influence, again not just through the exposure, but through response marketing. Get them involved in the ad. Get them doing something in response. Again, there's the Coke approach where they spend a lot of money on just the exposure. If you're just expecting that it's going to happen with the numbers, well you're going to be putting a tremendous amount of money into something that's not certain. Engage people, and get them to respond, towards building a relationship with them.

The good news about publications is that you can still negotiate attractive rates during this soft economy. So, don't think that, well an ad, a quarter page ad or whatever, would be too much for my business. Check in with some publications. You can negotiate with them… prices have come down. They'll pick up again, but they've come down.

So, that's good news. It's all worth exploring in the end, even if you think something is not worthwhile.

Business-to-business websites are the second area. These are primary sources for professionals who are looking for the latest info. We all do that on the Web. It's a very popular thing to do. So keep your site very well updated with valuable content, and at all times, needless to say. Explore cross-linking with other websites to increase traffic. This is a very, very, very powerful way to get traffic to your site. It's a proven Web mechanism. If you link out to many sites you're just going to have this great synergy, hopefully with good sites, if you're going to send business their way and vice versa. Make sure that you do careful search engine submissions. Including any sort of case studies or articles that you might have written which are great information for people to access. It puts you in a place of prominence and importance. We'll touch on that in a little bit.

Tradeshows. I’m not sure how applicable trade shows will be to you, but I will cover a few things about tradeshows. You want to explore what's out there. There's something… there's a Tradeshow Week. Are you all familiar with this magazine? This publication? Tradeshow Week? I know the Editor-in-Chief at the company. I don't know if they're local to L.A., perhaps, but he told me that there are something in the neighborhood of 4,000 tradeshows happening during the year! So, it's worthwhile to find out in the area of design, advertising, whatever business you are in, what's out there that might be beneficial.

Let me talk about being cost-effective in this area because you obviously don't want to be spending a lot of money. You want to look at tradeshows. You want to look at eliminating the bad return on investment, again, ROI. But you don't want to be dropping out if you're a company that participates in tradeshows from any particular important tradeshow, because according to attendees, 91% said they feel it's bad news if a company is not there. It reduces their level of confidence; they feel that there's something is wrong. Especially during bad times when we're all expecting things to go wrong. So, if tradeshows are part of your scheme, or in the future, you want to make sure you don't skip or you don't miss the important ones where people are starting to recognize you and expect you to be there.

Other ways of being cost-effective in achieving this are to have a smaller booth. Many times you can arrange to have dealers, distributors, or resellers help you with staffing the booth. It's another great way of exploring how to keep the cost down. And you can eliminate expensive parties. If there is any money going into that, that can be eliminated, and that can be downsized. You can improve attendance at a tradeshow through a pre-show mailer. This gets people interested in coming down to the event, and then obviously you can follow up later on and convert inquiries into leads. There's a whole process, not just showing up at a trade show, but the before, the during, the after.

Tradeshows I would say are a great idea during bad times because, and this is an incredibly interesting point, those who attend tradeshows during bad times are a special breed of qualified prospects, believe it or not. These are individuals who are showing up to buy, to research so they can buy. They are not the usual attendees you get at tradeshows who are educating themselves. You know, during good times you get the thousands of people showing up. And they're carrying their bags with all sorts of goodies. These people now, during bad times, are not just educating themselves. They're not there because it's some sort of perk that they get as an employee. They're there to learn about what's out there, to buy. They're going to be more cautious and slower in making decisions, but you have great space in that for building a relationship.

So, in the end, you're not losing on the potential. There's the same potential that there is during good times, which is great. You're able to spend more time and focus on interacting with them when they show up to your both. And, as far as replacing tradeshows with video-conferencing or events on the Internet, most people said no, they would never want to replace the real thing. They need the face-to-face. The face-to-face will come up again in a little bit. It is crucial. We all know what it's like to be engaging with someone face-to-face and shaking hands. These people said that this gives them a great chance to meet six to ten companies in a single day, and that's a big deal.

Before leaving the topic of spending money in a smart way, I would urge you all to look into seminars. Seminars, along these lines, and you can certainly do them in person, schedule an event at a hotel. That will mean a few dollars to spend. You can certainly also do a Web event, video-conferencing, and of course a teleconference, such as this! If it fits in with your strategy and who your target audience is, virtual events can be very cost-effective, and also effective in how you get the word out and share information with people.

So, that is my last point in spending money. Like I said before, I had a lot to say in this area, but I have to allow enough time to finish the rest that I have to cover.

Does that strike up ideas for you in terms of ways you can get out there and expand your businesses and be cost-effective, and put your dollars in really good places? Did that generate some ideas?

[Participant]
Well, I just wanted to say that I think the tradeshow idea is a good idea, and it's worked for us in the past, because you find you're able to get people in companies who you would try to get on the phone forever. At the tradeshow they're there and they're ready to talk and do business. I think anybody who goes to a tradeshow is ready to do business at that point. They're not going there for just a vacation. They're going there to make money and spend money.

[Josh Barinstein]
Exactly. It's quite worthwhile. Now, have you yourself compared attendance during good times and bad? And did you notice more of an interesting breed, let's call it, of people that are just willing to spend more time with you or that you can engage with a bit more deeply?

[Participant]
During all times. I just think at tradeshows there's always plenty of people to meet and there's never enough time to meet them all!

[Josh Barinstein]
Right. Gotcha. Well, good, good.

[Participant]
It's always over. Or you just come back and you have a lot of directions to go.

[Josh Barinstein]
Right. I'm glad you endorse them. It's good to hear that. I agree that tradeshows are important to participate in if it applies to your business, and to do it all the time. I do think, and that to me was a very interesting point, that if you don't show up to where people expect you, they're going to start wondering what's happened, especially during down times, where they're thinking you might have gone out of business.

[Participant]
Yes. Well, I don't think it's necessary to exhibit in tradeshows. I think that's where a lot of the money can be blown. I think it's important to go to tradeshows, because even attending tradeshows, there's a lot of ways to meet people.

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Josh Barinstein is President of Red Frog, Inc., the Southern California ad agency that provides worry-free experiences and powerful results in the areas of Marketing, Print design, and Web/CD-ROM development.

Learn more at www.RedFrogInc.com or by calling 888-955-0550.

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