Today we’d like to applaud the efforts of Brad Benson, an NFL offensive lineman turned car dealer and a man, for those who hear his regular radio commercials, who needs no introduction.  The former All-Pro is the owner of Brad Benson Auto Group in South Brunswick, NJ and the author of some of the zaniest promotions I’ve ever heard.

The first time I heard one of Bensons’ commercials was in the wake of former New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer’s prostitution scandal, and he caught my ear by addressing the embattled ex-Guv directly.  In the ad, Benson told Spitzer, now without the use of “the governor’s limo,” where he should turn for all his automotive needs, and reminded listeners of the full service VIP treatment all of his customers get.  Once Benson warned that it might not be the kind of “VIP treatment” Spitzer had paid for in other places, I was hooked.

Sure, calling out a disgraced politician might be crossing the line, but Benson seems to up the ante each time he takes to the mic to record a new ad.  When Giants Stadium, Bensons’ previous place of business, was torn down to make way for the New Meadowlands Stadium, Benson bought the goal posts and put them up on the lot of his dealership.  When he told customers to “Come on down and see my 40 foot erection,” I’m sure many people sat up and took notice.  If that didn’t get people talking, surely his promise to give up sex until he became the top Hyundai dealership in the country certainly may have.

But then a funny thing happened.  In October, Brad Benson Auto Group actually became the number one Hyundai dealership in the United States!  In a time when most car dealerships are either closing their doors or hurting bad enough to consider it, Benson’s business has shown steady growth since the start of the seemingly outrageous radio campaign.  The reason for this, according to Benson, is simple.  “I think it helps business because we’ve actually branded ourselves,” Benson told New Jersey 12 News recently.  “People know us.”

After listening to his ads that play constantly on some of the New York area’s top radio stations, it’s hard to disagree with Benson.  Hearing his seemingly off-kilter marketing ploys day after day, you do get the sense that you know him personally.  We’ve talked before on this blog about building relationships with your consumers, so if a customer walks into your business with a sense of familiarity, isn’t that already half the battle?

Now, some people have found the ads to be in bad taste.  Surely, the butt of his jokes are not too keen on hearing the ads, and Benson drew criticism when he offered Saddam Hussein a car if he would abdicate his seat of power in Iraq back in 2003.  But like it or not, Benson delivers.  He couples his antics with impressive deals on his cars and when he makes a pledge in a commercial, he keeps it.

For the most part.  Benson did admit in an interview that his celibacy act was indeed just that, but when he promised Pastor Terry Jones a Hyundai for not burning the Quran on September 11th, Jones got his car.  From the sound of things, Benson could afford to give one away.

What unconventional branding techniques have you seen in the past that have done wonders for a business?  What branding tactics have you tried for own business?  What do you think of Benson’s ads?  As always, we’d love to hear from you.

Lately, several businesses have made customer retention the focal point of their marketing strategy.  When dealing with your own customers, you could follow the lead of Filters Fast, an online air and water filter company.  The good folks at Filters Fast have taken a new approach to email marketing, coming up with a creative way of reaching out to their customers’ inboxes without ending up in the spam folder.

After some research, Filters Fast discovered that simply adding customers who had purchased their products to an email list produced a click-through rate of less than 2 percent.  Not only did they find that they were wasting their time, but in many cases, they were trying their customers’ patience.  Instead, the company has found success with opt-in subscriptions, in which individuals have the choice of signing up for free email alerts when it’s time to change their water filters (read: buy new filters from Filters Fast).  President Ray Scardigno expects 15 percent of his audience to sign up before the end of the year, which means customers will start paying attention to Filters Fast emails, instead of going right to the delete button.

Large companies like to use the term “customer loyalty” when referring to customer retention, offering at least the illusion that these efforts are done for the consumer’s benefit.  We all know, however, that when the customer feels they are benefiting from choosing our business, it also benefits our bottom line.

One of the more common examples of customer loyalty are of course, airline frequent flier miles.  Does your business reward your “frequent fliers”, those customers who come back to you again and again?  Perhaps you’ve seen these programs on a small scale during your lunch hour, when you got that punch card from your local sandwich shop.  Did you buy your ten sandwiches to get the eleventh free?  Odds are someone did if they keep giving them out.

For more on customer retention and new ways to implement it in this modern day and age, read Peggy Dau’s thoughts on how to use social media to keep your customers coming back for more.

And check out Harvey Thompson’s book Who Stole My Customer?? for ways to keep those consumers from going elsewhere.

What customer retention programs have you implemented for your business?  What ways would Filters Fast opt-in program work for you?  Let us know so we can share it with the rest of our readers!

• See why Brittney Drye of The Stir thinks that Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of the MTV reality series “Jersey Shore” is a better market than all of us.

• Check out the marketing lessons that beer can teach us, according to Margaret McDonald of the blog MissCommunications.com

• Tom Hansen of The Big Fat Marketing Blog talks about how General Mills Cereal boxes have gone retro, and the marketing implications it has for the rest of us.

• Read David Gomez’s thoughts on the corn syrup industry’s new plan to get people to forget about the health problems caused by its products on TGDaily.com.

• On a similar cover-up note, see how the New Jersey Nets are trying to market their new home in Newark to their fan base, a demographic that may still be hungover from a disastrous ’09-’10 season.

• Take a look at ClickThrough-Marketing.com’s report on Yahoo catching up to Google in the marketing game.

• See the BBC’s Andrew Harding’s ideas for marketing Africa to the rest of the world.

• Hank Cordello of the CBS Buisness Network shares his thoughts on better ways for the FTC to regulate food companies marketing to kids.

• Check out what Arielle Ford of the Huffingotn Post Blog calls “Your #1 Best Marketing Tool.”

• Read why John Alex of MetroWNY.com thinks one Hollywood romance is founded on a desire for better marketing.

As always, we want you to enjoy these links and use them to give yourself a leg up on the rest of the marketing competition.  But please remember, we don’t you to just read these posts, but interact.  Leave comments on these blogs and start a dialogue with those making waves in our industry.

Well, maybe you’re not expecting that much.

By now, we all know that in advertising, things may not always be what they seem.  Each of us has seen hundreds of examples of food companies putting their best face forward in their ads, then failing to deliver anything close to what the packaging or a television commercial might indicate.  Here’s a bunch of examples of what we mean.

And a few more from the fast food world.

Most of us are resigned to the fact that the perfectly prepared packaged delicacy we are about to consume might not look exactly as it does on the box, but one company has recently tried to buck this trend.  Domino’s Pizza launched its new “Show Us Your Pizza” campaign over the summer, asking consumers to take their own pictures of freshly delivered food to see how they stack up against traditional advertising shots.

Essentially, Domino’s has pledged to do a better job of making their actual product look more like it does in commercials.  This comes on the heels of research done by the company to determine why customers chose to (or chose not to) eat their pizza over all others.  This process included taste tests, individual surveys, focus groups and a serious sampling of the competition.

That sort of research is the bread and butter of marketers like us.  Time and time again on this blog we’ve talked about how customers are your most important resource, and why listening to what they have to say is the surest way to keep them coming back for more.  Kudos to Domino’s for taking the time to find out what’s on consumers minds, but we also want to give them credit for taking it a step further with a genius marketing idea.

The “Show Us Your Pizza” campaign has been a remarkable success, with the pizza giant receiving thousands of consumer generated pictures over the course of the last few months.  It offers customers a real chance to interact directly with the company, and makes them feel as if they are helping to improve a big corporation’s products and services.  This concept, known as reciprocity, gets consumers to respond to a positive action (Domino’s basically asked customer’s to grade the pizza) with another positive action (posting the pictures to the website).

As Rafael Grillo, a marketing expert and contributor to Seekingalpha.com writes, this is the same as when “A sales person has been particularly helpful and has spent what might be perceived as an inordinate amount of time with us, we feel bound to buy something from him or her.”  Grillo goes on to say that when a company that opens up to its consumers, “Going above and beyond the cynicism we’ve come to expect in economic relations,” customers tend to give that company a try.  In short, “They’ve earned it.”

Just like all the other marketing techniques we discuss here, this campaign allows customers to trust in the fact that Domino’s is providing them with value they can’t get elsewhere.  In this case, the value is hot, delicious pizza delivered right to your door that actually looks like it does on TV.  As for the campaign, Domino’s has taken many of the better pictures taken by actual customers and run them in a new commercial.  Surprisingly, (or not surprisingly if you’re a Domino’s bigwig), the new initiative has produced some good looking pizzas.  Furthermore, there is also a commercial in which CEO David Brandon personally apologizes to a customer who sent in a picture of a pretty pitiful pie.

This is just another example of a business taking a new, creative approach to marketing an old product.  What innovative techniques have you noticed lately?  What initiatives have you started for your business that have increased customer interaction and yielded positive results?  As always, we’d love to know.

Take a recent afternoon I spent in New York after a meeting with one of our clients.  The mini-summit ended early, so I grabbed some lunch and plopped down in front of the television to enjoy a few hours respite before getting back to work.  On the tube I found the broadcast of that day’s New York Yankees game, and was immediately met by an unusual marketing strategy.

Instead of seeing the game action, the cameras of New York’s YES Network were trained on the wild blue yonder above Yankee Stadium, where a team of sky writing planes were scrawling a message that hung over the Big Apple skyline.  The message was simple enough, but nearly knocked me right off the couch:  “Hey Michael K- GEICO.”

A number of questions popped immediately into my head.  Sky writing ads are nothing new, of course, but who the heck is Michael K., and why would that little gecko go to all the trouble of writing his name in the sky?  I put my lunch down and got to work.  I had to get to the bottom of this.

Michael K., as it turns out, was easier to find than I thought.  Longtime Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay has been behind the mic for YES broadcasts since the network was founded in 2002.  While public opinion of him varies, Kay is the leading play-by-play man of the most famous franchise in North American sports.

Okay, that’s who he is, but why is GEICO going to all the trouble of shouting him out at 10,000 feet?  For the remainder of the trip, I watched a few more Yankees games and noticed something interesting.  Throughout the game it felt as if the cameras were searching the crowd for fans holding up signs that had Kay’s name on them.  The messages were varied, of course (one asked Kay to wish a grandmother a happy birthday, another informed the broadcaster that the sign holder was at his first Yankees game) but the result was the same.  Holding up a Michael Kay sign in Yankee Stadium will get you on TV. 

Let’s look at the broadcast of these games for a moment.  According to the Nielson rating system, whenever a Yankees game in on in New York, the YES Network trounces all others in viewership.  Airing a storied franchise playing in the biggest market in the country makes YES the most watched regional sports network in the world.  An average Yankees game in 2009 garnered a 4.62% market share of all TV households, a record topped only by the average Yankees game in 2007.

After finding that out, I realized GEICO was on to something.  Every company with a marketing strategy seeks to get some publicity that will reach a high number of potential customers.  The good people at GEICO noticed a trend when they saw fan after fan holding up Michael Kay signs to get some air time.  Then, factoring in how many people would see the message, both at the Stadium and at home in their living rooms, GEICO saw an opportunity.  With so many viewers for each YES broadcast, the ad revenue generated by the network must be mind boggling.  I can’t say for sure, but odds are good that paying for a short sky-written message is cheaper than an average TV spot during the game.

Obviously, not all of us can afford to hire sky writers to etch our ad into the sky above Yankee Stadium, but that isn’t what’s important to us at P&A.  Once again, we are impressed by a marketing strategy that goes outside the box and brings a message into the public eye in a new and exciting way.  It just goes to show what a little research about your target audience will do for you.  GEICO must have found that its New York customers spent their afternoons and evenings watching Yankees games, then discovered a creative way to display their message.

What research do you do to find out more about your customers?  If you have discovered a unique way to get a product or promotion into the public eye, we want to hear it.  Don’t let the big companies take all the fun, innovative marketing techniques.  Get out there and discover your own.

And when we say got busy, we mean it.  The resulting baby boom defined the next generation of Americans, and now in 2010, provides marketers with one of the largest untapped resources in the history of the industry.

According to the US Census Bureau, ten years ago adults aged 50 and over numbered 76 million people, nearly 30% of the entire population.  Because of sheer force of numbers and advances in life expectancy, in five years the baby boomers will account for nearly 50% of the entire adult market in the United States.  That provides us with a few interesting facts, says Frank Kaiser, marketing expert and founder of Suddenly Senior, an online resource for America’s senior citizens.  Here’s what Kaiser found:

• The senior market in the US is larger than the African-American and Hispanic demographic combined.
• Seniors are the most affluent of any age bracket.
• The mature market accounts for 41% of all new car sales and 80% of all luxury travel.
• Adults 50+ control a household net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth.

Those are weighty numbers indeed, especially for marketers looking for a target demographic.  But even more interesting to us is what Kaiser found out about the senior market and computer technology:

• Seniors spend $7 billion online each year.
• The mature market is the fastest growing demographic on the internet.
• Adults 50+ spend more time online than teenagers.
• 55+ households are the fastest growing user segment to embrace computer technology.

It is true, as web marketer Michael Bloch points out, that much of that online purchasing power goes toward “senior” services including prescription drugs and durable medical equipment.  Nevertheless, Bloch reminds us that seniors are just as likely these days to “feel young,” and apt to look for the same services as their more youthful counterparts.  MP3 players, smart phones, and even online dating have all been opened up to the senior market.  As Bloch says, “Just because people retire from work doesn’t mean they retire from life.”

So how do we translate these findings to our marketing strategy. “Age, generally speaking, makes you wise,” Bloch says.  “Seniors tend to have more available time to make purchase decisions. They are life savvy and for the most part, research well. They will ask questions before making a purchase – sometimes many, many, many questions.”

Bloch encourages you to maintain special “senior sections” with promotions and discounts geared solely toward this demographic.  Establish your credibility and avoid too much marketing hype.  Remember, these world-wise customers may be turned off by your promises of a miracle product.  Use the words “senior” and “seniors” as your online keywords: the mature demographic uses them when they search!  And be sure to integrate your off-line marketing techniques as well.  While the computer users grow in number, this demographic is obviously still receptive to traditional printed materials.

What other demographics have you noticed beginning to grow?  What trends in shopping and spending have you noticed and tried to take advantage of in your own business?  Let us know if you have other ideas for marketing to baby boomers, and share with us what techniques have worked for you in the past.

One of the simplest techniques, and without a doubt the cheapest, is something we all learned back in Marketing 101.  Even today, word of mouth is one of the best ways to interact with both new and existing customers, offering you a low-cost, far-reaching way to increase sales and referrals.  Today we turn to Kristen L. Smith, Executive Director of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association for five ways to use this time tested tool to your advantage.

1. “Listen, speak, and listen some more.”  The best way to get a feel for your customers, Smith says, is simply to listen.  “By listening, a company can align with its audience. Engage customers in open, unfiltered conversation,” Smith explains. If your customers have a problem, make sure to address it immediately.  Customer opinion is crucial to the success of your business, especially since those opinions are what they will pass on to other potential customers.  Smith goes on to say that for small business, social media can be a great way to gauge the mood of your clientele.
2. “Be transparent and disclose.”  “Traditional communications are not as trusted as they once were,” Smith says.  “Customers and the public favor friend and peer-to-peer recommendations over trusting an ad.” Building that trust can be easy if a company adopts a completely transparent mode of operation.  Smith urges you to “Participate openly on online blogs and discussions. Encourage two-way conversations with interested parties.”  The more open you are, the more customers will be apt to trust in the value you provide.
3. “Spread the word, not the manure.”  People have a natural inclination to share their experiences with family, friends and colleagues, Smith explains.  However, the information that is shared must not only be accurate, but also appropriate to the audience to which it is exposed.  “Everyone knows that sending bulk or unsolicited e-mails without clear, voluntary permission is wrong,” Smith reminds us.  Make sure you have an accepting target audience, and that the customers to which you’re spreading the word are interested in what you have to say.
4. “Encourage an enterprise-wide Word of Mouth culture.”  From top to bottom, your company must be geared to promote a successful word of mouth forum.  Encourage your employees to develop conversations and personal relationships with your clients.  “Be certain to train employees about ethical word of mouth marketing,” Smith says.  “Ongoing training for both staff and clients to understand word of mouth will lead to cultural change. Be sure to review and update essential skills of marketing and communications specialists.” .
5. “Employ online and offline WOMM.” “According to a recent study by Keller Fay Group,” Smith points out “over 90% of all word of mouth conversations that take place in the U.S. are offline.” The company estimates that 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations take place in the U.S. on a daily basis. “Three-quarters take place face-to-face, and another 17% are on the phone,” Smith goes on to say “Only 7% take place online via instant/text messaging, chat rooms, e-mail and blogs. This means that offline tactics to encourage conversations cannot be ignored.”  Smith encourages you to use online experiences as a platform to spark and generate offline activities.

So the current state of the marketing industry has not left traditional practices behind after all.  As Smith writes, the best marketing strategies combine the use of  new media and technology with the same old tools that have made marketers successful for years.  What do you do to generate word of mouth buzz for your company?  How do you get people talking and sharing their experiences with your business with friends and family?

But hold your horses, folks.  There is one oil company that can provide an important lesson to businesses in any industry, and is particularly relevant to us marketers.  Chances are, over the last six years you have seen this lesson in action without even noticing it.

Way back in 2004, Sunoco, Inc. took on sponsorship rights to NASCAR and became the official fuel of the popular racing circuit.  To celebrate this, and to get the word out there about its new partnership, Sunoco began a promotional contest in the summer of ’05 in which the winner would receive 5,000 gallons of free gasoline.  To put that into perspective, that’s enough petroleum to power even the most gas-guzzling SUV for about eight years.

All the public had to do was stop by their local neighborhood Sunoco station, pick up a branded window decal and slap it onto their cars.  Once on your ride, the decal could get you noticed by Sunoco “spotters,” who would reward winners with an instant $10 Sunoco gift card and put their name in the running for the 5,000 gallon grand-prize.

Since the contest was so popular Sunoco renewed it, offering the same grand prize to a new winner each year.  A pretty cool promotional contest, to be sure, but not exactly revolutionary in concept.   The real lesson from the “Free Fuel 5000” comes now, six summers and 20 million stickers later.  From the outset, Sunoco had their spotters record the names and contact information of instant winners, building up a database of loyal customers over 70,000 strong.

With that, says Dawn Zimmermann, marketing program specialist for Sunoco, the possibilities have become endless.  With millions of the stickers out there, Zimmermann sees  “customers endorsing our brand day after day.”  Not only were drivers using the decals to win some free gas, but they also became a testament to customers’ serious brand loyalty.  “These customers put their decals on their cars and are mobile endorsements for our brand,” Zimmermann says.  “Some have had them on their cars for six years.”

Today, Sunoco has taken things to the next level.  No longer are spotters limited to scoping out cars at gas stations.  Hopping onto the social media train, Sunoco now offers $50 gift cards to individuals spotted using the decal as a Facebook profile picture.  Furthermore, Sunoco now encourages decal owners to join a Facebook group to tell the world about why they keep coming back to only one oil company.

Now, few of us have a clientele base of over 20 million.  It’s probably just as rare that any of us have a market area as large as Sunoco, which has stations in every state from Maine to Florida and as far west as Indiana.   Nevertheless, that should not stop us from taking something out of this story.  We’ve spoken before on this blog about the benefits of promotional contests, but it is important to realize the opportunities provided by a successful promotion do not end once the contest is over.  And, just because a contest ends, doesn’t mean it can’t be reincarnated at a later date.

The real innovation here, at least in our eyes, is Sunoco’s incorporation of social media.  While we may not have businesses as large as a giant oil company’s, odds are pretty good our customers are still all over sites like Facebook and Twitter.  By extending your promotion into the virtual world of these places, you are just as likely to reach your customers as any huge corporation.  Use that contact to generate some direct feedback about why consumers come back to you time and time again, and your promotion will be a unilateral success.  Identify your loyal customers, find out what keeps them loyal, then use that information to build value for new customers and you’ve won the marketing game.

Has your business created an innovative marketing promotion that was successful beyond your wildest dreams?  We’d love to hear about it.  We’re always looking for new ways to think outside the box and searching for marketing strategies that include both traditional and web based media.  Let us know how you get feedback from your customers, and what tactics you use to make that information help your business grow.

Behold, The Big Internet Marketing Game, a website dedicated to helping you map out your marketing strategy from starting up to cashing in.  Using a Monopoly style “game board,” site creator Nathalie Fiset walks her visitors through all that it takes to become a top-notch web marketer, and how to use the internet to your fullest advantage.

The layout of the site is fairly simple.  Each square on the board represents a different aspect of e-marketing, and links you to a page dedicated to a particular idea.  A self-taught web marketer, Nathalie offers her thoughts on a given topic, and gives links to back up theories and provide her readers with more information.

Each square is used as a building block to success; a specific skill a potential web marketer must master and use in combination with others to get the most out of their online marketing endeavors.  Some of her topics include:

• Time Management
• Web Hosting
• Blogging  (Gee, do we follow all of her tips here at P&A?)
• Copywrighting
• Search Engine Optimization

Just like a Monopoly board, there are 40 squares on which you can “land,” thus providing Nathalie’s musings on 40 different topics.  Even if your website is already up and running, Nathalie’s easy to follow breakdown allows you to go back to the drawing board and see if you’re getting the most out of your online business.

On the same note, here are Karim Gargum’s 10 Steps to Better Online Marketing.

Or check out Home Business Tips founder Mal Keenan’s 6 Proven Steps to Internet Marketing Success.

We stake out the web every day to find new places to make us better marketers.  If you’re not constantly on the look out yourself, you’re almost sure to fall behind.

What resources did you use to when starting your online marketing company?  What reading materials help you check your progress as your online business marketing strategy goes into effect?  Or, do you have a place that helped you organize your thoughts as you forged your way in the e-Marketing community?

The event was a rather swanky affair, complete with free product giveaways, body-painted models posing as statues, and plenty of good food and libations to go around.  We weren’t there to party (even if we did a little bit), but rather to work the room for a while and see what contacts we could make or what buzz we could generate for our clients.  Gaining access to such a great venue for networking got us thinking however, and we want to make sure all of our readers are prepared to take full advantage of these events should the opportunity present itself.

Therefore, we turn to Scott Allen, a social media expert and blogger for his tips on walking into an event with a goal and walking out with the contacts you need to help your business grow.

• Make an Entrance-  Don’t over think this one, for as Scott warns, “You’re not a movie star on the red carpet.” Still, attending an event where you don’t know anyone and striking up conversations can be a difficult task for some of us.  Since that’s the case, start as soon as you get inside.  Scott recommends chatting up the registrar or person working the door.  It’s a great way to get comfortable in the environment, and they may even be able to point you to the event organizer or host, which will allow you to get what you’re really after.

• Introduce Yourself-  At some point during the event, you’re going to have to introduce yourself, so you might as well get started right away.  If you’re introducing yourself to a whole group, then you’ll want to use your “elevator pitch,” a brief (30 seconds or less) and memorable introduction that describes both what you do and how it benefits others.  If you’re talking one-on-one, however, this may sound forced, so Scott provides Roger Willcocks’ conversational approach to how to introduce yourself professionally.

• Making Conversation-  Scott reminds us that “Small talk is highly under-rated. In this kind of setting, it is how you build rapport and discover common ground.”  Some networking gurus advise you to ask questions to get the other person doing the talking.  Sure, people love to talk about themselves, but always remember that “Good conversation is a two-way street.”  You’re trying to create value for the person with which you’re networking, so be sure to contribute to the conversation.  Listen closely, respond quickly, maintain eye contact, all the signs that show that you’re really interested.  If the person thinks they’ve made a connection with you, they’re more apt to remember you.

• Say Goodbye-  Your exit is just as important as your entrance, according to Scott.  Be sure to thank the host or organizer, or stop back with some people you spoke with and thank them for their time.  If you’re trying to leave a lasting impression, pop back in right before you go to remind them of what you spoke about or that you’re looking to make contact in the near future.

 Scott also reminds us that sometimes, the business cards you receive are a lot more important than the ones you give out.  Stay organized and make notes on the back of the cards to keep your thoughts in order.  Finding a crumpled business card in your pocket three days after the event may not be enough to jog your memory as to why that person’s contact info was worth snagging.  Most importantly, Scott says, “Create value for others. This is the essence of networking. Look for opportunities to be of service, and you’ll benefit in the long run, as well.”

What tricks do you use when marketing yourself at an event like this?  How have you gotten your foot in the door in the past?  Has seemingly insignificant small-talk ever blossomed into a lucrative business relationship?  As always, we beg you to let us and our other readers know, so we too can take advantage of your marketing strategies.