Patterson/Bach Communications, Inc.

Focus on a Goal

Survey the Right Number of People

Craft Your Invitation

Order Questions Logically

Write Objective Questions

Shorten the Survey

Close the Feedback Loop

Focus on a Goal

Be precise about what information you need to gather and what you plan on doing with it. A narrow goal will help you to simplify the survey.

Survey the Right Number of People

Some might consider a “census approach” to surveying, attempting to gather feedback from 100% of the population. Others take a “sampling approach”. If you are thinking of taking a census approach with your survey, consider:

• The census approach works best for populations under 1,000 individuals
• It may require you to utilize incentives to boost response to the appropriate level
• Make sure you invite all respondents
• Use reminders and deadlines to ensure highest response rates among your population

A sampling approach may be more effective for populations over 1,000 individuals. This allows you to obtain information on particular subgroups. If you are going to take the sampling approach, be mindful of the number of responses required to get a solid indication of how the target population overall would respond to your questions. To ensure good sampling, make sure your selection of population is as random as possible.

Craft Your Invitation

It is critical that your invitation is designed to minimize the likelihood of being flagged as spam. Avoid spam-filter trigger words (“Free, “$”, “act now”). Use a compelling subject line, such as “Help us improve our products” and send from an individual person’s e-mail address as opposed to a general corporate e-mail address.

Once someone clicks on the invitation, you have less than eight seconds to make a good first impression. Tell recipients what you want them to do as soon as possible in the invitation. Let them know how long the survey will be.

Consider using a combination of incentives and deadlines to gain rapid response. For example, “The first 100 people to submit a completed survey by May 31 will receive….” You can limit your financial liability by putting a cap on the number of incentives offered. A deadline creates sense of urgency, and relevant incentives motivate invitees.

Order Questions Logically

Begin with screening questions. These questions will ensure you are surveying a good candidate. After your screening questions, open-ended questions are a good next step. Capture their views in their own words before biasing them with your later questions.

When you get to general questions, use them as the basis for branching off into specific questions dependent upon how they respond. This requires using skip patterns.

After specific questions, you can delve into demographics. Use demographic questions to profile respondents. This will enable you to cross-tabulate and compare subgroups. Place these near the end of the survey as they are tedious and intrusive.

Finally, ask for any final comments about any aspect of the survey or its topic. Ask for permission to follow-up with them about their answers, and prompt them if they have an issue they want to be contacted about.

Write Objective Questions

Poorly worded questions will lead to suspect results and erroneous conclusions. Respondents should not be able to determine where you stand on any topic, so use nonjudgmental wording and choose neutral terms. Don’t ask leading questions such as “What do you like about your service?” but instead ask, “What, if anything, do you like…?”

Shorten the Survey

The shorter the survey, the better the response rate. To simplify surveys, remove questions that don’t directly address the goal of the survey. And ask only the most important questions. A common research tactic is to have three similar questions on a similar topic; just use one.

Close the Feedback Loop

Your respondents contribute because they value their relationship with you and they want to see you improve. Explain what you’re using the data for and share your data with the relevant communities. Identify actions you’re taking as a result of survey. Consider using web seminars, video conferences and meetings to share data. Use this approach to stimulate additional participation and ongoing feedback. 

Recently, we spent several months creating a comprehensive advertising and public relations campaign for one of our clients. First we created a number of spec campaigns which we presented to the client. Of these, several were chosen for further refinement and presentation to focus groups (focus groups: a topic for a future blog article!). The focus groups in turn gravitated to one campaign, and the client gave us the OK to run with it.

Done deal. Or so we thought. However, in the middle of developing the campaign, a decision was made to shelve it in favor of another one that had actually been rejected by the focus groups. This meant starting over from scratch under a real time crunch—just the thing that normally causes ad creatives to do what we’re alleged to do best: scream and whine.

But no, we didn’t scream or whine. Instead, we got to work. And so, I’m sharing this story with you to:

A. Pat ourselves on the back for executing this switch with grace, good will and professionalism.

B. Present this as a small lesson in humility (as opposed to the other h-word in advertising, hubris).

Stuff happens

Scenarios such as the one I’ve described happen in our business. Changes, reversals, zig zags and all sorts of unexpected things can happen to a campaign as it goes from drawing board to final production. How an ad agency handles these twists and turns determines many things, not the least of which is how the final campaign turns out.

I’m proud to say in this case that we at Patterson/Bach handled things beautifully. There was no grumping or griping about the sudden turn of events. No whining or temper tantrums. None of the arrogance that’s often associated with creative people and their childish ways. Instead, there was an immediate and total commitment to making the new campaign work even better than the original. We regrouped, retrenched, rethought—and lo and behold, we created a campaign that exceeded the original in its creativity and effectiveness.

By handling the situation professionally, with zero arrogance and 100% commitment to the job, we moved from a rough spot to a very smooth and satisfactory finish.

The moral of the story

Conventional wisdom says many ad people—especially creatives—are temperamental and arrogant, disdainful of criticism and unwilling to compromise their grand creative visions. There’s some truth to this, although it’s not always a bad thing to stick to your guns and fight for what you believe is right.

The takeaway from my little story is … well, a little flexibility and humility never hurt anyone. Sometimes all the pieces fall into place and sometimes they don’t. But regardless, the important thing, the thing that really matters, is doing the job to the best of your ability under any and all circumstances. That’s really what you get paid for, and if you’ve done this, you’ve earned every penny you’re entitled to—and you’re worth it.

The most common mistake organizations make when deciding how to spend their communications budgets is overlooking the power of research. Either the thrill of a new campaign or assumptions about what target audiences think leads to what I call “gear goggles,” whereby the organization shifts into high gear before grounding itself in a solid foundation. A campaign in “gear goggles” risks exhausting resources, sacrificing effectiveness, and spinning out of control.

PepsiCo experienced a major “gear goggle” moment in 2009 with the Tropicana brand when a new carton design met such hostility from Tropicana’s publics that the change was reversed. Assuming the opinions of its publics, PepsiCo created a false confidence that resulted in not only angry consumers but also wasted time and money. No matter how well an organization thinks it understands its publics, research will either validate or correct those assumptions, ensuring the most successful communications investment possible.

Some organizations do not comprehend the benefits of public relations research because they do not recognize communication as a science. Communications must be tested and established with research, just as any product or service the organization provides. With organizations demanding quantifiable results to illustrate public relations’ effect on the bottom line, pre- and post-campaign research must be conducted in order to calculate the true impact. Only those public relations campaigns and strategies with thorough research of the publics’ opinions, the industry climate, and the message’s effectiveness will provide the greatest results.

All public relations processes demand research as the first step. Research delivers the insight necessary to develop the most valuable strategy. Conducting public relations without research is like taking a road trip without a map. You may know where you’d like to end up, but without the fundamental groundwork, you have no idea where the campaign will go or how much it may cost you.

Don’t cut corners and let “gear goggles” steer your organization in the wrong direction. Call Patterson/Bach Communications today at 407-645-1880 and let us build your communications plan with the solid foundation your organization deserves.

It feels good to win. And with a solid customer loyalty program, both you and your customers will win. Whether you are looking to create or enhance your own loyalty program, consider the following:

What’s your objective?

The first step in building your loyalty strategy is determining your objectives. Know the business outcome you expect to create. Then, translate that into something customer-centric. Find the ties between your business objective and your customers’ priorities. Those direct ties will likely become the foundation of how your loyalty program will grow and thrive.

Focus on the customer

The best programs, whether aimed at businesses or consumers, are those that engage their customers emotionally. Your customers want to be recognized and rewarded. Rewards can vary from money savings or giveaways to VIP treatment with exclusive offers or privileges.

The better you understand your customer and what ultimately motivates them, the more incentives you can develop (besides money) to drive their behavior. And many of those cost next to nothing.

Keep it simple

Think about the programs you like the best. They don’t require a lot of work. You simply continue to shop, as you normally would, while accumulating points and perks. Problems with loyalty programs arise when 1) you make the customer think too much, 2) you add too many steps to collect the motivation, or 3) you require either math or memory. Keep it simple.

Test your program

Identify a subset of customers to test your program. Don’t just tell them about the program, but try and actually roll it out with the test group. Feedback you get in a focus group or survey will help improve the quality of your program and correct any mistakes before you introduce it to your entire market.

Promote your program

Once tested and approved, you’ll need a stand-alone marketing campaign to build awareness and participation. First, introduce the campaign internally so that every customer-facing team member knows about it and can help promote it. Then, begin your external rollout. Eventually, ongoing marketing of the program to existing customers should become less frequent, less interruptive, and largely via existing communication channels.

Don’t let your existing customers slip away. Call Patterson/Bach Communications today at 407-645-1880 and let us help you get your customer loyalty program underway.

When is the last time you wrote a letter to a friend, a service provider or a prospective customer? Chances are it’s been a while. And of course, in today’s world of instant communications, why bother with the time, expense (and icky stamp-glue-on-the -tongue) of snail mail?

Here at the agency, though, we’re seeing the value of a good, old-fashioned letter in a new business initiative we recently launched. That’s right, we’re sending out personalized letters along with other materials to prospective clients—and so far, the results are encouraging. We’ve actually lined up a few meetings along with some “keep in touch” invitations, and in most cases the prospects have called us, a sign that our message is getting through. We’re also dusting off another old-school sales tool a.k.a. the White Paper. We’re starting to send these out via e-blasts, as part of an industry-specific new business initiative. I’m eager to see the results, and I’m betting we’ll get some.

I’m sharing this as a reminder that, as we embrace all the new media out there, we shouldn’t entirely junk the old. Sure, it generally costs more to  send a letter, direct mail, etc. However, used judiciously, these mediums can garner attention and pull results. It may be—irony of ironies—that Dinosaur Age communications appear all the more novel and attention-getting in today’s jungle of electronic media. I don’t know. But I do believe that old-school communications has a place in our new media world—and used properly, the old can be worth gold to smart marketers.

Wow, how an image and reputation can be destroyed overnight! If you’ve had your head in the sand, thinking it can’t happen to you, the recent events that have tarnished confidence in the financial industry, celebrity images, company reputations, and brand trust should be enough to make everyone sit up and take notice.

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Internet, cable, and phone. Flight, hotel, and car rental. Whopper, fries, and a drink. What do these products and services have in common? They are all among the most recognized examples of product bundling.

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Sanford-based Federal Trust Bank has good news to share with the public, and it’s getting the word out through a bold, straight-talking ad campaign created by Patterson/Bach.

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Originally, the Top 10 Scenic Drives in the Northern Rockies existed only as a dream to brand and promote one of the world’s most beautiful destinations. A consortium of area businesses, along with civic and governmental organizations, joined together to make this dream a reality. Patterson/Bach was selected to build the Top 10 Scenic Drives brand identity.

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For its first CHA Craft SuperShow in Anaheim, the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) looked to position social media as a priority to help increase awareness of and excitement for its consumer show event. CHA selected Patterson/Bach Communications to launch its CHA Craft SuperShow social media initiatives in fall 2009.

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