How to Limit Cuts to Your Marketing Budget

This is the time of year when marketing budgets start to get cut.  As the first quarter ends, corporate finance teams roll up the numbers.  If there are negative cost and profit variances vs. the plan, they will look for ways to close that gap before they report quarterly results.  Too often, the marketing budget is seen as the first source of funds to close the gap. 

Why is that?  In many companies, it is because marketing leadership has not proven marketing investment can predictably drive revenue and profits vs. investments made by other departments.  The finance team and the executive team know they need marketing, but unless the marketing team can demonstrate an ROI, the budget remains vulnerable to cuts.

As a strategic growth consultant, I talk with many Vice Presidents and Directors of Marketing.   Recently, many companies have been focused on survival and cost-cutting vs. strategic investment in building their brand and market share.   There has been great frustration as marketing budgets were reduced at the planning stage and then cut again mid-year.

Only marketing leadership can stop this trend. The process of cutting the marketing budget will continue until marketing leadership can educate management and demonstrate a better approach.

This starts in the planning cycle.  The marketing planning process can take several forms. 

• For some companies, the planning process is very involved.  The marketing team and their agency work to develop an elaborate marketing plan, presentation and binder.  These plans can be detailed strategic growth plans or just a fancy presentation with a lot of charts.  The best of these companies develop a strategic plan and tools that they will put to work all year and measure the results as they go.  The worst put the binder on the shelf after the presentation, and will do the same thing next year that they did this year.
• Some companies just wait for the marketing budget number to be communicated.  They then allocated the budget into different spending categories.  There is no strategic plan.  The marketing plan is just a to-do list based on available funding than a growth plan.  For some in this situation, they have given up fighting for strategic growth funds and just want to make sure they have enough funding to do what they did last year.
• A last group develops a strategic growth plan that drives achievement of the company’s strategic objectives. The plan identifies specific strategies, programs and investments to obtain long-term strategic objectives.  It identifies near-term programs that drive sales and profits this year.  A strong plan channels all investment into these two categories.  Some may include tactical legacy programs with limited impact on sales or strategic objectives – these should be replaced with more strategic programs over time. 

Work upfront in the planning cycle can establish the foundation and expectations for future budget cutting conversations.  If your company’s annual and 3-year business plan does not call out your strategic marketing goals and the related investment, your marketing department should be prepared to serve as the banking account to go to when your finance team is looking for money.

Each year there is pressure to do more with less.  The ability to protect or receive additional budget funding will depend on the work marketing leadership has done to demonstrate that:

1. Marketing gets real results – agreeing on key performance metrics and then demonstrating results helps create new understanding and value in marketing.  If you cannot achieve the desired results with the funding you have, you must identify what is holding you back – and work to change it.
2. Marketing is strategic – All year long, marketing leadership needs to demonstrate and communicate how the work of the marketing team and the investment in marketing is helping the company achieve its goals.  If you cannot demonstrate this, revisit the focus of your marketing plan to achieve this result.

Preparing for the Mid-Year Budget Cutting Meeting  

Once you have been notified that a marketing budget review is pending, preparation is needed.  Marketing leaders tend to approach meeting preparation in one of four ways

• Some will go into this meeting without any preparation - waiting to see how much needs to be cut from the budget before spending time on the issue. 
• Others will just plan to reduce all their programs by a little bit and limit the execution within available budget.
• Others will just prepare a list of what has been committed vs. what is available for cutting.
• A fourth group will prepare for these meetings in depth - and likely will be more successful in protecting their funds.

What does this fourth group do?

First, they separate their marketing budget into long-term strategic, near-term strategic and tactical investments.  Ideally this was done in the planning stage, but if not, it can be done in preparation for this meeting. 

• Long-term strategic programs move the company toward long-term strategic objectives – cutting this funding endangers long-term company growth. 
• Near-term strategic programs drive sales this year – cutting these will directly reduce profits.
• Tactical investments are programs we like, but do not result in a measurable financial or strategic impact. 

Gain advance understanding of what is triggering potential budget cuts.  Are sales down or are costs up? Understanding this will help Marketing be part of the solution in closing the financial gap.

Identify proven ways to drive sales growth to solve the problem rather than cutting your way to a financial target.  Prepare a proposal identifying the investment required, the potential ROI and why management can have confidence in the expected result.

Prepare talking points on how other departments may help close the gap.  Since the company as a whole has a shortfall, all departments should help in closing the gap.  This will reduce some pressure on the marketing budget.

Lastly, prepare a list, in order of cutting priority, of non-committed tactical investments. Prepare a separate list of non-committed strategic investments for discussion if you must move beyond the first list.  Identify the budget value and the current year profit impact of each potential program cut.  This list prepares you for an open, thoughtful conversation on what to protect and what to cut. 

When the budget review meeting comes, approach it with a positive attitude that marketing can and will take a leadership role to help the company achieve the desired results.  Identify the funding that can be freed from each department, including marketing.  When reducing the marketing budget, cut entire programs rather than reducing the budget across all programs. The most important programs will remain intact.

Ideally, you have previously gained agreement to programs your company will never cut for strategic reasons.  If you have not, the first budget review session is a good time for this conversation. 

What can you do now to prepare for potential future budget cut meetings? 

• Have a discussion on the strategic role of marketing – and the programs the company will protect no matter what happens this year
• Measure program results to demonstrate the ROI of marketing investments
• Communicate program results!
• Spend time with your finance team showing them the financial and strategic benefit of marketing

With these efforts, you will not only limit cuts to your marketing budget, you will likely build understanding and trust to build further investment in marketing over time!

This blog was originally posted by GrowthSpring Group on the MENG Blend website.

GrowthSpring Group is a marketing innovation and growth strategy firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com

Is It Time for You To Reinvent Your Retail Experience?

Retail is changing.  How consumers research products, shop and buy are changing.  Some of this is due to mobile shopping, some is due to consumers’ ready access to product information online and some is simply due to some retailers cutting back staff – forcing consumers to do their own product information gathering.  And shoppers are becoming better informed – according to a 2012 Motorola Holiday Shopping Study, 61% of retail store managers surveyed said they believe that shoppers are better connected to product information than their in-store associates. 

Given this changing retail world, a question retailers need to answer is:  do you have a strategy and plan for this evolving marketplace and the experience you deliver to your shoppers in store and online?

Mobile shopping is growing – maybe not as fast as some predicted, but it is still growing at a healthy pace.  In 2012, according to eMarketer, $25 billion in purchases were made on phones and tablets – up 81% vs. 2011.  While mobile sales were just 11% of total ecommerce sales, eMarketer predicts this will reach $87 billion by 2016.  According to a recent study from Adobe Systems, 55% of tablet owners use the device for buying products vs. just 28% of smartphone users.  And while, more was spent on tables ($13.9B) vs. phones ($9.9B), shopping on tablets was more likely to be done at home.  According to a 2012 Viacom study, only 36% of tablet owners use their device when shopping in store.

The use of tablets and smartphones as shopping information and purchase devices will continue to evolve and reshape retail as both manufacturers and retailers develop content, apps and better ecommerce tools.  According to the 2013, Shop.org/Forrester Research State of Retailing Online survey, 51% of the retailers surveyed, stated their top priority for 2013 is site optimization, including checkout optimization, user experience, and product detail page enhancements.  Additionally, 43% of retailers surveyed stated that mobile and tablets are among their top three priorities for 2013. 

Different Brick and Mortar retail strategies are evolving – Retailers need to react to this evolving world.  While ecommerce only reach 5.2% of total retail sales in 2012 (source: US Census Bureau), it is growing at 17.7% per year.  Many retailers have concerns about “Showrooming”, where consumers shop at retail and buy online to save money.  Given the rapid growth of ecommerce, retailers appear to be adopting one of four strategies to win shoppers and their purchases in their traditional brick and mortar stores. 

Multi-Channel Retailing – many key retailers, especially the big box stores, are rapidly working to create content-heavy marketing experiences that integrate consumer shopping touch points across stores, retailer websites, social media and email.  Macy’s CEO, Terry Lundgren, refers to their efforts as “Omni-channel” – combining multichannel marketing with new capabilities to fulfill purchases across their system from both fulfillment centers and fulfillment stores.

Multi-channel retailers are working to make sure that in-store shoppers have an easy shopping experience with ready-access to helpful and knowledgeable sales associates.  One retailer in particular working to improve in this area is Best Buy.  Best Buy is a frequent stop for consumer showrooming before buying online.  They are at risk of losing their business if they cannot solve this problem.  Best Buy is working to confront showrooming by creating better in-store experiences that will convert shoppers to buyers.  As Best Buy CEO Hubery Joly put it recently:  “Once customers are in our stores, they’re ours to lose”.  

The key to the multi-channel retail strategy is to offer the right combination of helpful product information, product availability and a good price for the shopper who is ready to buy now.  In stores, this means knowledgeable store associates who can help the shopper find the right products.  Online, it means product selection tools including product reviews, product comparisons, plus upselling and cross selling recommendations to boost total sales.

Experiential Retailing – These retailers have also chosen to give shoppers a great shopping experience, but the path to loyalty has less to do with product information and availability as it does with the experience itself.  These are typically high service retailers that stand out in their category by creating unique and desirable shopping experiences that leaves the shopper wanting to shop in that store again.  While most retailers are looking to enhance their retail experience, there are those who have chosen to create a real difference.  In grocery retailing, smaller retailers like Stew Leonards (CT) and Jungle Jim’s (OH) have created highly unique experiences.  But bigger chains such as Wegmans, Loblaws, and Publix stand out in their experience and service concepts.  Specialty stores such as Starbucks, Sephora, Build-A-Bear and Bass Pro Shops all provide truly unique experiences.  Petco uses puppies and the opportunity to interact with them in store to engage shoppers and create emotional connections. 

The challenge and opportunity for retailers choosing this strategy to identify the key experience activities that combined with store merchandising practices will help them stand apart and engage their shoppers.

Lowest Price – This strategy focuses on the price-driven shopper.  These retailers’ business plan, consumer communication and merchandising are all focused on offering goods at a low price.  The level of sophistication varies from the highly integrated multi-channel marketing efforts of Walmart to the much simpler approach of Dollar Stores.  DSW, Stein Mart and Harbor Freight Tools are examples of this strategy.  This is not a high-service model.  Staffing is kept low and shoppers often have to discover products and product information on their own.  Shoppers are willing to shop there to save money – trading in service and experience for savings.  The key to this strategy is to consistently deliver great prices.  These retailers will successfully compete with other business models by continuing to offer low prices every day on popular products.

Walmart got in trouble and started losing shoppers when they redesigned their stores and tried to offer upscale fashions in addition to everyday low prices.  They cut back many departments shopped by men to add space to categories that women would shop.  The result is they eliminated thousands of low price SKU’s across many categories – and lost the shoppers who came to Walmart to buy them.  Walmart has since changed their strategy and has been adding back many of the categories and SKU’s they previously dropped.  A renewed focus on offering and communicating low prices across key category has helped them regain shoppers and sales.

Do nothing new – The last group of retailers is noted more for inaction in this new world rather than responding to the changes.  They continue to use the same go-to-market strategies that they have for years rather than choosing one of the three strategies above.  They are losing shoppers to the tech-savvy multi-channel retailers, the much more engaging experiential retailers or the value of the lowest price retailers.  Stuck in the middle without a clear reason for shoppers to go there, their only strategic advantage is often the convenience of a particular store location.  Getting lost in the middle of these winning strategies, these retailers will slowly erode sales and market share.  Examples include Sears/Kmart, Sports Authority, Barnes & Noble and The Gap.

Refine Your Experience

Which of these is the best strategy to win in the evolving world of retailing?  The best strategy is the one that differentiates a retailer and attracts and keeps loyal shoppers.   The first three strategies all offer this opportunity.  The winning opportunity is to embrace one strategy and stick to it to create the shopper experience that keeps your shoppers coming back to your store.

This blog was originally posted by GrowthSpring Group on the MENG Blend website.

GrowthSpring Group is a marketing strategy, market research, and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com

Help your Brand to Stand Out in a World of Sameness…By “Doing More with Less”

A review of the recent holiday circulars reveals dozens of stores selling similar products all promising savings if you shop their store vs. another.   When multiple store formats all sell the same type of products, convenience and price often win over brands.  In many cases, there is not a large difference in what you and your competitors sell.  But there is still a difference – and you need to get your target customers to notice, understand and buy your difference.  The challenge how to do that well in a world of limited marketing budgets, fragmented consumer media and continued integration of social and mobile media into the marketing mix.

Whether your business is consumer electronics, CPG, FMCG, fashion apparel, hand tools, automobiles, or a cup of coffee…or the store where they sell any of these products, you need to stand out and differentiate yourself.   Significantly outspending your competitors is one way to do that, but given you likely have a cap on your marketing budget, here are three ways you can be more effective by taking a “Do more with less” approach.

Stand for One Thing that Matters

It is hard to win category leadership and customer loyalty when you offer an average product at an OK price.  Your customers need a reason to buy your brand.  What do you stand for?  Are you the highest quality, the lowest cost, the strongest, the lightest, the most fashionable, the most consistent, the most innovative, the most environmentally friendly, the partner of a key charity, or the brand most likely to irritate parents? 

Beyond the base product or service what do they get from you?  When your shoppers are asked why they bought your product, do you want the answer to be, “it was on sale”?  If your product is not unique, how can your brand positioning betterdefine you?  If you do not stand for something, you stand for nothing.  Standing apart for something that matters to your customers will help define your brand and win sales.  Once you have identified what you stand for, stick with it and own it.  Communicating that message becomes more powerful and cost effective the longer you stay with it. 

Is this basic marketing?  Yes!  Does everyone do this well?  No.

Refine Your Experience

Once you stand for something, the customer experience with your product and brand need to deliver against it.  Your brand experience is not limited to the use of your product or service.  It also includes your marketing and customer interactions in both the retail and the social media space.  To customers, your brand is the emotional connection they make with you and the trust they put in you to deliver against expectations. 

If you want to earn loyal customers, refine how you are going to differentiate their experience based on the key brand dimensions you stand for.  Compare the customer experience described as “Dell Hell” customer service vs. getting help at an Apple store.  If you shop at Publix “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” and ask where a product is, that employee will stop what they are doing and walk you to that product.  Whether or not you like the coffee, Starbucks differentiates the coffee experience.  Tom’s combines fashion and social responsibility to differentiate the experience of buying shoes and eyewear.  A holiday kiosk with samples in a shopping mall turns a pound of Hickory Farms sausage into a special gift.

What is your experience?  What can/should it be based on your brand promise?  What can you do to simply, but effectively deliver it?

Focus Your Efforts

Many brands and marketing teams are less effective than they could be because they try to do too much with limited marketing dollars.  The budget is spread so thin across so many activities, it is hard to be effective in all of them.  The good news is some brands are getting more money to invest in social media and content creation, but dollars are still limited for overall brand building.

Here are a couple reminders of how a “do more with less” approach can actually make you more effective.

Say the same thing everywhere – taking an integrated marketing approach, where the same message and visual is used in all channels of communication, will make each consumer touch point work more effectively.  Multiple ad campaigns and creative executions take extra time and money and diminish your ability to simply communicate what you stand for.

Do less by focusing your time and money on the customer touch points that matter most.  Yes you may have had some marketing programs or partnerships for years, but they may not matter anymore.  Annually evaluate where your customers are spending their time with your brand.  Focus your time and money where your customers are.  Fish where the fish are today, not where you caught fish two years ago.

Work closely with your IT/CIO counterpart to combine budgets and efforts to make your social media and online efforts they most effective they can be.  Working closely with your IT team can make combined budgets go farther, speed up project development, and help you gain senior management support for new initiatives.

Be consistent and repeat – if you can focus your efforts behind just several key initiatives, do them well, deliver them consistently and then repeat them in the market, you can make yourself and your team more effective. 

The above three steps, executed together, will help you become more effective by doing more with less.  As you clearly communicate what you stand for, consistently deliver against it and focus your efforts around the select key programs and customer touch points that make a difference, you be more effective, free time from time wasting initiatives and focus your organization and budget in new ways to boost results and marketing ROI.  

A great result for any brand!

This blog was originally posted by GrowthSpring Group on the MENG Blend website.

GrowthSpring Group is a marketing strategy, market research, and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com

Is your brand speaking with one voice?

Building a strong brand is demanding work.  Brand teams are tasked with growing businesses with limited staff and small budgets.  In a world of multichannel communication and multichannel points of purchase, creating and maintaining a consistent brand experience can be challenging.

Building and maintaining a strong brand can be even harder when there are many people involved in brand communication.  Think about 5 or 10 different people reporting on the news story for different news media.  They will all tell the story a little differently.  When it comes to communicating your brand message, the more people you have writing copy or posting on social media, the risk of creating different versions of your brand message increases.  Each consumer touch point becomes an opportunity for brand building…or brand confusion.

From just observing the brand communications of many leading brands, you can tell when there are too many authors speaking for a brand without good control over the brand message.  I have also observed brands with poor control over their iconography with up to six different versions of their brand logo in the market across packaging and marketing materials.

Many of the most effective brands have simple, consistent messages that are delivered across all mediums.  Consumers trust brands that consistently deliver against their brand promise.  Part of the strength of brand building is keeping your brand promise and messaging consistent.  It becomes harder to connect with a brand that has a different voice in different consumer touch points.

When there is not good control over your brand voice, your brand may suffer from one of these symptoms:

• Multiple personality disorder—your brand communication has several distinctive different messages and/or author styles in the market.  While each author works to add their own individual value-added touch, they inject a different spin into the messaging.  This split personality can sometimes be seen in the communication prepared by your agency vs. your brand team. 
• Committee speak / designed by committee—it has been said that “a camel is a horse designed by a committee.”  You can recognize brand communication that had too many inputs and crams too many different message points into an ad – the final result often does not match the creative brief.
• Communication of the week/weak—some brand leaders just lack the discipline to define and remain loyal to a chosen brand communication platform.  Their messaging is constantly changing, making it difficult to know and connect with the brand value proposition.
• Communication of the novice—some brand work is delegated to younger members of the brand team and is not reviewed before going to market.  This group is less likely to be trained in the brand character and brand standards and may communicate in a less formal way that does not fit the brand.  This is often observed on Facebook and other social media.  Brand leaders that give their intern responsibility for Facebook communication because they actively use social media, can risk introducing a new, very casual voice to their brand.

The addition of social media to the marketing mix can often lead to multiple voice communication if there is not a clear strategy and a limited group that is trained to speak for the brand.If your team has multiple people creating multiple messages, consider:

• Setting guidelines such as a brand standards manual and communications platform for how to communicate imagery and message points for the brand.
• Limiting the number of people creating communication on your behalf
• Having one person who reviews and approves all brand communication

When your marketing plan includes a multi-channel media approach, the need for consistent, integrated brand communication increases.  Review your current communications and identify the steps needed to have the same message, imagery and branding in market at the same time.  This includes product packaging, point of purchase communication, advertising, PR, B2B sales collateral, social media, website, event banners and more.

Often with a tight budget, it is tempting to continue use of some materials while new brand communication is introduced in different channels.  This may be cheaper, but it is much more effective to achieve the impact and alignment of integrated brand marketing by introducing a new campaign across all touch points.  The big challenge is to avoid having remnants of several campaigns as you launch new ones.  A regular audit to identify and update out of date materials can help you stay current and aligned. 

In the time pressured world of trying to do more with smaller budgets and fewer people, it can be easy to let brand consistency slip as communication is rushed to market.  Don’t let your brand become the victim of rushing work to market without the appropriate brand review.  It is better to have fewer points of communication that are consistently on brand than a mass of content that speaks with many voices.  While this can appear to add work at first, over time your entire team will be more aligned and your brand communication will be more effective in the marketplace.

This blog was originally posted by GrowthSpring Group on the MENG Blend website.

GrowthSpring Group is a marketing strategy, market research, and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com

Why STEM should be a priority for Marketing Leaders

 

I am directing this blog to leaders in the marketing community.  You have an opportunity to make a difference in a way that can strengthen both your company and the marketing community.

What is STEM?

You may be aware of STEM initiatives in your local school or in your community.  Your company may even be involved with a STEM program.  What is STEM?  It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  These are four critical areas where U.S. students lag behind many countries around the globe. 

 

Improving our STEM capabilities has been identified by the U.S. Government as a key step to boost our long-term competitiveness in global business.  Many academic and community programs have been launched to engage and educate U.S.  youth in STEM education.  Time Warner and the Boy Scouts of America are two organizations that have recently launched STEM initiatives.

 

Some of you may be involved in promoting STEM initiatives that have been launched in your company but these are often run by other departments. 

 

Why is this important to marketing leadership?

 

It is obvious why efforts to build STEM skills should be important to engineers and scientists.  The direct connection to marketing is less obvious.  In short, CMO’s and other marketing leaders need new and current marketing employees to be strong in STEM.  There are many marketing managers in the workforce today who are not strong in the marketing application of these skills.

 

Let’s look at how that makes a difference in successful marketing.  Where can STEM be applied in your marketing initiatives and team?  Here is a sample list of STEM related marketing skills:

Science

·         Product improvements

 

·         Product formulation development

 

·         Product testing

 

·         Trend identification

 

·         Market research design and execution

 

·         A/B testing

Technology

·         CIO – CMO Partnerships

 

·         Identifying and leveraging the insights of “Big Data”

 

·         Web marketing, social media, ecommerce

 

·         Database marketing, category management

 

·         Real-time mobile marketing, mobile apps & geo-targeting

 

·         NFC and mobile ecommerce

 

·         Breakthrough new product technologies

 

·         3D design and printing technologies

Engineering

·         New product design, development and manufacturing

 

·         Applied materials for new product capabilities & claims

 

·         Packaging improvements / 3D structural design

 

·         Fixture design and development

 

·         Trade show booth design and development

Math

·         CFO – CMO Partnerships

 

·         Statistical analysis and business projections / forecasting

 

·         Trend identification

 

·         Developing financial models in Excel

 

·         Pre and Post program analysis

 

·         Retail sales analysis

 

·         KPI / ROI measurement

 

·         Budget planning and management

Not only are these valuable skills for any marketing team, but many of these skills can help differentiate a brand or company in the marketplace.  Enhancing your team’s skill sets in these areas can help accelerate success in your company – and enhance your workforce overall.

What can/should the marketing leadership community do?

As marketing leaders, we can enhance our own workforce and strengthen the skills of the U.S. Marketing community over time.  There are many ways you can help create new opportunities or lead your company in adopting new STEM focused initiatives.

Education

·         Educate new employees in relevant marketing STEM skills to make them more productive and effective

 

·         Offer tuition reimbursement for employees that take STEM related marketing training courses online or at local schools

 

·         Offer College and Grad School internships with a focus on sharing learning in both directions Offer employee training on STEM related skills such as those on the list above

 

·         Provide mentoring/instruction for local high school students – support high school tech centers and marketing programs such as DECA and FBLA

 

·         Provide education tools for classrooms that provide real world examples of how STEM makes a difference in your industry and company.  Share these with educators and put them on your website.

Community support

·         Support your company’s sponsorship of community organizations and programs that teach STEM skills to youth

 

·         Encourage employee involvement with local schools and non-profits

 

·         Develop your own community focused STEM programs

Communication

·         Develop new online content for your website and social media efforts that educate the community on your STEM related initiatives and/or how STEM makes a difference in your business

 

·         Work with community leaders to communicate the importance of STEM in your company communications and PR

 

·         Talk about the importance of STEM skills and how to develop them in the marketing organizations when you are a member. 

Change will not come overnight, but if we if we work together as a community, we can and will develop an even better educated, better trained marketing workforce that will help boost U.S competitiveness in our marketplace and around the globe.  You will benefit from the employees and youth that you help develop.  You will also benefit when you hire a new employee that was trained in STEM skills by another marketing leader.

 

With your involvement, and continued progress, we can better leverage STEM at the point of commerce.  Let’s add marketing leadership to the list of corporate leaders who are actively working to boost our STEM skills in the workforce – for better results for this year and for many years to come.

 

This blog was originally posted by GrowthSpring Group on the MENG Blend website.

 

GrowthSpring Group is a marketing strategy, market research, and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com