THIS ISSUE INCLUDES: •  What's New? •  Going, Going … Gone! •  Resource Referral •  Lessons Learned •  Tips & Tricks •  Community Leaders •  Member Spotlight •  Community Stats •  Your Account Summary •  Special Thanks •  Last Laugh

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WHAT'S NEW?

Dear Askers & Answerers,

Good news on several fronts! First off, I'm excited to report that we officially crossed over to 10,000 newsletter subscribers this week. That means there are 10,000 MarketingProfs members who are interested specifically in what's going on in Know-How Exchange. It's good to remember that there are a lot more of us "participating" than we see posting in the forum. The knowledge exchange benefits a sizeable (and growing) community.

Next, Aaron (our trusty programmer) came up with a solution to protect our email addresses on our profile pages from those nasty harvesters. It's already been implemented.

Third: You can now search for Open Urgent Questions using KHE's Search Questions page. Or, if you prefer to use the View All Open Questions button on the mainpage, you can identify the Urgent Questions by the red exclamation points .

Aaron also added the exclamation points to the Daily Digest emails. And he published the "What's this?" links on the question pages, so that Askers will know they can switch their Open Questions to Urgent if they want to call greater attention to them.

Finally, we've added two new categories to the forum: Taglines/Names and Just for Fun. That means you can elect to receive alerts on these types of questions separately from the categories they used to be part of (Branding and All Other).

The Resource Library is in development, and I'm looking forward to introducing it to you soon. I hope you enjoy the newsletter!

Happy exchanging,

Val Frazee
Moderator, Know-How Exchange
MarketingProfs.com

GOING, GOING, GONE!

Here are KHE's 10 oldest questions. They're likely to close soon. Have an idea to offer? Better do it now!

1. How do I develop a new accountable management team?
2. Is there a need for Hispanic speakers?
3. Internet Gambling
4. Need help w/a marketing campaign for a title co.
5. Anyone watching The Apprenctice?
6. Open rates and average # of unique visitors
7. Need help w/ marketing a collision shop
8. Effectiveness of various marketing vehicles
9. Easyjet SWOT analysis
10. Can you recommend a good marketing person?

RESOURCE REFERRAL: PROPHET

Michele has been an advocate for creating the new Resource Library we're building for KHE. As preparation, she contributed her own short list of favorite resources. Here's one of them that anyone interested in branding will find interesting. She explains:

"David Aacker is behind this global consultancy that specializes in all issues to do with branding. Good case studies and examples about methodologies to measure and manage customer touchpoints."

Resource: Prophet

I'm always looking for resources to share with our readers. If you know of one, send me a blurb. I'll send you 250 Question Points.

LESSONS LEARNED: ROI ON PRINT ADVERTISING

Last week, JoJo asked the community for help in calculating the ROI for print advertising. The conversation that resulted, as SRyan suggests, is a good one to save for later. I've excerpted a few highlights below.

• mgoodman: ROI is the right concept, but measuring it isn't nearly so easy or straightforward. Whatever you are advertising is affected by so many things in addition to the print advertising. ... My advice is to construct a simple experiment where you have a professional market researcher contact people in your target audience. Ask them a series of questions about the brands/companies they are aware of, how they'd rate them, etc. Then let them read 6 or 8 print ads in a magazine or trade journal environment. You ad would be one of them. Then ask them the same questions you did before they read the ad. And then ask them direct questions about your company/brand, whether they recall seeing an ad for your brand, etc. Finally, ask them how likely they would be to purchase your brand. That should give you some feel for how effective the advertising is.
• darcy.moen: Create ads that include a response from your customers. For example, I'd ask a customer to clip a coupon, present the advertisment to get the deal, or something that gets you a physical piece of your advertisment. Instruct your sales staff that when customers turn in their ad or coupon, they must write on the back of those ads and coupons how much money the customer spent making a purchase. At the end of the promotion, gather up all the ads/coupons turned in, and add up the sales dollars generated. Then, go back to your advertising department, and ask them to produce invoices for the print ads you've placed. Now, compare the numbers. How did your ad do? Did it cover the cost of printing the ads?
• mbarber: Well the FIRST thing you might like to consider doing is to determine the answer to the following question: "What TYPE of return do we want to measure?" That puts things in a WHOLE different ballpark, enables the marketing department to get out of the straightjacket placed on it by the weird financial types and also gets the financial types to at least see (hopefully also accept) that there's more to it than just a straight income return that is measurable. What, for you, would be considered a return that would be valued by your company from its print campaign? Increased brand awareness? Word of mouth? Increased number of inquiries? Sales made in the next month? Sales made within one week of the ad? You can then ask the next question in the ROI process: "What level of each form of ROI would be deemed acceptable to consider this campaign a success?"
• jason.koulouras: Make sure you include a dedicated phone number and dedicated URL on the advert. This way you can measure and track inbound responses to the ad as being impact related to that ad and that ad only.
• mmprint: The most obvious and successful of all approaches has not been mentioned. Implement a policy for representatives to ask a simple question when a potential client contacts you: "Excuse me Sir/Miss, one more thing. How did you hear of us?" ... Over the last year I can tell you how many people called us, where they are from and how they found us down to the keywords used in search engines. ... Do you have a Web site? Last month I ran a promotion, where I sent out 15K postcards to print buyers on our mailing list throughout our market. This postcard was basically a ticket, we assigned and numbered each postcard to the specific contact and used a number generator to choose a winning number. These people were instructed to go to our site, enter your number and see if you've won a new Apple I-pod. ... Every time a postcard number was entered, it was recorded in our database. We generated close to 8000 entries on our site. When and if they purchase in the future, we'll know how they originally found us.
• dezinerguy: If you just want to calculate ROI here is a link to an online calculator. ROI measurements may not always be that valid though. mbarber is correct to remind us that you can't measure everything and some things that are not measurable are still valuable. Cliff, I think had a great idea. Entice and measure. ... I would try to make as much of my advertising measurable as possible so I could see if it the advertising is going in the right direction. Understand that your ROI may not be solely dependant on that campaign unless it is your first. Advertising ... art or science? Perhaps a little of both.
• SteveB: Good input so far. I would add the concept of direct response print advertising’s A/B split testing. Basically many publications will allow (small fee) advertisers to run two versions of an ad in a single issue. Example: With a circulation of 100,000 - 50% will have an A version of the ad and the other 50% will have a B version of the ad. The difference between the A and B versions can only be tested by one element at a time, such as the headline, a photo, or the offer etc. There will always be a clear winner, A or B. The winner becomes the standard for the next version to test against. Over time the advertiser will evolve a great producing ad. Here's more info.

The Question: How Do I Calculate ROI On Print Advertising?

TIPS & TRICKS: TAGLINE QUESTIONS

Many of our members say the Tagline questions are their favorites. The collaborative atmosphere sparks ideas, and participating in the brainstorming can be fun - whether you're actively contributing or just reading along.

So if you've been struggling to come up with just the right tagline for your company, I encourage you to leverage the collective talent of this community. To make sure you get the best possible answers, please include the following information in your question:

• The company name
• The product name
• The brand architecture
• Brief company/product history
• Brief background on competitors.

If you're not sure how much to say, start out with a few paragraphs, and invite the members to ask you questions. Then, of course, be ready to answer them.

Have a question? Ask the experts.

Post a brief synopsis below, and invite other members to offer their feedback.

My Question Title

COMMUNITY LEADERS

As of this week, these are our superstars! The Most Inquisitive are those who have asked the most questions. (Where there's a tie, we broke it based on number of points they offered for their questions.) The Most Expert are those with the highest number of Cumulative Points (given to them by question authors for offering helpful answers).

NOTE: These are our top members as of midday October 14, 2004

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MEET VEVOLUTION

Gary Rosensteel, more widely known in KHE as Vevolution, is an IT-professional-turned-marketer. As such, he's been an invaluable contributor to KHE's advisory group, as well as a frequent participant in the forum. Read on to learn more about this week's featured member.

Where are you based?
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the U.S., although we are all now virtual citizens of the world.

What do you do in real-life?
I'm a principal in Vevolution.

Tell us about your company.
Vevolution is a full-service marketing company specializing in eMarketing activities - Web sites, eCommerce, email marketing, marketing analytics.

How did you find KHE?
As a member of MarketingProfs, I was invited to join during the beta test period last fall.

What kinds of KHE questions do you enjoy most?
The strategy questions are the most thought-inducing for me. However, I've entered into interesting dialogues within several categories.

Describe a specific KHE discussion you learned something from.
I have been fortunate to learn a lot from many of the questions and the responses. Many thanks to all the wise participants!

How did you get started in marketing?
I'm really an IT person who fell into marketing in self-defense through involvement with startups since the early '90s. I became a principal in Vevolution about three years ago and have really enjoyed working directly in marketing. I found I have both an interest and a flair for it. Had I known this earlier, I may have had a completely different career path.

What is your next career objective?
To make my software startup company wildly successful.

Do you have a favorite tool that helps you do your job?
The whiteboard with lots of different colored pens.

Describe one of your non-marketing hobbies or interests.
I really have an eclectic set of interests - sports, theater, art, jazz, oh, and I can't forget wine. I lived in California for 11 years and got to know and love the wine country AND its products!

What is the value KHE provides to you personally?
A great way to interact with colleagues around the world. A continual learning experience. The opportunity to help others.

Have you made any offline connections with KHErs?
Yes, I've connected with many of the members for offline dialogues, and have provided detailed advice to many people who contacted me as a result of my responses to their questions. I've been fortunate to help people from all over the world - the U.K., Jordan, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Pakistan and several in the U.S.

Do you have any advice for new members of KHE?
Think about how you want to pose your question, and, if possible, ask someone else to critique it before you post. The problem is that when you are so close to a problem you may leave out important details that allow our members to understand your situation and appropriately respond. Also, stay engaged when you post a question. Many times a member will ask for some clarification so they can respond appropriately, but the person asking the question never replies.

Do you have a favorite quote you want to share?
"Common sense isn't common." Gary Rosensteel circa 1980. I realized this a long time ago and created this quote as a response to the many times that people would ask, "Don't they have any common sense?"

Is there anything else you would like to say to the community?
"Never give up, never surrender!" (Tim Allen's character in the movie Galaxy Quest.) The world will keep trying to beat you down, but it's important to not lose your confidence and overcome the obstacles.

COMMUNITY STATS

Active Unique Participants (to date): 2,889
Closed Questions (to date): 3,243
Currently Open Questions: 68
Total Responses (to date): 24,315
Subscribers to this newsletter: 10,150

YOUR ACCOUNT SUMMARY

These numbers come directly from YOUR profile. Question Points tells you how many points you have available for asking questions in the forum. Expert Points indicates your standing in the community based on answers you have posted. Visit this FAQ, if you want to know more.

Question Points: %%PointsBalance%%
Expert Points: %%PointsCum%%

Click here to buy more Question Points

SPECIAL THANKS

Thank you, Michele and Vevolution for providing content for this newsletter. And thanks to all the following community members who have emailed or posted suggestions, technical reports or questions in the last week. Your feedback and energy drives this community's development. We couldn't do it without you!

alistair, K, W.M.M.A., mjklanac, calvinmicklefinger, Jett, Leaky Funnel, Paul Copcutt, Rick, OlivierT, lekh, et3dotcom, Michele, tjh, Sweetasman01, mbarber, JBtron, Peter (henna gaijin), SteveB, ASVP/ChrisB, Deremiah, *CPE, ¤ SRyan ¤

LAST LAUGH

I like to end with a smile. So this space is dedicated to something amusing I find posted in our forum.

We have jillc to thank for starting the thread that introduced us to MenWhoLookLikeKennyRogers.com and a whole host of other afternoon distractions. Be sure to visit this question if you're looking for a quick stress reliever.

Open Question: Wacky Web Sites

Forum Feedback: The Know-How Exchange is still young. So we're constantly refining how things work. We have a gigantic list of action items, and your feedback helps us prioritize it. So please feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions. Thanks, in advance, for your time!

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