Recently Cincinnati, Ohio celebrated opening day for the Cincinnati Reds.  The Findley Market Opening Day Parade along with other downtown festivities draws a huge crowd!  Local companies, organizations, non-profits, and schools fill the streets with vehicle wraps, floats, and marching bands to show their support of their home team.  Last year, Heidelberg (the local Budweiser distributor) and The Reds teamed up to wrap a Hummer and a party trailer for the parade.  This year, PNC Bank and Mike Albert Leasing partnered with Advertising Vehicles on a vehicle wrap to be used in the parade.

A local company with vehicle wraps receives 30,000-70,000 impressions daily!  With the warmer months comes local parades, captive audiences, and new marketing opportunities!  Most towns in The United States celebrate Memorial Day, The 4th of July, Labor Day, and a high school football homecoming with a parade.  Don’t miss out on these prime opportunities to use your vehicle wrap to get your message and contact information in front of potential clients!  Stay tuned for other ways to use your vehicle wraps to increase awareness and generate revenue!!

The following week I received another call from the same man telling me that he loved the wrap and during his catering job over the weekend he had received 3 calls for catering jobs from people who had seen his van wrap! Now he wanted to wrap his trailer to match, so we did a trailer wrap.

Less than a year later, he was opening a second location and wanted to look at options for extending his branded van and trailer wraps to the interior of his new store. A logo on the floor and a couple of wall graphics later, my client had transformed his new location into a branding opportunity! Now when people come into his store and his his floor wrap or his wall wraps or see his wrapped van & trailer traveling the local roads, they will remember who he is. This is just an example of a smart businessman having enough vision to go out of his comfort zone to try something different and innovative to build a successful business. They say the people who take the most risks have the biggest payoffs; while his only risk was stepping outside of his comfort zone, his dividends will continue to pay off for years to come. We are now working on our next steps to further build on his brand so stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted!

I recently had a customer tell me they don’t advertise when I spoke with her on the phone. I told the business owner it was a good thing she didn’t. Confused she asked what I meant. I told her it took me 4 different phone calls to get someone to answer the phone. On the 4^th time when someone finally answered I could barely hear what they said when they answered the phone. Once I figured out I had the correct business after having the young lady repeat the name 3 times (maybe it was an issue with a tongue ring) I was put on hold. Once on-hold there was no message selling their business, just SILENCE, oh and I was on hold for 10 minutes. This I told the owner is why they should not be advertising, not because she thinks they have enough business or a great customer database. I don’t care how great of an advertising campaign you have, if you don’t answer the phones, put people on hold without ever checking back and don’t attempt to spend a few hundred dollars for an on-hold phone system (The Original On Hold Company,www.omghq.com)

Next I visited a client to see how the experience was in-store. This was a Jewelry store witha few locations. No-one at this particular location knows me so I figured I‘d get the normal treatment. This particular client told me in prior conversations that “I don’t think the advertising is working”. I was actually in the market for a gift for my wife. I was dressed nice and I had my wife and kids withme. My wife looked at 3-4 rings and found the one she wanted. We got the price ($2,500) and I even TOOK A PICTURE of the ring with my apple iphone (for a good sales person an easy sign I don‘t mind spending money). I even told the salesman, who I later found out was the GM of that store, this was so I could come back the next day and buy the correct ring. This is where their BRAND fell apart. The GM never asked for my name, phone number or any other contact information. He didn’t give me his card or try and set up a follow-up appointment. He didn’t offer some kind of discount or reason to closee me. How about some sense of urgency “There’s only 1 left” to try and close me. HE NEVER TRIED TO SELL ME. Consumers want to be sold, especially salesman like me. Again, it does not matter how slick your radio ad is, how great the newspaper coupon offer is, if your staff can’t sell then you just wasted your money.

Next I was visiting a locally owned retail store with a large showroom. I walked it looking to buy a specific item. I was not greeted within 50 feet of the door. In fact, I was never greeted. I had to ask a guy I guessed was an employee for help. The reason I “Guessed” is because his hair was a wreck, his shirt was un-tucked and was old and not really recognizable with their company colors or logo. I did get it right though, but since he was carrying a scan gun it was somewhat a give-away. Next I asked where this product was, to which he pointed about 10 rows down and said down in aisle 15. I wanted to smack him. YOU DON’T POINT. You walk me to the item, see what I’m buying, find an item to up-sell me to and then take me to my next item. Needless to say I got lost, got frustrated and asked 2 more people. I ended up not buying anything due to this flawed process. Again, this BRAND was out of whack.

My last example comes to me from a friend in Florida who owned a boat dealership in the 80‘s and 90‘s. He used this example from his dealership during a training I attended in 2003. He was in the showroom watching the salesman close a deal. Everything seemed ready to go as planned, everyone was smiling, shaking hands and getting ready to sign the paperwork. As he watched from across the room he noticed the wife get up to go somewhere. Within minutes she came back, whispered in her husbands ear and off they went. The owner thought something was up. He asked the salesman what happened and he had no idea. So he hurried out to the parking lot and caught them as they got into their car. He introduced himself as the owner and said he could not help but notice something went wrong, “Can I ask what happened”. The young lady told him that when she went to the restroom it was horrible, it was dirty, old and to her a slap in the face. She said that she did not think the dealership deserved her business if they did not respect their female customers enough to spend a few dollars on a nice clean restroom.” WOW, this dealership owner was floored. He was widely successful and had been in the business for 20+ years. He apologized and wished them luck on their shopping experience. He had never been in the ladies room at his store, so he took a stroll. Once in there, he was disappointed “How could I miss something this obvious, how could I have not trained my staff to look for these type of issues” he told me. “We had a multi-million dollar facility and a $10 ladies room”. That night he called the customer and acknowledged her concerns and agreed. He let her know it would be remodeled the next few days and thanked her for telling him about it.

So to recap we just talked about the following items:

1. Answering the Phone

2. Clear Speaking when talking on the phone

3. On-Hold Systems

4. Getting a prospects contact info

5. Setting up a appointment

6. Closing a retail customer

7. Employee appearance

8. Pointing instead of showing a customer

9. Restroom appearance

I know, right now your wondering what any of these items have to do with your marketing. They have everything to do with your marketing of your business. These are all an extension of your brand. Your brand is how your company/product is perceived by your customers. In these situations, these were real life examples of how each of these businesses failed to meet the expectations on their customers, and they failed to build their brand properly.

When I ask my customers about their brand I usually get a response targeted to their advertising. When in fact, I’m looking for a statement that defines their company and how the public relates to it. Uniforms, phone-answering, sales training, clean restrooms, trained employees, consistent company colors, clearly marked showrooms, and more importantly a staff that understands exactly what your brand is and how they are to carry that out in their job EVERY DAY.

Next time I’ll talk about a few recent examples of how local companies did all the above right

Matt Plapp is a Marketing Consultant for Advertising Vehicles in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. You can contact him at matt@mattplapp.com

As the economy recovers and technology continues to offer consumers new ways to manage their on-the-go lifestyle, business owners and marketing directors are faced with the daily obstacle of trying to reach these exact consumers! So many vehicles, each with their own demo and factors to be considered. While your product/service may make some decisions a no-brainer, most don’t have that luxury!

While most mass media can still be used as such, the fact of the matter is that due to technology advances, the future effectiveness of each mass medium is now in flux. Not everyone can effectively predict the future, but having a sustainable mindset will have you ahead of the crowd! Where can you put your marketing efforts and know people will still see them?

For most consumer-driven companies, an effective marketing mix consists of a mass medium or two and some very targeted marketing efforts. My thought process is as follows. What is NOT going anywhere anytime soon? Better yet, what isn’t going to be invented to fragment the advertising industry any further! I can promise you a time machine or transportation portal certainly isn’t going to be invented anytime soon! Additionally, a new social media site may be unveiled, but the internet is here to stay! Therein lies two media that I personally feel are the most sustainable places to put your message. A solid presence on the internet (your website, new media, & Google Adwords) and on the streets that consumers of all demographics use to commute every day of their lives!!

Agree with me? Disagree with me? Where do you think is the most sustainable place to put your message in a world that is driven by the ability to cram as much into one day as possible?

If a business has a desire to create this, then maybe they need to blend old media with new.  Take our product for example, what if an advertiser used the massive reach of a transit campaign to promote a giveaway on their Facebook Fan page?  Using buses is one of the greatest tools left for reaching a large amount of consumers in your marketplace.  Putting this reach together with the ability to start a relationship with them through social media may be just the spark a business needs to impact the social media scene in a big way.  Imagine driving all over your market and seeing a transit campaign with 40-60 displays barking a brand and a contest to you.  Win (idea here).  Become a Fan to learn more.  Simple and effective.  Potentially thousands of people could join in the first week alone.  Making your online real estate even more valuable.

Media has changed in a major way over the past decade.  Consumers and their media habits have changed in a major way, but one thing that remains the same is a successful media strategy involves a mix of media.  So the next time the conversation turns to social media and getting results for your business; ask yourself how I can leverage the old media to get jump start on new media?

Have you seen any great ideas or ways businesses have leveraged transit advertising to impact a social media strategy?  If so we would love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below.