Archive for the 'Marketing' Category
Buzzmarketing
One of my all time favourite books is Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. He describes the power of selling products by word of month rather than traditional advertising. The main function of buzzmarketing is to create a message relating to your product that is so entertaining, newsworthy, and fascinating that viewers will tell more people, and therefore do the marketing for you.
My favorite type of buzzmarketing is to be outrageous; connect your product with an outrageous story or example that will stick in buyers’ minds and allow them to pass the story on to friends. After reading this book, I find myself analyzing commercials or ads completely differently, I always think to myself “am I going to remember that commercial, is it even worth remembering, would I ever tell anyone about that ad?”
Staging for the “Y” Consumer
I recently overheard a comment coming from a baby boomer, she said: “Young people just don’t want to work as hard as we do, I can’t even bribe them with money.” As a generation Y myself, this conversation got me thinking about what my generation will look like in 15 years at the height of our careers when the majority of Boomers are retired.
As the average Yer’s work-week drops from 40 to 35 hours to include more leisure time, activities done outside of work will become an experience rather than a rushed chore. A trip to the grocery store will be transformed into a learning experience as buyers continue to educate themselves about nutrition in the food they are buying. Purchasing decisions will be based on notions of “healthy choices”, “eco-friendliness” and “carbon footprints”.
How is this growing trend going to influence businesses? While those who package products will need to improve labeling, will businesses see this as an opportunity to offer more participation-oriented experiences? For example, a trip to the grocery store can turn into an afternoon event if there is a speaker discussing healthy eating habits.
How are you, as a business owner and employer, going to catch the ‘eyes’ of Generation Y?
Are You Getting Out There?
There are so many ways to make yourself known to the public and get connected with different people. With technology at its finest, it is easy to join a group of Facebook and meet like-minded business contacts, or dig through LinkedIn for potential clients, meet contacts at a Meetup Group, or even post articles you’ve written to GoArticles.com or ArticleDashboard.com. Another great venue for getting noticed and networking is Biznik, you can post articles that you’ve written and connect with like-minded entrepreneurs.
Although some of these ways of connection may take a little time, I am reminded by an article in Entrepreneur Magazine, that we never know when or how someone could connect us with a potential client or partner. This article shares some stories of how you may meet an important contact through the most unlikely person. Whether you are joining an internet group or just having coffee with an acquaintance, never underestimate the connections sitting right in front of you.
Why Do Some Brands Build Trust & Others Don’t?
Just finished a very interesting book: The Truth About Trust in Business by Vanessa Hall that talks about how to build trust in business. She has a great chapter on building trust in marketing and branding where she outlines the 3 reasons why people come to trust a brand from a marketing perspective:
1. Your brand makes an emotional connection with your customers.
2. Your brand remains relevant and encourages customer interaction. (i.e. you don’t just ignore the emails people send you about why they’re not happy with their customer experience with you.)
3. There is clarity on what your brand stands for and who your target market is. You know who you are marketing to and what messages they want to hear.
The 90/10 Marketing Rule
I recently read a great article by Robert Allen that talks about a common mistake made by many beginning marketers . Although he specifically writes about internet marketing, his key points apply to any marketing program. There are three key questions you must answer in any marketing campaign:
1. Who is your target audience?
2. What do they want?
3. How can you motivate this target audience to act now?
As this article points out, many business owners spend 90% of their time creating the perfect product and only 10% of their time finding the perfect audience. I see this all the time – painstaking hours put into product development and minimal time put into marketing. This needs to be reversed to maximize your success – spend 90% of your time finding your market. Do research to answer the 3 questions above. People don’t just buy because you have a great idea – you need to market to a niche. Once you identify a hungry market – a market that is interested in what you offer – then use your marketing campaign to motivate them to buy. You have a targeted marketing effort which always gives better results.
The Powerful Woman
How are you marketing to women – the family member who either buys or influences the purchase of most consumer items? A recent article on Startup Nation, titled Women Roar! notes that women either buy or influence a purchase 83 percent of the time; more specifically, women account for 92 percent of all vacation choices and 94 percent of all home furnishing purchases. Not only are women making or influencing the majority of purchases, but women also own many of the businesses. In the United States alone, there are 10.1 million women-owned businesses, employing 27.5 million Americans. Although women make up such a huge part of the purchasing group, many companies today either fail to market to women or believe they are only another niche. To market effectively to women, a brand needs to speak to their heads and hearts. As women are more naturally inclined to boast about products and services they like, what are you doing to capture this market? Check out the whole article here!
Grow Your Client Base
I recently came upon this article in Entrepreneur Magazine titled ‘Referal Offers Your Customers Can’t Refuse’. In any business at any time clients are a necesity, but in an economy where every dollar is carefully watched and accounted for, attracting clients through referals is required. This article gives 5 examples of ways to bring in new clients through referals from existing clients.
I’m all a-Twitter
- Do research: Monitor what people are saying about your brand right now. Try it: go to search.twitter.com and type in “Swiffer.” As I write this @d33ann is bragging about how she tidied her apartment and @adtothebone suggests they should rebrand it for men as the “dusterminator.” Try it with your own brand. Locked in those tweets are sentiment, volume and insight about your brand, your competitors, and your category.
- Talk to people: Just get a Twitter account for your company and start twittering. You’ll get more followers if you offer something useful. For example, Dell has sold more than a million dollars worth of overstock computers through its @DellOutlet Twitter feed, which has 137,000 followers.
- Energize your brand advocates: Zappos has a page that shows who’s tweeting about it. Unlike Skittles, this isn’t a stunt; Zappos is engaged with its customers on Twitter and they’re responding. Do you know who loves your brand?
- Support your customers. Comcast is digging itself out from under a poor service reputation one customer at a time;@comcastcares will respond if you tweet about challenges with your Comcast service and will solve your problem in 140 characters or refer you to people who can help.
- Embrace customer feedback. H&R block asks its Twitter followers about potential product upgrades, for example. Twitter users love it, and now companies are learning to love it, too.
Yes, his examples are big companies, but even small business owners can tap into this marketing opportunity.
This is great marketing!!!
The train station in Liverpool, England T-Mobile did this great commercial unbeknown to the daily commuters. They practiced for 8 weeks plus one late night at the station. On January 15th, 2009, with hidden cameras and 400 dancers at 11:00 a.m. their plan was put into action. And some say the Brits are straight laced!!!
Prospecting Tool – Google Alerts
One of my favourite tools for hunting prospects is Google Alerts. Google Alerts are e-mail updates, sent daily or weekly, relating to the latest relevant Google results based on the query or topic you request. Google Alerts does most of the hunting for you, and all you have to do is go through their suggestions and choose which business or people you want to contact. As with any hunting tool, Google Alerts is only as good as you make it – if you don’t go through the prospects or fail to jump on some opportunities, then this tool will not work for you.
