In the past, shoppers only had Boxing Day to look forward to when it came to finding deals. Nowadays, retailers and consumers have more options than ever when it comes to shopping days and they’re happening earlier and earlier each year.

A report this year found that retail giants Wal-Mart and Amazon would be promoting holiday deals as early as November 1^st.[1] We all know about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but do you heard about Gray Thursday (November 28^th), Small Business Saturday (November 30^th), Green Monday (December 9^th) and Super Saturday (December 21^st)?[2] Though many of these sales only take place in the U.S., retailers in Canada, like Best Buy, Future Shop and Sears, are also taking part.

During years when consumers are more careful with their spending, it’s even more important to let your customers know in advance the deals you intend to offer, allowing them more time to plan their spending. Planning out your retail strategy ahead of time will help you, and your customers, get the most out of the holiday season.

2. Take Cues From Those Around You

As soon as Halloween ends, we start to hear it: Christmas music on the radio. It’s a sure sign that the holiday season is approaching. Soon after, decorative lights are hung on houses, families start putting up their Christmas Trees, and before you know it, the season is in full swing.

Being responsive to the environment around you is a good way to gauge when you should be beginning the holiday season. In addition to Walmart and Amazon, large chains like Sears and Office Depot will be offering discounts in early November as well.[3]

Smaller and mid-size business should also think about taking a pre-emptive approach to holiday sales. However, it’s important to also take into account what feels appropriate to their brand and their customers, remembering that holiday promotions should be apart of an overall sales strategy that runs year round.

3. The Shift to Digital: The Changing Retail Landscape
It’s no secret that consumers are all about convenience, and the shift in the past few years to online shopping is a clear sign of that. The good news is that this can benefit businesses as well. Using savvy social media strategies for promotion is easier and cheaper than printing and distributing materials in stores. Online stores can be a great way to bypass the costs of brick-and-mortar stores all together. Best of all, cheaper and easier sales methods mean that you can start promoting the holidays sooner rather than later.

Recent numbers show that the shift to online shopping isn’t budging anytime soon. Last year, there was a 5% increase in the number of consumers who said they planned on shopping online for Cyber Monday, up to a whopping 49% of total consumers who plan to make purchases online this year. Within five years, 10% of consumer spending in Canada will be spent online, and 11% of consumer spending in the U.S.[4]

Incorporating online promotions into your overall strategy is a great way to stay ahead of the game when it comes to planning when to launch your holiday sales strategy.

We recommend starting your holiday season planning as early as possible. The more time you have to prep, the higher the quality of your strategy. Beyond just growing your sales, we want to help you figure out how you can best elevate your brand.

Though the tips above are great guidelines to follow when it comes to your holiday planning, it’s also essential to remain loyal to the integrity and personality of your brand. At PRECISION, we can help you understand what that personality is, and how you can express it through your sales, marketing and retail strategy.

Sources:

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/30/black-friday-deals-all-month/18169743/

[2] http://www.sociallystacked.com/2013/11/mark-your-calendar-9-shopping-days-businesses-must-know-about-this-holiday-season/

[3] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/30/black-friday-deals-all-month/18169743/

[4] http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/e-commerce-explosion-coming-for-2014-holiday-shopping-dianne-buckner-1.2818640

Since we like to practice what we preach, we’ve elevated our UX and updated the PRECISION website to add a new level of simplicity and ease of navigation.  Check us out @ www.precisioncg.com

Integration…meet interoperability.

With integration there are often disconnects among the channels, where information needs to be sent from one platform to another, causing a time lag, changed formats or human involvement. Integration involves getting distinct platforms that have different coding, language or system requirements, to work with one another in individual circumstances.  Ever ask your programmer to add new information to site they haven’t personally programmed? It can be a nightmare!

So what’s interoperability? Imagine a world where all platforms and channels worked seamlessly together. Where it didn’t matter that a new platform was introduced because everything was programmed against specific standards. And these standards were part of the bigger picture; collecting data that truly allows brands to understand the needs of the consumer journey.

The difference between the two forms of connectivity can be compared to a macro vs micro way of thinking. Interoperability, or the macro view is when you see a system or business as a unified whole, with every department working with one another as one. Integration on the other hand, or the micro view, is when your business is divided into individual departments with different KPIs and journeys, trading information on solely a need-basis. Basically, business as most brands know it!

Need another example?
Interoperability would be the creative department and the programmers working together from the start of a website redesign to determine a layout that both satisfies the project’s objectives as well as the programmers’ needs. It would include the current need for performance and more importantly the future needs against changing trends in UX, technology and brand needs.

In today’s way-of-working, most creative teams determine a layout, look and feel and then go to your programmers to make it happen. A problem that may arise is when a programmer tells you that the look you are trying to achieve is not possible, but he will try to integrate the design with what is possible. This is why when there is gap between marketing and IT or in other cases, marketing and sales, you never fully achieve a seamless approach.

While interoperability may sound like a dream come true, it’s hard to achieve. It requires all departments and budgets to work together in order to create a standardized communications infrastructure that optimizes both the user experience and the flow of information. While this may seem obvious or frivolous, it is actually a major hurdle to overcome as no one wants to reveal company secrets.

One company that has taken the concept of interoperability to heart is Apple. Everyone seems to be talking about the keynote that took place a few weeks ago where Apple introduced the iPhone 6, Apple Pay and the much-anticipated iWatch. Great technological advances aside, CEO Tim Cook stated that Apple went to great lengths to consider how every device would work together.  Apple takes great pride in their assurance that each of their new products work seamlessly with both the previous generations of their products as well as all new devices. Rarely do you hear of an iPhone, iPad and MacBook not working well together.

If you’re not Apple, or even heavily involved in tech, what can interoperability do for you?

Interoperability ensures that every channel being used whether it be social, your website or even more traditional forms of advertising work together to enhance the overall user experience. You can better secure your ROI through looking at your total activity, which is really about the future of Return on Everything.

Want to learn how to apply this way of working to your brand?  Connect with us to begin your brand journey to precise communications through strategic interoperability planning.

This is how we think. This is what we do.

Feature Image Source

I fell in love with the music industry during my summer internship in New York City at Island Def Jam Music Group while working in the Digital Marketing department, which inspired me to pursue my degree in Marketing. The wonderful perks of living in New York City, coupled with free music and meeting my favorite artists almost weekly, made it a dream job. But the main reason I truly fell in love with the industry is simple: Every artist is a unique brand. And how those brands get to market, whether through their music or through campaigns across radio, social media and their fans is what got me excited to be part of their world.

PRECISION has allowed me to truly flourish at this. I feel confident and ready to take on the challenge of working with different brands and help them drive communications across multiple channels. Working with different clients and the different employees at PRECISON has allowed me to better understand brand personalities and how to adapt them to create effective content plans that drive the right conversations across social media channels, PR and other communication touch points. I feel I have acquired so many great strategies and branding skills here at PRECISION that can be applied to working with different artists; I feel fully prepared to take on the music industry. The agency life at PRECISION will always be with me and I am so grateful to have had this experience.

Thank you PRECISION, I am ready to apply my agency life to the music industry!

Amanda Aziz

While it may seem like business as usual this year for those looking to or currently doing business in Canada, CASL presents a key difference. There is now a new  hurdle to overcome in order to get your communications out in Canada.

For those of you who haven’t yet been exposed to CASL, it was implemented on July 1, 2014 and is the most aggressive set of anti-spam laws to-date. You may be wondering how this may affect your business, CASL extends to all commercial electronic messages (CEMs) that are sent to and/or received by a company located in Canada. A CEM is defined as any electronic message that encourages participation in a commercial activity. Furthermore, commercial activity is defined as “any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character, whether or not the person who carries it out does so in the expectation of profit.”  The law is based heavily on the idea of having consent prior to communicating with anyone on your mailing list IF they are located in Canada.

As a friendly Canadian agency, PRECISION, realizes the value of great communications. This is why we’ve helped our clients build CASL-compliant lead lists so they can continue to communicate with their customers or prospects regardless of location.

If you are looking to expand your business, and therefore your communications North of the U.S border, here is what you need to know about CASL:

1. What is CASL?

CASL stands for Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation and it regulates the sending of Commercial Electronic Messages through an opt-in system.

2. CASL contains the following three requirements for CEMs:

a. You must have the consent of the individual before the message is sent.

b. You must identify yourself and provide your contact information.

c. You must give the individual a way to “unsubscribe” from further messages. 

3. There are two kinds of consent! What are they?

Express Consent

•  This is the most obvious type consent. It is where the recipient has given you direct permission to email them.

Implied Consent

• You can email someone because you have an existing relationship with them even if they have never explicitly requested you to email them. There are three scenarios where this is valid:
• The recipient and sender have an existing business relationship, or existing non-business relationship
• The recipient has conspicuously published their email address and the publication is not accompanied with a message the recipient doesn’t want to receive unsolicited messages
• If the recipient has disclosed their email address to the sender without indicating that they do not wish to receive unsolicited messages.

4. Keep a record of the consents and consent withdrawal requests you have secured!

If you send a CEM without being able to prove that the recipient has consented to receive it, you are placing your brand at risk of a potentially substantial fine under the CASL.

While much of the regulation is not 100% understood, the penalty for non-compliance can range from $1-$10 million.

Let us know how we can help you develop a communications campaign to maintain or start chatting with the polite folks up North.  We’re so sorry about these new regulations eh!?

This is how we think. This is what we do.

For more information about CASL click here

Throughout this summer I have been working as an intern in the strategy department of PRECISION, and during my time here, I have learnt a tremendous amount about interning and about agency life in general. I would like to share some of this knowledge so that when it becomes your time to look for jobs and internships, you know exactly what to expect and how to gain the most out of this type of experience.

Initially I didn’t have a frame of reference to go by so my preliminary expectation was that it functioned as any other business would; everyone comes in bright and early, punches in and then sits in their cubicles to carry out their work for the day. Maybe a couple of breaks here and there, but for the most part, everyone has their own responsibilities and carries out their duties; However, that perception was totally wrong. Working in an agency is like working with a family, everyone has their departments and their specific job requirements but all tasks overlap with each other, which makes everyone’s jobs intertwined and interdependent at times.  Teamwork is very prominent and also extremely important for all tasks to be accomplished in a timely manner, with the utmost care, which is a perfect segway into what I believe is the most important aspect of what I’ve learned at PRECISION.

1. Socialize and be friendly.
Working in groups, teams or even just collaborating with another person on a project is much more efficient and even more fun when you like the people you are working with. As an intern, your opinion can be dismissed and regarded as somewhat inferior to others, which often makes you question whether you should even speak at all, so be friendly and interact as much as you can with your colleagues. This way you will be looked at as more of a friend then a intern.

2. Make an effort to show how serious you are about the job and the work that it entails.
There are a few qualities in a person that are indicative to whether he or she takes their job seriously. Control those qualities properly and they will influence other people to take you more seriously even if you are just a first time intern. Some of those more important qualities include: how you present yourself, your attitude and your body language throughout the working day.

3. Be prepared for grunt work.
As an intern, you will be subjected to a lot of the work that is less on the creative and/or intellectually challenging side and is better characterized as being repetitive and time-consuming. Tasks like research and data entry are the most basic assignments to be carried out and at first they may seem like a waste of valuable time but in reality they are among the most important assignments. In the agency world, like in life, information is power. Knowing how to effectively handle the information will increase your value to your employer. This includes being able to find the right information as well as properly reading, analyzing and using the information to maximize its power.

4. You were given two eyes, two ears and only one mouth for a reason… Use them accordingly.
You may feel like you know-it-all now that you have a fancy new internship at a new and exciting agency but don’t let it get to your head because there is always more to learn even as an all-star. This relates to a seminar I once heard about your teachability index, which rates your willingness to learn as well as your willingness to accept change, which both go hand in hand in the learning process. To learn more about the teachability index and discover your number here is a link where you can learn more. Absorbing all the information you can from your co-workers and bosses is one of the best ways to learn and to improve in what you’re doing, so do it properly!

I would highly suggest leaving a summer open for the possibility of an internship type position because now that you know much more about interning at an agency, you will surely be sent on the right path.

This is how we think. This is what we do.

As digital advertising becomes the new standard in marketing, some have turned their attention away from the more traditional channels. In doing so, the effectiveness of certain media, like the tried and true static outdoor advertising, has been largely forgotten.

What is static outdoor advertising?

You look at them in the sky while driving down highways, intersections and main roads. Like most of us, you’ll take a second to soak in the message: “What? 2 for $1.99 at the local corner store? That’s a great deal!” This one-second has perfectly played its part. Your brand awareness has been activated. Static outdoor advertising is the space that remains unmoving and unchanging. With digital boards, you tend to share your purchased space with two or more advertisers. In these instances, the image switches after a specified period of time and only 1/3 of the passing traffic is actually exposed to your message.

Still unsure if outdoor advertising is right for you? Take a look at the top 4 reasons billboards should still be included in your marketing campaign!

1.    Investment
Using billboards is one of the most cost-efficient ways to reach the largest number of people within your target therefore reaching potential new customers and getting more bang for your buck. Other media channels like television, radio and print have become increasingly fragmented. These channels only allow brands to reach segments of a given target market at a given time.  Outdoor advertisements are one of the few channels left where you can still efficiently reach a broad audience in your local market.

2. 24/7 Coverage
Using a billboard means 24-hour exposure to the public eye. It is a consistent and constant means to reach your target demographic. All other mediums are momentary and sporadic; even digital as the shear volume of content created daily makes it easy to get lost in a consumers feed. Because of their constant presence, billboards have the benefit of repeat exposure, ensuring that your brand and message are remembered.

3. Become a Part of the Environment
While other forms of advertising need to interrupt their audiences, outdoor advertising becomes a part of the environment that consumers are exposed to. Rather than having to provide entertainment like other media channels, outdoor advertising allows brands to promote their messaging in a non-intrusive manner while still achieving disruption for brand awareness.

4. Awareness
Out of home advertising is a great way to generate awareness while elevating the perception and credibility of a brand. By strategically selecting key locations, brands have the ability to not only inform their audience of their products’ existence, but also guide them to store locations through the placement of ads on the consumers’ path to purchase.

Want to find out how to integrate Out of home advertising into your marketing? Interested to see how you could pay less on your billboard campaigns to free up dollars for your digital channels? Check out our PDF or contact us today!

This is how we think. This is what we do.

Sources: 1,2,3

In the not-so-distant past, companies would speak at their consumers, telling them what they need or should want with little expectation of a response. This was accomplished through what we now refer to as traditional media such as print, direct mail, television and radio.

Welcome To The World Of Sharing

Though traditional methods of marketing are far from obsolete, the expansion of social media has changed the advertising game and there are now a new set of rules to follow.

1. Engagement Is Key

Your customer no longer wants to be spoken at, but rather they want to be spoken to. This means that there is now a desire to have a meaningful conversation and be involved in the brand process. Social media allows your audience to feel as though they are being listened to and have a say in where the brand is going.

Engagement at this level can be demonstrated through both the encouragement of consumer participation as well as through the driving of important conversations. Consumer participation has been seen through contests like those held by Lays who use user-generated content to determine new flavours . Important topics are driven through more nuanced conversations like the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (WIKI PAGE). This campaign highlighted an important dialogue that had been running through women’s heads for years and made it a more legitimate area to discuss.

2. Getting Down To Plain Talk

As marketers, we used to be able to wow our audiences with our extensive use of terminology or jargon. To a large extent, this is no longer the case for both consumers and other businesses. The tried and true K.I.S.S principle has never been a more important or effective idea to implement.

Why?

Brands now have the mission to talk with their customers as though they are a really informative, sometimes quirky but always-genuine friend.  This is why it is so important to understand who your brand is and not just what it does.  While the consumer buys products, they buy into brands.  With all the effort that goes into connecting to consumers in traditional and social spaces, it is worth taking time to understand who your brand is – this will help you approach the conversation so that you can build a community of both on and offline ambassadors.

3. Embrace The Dialogue

For all of you traditionalists out there, this shift is not bad news! Through the use of social platforms, you get to gage audience opinion and essentially host a continuous focus group with thousands of active participants. To top it all off, it comes at no additional cost if you’re already running a social program. By properly leveraging your conversational presence you can refine the more traditional approaches so that they properly match your target audience.

Unlike the previous era of marketing, companies are able to find out public opinion almost instantaneously and better yet the public is often very specific about what they do and do not like about a brand’s messaging. Through this process, companies are able to find out how to adapt their approach to ensure they stay relevant to the people they are trying to reach.

4. Start Conversing

The key to finding balance in the new approach to brand conversations is to know who you are as well as who your consumers are.  Social marketing helps facilitate this by allowing your audience to connect and respond in real time and more importantly share their opinions and/or those of others in this same way.

Every great communication strategy is rooted in understanding your target audience needs and wants – especially since, for the most part, your audiences are active conversationalists. To discover how to develop the perfect communication strategy that drives your campaign and better connects with your audience, partner with PRECISION COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, and begin your journey into the new world of brand communications.

Let’s Make It Happen!

This is how we think. This is what we do.

Recently, Herzing College, a career-focused institution for higher education in the sectors of technology, business, healthcare and design, reached out to PRECISION to join their students for a 1-hour presentation on “Life in the Agency World”

PRECISION’s strategy department shared insights into the world of agencies to give the Herzing students a glimpse into life after school. During the presentation, PRECISION covered topics that included: a day in agency life, each of the presenters’ respective journey before they joined PRECISION, and an explanation of all the different departments PRECISION houses and how those departments work as one to deliver top-notch client work.

Since then, Herzing has shared with us some of the great student feedback:

 “It was a nice performance, pretty informative and useful. They brought a general vision of a marketing agency functioning. I was pleased to know about all potential alternatives are waiting for the students for the internship period. It would be interesting to have a paid internship with this company with the variety of different types of projects.”

“I really liked the presentation. Everyone really knew their stuff. It was very informative of how marketing is in the real world.”

“PRECISION was a very informative presentation that left me feeling inspired towards the agency field. I would love to intern there.”

If you would like a representative from PRECISION Communications Group at your next speaking engagement connect with us via email: info@precisioncg.com , Twitter or Facebook

At PRECISION, we make it happen!

This is how we think. This is what we do.

Can you feel the difference? 

This new state of mind is based on wanting the brand you work for to mean something which helps put service at the forefront of brand differentiation. Traditionally, the definition of a sales agent has been a commission-driven individual who only sells to meet their bottom line or quota. While brand ambassadors have these same concerns, (because let’s be honest, they need to make a living) there is a fundamental difference in the equation: brand ambassadors sell because they love the brand and feel it is an extension of themselves. These are not the Willy Lomans of the world. In this new commercial world, sales agents or brand ambassadors live and breathe their brand. They find joy in servicing their customers through education that is no longer limited to product features, but now extends to brand identity and stance.

Today, employees and consumers alike seem to expect brands to represent or stand for something larger rather than just what the individual products can do; the generational gap has led to a societal shift in consumer expectations as to what a brand can and should achieve. Transparency has become the new norm since deep industry research can be only a click away. Only a few years ago, manufacturing practices were not a topic of conversation, yet now it is a point of differentiation. Remember Nike?  By combining these factors, one can create a brand that employees can be proud to work for. With so many products per category in the market, the change in mindset of the brand ambassador has brought forward a new means for differentiation: service in how a customer is approached and how information is delivered.

Use service to rise above the fray

In our previous blog post, we discussed how companies can gain a competitive advantage through convenience. Service is factor in convenience through education and a responsiveness to any given situation. With the old sales mindset, the agent was only there to sell. In this new system, the brand ambassador is present to go above and beyond traditional methods. Because customers are more informed than ever before, it is the ambassador’s responsibility to add value to the selling process through service.

If it’s broke…it’s time to fix it

How many times have you taken a flight, or eaten in a restaurant, and have felt that you haven’t been given the service you deserve as a paying customer. It seemed as though the employees did not really care if you were satisfied. It is during these critical moments that a brand must ensure that all employees are ambassadors for your brand and that they feel it is their personal responsibility to make sure that every customer leaves feeling as though they have been treated like they were the only customer. Even though we know that we’re not the first to enter our hotel rooms, it’s interesting that we can be made feel like we are the first to sleep in a set of sheets.

When looking to ensure that service is a key part of your brand, it is important to provide your employees and sales staff with a game plan so that no matter the situation, they know how to respond. This is how you can shift your sales agents to brand ambassadors. In this new generation of selling, it is the outlook of a brand ambassador that allows for the embodiment your brand’s strategy.

Create buy-in to create ambassadors

It is important to keep in mind that how you sell your brand to your employees as a whole reflects how they sell it to your customers. When you’re looking to drive brand awareness and ultimately increase your bottom line, remember to communicate your excitement to your employees, especially those who go on to sell to your customers. They can then transfer excitement in the service they provide. With this knowledge, it is important to ensure that service always comes first.

At PRECISION, we believe that great service is a direct result of great training. By providing insightful training sessions and workshops, you can ensure that your team is properly educated on both brand identity and the type of service to provide. Putting together an all-inclusive response strategy equips your employees with the tools needed, no matter what situation arises.

This is how we think. This is what we do.