Marketing is important! But the amount of options in marketing can be overwhelming…
Kelly Smith is the CEO of Leapfrog Promotions, one of our sponsors for the Grow Retreat this year and as an expert in marketing consultation, Stephanie & Kelly sat down to discuss some of the tools & tips he shared for you to implement too!
Q1:
A lot of business owners feel easily overwhelmed looking at all the options for marketing. Just looking at a promotional product site has 40 million different cups to choose from, and that’s just cups! How does Leapfrog Promotions help clients figure out the best way to proceed?
Kelly:
We're not just a promotions or printing company, and I think it’s important to find businesses who go beyond their functional skill to ensure that their customer is well taken care of. We've always taken that consultative approach and that really helps cut through a lot of the clutter in marketing to focus on what will work best for the individual we’re talking to.
I turn working with people into more of an interview process. This way I can get to know them and their goals and dreams and strengths and weaknesses so we can find what will work best for them. And it helps us ensure we always have clients we love working with. Since we really focus on having fun at Leapfrog Promotions, we end up becoming really good friends with our clients and we want to be sure that people we work with will get along with us too.
Q2:
When you’re doing this, how do you figure out what people need? There’s 200 options out there, how do you decide to recommend specific ones?
Kelly:
You’re right, there’s a lot and it’s hard to organize.But I like to try to gather their thoughts and organize it.
In our first meeting with a client, I like to see what they’re doing currently. What is going on print, promotional, and design advertising wise. We look at their target market, as well as their plan for the next 90 days up to five years. Most of it is asking questions.
A lot of the time I’ll get a deer in the headlights look in that first meeting, but then we take everything and pull it together to see what would make the best fit for that company.
Q3:
Target markets and demographics are important in marketing! What’s an example of how Target Markets affect promotional products?
Kelly:
If you're a lawyer and you walk in and you say you want $.50 pens but you're charging $350 an hour, does that really align with who your target market is? Why would someone who can afford $350/hour rate for a lawyer need or want a cheap pen? It doesn’t fit the demographic.
So those are the little things that we look at. We want to find out more about you and what you do. If you don't have a target market yet, and we like to help you figure that out so you can get the promotional products that will help you.
Q4:
Figuring out who a target market is can be challenging. So what do you guys do to help clients figure out who their target market is?
Kelly:
I take them through a funnel of sorts.
Back in the day when I did most of the consulting, we’d put pieces of paper all over a room and throw every idea we could at it to finally come up with a few sheets of paper as a plan for them.
But the point of all that, and what we do when we create the funnel, is look at their favorite client.
That favorite client is generally their target market. Then we can walk through writing down all the details we can think of about that client and use that as a target market.
Not that we’re working to get rid of other clients although that might happen, but planning toward marketing to their favorite client can generate more clients like that first client.
Q5:
You’ve mentioned the 5-point checklist to me before, can you talk about that briefly?
Kelly:
The checklist is to give people an idea of how their marketing plan is working and what they are doing in all areas of their marketing.
The checklist goes over four points.
Printing:
We look at what you’re doing printing wise. How are you promoting and advertising in things like print ads and is that working with your marketing strategy? Every single thing (internally and externally) that people are doing with print, we look at it and see how it’s contributing to the marketing plan.
Design:
Are you doing your design internally? Externally? When was the last time you made sure your branding was exactly what you wanted it to be? Is it moving in the direction you want to be going in?
Marketing Calendar:
This is something you want to keep up with on a regular basis to make sure you’re aligning things with your target market. We realized at one point that 50% of our clients were just using us for promotional products, and that’s not what we’re designed just to do. But it was because we got behind on our marketing calendar and got away from our target market (the last one of the 5 points on the checklist).
Spending:
And we also wanna know what you're spending on all this because you want to get a good return on investment. we, you know, they're my clients.
Sometimes we feel...
Like we have to work with whoever comes to us, but when you can get really clear on who you do and don't want to work with, it makes it a lot easier to do marketing right.
Marketing works holistically, so one weak part of the marketing can make it fall apart. If you’re struggling a bit with your marketing and want to get some help from Leapfrog Promotions, check out their website here.