Mid-Missouri Marketing Resource Blog

McDonalds is one of the most easily recognized, well-known brands in the world. If fact, you would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t at least heard of McDonalds and most have visited a franchise more than a few times. They maintain their immense reputation for stellar recognition and brand awareness through consistent branding, advertising and being willing to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace. Here’s some marketing lessons we call learn from McDonalds, one of the best in the business at knowing and employing relevant, effective marketing practices:

Advertising is a key part of business, but unless your messages are effective, you’re spinning your wheels. For an ad campaign to truly connect with your customers, you must create messages that are both memorable and powerful. You must also clearly communicate how you help make the consumer’s life better.

To better illustrate our point, here are three of the most powerful, effective advertising campaigns ever created:

Your advertising is a precious commodity. There’s limited space or time to tell your story, so the challenge is to use it wisely. Your story is what creates your brand. It’s what people will remember. Good advertising gives consumers a message that will stick and only includes information that is relevant. However, in our expert opinion...we find that old habits die hard. Certain bits of information are no longer germane and may be costing you valuable air time. Here is Director of Sales Carrie Berkbuegler in this video discussing 5 topics, commonly included in traditional advertising, that nobody cares about anymore.

Consistency builds trust. Why? Because you teach people that they can depend on you, that you'll be there every time they need you. You become familiar.  Familiar becomes safe. And we trust "safe" - especially now. So consistency is the golden rule when it comes to marketing. Wouldn't you think that McDonald's and Ford and M&M's would lay off the advertising for a while?  Especially when it's fairly safe to assume we all know what they are and where to find them?  Yet they don't.  In fact, they wouldn't dream of stopping. Why? Because they understand that consistency is simply THAT important. Here's why.

As a business owner, you have a unique opportunity.  You own something that has a chance to become a part of local culture, to join the regional vernacular, to contribute to the zeitgeist… to be a BRAND.  

But what IS a brand?  More than just a slick logo, a brand encapsulates ALL mental associations, both good and bad, that consumers have about your business… so building yours goes well beyond coming up with a cool business name and tagline.  It means taking control of EVERY aspect of a consumer’s experience that you possibly can.  Once your brand identity is fully realized, your efforts to develop and market your business become exponentially more powerful. 

You’ve just invested in advertising. You’re nervous, but optimistic. It’s more money than you’re used to, but you understand that you have to spend money to make money. Customers won’t spend money with your business if they don’t know about your products and services – so you pulled the trigger on what you believe will work wonders! Your ads started 2-3 weeks ago…but so far…nothing. Nada. Crickets. Then the first invoice for your advertising comes in. It’s a lot of money. Tempted to cancel, you pick up your phone to call your sales rep and cancel the campaign. They remind you to stay the course. Who do you listen to?  Your nervous internal voice as you write the first check…or the sales rep who tells you it takes time. When advertising doesn’t kick off with the results you’d expected, what do you do?

We like “easy.” Who doesn’t? In fact, the easier it is, the more we like it...and the more we’ll keep on doing it. What’s true in life is also true in business. It’s not a complicated concept...make it easy for your customers to do business with you. The easier it is for people to buy your products and services, the more likely it is they’ll do it...and keep doing it. Therefore, the last thing you want to do is unintentionally complicate the buying process. Here are 5 ways to examine your business model and make changes that create an easier customer experience.

Your customers are the reason you are in business, so the least we can do is give them an easier, more seamless buying experience. Examine your business and ask yourself honestly, “Where am I complicating things and missing opportunities? Where am I slow to embrace new methods or technologies that would help my customers want to do business with me?” We thought about those questions...and here are the answers we came up with:

So you want to run a radio ad. Wonderful! Which station do you choose? When do you want your ad to air? Do you choose the station YOU like, or is there a better plan of attack. How do you get started and what is it important for you to know? Here is information on both the art and science behind radio advertising. Information that will help you make smart decisions when buying it for your business.

As a business owner, you cannot avoid, or ignore, branding. Branding is just as important, if not more important, than most of the day-to-day aspects of your business. In fact, branding encompasses everything your business is and how customers think about you and what you can provide them.

Did you know it costs five times more to recruit a new customer than it does to keep an existing one? That’s right, and what’s more, it can cost as much as 30 times as much, depending on the industry! However, many companies simply fail to quantify the impact of customer retention. They do not focus enough on current customers or consider how to retain them. Instead, they focus their marketing efforts on garnering new customers, much like a toddler who tosses an old beloved toy aside in preference to a shiny new toy. To place customer retention in the place of prominence it deserves, answer the following questions:

1. How can I re-sell to the customer?
2. Is there an opportunity to cross sell?
3. Are there additional products or services to up-sell?

Keep in mind, all the new customers you can hope to obtain are not worth as much as the customers you already have.