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My business was recently invited to a pre-opening reception at a new, swanky restaurant. The wording on my invitation said “thought this might be a good networking opportunity for you. We’re inviting a variety of businesses, and wanted to make sure we included women-owned businesses. We hope you can come and have a cocktail, make some great contacts and enjoy the reception. Thanks!”
Now, I realize that networking events, receptions, etc. are hit-or-miss, and you shouldn’t pin too much on the outcome, ever. With that in mind, I RSVP’ed, dressed accordingly, and we headed out.
Well, when we arrived, (more…)
In a post at his Influential Marketing blog, Rohit Bhargava talks about walking down the street in New York and watching people as they buy $5 sunglasses from street vendors. He knows there’s a rationale for purchasing cheap knock-offs, even though they are of clearly inferior quality:
Whatever their reasons, says Bhargava, they point to an interesting lesson: “[F]or some people, good sunglasses just aren’t worth paying for.” In other words, you can demonstrate the features and benefits of your product or service until you’re blue in the face, and still fail to get any traction with a certain audience.
“[I]f a consumer doesn’t believe products in your category are worth paying for, you are unlikely to convince them to make an exception for you,” he says.
“Instead of asking if your marketing is selling the right messages, you really need to ask if you are targeting the right customers,” says Bhargava. “The real question isn’t whether you can compete with the guy selling sunglasses on the street … it is whether you should even be trying to.”
Source: Influential Marketing. Click here for the entire post.
In the June issue of SPIRIT MAGAZINE, the in-plane publication for Southwest Airlines (whom I absolutely adore), is an interesting article about the steady growth of video advertising. Here’s an excerpt:
REDLASSO EMERGED thanks to the convergence of several Web 2.0 trends, the foremost being the pursuit of multimedia search. Increasing bandwidth caused a proliferation of Web multimedia, with more people listening to podcasts and watching online video than ever before. And while Google has quite profitably sewn up text-based search, multimedia search remains a largely uncharted territory because it requires different technology. A traditional search engine can only “see” text. YouTube searches, for example, rely on accurate keywords and descriptions: a search for “winning Super Bowl touchdown” returns useful results only if the nearby text contains those words.
Advertisers have followed video to the Web. (more…)
Micromentor.org matches entrepreneurs with mentors to create short-term (3 month) relationships. It works somewhat like a dating service: you create a profile of your business, and after you go live on Micromentor.org, you can connect with mentors to request mentoring, and mentors looking for proteges can also send you connection requests.
After a match is made, you are asked to spend three hours per month working with your mentor (usually via email) and then another 3 hours each month implementing your mentor’s suggestions.
I’ve just signed up, so i’ll post updates on how it’s going, but it sounds promising. I’m very excited.
My Own Business is a site designed to help you no matter what stage you’re at in your business.
They offer a free e-course that covers all the steps, from researching your market to projecting cashflows to expansion. Quizzes and business plan templates also included. Might be worth giving a whirl! I know I will be.
When will my ads start working?
The length of the “ramping up period” your ad campaign will require before you begin to see results is determined by the following factors, listed in descending order of their importance: product purchase cycle, share of voice, impact quotient of message and media delivery vehicle. Here, I take a closer look at each: (more…)
One quick way to cut your marketing costs is to team up with other companies to cross-promote each others’ messages. This is sometimes called coop-marketing.
Surely each of you have a database of people you market to. By combining forces, you can get in front of many more faces. You can also combine the costs of printing, postage, and layout design.
Please note: There are no rules to follow when engaging in coop print ads or direct mail, or links on your website. Rules do apply in email marketing. Remember, your subscribers opted in to receive your newsletter, not items from every other business you give their names to. So, to stay on the right side of the law, it’s best to use your newsletter to include a blurb about the other business, and vice versa. Do not simply trade email lists.
Here’s a way to get more bang for your marketing buck. It might seem obvious to some of you, and others will wonder why they never thought of it before!
It’s actually starting to pick up a buzzword, called transpromo. I don’t know if it needs a fancy name, but here’s what it is:
Take every opportunity, with anything that leaves your office in any way, to cross-promote.
Examples:
If there’s white space, there’s a place to cross-promote!
Okay, this is more inspirational than frugal…I’m allowed, it’s my blog!
So about a month ago, my grandfather needed to be transported to Des Moines for knee surgery. My mother, who is currently living with him and my grandmother and taking care of them, and my uncle were to take them to Des Moines from the house, an hour and change away.
Originally they were set to arrive for his appointment at 8 a.m. At the last minute, they rescheduled the surgery and asked them to be there at 5:30 a.m. This meant getting up at 3. (Just typing that makes me tired.)
My grandmother simply will not leave the house if there is a cloud in the sky. Driving terrifies her when it rains. And there was a storm forecast for that day. (more…)
