Know your target audience and how to reach them - marketing is customer driven.

It's not enough that your ads, brochure or website are creative. The judge of good advertising is if it helps sell products or services. Good marketing is based on sound research that understands the current market environment and the available assets that a company can use to grow profitably. Good creative is an outgrowth of a clear understanding of the target audience, the media they use and the messaging that appeals to them.

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

Broadbent & Williams defines effective advertising as planned communication that achieves predetermined objectives developed cooperatively by the agency and the client. In our experience, advertising most likely to achieve its objectives is characterized by the following criteria:

• It is an outgrowth of a disciplined planning process that reviews client objectives, product strengths and weaknesses, competition, target market segments and customer needs.
• It is directed at a preselected target audience, and has as its focus a preselected market position, both of which have been methodically defined.
• It uses media that reaches the target audience in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
• It presents a product, service or concept and its benefits in a persuasive, factual and consistent manner, utilizing logical and thoughtful messaging and design techniques.
• It sells the product, service or concept and gives the target audience a memorable image and a good feeling about the client and its business policies.
• Its selling messages are direct, succinct, factual and always honest.
• It's consumer/target group oriented. For example, creative execution should not be biased because a companies' CEO is an avid sailor and thinks that a sailing metaphor would be really "cool." If the people that buy the CEO's goods or services are not predisposed to sailing metaphors, communications will, in effect, be speaking to the client's likes and not the "needs" or "wants" of the customer.

A plan need not be a complex and cumbersome document. Often a plan is in outline form starting with a vision statement. A plan is not etched in stone. A plan is flexible. A plan gives everyone involved written words to contemplate. A plan brings everyone together as a team and offers focus that can achieve measurable results. If you've been working without a plan, Broadbent & Williams can help.

Marketing Consultation and Planning: Consulting and planning for all aspects of a project including implementation for your marketing, advertising and public relations projects.

Market Research: Secondary research along with management services for preliminary and comprehensive market evaluations including questionnaire development, interviewing, tabulation, data analysis and presentation.


Strategic Business Planning: Question-Based Business Planning™ is provided through Van Mell Associates. Question-Based Business Planning™ gives your organization focus fast. It's a plain-English alternative to traditional "strategic" planning. In five two-hour meetings, it yields a one-page plan that helps you keep everyone headed in the same direction. Our goal tree lets every manager see how they fit in. VMA is a 7-person services firm with experts in six disciplines (business structure, operations, marketing/sales, IT, Human Resources & Finance). For more information on Question-Based Business Planning, please visit the Van Mell Associates website at www.vanmell.com