Anchor Your Marketing

Part I

 

In a sea of advertising excess your clients and prospects are being drown with information overload. Your marketing efforts are being churned in with that of your competitors and every other piece of information floating out there. With the waves and waves of materials being sent how do you get your message noticed and received?

 

You can calm those waters and become your customer’s life vest, the one they call on when help is needed to keep their sales full. How? Simply drop anchor and settle the ship. No, you do not need to drop a heavy piece of metal at your prospect or customer’s feet. In this case, anchoring is a process that will add value to your services without the need to use price.  The common definition for anchor is:  any of various devices dropped by a chain, cable, or rope to the bottom of a body of water for preventing or restricting the motion of a vessel or other floating object, typically having broad, hook like arms that bury themselves in the bottom to provide a firm hold.

 

For our purposes we’ll just use the last four words of that definition – provide a firm hold. This is exactly what you need your marketing to accomplish, for your brand to provide a firm hold on the minds of your prospects and customers. In marketing, you need to provide the tools that will keep your clients and prospects anchored to your brand. In this case an anchor can weigh as little as a pen or t-shirt, if used properly.

 

Anchoring your marketing is not just stamping a logo on a product and handing it out, anchoring is providing an instrumental item, wording or anything that provides weight and substance to what you would like to say to your clients and prospects. There are literally a million products and ways you can accomplish this, proper anchoring comes from picking the item(s) or theme that helps illustrate the product, service or company message.

 

Choosing the right anchor for the job begins with you and the questions you ask yourself. 

What have you used before?

Where do you plan on using it?  Tradeshow – Mailing – Internally

What are you using it for?  Product Launch – Goodwill – Lead Capture

Is there a specific target audience?  Current Clients – Prospects – Tradeshow Attendees

 

These targeted questions will help you in your choice of the correct weight, size and dimension of the anchor needed. Other things to take into consideration are color, finish, decoration and the material your anchor is made from.

 

Ok, your questions have been answered, now what? Now is when you distinguish yourself and get that promotion to First Mate. We will run through a scenario in the next article and learn how to create an effective anchor for your needs.  Bon Voyage until next time.

Steady Your Sales – Drop Anchor

Part II

 In Part I we discussed the importance of setting your marketing message apart from the waves of information crashing down on your prospects and clients.  We began to explore the meaning behind Anchoring your marketing and the process of putting it to work. Part II will go into additional detail on why Anchoring your marketing is so effective and run through a brief demonstration on its use.

 

Anchoring a message is like painting with words, allowing those that read and hear your marketing to associate it with a visual image.  This is more powerful and allows your target to derive more meaning than just glazing over text with no link or association. As we referred to earlier, we are constantly being flooded with messages through snail mail, email, advertisements in magazines, newspapers etc. If you look closely at all of these you will notice a trend that began recently, that of including more pictures and bright colored borders. This is done of course to draw more interest and attention to the message. The problem is that while it might draw their interest for a brief moment; that is all it accomplishes. Once the image and the first line of text is scanned, if there is no connection or you have not peaked their interest, it is on to the next wave of information rocking their ship. Many times the images used are stock images of business executives looking over a screen or working together, all blending into the same discarded information.

 

This is one of the key advantages to Anchoring your marketing by designing an effective opening line or phrase you can crash the bow of marketing resistance, assuring yourself of additional exposure to your target. Further anchoring will keep the tide in your favor as they begin to connect with your overall message and begin forming an image in their mind of your product or service. To provide you a brief glimpse into Anchoring Your Marketing we will run through a short scenario to provide an example on how it works.

 

Let us say that you represent a hospital, and are asked to put something together to provide a spotlight on the doctors that utilize the hospital to let them know they are appreciated. The marketing will be created for and mailed to approximately 425 physicians and surgeons.

The initial thought is a coffee mug or tumbler, something they can use repeatedly.

 

First try and think if a doctor needs another coffee mug or if there is a special physician’s mug you may have seen before. Now examine the answers to your questions.

Why that item? No specific reason given.

Where do you plan on using it?  Mailing to doctors.

Why do you want to give an item?  Goodwill and Appreciation

Is there a specific target audience?  Doctors and surgeons who use the hospital.

There is no specific reason given for picking a coffee mug so this frees you up to make another choice without much, if any resistance from others involved in the process. Now start thinking of what doctors tend to use on a regular basis.  Stethoscope, computer, tongue depressor, flashlight…Flashlight – Spotlight –Penlight…

What about a penlight? Doctors use them, they cast a light like a spotlight and you wanted to spotlight the doctors after all. Now how can we form this to create the perfect anchor?  We need to ship these out to the doctors so we also need to focus on the packaging. Penlights are a lot smaller than coffee mugs to ship so we can save money on shipping and add a little of this cost into the packaging if necessary.

 

So we have an item, a penlight which can act like a spotlight but we need a way to anchor these together.  What is the purpose of a penlight/spotlight? To light a dark area in a specific location.

When you think of a spotlight you picture a dark stage with a white circle of light on the floor or lighting up the main subject. In your case, the hospital is the main subject. Next, we know we need to show appreciation with the presentation and usually a card of some kind is included. What if we design a card to hold the penlight inside and the front could be all black, except for the bottom right corner the hospitals logo is made to look as if it were being lit by a spotlight. Picture the logo bright in the center with a soft circle encompassing the outside areas.

 

An all black card with the hospital logo “spotlighted” will definitely draw their interest to open the card, that and the fact that they can tell something is inside the envelope. If your budget is larger you could change the card and envelope into a small gift box with the same imprint on the outside of the box. The most important part is to draw your targets interest in and begin setting the anchor.

 

When the card or box is opened you need to provide the final hold for your anchor to grab. In this case tying in the front of the card/box with the item and overall theme or message you are presenting. The penlight will be front and center with the hospital’s logo printed on the side, safely secured to the card/box. On the inside of the card or box you could have printed “General Hospital applauds your service to our facility and would like to spotlight your dedication and professionalism.” “Thank You from everyone at General Hospital – Take a Bow!.” Depending on the budget again, you could have included a sound card that played applause when the card/box was opened digging your anchor even deeper into the target.

 

Now, review the two possible scenarios and see how effective anchor marketing can be compared to the average marketing piece.  The doctor’s are sent a generic box containing a coffee mug with the hospital logo and a thank you card or the anchor piece designed above? When they use that coffee mug what thoughts, if any, do you think will go through their mind?  How about when they use the penlight? Chances are they will describe the presentation that the penlight was presented with others, which continues to “spotlight” your marketing message.

 

Future articles will help provide you with the creativity in the use of Anchor Marketing, even if you do not think you have this kind of creativity inside you. Good “Sale”ing until next time.