“Lascivious Marketing offers clients clarity, direction, and focus.”

If you had to single out one particularly big mistake that a lot of companies in the adult industry make, which one would it be and what would be your advice?
Not that this sector is the sole culprit by any means, but there’s a tendency for many adult retailers to treat social media as one-way promotional traffic. Relentlessly tweeting product images and weblinks isn’t what social media is about! That’s not relationship-building: it’s just using social media platforms to sell, sell, sell. Not clever. Use social media only if you’re going to be sociable!

Marketing is a core aspect of every company. How deeply will you get involved in a company’s activities when they hire your services? Is there a general way of assessing how many aspects you’d like to change in a company to optimise their marketing?
That’s really up to the companies themselves and to what extent they require assistance. I also know from experience that when a prospective client gets in contact what they want isn’t necessarily what they need most to help their business. Some businesses may contact us with a very open brief that may require a thorough marketing audit and subsequent planning. Others could have a specified need – customer satisfaction research or brand development, for example.

Lascivious Marketing is based in the UK. Does marketing for adult products follow the same general rules in all European country, or is a separate strategy needed for every market?
Companies who treat one country exactly the same as the next do so at their own risk. Look at multinationals who have introduced new products then faced a PR crisis as the product name translates into something funny, insulting, or embarrassing in other languages.

Furthermore, different countries react to marketing in different ways. I learned a few years ago that one European country’s research respondents consistently rate ads less positively than those from other countries, regardless of the products and how good the ads are.

So, at the very least there has to be an awareness – especially as we’re talking about adult products – of individual countries’ sexual culture, attitudes, sensitivities, that need to be accounted for. It may just require some individual fine-tuning, but that only comes from already knowing the territories you’re intending competing in.

When a company requires your services, would it be best if this company presents you with a specific project, plan, or problem that you can sink your teeth into, or do you analyse the company and its marketing as a whole and then present your results, explaining which things should be changed?
This depends entirely on how we’re approached. Some may come with a specific brief: “We want you to design and manage a customer satisfaction survey, run key driver analysis on the data and then deliver a presentation to us tell us what we need to do to improve our performance.” Alternatively, others may contact us realising that their marketing effectiveness must improve but need guidance and direction in which to achieve this. That’s when more exploratory conversations will be needed to further drill down the key issues, and perhaps call for a marketing audit and planning/strategy expertise.

What do you want to achieve with Lascivious Marketing throughout the next 12 months?
Good question. The obvious answer is: lots of paying clients who see the value in what we’re offering and see for themselves the impact on their businesses. But I’m also really keen to improve the amount of research on an industry-wide level, whether conducted at cost, or on a syndicated basis. More ‘state of the industry’ reports on key issues, using real multi-country data from real industry respondents participating in structured surveys would be great. It’s really important to send a message that the opinions of small business owners count just as much as those from bigger firms.

Finally, at a more holistic level, it would be really great to see adult retailers collectively ‘up’ their marketing game. Sure, this can be challenging for small companies who feel time and money constrained, but we’ll be doing our bit by offering as much free information and tips on our website as possible, while our paid-for services will be competitively priced. We’re also launching a new weekly email (‘Six of the best’) that will include news stories from the sector as well as some other items. You can sign up to receive it at eepurl.com/cCOJNj

How expensive are your services and how can interested companies contact you?
It really does depend on the nature and scope of the client’s requirements. Depending on requirements we can offer day-rate, retainer, fixed-fee project pricing or even in-house support, depending on location and duration. We’ll shortly be announcing specific fixed price offerings for research services such as survey checking and testing.

To get in touch with me, you can tweet to me @LasciviousMktng or head to lasciviousmarketing.com and type me a message from there. Or pick up the phone and call +44 (0)141 255 0769. I look forward to hearing from you all!