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Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

In a time short world we’re always looking for just the right fast fix of relevant information; just in front of us for when we need it. In this scenario a marriage of almost perfect proportions was made.

The problem solvers required their message in client’s faces and clients needed easy access to a fast fix for their problems – the fridge magnets were providing those solutions.

Arrive the fridge magnet – an easily imprintable medium to get images on the family fridge. First made in the 1970’s the fridge magnet has grown ever more to take a sacred advertising space on the family fridge. Plumbers, electricians, real estate salesman, vets, doctors, local politicians and many more have come to rely on the humble fridge magnets power to infiltrate the family home.

The communications force of a humble fridge magnet relies in the fact that an average fridge is visited – read viewed – some 17 times a day. That’s a lot of views. 

A fridge magnet marketing card takes the same rationale, but with a larger imprint area. They have magnet only over a small section of the back of a printed card. For a size, the fridge magnet marketing card is cheaper for its initial outlay and in its distribution costs. Both pluses, if you’re not looking for “big” magnet pulling power. 

These are best suited to promotional products like calendars and large advertising messages too big for say a business card sized magnet.

Another adaptation of the fridge magnet has been the manufacture of a thicker material suitable for car magnets with the same ease of movement and positioning wherever you want on a car.  These car magnets are an easy means to place all forms of communications over a car – transforming the vehicle into a mobile billboard. 

A new idea is to invite passers-by your car, pick a fridge magnet off the car; combining the company’s advertising and means of contact via the fridge magnet. It’s a fresh way to advertise from the combined use of car and fridge magnets.  

A quarter of a century ago, opening a retail store was a much simpler undertaking. Consumers were regularly buying staple items they needed. Businesses were easy to run and business was booming. Proprietors often saw themselves as prime examples of individuals living the American dream. A time when neighborhood kids knew if they ever needed a job, it could be found at one of the many neighborhood establishments: candy store, drug store or their local women’s shoes store business. Some of the shops have been owned by the same family for generations. However, in today’s economy most of these mom and pop stores are closing their doors. They’re struggling to just keep their businesses afloat.

See also:  comfortable mens shoes

Historically, most of these retail neighborhood stores had survived competition from large department store chains. They were able to compete because they provided individual customer service. They were able to maintain a constant flow of loyal customers. For example; your neighborhood shoe store would allow a customer to return a pair of shoes without a receipt, because they knew the customer and had faith that they would be back in the future. Sometimes developing strong good customer service bonds were better for business than mere bargain sales and discounts. The ability to offer this type of personal customer service was one of the main tactics small retail outlets used to gain leverage over and compete with large department stores.

Since the development of the internet, small retail stores have had to compete not only with their local competitors, but they now have to compete with online stores. The impact of these cyber-stores may not have been clear at first, but gradually increasing numbers of shoppers have started to use the internet, they started making more purchases online; i.e., online shoe stores. There’s no more going to your neighborhood shoe store; people started buying shoes online. As online retail stores started to see an increase in business, local vendors started to see a sharp decline. While this is convenient for customers, this is taking a toll on local neighborhood stores.

In today’s economy, small merchants face an even bigger challenge in order to stay in business. Also pressured by the declining economy, banks have tightened the reins by decreasing the lines of credit that merchants depend upon. This credit crunch has cause local merchants to resort to drastic measures. For instance; your local comfortable men’s shoes store owner has had to dip into his retirement fund to purchase inventory or fund the marketing campaign. They don’t have a large funding base to rely on. However, with banks lowering credit limits, they have fewer funds to work with. And with the decline in business they are looking at the strong possibility of a completely restructured life.

It is possible to locate additional articles by checking out The Wall Street Journal and in Yahoo.       

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Increased competition and the recent economic downturn have combined to make effective marketing increasingly difficult. The advent of guerilla marketing tactics, as well as a host of other unconventional techniques can intimidate even the most adroit marketing professional. The “fighting fire with fire” adage is clichéd, but now truer than ever. If you’re looking to separate your product or service from the seemingly infinite number of competitors in the marketplace today, you have to use increasingly unorthodox approaches to marketing.

One of the most effective ways of selling yoru product or service is first getting it past the media gatekeepers. One way to do this is to think extreme. Peruse the Guinness Book of World Records and try to find something in it that is related to your service or product. Next, you can try to break this record in some type of public forum. Such a bold move will certainly garner attention and, as long as you avoid making a spectacle of yourself, attract positive publicity from at least a few media hounds that gather to witness the event. Another strategy would be to sponsor a local sports team or event. The coverage the event or team draws will provide your company name with publicity.

Along the same vain, you may want to support a local philanthropic group or charity that in some way applies to what you are trying to sell. If you don’t have the capital to make a straight donation to such a cause, try giving out a percentage of your monthly sales as part of a promotion. This will give customers added incentive to buy your product. If possible, you can then advertise your generosity by placing informationa about the charity on your product.

Another way to get your product known is to send out a bi-monthly or monthly form of literature to serve as advertisement for your business. Given the continuing trend toward visual communication, you can try sending out a photo book instead of the traditional flyer or newsletter. Promoting your business through photo books can be a very effective way of displaying your products as well as distinguishing yourself from the crowded marketplace. Online photo book sites such as MemoryEscape.com allow you to upload images, select distinctive templates and backgrounds, and choose a personalized cover – all in a matter of minutes. A retailer, for example, may include photos of their newest products, and even add some copy mentioning promotions or coupons. If your business provides a service rather than a product.g. hair salon, photography studio, etc), a photo book is a great way of informing your customers of updates while providing them with visual images that stand out from the rest. If you find yourself struggling to come up with ideas, MemoryEscape.com has an entire page devoted to ways one can use photo books to promote one’s business.

With the advent of social networking sites, it behooves the savvy business owner to encourage open dialogue between the company and its customers. Your website can serve as an ideal forum for such interaction. By creating an area specifically designed for customer feedback, you can show your commitment to your customers and learn new ways in which you can improve your business. This should be a type of forum where customers can ask you questions as well as interact with each other.

While new forms of marketing continue to emerge and others are replaced, one technique that will never become obsolte is giving away free products/services to customers. Such items can range from pens to hats – basically any free merchandise will work as long as your company name and information are printed on it. It is crucial, however, to make sure the item will be useful to your customer. Also, try to make the object something relevant to your company. If you own a hair salon, for example, you may want to give away combs, brushes, or samples of your products.

If you conduct effective market research what are the things you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? What age group does your service or product appeal to? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Is what you offer value for money? How do your products and services compare to those of your competitors? Can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there adequate advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which of the marketing channels that are available to you are effective and which ones are proving ineffective?

Is the marketing message understood? Does your marketing properly embody your brand? Do you use the correct advertising channels? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective – Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Having completed the survey consider how you will analyse the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

Much will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analyzing the results.

Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analysed will help you make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all – to maximise the benefit from a customer survey you must be prepared to take criticism.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

What questions should you ask?

Depending on their own particular size and makeup each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.

If a problem cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to check that your customers find your staff to be helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical bricks and mortar store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Are the products you sell or the services you provide considered by your customers to be value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Customers appreciate attention but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.

Allow customers to state any concerns that they may have and the opportunity to provide their contact details so that any problems that are raised can be followed up.

What is next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the service is found wanting.

Ask yourself honestly if any criticism that you receive is valid and if there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Don’t lose an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

The current climate is causing a real shift in how consumers use the internet. During the boom years of the past decade, we saw a huge number of small startup businesses trying to compete with the big boys. And many of them have been amazing success stories, particularly online. Before the recession web users searched out the best price for the products they wanted, now they look for the best brands that will still be there when they need them if something goes wrong. Things have changed however and hundreds of website companies are going under, the fall out of which is a growing lack of customer confidence. What this means is that people are going back to preferring known and recognisable brands, even if it means spending a little more.

Yet at the same time job insecurity and redundancy are causing more and more people to consider starting up their own business and becoming self-employed. With around 98,000 new business being created every three months, the competition isn’t getting any smaller. It is by no means the easy option. Around the same number of businesses failed during that period too!

I believe that most new online business fails due to bad branding. Your logo and identity is the first impression customers have of you. It’s crucial to what people use to judge whether you are trustworthy or not. But it’s so often the case that startup owners put off paying professional logo design in the initial stages. All to often its “Lets see how many customers we can get before we think about branding”.  In the meantime they try and do it themselves, or get an amateur “designer” friend to design a logo. Lots of companies merely go for free options such as clipart and templated designs that look cheap and unremarkable.

Brands shouldn’t underestimate the importance of their image. You need to look like a professional organisation that’s in it for the long haul.In times when people are worrying about each and every penny they spend, a brand needs to appear stable and constant. Very small businesses need to look like a much bigger business, its possible. So, these days online customers are looking back to the bigger brands or at least who they deem to be the big brands. Ultimately, a brand that consumers thinks of as credible and dependable will be the brands that they will recommend to family and friends and so on.

The bottom line is this. About 50% of all new start-ups are forced into bankruptcy within only a few years. Experts agree that one of the main reasons for failure is poorly thought out  and shoddy marketing. A custom logo design helps you create the right image for this marketing to succeed. So do yourself a favour – start looking at some sample logos in your industry and see what the successful ones have in common.Finding yourself a talented graphic designer is key to your business, not only surviving but thriving in this current climate.

For any business that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions based on good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking you take the guesswork out of customer services and demonstrate to the customer that you care.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to launch a new product and want to know how people will react then market research will help, not only in predicting how well the product will be received, but also by testing the marketing message to see if that needs to be adjusted.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – You need to be able to measure so that you can ensure that your organization is always improving. Preliminary research may be able to identify problems in the service you intend to offer or in your product, regular market research will show if progress is being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few organizations invest sufficient resources to enable them to gather good intelligence that will help them improve their business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

Why bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although new customers are very important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but show that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective – Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – When the survey is complete consider how you will analyze the answers.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A great deal will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analysed will help you make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – to maximise the benefit from a customer survey you must be prepared to take criticism.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What to ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Is it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide do fully match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want their enquiries or queries to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.

Within the survey encourage customers to highlight their problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Don’t waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

When most folks come online aiming to make some extra money the first place to start is usually with affiliate marketing where you earn a commission for each sale made that you have referred. This is a very nice way to begin as you do not need to worry about taking payments, creating a product or dealing with customer services. You could start immediately and be making sales. It is often not long before a successful internet marketer will create their own product to sell and find affiliates who will be able to make the sales for youle to.

Below are some helpful hints that can make life simpler if you decide to go into creating your own product.

Outsource the Job
For a reasonable price you can pay a writer to build the product for you. If you have done a lot of research initially then it will be cheaper, but even if you have not, you can find a writer who will do all this for you. Obviously it is simpler to create a digital product instead of a physical product which will probably have high overhead costs. You can even use resell rights products such as those given with Google Conquest.

Uncover an Expert
If you are not confident in your market then you can be sure there are many experts out there who are. You can find them all over the web and they can be responsible for content for you and make a cut of the revenue. To find an expert you can look in the forums in your niche and also look for authors who are not currently in the best-seller list. If you approach them in the right way they will probably want to get involved. This approach was taken by Alex Goad to make a successful Clickbank product in an area he knew nothing about.

Do Your Research
If you aren’t afraid of a little bit of work then you can do your research on the subject and become knowledgeable in your niche. It will not take much time to be competent and it really comes down to researching the most respected information and then organizing it so that it is straightforward to understand and put to use. Look at what your competitors are doing and plan to be better.

I hope these tips have been useful and you feel more confident bringing your own product to market. It is not as hard as it may appear and if you focus on the digitally delivered information area it is very fast and low risk. To get a course on how to set this up take a look at Google Conquest review.

At the heart of any marketing communications effort should be a respect for design that communicates clearly and effectively to bring you the results you are looking for, and your selected design agency should be familiar with all forms of visual media. Print management with a view to not only cost effectiveness, but also how your brand is expressed to its maximum impact across all above, below and through the line channels is vital to effective communication with your target audiences. This is even more important when it comes to 3D marketing of the brand such as brand environments, large displays, simple pop-up units or fully fledged exhibition stands.

Whether it’s uniquely different banner sign printing or exhibition stand design and custom built display solutions, you need to make a distinctive eye catching impression with an identity and execution that not only looks good in the medium it inhabits but is easy to erect and dismantle.

At the centre of all this is the initial corporate identity design. Aside from its creativity and how it captures the spirit of your proposition, how effectively it can be translated across all those myriad expressions will determine its longevity and impact. What looks good on A4 print materials may not be so wonderful when you enlarge it to use on exhibition graphics.Equally, any logo or graphic in an exhibition environment can be enhanced by an imaginative use of lighting that can generate a number of effects.

Portable Display Stands, Banners, Pop-ups, Modular stands and Shell Scheme Graphics all have their own unique requirements as to how strong they need to be and how long they should last. Design that works will bear all this in mind from the very start. Point of Sale Material, Window Graphics and Signage have similar marketing functions to fulfil, but have completely different lifetimes. These items need to be more durable and able to last far longer than is usual for temporary exhibition materials and with POS are often left unmanned and need to work entirely alone. These products therefore need to be far more robust than temporary graphics, whilst maintaining the same style ans sense of unity of corporate design as every other piece of marketing collateral.