One strategy is to focus on the knowledge and experience of the firm’s employees. I recently wrote about the importance of selling what you know (your smarts), not what you do (your services) to effectively market a professional services business.

There’s another factor that can help differentiate your company in a competitive market: How your employees make your customers feel. Case in point: My UPS delivery guy, Tom.

What can smart marketers learn about marketplace differentiation and customer retention from a UPS driver in Cleveland, Ohio? Here are some tips for your smart marketing strategy.

Delivering Packages and Much More

I opened a UPS account almost 20 years ago when I started a marketing consulting business from my home near Cleveland. A driver named Tom was assigned to my area. Later, when I moved the business to a nearby office building, Tom’s route covered my home and business.

Tom’s been serving us in both locations for many years. Like most UPS drivers, he’s smart, courteous, and efficient.

But Tom delivers much more than packages. He provides an exceptional level of personal service that you won’t find in a job description for a delivery truck driver. As the competent, caring face of the company, Tom helps ensure our loyalty to UPS.

Here are five principles of customer loyalty and retention that Tom practices every day:

1. Know the customer. Tom figured out quickly that my home was also my business. From the very beginning, he treated me like an executive, even when my office was 10 feet from the kitchen. As we grew, he came to know our whole team and what our business is about.
2. Value the customer. Though ours is a small business, Tom gives us the same respect as a large client. Our packages seem to be just as important as the ones he’s delivering to the biggest tenants in the building.
3. Anticipate the customer’s needs. If there’s no one available to sign for a package, Tom will deliver home-bound shipments to our office and vice versa. That may not be in the UPS rule book, but it gets important packages to us without delay and we love it.
4. Know your own business. Tom can answer almost any question about shipping via UPS. We can consult the UPS website (and we do), but it’s nice to get the right answer from a real person.
5. Delight the customer. When my business was home-based, my children helped answer the door. Tom brought them Dum-Dum lollipops and Tootsie Rolls. All these years later, he still leaves treats for my dog. Is this a corporate strategy to protect UPS drivers from dog bites? I doubt it. I think he’s just a genuinely nice guy who cares about the people he serves.

Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

If you’re marketing professional services, you’re selling what your people deliver. Promoting their expertise is essential, but so is promoting how they exemplify your commitment to great customer service.

Here’s how to make customer service excellence a core part of your brand and your marketing:

• Hire and train employees who make your customers feel so good about your company that they wouldn’t consider switching vendors because they place so much value on your team.
• Ask customers to help you tell your story in marketing campaigns through testimonials and case studies. Feature employees alongside customers in your advertising.
• Never forget that business is about relationships. Building great relationships with customers – who have the power to refer you to new prospects – is the smartest marketing strategy of all.

So what’s on the horizon for digital media in 2012 and what does it mean to marketers?

Three marketing experts shared their forecasts last week at a program sponsored by the American Advertising Federation – Cleveland, Ohio. Adele Pellicane, Senior Director, Agency Services, Traffiq Inc., New York, Larry Weissman, Managing Director, Top Line Revenue, Inc., Atlanta, and Scott Chapin, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy, Marcus Thomas LLC, Cleveland, were panelists. Michael DeAloia, Partner at Emerging Chefs Cleveland, moderated for AAF-Cleveland.

Here’s what these digital media pros see in their crystal balls and some insights for using digital media in your smart marketing strategy.

What Digital Media is – and Why it Matters

Chapin defines digital media as “anything that’s driving traffic to digital content: Paid media, social media, or other media that drives traffic to a digital source.” 

Marketers need to embrace digital media, says Weissman, because “it’s quickly becoming mainstream” and it’s reshaping the traditional sales funnel. “The sales funnel is now dramatically different and much more complex because of digital media,” he notes.

The Next Big Trend: Mobile + Social + Local

Last year’s big trend was mobile marketing, says Chapin. Advertisers spent over $1 billion in mobile marketing ads in 2011.

“What’s coming is the convergence of social, mobile, and local – that’s the hot trend right now,” he states. “Facebook and Google are both going in this direction. Every marketer’s goal is to figure out how to communicate their brand to customers when they’re on the go.”

Pellicane agrees. “The convergence of mobile, social, and local is the next big trend in digital media. It’s about the where and when. This will continue to grow, especially in the retail space,” she predicts. “It’s crucial for branding and driving sales.”

Weissman says local social media marketing platforms like foursquare are important to retail marketers, but “the local marketing space is extremely crowded and there’s a consolidation coming. Amazon and eBay are getting ready to launch these types of products. Foursquare will need to stay innovative to thrive in this environment.”

7 More Digital Media Trends to Watch

1. Real-time engagement: Chapin sees marketers continuing to move people from traditional to digital media in real time via such tactics as QR codes. “Everybody’s trying to figure out ways to make this transition easy for people,” he says. Another example is the plan by Shazam, developers of the innovative iPhone and Android sound recognition apps, to link audio via tags from this year’s Super Bowl ads to advertisers’ websites, as recently reported in Adweek.
2. QR codes: Though advertisers are rapidly adopting QR codes in marketing campaigns, panelists agreed that widespread use of QR codes by consumers won’t take hold until smart phones have built-in QR reader apps. “Using QR codes will grow exponentially when apps are pre-installed on smart phones,” Pellicane predicts.
3. The power of video: “Mobile marketing plus video is a huge trend in general, but especially for tweens,” notes Weissman. “It’s how they consume media – and it’s not on the TV in the living room.”
4. The growth of Google+: “Social is a huge part of Google’s strategy,” says Chapin. “It’s being integrated into nearly every Google product. Google+ will slowly gain in relevance and eventually we’ll be discussing it in the same vein as Facebook and Twitter.”
5. Easier ways to influence others: “‘Share this’ buttons are creating digital versions of kitchen-table conversations between a few people and many people,” Weissman notes.
6. Co-watching: Viewing a mobile device or tablet computer while watching television is a growing trend. “Marketers are trying to figure out how to integrate this and drive cross-device connectivity,” Chapin observes.
7. Measurability: Weissman says new tools are on the horizon to measure audience access via the web, which may create a way to buy digital media based on gross rating points. “Marketers want the ability to measure and analyze a consumer’s path from traditional to digital, to track the user’s experience from end to end, such as from an app to a website,” Chapin explains.

Tips for Planning a Digital Media Strategy

How should you use digital media in a smart marketing strategy? Chapin recommends that marketers ask these questions to determine a digital media marketing plan:

• Is your audience mobile? In most cases, the answer is an easy yes. Half of phone users now have smart phones, so penetration of smart phones in your market is probably a given.
• What content do you have?  You need something to pay off a mobile marketing campaign, like a mobile website or app. “If you don’t have this, spend your money here first,” Chapin advises. “Mobile users have even shorter attention spans than web users, one second instead of five. You must answer the user’s question instantly.”
• When and where is your audience? A mobile user can be literally anywhere in the world. Figure out the mobile usage patterns of your audience and connect to them then and there. “For example, during the week, Google Maps users are on desktop computers. On the weekend, they’re on phones,” Chapin notes.
• Can you do geo-targeting to a specific local market and near a retail outlet?

Pellicane advises marketing agencies and consultants to focus digital media marketing strategies on goals and metrics. “Don’t get hung up on the ‘shiny new object’ syndrome just to show your clients you can do it,” she explains. “Ask yourself, ‘what’s the goal of the marketing campaign and what metrics will be used to measure success?’ Do you want to build community? Drive sales? That will drive the decisions about devices and tactics in digital media.”

I recently helped a client of my Cleveland marketing consulting firm prepare a request for proposal (RFP) for professional services. I also reviewed the proposals received in response to the RFP.

Though the RFP spelled out the client’s needs in detail and all the vendors had the opportunity to talk with us to learn more during the proposal preparation process, most of the proposals fell shockingly short.

Here’s what these B2B professional services marketers got wrong in their sales proposals and what you can learn for your smart marketing strategy.

5 Proposal Mistakes that Can Cost You the Sale

The sales proposal is your best opportunity to demonstrate your desire for a relationship with a prospect. By creating a dynamic, well-written, and insightful proposal, you can show your understanding of the prospect’s needs and your ability to deliver the services the prospect wants better than anyone else.

But the opposite is also true. If you submit a bad proposal, you’ll have very little chance of winning the business. Here are five of the most common — and costly — mistakes:

1. We, are such good, writers: Most of the proposals my client received in response to the RFP were poorly written. One proposal that offered writing services as a capability was astonishingly bad with poor sentence structure, misplaced commas, and verbose language.
2. I’m sorry-what was your business about? The worst offenders failed to offer any insight into the client’s business or demonstrate how they could use that insight to help the client achieve success. Some appeared to have invested little time in learning about the client’s brand, industry, competitors, or key points of differentiation in the marketplace.
3. Hand me that cookie cutter: One firm noted with pride during the interview process that they could easily “whip out a proposal in a day.” And indeed they did, by using a one-size-fits-all template. They got it done, but it was so obviously a templated proposal, with references to services that had nothing to do with the client’s needs, that it demonstrated their lack of interest and their lack of understanding of the client’s business.
4. It’s all about us: One 19-page proposal had exactly two pages that referenced the client: The cover page and the pricing page. The other 17 pages were about the firm and how they work, with no explanation of how those capabilities matched the client’s requirements or the services requested in the RFP.
5. No ideas for you: Though a vendor shouldn’t be expected to give away a lot of free advice at the proposal stage, the proposal is a chance to demonstrate eagerness to go beyond what the client is expecting and get them excited about the possibilities of a future partnership. Ideas were few and far between in the proposals we received.

The B2B Marketing Lesson: Don’t Waste a Golden Opportunity

Any sales representative will tell you that it’s hard work to nurture a B2B prospect to the point where they ask for a proposal. So when you do have the chance to submit a proposal, it’s crucial to give it your best effort.

Always remember that your sales proposal is a reflection of the quality of your company. If you can’t demonstrate high quality at the proposal stage, you certainly won’t be capable of doing so if the prospect selects you. And you probably won’t get the chance.

How can you create a great business-to-business sales proposal? Here are some tips for success from a previous post: How to Create a Sales Proposal that Wins the Business.

Think about this list for a moment: These are TV spots people chose to watch online, by the millions. That’s an advertiser’s dream.

But what makes these ads so popular? Why did the Darth Vader Volkswagen spot get over 45 million YouTube views? Why did 25 million people view the Royal Wedding dance ad for T-Mobile?

It’s not crazy gimmicks or over-the-top production techniques, though some of the ads on the YouTube Top 10 list have spectacular visual effects.

I think it’s about storytelling. The most watched ads of 2011 engage viewers in a compelling story.

Here’s why storytelling is such an effective advertising technique and how to tell stories in your smart marketing strategy.

Why Stories Work in Marketing

Storytelling is fundamental to every culture. Stories work in marketing because everyone understands what a story is about. When the story is highly relevant to the needs and interests of the audience, it’s a powerful and persuasive way to convey information.

Stories have a plot, characters, and a narrative point of view. The mostly highly viewed YouTube ads – the Volkswagen and T-Mobile spots, Jennifer Aniston creating a video for Smartwater, or Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” campaign – combine these elements brilliantly.

7 Characteristics of Effective Advertising Storytelling

As a marketing strategist, I believe there are seven characteristics of a great advertising story:

1. It’s engaging: The viewer is immediately drawn into the scenario. Something interesting is happening and you want to know what it is.
2. It’s emotional: The best advertising stories make you feel something: Empathy, humor, joy, tension, excitement.
3. It’s memorable: You get it and can’t forget it.
4. It’s easy to retell: You can describe the basic scenario in one sentence.
5. It has a plot: There’s a beginning, middle, and end.
6. There’s an element of suspense: You have to stick with the ad to see how the story will turn out.
7. Most important, the product plays a pivotal role: The product is woven into the story so well that the story couldn’t be told with it.

Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Storytelling can be a smart marketing tactic for almost any marketer and great stories don’t have to be told just on TV.

One example is the excellent Avis marketing campaign on the front page of the Marketplace section of The Wall Street Journal. Avis uses real letters from grateful customers to tell stories about the company’s commitment to customer service.

To create dynamic marketing stories like these, I advise clients of my marketing consulting firm to think about the following:

• How are your products or services used? What stories might your customers tell? Plot out the scenarios and explore how to make these scenarios interesting to prospects.
• Who are your customers? What type of character is your customer? Use real-life case studies to showcase customers as themselves or create similar characters prospects can relate to.
• What emotions do people feel when they use your products or services? Do your customers feel confident, safe, happy, relieved, excited, satisfied, proud? Capture these emotions in the stories you tell.
• What is your product’s role? How does your product enable your customers to achieve success? Build your stories around the benefits of what you sell.

A final tip: Don’t make the mistake of telling such a great story that the product gets lost in the narrative. See my prior post about the Kevin Bacon ad for Logitech.

What stories do you think made the most compelling advertising campaigns?

Not because the direct mail campaigns our marketing agency creates require next-day delivery. In most cases, we mail standard class to get lower rates and we factor in the necessary delivery time when crafting a marketing plan.

But I got a sinking feeling when I heard this latest news. I fear that as service delivery levels fall and the costs of using direct mail climb, we may be nearing a tipping point when mail will lose its viability as a marketing channel.

Here’s what I think this news means for smart marketers whose strategies include direct mail marketing.

The Worrisome Implications of This Latest Move

The financial liabilities facing the USPS are staggering. The agency is working hard to find ways to cut costs and it has to consider all options. The most recent plan is to close more than half the nation’s mail processing centers, including ten here in Ohio.

We can probably get used to first-class mail that takes a day longer to get there. We also can probably manage without Saturday delivery, though many catalog marketers could find their call centers quieter on the weekends if the USPS gets approval of five-day-a-week delivery.

But think about the implications – for any service-based organization – of reducing service levels.

When your mission is to deliver a service, the last thing you want to do is deliver less service. The customers you have will leave and the ones you’re trying to attract won’t even consider you.

As old customers find new options – paying more bills electronically, sending e-cards instead of printed cards, using FedEx or UPS to ship packages, or using e-mail or social media instead of direct mail for marketing campaigns – and new customers stay away, a downward spiral can begin that’s hard to stop.

Fewer customers will mean lower revenue and the USPS may be forced to make even deeper service cuts, which will make using the Postal Service even less attractive. Where does it end?

Fuel for the Fire of Direct Mail Naysayers

As a marketing consultant and lifelong direct marketer, I strongly believe in the channel and often recommend it when planning marketing strategies for my clients. But even before this news, more and more of my clients  have been telling me lately that they can’t justify the cost of direct mail compared with e-mail, web marketing, and social media.

If service levels continue to go down and costs continue to go up, even direct mail advocates like me could find it harder to make the case.

Oddly enough, there could be an upside for direct marketers if fewer people use mail. A less crowded mailbox could help your direct mail campaign get more attention. For some direct marketers, continuing to mail – indeed, even mailing more – could be a smart marketing strategy.

But for others, the reasons not to use mail could begin to outnumber the reasons to use it. Unless the USPS can become a healthy service provider, marketers who depend on it now will rely on it less and less.

Why I Hope I’m Wrong

Direct mail is one of the most effective marketing channels ever created. A creative, high-impact direct mail campaign is still among the most powerful ways to capture the attention of prospects and engage them in your marketing message. And while I’m dismayed at what I see happening with the Postal Service, I don’t believe direct mail marketing will end in my lifetime.

But the cost and quality of service could make it an increasingly unattractive option for marketers. That would be a sad outcome for those of us who have always believed in its value.

Do you think I’m wrong? Should I stop worrying? What do you think lies ahead for direct mail marketing, based on this latest news?

That’s why so many smart marketers, especially companies that sell business-to-business (B2B) professional services, use client testimonials in their advertising, sales presentations, brochures, and websites.

So how do you get customers to give you great testimonials for your marketing campaigns? Follow these 10 tips:

1. Select the right customers. Choose clients who best represent the kinds of companies you serve and the prospects you want to attract — and who can speak credibly about your work.

2. Focus the message. Decide what you want to ask clients to say about you. Think about your core value proposition and the most important factors that set you apart from competitors.

3. Keep it simple. Unless you’re developing a case study, you don’t need a lot of content from a client—just a paragraph or two about the value you deliver. Clients should not feel burdened by your request.

4. Make it easy to say yes. Offer to write the testimonial for the client or suggest points you’d like them to make in what they write. Interview the client by phone, then send a draft of their comments for approval.

5. Get specific. Ask clients to go beyond general praise for your capabilities and refer to a specific aspect of what you do or how you’ve served them. The more specific the testimonial is, the more believable it will be.

6. Tell clients how you’ll use their comments. Clients will be more likely to agree to your request if you spell out how you plan to use their comments – in marketing campaigns, sales presentations, on the web, etc.

7. Ask advocates for more. The most enthusiastic clients, those true advocates who are delighted to tell the world how great you are, may be willing to give you more than a written quote. Ask to use their logo and personal photo with the testimonial. See if they’d be willing to give you a testimonial on video. You may surprised how many people say yes.

8. Reach for the stars. If you’re lucky enough to serve well-known companies your prospects will recognize, ask for their support. One of the best testimonials I ever received as a marketing consultant came from my biggest client at the time, IBM.

9. Thank clients who help you. Once a testimonial appears in your marketing campaigns, share it with the client and thank them for their endorsement. This is an ideal opportunity to send a small gift or make a donation to a charity on the client’s behalf as a gesture of your appreciation.

10. Most important: Don’t be afraid to ask. You deliver a valuable product or service to your clients and it’s perfectly acceptable to ask people who value what you do to go on the record about it. LinkedIn has helped many people become accustomed to providing recommendations for colleagues.

Why You Want Your Clients to Help Tell Your Story

Getting clients to publicly endorse your company is a smart marketing strategy because it gives you tremendous credibility. Testimonials can be especially powerful for differentiating your brand if you’re a B2B services provider.

A final tip: Sometimes clients would like to say nice things about you but their legal department or boss won’t let them go on the record. Ask if you can refer to them by title and type of company instead of individual or company name. Such testimonials aren’t as strong as ones with attribution, but they’re better than no testimonials at all, especially if the client has good things to say about you and your business.

Since we’re moving soon to new offices (a new suite in the same building in Cleveland, Ohio), I decided to take the opportunity to weed out our idea file, especially our massive collection of direct mail.

I tossed a lot of old stuff, but I was surprised at how many direct marketing campaigns created five, ten, or even 20 years ago still pack a powerful marketing punch.

I wondered: Why do some direct marketing campaigns stand the test of time? What do these campaigns have in common that makes them so effective?

Here are four things our old idea file taught me about great direct mail that you can apply to your smart marketing strategy.

Proven Principles of Direct Marketing Don’t Change

As a marketing consultant who advises clients on direct marketing strategies, I’m always on the hunt for effective business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) direct mail ideas and techniques.

Looking back through the gems in our idea file, I was reminded again of four proven principles of effective direct mail:

1. Write engaging teaser copy that grabs the reader and doesn’t let go: Teaser copy is the most important message in a direct mail package. Here are four irresistible examples of excellent teaser copy:

• 5 Words You Never Want Your Wife or Husband to Say. Know what they are? See inside. (Life insurance; payoff copy inside: “There wasn’t enough life insurance”)
• What NEVER to eat on an airplane. (Newsletter subscription)
• As it turns out, your mother was wrong. (Software company; payoff copy inside: “You DO know everything”)
• “We need someone with vision, creativity, and great marketing instincts: Someone like Jean Gianfagna.” (Cartoon caption on an Advertising Age subscription mailing that’s still a classic)

2.  Use paper to make the reader want to touch and hold the mailing: Many of the most effective campaigns in our idea file use paper creatively. Translucent or clear carrier envelopes, a brown paper bag, high gloss paper, or a rich, textured stock can transform a direct mail promotion.

3.  Select a creative format to stand out in a cluttered mailbox: Direct mail offers unlimited creative options, especially with formats. Mailings with odd dimensions, interesting folds, string or ribbon ties, very large envelopes, very small envelopes, die cuts, wax or foil seals, and pop-ups are among our keeper campaigns.

4. Deploy dimensional direct mail that screams “open me:” Dimensional direct mail can’t be beat to get attention, especially in B2B marketing. A small, clear plastic bottle holding a note, sand, and a tiny beach umbrella, a piece of wood, a small box with a key inside, an actual metal mailbox, and a lumpy mailing with half a Swiss Army Knife showing through a window (and a great teaser: “Open carefully: Knife inside”) are just a few examples of outstanding dimensional mail we’ve saved.

Keep an Idea File for Education and Inspiration

Truly great marketing campaigns grab your attention, engage you immediately in a relevant message, get your head nodding in agreement, and make you eager to say yes. If you run a marketing agency or a corporate marketing department, an idea file can help educate your team on these principles of effective marketing and get the creative juices flowing when you’re looking for new marketing ideas.

Do you have favorite or classic promotions in your idea file? Please share them!

Whether you’re selling legal services, marketing services, accounting, IT, insurance, benefits, payroll, or consulting, it can be tough to create a marketing strategy that differentiates your company from everyone else who does what you do.

Here’s the usual approach: “We have great capabilities and we deliver great service.” No offense, but you must, or you wouldn’t still be in business. Plus, all your competitors say the same thing.

Is that really what makes you stand out?  Is that the real reason clients choose you?

I think not. In my experience as a marketing consultant, professional services firms can skip over most of the blather about what they do and how responsive they are.

The real value professional services firms sell is their expertise and their ability to use that expertise to solve clients’ problems.

Here’s how to create a smart marketing strategy for a business-to-business professional services company by selling your smarts.

Set Your Firm Apart by Showing What You Know

The knowledge you bring to whatever problems you solve for clients is what makes your professional services firm different from everyone else. You’ve acquired that knowledge through your education and experience, which is yours alone. You want to build a marketing strategy around the value of that intellectual capital.

The first step is to focus. Do you have unique experience with a specific industry, challenge, application, or situation that sets you apart? Are you an expert on this topic? Decide what you can talk about with credibility and authority.

Then, organize your content. What keeps your clients awake at night? Think about how to organize what you know into topics and content that will help prospects deal with everyday challenges or prepare for trends and issues impacting their business.

Finally, create the communication vehicles to share your knowledge. Here are some suggestions:

1. Be a blogger. Blogging is the best way to regularly demonstrate your knowledge and your unique point of view.
2. Create case studies showing real-life solutions you’ve developed for clients’ problems.
3. Develop white papers that offer an in-depth assessment of a key issue your clients care about.
4. Be a columnist or contribute feature stories in your industry media .
5. Create and present original seminars.
6. Speak at industry conferences.
7. Conduct original research, share the results, and add your perspective on the findings.
8. Create a video. Repurpose your seminar or presentation content in videos for your website or YouTube.
9. Develop podcasts from your presentations.
10. Write a book. If you’re truly an expert in your field, writing a book is the ultimate way to demonstrate your knowledge.

Sell Your Smarts for a Smart Marketing Strategy

Showcasing your expertise is the best way to differentiate your professional services company in a competitive marketplace.

By sharing the knowledge and insights you’ve gained from your unique experience, you can position your company as an authoritative resource that clients and prospects can trust. That’s smart professional services marketing.

But they also share quality content produced by others. Gathering, sorting, and republishing content from other authors that you believe your followers will value is called curation.

By being a great content curator, you help customers, prospects, and colleagues find the “good stuff” online and know what to read. This not only makes you an informative and influential social media contributor, but it also helps attract new followers.

Here’s how to find, filter, and share the best content with your social media followers in a smart marketing strategy.

10 Steps for Sourcing and Selecting the Best Content

There is a wealth of potential content online to share with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter followers. Follow these steps to curate information that will bring real value to the people you’re connected with:

1. Use Google Alerts and similar tools to see who’s publishing what on the web about the main topics and keywords related to your business.
2. Sign up for RSS feeds from websites in your field, such as trade associations, conference sponsors, competitors, and industry media.
3. Subscribe to the top blogs in your industry to hear what the most influential voices are saying.
4. Follow key industry leaders and commentators on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
5. Sign up for e-mail news briefs from news media specific to your industry to know the latest news and research.
6. Follow reporters at major business news media like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg who write articles related to your business.
7. Apply your knowledge of your industry to separate the wheat from the chaff. Focus on information that offers meaningful insights, a new perspective, or new findings on a key topic.
8. Look for patterns that could indicate potential trends. Follow top researchers and share findings that could indicate a shift in your industry or your market.
9. Filter out content that’s obviously self-promotional or “research” that’s self-serving or otherwise suspect.
10. Add your point of view so people know why you’ve selected this content to share. Include comments like “A great demonstration of…,” “Helpful tips about…,” “Important news…,” “A can’t-miss conference,” etc.

How Content Curation Fits in a Smart Marketing Strategy

Content curation is an especially effective approach in a business-to-business marketing strategy, where companies strive to showcase their knowledge. Being a content curator is an ideal way to demonstrate your expertise and position yourself and your company as thought leaders in your industry.

The Next Great American Consumer by Brian Braiker provides a fascinating look at this development. Braiker says branding at birth is “a trend—fueled in part by the growth of digital devices—toward aggressively targeting a demographic that didn’t exist, in marketers’ eyes, until recently: infants to 3-year-olds. By getting their logos and iconic characters in front of babies—even those with still-blurry eyesight—they hope to establish brand-name preference before she or he has uttered a word.”

Is this a smart marketing strategy? Or is this the scariest thing you’ve seen all week? The answer to both questions is yes. Here’s why.

The Brilliance of Early Marketing

Establishing brand awareness and brand preference is the goal of every smart marketer, and as a marketing consultant, I have to acknowledge the brilliance of this strategy. The article cites plenty of research to prove the impact of early marketing on infants and toddlers, including studies which show that an American child can recognize an average of 100 brand logos by age 3. If you’re marketing products to kids and parents, you certainly want your logo on that list.

The real power of this marketing strategy may be its influence on parents. I bought Disney-themed baby toys for my kids and if Kate Spade had made designer baby bags when my daughter was born, I’d have been first in line to buy one.

I probably also would have let my young children play with my iPhone or iPad if I’d had one back then, as many parents do today. That’s why so many marketers like Fisher-Price and Nick Jr. are creating branded apps and online games for the very youngest technology users and why Dora the Explorer has a Facebook page (supposedly for parents) with over 770,000 followers.

But How Young is Too Young?

Of course, licensed characters on clothing, toys, and other products for babies and toddlers are nothing new.

But I wonder if marketers are beginning to take this too far. The level of marketing to infants and toddlers is clearly on the rise, as Braiker’s article illustrates, and the idea of marketing to someone too young and vulnerable to perceive the difference between reality and fantasy makes me queasy. In my experience as a marketing advisor, when it feels like you may be crossing the line of what’s appropriate, you probably are – and the negative fallout usually outweighs the marketing benefit when you do.

Is This Really a Branding Strategy?

From a marketing strategy standpoint, I also wonder whether this approach really can be called “branding.”

Branding is making a promise to a customer about the value you deliver and the experience the customer will have when they choose to do business with you. Is that what these marketers are achieving by targeting consumers far too young to understand product value and differentiate between products? Or are they just cementing an image of an icon in a young child’s mind without attaching any meaning to it?

If that’s the case, I think it’s an open question whether this will pay off as a branding strategy in the long run. Brand recognition doesn’t automatically translate into sales; sales are driven by value.  Even if a young child can recognize and name a brand logo or character, that’s not the same as achieving true brand loyalty among children and parents because of the quality of your products. And marketers who go too far by targeting infants could find themselves facing a backlash from society and parents.

What do you think? Where should marketers draw the line when it comes to targeting images and messages to babies and toddlers? When does a smart marketing strategy become a societal concern?