Marketing Guides

Archive for January, 2010

Five Spying Techniques For An Effective Postcard Printing Trick

If you want to last in the business you need to be involved with whats going on around you. You have to play many roles. You are the leader of your pack a slave to your customers and a spy to your competitors. The latter must be done when you are planning on ad strategies including postcard printing.

Spying 101
Sounds thrilling? No you wont do anything illegal. And just think about this. Your direct competitors are also spying on your every business move. So you must do the same if you dont want to be left behind.

What will you gain from this? Here are some.

bull; You will be able to strategize better. You can base a lot of your immediate decisions on your findings. For example if you knew ahead of time that Company A will have a big event on a certain place. You can top that off at the same place or somewhere nearby.

bull; You can create better ads. It will be easier for you to decide on the different elements involved in your advertisements like postcard printing. Because you know how your direct competitors are going to do theirs you can make yours similar or way beyond better.

bull; You will not feel intimidated by the other businesses. You know where you stand. And you know their moves. This way you are confident that you are not being left behind. And that you are still playing their game.

Sounds hard? Not really. Its not as if you will disguise and apply for a position on the other company. Thats going too far. You dont have to do it yourself. That will be too risky. You may not get the information that you want by doing that. Hire someone to do this task for you. That person will be your eye your spy. And let the games begin.

1. Ask your spy to visit your competitors stores. This person must take note how the customer service is for each store. Your eye must keenly observe how things are being done by your direct competitors.

2. Aside from the stores your spy can also go to your competitors booths at trade shows talk to the suppliers and ask questions to the sales people.

3. Your spy can also speak with customers and ask what they like about the other companies. They need not be so obvious about their motive though.

4. You can gather the ads of your competitors and base your future materials on that.

5. You must gather information on what makes your competitors strong and weak. This way you can focus your attention on getting ahead of them where they appear to be frail.

In business you have to be in the know if you want to stay in the lead. This is all part of a friendly competition. So you are not doing anything wrong. This is as long as you just observe or spy to learn and you are really not doing anything to maliciously mean bad to your competitors biz.

With such task out of the way you will be able to prep up for your postcard printing venture.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;The author is a very energetic person. She loves to play badminton and volleyball. She likes taking care of dogs. She is an outgoing person. She always wants to have fun in everything she does.
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Five Marketing Communication Sins – Does Your Company Commit Them?

It is sometimes amazing how stubbornly companies and their marketers cling to oldfashioned clichd and downright wrong ideas of how they should market their companies and their products or services. Here is a collection of selfdestructive obsessions from my 20year marketing communication career.

1. Me myself and I

The most efficient way to end a date abruptly is to talk about yourself all the time. Why would your customer think differently?

When you go to almost any company’s website or read their marketing literature you will be inundated with talk about what WE can do what OUR values are or how OUR products perform.

Let’s be honest: the customer couldn’t care less about YOU. She wants to know “what’s in it for ME”. Instead of knowing that your machine does X thousand revolutions per minute she needs information on how her business will do better if it buys a machine that does X thousand revolutions per minute.

In other words don’t just tell about features. Go ahead and transform them into advantages and benefits.

2. Mass individualism

It may be fun to create terms that only have a meaning to you or your advertising agency. But what will your customers think?

The example above is from real life but let’s not reveal who is the culprit. The company was so proud of this flash of genius that it made it the motto of their retail chain. Obviously nobody came to think that in only two words magnificently contradictory they managed to create mass confusion.

The moral of the story: When you’re creating mottos taglines or slogans make sense. Adapt the terminology to your target group and remember that people need to understand what you’re saying immediately. And for heaven’s sake be clear about what your business is about and what it tries to achieve.

3. We are the best partner you can imagine

If you don’t know how to quantify your offering maybe you should start practising. Soon and hard.

I recently ran into the website of a web design company that claimed to be “the best web design company for you”. Given that a quick Google search on “web design company” gives 86500000 yes eightysixandahalf million results I have my doubts.

Just claiming something doesn’t make you an expert. Proving it does. Again make it crystal clear what the customer’s benefit of doing business with you instead of your competitors is.

4. This is how it’s always been done in our industry

Has it brought any results? As Einstein said: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The funniest or most tragic aspect of many companies’ resistance to changing their message or tone of voice is that a they seek the help of a marketing communication specialist to improve the results of their business and b when they are getting the help they still want to do it the old way. Which needed to be changed to improve the business remember?

Particularly in times like these when the economy is slowing down it might be an idea to be the first to break the conventions of your industry. It takes some courage definitely but may produce results that surprise you.

5. Our marketing team didn’t like your suggestion

All right that’s infinity minus one. Helps the ad agency a lot.

When your marketing message is being crafted whoever is crafting it may not hit the nail on the head the first time. Perhaps he was sloppy but equally well it may have been an insufficient or unclear brief. That’s why the writer or the design team need a detailed dissection of WHY the suggestion didn’t fare.

Besides it is totally irrelevant what your marketing team likes or does not like. What matters is what the target group thinks. Test research find out. Then adapt.

About the writer:  Kimmo Linkama is a copywriter and marketing communication consultant who has helped businesstobusiness companies get more out of their marketing budget for more than 20 years. He provides communication planning copywriting editing transcreation and other marketing communication services as well as related training. More information at www.linkama.com

Fast-track Your Marketing Online

This article is from Global Impact where many more helpful graphic design and online marketing resources can be found.

What I am beginning to see is a massive push forward in the marketing world towards futureproofing brands through online strategies mainly by increasing SEO search engine optimisation and making use of the key online attraction factors of:

1.Community

2.Authority

3.Reciprocity

Scarcity is the forth factor but I wont discuss that in this post as it doesnt necessarily apply to everyone.

In the notsodistant past these factors were difficult to solidify and quantify online and in fact most people are still unaware of their importance but fortunately there are now various techniques and technologies that can offer some highly efficient ways to integrate these key factors along with powerful traffic generation strategies increasing website visitors into a singular system which can be controlled managed and tested to ensure maximum impact and success.

The main goals and benefits of utilising these technologies and building a stronger sense of Community Authority and Reciprocity into the online presence of a brand would include but not limited to

1.Increase Brand Awareness both Locally and Globally

2.Increase Sales SignUps and Repeat Customers

3.Save Time by Automating Certain Processes

4.Reduce BudgetSpend and Vastly Increase Readership of Website Content

5.Become Perceived as an Authority in your Niche

6.Increase the Sense of Goodwill through Resource Contributions by providing accessible useful unique and/or highquality content online

7.Greatly Reduce the Effort Required to Publish Marketing and Resource Information

8.Increase the Perceived Intrinsic Value of Brand

The C.A.R. strategy certainly warrants further consideration for any business wishing to expand. If youd like to discuss how this highly successful online marketing vehicle can drive your business further faster please feel free to contact me to arrange a meeting or email discussion if you dont live in Melbourne Australia.

My final thought. Fast cars are more fun to drive. And C.A.R.S. drive F.A.S.T. Financial gain And Seriously big numbers in terms of website Traffic if they have the right engine and the right driver and yes these are definitely topics for further discussion here on my blog in the notsodistant future

Happy Driving!

This article is from Global Impact where many more helpful graphic design and online marketing resources can be found.

About the writer:  Matt Cumming from Global Impact author of this highly successful online marketing “vehicle” can drive your business further faster and higher with the Key Attraction Factors needed to create a positivelyperceived brand online.