FALL 2005 PAGE ONE ISSUE 34:1
Value-Created Review - e-journal for sustainable manufacturers and contemporary modern furniture design

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The Price of Promotion

VCR was founded to support the efforts of SMEs (small and medium enterprises), because they buy locally, pay community taxes and are answerable to their neighbours. Inherently, these attributes are more consumer- and eco-friendly than those of most MNEs (multi-national enterprises). It's disturbing, then, to see the recent trend by some SMEs to mimic marketing and business tactics of large corporations, including:

  • Over-reliance on media exposure. Unlike SMEs, large companies can afford heavy media promotion of selected "feel-good" projects to distract attention from their other, more dubious practices.
  • Huge gimmicky websites. Such promotion is usually a poor substitute for well-trained phone, office and sales staff.
  • Virtual-only product launches. Increasingly, MNEs launch items before final production and then abandon them when insufficient orders are generated.
  • Poor levels of service. MNEs off-load their wage costs onto their customers, resulting in such classic examples as the long bank-teller lineup and voice mail hell.

In a marketing context, these ways of communicating with customers lack credibility and don't pay off. On "Place Ad Here," a radio documentary that aired on CBC's Sunday Edition (November 6, 2005), marketing consultant Max Lederman claimed that today's advertising methods are no longer relevant. He was now advising his clients to develop WOM (word of mouth) marketing strategies (also termed conversational capital [1]). Finally, the marketing gurus are beginning to understand that honesty and community connection are much more effective than hype and hypocrisy over the long haul.

And once sent out a word takes wing irrevocably.

Horace (65-68 B.C.)

SMEs would be wise to resist the siren call of MNE-style marketing sizzle. Instead, they should exploit promotion techniques that will pay off for their scale of operations and customer needs such as:

  • Be honest with your customers and suppliers when promoting your company - warts and all. If this means announcing a plan to clean up your act in a few areas, that can work in your favour.
  • Design your Web pages to download in 20 to 30 seconds on a dial-up connection [2], use scalable base fonts (with good contrast) and make sure the design adapts to common screen sizes.
  • Back-load your new website budget to ensure sufficient funds for maintenance and regular updates.
  • Use "free" Analytics and Sitemaps reports from Google to maximize your website marketing ROI (see page two).
  • Offer products that are fully developed and checked for fit-and-finish or technical problems before shipping to the end user or retailer.
  • Answer email and voice mail messages promptly, at least twice a day.

So, if your company supports living lightly on the planet, you will aim to tell the truth about your products; avoid designing a website that burns bandwidth like a Hummer guzzles gas; respond promptly to emails; send a short "thank you" when your peers respond with marketing assistance; answer the phone - in person, now and then. This approach will help generate positive WOM that sluggish corporations can only dream about. Priceless.

[1] Diesel Marketing, Building Strong Brands by Leveraging Conversational Capital. Download PDF copy.

[2] Nah, F. (2004), A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait? Behaviour & Information Technology. Download PDF copy (without graphs/tables).

© Value+Created Review, 2005