Collateral Marketing

Say Marketing Collateral (MC) and thoughts of standees and leaflets start swimming around in your head.

What i see around me is the explosion of ideas that has not only transformed the way products are being marketed now but the amount of innovation that it has brought in and therefore infused awareness in the users of the products.

Getting the basics right is important though. Looking the at forest and then at the trees is the mantra most top guys follow. Also, looking at the forest from all possible angles would certainly help. Then come the trees.
I'll elaborate...

For MC difference of material that goes into roping in an institutional Buyer (IB) as opposed to a one time buyer.
For an IB, there is always the financial factor - get that right and you would be well on your way. Dealing in software products gives you a particular insight which is significant because it tells you the way software guys think.

The Forest:
I started developing MC for a product some time back and wanted to categorize it in terms of industry relevance. What turned out was that i had to categorize it NOT only in terms of industry relevance but in terms of the hierarchy of the organization that i would be pitching it eventually to. This was interesting since i had not seen this aspect earlier. (though that doubled the work!)
Since i did not have control over who in the organization would see what at which time - i had to be very careful as to what i would be including into the content, and more importantly what i would not!

Another aspect would be the environment that i would be making this pitch in. For instance if it was a sales conference and industry biggies are going to look at this material, i obviously cant get into the nitty gritty of the products and start detailing as to how it would impact bottom lines or improve overall efficiency (that's what they are interested in any way - money!) i would have to be more expansive in my approach and my material would have to be more generalized to relate to any industry. (I am btw in the software storage and so my content is related to that). Only after luring in the fish, would you bring out the club. Bludgeon him with information - which is mostly live cases and referrals that you have in your arsenal simply because if the guy does not want it right away - your money proposition would hit the right nerve the first time. At the same time pepper it with information on how it would impact overall efficiencies and business processes and you have a winner!
The whole point being - have a fish hook, but also keep a club handy.

The Trees:
Another aspect that i would like to touch upon is the core concept of the product that one would be dealing with. Now for instance, i was selling a bike, no matter what i do, it would take you from point A to point B. Now the difference here would be that it would take you there in the least amount of time or would take you there most comfortably or would take you there with the least fuel consumption - would all be subject to the brand identity and message that your branding team has formulated. (in my case i am the 'everything') Infusing these into your MC would highly appeal to the target audience and in case of IB's would give a clear picture of the philosophy that your product subscribes to. And don't worry there - if you have a financial topping to make the deal sweeter, throw it in, but more often than not, the IB's are going to see the moolah then and there.

These thoughts are more from the perspective of software marketing but i saw the parallels with others and therefore i am having an "out of industry experience" to talk about it!

Frugal Marketing

The essence of marketing lies in reaching out to the consumer. I talk about communication here. Wikipedia defines communication as the exchange of ideas, thoughts, opinions or information by way of speech, writing or signs. The sole agenda of any marketing guy has to reach out effectively to the consumer.

Let us explore the meaning of 'effectively' -
Does it mean climbing sales charts? Or does it mean being the market leader? More TRPs? Top of the mind recall? Awards for best service/product? What???

'Effectively' would only mean that the message that your product/service/company is trying to convey is perceived; exactly as intended. The situations mentioned above are merely happy consequences of the perception that you have ingrained by way of effective communication. Understanding this is unfortunately an exercise that involves a lot of money. A decent market research has to be undergone to evaluate your position. Move over to analysing the data from your strategic standpoint and enable action items for further resource development. This becomes a pain point for most of us because in this era of financial difficulties, research would be only possible if we all remain afloat - let alone Market, which seems like a concept right out of fairy tales.
So, the million dollar question remains - how to market frugally?

It is not as hard as it would seem. With the boom in online communication and the younger generation being heavy Internet users, all your preliminary needs are addressed at this level itself. Content now can be directed to a whole set of users that are the intended audience and not beamed across the country hoping to be picked by the target market. Whatever the need is, it is addressed here as soon as you can say 'Orkut'.

First up - Google. The search giant that has revolutionised the Internet. Be it paid searches (the small two liners that appear to the right of the page saying 'sponsored links' on top) or the first page of the search results, it is best to be seen on google in any form present. Its a bit like American idol. Make a fool of yourself on the stage - but get noticed - be there on Google! Tools like SEO are now widely available and knowledge commonplace for the same. Google has other very powerful tools in its labs - worth a dekko. Analytics being one of them, i myself use analytics to figure out how many hits I've had on this blog and from where.

Social networking sites are another very strong tools to direct targeted content. Here everyone knows everybody else, so there are two pronged vectors working here for you. There is the grapevine or word of mouth communication and there are the 'event happenings' (invites being sent by peers who have recieved these by their peers) that we all are well aware of on facebook or orkut. I can recall an instance of a restaurant in Bangalore that opened up recently and had business up 70% only in the first week thanks to a facebook page.
Such could be the might of social media. We all are well aware of the furore that took place over the cattle class remark made by Sashi Tharoor on Twitter which is only another case in point of the power that has been unleashed by social media.

Viral marketing and micro sites are another cost effective way of involving the consumer by whetting his appetite for an experience by technology like Web 2.0 and Flash, Flex and Silverlight. Many auto majors use the microsite route to bring in the eyeballs and address the minute questions that are pertaining to their product.

Going online has another advantage which is not completely apparent. It is persuasive word of mouth publicity. Here's an example, Coldplay - the popular English alternate band from UK put up their latest album on the site free for download as a tribute to their fans. This was then shared with millions of people online and they in turn shared the same link with their peers. The persuasion is definitely the product - free music. but what does not meet the eye is the persuasion involved in step 2 i.e. passing the information to the peer. Its the difference between telling you that Coldplay is giving away free music on their site. as opposed to giving you the link directly to their site. Apart form this, there are Blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds et al for the savvy and the updated.

Moving away from the Internet, another powerful media for frugally getting across your message is PR. PR is managed across channels so that only a succinct, all encompassing and unambiguous message is passed on. This is important because PR is a dual edged sword. A message that is not clear would only lead to major down gradation of the image of he subject under question- be it a product, person or an organisation for that matter. Jessie Paul has addressed this question in great detail in her book when she says that there should always be a face to the organisation that speaks for it. A clear confident person who represents all the organisations stands for and more. you could find more information in 'No money marketing' - a very interesting read.

Many other interesting ventures are available for the adventurous. SMSs. There are various sites that allow users to send sms's to other people via signing up on their site and filling in some amount of information. Although it is inadvisable to go for such a route largely due to the veracity of the site involved and security issues.

Moreover the perception of such a method will not always be favourable.