Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sample Footage for Utah Office of Tourism

From north to south, east to west, Utah offers some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. With highways, hiking and off-road trails and you suddenly find yourself away from the hustle of a daily routine. With world-class resorts, restaurants and accommodations, locals and visitors will find that everything is different in any direction you travel across Utah.

The video below contains a sample of footage available to promote tourism within the state of Utah.

The Marketer’s Milieu (Infographic)

The marketing professional is frequently in a tight spot. Not only do you have to meet the demands of your organization to collect a paycheck, but you’ve got to find and engage an audience that may not care what you have to say. If you don’t get them to pay attention and “like” you, your job is on the line. So, to all those of you who feel like you’re in a “tight spot” as marketers, here’s an infographic that serves as our attempt to show you a bit of well-deserved empathy.

marketers_milieu

Lies, Inundation and Being Sold: Part 1, The Great Dupe

This is the first in a series of posts discussing several challenges that marketers face in reaching their customers and how to overcome those challenges. This iteration deals with the inability of consumers to trust advertising. Part two deals with the prevalence of advertising. Future articles present solutions to help marketers overcome the challenges described. 

de077e886b1aafc2e366dd3ad111f534x

A couple of weeks ago, my brother, a successful endodontist (root canals), heard an ad on the radio for a local used-car dealership. In the ad, the dealership touted that they want to buy your used car and would pay virtually any car owner $3,000 more than the car was worth. Upon visiting the web site, there are large ads , headlines and even a video stating that even if you don’t buy one of their cars, they’ll buy yours. 

As my brother is still hanging onto the car he had in college in the late 90s, he figured that the $3,000 bonus was even more than the car was worth so why not give the dealership a try? Needless to say, the salesman’s rampant backpedaling over the $3,000 deal obviated to my brother what we all suspected—the ad was merely an attempt to dupe potential customers into coming into their dealership. They had no interest in purchasing his well-used vehicle.

Of course, my brother is neither the first nor the last to experience deceptive practices in advertising- and marketing-related activities. It’s no surprise that a recent study by YouGov found that 50% of Americans don’t believe what they see, hear or read in advertisements. It’s also no surprise that said study listed advertisements for cars as the forth least trustworthy category of ads. Furthermore, nearly two thirds (58%) said that there should be stronger requirements for proving claims

The responsibility for this lack of trust in traditional advertising rest squarely on the shoulders of the decades worth of advertisers, marketers and organizations that have resorted to mindless gimmicks similar to the one that duped my brother. It creates a serious challenge for those of us who try to market legitimate products and services using above-board strategies and tactics. It also plays a significant role in a consumer’s nearly involuntary reaction to sales-related messaging, where at best it is simply ignored or at worst resented.

We call on marketers and advertisers everywhere to give up the lies and gimmicks and develop something of real, salient value to their customers.

The next post in this series will explore the prevalence of advertising and how that further challenges the marketing landscape.

 

 

Fired

Why are CMOs being fired twice as fast as any other C-suiter? Why are major corporations like Old Navy, Taco Bell and Miller Lite letting their marketing executives go? A recent article by Jonathan Salem Baskin questions why there is so much turnover in the marketing C-suite.
Is marketing changing? Sure. Is the marketing landscape beginning to flatten with the use of social media? Possibly. Maybe it’s as Jonathan suggests, maybe they deserved to be fired.
Lack of Accountability
Serfwerks believes that in many companies marketing is the last function to reject all accountability. Is there a change coming? Could this be why companies are moving on without their top marketing executives? Are we finally seeing the day where there are no more bottomless marketing budgets used to explore “creative” ideas? Are CEOs finally requiring CMOs to measure their marketing ROI? We sure hope so.
The Case for Accountability
A recent study by CMG Partners and Chadwick Martin Bailey found the following:
– 75% of companies are highly interested in marketing measurement
– Less than 25% of companies are excelling at measuring & improving their marketing performance.
– 98% of those excelling at measuring and improving marketing performance say it is having a significant impact on their business.
– 55% of those excelling at measuring marketing performance are gaining market share.
If only 25% of companies are measuring their marketing performance it must be difficult to do. On the contrary. It’s rather simple. If you can look at past performance, define you key performance indicators and outline your sales cycle. You can measure your marketing with a 95% accuracy.
Are you measuring your marketing performance? Now is the time to do it. Don’t be the next marketing department casualty. Start being accountable today.

Marketing De-Mystified Workshop w/ SLCC

De-Mystifying Marketing

By many, marketing seems like a mystic art form full of ambiguous and unvalidated metrics; creative gurus; and flavor-of-the-month tactics. Marketing should be no different than any other business function and held to the same levels of accountability and profitability. To think of marketing any other way is a less effective and negligent business practice.

Sophisticated marketers are able to de-mystify marketing by using research, statistical analysis, effective strategy, efficient tactical mixes, and continuous refinement in an effort to create marketing campaigns that provide measureble and attributable positive return on marketing investment. De-Mystifying Marketing will help you become a sophisticated, analytical, innovative, and effective marketer.

Join us for the De-Mystifying Marketing Workshop
Date: April 7th
Time: 9am to 1pm
Location: Salt Lake Community College Miller Campus (9750 So. 300 West, Suite 330) in Sandy, UT.

Your business may qualify for a discounted rate to this event and other Custom Fit events. Custom Fit is a state operated provider of training services for small businesses. Full priced admission is $126 per person. For more information regarding Custom Fit qualification and/or to sign-up for this event contact:

Custom Fit Salt Lake County

Shannon Strickland

801.957.5293 or SPEDRegistration@slcc.edu

Register here.

Lost and Found: The Key to Grabbing the Low Hanging Fruit

Is your business Lost to potential clients or rather if they wanted to find you could they?

I’m absolutely a fan of proactive marketing, but before you put your money into outgoing marketing, you need to make sure you can be found by people who are already looking for your service. They are the low hanging fruit•The love group, so to speak.

Ask yourself: Is it easier to sell a car to someone in the market for a new car or someone who isn’t looking and happy with what they are currently driving? The answer is obvious. But what may not be so obvious is how to find you when they are looking. Who is your potential client and if they are looking for granite countertops or a shiatsu massage, where will they look?

Here are three simple tips that can be helpful for many companies in being found:

1)Website with Search Engine Optimization Yes, being found at the top of an Internet search is a big deal and not really that hard to do if you have the right help.

2) Current Client Awareness Programs Let’s say you have 3,000 customers. 800 of them are regulars and the other 2,200 you’ve only seen once or twice in the last couple of years at most. Do your inactive customers know all the services you provide? They’ve already shown they like a few things you do but perhaps they don’t know they can host a corporate Christmas party at your restaurant or that your golf club offers networking events with local big wigs. They won’t know unless you tell them. Electronic newsletters, a flyer in their shopping bag, emailed birthday coupons, and referral incentives are all simple ways to help bring in new business to from your already loyal customer base.

3) Signage Sounds too simple, right? If you have a local business and local patronage is important, make sure you can be found from the street. That could mean advertising on a nearby billboard, listing your business using Google Local Business Listings so you show up on the map at the top of the search, and even making sure your brochure is located at concierge desks for local hotels. If you do business in other states and not locally this can mean being listed on industry web sites and directories, being found at large industry tradeshows, or building partnerships with local brick and mortar companies that have a local presence and can showcase your products in person.

Try these three simple steps. You might be surprised how making your business accessible is the easiest thing you can do to bring in additional dollars.

The Importance of Knowing Your Position

Please use your imagination as you look at the bullet list below. The list is describing a car; try to imagine what it looks like, how much it would cost, and who would make it:

  • Large-sized luxury sedan
  • 4.6 liter V-8 engine
  • Adjustable air suspension
  • Reclining, heated, cooled, and messaging rear seats
  • Adaptive HID headlights (projector lights that turn as your turn)
  • Standard 19″ wheels
  • Back-up camera
  • Rear seat entertainment system plus mini-fridge
  • iPad pre-loaded with owner’s manual in every car
  • Personal salesperson who will stop by your house at your convenience for a test drive
  • Dedicated service personnel that will pick up your car for scheduled maintenance

How much would you pay for a car like this? How much do you want a car like this? Who would make such a vehicle? Continue reading

Serfwerks Presents at SBDC

Serfwerks will be teaching the strategic marketing workshop through the Small Business Development Center at Utah Valley University on Thursday, August 5, 2010.To be held at the SBDC offices at 800 West University Ave., suite MS 239, in Orem, Utah, the workshop covers some of the basics of developing an effective marketing strategy to help marketers and small businesses achieve significantly improved marketing results. Topics covered include: marketing performance analysis, customer segmentation, positioning, branding, competitive analysis, and performance measurement.

To register for the workshop, please contact the SBDC at: sbdc@uvu.edu

Marketing De-mystified Workshop

Developing marketing strategies for marketing results
August 5, 2010
SBDC
800 West University Ave, Orem, UT
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 pm.

Automobile Owners Unite

At Serfwerks, we are presently assisting a client by researching the attitudes and behaviors of automobile owners regarding the maintenance and repair of their vehicle(s). As such, if you own a car, we need you. Please take a few minutes to take a brief survey to gauge your thoughts about car maintenance and repair. Your opinion will be a huge contribution toward helping us make our client successful.

You may access the survey here: http://bit.ly/b1Xiyu

We thank you in advance for your valuable time and opinions.

Serfwerks Presents at Chamber University

July 9, 2010, SALT LAKE CITY—Serfwerks has been selected by the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce to present at its monthly Chamber University series on July 15th at the Zion’s Bank branch located at 462 W. 800 North in Orem, Utah. The 90-minute presentation titled De-mytified Marketing covers the basics of developing an effective marketing strategy to help marketers and small businesses achieve significantly improved marketing results. Topics covered include, performance analysis, customer segmentation, positioning, branding, competitive analysis, and performance measurement. Chamber members and attendees will learn how to quantitatively analyze the performance of their marketing efforts, identify opportunities to compete more effectively, and use marketing tactics to significantly improve their marketing results.

To register for the event, visit the Provo • Orem Chamber of Commerce’s web site at www.thechamber.org. Breakfast will be provided.