Sharing branded content across social networks, blogs, and email and engaging in a contextual dialog has never been easier. PopularMedia SocialNotes™ delivers instant social interactivity on any web page with a simple click of a button.
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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…)
Creative Advertising! Many of these ads do not get produced or run in the US, which by itself is food for thought. How can these ads spark some creativity in you?
Notice the UPS trucks “inside”?
If you can’t read the fine print, this is for a funeral home:
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.
Five ways to make your advertising message more powerful–and more relevant–no matter what medium it’s in.
“I’m in the furniture business. Which media should I use?”
“I’d like to target people who are afraid of the dentist. Can you recommend a good mailing list company?”
“My uncle uses TV ads to attract new customers, and they work really well for him. What’s your opinion of TV?”
“No one in my town listens to the radio anymore. Everyone has satellite or an iPod.”
“I tried advertising. It doesn’t work for my kind of business.”
People say things like this and expect me to have an intelligent response. What usually happens is I stand there, dull eyed, with my mouth hanging open. These aren’t my favorite moments.
When my brain finally recovers, and I tell them the truth they need to hear, they act as though I’ve sidestepped their question. The following is the truth they needed to hear. If you’re asking similar questions, maybe you need to hear it, too. (more…)
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.
You have a database full of names. And you’re prepping a big postcard campaign.
However, you haven’t kept up with them. It’s easily been a full year since you sent anything to these folks.
If you send out this pretty postcard campaign, you are easily wasting money as a result. You have no idea how many of those addresses have gone bad. And a year is too long to wait to find out the expensive way that out of the 500 names you have, 113 have moved away. It may not be a big deal to you, but for others, the extra printing, labor, and postage costs might be better used elsewhere, no?
Here’s the Frugal Marketer’s way to reestablish presence to your database without breaking the bank on bad addresses:
Here’s an illustration of savings with this method:
5×8 postcard, color, 500 copies: $80
Postage @ 43 cents: $215
Total cost: $295
4×6 postcard, b/w, 125 copies (4 to a sheet): less than $15
Postage @ 27 cents: $135
Total cost: $150
So, in this example you have just saved $145, and accomplished what the first goal of marketing to a dusty database should be, which is cleaning up bad addresses to save money on future runs.
And remember, regardless of your campaign, always think of ways to cut postage costs first, because that’s where the most expense typically is.
